in the most concrete way yet I feel like I’m getting a handle on what my flaws and weaknesses actually are lol.

one and lonely | din djarin x reader

you and mando visit one of his old friends at a corellian strip club, and doubt begins to set in. in return, mando gives you something no one’s ever had: his name.

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2.8k words

mentions: implied/referenced piv sex, fem!reader, strippers, strip clubs, original female character, mild jealousy, mild hurt/comfort, mild smut, fluffy at the end

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In hindsight, you have no idea why you agreed to do this. It probably has a lot to do with the words Mando used, how he asked you and when he asked you.

“I know someone who can watch the baby,” he had said, murmuring in your ear under the cover of darkness. “I need you to come with me. Will you?”

Need— that one little word is what made you say yes, heart jumping in your throat the second you heard it. And what a sound it was, dripping from Mando’s tongue raw, the static of the modulator not touching a single bit of the word. It’s like he knew you couldn’t say no to him then, not when he was naked and laid out beside you in the pitch-black hull, helmet off— no creed to abide by, no business to attend to, just him. Then he’s talking about needing your help, insinuating that he wants you to assist him bring in bringing in this bounty, and well… It hit all the right spots inside you, the raw ones that need gentle handling, and you said yes without second’s hesitation.

Since it all began, what you and Mando do together in the dark has felt vaguely unreal, the sex and the talking and the vulnerability of it all so foreign and ridiculous in the light of day. But you this right here, this strip club on Corellia? It’s realer than real, your senses overloaded by the sights and sounds, by the smells and textures. Your first instinct is to turn right back around, but Mando’s got you by the arm, gently leading you through the room.

“Find a table near the stage,” he tells you, speaking in your ear to be heard over the thudding, fast music. “I have to meet someone. Send me a comm immediately if you see the quarry, alright?”

All you can do is nod, distraught as Mando abandons you near the front of the club. You watch him walk away, colorful lights bouncing off the beskar as he goes, and then you do as you’re told, taking a seat at a table as far away from other patrons as possible.

Alone and completely out of your element, you have no idea how to act. You suppose you should try to blend in, but you feel shy watching the show. The women are half-naked and unbelievably beautiful, practically levitating as they perform onstage. You have no idea how they’re doing half of what they’re doing on their poles, and you envy their sex appeal, their confidence. You’d sooner die than give one of these patrons the time of day, but to watch them fawn over the dancers and give them money does make you feel just the slightest bit less-than. You could never be so bold as to work a job like this one, and the attention, well… Nobody’s ever going to look at you like that, not even the most desperate man, and you’re sure as hell never going to have anyone throwing credit after credit your way like it’s their honor to do so.

“It’s okay if you want to look, honey. Nobody’s going to judge you, not in here.”

The sound of a voice above you has you jolting in your seat, your train of thought crashing and then disappearing like it never existed in the first place. You look up to see who’s addressing you, only to find that it’s not a someone at all, but a goddess. Never in your whole life have you been this close to someone so gorgeous, and you finally understand what it means to be struck speechless by a person’s beauty.

The woman seems to sense what you’re feeling, and a small, almost satisfied smile creeps over her perfectly painted mouth. She leans down, her curtain of thick, silky red hair swinging, and you catch the scent of something spicy all around her. Perfume, you think, but not the cheap kind. “Are you here all by yourself, baby?”

Something in your brain sputters back to life, and you’re able to speak again.

“No,” you blurt, “I— I’m here with my friend. He has to talk to someone.”

The second the words leave your mouth, you feel like you’ve said too much, done too much— your gaze went straight to Mando when you started talking about him, and the redheaded goddess is looking dead at him now. And that’s just what he needs, more attention than he’s already getting with all that beskar on his body. Mando always puts a premium on secrecy, especially during his hunts, yet here you are spouting off all his business to someone you just met. Fucking unbelievable.

“The Mandalorian is your friend?”

You couldn’t lie to this woman, not even if you wanted to, and so you find yourself nodding before you can think about what you’re doing. She looks back at him one last time, the jewels on her skimpy costume flashing, and then you’re the object of her full attention once more.

“Loosen up, honey,” she says to you, reaching out to brush a strand of hair from your face with a soft, manicured hand. “I’ll send you a drink on me.”

The goes the way she came, disappearing more than she walks away. A few minutes later, a waitress does come by with a drink for you, but you still don’t have the nerve to turn your gaze towards the dancers. No, instead you keep your eyes essentially glued to the floor, only peeking up now and then to glance at Mando. He’s still at the bar every time you look, stock still and unbothered, almost like a statue someone affixed to the stool he’s seated on.

About the fourth time you do this, you’re startled to find that Mando’s no longer alone, accompanied now by the very same redhead that bought you a drink. She’s just as stunning at distance, perched on the stool like it was made for her, hair shining under the lights. The shape of her body had been lost on you before, but it would seem that that, too, is utter perfection. Jealousy flashes up inside you when Mando leans in close, giving her his full attention as she talks. Whatever’s being said must be important, the set of her face serious as she listens to him in turn. Eventually, the conversation wraps up, and then Mando’s coming to collect you from your table. The two of you leave together, and you’ve never been more relieved to get back to the Crest.

Though your little jaunt into Corellia’s night life was anything but, the rest of your evening is routine. You and Din collect the Child from his friend, you make dinner when you get back to the ship, and when the baby falls asleep, Mando cuts the lights and fucks you for the better part of an hour. You’re left sated and sleepy by the end of it all, already dozing off as Mando cleans his cum off your stomach with a rag.

Mando had you in his arms when you finally went out for good, but you wake up cold and alone, blinking sleep out of your eyes in the dimness of the hull. You pull on a new pair of underwear and a loose shirt, stumbling back towards the armory after a quick check on the baby. He’s still sound asleep, but you know Mando’s up and about if the noise in the back is anything to go by.

Sure enough, you find him cleaning his blaster, perched on a crate with some supplies laid out nearby.

“Hey,” is all Mando says to you, barely looking up from his work. You feel it still, though, the way he reaches out to pinch the back of your thigh as you walk to the pantry, and that makes something warm bloom in your chest.

It’s quiet for a while, just you munching on your snack as Mando works on his weapons. There’s a clink here and there, a crinkle of the bag in your hands, but neither one of you speaks at all. As you sit there and watch Mando clean and count and calibrate, you can’t help but think back on all that’s happened today, on the club and that woman who spoke to both of you. The smell of her perfume is still vivid in your mind.

The smell of her perfume, and the way Mando sat so close to her.

“That woman you met with tonight was nice,” you say slowly, trying to fish for information without being too obvious. You’d like to know if Mando knew her before tonight, and how he came to discover that club at all. There’s so much of his life that predates you, so much of his history that you’ll likely never know, and it’s times like these when that fact comes into sharp focus.

Mando doesn’t even raise his head. “She liked you.”

That makes you flush. “We didn’t even talk for five minutes.”

“She liked you anyway.” Finally, you earn yourself a glance. “Sypha’s just like that.”

Sypha. Even her name is sexy.

“You know her?”

“She’s a friend,” Mando affirms, shrugging. “A lot of people pass through her place. She’s always good for information when I need it.”

You nod, trying to stay causal. “How did you two meet?”

“We know some of the same people. I cut her in a bounty, Maker, what, five years ago maybe? Anyway, I’ve kept in touch ever since. Like I said, she sees a lot of faces.”

That genuinely makes a lot of sense, but you know that Mando doesn’t consider just anybody a friend.

“Have you had sex with her?”

It’s risky question, and you’ve really got no right to ask it. But since you and Mando started hooking up, you’ve always wondered what he’s comparing you to in his head, always wanted to know how you measure up to the women he’s had in the past. Call it jealousy, call it insecurity, hell, call it self-absorption— in any case, you just want to know. You have to know.

Mando’s hands go completely still, abandoning his work in his lap as he raises his head to look at you. You feel small and helpless before him, and you wonder if he knows that he had your dignity, your ego, and, most importantly, your heart clenched between his teeth. Just the slightest bit of pressure, one puncture from a sharp, dismissive word, and he could destroy all three.

“Yeah,” he finally says, “a few times. But that was back in the day.”

A few times stings, but he’s not exactly telling you to fuck off and mind your own business. You know you should quit while you’re ahead, but you feel like a woman possessed, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can stop them.

“Did you want to hook up with her tonight?” You take a breath, think about how that might have sounded. “I mean— If I wasn’t there, if I hadn’t been waiting for you, would you have gone in the back with her?”

You know he knows what you’re talking about, Mando’s not stupid. He saw how some of the dancers would lead patrons back behind a curtain and off into another part of the club, he saw it because you saw it, and Mando doesn’t miss a thing.

The blaster and his tools now fully abandoned, you know Mando’s appraising you, his gaze intense even behind the helmet. An apology sits poised right on the tip of your tongue the instant you’re done speaking, because who the fuck do you think you are? Mando’s girlfriend or something? And even if you were, even if he did call you his and show you off like that, he’s a grown man. He has a past, and he has a right to have a past, regardless of what it involves. Just because you’ve had sex with a grand total of two people in your entire lifetime doesn’t justify you being upset at the fact that Mando’s known more than one woman before you, whether he paid to know them or not.

