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davinashifts333 · 1 year

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WHAT DATING DAMON SALVATORE IS LIKE (DAMONXWITCH!S/O):

⚫️summary; Dating Damon as a Witch!S/O. Reader is a very powerful witch who met Damon & Stefan in 1864 & has been close with them ever since.

⚠️warnings; angst, emotional, horny!Damon, some swearing, if you’re not 18+ go away, smutish topics, blood ofc, etc.

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-knowing the Salvatore brothers was like knowing heaven & hell but mainly… hell…they fought & fought & fought, well you catch my drift & for the stupidest reasons too. Knowing they cared for each other just wasn’t enough. Y/n Y/L/n had to come along to literally rip them apart when they would get physical.

-dating Damon however was insane, if he wasn’t attached at your hip, it’d be his hips rutting into yours… if he wasn’t feeling you near him as much as possible he’d be clinging to you whenever he could…

-his smile? your favorite thing.

-his eyes though? they made you feel like you would ascend at any second.

-you? his drug.

-he made sure to always be romantic & loving when no one saw & even if they did? he’d do so much more just to sicken them.

-dating Damon was full of chaos & getting hurt both physically & emotionally. but overall it was like your 100+ years of friendship actually meant something.

-he knew you like the back of his hand & when he saw your eyes flicker in the same color of your powers? he knew danger was close. as in you being the danger.

-he would try his best to keep you calm but would ultimately fail & watch you slaughter the enemy alongside Bonnie whom you had taught as well.

-he loved watching your anger take over. really? he just loved watching you give into your emotions, knowing you had taken years to let the fear of what you could do go.

-dating Damon was like fire and ice, fighting for domination until one let the other win.

-it was like an eternal spark was lit when you both admitted your feelings while watching your best friend/his brother fall in love.

-“you know, the way he looks at Elena, is how I imagine I look at you.” Damon would accidentally say as your legs laid in his lap & a glass of bourbon in both of your guys’ hands.

-“really? I would say the same but I know i’d do a lot more damage if someone hurt

you. I would probably go on a rampage.” you would reply as his hand ran up your leg, squeezing the flesh slightly as he heard those words leave your lips.

-it would soon turn to broken glass on the floor as he had you pinned to the wall while his lips attacked yours passionately.

-the intense confession became a night of entangled bodies and “i’ve loved you for so long” being repeated over & over.

-from there he’d never let a single hair

on your head get hurt.

-throwing his leather jacket over your shoulder when he saw your cold.

-eyes always looking for you in a room to make sure you were okay.

-PROTECTIVE! BOYFRIEND!

-if he even suspected someone wanted to hurt you, he’d go after them.

-would love to watch you train with Bonnie & Caroline.

-always trying to be the best he can be for you.

-“You know, you look pretty fucking gorgeous when you slam someone into the ground like that. Never knew telekinesis could be so hot.” Damon would say in the middle of a big ass fight.

-“Oh really? One second— Well get used to it tough guy.” You would say between blasting another hybrid into pieces.

-training with Damon & Alaric for fun but also to get their endurance to

magic up.

-being his serenity.

-him being yours but also your chaos.

-Stefan reminding you both that no matter how different you both were you still mended so perfectly together & it only made your heart flutter even more.

-dating Damon Francesco Salvatore is like being protected, loved, needed, desired, cared for, & worshipped all in one.

-but it was also making sure he felt the same love he gave because god knows that man desires that so much.

-he would melt in your touch & would be on his knees for you if you wanted.

-of course with his head between your knees if you wanted too.

-Damon Salvatore, your eternal

soulmate, the one you’d give your life for, the one who’d know exactly what you needed at your worst & the one you’d rip the world apart to protect. Your Forever.

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A/N:

ITS BEEN A WHILE BUT IM BACK & SO READY TO SHARE MY NEW DESIRED REALITIES WITH YALL & MY NEW CONTENT!! HOPE YALL ENJOY!! 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

#davinashifts333 #damon salvarote #damon x reader #damon salvatore x y/n #damon salvatore x witch reader #damon salvatore imagine #damon salvatore headcanons #damon salvatore x reader #damon salvatore x oc #damon salvatore x plus size reader #damon salvatore x yn #the vampire diaries #the vampire diaries imagine #tvd fanfiction #tvd imagine #tvd universe #tvd damon #tvd damon salvatore

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divinekangaroo · 6 months

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I’m baffled as to why Tommy married Lizzie really. She is unsuitable to be a politician’s wife, a mistress on the side surely would have been fine, it's even norm. It is no way a good strategy or helps his reputation.

Agree! There was no strategic gain for him at all. It might nominally help his reputation with some working class voters, that he married within his class and not above it, but I don't know how that works if Lizzie's reputation as a prostitute was well known. Either way this nominal reputational boost with one demographic is not likely significant enough to be any part of his decision making. I feel there had to be some level of personal care for her in there, and a desire to do something for her, as well as his strong sense of family, because otherwise why would he marry her?

Based on cues in the canon, there's possible motivation including:

his strong cultural and personal sense of responsibility to family given Lizzie has his child - he's demonstrated this sense of family before with Grace, because as soon as he learned Grace was pregnant in S2, he went immediately to marriage. This was different to his conversations with S1 Grace where he was satisifed with a relationship and not marriage. (And even his S2 pre-pregnancy conversations with Grace, where he seemed satisifed with an affair. And the way he brought Duke into the picture.) His children are very important to him!

an acknowledment/respect for Lizzie's unashamed willingness to be a single mother to his child, and all the stigma that carries on top of her past; marrying her would be the least he could do to help erase that stigma for her. Noting no amount of money would erase the stigma of single motherhood given his and her class of origin. These social privileges to the mistresses of upper class men do not apply to the mistresses of working class men who've acquired money.

he was feeling really fucked up at the end of S4, and Lizzie's helped him with comfort/care through other times when he was feeling really fucked up. Apart from being his regular pre S1, when his war trauma would have been the worst, in S2 Lizzie features with this one observable sexual event where he was with her immediately after Polly told him to get over Grace, and immediately before he had to do an assassination he didn't want to. S3 he clearly articulates she stopped his heart from breaking. Lizzie (and sex with Lizzie) represents some kind of easy, accessible physical comfort/softness for him between slices of hell.

some kind of guilt at how he'd treated her in the past (John, Epsom) when here she was, prepared to be a single mother to his child with no shame.

he actually likes her - S2 he goes to a special effort to elevate her out of being a prostitute, even when she was probably barely capable of the role at that point, S3 features several elements suggesting he trusts her significantly, S4 they have relaxed conversations despite all the shit going on, even in S5 in the middle of the worst and cutting at each other verbally, they both mutually decide to still try to find some middle ground where they can stay together, which suggests they have a lot of non-sexual/conversational history not shown on screen. They also have several almost comedic moments of chemistry in S4 and S5 which ties back to liking, too.

I 100% feel Ruby was the trigger for the marriage, no matter any other motivation, I don't think he'd marry her if there was no child. But he had to have more than *just* the child to go so far as marriage, hence the above.

I think, given Lizzie was the one he took to the bridge which was his 'can I still do good things the way Greta and I used to speak about' moment, this sort of symbolic link carried through Ruby's conception, he might have also thought marrying Lizzie would be a gesture of 'doing a good thing.' There is a constant theme in the series, and Tommy even clearly and verbally articulates it in S5, that when Tommy tries to do a good thing, people get hurt. Hence the weight of his regret for marrying Lizzie as expressed in S6 -- marrying her, which he likely saw as a good act, resulted in Lizzie's anguish and exposed her to hurt by both Tommy personally in his emotional closed-off state, and via the acts Tommy was doing in trying to sabotage Mosley, which he would not deviate from even when conscious of the hurt it would cause Lizzie.

#tommy x lizzie #peaky blinders

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tanadrin · 4 months

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Ignoring the sex aspect, could you expand on what makes a preference neurotic or immature? You say “I disagree. I think it’s in fact pretty easy to separate neurotic/immature preferences from other kinds of preference. Like if you dislike the color red, that’s a normal preference. If you refuse to enter a room with any red objects in it, that’s probably something closer to a neurosis.”, which is just an example. What’s the actual principled distinction?

"Neurotic" and "immature" were possibly ill-advised words--maybe it would be better to describe them as preferences that seem to me to be fundamentally reasonable vs ones that, if I detected them in myself, I would feel motivated to ruminate on and dissolve if possible, or which seem in some way self-defeating or self-limiting.

I am not sure it is possible to give a set of criteria specific enough to distinguish, in every case, a preference of type 1 and a preference of type 2--and some of what we consider preferences of type 1 vs of type 2 is culturally contingent, to the point it may differ in different contexts. These are instrumental categories with a fair amount of overlap in the middle, so I don't know that I can adequately define this particular kind of preference with the specificity you seem to be seeking. It's a judgement call!

They may be easier to distinguish in the context of sex. In the specific case of sex, it seems to me that a lot of people have what we might think of as a ground-level sexual orientation, a pattern of desire/attraction that is basically unalterable, and on top of that we have a still-pretty-unconscious-but-much-more-contingent set of attitudes/credences/reflexes that may alter or limit the expression of the basic pattern of attraction/desire, but which is alterable. And the best example of this might be someone who is gay, but repressed because they were taught all their life it's disgusting to have gay sex. There definitely seems to be a large class of people who are, for instance, attracted to trans people, but who have a specific cultural attitude towards trans people (that they are disgusting or wrong) such that that attraction is also bound up with intense feelings of disgust. And that disgust can become quite paranoid, like with the people on twitter who secretly suspect every female celebrity of note of being trans.

But such attitudes can (and often are) confronted and even dissolved over time. Disgust can be unlearned! Which indicates to me that though these attitudes can seem quite deep-seated, they are fundamentally different in nature from people's deeper structures of desire, which do seem relatively fixed. Conversion therapy doesn't work; there doesn't seem to be a way to deliberately unlearn a paraphilia. You can't change someone else's or your own core sexuality very much.

This is not to say "genital preference is necessarily transphobia." It's also certainly not to say that even people who are transphobic don't have a right to select their partners. You do not have to have a good reason, or any reason at all, not to sleep with someone. So I want to head off that possible misunderstanding now. But it does seem to me that, insofar as complex preference sets like those that govern sexual attraction are composed of different kinds of preferences interacting, narrowly focused bodily preferences which operate more or less in a vacuum (e.g., "I find every single thing about this man attractive, except that he doesn't have a penis") are much more likely to be of the contingent, malleable sort rather than the ground, inflexible sort, unless they are the object of a kind of narrow sexual fixation that's so intense it's of the "I cannot have an orgasm unless I am licking a size 6 women's high-heeled shoe" variety, i.e., a really specific paraphilia.

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menalez · 2 months

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About the pressures on gay people to be het acting and how we react to them…….. I think one thing people have to accept is 1) yeah it affects people … it affects people DIFFERENTLY. Five different gay girls growing up in the same town in the same family with the same religion taught to them will have 5 different experiences with it. Some people are more people pleasing. Others are rebellious but deeply taken in by the idea of gods and devils judging them and tormenting them forever. And so on. I grew up being taught to be scared of hell and mostly just low key rejected it from the start. My sister is also now an atheist but is still terrified. Still has nightmares. Still catches herself subconsciously adjusting her thoughts and behavior to “avoid hell”.

