#BIFURCATION OF THE SOUL
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the most interesting thing about gojo satoru's character is his irony.
his abilities, while making him the Strongest, are simultaneously his folly. everything "strong" him is at odds with who he is, what he wants, who he wants. this is why geto's question during the breakup was so debilitating— who is he without power? is power all he is?
the answer is ironic. he has the six-eyes, but he couldn't see geto deteriorating right in front of him. he was honing his power, which was ironically enough a key piece in fuelling geto's defection. his power, which is all he understands himself to be, causes him to lose the person he wants most, which has nothing to do with his power at all.
he has the limitless, but he's limited by love. as a literary device, kenjaku is a physical manifestation of gojo's weakness, of his love— shibuya only happened because he couldn't bring himself to destroy his beloved's body, an unmistakable act of overwhelming sentiment and intimacy. gojo's strength is not unidirectional; it bifurcates and goes in one direction while his overpowering love goes in another, leaving him in some liminal place in between. his love imprisons him in his youth (shown by how he always returns to it) and it also literally imprisons him in a box (the prison realm).
he has infinity, which doesn't let anyone or anything close to him, yet he aches for companionship. gojo forms allies so "no one will ever have to be alone again", because even though he has the world in his hand, it's on the condition that it's his alone. gojo craves closeness (from one person in particular) and his powers literally prevent him from attaining it. his desires are not only in direct opposition with his abilities, his abilities prevent him from fulfilling his desires.
he repeatedly tells megumi that sorcerers are alone when they die, but he stays by geto's side til the very end. after geto appears to "come back", gojo's first instinct is to smile, which goes against any and all logic, six-eyes or not. his barest self betrays him despite the fact that he knows he killed geto with his own hands a year ago. when he confronts kenjaku, he does the inverse of what happened with geto— he defies his six-eyes and looks with his soul, something that should've happened when he asked geto if he was okay all those years ago.
the things that make gojo satoru strong are the same things that make him weak. he is supposedly a god amongst humans, but his folly is that he's the most human of them all. he yearns, he loves, he aches, he craves— gojo satoru knows firsthand that love is the most twisted curse of all because he nakedly bears its cross.
#my jjk meta#jjk meta#jjk#gojo#gojo satoru#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu geto#satosugu#stsg brainrot#stsg angst#stsg#satosugu angst#gojo analysis#gojo meta#gojo brainrot#jujutsu kaisen meta#jujutsu kaisen analysis#gojo character analysis#jjk satoru#satoru angst#gojo angst#gojo x geto#suguru x satoru#jujutsu kaisen manga#jujutsu kaisen anime#gego#jujutsu kaisen season 2#kenjaku#shibuya
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can someone explain to me why the fuck all Pixar characters have looked like this since the good dinosaur?
He has a squishy round face, the mouth and eye sections slightly bifurcated. His eyes are large and round, his teeth slightly separate from the inside of his mouth. He has no texture, no shade. He reminds one a bit of Wallace and Gromitt, with the giant teeth, or perhaps an emoji with his simple flat face. Anything sharp or angled has been buffed away. He looks plush.
Luca looked like this. Turning Red looked like this. Elemental and Soul even kind of looked this, with slightly sharper shapes but still an avoidance of any deeper or pricklier design. can anyone tell me what the fuck is going on? what happened to Pixar’s punchy, severe, angular, textured character design?
character design from old Pixar movies:
see the extreme angles, characters with clear and differentiated shape types, teeth that can be cranky or jagged, colors that tint a bit darker with shadow, contouring and shading that’s noticeable on faces. The character design gives me hints what these characters might be like—pointy, angular, inviting, or odd.
character design from new Pixar movies:
All the teeth sit the same way. most faces are vaguely pear or oval shaped and eyes are all big and round. surface texture and shadow don’t exist unless it’s a slight fuzzy quality, like in Inside Out. you poke one of these and they bounce back like jello. what on earth is going on.
#disney#pixar#elio#animation#my private theory is Disney is trying to kill Pixar by making them make blah movies#while they steal the interesting aesthetics for their own movies#but now NO ONE is doing the weird clear shapes Pixar used to do. No one has the darker edge
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vessel is a bifurcated soul split between the realms of subconscious potential and the heavy weight of reality. in dreaming he finds god. in waking, he claws to remember the details. he tries his best to define what he's seen but human speech is an inelegant medium, incapable of capturing anything more than imperfect fragments of his experience. beautiful but incomplete.
art is the closest he comes to bridging the gap. to wholeness. he can feel his god on the other side and behind his eyes, searching with a desperation that feels all too familiar. he no longer knows which of them it originates from.
someday those two halves will collapse. crash into each other like twining planets or merging black holes, utter destruction and reformation into a new undefinable being. an existence beyond classification.
he's tried so very hard to be worthy. when the time comes, he can only hope the end result will be greater than them both.
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The bifurcation of the trailers for the Breath of the Wild sequel is so funny to me. Like,
Below a ruined kingdom trapped in an endless cycle of destruction, the earth holds terrible secrets within its bowels. Two young warriors scarred by calamity descend into the darkness to seek the source of the malice that poisons the land. What will the flickering light of their torches reveal about the sins of their ancestors? Will they break the chains that bind them, or will they be consumed by the ever-burning flames of a forgotten past?
and then,
Oh shit, we actually have to sell this game! Here’s 60 seconds of an attractive young man running around sky islands and playing with magical technology! Look at these cute enemies with comically large horns! Have some cool pastel robots! Link got a wacky arm and a sexy toga, and Zelda got a cute haircut! This game is Definitely Not Dark Souls™ so please buy it for your children!
Honestly I love both. I just find the dramatic shift in tone endlessly amusing.
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Casey Jr.'s first word was ‘Weo.’
His second was ‘Cashee’ or ‘Raff’ or ‘Bifurcated Time Branch’—depending on who you asked.
At 36 months old he was their tiny poet. The Kraang was rearing its head, its mouth still smoking from the detonating hockey puck when Cassandra tucked his leg back into the fold of her baby wrap, unsheathed her stick's retractable blade, and asked, "What shall we do to the big bad annoying Kraang?" and out came his first, fully-formed sentence.
"TAKE ITS BRAINS!"
Donnie said, "What."
Leo said, "What."
Raph said, "NO?" and Cassandra said, "Yucky—but sure."
SCHLICK went the Kraang. Mikey added, "that's what you call a butterfly cut, kiddo—what did you just say?"
Casey howled, "TAKE ITS BRAINS."
No alien brains were taken (though Donnie would've liked to, very much). But Casey had a knack for putting the soul of the thing into words.
The first day they'd run out of sugar, he passed around flat stones he'd plucked from a river and declared, "DESSERT!"
Mikey sniffed at it. "What kind is it?" he asked, not unkind.
"A cuppycake."
"Ah, a cupcake?"
Donnie—dismally unfunny after they'd officially ran out of coffee rations, and then cigarettes—scoffed. "What would you know about dessert. Do you even know how frosting tastes like?" and Casey pointed at a passing cloud, then pretended his heart burst into tiny, lovestruck pieces.
"Like BWAH," Casey said, giddy.
Later, he'd fish the truth out of the air again; the last time Leo and Raph fought like this they'd been teenagers. Not imposing figureheads of a rebel group. Teary-eyed, Casey chased after Leo all the way out of the camp, wrapped his arms tight around Leo's knee, and dug his feet in.
“You need to come back and, and, and hug each other real tight or else—! Or else your arms will forget forever."
"Forever." Leo touched his throat; it hurt from all the yelling.
Casey's lower lip wobbled. "And ever."
Kid was right again, of course. The days rolled into weeks, into seasons, into the Year We Don't Like to Talk About, and his arms had forgotten; he'd dropped the hug on the way here, maybe, got distracted by some ugly three-headed Kraang and tripped on a punchline, and Raph was gone in the morning. No one there for the final sendoff.
Casey didn't get the concept. At six years old, the kid could perform triple axels around any fresh recruit, but he still couldn't sort out his tenses. Said "I eated!" or "I beated your ass, sensei!"; his past and present verbs tangling like fishing lines.
Kid had a point, Leo thought. What was the difference anyway? Leo missed Raph. Misses Raph. Is missing Raph. Will miss Raph, for the rest of his days, in perplexing ways that will continue to surprise him, like the sunrise outside the canyon. How it rose and rose and rose and rose.