“Sypha never took me in the back, not even back then.” Mando doesn’t sound upset, but the tone of his voice has certainly changed. “And no, mesh’la, I didn’t want to fuck her tonight, and she didn’t want me either. All that’s long gone between us. And even if she did ask, I wouldn’t have accepted. I wouldn’t make a fool of you like that.”

You must look as confused as you feel because Mando shifts on his crate, tilting his head your way. “Cyare,” he says, disbelieving, “do you really think I’d do that? Fuck some other woman while you’re here waiting for me to come back?”

It feels like somebody picked your brain up and shook it, all the thing you could say jumbling up in your head. “Well, we never… You never… I don’t know what I thought, Mando. I’m sorry.”

He sighs, deep and tired, but you don’t think it’s directed at you. “No,” he says, “I’m sorry. I don’t— I’m not good at this, and I know that. I’m not good at talking, especially when it’s about you, or what we do when the baby’s asleep, or how I feel. Just… Just know that when I meet with someone, whether you’re there or not, it’s all business. You’re the only one, alright?”

Once again, you have absolutely no idea what to say. You’re not sure you could talk around the lump in your throat anyway, even if you did have the words to express how you feel. Tears burn the corners of your eyes, but you refuse to cry, deciding that that would be entirely too dramatic.

“I know the fact that I’ve been with other people worries you—”

“It’s doesn’t,” you cut, lying through your teeth. You’d sooner die than have Mando think that you judge him for his past.

“It worries you,” he presses, “but it shouldn’t. You have something that none of them have ever had, something they’ll never get to have, period.”

Your heart leaps in your throat, thoughts racing. “What’s that?”

“My name.”

“But everyone calls you Mando. When—”

“No,” he says, speaking over you, “my actual name. The name my parents gave me.”

You think for a moment there that you’re still sleeping, that you never woke up from your little post-sex slumber and that this is all a dream. But no, Mando really is beckoning you over, gloved hands reaching out to grab hold of your waist as you lean in close. The two of you are alone on the ship, save for your sleeping baby, but even so, the whole thing is secretive, hush hush like a ritual. And you think that’s a fitting way to treat this, a fitting way to behave as Mando reveals one of his most closely guarded personal details.

“Close your eyes,” Mando commands, speaking softly, and your heart stops as you think of the lights— one false move, one flutter of an eyelid, and you’ll see it all. You’ll see him.

“Mando—”

“Close your eyes, mesh’la,” he repeats. “I trust you.”

Those last three words alone are enough to put your body on autopilot, and so you do as you’re told, eyes slipping closed. The sound of Mando removing his helmet is unmistakable, the beskar landing with a thunk beside him. Your stomach flutters when you feel his breath on your ear, the warmth of it so familiar and yet so foreign all at the same time.

“My name is Din,” he whispers, voice softer than you ever thought it could be. “Din Djarin. You can’t call me that in front of other people, but here when we’re alone, when we’re with the Child, you can say it all you want.”

“Din,” you say, experimenting with the name, trying it out on your tongue. A hand trails up and down, up and down, up and down the inside of your thigh, and so you sigh it again. “Din.”

“I like how you say my name,” Din tells you, and it takes all you have to keep your eyes clamped shut. “But I’m sure I’ll like how you moan it that much more. Go lie down, I’ll be there in a minute.”

You don’t have to be told twice.

Murderbot Biology Facts

General

There are standardisation guides for constructs so even SecUnits produced by different companies have the same height and build.

SecUnits are probably tall. Murderbot is bigger than the humans who might have threatened Tapan if it hadn’t been there in the transient housing. The cubicles for SecUnits are bigger than for ComfortUnits even though SecUnits also have lockers and racks for weapons. Murderbot has to borrow a jacket from a “big enough” guard.

The facial features are based on the genetic material and unique to each SecUnit.

SecUnits are always described as leaking “blood and fluid” when injured, while humans usually just bleed unless they’re actually eviscerated. Either this “fluid” is something specific to the workings of SecUnits or any SecUnit wounded enough to be leaking is likely wounded enough to be leaking a whole bunch of stuff.

No digestive system or reproductive system.

Murderbot has much, much clearer awareness of the inside of its body than a human, often able to monitor things and describe physical reactions with details of exactly what just happened, such as a release of adrenaline or a bunch of neural pathways opening.

Murderbot can consciously regulate its own temperature but this can fail due to damage, and it does need its own body heat.

SecUnits don’t need to move to be comfortable like humans do.

Support Structure

The support structure is made of “synthetic bone and metal”, at least in the arms and legs.

It has ribs, implying a skeleton like structure.

It has a skull, which has better shock absorption than a human one, allowing SecUnits to avoid concussion.

A blade lodges in its palm, meaning it has multiple parts in there, possibly similar to human bones, rather than a solid mass.

A damaged knee joint clicks and grinds, appearing to be bent out of shape, rather than shattering like bone.

Musculature

It does have muscle actually described as muscle in its back.

It does not appear to have muscle in its arms. When detaching its hand it describes inorganic parts that need uncoupling and which are necessary for leverage, connecting to the big joints in its arm. These seem to do a similar job to flexors, which would be attached to muscles, but are not organic and no muscles or flexors are mentioned as needing to be torn away.

This may explain why it has no problem carrying Bharadwaj with most of the organic parts of its arm damaged or gone.

It has trouble standing with a wound in its thigh, and damage to “something in [its] abdomen” leaves it worried it won’t be able to pick Bharadwaj up again if it puts her down. Unclear whether these are muscles or something else, but they seem to be needed in a way the organic bits of the arms aren’t.

Lungs

Lungs are very different to a human’s, all the connections are different, and it needs less air.

It can’t expel very much air from its lungs at once.

It can segregate part of its lungs from the rest (a way it could fake eating).

Its breathing doesn’t naturally change in response to air quality or vary naturally as much as human breathing does, it has to write code to do this.

It can hibernate if it runs out of air.

It can hold its breath voluntarily and at one point seems to do so from stress, letting out a breath once something is solved.

It has a sense of smell, which appears to work like a human one and is quite useful.

Circulatory System

There’s no mention of a heart, which might not mean much, but despite Murderbot showing most symptoms of anxiety there’s never any mention of a fast heartbeat. Either its heart is more regulated than a human’s, even under stress, or something quite different pumps its blood around.

However, its circulatory system can be affected by stress, usually causing it to go cold at the extremities.

The use of “synthetic bone” may be related to needing bone marrow if you have blood.

It has adrenaline and when it measures its “levels” these are probably blood chemistry, since if they’re off it’s likely to be agitated.

Its circulatory system can “purge fear causing chemicals”.

A temporary shutdown also appears to purge stress chemicals.

Its veins (and presumably arteries) can seal to prevent bleeding, this may also be why being hung upside-down doesn’t affect it like it would a human.

It has capillaries, although I doubt they need to seal.

It sweats when nervous and it’s not clear where this fluid is replaced from. Possibly it just winds up in medical before it becomes a problem, usually. Or maybe it filters water from the air when it breathes.

The cubicle does contain “repair and resupply leads” which, considering the amount of blood and fluid it loses, must include water.

It does say its body is self-regulating and it doesn’t need “food, water or much air” but I don’t think it’s counting injuries in that.

Nervous System

The brain is a mixture of robotics and human neural tissue, this is why SecUnits are made. The human neural tissue seems to be enough to develop human mental illnesses (anxiety, depression and probably PTSD).

Despite the eyes appearing to be inorganic, the ability to interpret images is partly organic.

The governer module is a literal implant lodged in the brain and it’s unclear whether the education modules are as well. Murderbot clearly can learn from books, but I’m not sure anyone would think to teach a SecUnit like that rather than inserting hardware.

Its nerve pathways are much harder to detach when it removes its hand than the inorganic components, but it seems to be able to get most of them to join up and attach again which implies they’re at least partly inorganic.

Energy weapons which cause incapacitating nerve pain don’t affect a SecUnit as much as a human and aren’t incapacitating. It may just be a matter of degree, though, punishment from the governer module is described as similar to an energy weapon.

Pain appears to be felt organically but mediated by inorganic parts, with its inorganic parts shut down or failing Murderbot feels more pain, losing the ability to turn it down, rather than losing the ability to feel it.

It usually loses consciousness during a shutdown even though, technically, its organic parts aren’t affected. Murderbot says they “usually sleep” through a shutdown.

Inorganic Parts

Eyes appear to be inorganic cameras, although they move and focus like a human’s making video shot through them jerky. (Miki’s eyes, described as large globes, probably don’t do this.)

Audio is also inorganic, Murderbot loses both visual and audio when its inorganic parts are shut down, although it retains its sense of touch.

“Visual, audio and scan” tend to be the three senses Murderbot lumps together, regarding them as robotic senses and the ones it can use through its drones as well as its own input. There is presumably some internal hardware associated with scan.