2) yeah admitting that and saying it aloud DOES make at least some bi or het people further self-delude for whatever reason that they are gay despite not being gay, which yeah does continue to have some negative effects when they speak over us, but let’s be real hear it’s just one more half-out cig butt getting dropped on the ground in the middle of an already raging wildfire of homophobia… we got other problems

3) AND it doesn’t make it less true — some people really do experience pressures great and small to be or try or pretend to be het. And some act that out while others don’t. And it doesn’t make someone not gay to have been in a situation like that. It’s a cold day in hell where I want someone who went through that to suffer even 1 second more …. And for what??? so I can scrabble to try to keep political fake gays and other fake gays from overrunning? When that is more to do with their own psych and less to do with what we do or say? Nah. We should fully and openly talk about pressures to try het sex and try to become/pretend to be het. AND be very clear that it doesn’t confabulate whole feelings of desire for the other sex. Not just like desire to be het or desire to be desired or whatever. And we can be clear too that sometimes bi people for personal reasons lose the passion for one sex or the other. But still have the capacity for it and are bi.

A lot of this confusion crap to me is 1) homophobia— being grossed out or freaked out by genuine same sex only attraction so people keep trying to erase that including by faking gay to change the socially accepted meaning of it to include the other sex 2) people not getting the range of bisexuality or how affected people are by their own experiences and politics. Like yeah it’s possible to lose attraction to men functionally from being around them and seeing their shit. You’re still bi or het though. Just with a zeroed out libido for men from life experience.

If anon wants to stop the madness around this she should talk about all that not worry about, cast doubt on and bother lesbians from traumatic backgrounds who experienced trying to force themselves to be into men.

totally agree, i keep saying people will go thru similar situations but have different reactions for many reasons such as personality. it just falls in deaf ears bc i feel like some ppl just get some kind of pleasure or joy out of framing gay ppl as liars for having frankly traumatic experiences of trying to be het in a homophobic world. so i feel like no matter how much any of us explain and talk about this phenomena, some ppl will only hear what they want.

there’s indeed OSA ppl pretending to be gay and explaining away their experiences with the opposite sex, and i get being wary bc of that. i’ve been in such situations where i wasn’t certain ppl were actually gay but who does it actually help to harass every person who has for any reason ever had any experience with the opposite sex, gay ppl included, and to harass them & call them liars & make it seem like their story can’t possibly be plausible? it hasn’t helped gay ppl from what i’ve seen. doesn’t help us form communities, sense of togetherness, give us protections, or anything else.. and it probably pushed some gay ppl back into the closet. i’ve seen so many lesbians harassed off of these platforms over it too.

when there’s ppl openly claiming to be gay while talking about being into the opposite sex, im not going to be wasting my time harassing traumatised gay ppl about how it doesn’t make sense to me that they forced themselves thru a heterosexual experience in hopes that it’d change their sexuality.

#like it’s dumb to me. in every situation we can see that different ppl react differently but apparently if it’s gay ppl we can’t? 😭 we are #unique individuals too. we simply share the same sexuality

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a-god-in-ruins-rises · 1 year

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I recently converted to paganism from Christianity and I have some questions about offerings. What do I do with offerings after the fact? Do I dump them? Do I eat them? Would that be disrespectful? What are the best offerings?

welcome home! these are good questions. i can offer my perspective but of course opinions will differ from individual to individual and tradition to tradition. just keep that in mind. but here's my personal take.

it's flexible. i'm not a hardcore traditionalist. i think you do what you can with your circumstances.

i'll start with "what are the best offerings" and i'll say it depends. it depends on your circumstances and who you're offering to. different gods have different preferences and it would be a good idea to look that up before making offerings. however, in general some safe bets are water (especially holy water), alcoholic beverages, milk, oil, honey, meat, fruits, and grains/bread/cakes. also, votive offerings are always welcome.

when it comes to offering food people often fret over how much they should offer. the answer is whatever is reasonable. you don't need to buy an expensive cut of meat and offer it to the gods. you don't need to break the bank. i'd have to go through my notes but there are ancient references talking about how poor people offering their last loaf of bread is more pious than a rich man offering a whole pig, for example. offerings should not be an unreasonable burden but it should be /some/ kind of actual sacrifice. obviously, it /can/ be more of a burden if you want -- that would probably be pious (as long as it's not /too/ much of a burden) -- but it's not required. it's supererogatory. and obviously, there will probably be a difference in the quality of your daily offerings vs your offerings on especially holy days. so yeah, just offer whatever is reasonable.

now how do you dispose of offerings? well, it also depends on some things; what you're offering, why you're offering, who you're offering to, and where you are making this offering. there are a variety of possibilities; you might pour libations either onto the earth or a body of water or a sacred stone or into a special bowl reserved for libations (which you will then pour onto earth when possible), you might bury votive offerings or certain foods (if you're a hellenist this is especially preferable for cthonic deities and spirits), you might burn the offering in a fire (especially for ouranic deities), or place them at an outdoor altar, or you might consume them yourself (some consider this impious, but i don't -- there is plenty of evidence attesting to this), or you might give them to other people or animals to consume, etc.

to elaborate on eating the offering: lots of people find this controversial. they consider it cheap and impious to eat something you're supposed to be sacrificing. i think this is valid and i definitely sympathize with this sentiment. on the other hand, other people say it is impious and disrespectful to waste an offering of food and that the gods would want us to share in the bounty. again, i think this valid and i am sympathetic. so i personally practice a middle ground. if it's something simple/cheap like bread or milk or something i will just offering the gods a portion and leave it to nature. but if it's like a lavish feast, especially one including meat, then i will typically reserve a portion, especially the inedible (or less desirable) parts and any excess fat, for the gods in a burnt offering. the rest of meal in general can be symbolically offered to and blessed by the gods and then consumed.

again, it's important to remember you just have to be reasonable and be putting a sincere effort. don't overthink it. if you're buy a prime rib roast for a feast you don't need to buy an extra one to offer the gods. you can just trim off the fat and offer that. it's all the same to the gods. they don't /need/ the food like we do. they're not literally physically eating the food. they're spiritually sharing in the meal with us. that's the important part. the communion. it's like a father eating with his child and the child offers pieces of his own food from his plate to his father and the father gleefully accepts even though he doesn't really need it (he has all he needs) and both father and child are enriched by the act. it's the act of sharing and the intention and the thoughtfulness and the bond that matters.

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guzsdaily · 5 months

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Anxiety with jobs

Day 29 - Dec 4th, 12.023

As I said in past posts, I'm in the look of finding a job. And this week's project is researching, create and learn things to do so, but let's just say that researching didn't help with my anxiety at all. Knowing that I need one somewhat soon if I want to be financially stable and have a home or apartment in some years, it is not good to enter a new social media and see how fucked you are, even YouTube videos didn't help that much to be honest, because none seems to actually talk about this "middle ground" that I'm in.

Why be anxious?

Lack of [real] experience,

If you aren't in tech, let's just say that in this market it's really hard to prove that you can do a good job, because a good programmer is something subjective most of the time. And the big problem also is that your recruiter won't actually see things like source code and the "behind the scenes" of your work, it will probably just see your experience in other past jobs, like any other profession. Which is kinda hard to get when to get a job to have experience, you need experience, I think everyone here already knows this paradox. I don't have experiences, so maybe I can prove saying the things I know? Like, saying the things I learned?

Lack of [real] education,

Well, no. I'm self-taught, so I don't have a degree or prove that I learned something these past 2 years. Yes, I made some courses here and there, but most of them I left and started to learn based on YouTube videos and mostly creating my own projects and learning by trying. Thankfully in this industry, something like a degree is not mandatory for getting a job, but it probably helps a lot. Well, maybe I can then show someone my skills and what I learned? Possibly someone whose work in a company that is recruiting?

Lack of networking,

Again, no, and this is the one that gives me more anxiety. I mostly have relationships online now days, because of my social anxiety which I developed during my young teenager years, and let's just say that this anxiety also applies to social interactions on the internet. There's pretty much no one that I know that could network with to get a job, I actually just started to have people who work in tech to talk with some weeks ago, by accident in some sense. Yes, there are Discord servers and communities that I could talk in, but again, social anxiety still attacks. But in this industry, it seems that it is more possible to get a job if someone recommends you than if you apply directly, even more after the layoffs that happened after the pandemic. There are a lot of people applying, lack of jobs it seems, but also lack of quality in the people who apply, so a lot of companies seems to be making intern hires and position shifts instead of getting someone new who probably doesn't have experience to work.

LinkedIn This anxiety worse a lot after I created a LinkedIn account, because of their emphasis in connections, which is similar to the "mutual" concept in other social medias, but worse. I don't have people to connect, to improve my account algorithm or whatever. This social media in general seems so bad, and worse than just applying to random companies in job finding sites even. And it is somewhat funny that a platform which has a lot of tech people in it, has a 5 to 10 seconds loading stage in each page.

But a lot of projects

As you seen in some past entry, I have a lot of projects ideas related to code, around 20 notes just in my Obsidian, and some more in my phone's note-taking app. And to be honest, that's what I'm good at, actually coding. Yes, I need and kinda want to have more connections with people in this industry, but we all are in this because we are/want to be good at something: programming. I want to create software and things that help people, so that's what I will do every day to be someone who's desired to be hired. Thankfully I didn't fall in tutorial hell, didn't stop some framework or one tool (without even know basic programming logic to begin with), so you know what? I will fucking show it by creating things that "someone else" couldn't create. FUCK. OFF. ok, sorry, but I really needed to emphasize this for me even. I created Lored and Capytal for a reason, to show that I can create quality code and products, and maybe even be able to don't need a traditional job in the future.

Talking more serious now

Ok, but now talking in a more serious note. I feel like I cannot really plan well how I can get a job in this industry, in a lot of sense luck has a factor in it, but you also need to create your own luck. Something that I'm trying a lot now is to be more persistent, continue even if I fail, and it is what I need now when finding a job. It makes take months or even more, one year until I get one, but I need to try something to improve the things I lack now days. So I created a small plan to do so:

Create projects

This is what I like and am good at, but would also help me a lot in showing my skills. Out counting the idea that my projects are open-source, built in public and people can judge clearly if the code and process are good, having a good list of projects in your portfolio or resume can really show that you actually want to learn, improve, and code y'know?

Contributing to open-source

This will be challenging to me, but I need to start to contribute more back to open-source projects. Wanting a job or not, contributing is one of the best ways to connect with people and say like "hey! I exist and know how to code!", and just giving back to this community and tools that I use seems fair, I want to help, and a lot of people needs help. Soooo why I don't have an "open-source weekend"? Contribute to a project every week, while also creating my own projects, seems reasonable and won't pressure my social anxiety that much every single day.

Applying to jobs

I will mostly be rejected because of the reasons above, period. But if I at least get to the interview part of the recruiting process, I can learn how they work and how to communicate and don't be anxious during the live coding section, which will really come in handy when I start to apply to jobs that I actually want and/or have a change to be hired. And there's a change in these random applications, that I actually get hired to work, so why not try one every week also?

Connect in social media

This is the part that, I'm going to be honest, I plan to be lazy with. I really don't care that much in opening Twitter or LinkedIn in general, even Mastodon to be honest, I just got tired of them, but I can't deny the value that them have in showing your work to an audience, even more if you play the algorithm and post consistently every day. But you know what I can use to do this part? Automation! (And even AI, possibly!). I will probably create something, with my own website, to get notes in my note-taking app here where I write my daily journal entries, to post them in social media, and maybe have a section to weekly tweets related to blog posts that I posted, so hopefully I never actually open these platforms. And yes, I'm seeing the possibility to use AI to create tweets related to posts automatically, but I don't want to use OpenAI's ChatGPT for reasons, a lot of them, and would like to use some open-source alternative and/or create/run my own model even. But I will probably just batch write a bunch of them to be posted daily automatically.