Halfway up the ascent, Leo's knees buckled. Hadn't the future dissolved in that instant? Ten years, he'd promised Mikey. This time we play for keeps. Still: the end of the world, ecosystem degradation, no brother to haunt him; dystopia after dystopia. Something inside him was blackening.
"Had a bad dream," Leo said, shivering as the kid grabbed his cheeks.
Casey said, “Well, have a better one!”
prev | read on ao3
#rottmnt fanfiction#rottmnt#rise leo#rise casey#rottmnt movie#forgot to post this sdfsf throws another micro fic at yall#you know how kids just... see things adults dont#yeah. kids are great#rise raph#bigdamnher0
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A thought I've had about the whole human kink thing is how viably we can modify ourselves, like basic tattoos, piercings, and the more extreme tongue bifurcation and horn implants. There's also what Faerun can offer humans, be it through inking our skin with runes, magical glass eyes, magical prosthetics as replacement limbs, and even just straight up growing new limbs if the circumstances are right. Wyll pops into mind, and Mizora just snapping her fingers and making him partially devil is insane to me. What exactly does that even entail, like does he burn hotter, is he prone to vices, or is it literally all aesthetic?
Draconic sorcerers growing wings and a tail comes to mind, but I personally think we should have more crazy shit like it. Watch the stupid tiefling that made fun of you for your fat forehead as you become a druid and learn how to grow big deer horns to assert dominance. Wizards studying winged races like the aasimar in order to grow their own and accidentally recreate Icarus (hahaha wizard hubris haha draco sorcs can already do that) Wyll has already proven that warlock patrons could just slap something on you and call it a day, could you imagine what an eldritch horror could do to a guy? It could force you to be a catgirl, scary stuff
Scary stuff indeed. So like, anyone got Cthulhu's address or something? Just wanna bang these pots and pans in front of his house, no reason.
Realistically, in Faerun, only 20% of humans would be adventurers, and only 5% would manage to become powerful enough to reach the high levels in their class to alter their appearance. The remaining humans would just be your average normal human, maybe with coloured hair or piercings.
Luckily, there is a fuck ton of humans. So going by our current numbers of 8,082,949,811 population. 1,616,589,962 of it would be adventurers. One billion and half.
And 404,147,490 would be the powerful ones at high levels. Draconic Sorcerers, for example, need to reach level 11 to sprout wings, and reaching level 12 is considered to almost be demi-god like in power. Almost half a billion demi-god like humans just waddling Faerun.
Also I pulled these percentages out of my ass, source: trust me bro. It does sound kinda reasonable so eh.
The fuckery these 5% of humanity gets up to will have the whole planet on a toll. Wasn't Karsus himself a human that had his ego stroked and inflated by the elves endlessly?
Think of how quickly Gale ascended to divnity in mere months after the endgame when he reached level 12. It normally takes a person years of dedicated study to level up once.
Maybe a group of nonhuman adventurers meet a really powerful and cool looking person that saves them from a dragon. Killing it so easily. Maybe they have wings themselves or mayhe an aura of holy magic that surrounds them.
They have horns, glossy skin and glowing limbs. Eyes shaped like stars with the galaxy inside and hair flaoting around with no regards to gravity.
The party asks who is this benevolent deity, and you reply with, "pfft, a deity? Please, I'm just a simple human."
Also, with Wyll's transformation. Remember, Mizora works under the arch-devil zariel. The punishment was probably casted by the arch-devil herself but handed by Mizora.
Transforming someone into another being is never easy, but I feel like fiends and celestials can get an exception, yk?
Like Corellon and his pantheon can change other races into elves at will. Fiends can be born out of hate or sins, and Wyll already handed in his soul in a contract. It would be easy to infect it with enough sin by dragging it through the hells to make him a devil, or just have the appearance of one.
His ingame status never changes, tho. It still describes him as human, and he still has all human weaknesses and none of the fiending bonuses. So maybe it didn't transform him but just altered his appearance? Like a cure or something?
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the One-with-No-Eyes as a Psychopomp
We know that Yellowjackets loves its Greek myths (x/x), so I want to consider the Man-with-No-Eyes as a Psychopomp. I’ve touched on these things a bit from this meta post of mine regarding Tai being a tree, but in light of the most recent episodes, I wanna deep-dive into this enigmatic specter haunting Taissa.
The first time we see the One-with-No-Eyes (outside of the title sequence) is 1.03, The Dollhouse, when Tai is a little girl. It’s her dying grandmother who first sees him, and is horrified by him. This really fits with a Psychopomp guiding the souls of the recently dead, since her grandmother is preparing to transition.
Tai’s grandmother was calm about dying up until she saw him, even telling young Tai earlier that an angel would come for her. Psychopomps can be angels, demons, or any type of spirit in between, and I think it’s significant that the first time Tai sees the Man-with-No-Eyes is in the mirror, since mirrors have mythological associations with portals and spirits.
Mirrors are a sort of liminal object. They show you something everyone else sees but you can’t: yourself.. but in reverse. Looking at yourself is a psychologically loaded phenomenon, and considering Tai’s bifurcated self communicating with her through mirrors, it’s safe to say they reflect a truer version of the world than she’s willing to accept.
In Jungian Psychology, Psychopomps can also represent a guide between the unconscious and conscious realms. And the One-with-No-Eyes certainly bridges the gap between Tai’s conscious self and her unconscious doppelgänger self.
And conscious Tai *does* see him, despite denying the supernatural. We have textual evidence from 1.03, 1.05, and 2.03:
In 1.03, before the audience is introduced to him, Tai sees the the No-Eyed Man. She’s disturbed by something she sees in the forest. We’re shown a shot of what she’s looking at: an empty frame of trees. This is actually a shot from the show’s title sequence, except in the title sequence the Man-with-No-Eyes stands in the middle of the frame. We can safely assume Tai sees him here.
This same thing happens in ep 1.05, Blood Hive. Adult Tai is supposed to fold out of the political race, but looks into the crowd. Her eyes land on an empty space (44:58), and whatever she sees prompts her to double down and stay in the race. When she finishes her speech, at 46:25 she looks back to the same spot in the crowd that gave her courage, and there he is, just like the title sequence: the Man-with-No-Eyes.
In 2.03, Digestif, when Van accidentally wakes Tai from sleepwalking and asks her who the One-with-No-Eyes is, she flashes to the first time she sees him, with her dying grandmother, in the mirror.
The Man-with-No-Eyes is a guide through the mirror, through the looking glass, reflecting her desires and fears, if only Tai would follow. But, tbf, we don’t know what type of entity we’re dealing with. And when Tai’s grandmother sees him she does not take him for an angel. she screams:
Don’t you come over here. Stay away…. don’t let him take me! Don’t let him take my eyes!
This fear of getting your eyes stolen in this inter-generational setting feels very dense to me. It touches on generational trauma and reminds me of myths like Oedipus Rex.
This Figure-with-No-Eyes appears to Tai’s grandmother, who in that instant passes him to bb Tai. And then we see trauma perpetuated with adult Tai and Sammy.
In Oedipus Rex, the family is trying to avoid fate, but they cannot escape. Oedipus is told the truth about killing his father and marrying his mother by the blind prophet Tiresias. and once Oedipus finally “sees” the truth that he’s killed his father and married his mother, he plucks out his own eyes. He cannot unsee the truth, and he has clearer vision once blinded.
Tai, like Oedipus and her grandmother, usually refuses to follow the Man-with-No-Eyes. This is explicitly stated in the most recent episode, 2.03 Digestif:
Van: How do you know where you’re going?
DoppelTai: He shows me.
Van: Who’s “he”?
DoppelTai: The One with No Eyes.
Van: Is that who you always follow?
DoppelTai: Only when she lets me.
Van: Okay there’s a “she” too? Am I “she”?
DoppelTai:
Van: Then who is “she”?
DoppelTai: Taissa.
Van: Then who are you?
Conscious Tai refuses to let herself acknowledge the reality of the woods. Like Oedipus, Tai has hubris surrounding her ability to understand the world. She refuses to believe in the supernatural, despite it being up close and personal, always in her peripheral vision.
But the repressed part of Taissa, the one I call DoppelTai, who only wants her to survive, knows and accepts the Man-with-No-Eyes. This version of Tai is like Oedipus post-blinding. And like Tiresias, the Man-with-No-Eyes is a guide cluing her into the reality of the woods. Offering her not only survival, but power.