The feet are mentioned as inorganic and not looking much like augments a human would have. There is flesh over the knees, but possibly not the shins (Murderbot mentions an energy weapon shot to the shin just being annoying, but energy weapons don’t often work on it anyway.)

Considering Murderbot is heavier than a human, can move much faster and run without tiring for much longer periods of time its feet must be able to take a pounding and are probably made to absorb shock without losing momentum. It can also jump over people, or onto ten foot robots, so it has some good propulsion.

It has a built in compartment hidden under its ribs (this sounds less than useful during a SecUnit’s normal job unless the company is ordering it to steal from clients).

Its guns unfold out of its forearms, but probably not that far since a bad angle can leave it unable to shoot without hitting its own hands.

Despite this it’s able to destroy someone else’s energy weapon with a pulse while holding it in its hand. This may be something different from the gun.

It has an internal battery which has a very long life. The regular recharge cycles don’t seem to require it to plug in and are probably about charging the rest of its body from the battery rather than charging the battery.

It can charge other things from its gun port, but needs a recharge cycle afterwards.

It mentions plugging itself into things like the hopper and the first ship it hitches a ride from, but only before ART disables its neck port. After that it sticks to using the feed.

Skin

Murderbot describes this as its “human skin” and the skin does seem to be more like a standard human’s than its other organic parts are like human ones.

It was hairless until ART changed that.

It’s useful for sensitivity, especially in the fingers, but doesn’t seem to be any tougher than human skin and gets regenerated a lot.

A Touch of "Madness"

or is it,

The Feels for the "Mad"?      9-5-21

"If Sally had been in an accident or come down with some overtly physical disease, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell him about it, confident that his sympathies would flow in my direction as a matter of course. But psychosis defies empathy; few people who have not experienced it up close buy the idea of a behavioral disease. It has the ring of excuse, a license for self-absorption on the most extreme scale. It suggests that one chooses madness and not the other way around." – from the book I am currently reading, Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Green berg

Chooses madness (?), as a matter of course. . . (I) shall choose the mad for sure. The love found in the heart of the “mad” is probably of a higher caliber, better quality anyway. Lol no lol

Defend where you can, those who need it, and the rest of you can check your judgement at the door. Here’s your ticket so you can pick it back up on your way out, should you still desire.

Ponder while you read, what’s the difference between Goodness and Righteousness?

The stigma attached to all variations of mental illnesses reflect this similar a perspective, I think, the one mentioned in the above quote that is. I used to believe some people just didn’t have the capacity to fully understand. But, as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that most, nay some of the actual mentally ill, but still some, just choose not to accept it for what it is. Which, in the layest of layman’s terms, is real.  

Evidence is evidence whether its ignored or not and unfortunately is the sole discretion of the "perceiver". Ignorance is only bliss for the ignorant. For the rest of us who watch on in horror . . .not so much. It’s more a curse, their ignorance.

Part of the acceptance of life, to me, is the acceptance of others’ lives, or at least learning better ways to [feel?] empathize with. I care enough to know it still ain’t all about me. Maybe just try to be more curious than skeptical. It’s a slight but in the right direction at least.

I read somewhere that, “a righteous man is righteous for himself, a law-abiding citizen who does no one any harm. The good man's goodness is communicative and is seen as beneficial to the society of men.” So, therein lies the confusion, right? Thinking that righteousness is equal, or better even, than goodness. I assure you that I feel goodness is a much more virtuous character trait, by that definitional comparison.

Struggle is a part of everyone's life to some degree, in some form or fashion. Why would anyone choose, to deliberately be a part of someone else’s struggle or to make it worse or harder than it needs to be? You don't have to be part of the solution, but maybe don't be part of the fucking problem. What's it got to do with you anyway. Help or hush.

A lot of people out there declaring who and what to be, and even how. All without knowing you or your life. Definitely never walked in anyone else’s respective shoes. Them people can sit back and shut the fuck up as far as I'm concerned.

Does your life directly affect theirs? Or the opposite?

No? Then there ya go.

Yes? Then it should open hearts and platforms for discussions.

Am I right?

If you feel anything opposing in this entry? I’m sure that there are some people who do, and even more sure that a few want to hear that side – so take that sermon up on the mount and preach it to them. For those of us together on this side, we know to just do better when we know better, and we move forward.

It’s just some more “lead by example” and “be the change I want to see in the world” in this entry. Repetitive maybe, but its repetitive in my real life as well. Current, and ongoing theme if you will.

Everyone judges everyone. Sadly, probably always will. A lot of learning has to go into not being judgmental, especially in our society. Just be sure your judging is not based on things people cannot control, even if you don't understand it. You can control whether or not you’re the bully in somebody else’s story.

As I continue to grow and learn, I try to be a little bit better and more understanding with each passing day. Like I said, when we know better, we do better, or we should. Shouldn’t we?

So many philosophies to live by, so little life to live them in.

A couple of things that I will never stop going on and on about is stopping bullies and choosing kindness. Obviously in that order. Both done through various forms of education, because as we all know ignorance is the most common stimuli for fear and hatred.

It really is all relative.

Read that all again if you need to. It’s how we start to understand each other.

We can stop this . . .together.

All of us.

All of us together.

Whether it's around mental health, drug addiction, or discriminations of any kind really, a lot of the old ways of dealing just aren't working. Haven’t for a quite some time. There just needs to be more understanding and way more adult-like, mature conversations.

Every human being should have rights. That’s something the masses in large part can agree on. Now decide which rights you think you should have then ask yourself if and why others, ALL others shouldn't have the exact same rights.

Evil always feels goodness. The same as the good always feels evil. So let evil feel us kick its ass.

I don’t know of a lot of headline topics about being neutral. No choice is a choice. Always, always, always, it’s about what side you choose.

Although, it’s a nod to the movie the Crow, I found this little gem of a quote in search of the beginning of it. Way better in full. Way, way better.

End of entry.

Now, have a great week and go be fucking nice.

Until next week;

“Abashed the Devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw, and pined

His loss; but chiefly to find here observed

His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed

Undaunted: —

"If I must contend," said he,

"Best with the best, the sender, not the sent,

Or all at once; more glory will be won,

Or less be lost."—"Thy fear," said Zephon bold,

"Will save us trial what the least can do

Single against thee wicked, and thence weak” – from Paradise Lost by John Milton

Here’s that whole piece;

“A righteous man is righteous for himself, a law-abiding citizen who does no one any harm. The good man's goodness is communicative, and is seen as beneficial to the society of men. Scarcely would one die in the place of a righteous man who is unjustly condemned to death. But some would dare to die for a good man, e.g., a soldier might die to protect his commanding officer, seeing his own life as worth less on the battlefield.

Astrology guesses for Sasuke  pt-2

I personally don’t have the best (or in anyway complete) grasp on practically any of the characters, specially Sasuke (despite him being my favorite character). Also I would appreciate it if shippers stay away from this particular post. 

With that out of the way, lets talk about pluto. (incomplete, will edit later)

Pluto is a generational planet so in order to discuss it, we need to take into account generational themes and also note that the theme associated with the sign it is in will be present throughout the generation (keep in mind that the transformation wont necessarily be successful but it will be a theme). In order to have an easier time with this and narrow down our options I will start with natal house placements and potential house overlays and aspects. Afterwards we will have a look at the time line and transformational themes across generations. We might not come to one definite conclusion. 

I have no doubt that Sasuke has pluto in harsh aspect to his personal planets. I say this because not only is he often seen as a scorpio by viewers but all his significant relationships are plutonian in nature and everyone is out to control him. Pluto is generational while personal placements aren’t which means That it makes sense for a whole generation (from itachi to naruto) to be so obsessive, manipulative and controlling towards him (or at least be inclined to do so).

If we go by my guesses in pt-1 of this series, we have 4 main signs to start with.

aquarius -> naruto = 7th, sasuke = 1st

leo -> naruto = 1st, sasuke = 7th

taurus -> naruto = 10th, sasuke = 4th

scorpio -> naruto = 4th, sasuke = 10th

I’ll jot down the potential aspects to sasuke’s personal planets bellow and then we will get to natal and synastry interpretations for both aspects and house placements. The ascendant ones are out of sign and are possible but not certain also the moon and mercury ones wont necessarily be both (could only be one) but the 1st decan ones (other than ascendant) would be at the same time and would exist if pluto is there. Another thing to note is that it is possible for his mars to be in the 3rd decan instead of the 1st (opposite his moon instead of square his sun and saturn but still in 10th) therefore for a more comprehensive exploration we will have a look at alternative possibilities in later posts, if possible.

pluto in aquarius (1st decan) -> opposite sun, square mars, conjunct asc

pluto in aquarius (2nd or 3rd decan) -> square moon, opposite mercury

pluto in leo (1st decan) -> conjunct sun, square mars, opposite asc

pluto in leo (2nd or 3rd decan) ->square moon, conjunct mercury

pluto in taurus (1st decan) -> square sun, opposite mars, square asc

pluto in taurus (2nd or 3rd decan) -> conjunct moon, square mercury

pluto in scorpio (1st decan) -> square sun, conjunct mars, square asc

pluto in scorpio (2nd or 3rd decan) -> opposite moon, square mercury

I’ll lay down the information first and then discuss my personal opinion on the subject.