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I think that's it, today's was a little different, but I'm trying new formats to these daily journals. Nonetheless, it is my daily journal, so I will write how I like them. ;')

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Today's artists & creative things

Video & Song: Glimpse of Us - by Joji Joji never was really my style of music, and it still isn't, but recently I remembered about him and had the curiosity to listen again. And this music, and mostly the video clip, make me shocked. I actually thought that this video was actually found footage, that those people were real, and the history talked in it was real (which to be clear is not, here is the behind the scenes). The visual direction of it is simply superb and of course the music just makes it even more excellent, seeing these people in such destructive life, and even them realizing that life shouldn't be this, the chaos increasing together with the music, this is fucking art. I didn't follow Filthy Frank, but knowing about he and what Joji is now, how his persona changed, just gives even more weight to it and his music to be honest. I don't know if this video somehow reflects how was his life in the past when he was doing Filthy Frank and all his past videos, I probably don't, but I like somehow to interpret some connection to be honest. In general, just love the music and art he created and the artist that he became.

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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License

#daily journal #anxienty #techjobs

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villadseneckknudsen · 2 years

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An incredible internal-layout tip for finances minded men and women is to move the bedrooms entirely. Change https://thietkenoithat.com/tin-tuc/articleid/14716/chiem-nguong-mau-thiet-ke-kien-truc-biet-thu-phap-co-bac-nhat-tai-da-lat in to the master bedroom and your room in the new workplace! With totally different functions, household furniture and decor, each new space takes on an entirely new look and personality. It's also a complete and enjoyable modify up for you personally, that costs nothing.

Consider lighting effects. Lighting effects can not only assist you to see issues a lot more clearly, but good lamps and lighting fixtures can produce a sensation of drama and excitement within a place. Check out diverse lights, from recessed spotlights to ground lamps, and play with it to determine what suit your residence the very best.

You could do lots of different things with the living quarters on any spending budget, but you should plan! Tend not to visit the shop without a program or you will buy too many stuff you do not require and may struggle to finish off your project punctually.

#thiết kế nội thất chung cư đẹp #thiết kế nội

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uncletwig1 · 2 years

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7 Tips About Minecraft Server You Wish You Knew Before

However permitting another payment processing service onto the iPhone could possibly be a first crack in Apple's argument that its strict App Retailer rules are constructed for the protection and trust of its users. They didn't like having to install one other app store to get entry to some of their games. Also, gamers have the likelihood to construct houses and store their treasures. That's definitely potential with Android, but there isn't a lot incentive to utilizing a ready-made platform if studios still need to bend over backward to offer support. However folks linked to the lawsuit do not assume that'll happen, partially because there isn't much middle ground between the 2 companies' arguments. Permitting you to speak with individuals via Minecraft coding is an actual advantage. In today the number of people these who're fond of minecraft server, is great. Apple could decrease its payment processing fees, which it is already accomplished for subscription providers and developers who ring up lower than $1 million in income each year. Some, but not all, of these iPad video games can be found as a part of Apple's gaming subscription service, Apple Arcade.

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#4com #ALL ABOUT MINECRAFT #Minecraft servers #MINECRAFT NEWS

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nothorses · 3 years

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Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

#transgender #transphobia #trans #transmisogyny #radical feminism #radfem #feminism #transandrophobia #terfs #tirfs #gender critical #nothorses #cult mention #long post

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sukirichi · 3 years

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no guidance

pov: you ask your step-brother to guide you in your first time

part of the everything step cest collab by @dilfhub thank you for everything! 💕

note. lol this rotted in my drafts for weeks but i finally finished it eeeee

cw. virginity loss, sexting, mild corruption themes, fingering, oral sex (f. receiving), possessive! akaashi-ni, slight dumbification, pseudo-incest (step siblings)

You knew better than to associate with the likes of Miya Atsumu. As if him being one of the most notorious fuckboys in campus wasn’t enough of a warning sign, his reputation was also infamous for being the “Virgin Killer.” In simpler terms, he took pride in corrupting the innocence of whoever was foolish enough to fall into his trap, and yet there you were, bottom lip caught between your teeth as you shamelessly sexted with him.

Unsurprisingly, he’s asking for nudes. Again.

It had been approximately three months since you passed notes with the said Miya twin (and of course you liked the worse of the pair) before your friendship escalated into something...more sexual. It was no secret Atsumu had a high sex drive, something you were still foreign with, so you weren’t really taken aback by his open vulgarity over his desire to fuck you.

The first month, you were nice enough to sent him a snap of your titties. Albeit still a little shy over not having sent anyone such an intimate photo before, you were beyond exhilarated.

The next, you sent him a booty pic. It wasn’t anything sexy since you were only in your campus hoodie, the door locked because you didn’t want your parents walking in on you trying to get a good angle of your rounded buttocks.

And just last week, you finally gained enough courage to take a photo of your glistening pussy, sent with a caption of ‘thinking of you...’

Now, you weren’t stupid despite your preference to act naive and innocent. You knew your actions would entice him to lead into something more, if his dick picks that show him already leaking weren’t enough of a telltale already. But as your phone pinged and his name flashed above your screen, the words, ‘meet you at Issei’s party this weekend? I think I’ve waited long enough’ loud and clear – your heart dropped into your chest.

Without another thought, you shut your phone off and rolled to your side.

The thing was, you’ve never really had sex. You couldn’t even be brave enough to lose your virginity to your hairbrush or to buy a dildo despite your friends’ insistence it was much better than an actual cock (quote unquote: both can make you orgasm, but the former didn’t come with toxic attitudes of horny college boys.)

Sure, you’ve watched porn, and you watched a lot – but nothing could compare to the actual experience of it. Your fingers could only get you so far.

Glancing at your phone that kept lighting up with texts from Atsumu, you felt something stir deep within your stomach. Curiosity? Arousal? Nervousness? Excitement? Perhaps all a mix of both. You’ve heard from all the girls Atsumu’s slept with that even though he meant bad news, his cock could be likened of that of a blessing that converted them into ‘I hate him’ to ‘Gosh, I wanna fuck him again.’ Addicting, they called him, and now you were being offered a path to being on a path that most likely had no point of return.

You sighed.

The saner part of you warned you to stay away. There was no rush to lose your virginity now. Just because most of your friends had enough experience, it didn’t mean you had to be the same as them. After all, you came from quite...a strict household.

While everyone had been away from their parents and independently living in their dorms, you still stayed under the same roof as your father and step-mom, along with your older brother who was only a year ahead of you. Akaashi was a very sweet presence to have that you didn’t mind not experiencing that ‘youthful freedom’ too much, simply because your brother was a better company than whoever you could room with. He was kind, always ready to help, and you could confidently say you trusted him more than you did your closest friends.

Maybe that was the reason why you knocked at his room past midnight, shifting your weight from one foot to another. The faint sliver of light peeking from the cracks in his door told you he was probably still working on projects and the like, really not a good time to bother him, but you couldn’t hold on any longer.

At the back of your mind, this was the right thing. He was the right person.

“’Kaashi-nii...?” you knocked again, aware that he had a habit of listening to music on full volume while studying. “Are you there? Oh, were you studying, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to barge.”

Your brother stood in front of you, his headphones hung around his neck. He’d swung the door open to reveal that he was, indeed, previously hunched over his desk to work on something. Upon seeing the guilty expression on your face, Akaashi smiled at you in reassurance. “Hey, no, it’s fine,” he ushered you inside, setting you down at the edge of his bed while he sat across you in his swivelling chair. “Do you need help with homework again?”

“No...”

Turning away from him shyly, you opted to fiddle with your fingers as you stared at your lap. You had come here in a whim. You didn’t really think this through, and even though you’d been in his room a thousand times before, his dark blue sheets and tidy room that smelled sweetly of his detergent and vanilla cologne made you feel dizzy.

It didn’t help that he looked so mouth-watering in this light too.

Messy hair, long, slender fingers that absentmindedly spun a pen in those pretty hands of his, his dark eyes hazy and as welcoming as ever under the dim light of his desk lamp – how could you resist?

“What is it?” Akaashi quickly picked up on your silent worries. He’d always been observant, taking his role as your big brother seriously that he had attuned himself to sense even the slightest differences from you. Even though you’d only become family when you were already in middle school, it felt like you had known him for a much longer time than that, his warm hands rubbing soothing circles in your knees pulling the tension away from you.

“You know you can tell your brother everything, right? I’ll listen to you, you don’t need to feel scared or nervous.”

Guess it was now or never... “There’s this boy in my class...”

Akaashi’s eyes immediately darkened. All the warmth in his face disappeared, now replaced with a hardness you didn’t think was possible for such an understanding, patient guy like him. “Is he hurting you, forcing you to do something you don’t like?” his questions shot out one by one, and your eyes widened when he held you firmly by the shoulders. “Do I need to hurt someone?”

“No, no, it’s not like that!”

Your brother relaxed back in his chair. For a moment, your mind conjured up the dirtiest image of bouncing on his cock (and you know his cock is pretty after accidentally walking in on him changing clothes in high school) as he studied, but you quickly shook the thought away with a clear of your throat.

“What’s wrong then?”

You took a deep breath. “I just...I like him a lot and he asked me to have sex with him someday,” your words came out barely above a whisper, the courage seeping out of you until meeting Akaashi’s eyes felt impossible. “I said yes because of course I like him but...I’m afraid.”

“Hey,” Akaashi tilted your chin to look at him, his blue eyes pooling with worry and brotherly concern. “You know you don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“I just don’t want to disappoint him. I-I’ve never done it before and I feel like I won’t make him feel good. That’s why I came here,” you peered at him under your lashes, tongue darting out to nervously lick at your lips that felt uncomfortably dry. “You told me I could ask you for help in anything and you’re my brother so I trust you a lot to guide me on this one.”

The silence in the room was suffocating.

You were so close to running out of his room and pretending you didn’t exist for the rest of your life because what the hell were you asking? He was your brother, he obviously didn’t see you as a woman. You bet in his eyes, you were nothing but a little sister, and there really was no stopping him from kicking you out of his room until – “You want me to be your first time?”

You looked up at him so fast you actually felt your neck ache from the sudden movement. Heat spread all over your body, especially to your core at the unreadable expression in his eyes, yet it wasn’t...bad. He wasn’t rejecting you.

“Yes, please.”

Akaashi nodded at your hushed words. Slapping his palms to his knees, he walked to his bedside table where he pulled out an inconspicuous bottle with some sort of liquid you weren’t familiar with.

“Okay. Nii-san will teach you everything, but first, I need to prep you.” Fuck, fuck, fuck, this was actually happening!

You could barely process the events that happened next as he discarded his shirt to the ground, exposing his toned upper body to you from years of playing volleyball. While you sat there frozen and with a frantic beating heart, your brother barely blinked an eye as he gestured for you to take your clothes off. Wordlessly, you pulled your top off and shimmied out of your underwear. Too shy upon being exposed to a male for the first time in your life, you immediately headed towards his bed and closed your eyes, breath heavy and laboured as you waited for his next movements.