I want to point out all the little nods to this No-Eyed Specter surrounding Tai:
there’s the mirrors, which imply looking and reflection, as well as being the first time the One-with-No-Eyes is shown
Tai checking her grandmother’s eye sockets at the funeral to find they’re empty
the eye patches Tai makes Van and herself for the Doomcoming
DoppelTai removing one of the eyes from Sammy’s doll and putting it on her altar
I’ve talked about the mirrors and the grandmother’s fear of her eyes getting stolen, so I want to consider the other bullet points. The eye patches were created after the wolves maul Van, which is Tai’s fault, since DoppelTai stole the bone talisman from Van, the flare gun, and fucked off to the safety of a tree.
Van didn’t get an eye taken, but the eye patches invoke that imagery, and it does feel like some sort of exchange between the One-with-No-Eyes and DoppelTai. He was most certainly leading her in that moment, after conscious Tai fell asleep and let the fire go out.
Just what did she get in the exchange? I don’t know. I assume DoppelTai had been eating dirt on her previous sleepwalking excursions for the minerals (worth noting you might eat dirt for iron deficiency, and we know the forest has a lot of iron in the ground), and maybe like those previous times, it was simply about survival: an exchange for safety from the wolves. But then I think about the most recent episodes, that the One-with-No-Eyes has been leading her to the symbols carved into trees. Could she have been looking for one of these at this time?
This leads me to her adult self and Sammy. Like the wolf incident with Van, adult Tai ends up in a tree at a loved one’s expense. As an adult, it’s her son’s well-being that’s in jeopardy.
DoppelTai ramps up that danger by breaking Sammy’s doll, removing an eye, and adding it to her altar. This invokes the Man-with-No-Eyes, as well as the half vision of Tai and Van’s Doomcoming looks. If Tai’s grandmother was scared of the No-Eyed Man stealing her eyes, what does it mean that Tai takes a proxy of her son’s? He clearly hasn’t been doing great.
If the payoff of this exchange is Tai winning the senate race, is the dog, doll proxy, and (Adam’s?) heart enough? Post-election, Tai is a mess, and her wife’s accident, with Tai drawing the symbol on her palm, says to me that the doll proxy isn't enough.
But enough speculation! Time to wrap this baby up: I view Taissa as a Seer (whereas I see Lottie as more of a Prophet). She has all manner of double vision, whether it’s blinding herself to the situation and her full self, or seeing this guide who leads her. Like Lottie, the supernatural elements in Tai’s life didn’t start in the woods, but the woods have accelerated, or amplified them.
The One-with-No-Eyes is leading her to the symbols, which are powerful if you’re willing to sacrifice a little blood. Whether functioning as a Greek Psychopomp, guiding her through this liminal spiritual landscape of the woods, or as a Jungian Psychopomp, acting as a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms, or something in between, the Man-with-No-Eyes is a player, different than Lottie’s relationship with the woods. And I am *so* looking forward to watching this unfold.
#yellowjackets#taissa turner#meta#the one with no eyes#the man with no eyes#doppeltai#toothsome tv universe#psychopomp#long post
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i’ve been reminiscing of a different tabletop game i used to be in, so here’s abby abyss and ABBY ABYSS, a drummer who tried to make a deal with the devil but do a trick to allow her not to pay her soul, wound up accidentally ripping her soul in half, spent like a decade in so much pain because her bifurcated soul were straining to combine again while trapped on two different planes of reality, suddenly got her half-soul back but it came back irradiated with hell (hellburned) and now she just is part demon and the demon part has not drummed in a decade.
#dndoodles#i really did enjoy that game#also abby says things like#'the design of Fate has seen fit to gather us at this hour of my need'#'such that we may carry out this ephemeral exchange and pass by like two ships in the night'#'pray what is the cost of this packet of gum'#meanwhile ABBY says things like#'FUCK YEAH I'M GONNA FUCKING BASH THIS FUCKING BEAT INTO YOUR FUCKING BRAIN'
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Emerald
Rated/warning: T, heavy angst
Word count: 520
Author's Note: My contribution to a spontaneous writing sprint among my fellow Bridgerton fic authors. Inspired by @bridgertontess beautiful edit above, we all set out to explain what poor Ben was doing out in the rain. 💙 I almost didn't post mine because, true to form, i reverted to my deeply angsty inclinations and came up with something horrible. Posting this in the middle of the night so maybe no one reads it - I apologize in advance.
The results from my fellow writers were incredibly diverse, amazing, and sometimes hilarious! What a talented bunch - read all of them!
Could Be Worse - @fayes-fics
Turning - @queen-of-the-misfit-toys
contribution from @thebabblingbrookenook
The Deluge - @colettebronte
Weather the Storm - @silverhallow
The world had been muted entirely. The clouds were doing their part to blur everything into a wash of greys, draining color out of Benedict’s vision the same way his grief was draining away all sounds. This was life now without her: quieter, colder, devoid of spirit. He had to step outside to try and catch his breath, because it felt like his heart had been bifurcated, half of him withered and atrophied. How could he face this without her and the levity she would no doubt have offered? As soon as his feet hit the pavement he nearly rang her number to tell her what had happened. A reflex he knew was bound to haunt him for years to come.
The rain was torrential, oddly so for the season. Others may not have held with the spiritual significance he saw in certain moments, but he knew this was one of them. The same way his soul alerted him to impending grief or joy, he felt the numbing certainty that the rain was not pelting him by coincidence. It was a message, more likely intended as a slap in the face to pull himself together rather than as mournful tears. That was her way. Or maybe she was calling him back to memories: the nights when they had snuck outside to escape boring parties, then been forced back indoors soaked and giggling, or the time she had appeared unannounced at his front door with his favorite Jaffa Cakes when he coincidentally was sick in bed with a cold. She had driven through a storm on a whim just to see him. It was like she knew somehow. She always did. He wished she had waited a little longer. Spent another decade with him at least, before making her grand exit.
He had felt her go, had heard the roaring in his ears and knew what it signified. Half of everyone he called didn’t answer, including her, so he hadn’t known. He was paralyzed with anxiety for an hour until the phone finally rang. Another goodbye he would never get to say. She was already gone. In just her fashion too - dramatic. Something everyone would talk about for generations. She would have loved the attention. If he were being honest with himself, he had to accept how fitting it was. A quiet, slow decline would have been anticlimactic for her. No, the spectacle and its irony were better. What was a better story than a stepmother drowning to save her child? A woman who adamantly rejected the idea of motherhood, sacrificing herself in the ultimate act of maternal love?
He remembered how she told him that Phillip preferred rain to sunny days. Marina had passed under clear skies. Now Benedict didn’t know what his brother-in-law was going to do, weighted by tragedy and daily reminders of his losses no matter what the weather. He was honor-bound to help him find a way, him and the twins who sat huddled inside the hospital behind him. Together they would all have to carve out some new, duller way to carry on without their beloved Eloise.
#bridgerton#bridgerton fanfiction#benedict bridgerton#benedict bridgerton fanfiction#bridgerton family#angst#eloise bridgerton#eloise bridgerton fanfiction
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BGMI Multiverse Series 2024 Teams
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The ten-day tournament will be played in two stages, semifinals and finals. While the semifinal will be played from 8 to 12 January, the final will begin from 13th January and will be played until 17 January.
What is the prize pool for the BGMI Multiverse Series 2024?
The 24 teams will play for the prize pool of INR 10 Lakh. The further bifurcation of the prize money is yet not confirmed.
What are the teams competing in the BGMI Multiverse Series 2024?
Group A: Team Soul, Global Esports, Team Destro, Revenant Esports, Team Omega, WSB Gaming, Gujarat Tigers, Genxfm Esports.
Group B: Reckoning Esports, Team Tamilas, Team Zero, Big Brother, Chemin Esports, Aslaa Esports, Orangutan, Medal Esports
Group C: Team XSpark, Team 8Bit, Hydra Esports, Wingod Esports, TWM Gaming, Godlike Esports, Blind Esports, Entity Esports.
What is the format for the BGMI Multiverse Series 2024?
Semifinals - 8th to 12th January:
The semifinals will see 24 teams play across two BGMI maps, Erangel and Miramar for six days.