Here are some short descriptions for pluto in the houses (natal) from cafe astrology:

1st->

You radiate intensity, and others’ first impressions of you tend to be strong, one way or the other. You might often intimidate others with your manner. You can be very protective of your privacy, yet you generate much intrigue and interest with your strong presence. You might struggle with fears of being overpowered, rejected, or minimized, yet few are able to guess that you could be anything less than confident. Your first instinct in new situations is gutsy and determined, defensive and intense. You rarely accept the obvious or the surface of matters — instead you look through situations in order to read any information on hidden levels. Strive to avoid getting your back up or viewing life as a battleground.

7th->

With Pluto in the seventh house of the horoscope, power struggles in close personal relationships are themes. This can play out in a variety of ways. You might simultaneously fear and desire complete absorption in a close one-to-one relationship. You might find yourself both drawn to and resistant of close partnerships, fearing loss of control over your own life. You might be drawn to people who are intense, jealous, possessive, or obsessive, or possibly who you feel are powerful. On the other hand, your own resistance can bring out control issues in a partner, who fears the loss of you or your betrayal. In fact, you might bring out the “worst” in others by your relationship behavior — you tend to be the catalyst for others to discover their more primal instincts and fears. Never underestimate your role in this interplay, and don’t make the mistake of thinking that you are simply a victim. You also discover your own power through your relationships, and this may or may not be comfortable. How you deal with it determines outcomes. You might feel trapped in a difficult relationship, or have a hard time finding the deep connection that you crave. Obsession in your interactions with partners can be a big theme in your life. Watch that you don’t project your own urge for control onto your partner. Strive to come to terms with your own intense and deep-seated fear of losing someone you love and fear of betrayal, or you will meet these energies repeatedly in your closest relationships.

4th->

Early experiences may have led you to feel self-protective or to be secretive about yourself. A parent might have been secretive or ashamed, for example, and this pattern is deeply ingrained in your psyche. You might feel a sense of guilt for where you came from, even if most of you feel proud of your roots. A parent might have encouraged you to look beyond the surface of matters, and might have encouraged in you a love for psychology. A parent might have been very protective of you and attempted to shield you from negative experiences, and you subsequently grew to fear change. Or, your early experiences might have included a shocking, intense, or scary event that lives within you. Alternatively, you might have absorbed the strong fears or obsessions of a parent.

10th->

There is something very unique about you that makes you stand out from the crowd. Your ambition may be well-developed, or you pursue your goals with great focus and determination. You might have a strong interest in research, making improvements, understanding how things work, and transformation and these are qualities that you use most notably in your career or in your dealings with the public. Some of you could have a parent who is/was quite driven or work(ed) in healing or research professions. Your personal presence is strong, and you may find that you might inspire love-hate reactions as a result, particularly in your professional experiences. Nevertheless, you can be very persuasive when you choose to be. You have an especially strong sense of commitment and responsibility, but you are unafraid of going against the grain or bucking traditions if you feel they are outdated. Sometimes with this position, there are deep issues that need to be confronted revolving around the relationship with the father. Many of you are perfectionists and especially detail-oriented, particularly on a professional level. You tend to naturally take the lead, and you don’t always enjoy being in the position of a subordinate.

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Now lets write a basic interpretation for natal aspects:

-sun

conjunction:

The need to shine, be seen or be the center of attention, is integral to the multi-life empowerment journey. A person with this aspect is learning about empowerment through developing and expressing creativity, being willing to have and share opinions, and generally take up space and be noticed. A major need is to leave a personal mark on the world.

The disempowerment in many lifetimes involves not being seen, having the voice shouted over or lost in a crowd, power struggles with others possessing strong egos, pride, self-aggrandizement, arrogance, and needing but not getting attention or recognition. This person will have a strong (and perhaps dominant) personality whether he or she likes it or not, and past pain that has festered into anger may be very obvious. Alternatively, the person might try to hide his or her ego or creativity in an effort to avoid being seen or competed with, as that has been a source of difficulty in many lifetimes.

square:

The person’s empowerment path over many lifetimes has been criticized, pressured, or been in friction with others with strong personalities and egos. The chart holder is learning about egoic energy through pressure to change from those with charisma, creative streaks, and social status (popular). The pressure might come from a leader, or someone else others orbit.

Disempowerment in many lifetimes can come from being shamed, teased in public, controlled, dominated, coercion or being forced into doing something against one’s will and moral compass. All of these things can occur when the Sun influence perceives a need to knock the chart holder down a peg or two, or put him or her in his or her place. This path is one involving learning about what power really is: Is it having the attention of others and bullying, or is it in true and unapologetic self-knowledge and self-acceptance?

The chart holder may somehow seem to find conflict with charismatic, dramatic, popular others everywhere he or she goes. To own positive Sun qualities and overcome beliefs from the past are key.

opposition:

The chart holder has in many lifetimes felt blocked, confronted, or stopped in his or her tracks by others who are or seem dominant or powerful, or have the ears of many. This could be a leader of some kind, or an entertaining figure who’s orbited by others for some reason.

The chart holder will have had a contentious relationship with strong egoic energy in many lifetimes. The result can be that, at the first sign of resistance from strong-seeming others, they rise up in defense or yield a bit too quickly. This person is learning over many lifetimes about the true nature of power and overcoming fear of shadows within, eventually becoming able to work through power issues in various kinds of relationships while standing his or her ground, neither believing that battle or being a wallflower is automatically necessary. Part of this path is in speaking truth to power, but beginning it within the self.

-mars

conjunction:

The best and worst experiences in many lifetimes for the person are intertwined with Martian behaviors, attitudes, and experiences. The person is learning over time how to become strong and confident through making self-assertive choices. He or she is in process of learning the right ways to use Mars, including learning to come out lifetimes of fear and pain when it comes to using Mars energy. It’s possible that he or she has felt forced to attack or defend the self (or family, religion, culture, nation, etc.) and now carries guilt, shame, and regret when it comes to using Mars energy in any way. The result can be someone overly aggressive (but who would like not to be), someone passive-aggressive, or someone with significant buried anger afraid to show or act upon it.

The point of this aspect is to learn to use Mars energy in healthy ways. To get there, you have to overcome fear, pain, guilt, shame, etc., sourced in unhealthy expressions from the past. You need to learn you don’t have to defend yourself, and you don’t have to pre-emptively take things to make sure they are not taken from you. Finally, Mars’ desire energy has been a source of difficulty in many lifetimes from both sides (when you have desired and been wounded as a result, and when you have been desired by others and been wounded as a result), and a grounded approach to healthy desire – both sexually and otherwise – needs to be explored so that you do not lose power if you do not get what you want and don’t feel powerful if you do.

square:

Along the path to Plutonian empowerment, Mars people, situations, and issues have brought pressure and friction to you in many lifetimes. This signature is one that indicates power struggles, yet with various kinds of outcomes. In many lives you have been on both sides of what looks like winning and losing, and along the way have experienced a great deal of conflict with others who appear or threaten to have more power than you do. Some with this aspect have become conditioned to hide their will, desire, fire, and “yes/no” function, while others have become conditioned to be live with tension and anxiety, never really knowing if they are safe and can relax. Through war, bullying, intimidation, competition, and abuse of any kind, a person with this natal aspect has been through the ringer when it comes to fighting and defense, and is likely tired of the fight.

Resolution of the tension involves owning the power to say “yes, please” when you want something and “no, thank you” when you do not. This is basic (and likely seems too simplistic to provide anything of value), but it is critical that you reclaim the willingness to use Mars within you in its most basic expression. Along the way, you’ll have to heal and release fears of being overpowered or abused (or, even, killed). With this aspect you have seen in some lifetimes minor conflicts turn deadly, and you must now learn healthy conflict and to own the confidence that you have the right to choose as you desire. Saying “no” to someone does not have to mean a terrible outcome, and it’s time that you learn to own the power to do so.

opposition:

With the planets opposing in your chart, it’s an indicator that Mars people, situations, and issues have blocked you from being or feeling able to pursue and achieve your empowerment in many lifetimes. Oppositions can challenge and confront us, making us aware of something about ourselves that leaves us feeling stripped bare and vulnerable. With these energies, you’re doing the thing that will give your life meaning and make you feel that you matter (Pluto) and finding resistance and challenges from strong-willed others willing to fight (Mars). The result can be that you expect a fight all the time, even when others are trying to help and support you. You might also buckle at the first sign of someone else’s desires competing with or being the opposite of yours. This is because you in many lifetimes have become exhausted through the struggle to make happen what matters to you most.