Akaashi’s hand went up to your knee, and you flinched at the contact, relaxing only when his soothing smile greeted you. “Lean back for me. Just relax and loosen up, okay? I’m not going to hurt you, Nii-san will make you feel good.”

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you did as he told. You were still shy, but you were feeling a lot less nervous. His hypnotizing gestures of caressing your thighs made you sigh in contentment as your head hit the pillow, legs falling open like it was second nature to spread yourself to your brother.

The thought had you biting your lip.

Before you could think too much about it, you felt a cool liquid being spread all over your lips. You gasped and clutched on the sheets out of reflex, staring forward as your brother stared at you cautiously, his lube coated fingers experimentally rubbing circles over your pussy lips. It felt so lewd for him to touch you like that – those same hands that always held yours in your weakest moments – yet it felt so good; the strange sensation tightening your chest.

“I-it’s cold.”

“I’ll warm it up for you,” he reassured, “How far have you gone? Any prior sexual experience?” Akaashi then began to playfully roll your clit between his fingers, eliciting a high-pitched whimper from you. He grinned at your reaction – so vocal for him already – and he was determined to hear more of it. “Ever tried sucking someone off?”

“No, but I’ve watched a lot of porn.”

“Porn is different from actual sex, baby,” the nickname fell so effortlessly from his lips that you didn’t dare question it anymore. Not that you could anyway, because the tip of his finger was prodding against your hole that was embarrassingly clenching around nothing. “How about here? Have you tried masturbating?”

“Don’t ask me such embarrassing questions!”

“You’re spread open for me already, you don’t need to be embarrassed,” You covered your face with your hands to hide, but Akaashi pried them away, his grip on your wrist both demanding yet gentle. “Tell me so I know how many fingers I can put inside you. I need to stretch you out.”

“Just one.”

“Louder, baby.”

“Just one finger,” you blurted out, finding it harder and harder to breathe the more he glided his fingers between your slit. Fingering yourself couldn’t even compare to the beauty of having him do the same to you, your arousal only heightened by his dedicated stare at your shaven pussy. From below your bodies, his pants had begun to home a tent.

“Two hurts a little bit and ‘em too sore.”

“What a tight cunt,” he commented with a smirk. “I’ll have to take my time with you then,” You nodded gratefully, about to smile at him with hearts in your eyes when Akaashi slowly slid a finger in. Your moan came out breathless and muted as you stared at him, mouth open in a silent gasp. The intrusion wasn’t anything new but he expertly pumped his finger in and out of it that your walls fluttered around him, head thrown back for another broken moan as he slid another digit. The stretch felt fucking perfect – the slight sting more than welcome in your virgin cunt that was now being fucked by your brother.

“Shh, it’s okay, it’ll feel better soon. Just relax.”

Openly, your slight squeaks of pleasure had increased in volume. Akaashi fingered you until he was knuckle deep, his other palm flat on your abdomen. Had you been in a better state of mind that wasn’t previously clouded with pleasure, you would’ve been embarrassed at the loud sloppy sounds of your pussy, but you remained there with trembling thighs, your nails digging at his thigh as you stared at him wide-eyed.

“Feels good?”

“M-more,” you begged through gritted teeth, “Nii-san, more.”

“Not yet, baby, you’re still too tight,” Sooner than you’d like, Akaashi pulled his fingers out of you. Both of you gazed at the webs of arousal between his fingers; your face painted in shock while he smirked at it, chest swelling with pride. Then, his eyes slid over yours, hooking his hands under your knees before he settled between your thighs.

“Come here. I’m going to go down on you.”

“Nii-san, no!” your protests fell on deaf ears, almost as if he knew you didn’t really mean it. His ears knocked with your knees locked around him, and you shivered as you felt his hot breath right before your burning cunt. “It’s embarrassing...don’t want you looking at my kitty like that.”

“Your kitty is very pretty and Nii-san wants a taste of you,” he mumbles while pressing kisses all over your pelvic bone, his sticky fingers massaging your inner thighs into relaxation. Your head pressed back harder on the pillows at the sensation, the pleasure too immense and he was just starting. “Didn’t you say you want me to teach you everything? This is just a few lessons you have to learn so don’t be shy. I’m sure you taste heavenly,” Clenching your jaw from the overwhelming bursts of ecstasy, you failed to notice how he dipped his head further, tongue darting out to lick a flat stripe. Your eyes blew wide open as he torturously and slowly dipped his tongue from your hole, the wet and warm muscle licking all the way up from your slit until the clit. “See? I told you. Heavenly.”

“’Kaashi, ‘Kaashi, oh, oh!”

“You sound so pretty but don’t be too loud,” Somehow, he managed to raise his arms and placed a palm over your mouth. “We don’t want Mom and Dad to overhear.”

Your legs trembled around him until you nearly suffocated him, but how could you stop when he was rolling his tongue side to side, licking and cleaning up the previous wetness he’d pulled from you?

It was too much, too good, and soon you were moaning behind his palm as you came all over his face.

Akaashi greedily slurped up the juices that squirted all over his face, unbothered by the mess you’ve made. He didn’t stop until he was sure you were completely clean, and you were already on the brink of overstimulation when he locked his lips around yours, sucking whatever he could take. Unable to take it any longer, you pushed his head away and fell on your side in a desperate attempt to catch your breath, sending him a seductive glare, only to soften as you his lips, cheeks, and nose shining under the moonlight.

“Nii-san, your face—”

“It’s okay, I’ll clean up for later,” he shrugged it off and stepped out of his sweatpants, ripping a condom you didn’t even notice he had. You watched with baited breath as his cock sprung free, the tip red and glistening with pre-cum. Akaashi rolled the condom over his throbbing cock and situated himself before you, pumping his length a few times before aligning it with your hole, sending you one last look of approval.

“You ready for my cock now? This might hurt a little bit. You just need to relax and I’ll go slow, okay? Tell me if anything feels uncomfortable.”

Nodding, you made yourself comfortable and braced the sheets for preparation, wincing a little as he pushed the tip in. Akaashi felt you clamp down on him, his hips stilling just as he loomed over you, his arms resting beside your head. In this position, you could see each detail of him – the thickness of his lashes, the love blooming in his eyes, the sweat beading in his forehead and everything soft and slow written all over his face.

“Still okay? I can stop if you want.”

You shook your head and wrapped your legs around his waist to pull him closer. He raised a brow at your initiation, but you merely smiled at him to hide the mild discomfort. “I can take it, just keep going.”

A few minutes later and a hundred still good? later, Akaashi had slid himself in. He allowed you to get used inch by delicious inch until he was completely seated inside you, hip pressed to hip and his hand caressing your cheek. “You’ve done so well,” he praised, “How does having a cock stuffed in you feel?”

“S-so full,” you replied numbly, the feeling of him throbbing inside your heat so fucking delicious. “Love nii-san’s cock.”

“Yeah? I’ll give you more then,” he warned, and you knew you couldn’t go back anymore when he placed his palm flat beside your head. Akaashi began to move his hips, slowly at first to let you accommodate to his length which your pussy hugged greedily. You were moaning left and right and his groans above you was erotic enough to make you cum on the spot, the pleasure doubling as your pebbled nipples grazed his toned chest.

“Nii-san! So big!”

“I know, baby, you’ll get used to it, don’t worry. It’ll feel better soon,” he rasped, scowling when you raked your nails down his back, though not hard enough to draw blood. It would definitely leave a mark though, and the pain of it urged him to move his hips faster, the sound of skin slapping against skin echoing through his room that began to warm by each passing second. “Feel better?”

“Feels so good,” you cried around him, reaching up to bury your head in his neck and clinging to him like a koala. It did feel so good, so much so that you just might get addicted to this. “Love Nii-san’s cock.”

At your words, Akaashi’s patience that thinned a while ago completely broke.

His pace increased and he gripped your hips tightly, sitting back on his knees just to watch his cock slide in and out of you. The lube made sex feel a hundred times better from how easily he’s easily punching through your walls, the sight of you splayed out for him – hair strewn across the pillow, little whimpers leaving your lips, breasts bouncing right before his eyes and abused pussy lips hugging his shaft – it made him growl with possessiveness.

“This is how you should be fucked – you gotta be fucked right,” he announced, thumb coming down to rub your clit. As expected, you cried out and tightened around him.

He faltered for a moment at how tight you were, but he kept pushing, driving his cock in and out of you until he turned into you a sobbing, slobbery mess.

“You sure that boy of yours can make you feel this good?”

“N-no, Nii-san’s cock only!”

“That’s right, it’s just gotta be me, okay?” driving both his hands around your neck just to clench your airway as a warning, Akaashi fucked you harder than before. The sudden inability to not breathe made you impossibly tighter around him that you felt each ridge and vein kissing your bumpy walls. “Say it. Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours, I’m Nii-san’s property!”

“I’m gonna mark you as mine, claim this pussy as Nii-san’s only, yeah? You want that?”

“Cum in me, ‘Kaashi, cum inside!” you prompted, and what good of a brother would he be if he didn’t grant his little sister’s wishes? Growling, Akaashi snapped his hips hard until the tip of his cock successfully kept repeating that sweet spot in you that you didn’t even know you had. You were crying, moaning, too fucked to respond as you came, and your lewd expression was all it took before he was releasing his cum inside the condom. “Kaashi, Kaashi, ah!”

Akaashi quickly pulled out his cock and took a minute to regain his breath, his head cradled on his hands at the earth-shattering orgasm you both had. Not a moment later, he’s tying his condom and throwing it to his bin, finding his way right beside you as you blinked sleepily at him.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“No, you were great. Just tired.”

“Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?”

You smiled at his concern, pulling him in closer for an embrace. He was warm and sweaty that it felt uncomfortable, but you wanted him beside you, and Akaashi began to caress your hipbones with so much tenderness. He knew he was a little rough for losing control like that.

“I’d love that, thank you,” you mumbled, more than ready to call it a night and sleep when his weight shifted off the bed. Akaashi rummaged through something in his drawers before he disappeared in the bathroom for a bit, coming back to spread your legs open once more. “Wh-what’re you doing?”

“It’s called aftercare. If your partner can’t provide this and pamper you, I suggest you break up with them,” he snickered, and you hissed at the sensitivity as he wiped away your cum with the towel. You soon relaxed, however, all thanks to Akaashi’s doting nature that you were falling asleep on his bed, allowing him to clean you up as he pleases. He set the towel aside and snuggled right next to you, his nose bumping your jaw to pull you away from dreamland for a little while. His previous sexual aura had now dimmed; his brotherly concern present again. “You still want to fuck your classmate?”

“Hmm...he’s really handsome, and I heard from the other girls he’s got a huge cock too,” you giggled, not really aware of your words as you said, “Probably even bigger than yours.”

Thinking that he might be offended, you almost apologized after a moment, but Akaashi only laughed as he hugged you tighter. “Size doesn’t matter. It’s who owns the cock and their talent in pleasuring their partner that matters,” he confidently stated, fingers running up and down your spine that brought chills down to your toes as he nibbled on your ear. “And I know I fucked you so good he can’t compare.”

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ushidoux · 3 years

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Good Teacher - Sugawara x Reader

Summary: You meet Sugawara on an online dating app expecting something tame, but get more than you expected. (~3.1k words)

Warnings: fem pronouns, fem!reader, some features are described ***, dom/sub dynamics, collaring, daddy kink, breathplay, dacryphilia, spanking, edging, toy use, restraint use, sub drop

A/N: Again, this was a commission so some features are described!! Otherwise, please enjoy my first longer BDSM fic.