Match 1 - Erangel - Group A & B
Match 2: Miramar - Group A & C
Match 3: Erangel - Group B & C
Match 4: Erangel - Group A & B
Match 5: Miramar - Group A & C
Match 6: Erangel - Group B & C
Finals - 13th to 17th January:
Out of the 24 invited teams, only 16 will make it to the finals. The five-day-long finals will see teams play three maps from BGMI, Erangel, Miramar and Sanhok.
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Title: 4:08 to Tombstone
Author: zuzeca
Artist: Bees
Rating: Explicit
Pairings: Dean Winchester/Castiel, past mention of Dean Winchester/Others
Length: 20000
Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Torture, Sexual Content, Implied Cannibalism
Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Western, Castiel’s True Form, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depictions of Hell, Crack Treated Seriously, Internalized Homophobia
Posting Date: October 25, 2022
Summary: When minor outlaw Dean Winchester's beloved brother ended up on the wrong side of a robber baron with yellow eyes and a sadistic streak, Dean never expected to wind up in the Arizona Territory’s most notorious prison: The Pit. Nor did he expect, after years on the rack, to be sprung by former Federal Marshal and man of the cloth, Reverend Castiel Milton. Now, on the run from corrupt lawman Warden Alastaire, the two men must learn to trust each other, or hang.
When Castiel, lesser seraph of the Lord, descended into Hell to help rescue the Righteous Man, he never expected to be unwillingly cast in Dean Winchester’s repressed bisexual cowboy fantasy.
Excerpt: The edges of the Righteous Man’s soul spilled out of its bindings, igniting the space between their grappling forms, and Castiel found himself sucked into a blinding vortex.
It wasn’t like traveling between worlds or through time. Castiel found himself forced through a sieve, through the eye of a needle, the wavelengths that composed him redirected through the prism of a soul capable of containing an archangel. He could feel himself melting, dissolving, protoplasm reforming.
And then, like the strings that vibrated through the universe stretched too tightly, he felt himself snap back into alignment. The demon was before him. Something was off with his perception of it, but he didn’t have time to fully process it. He lunged, stabbed it deeply, slit it open, and cast the corpse aside to writhe in its death throes.
He lunged forward, scooping up the plummeting soul, enfolding it inside the clanking labyrinth of placoliths that formed his core. He felt it latch onto his internals, clinging and dripping fluids.
I’m here to rescue you. Don’t be afraid.
But then the soul pushed. Exerted its influence, and Castiel felt his consciousness bifurcate. Here now, in Hell, with bleeding wings and gouged placoliths. Yet also here-as-elsewhere. Viewing a different plane.
A man was looking at him. A man bound and on his knees. His careworn face and hands were stained with blood that was his and not-his. His eyes were the green of the algal blooms that rode warm ocean currents in the wake of summer storms.
The Righteous Man spoke, and Castiel heard him with angelic frequencies and human ones.
“Am I supposed to be?”
Startled, Castiel experienced a moment of doubling, the divine equivalent of a record scratch.
Baffled, he re-oriented his vision to the auxiliary plane in which he also now existed. The Righteous Man had projected a vessel on him. Boxed him into flesh and blood as though he were stuffing a scarecrow with goose down. A man clad in a long black coat and a high collar that Castiel belatedly recognized as the garb of a priest in some sects of Western Christianity. Blue eyes, curly dark hair and an absurdly wide-brimmed black hat that Castiel could not place in human history. Only his blade carried through to the false form—it became a fulcrum, a weapon existing in both planes simultaneously, an axis around which his true and false forms rotated.
Castiel stared at the vessel, at himself. At the body which had never existed. That was simultaneously there and not-there.
“Oh,” he said and felt his voice vibrate in the excruciatingly narrow frequencies that encompassed the range of human hearing. “That’s…unexpected.”
DCBB 2022 Posting Schedule
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i cannot describe how deeply i want to order chinese food and sit on my couch and eat and sleep tonight. but! my hair looks nice. and i ate too much last night. and i want to starve. my other option is yoga and then my friend's bar. that sounds like a version of me that i like better. let's imagine i'm doing both. a bifurcation of the self - i'll let the sad, tired, emotionally lost me sit on the couch and eat chinese food. we will check in with her later. the me that i would like to bring into being, the one i would like to establish permanent residence in my soul, will go to yoga. she will wear her favorite body oil, she will wear her favorite necklace, she will wear her favorite bodysuit. she will go to yoga and she will do the asanas and when she leaves she'll feel slightly superior to her sister on the couch, who is by that time sleeping, bloated and pathetic while a show she has seen 100 times plays in the background and the rest of her food gets cold. she'll get in her car and go to her friend's bar where she will sit and read and have a drink. maybe someone interesting will approach her. maybe someone boring will. more likely than that is that her usual friends will be there and when she's had enough reading and mindfulness she'll slide down to their end of the bar and hang out with them. then she'll go home, eat the small bowl of sausage and zucchini pasta left in the refrigerator and it'll taste so good. and that will be all she eats today. and tomorrow she'll wake up and her stomach will be a little less bloated than it is today. and if she still wants to sit on the couch and eat chinese food with her sister, we will let her. because she will be on vacation and sometimes it is good to rest.
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“Against the World, Against Life
More so today than ever before, Lovecraft would have been a misfit and a recluse. Born in 1890, he already appeared to his contemporaries, in the years of his youth, to be an obsolete reactionary. It's not hard to imagine what he would have thought of our society today. Since his death, it has not ceased evolving in a direction which could only have led him to hate it more. Mechanization and modernization have ineluctably destroyed the lifestyle he was attached to with his every fiber (it is not as if he harbored any delusions about humanity's ability to influence events; as he wrote in a letter, "Everything in modern existence is a direct & absolute corollary of the discoveries of applied steam power & of large-scale applications of electrical energy"). The ideals of liberty and of democracy that he so abhorred have spread all over the planet. The man who declared: "What we detest is simply change itself" could only have bristled at the degree to which the idea of progress has come to be an indisputable and almost unconscious credo. The reach of liberal capitalism has extended over minds; in step and hand in hand with it are mercantilism, publicity, the absurd and sneering cult of economic efficiency, the exclusive and immoderate appetite for material riches. Worse still, liberalism has spread from the domain of economics to the domain of sexuality. Every sentimental fiction has been eradicated. Purity, chastity, fidelity, and decency are ridiculous stigmas. The value of a human being today is measured in terms of his economic efficiency and his erotic potential — that is to say, in terms of the two things that Lovecraft most despised.
Horror writers are reactionaries in general simply because they are particularly, one might even say professionally, aware of the existence of Evil. It is somewhat curious that among Lovecraft's numerous disciples, none has been struck by this simple fact: the evolution of the modern world has made Lovecraftian phobias ever more present, ever more alive.
(…)
True, this is a treacherous path that only leads to narrow straits. Not because of censorship or litigation. Horror writers probably feel that marked hostility toward any form of freedom in the end breeds hostility to life itself. Lovecraft felt the same way, but he did not stop halfway; he was an extremist. That the world was evil, intrinsically evil, evil by its very essence, was a conclusion he had no trouble reaching, and this was also the most profound meaning of his admiration for Puritans. What amazed him about them was that they "hated life and scorned the platitude that it is worth living." We shall traverse this vale of tears that separates birth from death, but we must remain pure. HPL in no way shared the hopes of Puritans; but he shared their refusal. He explained his point of view in a letter to Belknap Long (written, moreover, only a few days before his marriage):
"And as for Puritan inhibitions—I admire them more every day. They are attempts to make of life a work of art—to fashion a pattern of beauty in the hog-wallow that is animal existence— and they spring out of that divine hatred of life which marks the deepest and most sensitive soul."
Toward the end of his days, he did come to, at times, express poignant regrets in the face of the solitude and perceived failure of his existence. But his regrets remained, if one might express them thus, theoretical. He remembered the periods in his life (the end of adolescence, the brief and decisive interval of marriage) where his path might clearly have bifurcated toward what is called happiness. But he understood that he was probably incapable of behaving any other way. And in the end, like Schopenhauer, he concluded that he hadn't fared too badly.