In some lives, you rise to the occasion and feel that you win against Martian sources. In others, you feel run down and lose life force energy in the process. Either way, it’s important now that you learn to discern not just what’s worth fighting for and why, but also if there is even any conflict in a given situation. You can overcome feeling that fiery others are adversaries and that you have to fight to prove that you and your cause are worthy, and this will require understanding that winning and losing are not the point of Plutonian empowerment. Instead, it’s all about self-knowledge and self-acceptance. When you see this, you can see others who bring Mars energy to you not as enemies and foils but as those who are in your life to pull out of you your deepest strength and sense of conviction.

-moon

conjunct:

The multilife empowerment journey is inextricably intertwined with issues related to family, belonging, emotions of all kinds, and dealing with and addressing needs. The person will feel deeply and strongly, and might have found family when young not being able to understand or hold space for what – and the depth to which – he or she processed emotionally.

In some lives, this conjunction indicates not being accepted by family, or being taken away from them. It can also be that a person needs to leave family, community, and/or home in order to be fully authentic and honor the self. Adoption, grief from the loss of family, and feeling/being disconnected from home and a sense of safety and security with tribe are all parts of this journey.

Being a parent holds special weight (though not all with this aspect will opt for it) because there are both many happy and unhappy memories from various lifetimes related to it. Some with this placement will not seem to grow up, still waiting for the family of origin to support and validate their needs.

Critical to this conjunction is processing, expressing, and moving through emotional blocks. Empowerment here rests on the chart holder validating his or own feelings, needs, and experiences, even if no one has, will, or can.

square:

Along the chart holder’s empowerment journey, he or she will experience friction with or criticism from/to family, community, and people close to him or her. It may be that family in some lives tells the person that love is conditional, as long as he or she conforms to their expectations. It can also be that the values and lifestyle of the person are different enough from his or her family so that he or she doesn’t feel entirely welcome or safe.

One result is that the person isn’t sure now if he or she has support or will be supported if pursuing what matters most to him or her. This aspect points to many lifetimes of conflict with family, and in some lifetimes this conflict can be deeply harmful. The chart holder might not trust the self to make the right decisions (since seemingly everyone who loves him or her doesn’t understand or support a core part of him or her – there must be something wrong with him or her), or might always keep others at bay just in case they turn out not to be supportive.

This aspect describes both a need to learn about the true nature of family, security, and belonging and a need to learn to take care of one’s self in the most important and meaningful ways. Just because this person has been close to others who doesn’t get his or her core self doesn’t mean that that core self is invalid, but the chart holder is the only person who can make that self-validating decision.

opposition:

In many lifetimes when working to become empowered, strong, and confident, the chart holder will find him- or herself at odds with family, community, and those closest to him or her. It’s possible that loved ones are or seem unavailable to the chart holder because they’re dealing with their own issues, unable to give him or her the attention, nurturing, and care that he or she needs.

This aspect indicates a need to learn about where one belongs and where love comes from. Some with this aspect will not feel that they can work with their families of origin due to a history of finding out that their families deeply do not want for them what they want for themselves. Some will seek out other families (tribes) or create their own families in order to heal a sense of belonging, while others might feel isolated and live through loneliness as they process feeling/being at odds with those who love them.

In the end, the healing process involves learning from loved ones how to validate the self and, if possible, remain connected to family and community.

-mercury

conjunction:

The empowerment journey of the soul is inextricably linked to Mercurial issues. The chart holder will have an intense, perhaps obsessive curiosity and need to get at the truth, while sometimes simultaneously dreading it. Being deceived is painful for this person but beyond it, he or she has phenomenal radar for dishonesty, being able to sense it a mile away. In many lifetimes, truth and lies figure prominently in all aspects of the Pluto path, and this person may now be dealing with the results of having or being forced to lie for some reason in many lifetimes.

This aspect is also about having or being denied access to education, being able or not able to speak one’s truth, and the very basic human intellectual function of asking questions and getting answers. It could be that the person in many lives has become disempowered through learning difficult truths or, perhaps, delivering them to others verbally or in print.

The healing path involves being willing to face/own the truth and bring honesty to all situations.

square:

In many lifetimes, the person’s ability to manifest Plutonian strength and confidence is met with friction, pressure, and criticism from communicators, teachers, and writers – those who generate and carry information. Such people will challenge the assumptions according to which the chart holder will do this most important part of living, and he or she may carry difficult emotional residues from arguing, being called out, and having to defend him- or herself. It can also be that some type of information itself is what brings the tension, as when you get an answer to your question and it makes your life harder.

Squares have the inherent feeling that one says to the other, “You’re doing it wrong – here: do it this way.” As a result, the chart holder might expect conflict with and difficulty from people who in some way live out the symbolism of Mercury. The most critical self-esteem thing in many lifetimes, after all, has been interfered with by Mercurial people and, sometimes, what they say has messed everything up for the chart holder. He or she may also resist giving in to new information or learning many new things, as there can be unconscious memories from many lifetimes that new information just might signal the beginning of the end.

opposition:

The person’s journey to become empowered and make his or her life meaningful in numerous lives is blocked, challenged, and ground to a halt by Mercurial people. They tell him or her new information that slows down the most important thing he or she has to do for the self. This can also be about the revelation of new information or details, and also potentially involves the chart holder’s closely guarded personal information being made public in some way. Whether this is fact or rumor makes no difference – damage can be done.

As a result, the chart holder might have a contentious relationships with various kinds of Mercurial people. He or she may feel a need to keep too many things private, fearing being made a laughingstock. This can affect the chart holder’s relationship to basic education and doing research on his or her own behalf, potentially having developed beliefs/karma that too much information – as well as the kinds of people who traffic in it more than most – can get in the way of what he or she perceives truly needs to be done.

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Lets go onto synastry house overlays (usually with synastry people write them with romance in mind but we can still get a general understanding of how they will show up in platonic/family relationships):

1th->

Positively the Pluto person can help the house person transform areas in their life in which they need transformation. In the negative the Pluto person can be bossy, controlling, dominating, pushy, manipulative or a whole slew of other negative Pluto traits. The house person might find the Pluto person to be too overbearing. The Pluto person likely has a very powerful personality and presence. However, if used appropriately the Pluto person can help the house person become more dominant and to learn to set proper boundaries with others or to take better care of themselves or any other positive transformation. Negatively this placement can point to obsession, manipulation control or domination. 

If the Pluto person is evolved in their Pluto or their use of power then this can point to a powerful attraction with a lot of passion, and the two can be seen as a power couple. If both are attracted to each other then they are likely VERY attracted even mesmerized feeling caught in a spell. Depending on the house person's nature and whether or not they get on well with more dominant personalities or not will depict whether or not the interaction is smooth. Typically, the house person will find the Pluto person alluring, powerful, intense, and sexy. The Pluto person can help motivate the house person, and help them empower themselves and be more confident in their pursuits. The Pluto person may also have strong ideas on how the house person should behave, act, or carry themselves. As long as the Pluto person is not a bully or mean in their delivery this placement can be very positive.

7st->

When your Pluto is in your partner's 7th house your partner finds you secretive, elusive, intense and mysterious. The Pluto person may become obsessed with the house person. The house person may look up to or respect the Pluto person's fearlessness, or how they wield their personal power. Negatively, the Pluto person may try to control the house person or who the house person associates. They might be dominating, controlling, possessive, jealous or vindictive. The Pluto person may also have strong ideas on what a relationship should be and how one should act in one. If this is a romantic relationship, then this relationship has the potential to deeply impact and transform the both of you. Marriage may be an ultimate goal or partnering in some form. Positively the Pluto person will enable the house person to present themselves much more powerfully, to set proper boundaries with others, and exude more personal power. If married, and the two of you decide on divorce, there may be many power struggles, and vindictive behaviors brought out, and you most likely will not remain friends. Again much depends on how mature both are, and whether or not either one has issues with power, to begin with.  

4th->

The Pluto person may take a deep interest in the house person's family and early upbringing. If you are living together, the Pluto person may try to control things in the home or be more dominant in the home. The house person may feel that the Pluto person is too dominating, controlling or bossy at home. The house person can help the Pluto person overcome any of their childhood traumas, by being a place of comfort for the Pluto person. This can ignite a very powerful bond if handled correctly. You have an opportunity to develop a strong intimate bond. In the positive: The Pluto person can help the house person overcome many phobias or fears that stem from childhood. If the focus is on the inner healing of past hurts and family issues, issues with patience and understanding then deep healing is possible. The Pluto person may focus much of their energy on home matters or discussing family matters with the house person.

10th->

The Pluto person will take a strong interest in the house person's public standing and career. The house person will be someone the Pluto person respects and see's many of their talents. In the negative, the Pluto person may try to control the house person's career or decisions made about it. The Pluto person can suggest powerful ways in which the house person may obtain their worldly goals. This is sometimes found in the people who become strong supporters, and marketers of their partner. The Pluto person will likely want to manage the house person or in a negatively suppress their career desires, or hold them back.   It is also possible on the very negative that the Pluto person can somehow destroy or harm the house person's reputation and our public image and Career. This is a great place for an actor and his agent, or business manager, even recruiter or headhunter they will work very hard for you. In a love relationship, you can expect the strong support of the Pluto person or disagreements and control.