---

Being alone in your bedroom at 9pm on a Friday night may have felt like a loss on any other day, but today, with your phone buzzing non-stop and every neuron in the sexy parts of your brain firing, you could not think of anything else you would rather do.

Well, actually you could think of a few, and most of them involved slipping out of your pajamas and slipping under your new flame.

Sugawara Koushi.

A name like that sounded sweet. Maybe even bland. Safe.

When you’d swiped right on his profile on the tamer of your social media apps, you’d expected someone mild-mannered and easy to speak to. He was an elementary school teacher with soft features, white hair and a cute mole under his left eye. He couldn’t possibly be as forward as the other guys you’d dealt with over the years. A tame, responsible choice.

You’d started texting back and forth quickly, with polite, formal introductions which progressed to cute messages and long phone calls, and you’d even managed a very chaste first date where he’d picked you up at 8pm on the dot and taken you to a fine restaurant on the water.

You normally would have expected to be dicked down that night, and had paired sexy lingerie under your silky mauve dress for exactly that, but you weren’t too surprised when he left you at your doorstep with a peck on the forehead.

The only unsettling thing about the kiss was the way his eyes had lingered on your lips, just as his fingers trailed the curve of your jaw as he tucked your hair behind your ear. It was too practiced, too… dominant.

You suspected he was holding something back.

And he was, because once you’d ventured to call in the middle of the night, a little bit tipsy and yearning for a little bit more than a smile and a gentle touch from him, you’d broken some sort of dam.

He’d called you a needy, desperate, pretty little slut, desperate for Daddy’s cock but needing to prove herself that she was willing to ride with Daddy’s very, very strict set of rules first, and you’d practically cum at the sudden turn of his voice.

Now anything was fair game.

I have… particular taste. Are you sure you can keep up, princess?

The warmth between your legs and the image of full balls and a weighty, rigid cock told you, you would absolutely be ready for anything he had in store for you.

Yes, daddy. I’m up for anything you want.

You, of course, couldn’t see the wide smile spreading across his face on the other end, as he palmed his cock slowly while reading your texts and admiring your nudes, and texted back:

We’ll need a shit ton of rope.

---

Sugawara’s hands are much larger than you’d anticipate, and rougher, and you wonder how much of it is due to high school athletics or from the fact that he’s quick to slap or spank you at any chance he gets. Your skin is sometimes red, sometimes bruised, and always marked, and it’s exactly the way you like it.

The first time you have sex, he starts you off as though you are the most shy of virgins even though you claim that you’re not exactly inexperienced.

“I wouldn’t want to break you, pretty girl,” he teases, as his hands worship your body, tracking down your waist to the center of your legs, and patting your cunt softly. Today, he’s promised to focus on your pleasure only because he wants to “break you in.” You wonder how many he’s “broken in,” then you realize you don’t really care. You’re his one and only princess right now, and you intend to be for quite a while.

The pleasure of being a good dom is that he can choose to serve - he can choose to be doting and he can choose to be harsh with punishment. Since it’s your first day since you’ve entered this contract with him, he’s decided to focus on the catering part of his personality, and familiarize you with his desires.

The rose-gold Turian collar on your neck compliments your skin well, he takes note, as he takes one of your nipples in his mouth and leans you against him while you are seated on the edge of the bed and he’s kneeling just so before you, fingers deep in your cunt.

“You’re gonna keep that pretty little thing around your neck, aren’t you, pretty baby?”

His fingers move so fast that it’s hard for you to speak, and the arm that’s wrapped around your waist and keeping you flush against him is tightening the longer he continues. He’s a lot stronger than he looks, you know from every heavy spank he’s given you.

“I-I will, daddy, every day and every night,” you pant out, your tongue lolling as his fingers curve upwards and his lips leave your nipple with a soft pop and make their way to your quivering mouth.

“Good,” he whispers as he bites your lower lip. “You’re so obedient… I like that in a little one,” he affirms.

---

He’s kind when he teaches, patient even.

He’s also generous; he gifts you with your first corset, a dark, lacy and tight thing that almost takes your breath away initially, especially when he tightens it onto you himself. Even if it’s constraining, you feel empowered from the very moment you look in the mirror. Your breasts sit high, and you spin once in a gesture of delight; he kisses down your neck as you admire yourself.

“This is only to get you used to a little bit of restriction,” he reassures, as he pulls you into his lap. “But I can’t deny that you look breathtaking.”

---

Since you’ve been so bold as to take his breath away, it isn’t too long until he decides he wants to see what you look like when you’re truly struggling for air. After all, the little shiny thing around your neck catches his eye way too often for his comfort, and his pants suddenly feel too tight for a casual grocery store run.

Your safeword is red, like the blood that courses through your veins as his fingers tighten around your throat.

He thumbs your pink, puffy lips, and it would be loving if he wasn’t calling you a stupid little cocktease.

“Pretty little bambi, prancing around like you’re free to be with anyone other than me.”

The breath that tickles your face is a taunt, because you’re slowly getting lightheaded, barely able to focus on the long index finger he’s commanding you to suck.

The pressure he puts on your neck is varying; for moments you can draw a single staccato breath, which encourages him to press his lips to yours and absorb you in a kiss before he reapplies pressure; his naked body presses against yours, rolling painstakingly slow. He hasn’t even entered you yet.

Breathplay, he calls it.

You gasp as his cock slips into your wet entrance just as fast as his hand leaves your throat, and he too draws a deep breath as he fills you to the hilt.

He lets out a soft laugh as he caresses the hair that is sticking to your face, and readjusts himself yet again - of course, he’s also better endowed than you’d expect him to be - before he picks up speed and chokes you again.

---

“I… Kou-”

“Daddy,” he stresses, unphased as he continues to press a small clitoral stimulator to your tender, overworked bud.

“D-Daddy~” you cry out in a soft, drawn out whine, and you shift a little bit because the ties that keep your ankles attached to the legs of the chair, your pussy exposed and vulnerable with your crotch wide open, are starting to dig into your skin. But you can’t move all that much, there’s additional rope around your waist that keeps you against the back of the chair and you think the soft satin that keeps your wrists behind you is probably overkill, even if you have to admit you like the color.

“Yes, sweetheart~” he whispers in a voice accented with assertive sweetness, his eyes still lowered and focused on the heave of your chest as he watches you drip before him.

“I-”

You scream.

He’d angled the toy upwards, and somehow within the small bundle of nerves he’s targeted an even more precise cluster of endings - there’s a flash of white you see before you cum practically violently, lurching forward so rapidly that he has to keep the chair steady so that you won’t fall over on the pretty little face he adores.

It’s possibly the fourth time he’s had to ground you in the past hour, and it’s an act of mercy because he had been edging you repeatedly, forcing your pussy to clench desperately around nothing but air.

The way you gush and spray so lewdly onto the chair, onto the floor, onto the hand he plays on your sopping wet pussy reminds him he chose very, very well.

---

It’s nearly silent and it’s dark now, far too dark for you to see.

Your Koushi has prepared you for this next step lovingly, sometimes not so lovingly over the past couple of weeks to build up to this.

The blindfold that obscures your vision is soft and slightly sweet smelling, as though spritzed with a floral scent about a day ago prior to this. Again your hands are bound, but he’s used lined handcuffs instead of ties, and your wrists are before you, not behind you.

But you’re lying on your belly, a spreader forcing your thighs apart. He must really love the way your pussy looks staring him in the face.

“You seem to be a glutton for punishment, princess,” he says, accenting his words with a hard slap on your inner thigh. You gasp, but his hands linger tighten, and are then followed by what can only be the press of his tongue against the stinging portion.

“Daddy, I’ll behave, I’m so sorry,” you moan as his hand grips a generous portion of your asscheek.

But you won’t behave, because you’ve learned that Suga likes just a touch of bratty behavior and that gets him quite physical with you. He knows this just as much as you.

He slaps your ass fervently, the slight jiggle drawing a pleased sigh from his lips.

“You’re a silly little slut, though…” he starts, rubbing a hand along the length of your thigh, “how can I trust any of your promises?”

His finger travels to your open center, and when he sees you tense up, he stops.

“You need a firm hand to guide you always…”

His right hand curves again around your cunt and his middle and ring finger finds its way into your slippery hole, while his index taps your clit and his little finger (he’s dexterous like this), taps ever so lightly around your asshole.

You shudder.

“Arch your back, you little cumslut. Make it easy for daddy.”

As you inch backwards slowly using your elbows and knees to rise up, his right hand continues to move with you, but then his other hand lands heavily on your other asscheek.

It breaks your concentration and you almost fall because it takes quite a lot more energy than you would expect to move this way with your hands bound and your legs spread, but you persevere.

For him.

Before you can whine once you’ve gotten into position, he withdraws his hand from your cunt.

“No!” You find yourself shrieking before you realize. You can’t have him edge you again, he’s absolutely cruel, you can’t…

“Oh, I thought I called the shots here, princess,” Sugawara reminds you, voice honeyed and cruel. You can feel his fingers weave into your hair and the warm tip of what must be his cock prod at your entrance.

“Sir, please~”

“Beg.”

He spreads you open with a hand massaging your ass, again tapping teasingly all around your vagina, but he won’t push in to give you the pleasure of having his cock inside you.

Your heart is pounding with desire.

“Please!”

“Please what?”

“Please fill me up, daddy!”

That statement of desire earns you an inch, an inch that makes you swallow saliva hard and your muscles tense with need and want.

“M-more, more please!”

“You’re so demanding. I would say your eyes are bigger than your pretty little pussy, but you can’t see, can you?”

He laughs, but he pushes in further another inch, than another, moving painstakingly slow, slow enough that you’re biting your lower lip until blood is drawn. The stretch is achingly delicious but it leaves you starved for more.

You’re begging and whining, and soon you’re trying your best to sink onto him further but he’s got you restrained for a reason.

“Greedy little bitch,” he murmurs, but he kisses your neck lovingly as he fills you to the hilt.

The unmistakable noise of flesh hitting flesh and minimal friction fills the room but you care less about sound, only about the slap of his balls against your cunt as he thrusts into you from behind.

More. Deeper. Faster. Harder.

He’s a master at drawing desire out of you, you wonder if you even needed these toys and ties and other accoutrements. You’re already so utterly wrapped for him.

---

There’s a movie playing on your screen that you had both been pretending to watch, cuddled together on the couch, your legs resting across his lap. You had barely gotten through the opening credits before he pulled you onto him fully and had you straddle him.

“You want a snack, pretty baby?” He whispers, as though it weren’t just the two of you staring in each other’s eyes.

Your eyelashes bat and you nod.

He doesn’t break eye contact while he reaches for a strawberry, fresh from the farmer’s market you’d strolled through this morning, from a bowl set on the table.

This one is drizzled in chocolate, and he runs it along the length of your collarbone, eye contact still heavy and unflinching before he dips down to catch it in his mouth.

It hangs out halfway from his teeth and he cues you to take it from him mouth to mouth. You split half of it, letting the sweet tartness permeate your senses.

His arm hooks around your waist and pulls you in close as he presses his lips against yours. You weren’t aware of the glob of strawberry-flavored saliva he’d collected until he draws away, tilts your head back and tells you to open up wide so he can spit directly into your mouth.

---

“Swallow.”

Suga’s relentlessly pounding an erect, frustrated and thick cock into your mouth, past your teeth and down your poor throat, and he’s close to his release now, you can tell by the way he’s now pressed your face so far against him that his carefully cropped pubes prick your face.