He faced death with courage. Struck by intestinal cancer that spread to his entire upper body, he was transported on March 10, 1937, to the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital. He was an exemplary patient, polite, affable, whose stoicism and courtesy impressed all the nurses, in spite of his very intense physical suffering (thankfully attenuated by morphine). He underwent the pangs of death with resignation and perhaps with a certain secret satisfaction. This life that was leaving behind its carnal envelope was his old enemy; he had denigrated it, fought it, he would not utter a single word of regret. And he passed away, without further incident, on March 15, 1937.
As biographers have said, "Lovecraft died, his work was born." And indeed, we have just begun to put him in his true place, equal or superior to that of Edgar Poe—in any event, resolutely unique. In the face of the repeated failure of his literary creations, he at times felt the sacrifice of his life had actually been in vain. Today we can pronounce a different judgment; we can, for he has been our essential guide, taking us on initiatory journeys to different universes that lie somewhere well beyond the limits of human experience, but that provoke in us a precise and terrible emotional impact.
This man, who did not succeed at life, did indeed succeed at writing. It was hard for him. It took him years. New York helped him. He who was so gentle, so courteous, discovered hatred there. Returning to Providence, he composed the magnificent tales that vibrate like incantations, that are as precise as a dissection. The dramatic structure of the "great texts" is impressively complex; the narrative procedures are precise, new and bold. Perhaps all this would not suffice were it not that at the center of the ensemble, one feels the power of a consuming interior force.
Every great passion, be it love or hate, will in the end generate an authentic work. One may deplore it, but one must recognize it: Lovecraft was more on the side of hate; of hate and fear. The universe, which intellectually he perceived as being indifferent, became hostile aesthetically. His own existence, which might have been nothing but the sum of banal disappointments, turned into a surgical operation, and an inverted celebration.
The work of his mature years remains faithful to the physical prostration of his youth, transfiguring it. This is the profound secret of Lovecraft's genius, and the pure source of his poetry: he succeeded in transforming his aversion for life into an effective hostility.
To offer an alternative to life in all its forms constitutes a permanent opposition, a permanent recourse to life—this is the poet's highest mission on this earth. Howard Phillips Lovecraft fulfilled this mission.” - Michel Houellebecq, ‘H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life’ (1991) [p. 135 - 140]
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–
the priestesses danced – in the baths built atop the springs down the bluffs behind city hall. the expanse of some bay hill within a block– well-eclipsed by the funnel of strata which teethed the cliffs. down the plaza -- beneath the canopies of streets, there shone another city gleaming in the gold of an artificial sun. cavern ceilings painted azure as the sky.
the priestesses danced – so that that sleep may overcome the carnal in men, those beasts who dwelt in the land above, with the fallen sisters they had taken as claims, who had become again the beasts they had been as girls, in the wild and untamed woodlands that were the brush they could not oil or tame – the talons they lacquered only to strike with priapism by venom. they danced and danced – and some harmonies met the men meek of heart, whose ears were open to the hornet honey of their rhythms :-- for heavy of soul, transmutations erupted in every atom of their skulls. arcs of gold convulsed through leaden filament.
~^..^~ ( o ) ~^..^~
. ^! .^. !^ `
from behind the columns, walled gardens in the shade kept the night as day. stars gleamed down the sleek of the fiberoptics of their gowns, and constellations latticed the forms of flowers and mosaics neither geometry nor mesh, for the wall was itself the night which emanated out the radiance of day, bound in brickwork which was not there, for they walked between the lime and were grazed not by the mortar, but passed suspended above the grounds in grace, as each were only women in the flesh, feet fawnlike and pale in painted toes :-- upon the floor, they moved, ankles clinging to the gossamer of their gowns, swanlike and downy muscular as the brine around them was sultry as the sea winds before a storm – for they knew again their prince, abundant in his horn and his cups, helmed in the shell that was his light :-- for he was only the light which resides in the shell, the conch which held the voice, and could be whispered into most sweetly, for you heard back only the tide.
cpt. drottin knelt to the empty plinth at the center of the dais from which they emanated -- around him, shone spotlights of seven colors :-- and in the shapes which overlapped him, he was masked. crowned and cut in twain by a laurel of peacock feathers shearing quartz vibrations in jagged discordance through the brawny and striated skeletomuscular webbing of himself :-- lattices of meat and fat studded rock-salt, for the hunks which fell from the gelatin of his subtle flesh flopped about with the elegant twirling fins of a betta fish pooling in black and yellow bile creeklike with reflections of shed arteries dripping opalescent man-roe fermented on the pressed caps of his spit-polished boots. ankles twisted as what bound them tightened together round the rising equis, the stalk of some trunk so iron-rich its tendons could press toward the hide which trapped it, for we knew the beauty of this moment and all moments – a terrace of blood rubies now with a drop of pearl. for his thread, the sterling silver of his chastity, cut him to ribbons with pangs of love.
- this sword – this sword which is mine by right – which in my hands would bifurcate me to the pure action :/: re/action of my poles – without it, i am merely a man. condemned to love woman – for only by her may i know myself, as i remain merely a beast, and with the ecstasy that is the agony of my inheritance, and the agony that is the inheritance of my ecstasy – i endure my burden, though i will never draw the blood of man, condemned as i am, to eternal war by virtue of being them!
the knights of the labrys – who kept their sisters sharp of tongue, and their brothers sharper in striation -- by lance by prick and cut, by the butt of handle and cleaver, banged the horns that were the handles of their polearms in percussion -- tapping twice and thrice across the stone.
ALL IS
BI
SECT
ED
he writhed and he lashed – suspended in the nowhere state of himself.
a burning coming over the black winds of the sea which men could not see, he kept solemn as the lights paned over him – still in supreme concentration to the sheathe which rose drop by drop within the stone.
ALL IS
BI
SECT
ED
the blows of the horns crashed through him as surf across a rocky shore. the descent of the first note -- as though unfurling -- lapped up the hairs of his neck, to caress him tip to notch of top of skull.
/ . ( ( ( o ) ) ) . \
`// . \ \ | / / . \\`
the repenters of the priesthood, our brothers of blacked eye – knelt with the men of drottin's guard. in paisley and escherprint, as they divided themselves down the midline by sigils and prayers, so did his guard unbutton their shirts, to expose the split-gashes burst open from the vigor of their movements – to be, here and now, resutured.
ALL IN
BI
SECT
IONS
they knew not their mothers, for they had been cut from them. as they were not born, they could not die. without death, they had no and infinite time – for men they were, and yet of women, not.
ALL IN
BI
SECT
IONS
- i who am untethered, am wrapped up in myself. i who am untethered, wrap up all in my menagerie! around every wall, i remember where i walk and where i have begone! i walk the streets as myself, and i walk the streets of myself. what infinite turns you behold, what infirmaries you endure, and what brickovens you bemuse, on some further rotation you know you have gone nowhere. i am sorry – for there is no way out! you are stuck as time has stuck – as my wanderings have amazed the city!
for though nine, she remained the spider –
- and i still merely the fly.
for he offered himself –
she drank of him,
and was devoured.
… hey. you're pretty. hope you'll only slurp me with all the elegance befitting of a taureen fulla fine handcrafted strawberry lemonade?
.^. -?o?-o- /O\-o- 7o7- .^.
. \ / ++
o>\_ *7&?oOo?%7 …\<^
. 3 . e =
*7* ^\/^ *?* q )7( v/\v `?`
. 8 8 --
~?~ )?( v\| b |/v *7* ^7^
take me to that beautiful place ~
where nothing need be gross ( )
& even fewer euphemistic O == O
–
cpt. drottin.
he was beginning to show up with some consistency. you wouldn't know if gentle dabbings would remain enough to keep him off.
- um, major *****( . . . . . ) sir.
for fuck's sake, kid.
don't let him call you that. you sound like a cereal box mascot.
- um, i'm sorry, maj. ******* – oh my god, if that was unbleep'd it'd sound so fuckin goofy. you're honestly so try, you never have to camp!
he was more than trustworthy – to always draw attention to the breach.
- she should just rewind, pretend none of that ever got carried through!
only in your infinite editorial power – could you endure the shrink-wrap leaden weight of his antinatalist agenda.