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Synastry aspects next (from youtube videos by truth in aspect astrology):

-sun

conjunct:

The pluto person feels like a lot of parts of themselves that have remained hidden or have not been understood, the things they wouldn’t share or show, the sun shines its rays upon and the cold and insecure part of themselves is drawn out and made to feel warm. the sun brings out the plutonic qualities within the pluto person. The sun is the very conscious part of ourself while pluto is the unconscious and when these to meet in a conjunction the sun person makes you aware of all that unconscious stuff like past traumas and hidden difficulties. The pluto person has more interactions with these things through the interactions with the sun person. very often it is the way that they interact with each other that brings these out, not outside forces but how they relate to each other. the pluto person very much wants the attention of the sun person because the sun person makes them feel secure and warm and seen when usually these are the dark cold parts of them selves. so they feel happy because the environment that they are. in is so inviting. the sun person is seen as very physically attractive by the pluto person because the pluto person very much likes the way that the sun [presents themselves and the way in which they have established their identity. There is typically quite a bit of sexual attraction on both sides so they feel like more because they have gain each others attention and problems between these two can really surface when that attention is put elsewhere or is mitigated. these two are likely to avoid each other initially and a lot of times permanently. the sun person has a creeping sense that the pluto is somehow going to control their identity and see them as a threat to their identity because they actually are. prolonged contact between them causes a breakdown in the sun person as a result of how the pluto person behaved towards the sun person. the sun wants to get away because they know what is coming. pluto is really about death and rebirth so the sun person has a real chance of some kind of psychological or spiritual breakdown that could lead to a break through in terms of identity expression. through struggle and hardship together and intensity the sun really becomes more balanced when it comes to their identity and ego. The pluto person will not understand this or be able to really see why their actions towards the sun person have resulted in this loss of identity and break down. the pluto person could be potentially destructive to the sun person. You can have this in a lasting relationship where both people are very centered in themselves and the pluto person has worked through their plutonian stuff or doesn’t have a lot of stuff to begin with, but typically thats not the case.

square:

this is the aspect of hard transformation because pluto is about hard change that we have to work for. when we have this in synastry it is typically attractive in synastry and is hard to resist. we want to see what the other person is about. most of the time when we have this the really difficult parts of it are cut off, a lot of times the people don’t go through with the relating with this aspect because there is a certain amount of hostility or enmity and it can preempt the most potent effects of this aspect because the people will not actually get into a relationship. the pluto person very much wants to control or dominate the sun person. they want to take over because there is insecurity and fear involved and they justify to themselves that they can or should do something. it also represents our resentment so there is a striking of the pluto person when they meet the sun person in a square aspect that brings up the urge to take control of the sun persons identity, expression and the physical body such as location or whereabouts. It could be a situation where the sun is more attractive in a relationship and the pluto person feel the need to control or dominate their looks. Both undergo a potential breakdown followed by a potential breakthrough if they actually do engage in an ongoing relationship. the pluto person brings out a lot of psychology out of the pandoras box of both of them so they let out a lot of hidden, nasty, undealt with past, abusive and unaccepted traits, issues and things that have to do with what we have not accepted within ourselves in both people. in the sun it’s about ego and structure of the ego and they have to reinvent their identity. the pluto causes both of them to puke up a lot of their past. there is opportunity for change and transformation because of the difficulties between these people. this is a soul mate aspect in a sense that it has the potential to bring the two people into who they are meant to be because a lot of people who create difficulties in our lives are often some of the most important people in out lives (life journey) and if it wasn’t because of interaction with those people we wouldn’t be who we are. pluto causes us to grow because we have to through the experience of pain and crisis. typically we don’t see this being expressed to the fullest extent because the sun will fight back and there won’t be a long term relationship.

opposition (there wasn’t a video for this):

Sun opposite Pluto is an aspect in which domination struggles are inevitable. Both partners strive for power and the other one somehow threatens it.

This aspect is like a competition of egos, in which each partner tries to dominate, demanding, at the same time, of the other one to be perfect in your eyes. This is a very difficult aspect to deal with.

One of the most problematic elements of this connection is the lack of mutual tolerance.

You are attracted to the other one, otherwise you would not be in a relationship, but you also want them to be more perfect, more according to your demands and standards, which are high.

This connection is not easygoing and it is always tense, as you try to prove you are something your partner sees in you and vice versa, very likely. It could feel artificial and forced.

Both have strong egos, unwilling to change in order to suit the other one’s expectations, while demanding the same from the partner. You want to control everything and this ego competition would make a central place in your relationship.

Over time, this could be devastating, exhausting and it could even make one loses self-confidence and self-integrity, depending on individual charts.

Was there any hope for this strong and tense opposition to work out fine? Of course there is, but it requires full dedication of both parties. You have to be ready for making certain effort that is contrary to your own convictions.

The key thing is that you stop projecting your egoistical aspirations onto your partner and the other way around. Try to see them the way they are inside and accept what you see.

At the same time, stop pretending you were something they want you to be, but act yourself.

-mars

conjunct:

square:

It triggers some explosive feelings in two people. Mars sees pluto as very forceful or pushy or controlling. you need to see the strength of these planets to see how this is going to show up. if you have a mars in pisces or sweetly aspected or in the 12th house and a pluto tht isn’t very aspected at all and doesn’t really play into their life that can take alot of the sting out of this square and make it way less dramatic than you see typically. because when we see this square we typically want it. we are working something out. there is drama because we are dealing with someones power and someones ego and when they meet they intensify. here the mars person doesn’t want to stand down they do feel a subtle awarness that the pluto person is trying to control or manipulate them in some way so there is a very erruptive reaction that the mars person has. bitter resentment with this square is the norm because there is a war going on and nobody wants to not be right when dealing with mars and pluto specially mars. pluto can eventually accept that it’s not right it could lead to the crash and burn which leads to the rebuild. mars never wants to admit to not being right. so it is a very hard headed aspect. there is no gentleness or understanding tat exists between these to forces in their lives. violence can show up if the people involved are prone or if the mars is being really forceful and the pluto person is dealing with a lot of abuse or past pluto issues. you can see a very unhealthy power dynamic show up as a result of this square. this square will always land drama into a relationship but you have to look at the natal charts to see the level of that and the potentials. the mars person often does a lot of going off and erupting because the pluto person really annoys them. mars feels needled and pushed and will put up with it with creates this friction and build up of energy which will eventually explode. there is also an underlying and unconscious sexual competition between these two people. The pluto person is very much threatened by the independence of the mars person. the mars person is threatened by the controlling tactics of the pluto person. so we have this dance of resistance between the two that could also create some sexual tension. sometimes it brings about sadomasochistic behavior depending on the natal charts.  the mars person will enjoy beating the every living daylight out of the pluto person. so it is on where we have to treat it carefully because the level of passion can boil over into hatred and resentment. the mars person is very reactive in this relationship. the pluto person is more the stand back and watch and subtly manipulate and position themselves so they can force a reaction from the mars person it makes them feel seen and powerful to be able to drive the mars person crazy. pluto is death so anywhere it is in synastry it has a sucking behavior, it wants to take. that is why it represent the other partners resources not things we make for ourselves, but the value we take from another. so they want to forcibly take the energy of the mars person as they explode they suck up the energy they get from the mars persons reaction without knowing that they are causing it.

opposition (no video for this):

You can you trigger intense willfulness, competitiveness, and passion in one another because you inspire each others desire, need to control, and willingness to go to extremes of intensity in order to win. You are working at this relationship from two opposite angles. You have the potential to transform yourselves and your partnership into a potent, assertive force if you can agree to honor both of your leadership qualities and learn to take turn supporting each others self expression. When the first persons Mars is in opposition to the second persons Pluto, everything has a tendency to become exaggerated which can cause arguments if you both stress the need to things in your own way.

-moon

conjunct:

square:

opposition:

-mercury (couldn’t be bothered to look up videos)

conjunct:

They see themselves in each other, Pluto possibly more clearly through Mercury’s communication. It is likely the Pluto person will show how they relate to Mercury on their own time and decision. There is a connection between communication and sharing + the renewing, compulsive, and transformation energies of Pluto. Maybe this relationship is all about sharing past trauma, past and current fears, and secrets.

square:

One person may pressure or coerce the other into things they don’t want to do or more likely pressure them into statements they don’t really mean. Standing your ground can be a lesson along with tolerating other’s opinions and allowing people to make their own decisions.

opposition:

There is a lesson and challenge for thinking for one’s self. Also letting go of fixed ideas or opinions is a lesson. One might try to control the other’s thinking and decision making. One might also look to the other to form opinions. Letting go of control is important.

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Now that thats out of the way lets write the descriptions for the signs that they are in too and we will get to the theorizing:

leo:

The easiest thing for Pluto in Leo to do is reinvent themselves whenever need be. If they find themselves in a less than desirable situation, they can change and adapt in a way that is most advantageous to them. That’s also the best way for them to discover new traits and skills to continue on their quest for self-discovery.