He’s warning you beforehand, and you’re thankful for the warning because when he cums with a soft, almost angelic moan, his penis jerks inside your mouth ever so slightly, and there’s a gush of hot, slippery liquid that slides down your throat.

You breathe through your nose. He tastes sweet, maybe it’s because of the strawberries from just earlier today, but nevertheless it’s a pleasant liquid you gulp down around his cock.

He loves the way your throat feels when it clamps around him, especially when you initially gag once accepting his cock.

You’re perfect.

“Come up, darling,” he bids you, pulling you up from your position on your knees.

“Are you gonna fill me up, daddy?” You mewl softly as he lifts up and carries you before laying you on your back.

“Yes, pretty baby, but let me taste your juicy little cunt first,” he says before he dives in between your legs.

---

“You’re so good for me, you know that, don’t you?”

He kisses your neck softly as he holds you close to him while you lay in bed together. It’s close to 1am and he’s focused on aftercare, caressing your arms and waist and the curve of your hip gently. You’re facing away from him, not because you’re upset, but because you’re exhausted.

He’s worried you’re having a sub-drop; after all, he’s spent the last two hours slapping your face and calling you disgusting. He wonders if you forgot to use your safe word.

You’re new to this and he’s put you through a lot in the past few weeks.

“Sweetness,” he whispers, directly into your ear. “Look at me?”

You turn, cheeks still flushed from particularly hard slaps. His heart aches a bit for you, because those sweet lips are pulled downwards into a frown and he’s not sure if those are fresh tears that wet your eyelashes.

He kisses your eyelids then rests his chin on the top of your head.

“Are you doing okay, my princess?”

You nod and reach for his face with your fingertips. Your dom softens under your touch because you are so precious to him. His fingers close around yours and he kisses your forehead.

“The most important thing is your comfort,” he asserts. He taps the collar around your neck that suggests in some way that you are his and he is yours. “You can take this off at any time.”

You wrap your arms around his waist and bury your face into his chest. It’s been fun and it’s also been freeing to have him take care of you. There’s a soft haze that wafts around your brain lately as you surrender to him. You are in love with him, deeply, in such a short amount of time.

“I would never,” you say, finally.

His heart skips a beat.

“Unless you want to buy me a nicer one, of course.”

He chuckles.

“You’re a feisty little one, aren’t you?” He remarks. He’s glad to look down at you and see you smiling again, eyes bright and brown. He reaches for your ass cheek, then raises your leg so that it lies across his hip.

Your eyes twinkle with mischief.

“Well, that’s why you picked me to teach, isn’t it?” You raise an eyebrow, and the cheeky grin on your face is enough to make him get absolutely hard again.

Of course, only if you’re up to the task.

Suga bites gently on your lip again, his hand on your thigh.

“I didn’t expect you to learn so quickly.”

“Maybe you really do have the gift of teaching,” you reply, as you stick your tongue into his mouth.

#sugawara x reader #suga x reader #sugawara koushi x reader #sugawara smut #haikyuu smut #fic: good teacher #not sfw #commission work #mae.writing #hqintheclub

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rose2jam · 3 years

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Why It Was Practically Inevitable That Severus Snape Would Join A Cult, an essay by Rose Jam

So, let’s talk about Cults. Disclaimer: This is just information I’ve gathered over the years from my personal fascination with religious cults. I’m in no way an expert or a psychologist or whatever. This is just my personal understanding from the research I’ve done.

A cult is started when a wildly charismatic Leader feels like they have a purpose, a higher calling, or a mission to be fulfilled (or they could also just be an egomaniac). Maybe they really do feel like what makes them special comes directly from a higher power, be that God, or the Heir of Slytherin, but either way, this person has a pathological need to be worshiped, and they need followers in order to do that.

So, how does one obtain Followers easily? By finding the misunderstood misfits of society, and promising them something. The people who feel like no one else understands them, or their ideologies. But this Leader? This Leader GETS IT, MAN! The Leader understands them perfectly, vindicates them, and makes them promises along the way. Like, if they stick with the Leader, then not only will they finally be understood, but they themselves will also be revered. That they will rise above all of the others who have put them down for so long, and will come out on top as a superior being.

Any of this sounding familiar?

Charles Manson preyed on young people in the middle of the hippie movement, mostly women, who were feeling lost, lonely, and in need of guidance, or in terms of the men he recruited, seeking power over others. Not all of these people were poor or helpless; some of them came from middle class, or even rich homes and families. Yes, some of them came from broken homes, but all of them felt “broken” themselves, in some way. So Manson used their desires to have a family to draw them in. He then used LSD and other drugs to keep them under his control, and he created a manipulative environment where the members of his “family” felt they could never leave him, and if they didn’t follow his commands, something horrible would happen to them. I’m not going to go into full detail on the Manson Family Murders, but if you’re personally interested, check out the Podcast “Cults” on Spotify.

So back to basics, this Leader draws in Followers with flowery promises of community, power, family, or whatever. But once the Leader has that following, the terror will begin. Cult Leaders are usually master manipulators, and have completely brainwashed their followers into believing the “us vs them” mentality, that the outside world is evil, that the outside world will only harm them, that the outside world would never understand what they’re doing on the inside. And that the Leader is the only one who knows the truth, so they better stick with him. Or maybe the Leader has gaslit his followers so completely, that they become dependent on him for everything, to the point where they don’t know how they would possibly function without the Leader. Or, the Leader has created an environment that’s so hostile, that Followers are too afraid of what might happen to them if they tried to leave, or didn’t do what the Leader commanded. Typically, it’s a combination of all of the above. Destructive cults will either hurt others outside of their circle (The Manson Family, Sect of Nacozari), harm themselves (Heaven’s Gate, The Ant Hill Kids), or both (The People’s Temple, Aum Sinrikyo).

Now that I’ve laid this foundation, I’m going to tell you why it was practically inevitable that Severus Snape would join a cult.

Snape’s childhood ultimately laid the foundation for the mental state he would be in when he decided to join the Death Eaters. He grew up in an abusive household, where his father, the muggle, had his magical wife so thoroughly whipped, that she couldn’t (or chose not to) use magic to defend herself, or her son (1). Eileen had obviously told Severus about magic, about Hogwarts, about what a wonderful place it was, and what a wonderful gift magic could be. Severus also watched as Tobias beat the magic out of her. (I know it’s debated whether Tobias actually physically abused his family, but he certainly verbally/mentally/emotionally abused them, so the term “beat” could be used figuratively as well). I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that Severus developed an extreme hatred of muggles with “burn the witch” mentalities from a very young age because of this.

Enter Lily, perhaps the only other magical person in his life besides his mother up to this point. He sees her using magic out in the open, perhaps recklessly, for fun, and he sees an opportunity to make a friend (and, admittedly, to be smarter than someone about something for a while). He was so eager to tell her all about magic, because getting to learn magic, and go to Hogwarts, has possibly been the only thing keeping him going in his young life. And now he’s made a friend, a real friend who doesn’t think he’s weird because he’s magical. Unlike Petunia, yet another muggle who makes fun of him for being weird (2). And Lily actually seems to like him back. For a kid who probably hasn’t received a lot of affection in his life, this is monumental. This friendship is everything. Why wouldn’t he love her?

So the time finally comes to go to Hogwarts. Severus gets to escape his abusive household, and finally has an opportunity to embrace magic for the first time in his life. But almost immediately, he’s met with a hic-up. Specifically, James Potter and Sirius Black. So Severus is no longer facing abuse exclusively from muggles who think he’s weird, but now he’s also getting it from other magical people who think he’s weird (3). And this started on the fucking TRAIN before he even GOT to Hogwarts. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t sour a kids dream right off the fucking bat. And then, when he finally gets there, he’s separated from his only friend, by being sorted into different houses (4). What a way for a life-long dream to be thoroughly dashed in less than 24 hours.

Let’s look at Snape’s Hogwarts experience. He’s a good student, and he pours himself into learning as much magic as possible, and at being the best he can possibly be, probably motivated by a desire to be better than what his Father thinks possible. During this time, he is regularly bullied and abused by the Marauders. Sometime before his 5th year, the Incident at the Shrieking Shack took place. It definitely sucks to have been so thoroughly fucking duped, and put into a life-threatening situation involving a goddamn werewolf (5). But perhaps even worse than that, the salt in the wound, was that no one fucking did anything about it (6). He saw Sirius and James and Remus get out of that situation without facing any sort of proper punishment (as in, they all still stayed at the school as opposed to being expelled like they DEFINITELY SHOULD HAVE BEEN (At least Sirius should have been)). Dumbledore was looking out for the Marauders, but no one was looking out for Severus. On top of that, Severus isn’t allowed to TELL anyone about it, not even Lily. So, he goes through what was possibly one of the most traumatic experiences of his life, and he can’t even tell anyone that it happened.

So, what sort of support system does Severus have during all this? He has Lily, sure (who literally told him he should be GRATEFUL to James, one of his abusers). But, what he really has, is Slytherin House (7). I’ll say it plainly: Severus was sorted into a house that was already full of existing cult members. McGonagall says in Sorcerer’s Stone that “Your house will be like your family” (she at least says it in the movies, I’m too lazy to get up and reference my books rn lol). So, Severus’ family, his support system, for 10 months out of every year, is a house that is already full to the brim with pureblood elitists with prejudiced ideals, who would absolutely vindicate Severus in his dislike for muggles. As a kid first getting sorted into the house, it’s obviously not unreasonable to become friends with the people you’re literally living with. His dorm mates became his family. So, when his dorm mates started to become Death Eaters… This is headcanon, I fully admit, but like, fuck, Severus didn’t have a lot of friends, and was probably already drifting apart from Lily. Do you really think he was going to tell the people he had to live with every single day, not to mention the only people that had been supporting him for years, to go fuck themselves for using Dark Magic? Especially when he was probably feeling like he was on the verge of thinking that their rhetoric made some sense?

On to Snape’s Worst Memory (8). At this point, he’s spent 5 years in Slytherin House, with fellow students who casually throw around the M word. He gets attacked by James and Sirius, he’s practically defenseless, and then the girl who he’d considered his closest friend for so long… has to force herself not to smile when he’s thrown upside down and exposed to everyone on the grounds. Sure, she was trying to defend him at first, but she also fucking nearly smiled at his humiliation, his pain, his abuse. So he hurls the one word that he knows is going to cut the deepest, that will hopefully hurt her as badly as she has hurt him. And it works.

Severus had been beaten down his entire life. By Muggles and Magic Folk alike. And finally, he’s betrayed by Lily, his last lifeline to the light. He betrayed her as well, of course. But he did try to show remorse. And she doesn’t forgive him (9), which was her prerogative, of course.

So. Who does he have left?

I’ve placed little (numbers) throughout my writing here. Each of those numbers denote the specific events that led Severus to becoming an angry young man, who hates muggles, hates (some) magic folk, and resulted in him feeling weak, helpless, and desperate. For what? For power, for a family, for a community. For a world where he is no longer the weird one. For a world where he’s respected, strong. For the world he thought he was going to be a part of, when he arrived at Hogwarts in his first year.

And it just so happens that this is the exact world that Voldemort is (allegedly) trying to create.