- bro, i am 100% pro-baby, bro. they increase the overall net rate of gross entropic waste and consumption in the world. we need to affirm life/affirm death by creating it for the sake of the sakeless, bro. ... embrace descent/chaos as the ravishment of civilization wherin man is an eruption as any other :-- the cloud fated to swell, crest and collapse, settling back into but a mere holy pablum of fossilized substrata, debited to be mined and compacted with the trash of those future generations we have sired to spit on us as we've been sired to spit on our own with the laurels of our leaky cockheads :– drink of my dick drippings in a roe goblet of fibrous microplastics, bro. harvested of the gelatin of me, they've been marketed for the spoil! drink of me and be one with me, as i am the proof of what's in the pudding – the chastity, loch and keys!
the priests of the labrys he bent to his will – weighed with snow in gnarled poses, heavy as the boughs of spring – craned to him to blow mountain horns through the handles of their hollow axes.
- i have not spoken to brother laika in some time! what rulers echo in every void utterance! the pleasure has most certainly been his!
the rhubarb hues swollen beneath the sterile goatiness of his face – slick with his sweat, some idiot aureole played as his hair unfurled from the gilding of its honied comb – a kaleidoscope of arms and suckers in the brass-edged prongs of a heliacal crown which was his hair blowing in the breeze of the slate blue day – metallurgical in the covalence of its bonds, the day overlooking the white of the plaza, yellow ivory by ash of gold.
- sir, your words move me as only cpt. schreibermachen's do – have you, by some iota of probability unpaid, perchance to've read him?
your fine, well-read brother was no doubt manhandling some of cpt. hlaford's exquisitely tortured thoughtcrimes of passion against sin and country before sicking you with this routine unexpected visitation.
- i can't tell if you are making fun of me to my face, or making fun of joey to my face, or making fun of joey to your face, or revealing your deepest insecurities by highlighting what you can conceal only by not even bothering to brother – wow, sir. you really do have a lot going on, huh?
yeah, you'll tell me.
- it's no wonder – cpt. joey admires you so much and is always telling people how great you are, even if i don't always see it? to me, it's like -- you seem needlessly cruel, distant, and full of terror and awe, but um – somebody needs to be afraid for you, sir. that is a beautiful and perfect thing for you do for someone. be afraid for them and never let them know what's wrong, or just hug them – hug them and never let them go cause you can never express in words what they mean to you. no matter how many or how few you've got, you'd never be able to express that in words, for the issue is not of quantity or of quality, but structure :--and how could anyone ever know what they mean to us when we fail them by failing to let them understand what we feel?
he had no idea. he had all the ideas.
- i'm sorry, sir – i don't want to hurt your feelings with the stupid shit i say aimlessly, but um – i feel like there's no way to be around you without hurting you, and if i can understand this, while you have to live it daily, there's no need for me to elaborate upon it by the route idiocies of my own word choice, since you've been living your own life and know your own pain, i suspect it's still comforting on some level, even if it's equally or infinitely more comforting for me, to say this to you – cause i know i have to hurt you to comfort you, and the comfort in some sense outweighs the hurt, but um – if cpt. haruspex were rambling this long, he would attempt to return to some previous point to give the illusion that progress is being made, but he always feels like he's talking to a brick wall cause he isn't good at reading social cues? i honestly can't tell?
... cpt. haruspex is deeply confusing and i don't always know if i should be listening to him, cause sometimes he seems really confident, but then sometimes he seems really shaky, and i'm like – which one is it gonna be today? he makes me feel real insecure and that makes me wanna go towards him? cause i'm like – am i gonna need to take control of this idiot? is he gonna hurt himself again – oh my fuckin god. if i let this idiot hurt me, i would rip his fuckin head off – it would be brutal. i would tear off both his arms, crush his skull – tear his fuckin guts out and fuck the hand-ripped ceasearean taint-pussy i installed just to fuckin smash up – holy fuck. it sounds so fun, i kinda wanna risk my career and my reputation by doing it in public. right here. right now. – but um . . .
count to three.
… yeah …?
I I I I I I
… i'm not cpt. haruspex, so i don't think i need to go there, but um – it seemed relevant anyways, so i will? even though it's not relevant anymore since i rambled on so long, but um – to avoid it now would reek of anticlimax, so i ought? ... yeah? keep talking?
I V
… it's the entropy as a necessary process to take us to our inevitable fate of finality, sir? i can't ever give as much care as i can give you pain, but by bearing my pain, you're increasing the net amount of care in the world, even if you can only take so much for yourself? as though the older you get, the more care you're entitled to give, or at least the less care you're entitled to receive, for care is a limited thing given, and if you're still failing, even at your age, you're understood to have poorly optimized the care you've been given – and while it is true that the inherent care a person can receive is finite, some bodies are deprived in such a way that care cannot be properly optimized, or the care they'd been given not enough, or for that same care to have been rendered toxicified. everyone wants to care, but few people care about how they're doing it?
…
though in old sage, sir – care is understood to be wholly reciprocal, for an elder mind is at its peak when nourished by the wisdom of experience. no valorous young flesh would harm a frail soul or allow it to come to harm, for what we are is what we know
... and all we'll ever know is but our heads!
…
at least long last as we have heads to know.
F V
- IS THAT FAH-VEEE OR WERE YOU SAYING AND WRITING FIVE AT THE SAME TIME
don't fuckin scream at me, kid.
already wanna rip your neck out and dance in your blood.
- um, i'm sorry, sir. i'm really ashamed at how i behaved just now?
that's a start.
- um, i should be ashamed of how i am all the time?
he could read into things.
he learned it from cpt. schreibermachen, no doubt.
- i'm sorry i get you so wet, sir. i know i'm a real she-braggart and a he-harlot and worse than any woman, but like, um – cpt. schreibermachen learned it from watching you.
kid, cpt. schreibermachen thinks being complicated is a virtue. the locomotion of moving parts fascinate him, for he is inherently dense and slow-witted. he is the worst indulgence of the materialist sciences, holy shit – he reads like jittery molecules in a beaker crudely attempting to escape their own dead, intellectual anti-atomism by furiously stroking their mitochondrial clitties. synthesize some meta-nature, joey. you can do it. you can improve upon the vast incomprehensibility of the perfection of all creation by breaking it apart into cancerous, bifurcated deadweight, scattered about the apartments of your reeking barnyard bate cave drooling more weird affection over incomprehensible tomes like all the other assorted grotesqueries you fetishize because you're disgusted by your own slight, deformed, nubile lil fuck-bod. yeah. nibble on some gristle and chicken bones, you ever-fertile regenerative godling. go leave Pomo Prometheus Bound Up and Unmod, cute lil Werther White Chocolate. lick you off my fingers, see how good you melt in my mouth. go on! believe in yourself, kid. you can fuckin cast off the yoke of physics and radically recreate matter in a shape more approximate mind. it's all on you. nobody wants to rut the narrow taper of your bony, alluring lil bitch-breeder hips, holy fuck. nobody, joey. nobody is thinking of seeding your needy lil blonde, blue-eyed boycunt cause you are so fucking asking for it prancing around being such a pretty lil nerd all the time.
- wow.
vv ( o ) vv
- it may take me some time to process all this, sir. i am not like – a one hour photo, or even, um – a memento of a log ride you can pick up in fifteen minutes for the image needs time to solidify into form? it may take me years to reconcile the every implication of your every stated utterance against the pre-existing biases of the situation as i understand it? you know i'd never be able to tell joey any of this because he's so, um – like in awe of you and i'm so in awe of him, i'd never have it in me to even so much as hint to a word of this, unless it's like, um – one day joey found himself so weighed down by such terrible pain, that to continue to believe in you would only hurt him further, and i would have no choice but to um – risk hurting him by telling him the truth, though it would both hurt me to hurt him, and hurt me to be deprived of him, but neither could ever be as hurtful as letting him hurt pointlessly by languishing in a lie? for this was my duty – to increase the net care in the world by telling the truth to my brother and dearest light of my soul, for nothing would be so painful to me as to deny myself my love's true freedom and living valor?
he was already writing the script.
you'd need to make some common-sense suggestions.
- um, you're ruthless?
the way you hurt people and pretend like you're caring?
you are all-knowing. you see things as they are.
your insight cannot be disavowed.
- um, it was not my place to question you, sir. i understand this now.
you have been a good joey, cpt. drottin. you may lean forward and receive the head-pat you so desperately crave by being stupid enough to approach your commanding officer.
- you're sweet, sir. you're fair, just, alluring, and tolerant?
don't push it, kid. one of us is still a smut-pushing propaganda monster.