The Leo Pluto people express themselves best in a creative setting for they love to go overboard whenever possible. Their glamorous attitude and approach to everything set them apart from the competition and keeps them in the spotlight, which is where they want to be. That’s the only way they know how to move forward and gain perspective on the world as a whole.

One thing Pluto in Leo has to be careful of is overstepping their bounds when it comes to leading projects or groups. They tend to automatically take over any situation because they are natural born leaders. But they don’t pay attention to whether or not someone has already taken on that role. So, their quest for control or power can be squashed before they even begin.

This does not bode well for them and the other people involved, because they have quite a temper. They have been known to throw a tantrum with their loud lion roar. They make a scene that disrupts the flow of everything going on around them.

They can handle change, but only when they are the one allowed to deal with it. If it’s left up to other people to reconcile the consequences, these people will have a hard time taking a back seat in terms of making decisions.

They are used to being the authority on everything and are unable to easily accept when someone else takes the reins or proves to be more knowledgeable. That’s the best way for them to remain at the forefront.

When it comes to their personal growth, the they are steps ahead of others because they are always looking to improve their station in life. But they need help from their large social circle if they are to extend that kind of attention toward other people.

While they are generous with their time and effort, it’s usually because they want people to hang out and do things with them. That’s how they flaunt their wealth and fame.

They sometimes have trouble seeing the bigger picture, and it takes the help of their social network to keep them focused on essential matters. Pluto in Leo would instead go out and play than stay in and work, and it takes a lot for them to settle down and do what’s best for everyone.

aquarius:

The best part about Pluto in Aquarius is their desire to do good in the world and for others. Their humanitarian efforts have the ability to bring about important changes in society. They believe you can improve upon any idea.

The Aquarius Pluto zodiac sign hate to see any injustice in the world. They feel there is a solution for everything if you can think outside the box. They desire change, which fits in well with their capability to go with the flow.

As long as they are the ones who are eventually able to control the direction of change, they will demand it every time. Their constant search to find out how everything works bring about more questions in need of answers, and they feel they know to find those solutions.

The Pluto in Aquarius isn’t satisfied with traditional definitions and explanations. So, they spend their own time and resources on researching whatever topic interests them at that time. And once they become interested in something it can quickly become an obsession.

They tend to get so involved in their research they can either leave people behind or run right over them in their search for the truth. If they are to grow and develop as a person, they have to learn how to work well with others.

As long as they understand other people are willing to go the distance for the same social issue, they might be more accepting of their offer to help. And outsiders will have to adapt to the work and thought process of Pluto in Aquarius because they are the most unconventional people to work with.

Their ego is what keeps them on track, for they feel they are one of the few who have the capability to create positive change. But being the social butterflies they are, Pluto in Aquarius do need other people to bounce their ideas off of to determine whether or not they will work. In this sense, they create their own “dream team” to help. This is the only way they struggle to control the situation – when they believe they have the right solution. They make sure their theory is solid before implementing it. But because they are so protective of it, they don’t trust anyone else to execute it. This can make it difficult for them to get something off the ground, and that’s where they have to learn to delegate authority and accept aid. Their brilliant mind shines through in everything they do and helps to inspire others to do more with their lives. That’s how social movements begin.

taurus:

Pluto in Taurus doesn’t mind getting comfortable and staying in one place or doing one thing for a long time. Only when that system stops working or they are forced to change do they make any effort to do so. 

As long as they don’t allow their stubborn nature to get in the way of their progress, they will land on their feet every time. And when they’re on that quest for answers that no one can seem to give them, they won’t give up until they find them. They know best what to do, and they will spend plenty of time convincing others of their mental prowess.

The Pluto in Taurus sign people can become quite obsessive when it comes to finding something new that they like just as much as the old. They can lose themselves in their stubborn habits. Once they are involved in researching different tactics and strategies in their lives, they can’t let it go until they have a new set-up.

This means other people may be put on hold while these people are trying to restructure themselves and their schedule. And if other people have a say in these changes, it takes even longer to finish. They are not great at allowing other people to come in.

Also, they hate to delegate authority or take over in any manner. They have their way of doing things, and no one can convince them that any other way is just as effective. This can hinder their progress at times if they take on a bigger project than they realized.

The best thing for them to do is step back from the situation to gain a little perspective on the subject. This is where their network of friends, family, and co-workers can help them out. Nudge this person in the right direction, and they will eventually see the light.

Pluto in Taurus enjoys comfort and beauty a lot. Thus, it can be difficult for them to let go of the cozy environment they have created and do something different. They despise chaos and try as much as possible to avoid messy experiences.

They should learn to embrace these kinds of developments and see them as improvements in their life. Then, they will be able to overcome any obstacle. Some may see this as Pluto in Taurus struggling for control. But, those who know them understand that’s just the way they work.

scorpio:

It doesn’t mean the Pluto in Scorpio sign have a negative understanding of the way the world works. They are prepared for the worst if it ever happens. They also have a better attitude towards things like change, tragedy or death. They know these things are a given and they accept them for what they are – inevitable.

This means they can also be well-adjusted people who are ready for anything. You certainly want them on your side in a difficult situation (or any situation for that matter). They are strong, confident and very protective of their loved ones. This is most important to the Pluto in Scorpio.

The Pluto in Scorpio people keeps everything close to the vest. They don’t let on to what they’re thinking or feeling. They don’t even like to talk about their past, as it may allow others to hold some power or control over them. They need to always be in control and will fight for the ability to gain the upper hand every time. This means they can be manipulative at times, especially when they need others to agree with them or be on their side.

It’s best not to go against Pluto in Scorpio, for they take every little offense personally. Because they feel everything so deeply, it doesn’t take much for them to believe they have been slighted. And once you are on their bad side, it’s challenging to get back on their good side.

They are the most intense sign of the zodiac. This means their reaction is stronger than the offense itself. And since they tend toward darker thoughts and a more pessimistic view of life, it’s difficult for them to snap back to a lighter viewpoint.

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The whole timeline themes thing can wait for another post because it’s too much for this post.

Now lets discuss. 

honestly I’m not sure because most of it makes sense and I can see a mars square dw between naruto and sasuke for instance but I don’t see it between sasuke and Itachi and if he has it with one he has it with the other unless the orb is really not that small. 

let me say the things which I feel don’t fit for each:

pluto in aquarius (1st decan) -> I don’t think sasuke’s pluto in narutos 7th fits. also I feel it’s naruto who wants to beat sasuke up not the otherway around (mars square pluto).

pluto in aquarius (2nd or 3rd decan) -> 

pluto in leo (1st decan) -> 

pluto in leo (2nd or 3rd decan) ->

pluto in taurus (1st decan) -> 

pluto in taurus (2nd or 3rd decan) -> 

pluto in scorpio (1st decan) -> 

pluto in scorpio (2nd or 3rd decan) -> 

Sad OTP Meme Kylan/Brea

Nice! Thanks for the ask! And sorry that this took longer than the others. I had some stuff come up and didn’t have time to finish it in one sitting.

who gets overwhelmed by small acts of kindness?

Kylan is more likely to get overwhelmed by small acts of kindness. This is pretty much canon with all his other relationships so his relationship with Brea is no exception. When he gets overly emotional or flustered she tends to react one of two ways. One, she’s so charmed by his sudden bashfulness that she throws her arms around him and kisses him. Two, she teases him by saying that if he’s going to get so overwhelmed every time she does something sweet she’ll just have to be meaner to him. This usually throws Kyan off so much that she has to give him a kiss for reassurance anyway.

who flinches at sudden movements?

They both flinch at sudden movements for different reasons. Kylan does because he’s always on edge and a little nervous. Brea flinches because she gets so engrossed in her own thoughts or what she might be doing/reading that she doesn’t notice a lot of what’s going on around her. 


who is most confused as to why their S.O. is still with them?

Kylan. Brea is a princess and Kylan is an orphan from Sami Thicket who spent his whole childhood being bullied and dismissed by his own clan. He is confused every single moment they are together. Brea can be very open and demonstrative though, and that does help stay his worries. 


who has to constantly check their S.O. still loves them?

Both. Brea, unlike Kylan is not so good at reading other people’s moods, and because he can be very reserved she often likes to check in and makes sure that his feelings haven’t changed. Kylan for his part, already worries that Brea, being a princess, should find someone more suited to her and her position. When she asks him if he still loves her he interprets it as her subtly letting him know her feelings have changed, which of course makes him even more worried. They can spiral out on this until one of them gets fed up and outright says ‘I love you.’ 


who says the other/s would be better off with someone else?

Kylan and Brea have both said this to each other at times.

Kylan says it when his insecurities about their relationship or his low self esteem are particularly strong.

Brea says it when she feels like she’s relying on him too much. She knows her personality can be very obsessive and self centered. She sometimes worries that this wears on Kylan and that she’s not being fair to him.

who gets surprised when they are given gifts?

Both.