Severus Snape was angry, and vulnerable, and as such, he was practically the poster child for the type of person who would be susceptible to falling for a cult. Maybe he was recruited by his friends in Slytherin House. Maybe he was recruited directly. Either way, charismatic Tom Riddle came along, understood how he felt, where he was coming from, told him he deserved better, and offered him all of the things he never had in his life. And being at rock bottom, being the lowest of the low, to Severus it must have seemed like a miracle of an opportunity, or perhaps, like the only chance he had left.

Now, let me be extremely clear; everything I’ve written is not trying to EXCUSE Severus Snape for his actions. There is always a point where personal responsibility must come into play. Except for children born into cults or victims of kidnapping, nearly every person who has ever joined a cult has made the personal decision to join it. I’m just trying to express how unbelievably easy it is, for a Cult Leader to find people with damaged lives and low self-worth, to suck them in with promises of a fulfilling life and grandeur, and for those people to be easily swept up and brainwashed into believing that what they are doing is right. (Or that what they are doing is required, because the alternative is more horrifying.)

The type of people who joined the Death Eaters are the same type of people who joined Heaven’s Gate, or The People’s Temple, or yes, The Manson Family. Now, I’m just going to say, from my own personal point of view, I do not vilify anyone who’s ever joined a destructive cult. On the contrary, I feel sorry for them. Because most people who join a cult, don’t necessarily do it signing up for the… end result of what happened to them. Some of them totally do, like Heaven’s Gate. Most of them knew that the end result was going to be the “evacuation of their earthly vessel”. But the people who joined the Manson Family, for instance, did not initially join it KNOWING how it was going to end. They were part of the family long before Manson even came up with Helter Skelter, and by the time the Tate-LaBianca Murders took place, they were already too far gone to go against it.

I highly recommend anyone who’s interested in a humanizing view of former cult members, to read the essay “Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship” by John Waters. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leslie-van-houten-a-frien_b_246953

Or, at the very least, listen to this 7 minute NPR interview with John Waters about the essay https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111585116

It’s the story of how notorious film maker John Waters, became friends with former Manson Girl, Leslie Van Houten, and about how she broke away from the cult after her conviction, how she’s spent the last 51 years of her life recovering from the psychotic influence of a maniac who’d promised her the world, and how even though she was convicted to life WITH a possibility of parole, it’s never been granted to her, despite the fact that she has done literally everything possible to try and atone for her crimes.

Maybe I’m just a bleeding heart. I’m pretty much the only person I know who feels sorry for Leslie Van Houten and other cult members who were brainwashed, abused, and manipulated into doing a lot of the horrible things they’ve done. But there are people in the world, who have committed FAR more heinous crimes than the Manson Family murders, and who are far less repentant than Leslie, but because those crimes weren’t as notorious, they get to walk free.

Addendum: When I first posted this, I had a few people point out to me that they had always associated Voldemort and the Death Eaters with Hitler and Nazi Germany. This is a perfectly fair point, but one that I personally don’t jive with, and the reason is simply the numbers. There were literally millions of people in the Nazi party during WW2. Death Eaters don’t even reach triple digits, as far as I’m aware. As I hinted at in this essay, I consider Voldemort and the Death Eaters to be MUCH closer to Charles Manson and the Manson Family. The Manson Family 100% had Nazi ideology, of course. "Helter Skelter” was Charles Manson’s prediction that there was going to be a massive race war; one that the Whites were going to lose, and that he and his Pure White family would emerge from it in order to rule over the remaining Blacks. Kinda... sounds like a Death Eater thing, huh?

Sorry. Back to Snape. There is a lot we don’t know about Severus’ actual time as a Death Eater. I think it can be reasonably assumed he’s never actually killed anyone before Dumbledore (In Prince’s Tale, Severus questions if his soul would be safe from killing Dumbledore, and Dumbledore implies that his soul would not be damaged by helping an old man avoid pain and humiliation. This leads me to believe that Severus never committed any soul-damaging murders before this). Beyond being a sneaky spy and delivering the prophecy to Voldemort, his time as a Death Eater is all up for conjecture.

Severus does make one important deviation from the typical cult member mold, however. In the end, he manages to break away from the cult. The scales fall from his eyes. In a figurative sense, the LSD has worn off. What made him sober up, was the threat to his last lifeline to the light. The one good fucking thing he’d ever had in his miserable life. He was brought back by genuine love. Ya know, the ENTIRE MESSAGE OF THE HP SERIES. And not only did he leave the cult, but he then spent the rest of his life actively attempting to destroy it, and atone for the mistakes he’s made, in an effort to bring back the world he’d been excited for, as an 11-year-old kid, so full of hope.

#Snape Meta #Severus Snape #Pro Snape #Snapedom #Snape Community #This will be the TRUE test of the tags #Essay Jam #Why It Was Practically Inevitable That Severus Snape Would Join A Cult

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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JGY and NMJ post-canon, as fierce corpses sealed up together in that coffin (as per novel), get freed from the coffin and go to Cloud Recesses on Baxia because NMJ is fed with having that little snake around all the time.

ao3

“I can’t believe you actually managed to get us out of there,” Jin Guangyao said when they reached air again.

“I can’t believe you’re still talking,” Nie Mingjue growled, his voice still raspy from the whole decapitated head business, which he was still taking far too personally in Jin Guangyao’s opinion. He’d already been dead at the time! It wasn’t like Jin Guangyao had caused him any additional pain by the dismemberment!

Anyway, Nie Mingjue had unexpectedly turned into a terrifyingly powerful fierce corpse – contrary to everything that should have happened, did he just skip the whole soul-calming rituals that all children of the gentry were supposedly getting? – and there had simply been no other alternative that would keep him from murdering Jin Guangyao right then and there.

Possibly, Jin Guangyao allowed, that was the problem Nie Mingjue had with it.

“Aren’t you tired? You’ve done nothing but talk since we got stuck in there!”

“It’s my finest talent –”

“Lying and deceit are your finest talents.”

“And those require talking!”

Nie Mingjue shoved Jin Guangyao as he tried to climb out of the coffin. He tried to catch himself with one hand, forgot that he didn’t have that arm anymore, and tumbled to the ground.

If it wasn’t for the fact that they’d realized some time ago that their sentience depended on regularly interacting with each other, and that without regular conversation they would both begin to lose their minds and revert to ravening beasts, Jin Guangyao swore that he would have murdered Nie Mingjue and torn apart his body a second time over.

“I should’ve ripped off your tongue instead of your arm,” Nie Mingjue complained. “I’d have had a happier afterlife if I did.”

“Too late now,” Jin Guangyao grumbled, getting up. It was very strange, being a fierce corpse. “I liked you better when you were wholly consumed with rage – oh, wait, that’s what you’ve been like the entire time I’ve known you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you, too.”

The prohibition on the coffin had been broken, but there was still one around the ruined temple to keep people out and evil creatures, a category currently including the two of them, although Jin Guangyao suspected that Nie Mingjue would argue that Jin Guangyao had always been included in that category. He might even be right, who knew?

At any rate, they needed to break the prohibition to get out. Jin Guangyao tossed himself down on the ground to wait while Nie Mingjue examined it.

“Why did you start talking?” he asked idly. “I’ve always wondered. When I died, you were completely mindless.”

“Who knows?” Nie Mingjue said distractedly. “Maybe all you need for sentience is to marinate in rage for long enough.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Why? Works for the sabers.”

Jin Guangyao opened his mouth, then found he had nothing to say. He supposed that it did.

“Why did you always have so much rage, anyway?” he complained. “I understand the bit about your father being murdered, and of course your stupid cultivation style encourages it, but you always seemed especially irritated about everything.”

Nie Mingjue huffed. “You remember that I’m misaligned, right?”

“So what? Being misaligned makes you more of a shithead?”

“No, dealing with your father made me more of a shithead.”

Jin Guangyao considered the practicalities of having to deal with his father while possessing a physically female body and shuddered. It really wasn’t worth considering, especially since Lanling Jin did not believe in or especially respect Qinghe Nie’s tradition of misaligned souls. “Wait,” he said a moment later. “He knew? Why did he know?! I didn’t know, and I worked for you for years!”

“You worked for me as an adult, you dolt. He met me when I was still young.”

Jin Guangyao thought about it, then grimaced. “I can’t even imagine you as a little girl.”

“That’s because I wasn’t.”

“…I wish you’d have told me,” Jin Guangyao picked at the fraying hem of his robes.

“Why? Would you be less likely to murder me if you knew? Or was it just to spare yourself the unpleasant shock you received when you were dismembering my corpse?”

Jin Guangyao considered it. “Mostly the latter.”

“Good. If you’d said it was the former, I’d take my chances with insanity.”

Jin Guangyao rolled his eyes, then frowned. “Did he ever…?”

“Ever..? Wait, what? No!” Nie Mingjue turned to stare at him, looking scandalized – which was not an expression one really expected to see on a fierce corpse. “Why would you even ask that?”

Jin Guangyao shrugged. “Seemed reasonable, given everything else he did.”

“No,” Nie Mingjue grimaced. “He just thought I was a freak, and it seemed to especially irritate him when I didn’t just submit to whatever he wanted, that’s all. Nothing over the top...still, you clearly know what he was like. This was the man you were so desperate for the approval for?”

“I figured it out eventually,” Jin Guangyao grumbled. “Anyway, who are you to talk about father issues? You, with the whole you-killed-my-father obsession?”

“He did kill my father.”

“Big deal! So did I!” He paused. “Kill my father, that is. Not yours.”

“Did you?” Nie Mingjue snorted. “My desire to kill you went down one notch.”

“It did?”

“From several tens of thousands, but yes.”

Jin Guangyao drummed his fingers on his knee thoughtfully. “Can I kill other people to make it keep going down?”

“The fact that you even asked that made it go back up.”

Useless. Nie Mingjue was just completely useless.

“How long will it take you to get out of this one?” he asked instead, changing the subject. “I’d like to get to the Cloud Recesses to see Lan Xichen before, you know, he dies of old age.”

“Would you like to break through this array?” Nie Mingjue growled.

Lan Xichen had always been very fond of communication. He sincerely believed that almost all the problems in the world were due to miscommunication, that the vast majority of the time people just needed to meet in the middle and talk things over and that they would be able to solve almost everything to their mutual satisfaction.

Communication, Jin Guangyao decided, had not helped things one bit.

“Have you figured out what you’re going to say?” Nie Mingjue asked, poking at one part of the array and not looking at Jin Guangyao in a way that had to be deliberate.

“Say?” Jin Guangyao asked. “When?”

“When we get to the Cloud Recesses. What you’ll say to Xichen.”

Jin Guangyao had thought a lot about that. “It depends,” he hedged. “I mean, what I say to him, there’s a lot of factors – for instance, will you be there?”

“Would you prefer to talk to him as mindless fierce corpse slavering for his blood?”

Jin Guangyao grimaced. “I’m still thinking about it, then.”

“Well, think fast, then. I found a gap.”

“Good!” Jin Guangyao scrambled to his feet. “That was fast. How do we break it?”

“It’s impossible to break from the inside.”

“…you couldn’t have told me that before I got up?!”

“You don’t even have muscles anymore,” Nie Mingjue complained. “Your entire body is powered by resentful energy. Why are you still whining?”

Jin Guangyao wished he had a second arm so that he could cross them over his chest and glare. Or put them on his hips and glare. Or even just use them to make a rude gesture more easily done with two hands. “Are we trapped here forever or not?”

“It can be broken from the outside,” Nie Mingjue clarified, rolling his eyes. “I’ll summon Baxia to break it, and then we can use her to fly to the Cloud Recesses.”