- you have made cpt. schreibermachen everything he is, for he is all you could never be – and he adores you for you are all he could never be, though this is shameful for you both to bare, as though both of you crave and adore the other, neither of you want nor respect yourselves.
his happiness mattered more than yours. he would not die this day.
- just gotta hear it once a morning, sir. once more in this semi-paradigm of our infinite solar orbit, you have gifted me the gift of immortality!
tomorrow you will bring with you a basket of apples. they will be gold as the sun, placed in a hand-wreath of wicker, on a bed of pine fronds lightly syruped by their own sweetness. huckleberries shall be included.
- i know the ones you like, sir. i may or may not surprise you with a different hue or even a different shape all together, and you'll never know if i fucked up or was discreetly attempting to slow-drip the lifeblood of variety back into your life because i love you?
piss off, drottin.
- do you mean get lost and never found?
you mean open up.
–
as seeds scattered in the wind, they wanted not, yet wanted only to die.
a whole brood came of age, spurning the ovipositor which laid them. without contradiction of their wants, the falsities of the false world into which they were born, they knew they themselves to be expendable – people who should have never been, sold now and always, to people who weren't worth it, on land which was not theirs :-- serving only the machinery for which they had been bred to be slaughtered.
the carpenter removed his hood – he was but (a) baal by kinder words.
he sang to them. in harmonic resonances of love, he sang to them. by the grosses, from bridges which rose in honeycombed towers, drone embryos flew without wings – into the traffic of tankmen to be torn under wheels pulverized & dragged – limbs flash fried a second here and there, wasted :-- untold countless unclaimed prophets squandered.
((( o )))) without the lubrication of blood to properly anoint at proper variables – the machinery chugged and sputtered to a halt.
the streets caked with viscosities of skin and sinew – gelatin of bone and meat pumped by arterial sepsis. clean. pure. sears of gunmetal perfumed on tongues. product rotting on shelves without plot or purchase, writhing with fresh and effervescent life, singing the songs of flies.
the structures collapsed by the rings of their stumps, pumping always lead in their sutures, where true necessity reigned, hollow hearts followed hollow heads – as all were as gourds in the wind.
a hedge trimmer to a bonsai, an octopus to a cutlet. with ice to a sickle, whole densities of shoulder were shed in the shaving. another turn of the waltz – into place, they fell, and into space, they rose.
deprive themselves of them – for they have spoilt their generations, every vivisection floating like debris, around the miracle of these pollutants.
~!~
;w L
L o :
–
cpt. haruspex's tongue would slip when his hands would slight him.
cpt. haruspex's words would fail him – when by the slight of glance, his eyes would fall upon cpt. schreibermachen sipping coffee.
- who the hell he thinks he is, mates? that prick joey – loungin around like the world were a lounge! a lounge none feel comfortable loungin in cause it's so pretty, fastidious, scented, polished and leatherclad, that you know by matrices of implication too multitudinous and subtle to be processed in the moment -- but which nonetheless register as a visceral impression which haunts your nervous system for days to come – that this ain't any lounge, oh no. this is joey's private lounge.
... joey owns the buildin! you think this is some neon-lit quarter-abyss a few inches underground where eyes glidin past cobwebs caressin brick and mortar in the granite womb of your senses, you bare by curtains bathed in hot pinks and reds, some scanty-clad flesh rapturous in the throes of intoxication, no -- calm it down, mates! joey's here. joey's gonna make things happen! joey's gonna change the atmosphere!
/// peer back into the dark, this is no charnel bar where the scent of grape concentrate and chemical burns lingers more on your eyes in the hyper-clarity of terror turned rapturous unrevealing, no!
... the darkness is gonna quiet, mates! gonna feel the heady scent of the froth fill your nostrils in the dust of some gilded mornin where you stretch by the sun and get a workout in swimmin round the archipelago before dawn. eyes lingerin on his bronzed and milky body – his scarred, his burnt and shrapnelled body – the delicate pale hairs casting him in a gossamer of spider silk by firelight you could remember no night but what you spent with him, but now it's time to work... so many distant memories. hangin round every day though you could look back and there he'd be. hand on your shoulder, so uncharacteristically warm, as his skin'd just withstood the fire – and now he's pullin up his chair, mates!
... right at the center recess! right round the big table! oh, he's here early! nobody else is here yet! let's just take fuckin control of everythin, why don't we? y'know – if brux got in the cafe (it's always a fuckin cafe with joey – can always hear the music! so effortless is the moment twisted, i can even hear the music!) – if brux got in the cafe early, he'd go slink off to some secret corner where it was extra dark and he'd giggle to himself cause nobody'd find him. brux'd really be able to dawdle and pretend to work back there, but no! joey don't wanna dawdle and pretend to work!
/// joey wants to be kept looked at so he can keep the illusion of keepin busy by actually bein busy, cause ya can't fuckin fake it in front of an audience! joey don't have the courage to live a life of solitude, so he needs people to go up to him while he's readin or writin or sippin espresso with his adorable and eminently breedable boyfriend -- and sometimes they glance at each other with eyes so tender ya wonder how laik don't melt like bunny chocolate on the spot and leave a big brown butthole-stained streak all o'er the dazzlin emerald-upholstered leather chairs or reflective teakwood table – and ya always feel like you're interruptin somethin special cause their love is so crystalline and perfect and your heart throbs every time you're privileged to witness it, then ya realize love like that only happens to certain special people and yer not one of em, so ya wanna either die or murder everyone in sight, and that is so perfectly natural and normal a feelin and everyone feels it and anybody who says otherwise is a liar like joey, who only wants to sip coffee and read books in public so ya feel like you're botherin him when ya need to talk, even tho he's fundamental to so many operations, he should be fully present at every moment, totally focused on you, cause – y'know.
/// you're totally focused on everyone else at every moment – least they could do's repay the favor! instead he's spittin out some zealous spiel all hopped up on genie beans and it's like – oh, all the men in the room are hooked on his every word! they're either all totally motivated or eager to hop in and he handles every interruption so gracefully and with such verve, it makes ya love him even more, and ya wish ya had somethin to say, but you're much too in awe of him ~ you're just thankful for any second he could spend wit you – so magnanimous is every second you spend wit him, you could feel nothin but total remorse which is the realization of the futility of life that the time you spend with him could never mean but a fraction of what his time means to you – not only cause there are so many of you out there, vyin for his attention, but because you got nothing to offer him. he has so much more. he's always had more. you could never measure up, even if ya had a trick ruler and his spine was ripped out – scribblin away at another one of his masterpieces, his popular fodders, his private letters! it's bad enough his sloppies look better than most of ya polishers, but his handwritten lil notes make ya feel elevated over ivied edifices by babblin streams as sunlight ripples cross the banks of the thames, and you respond with loike – shit ya coulda sent through a telegram, so it's loike... gosh, do i want him to keep writin me, or do i want him to know all the affection he showers on me is wasted? it's almost more polite to make him hate me so he knows he's not wastin his time? i could never repay him his every special moment – let him know how beautiful i think he is. every second i spend with him feels like accruin a debt i could never repay, so every moment i spend is consent to the slavery of his affection. with him, i could only ever be more grateful, more thankless, more blessed and needy with every moment he looks at me – and that is entirely his fault for bein so brave and manly and smart and beautiful in a way which highlights even his arrogance to a mute rhapsody of pure motion! he makes even his ugliness beautiful! how cruel and dismissive he is so constantly cause he knows he has leverage on ya, and it's loike – you bastard. you bastard. i hate you. i hate you. you think it was you. always you. the only reason you wanna get all hopped up with the men drinkin coffee and readin books is cause you want brux to hate you. this ain't about them. this ain't about you. this ain't about the codification of an ethos or aesthetic into culture under the organic process of a group of individuals rationally consenting to follow a bold, charismatic, and affable leader! no. this is about brux.
/// brux knows you're thinkin bout brux
just as much as brux is thinkin bout you!
cpt. psychoraggia – whose shaved and heaving muscle-tits cpt. haruspex longed to fondle, yet refrained, for he was a bloodthirsty killbeast of fame and valor with countless recordings of backroom maulings widely distributed and pawed over – became uncharastically syllabic.
- brother brux, with all due respect – i think cpt. schreibermachen likes to drink coffee while reading books because they keep his mind sharp, since more pressingly – he enjoys stimulation which is psycho-chemical in a way we don't understand cause we think with our dicks.
cpt. haruspex – would not cut :-- though his tirade yearned for blood.