“Fine.” Jin Guangyao frowned. “Wait, won’t that alert Huaisang that we’re back?”

“Probably.”

“He’ll boil me alive!”

“Only pieces of you, probably,” Nie Mingjue said, sounding far too smug about the idea. “As long as he knows that I need some of you alive. Maybe I should be the one to keep your head in my closet, this time?”

“It was a treasure room. I didn’t keep you in a closet.”

“It was a fucking closet.”

“It wasn’t. It was in a mirror and everything, it’s much more sophisticated.”

“You’re the guy that had a murder closet. Accept it.”

“I refuse to be the guy with the murder closet. Anyway, you can’t let him boil me alive, you don’t know what’ll happen if you let him do that.” He thought about it, and specifically about Nie Mingjue’s prioritization between risk and reward. “Please don’t let Huaisang boil me alive.”

“I’ll consider speaking in your favor if you stop being so annoying.”

“On second thought, I don’t have nerves anymore and can’t feel pain. Bring on the boil.”

“Are we really going to have to do this for the rest of our lives?” Nie Mingjue wondered, sounding depressed.

“For the rest of eternity,” Jin Guangyao said, equally grim. “That’s why we have to get to er-ge in time to convince him to cultivate to immortality. If I had to wait alone with you until he reincarnates, I’ll go insane.”

“You’re already insane.”

“I’ll lose the ability to stop talking.”

“…Xichen cultivating to immortality it is.” Nie Mingjue thought about it. “Do you think we could convince Huaisang to…?”

“No,” Jin Guangyao said. “You couldn’t get him to cultivate to competent; who could get him to cultivate to immortality?”

The answer to that, as they discovered when they arrived at the Cloud Recesses, was apparently Lan Xichen.

“Did I need to know this?” Jin Guangyao complained, unable to believe that he’d returned from the dead as a fierce corpse and managed to regain his sanity and even work with Nie Mingjue to get to the Cloud Recesses in order to apologize to his sworn brother for all the wrongs he’d done to him, only to be stuck waiting outside in the rain while said sworn brother finished banging his other sworn brother’s little brother. “I didn’t need to know this.”

“Shut up,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’m practicing meditation in order to block out sound from my ears. Maybe I should remove my head again? Do you think that would help?”

“Nothing will help,” Jin Guangyao said as another set of enthusiastic shouting emerged through the too-thing walls. “Ever. My mind is scarred permanently.”

“Maybe that’ll improve it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you, too.”

They stood in silence for a little while, the only sounds the howling of the wind and also the howling from inside the room.

“…how long do you think it’ll take for them to finish and notice we’re here?” Jin Guangyao considered. “Maybe we could throw rocks?”

“It took five years for us to get out of that coffin,” Nie Mingjue said. “You can wait five minutes for them to finish.”

“It’d be funny if we threw rocks and then appeared in the window, dark figures silhouetted by lightning. Like in those scary puppet plays. They might never have sex again.”

“I value my brother’s happiness over your petty desire to ruin his sex life,” Nie Mingjue said, then grimaced at a particularly loud yowl. “As tempting as the thought might be.”

“We’ll wait, then,” Jin Guangyao said. “And then we’re all going to have some words.”

“Of course we are. Because you don’t shut up.”

#mdzs #jin guangyao #nie mingjue #xisang #my fic #my fics #get together box #omgpurplefattie

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marybeatriceofmodena · 3 years

Text

You know, I’ve been thinking today about how Alina doesn’t even really work as a Reluctant Hero, compared her to Frodo to see the key differences (since Frodo is pretty much the Poster Child for the Reluctant Hero), and then I realized...

You know, I think L/eigh B/ardugo wrote TGT as a very black-and-white fairytale, where Alina is the princess, Mal’s the knight in the shining armor, and the Darkling is basically the dragon, except it doesn’t really work because the worldbuilding requires an approach that’s... a lot more grey?

The thing is, though, I realized... Alina and Mal are basically meant to be Frodo and Sam. Except that, again... it doesn’t really work.

Frodo works as a Reluctant Hero, because he makes it clear multiple times that he doesn’t want to carry the Ring. He asks Gandalf to do it for him, he asks Galadriel, he asks Aragorn, and they all refuse, because they are (or are called to be) in a position of power, and while them being in a position of power is presented as good, the One Ring essentially represents the fast, easy way to get to it, which will ultimately corrupt them rather than have them fight their way towards their goal.

Frodo, meanwhile, is the right person to carry the Ring, because he comes from a humble place and he doesn’t really have any aspirations to become powerful. And while he’s clearly burdened by having to carry the One Ring, and that he makes it clear that he wishes the Ring had never come to him, he still goes on anyway, despite all the hardships he faces, because his ultimate goal is to save the Shire and his friends, and that desire is stronger than any fear or greed he may have.

Now, J.R.R. Tolkien himself said that he didn’t really see Frodo as THE Hero, and that Sam is the real Hero of the story to him. Which makes sense, given how Sam was based off young men from rural England he met while fighting in World War I. But also, the story makes it very clear that without Sam, who’s arguably the most pure-hearted person in all of Middle-Earth, Frodo would have definitely failed in his task. The reason why he resists the temptation to carry the One Ring is LITERALLY because him protecting and helping Frodo is more important to him. Sam doesn’t give two shits about power. Helping Frodo save the Shire and coming back to everything he’s ever loved is more important to him.

Both Alina and Frodo are pure-hearted orphans who are given tremendous power: Alina is the Sun Summoner, and Frodo carries the One Ring. In both cases, power is represented as a corruptive force, that makes people go mad with greed. It works in the context of The Lord of the Rings, given how the rings were given to leaders of Elves, Dwarves and Men, and that Sauron created the One Ring to rule over and control all of them. The Grisha, on the other hand, unlike the Ring-bearers, are not in a position of power, given they are essentially victims of Fantastic Racism in pretty much every country. While Ravka treats them slightly better than in Fjerda or Shu Han, it’s still not ideal and it’s something that could be taken away from them at any moment. It would be an entirely different matter if the Grisha were the ones rulling over Ravka and viewing otkazat’sya as lesser, and in that context, Alina being the Sun Summoner would be a very obvious road to her becoming corrupted.

Frodo refusing to carry the One Ring and asking other people to take that burden from him comes from a place of genuine fear of what the Ring might do to him. In his place, we’d probably all do the same thing. That’s what makes his acceptance of his task all the more admirable. Alina, on the other hand, refuses to be the Sun Summoner and to help her fellow Grisha because that stands in the way of her ending up with Mal. She never gives any sign that she’s truly empathizing with the Grisha’s plight, she tries to run away not once, but twice, and most importantly, she never sees herself as one of them. They are othered, but it matters little to her, because she doesn’t want to be othered herself, because that stands in the way of her running off with a boy. It’s basically the equivalent of Frodo being overcome by fear after seeing the fate of the Shire in Galadriel’s mirror, and just demanding to be sent to the Grey Havens straight away to save his own ass from it all and just leaving the One Ring to whoever wants to deal with it. At that point, it’s not being a Reluctant Hero: it’s being a coward at best, a selfish bastard at worst.

(And that’s why I don’t really buy her when she tells Aleksander that they could have had it all if he had told her all the truth from the start, because... again, she didn’t seem to care about the Grisha that much and Aleks telling her everything would have actually been a sure way of having her run as fast as possible the other way. I know the story is trying to tell me otherwise and that the plot point I’m supposed to see here is that Alina was willing to do something until she felt betrayed by Aleks, which is... not what was shown here, and it’s especially annoying considering how Alina is a deserter in every sense of the word, and that any army would have court-martialed her for running away.)

So if Alina is meant to be a pure, selfless heroine, who loses her powers because she also refuses to be greedy... that just falls completely flat, because if anything, she’s as selfish as Frodo is selfless, because all of this really just boils down to her wanting to run off with Mal.

Now, onto Sam and Mal. Both of them are basically Everymen who are there to help the Hero and keep their feet on the ground. As mentioned earlier, Sam is the one who helps Frodo finish his mission to Mordor, and the story makes it clear Frodo would have failed without him. TGT meanwhile presents Mal as Alina’s “True North”... which could work on paper as Alina’s reminder to temper Aleksander’s efforts and to remind him that in order for Grisha to be viewed as people, it is important for them to also remember that balance and peace between Grisha and otkazat’sya will be essential, so resentment and hatred can be healed between both groups.

The key difference here is that Sam is completely supportive of Frodo at all times. Even when Frodo sends him away in the film, Sam goes back after him the minute he realizes he’s been tricked by Gollum. He never shames Frodo whenever he falls prey to temptation, he simply reminds him of who he is and what he must fight for, and even when he’s climbing Mount Doom, he still carries Frodo on his back despite being probably completely exhausted, because Frodo’s more exhausted than he is. He completely accepts Frodo as both his friend, the Hobbit from the Shire, and the Ring-bearer he needs to help, even if he might die in the process.

Mal (in the books, that is) makes it very clear that he does not accept Alina as both the girl he knew and the Sun Summoner. He only wants the girl, and whenever Alina makes steps towards being the Sun Summoner, he basically sulks and yells at her for not paying attention to him. Despite Alina becoming othered in the eyes of the world, he refuses to see her as othered, mostly because it is inconvenient to him rather than because he loves her for who she is. That’s why in the end, people feel like Alina lost her powers in order to be with Mal, because Mal would never accept her in her entirety. Sam, on the other hand, accepts Frodo as both Ring-bearer and Hobbit, because if he didn’t, Frodo would have failed.

And while they made Mal in the show a lot nicer than his book counterpart, he still doesn’t work as Alina’s “True North”, because he cossets her in her selfishness. He may say he doesn’t care about how Alina is a Grisha in this one, but he also doesn’t consider the implications of it all - which is especially glaring given he’s a soldier himself. Like, look, if you’re going to slap in a racism plotline to make Mal/ina work, you’d think that being half-Shu would give Mal a little awareness that people are going to treat Alina badly for being half-Shu AND a Grisha, and given Alina is the MOTHERFUCKING SUN SUMMONER AND A SAINT, maybe, just maybe he’d tell her: “Heh, it’s kinda lame we’ll just run off and let everyone else in the dust, you know, especially since we could make our lives as well as everyone else’s better?” Seriously, if you’re going to make Mal Alina’s “True North”, have him face her duties and her calling whether she likes it or not, don’t coddle her when she wants to run the other way because she wants to hide under a rock for the rest of her life.

With all that being said, that leaves us with the Darkling, who... I mean, given his whole schtick is that power corrupts and makes you evil and crazy, I guess that makes him Gollum, but sexy.

Gollum, but sexy.

That single expression has been haunting me ever since I started writing the above novel and I fucking hate it. You’re welcome. No one wanted Sexy Gollum. Absolutely no one. Fuck this shyte. See, this is why I want Darkling Redemption. I do not want to live in a world where Gollum is sexy. I need brain bleach.

Even here it doesn’t even fucking work because Gollum hid in a cave with the Ring with a strategically placed cloth because no one wants to see his crusty ass family jewels anyway, while Aleks worked his ass off to give the Grisha a safe place to live and to at the very least ensure they’re useful enough to not be killed like animals. Like, if you’re going to give the world something that’s gonna definitely not make me sleep tonight like Sexy Gollum, at least do it right.

#now i have thoroughly traumatized myself :)#anti grishaverse #anti leigh bardugo #anti mal #anti malina #darklina #alarkling #rants and reviews

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