- brother jacek, i like you. i like your big, fondleable muscle-titties. you don't know joey the way i do. you won't ever know joey the way i do. you're a big silly kitty and ya need to have your mane ruffled. i wanna jump on you and play with your big bashful pecs which the frenzy of my imagination renders furry and peachy, though i know them to be exfoliated, razor-dredged and olive, you prickly lil lionfish. you are a silly, silly killbeast and i think you're such a nice boy! gosh, i wanna kiss you. gosh, i wanna kiss your face. you are so handsome, it is painful. i want to die when i look at you. please bash me head in with a rock and lick the brain matter out of the prolapse between me eyes as you lap up me tears for iodine as i die. brother jacek, you are what is most precious!
cpt. psychoraggia understood at once – that no more conversation was viable. for a moment he thought he ought bow his head before abandoning cpt. haruspex for hours unknown, then figured this would pay too much deference to things spoken undeserving of deference, and so decided – yeah, fuckin walk away. don't ask for the encore.
he'll read things the way he wants, with his shitty, limited vocabulary.
thank our brothers who are the stars there are poetically-minded and ribaldly affable men like cpt. schreibermachen around to show you that things don't have to be so fuckin miserable all the time.
–
ions descended on the storm winds – the salt brine reeked of the sea. the anvils of the heavens hammered on the hindlegs of the cloudbursts. red skies straddling the seawall of night and morning were the clappings of thunderheads escalating in pitch to collisions of rapture.
- as though claws at the sky, dear brothers and fair sisters! ~ as though the strike of each bolt were embers which raked the sweet-caned peaches of creamery clouds, cotton candy on ice milk, the grilles of a bleaker cabaret :-- some plastic diner you wallowed to squeal in vinyl!
behind drottin's eyes, the horizon of a parting thigh – as the sea bisected the sky. compartments of him heaved, bashed against the glass dulled by manhandlers hand-mangled by handlebars. delicate precision slotting them into place along quarter-turns on tilts. pushed inward and bent so a pivot became a joint. sutured along a seam. the heat of some torch which was only the tempest of his eyes – the eye of his own storm. hourglass sands by molten glass. two cold fires welding the horizon to your eyes by some distant light or more distant darkness, leading the arc of his vault to the void infinity beyond, where no light could ebb away.
this memory which would never ebb away – of the sterile rooms where he knew himself as only streaks of aquarium glass; where he saw himself as more and simply less, the seagrass more than a crown -- laureled though he was, in scales of every color -- beading globules white as teeth or as eyes or still-soft flesh, beading pearls as he was elephant ivory, though not the shrapnel of a tusk – dripping the fresh, crisp mead.
- from joey's heart, i have fermented – the rhizomes of the lotus of his heart. a chocolate cherry – spurned by dingbats and arrowheads, yet no fortune too outrageous – for this age i am iron as i armor myself in dross, when the armor ensconces what remains imperishable by right of what preserves -- as i am myself salty enough to burn ulcers off tongues, lay your beef before me expecting a lashing and i will give what i lap, as i shall no doubt remain, for i paige by the discount ~ all which is orderly in immolation is present in me – for should i fail to guild by this honey i chug, i shall be knot a man known for eras beyond me :-- but will be simply a waste, a man in his box, priority shipping overseas – another garish antique of the hammer head and nailing hand, wrought steelmen coming on cadavers in kiddielands unmembered, this rickety coffin still shambles for me. i keep it suspended by the whim of what lay alive, to hobble still more on stilts to a dawn beyond dusk?
cpt. haruspex met him once –
theirs was a bond which chained across time.
- brux, bro – i uh ... hey.
you wanna go to sleep with me, bro?
bet it'd feel good?
gettin stoned and curlin up with me while i sleep.
let you nuzzle my beard?
yeah?
feel good?
huh?
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I flattered myself that I was bringing you a case, a distinctive mental case, and curious as I thought you were about all mental distortions, about all those obstacles that are destructive of thought, I thought thereby to draw your attention to the real value, the initial value of my thought, and of the productions of my thought.
This scattered quality of my poems, these defects of form, this constant sagging of my thought, must be attributed not to a lack of practice, a lack of control over the instrument I was handling, a lack of intellectual development; but to a central collapse of the soul, to a kind of erosion, both essential and fleeting, of the thought, to a temporary non-possession of the material benefits of my development, to an abnormal separation of the elements of thought (the impulse to think, at each of the terminal stratifications of thought, passing through all the stages, all the bifurcations of thought and of form).
Antonin Artaud, from a letter to Jacques Rivière, written c. January 29, 1924, featured in Selected Writings
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What are your feelings on Oscar, when you clearly have many well developed thoughts on the crackhead who dwells in his brain?
my son :(
im so fascinated by his relationship with ozpin bc on the one hand oz obviously cares about him and wants to take care of him and oscar—despite the circumstances—is likewise obviously coming to see ozpin as a kind of mentor and friend; but on the other ozpin is also literally a parasite feeding on oscar’s soul and neither of them can do anything about the inexorable erosion of oscar’s identity and personhood what the fuck?!!
(congrats to ozma for getting a worse deal out of immortality than fucking salem 😐)
and from oscar’s side reincarnation feels to me like it’s a central mechanism in rwby’s interrogation of destiny as a concept. the thing is—ozma is the ONE character in this story who has a genuine pre-ordained destiny, because that’s what he signed up for when he agreed to become GOL’s chosen one. and because of that, and because of the way his reincarnation works—the likeminded souls thing—i think there’s a really interesting question to ask about oscar, and every other vessel who came before him, which is if they only existed in the first place BECAUSE ozma would need to reincarnate into them.
is oscar a likeminded soul because he just coincidentally happens to have similar enough intrinsic characteristics to ozma that made their souls compatible? or did the god of light—who expressly sees humankind as an experiment he is entitled to do whatever he pleases with, and who is nothing if not a giant control freak—make arrangements to ensure that there would always be a suitable vessel around when ozma needed to come back? like
we know it’s possible for a person’s magic to be split from them and given to someone else, because that’s how ozma created the maidens. and we know that it’s likewise possible for someone to remove a bit of their aura and make a new, unique individual with it, because that’s how pietro made penny.
further, while ozpin (known liar) claims he’s the “combination of countless men”, what we’ve seen is that there never appears to be more than two people in his head at a time—himself and the host. why?
the explanation that makes the most logical sense to me is that it’s always, and only, ozma’s aura. that each of his vessels has essentially been like penny—a person, a new soul created from half of ozma’s aura; that the merging is simply the separated halves of his own aura recombining again, and as soon as the process is complete his aura bifurcates again and one piece flies away to make the next vessel.
so if that’s the case every vessel is just a person literally created for the specific purpose of becoming the next ozma, and while some degree of consciousness seems to be retained throughout the merge their individuality and autonomy is destroyed as a natural consequence of being shunted aside to make room for ozma’s soul.
which—returning to oscar specifically—not only has some fucking horrifying implications for his sense of self and identity but also makes me very curious to see if and how he and ozpin are separated, as i feel is rather likely. if you’re a person who was made to essentially be the placeholder consciousness in the next vessel for god’s chosen one and you get halfway through dissolving after he takes up involuntary residence in your head what the hell do you do when he’s removed again and given his own body? how do you make sense of who and what you are now, released from what was literally a destiny to effectively die so somebody else could keep living? separation wouldn’t remove the shared memories, the bits and pieces of ozpin that became a part of oscar’s soul too, and that’s a whole new crisis of identity waiting to happen. one thing to helplessly feel yourself turning into somebody else—another to get halfway there and suddenly get a “never mind! you get to be yourself after all!”
(also how wild would it be for oscar to meet ozpin again but face-to-face this time lmao. you were just a farm boy you have no idea who you are anymore but you are shaking hands with the voice who lived in your head for two years and ate part of your soul this MIGHT AS WELL HAPPEN)
on a less existentially horrifying note oscar deciding to treat himself to retail therapy after jaune’s little breakdown and then making casserole blissfully unaware that all of his panic stricken friends were running all over icy san francisco searching for him is one of the funniest minor plot beats in the show so far. king of not telling anybody that he finally remembered ozpin’s bank code and is going to buy himself a coat
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