Brea is surprised because Kylan’s gifts always manage to be the exact right thing at the the exact right time. He understands her so well that he seems to know what she needs before she does, and Brea is deeply moved every time.

Kylan is surprised because he never expects anything of Brea. He just wants to be with her, to get to speak with her, to spend the rare moment alone. This is enough to keep him happier than he’s ever been. So, when she gives him gifts it almost overwhelms him with love. It doesn’t matter what it is - the act of Brea giving it to him is what makes it precious.

who is most likely to break down on the other and how does their S.O. attempt to calm them down?

Brea
. She is still very much a naive princess and doesn’t have experience dealing with many of the things they are now facing - war, loss, instability. Though most of the time she is able to either push aside or ration away her feelings, sometimes it becomes too much and overwhelms her. When this happens Kylan holds her tightly and sings to her until she calms down.

He knows intimately what she is going through, because before he met Naia and went on his own journey he was very much the same way. But his friends helped him grow stronger, made him more capable, and he has faith that Brea will grow stronger too. She’s already so much braver than he’s ever been.

who is most self conscious in public?

Kylan. Brea is a princess predisposed to self absorption, and she’s often caught up in other thoughts. So, not only does she have a natural confidence from being raised in the royal family, she also really doesn’t notice other people or how they might perceive her. This is NOT the case for Kylan who grew up being teased by his own clan for pursuing different interests. He’s always aware of how others might see him, but both Naia and Brea have been working with him on being more self-assured.

who is more likely to apologize a million time for a tiny mistake?

Kylan is more likely to apologize for a tiny mistake while Brea is more likely to apologize a million times when she realizes she’s done wrong.

This difference is because Naia got sick of Kylan continuously apologizing and helped him overcome the habit - though he’s still sensitive to small mistakes. Brea on the other hand only really apologizes to placate others. It’s not often she truly feels she’s done something wrong. But, with Kylan it’s a constant worry for her that he’ll hear her ‘I’m sorrys’ the way others do - disingenuous and dismissive. So she always makes a genuine and heartfelt effort to let him know how sorry she is, even if she has to say it a thousand times. 


who admits they’re scared only when they think their S.O. is asleep and how does the other react?

Brea is more likely to wait until she thinks Kylan is asleep to admit her deeper fears and anxieties. Being a princess, especially in her family, has left her a little uncomfortable being openly vulnerable. She prefers to intellectualize her problems. But when that’s not possible she’ll lie awake and speak into the darkness.

What she doesn’t realize is that Kylan, always tuned into her feelings and moods, has also been awake beside her - waiting until she was ready to talk so he could hold her hand and gently listen.

who never thinks they’re good enough for the other?

Kylan often wonders why Brea is even interested in him. She’s amazingly intelligent, brave, and kind, not to mention that she comes from a much higher social standing. It definitely triggers his insecurities and makes him question whether he’s good enough for her.

If he brings this up to Brea she just scoffs and tells him he’s being ridiculous before listing off all the reasons anyone would be lucky to be with him. Though this usually makes him flush and stutter, it’s quite the boost to his self-esteem.

who takes a bullet for the other

Either would take a bullet for each other, but Brea. She more often shows her feelings through actions and seeing Kylan in danger would trigger an impulsive reaction to protect him. She’d jump in front of the bullet (literal or figurative) before fully realizing what she’s doing. However, there’s never any regret because she’s happy to put herself on the line to keep him safe.

Cursed: an Everlark fan fiction

It’s been so long since I’ve written any Hunger Games fan fiction, but after literally blowing the dust off my copies of the books I’ve been inspired by the series re-read here on tumblr. This is an idea that’s been on my mind for quite some time. I’m so happy to finally be posting it!

Summary: Katniss and Peeta end their Victory Tour with an encounter from a mysterious fortuneteller. When they wake the next morning, they’re not quite... themselves. This is Everlark: freaky Friday style. Canon divergent AU. 

Chapter 1

The Presidential mansion sat alone atop the hill in the middle of the Capitol, perfectly positioned so that every resident in the city could see its imposing form from all angles. The surrounding night would have been still and silent if not for the raucous party in full swing in the mansion’s vast courtyard, and in the center of it all, the star- crossed lovers of District Twelve.

The glittering lights and the loud music were headache- inducing by this point in the evening, and Katniss wanted nothing more than to go home. Peeta stood faithfully by her side, his hand wrapped around hers as it had been all night, but the wear was starting to show on him, too. It was long past midnight, their bellies were full, and their eyes were beginning to droop, but Effie had promised them only thirty more minutes at this final party and then they’d be on the train home. The Victory Tour was at an end at last, and Katniss and Peeta were nothing but grateful to be headed back to District Twelve.

A loud laugh from the partygoers echoed behind them. Katniss looked past the tables laden with food and the dance floor filled with people to see Venia and Flavius exiting a tent on the edge of the party. The pair of Katniss’s prep team members tottered towards them on wobbly legs, clearly intoxicated out of their minds.

“Have you two gone to see Madame Alcina yet?” Venia slurred when she stumbled over to Katniss and Peeta.

“No, we don’t really-“ Katniss said.

“Oh you must go have your palms read! She’s simply divine,” Flavius trilled, pushing the pair towards the tent at the edge of the yard. Katniss looked to Peeta, who merely shrugged.

“Why not?” He murmured to her. “It’ll kill some time, won’t it?” Katniss couldn’t argue with that, especially because she could spot a few more Capitol citizens making their way towards them. The hordes of party guests had hardly left the pair of them alone all night and Katniss wasn’t in the mood to deal with any more of the colorful, self-possessed people than she already had. So Peeta hooked her arm through his and led her to the tent draped from top to bottom with glittering red shawls. On the outside, a sign: Fortunes by Alcina- Discover what your future holds.

Katniss had to resist rolling her eyes. It was exactly the kind of superfluous thing that would exist in the Capitol and nowhere else in Panem, where people had no better way to spend their time or money. Besides, President Snow’s cold eyes had already told her what her future was going to look like, and she doubted very much that the truth of it lay in this tent. She followed Peeta inside anyway because the alternative was no more desirable than having her future predicted by someone who couldn’t have the faintest idea of what her future as a victor could possibly mean. Upon entering, they laid their eyes upon the most eccentric women they’d seen anywhere in Panem.

Katniss and Peeta were no strangers to the bizarre fashions here in the Capitol, but this woman was something else entirely. What little they could see of her natural skin was ghostly pale and the remainder of it was covered entirely in spindly, black tattoos. They curved and twisted, creating a cacophony of indistinguishable shapes and patterns upon her skin. Her hair was a fiery, unnatural shade of red. Here in the glowing candlelight it seemed to flicker like a real fire. Her eyes were dark, the pupils so enlarged in the dim lighting that it was impossible to determine their true color. There was something peculiar about the eyes, too. Something in them that was steady and solid and perceptive. The vapid self- absorption that possessed so many people in the Capitol was entirely lacking here. This woman had eyes that could see right through your very soul. “Ahh,” the woman purred. “I was hoping the star- crossed lovers would find their way to my tent.” Katniss and Peeta shared a raised eyebrow glance, and then turned back to the fortuneteller.

“Well, we were told that you’re the best,” Peeta piped up on instinct. Katniss was grateful that he chose to fill the silence. Something about this woman and this place made her mouth go dry, her tongue thick and heavy in her mouth. An uncomfortable tingle slithered up her spine.

“Have a seat,” the woman said, gesturing to the two armchairs across from her spindle- legged table. The pair did as instructed, and the woman turned to Katniss first. She extended a withered hand, palm up to Katniss. “Your hand, please, dear.” Katniss placed her olive- skinned hand into the woman’s heavily tattooed one. Madame Alcina ran a long finger down the center, eliciting a cool shiver that zipped up Katniss’s arm.

She spent a long time tracing the lines of Katniss’s hand before she spoke. “There’s conflict,” the strange woman whispered finally. “Oohh yes, and determination, defiance. But beneath your stubborn air, your heart has always known the answer you’re seeking now. Find the place where your heart and your mind come together.” Katniss blinked at the woman in confusion, her trademark scowl settling into place. What on earth could that mean?

Madame Alcina turned next to Peeta. Again, she studied his palm for several minutes, running a finger down every single line and crease of his hand. “You, young man, are at war with yourself. At odds with your love and your desires. The only way to fix it is to confront it.” She grabbed a shocked Katniss’s hand, entangled her fingers with Peeta’s, and then began gesticulating wildly in the air between the pair of them. “Your destinies are intertwined so very closely together, you may not even realize it at this moment! You need to become one! Take the path that leads to each other and never look back. Your fates are sealed within each other! Realize that potential and all will be well.”

Silence hung heavy in the air when the woman finished her impassioned fortune, her pupils blown and chest heaving with excitement. Katniss and Peeta gaped at her, their hands still laced together, and at a complete loss for how to respond. Luckily for them, time was on their side, for Effie chose that moment to poke her head through the front flap of the tent.

“Katniss! Peeta! Venia said you’d gone this way; the train leaves in twenty minutes and the there are some important goodbyes you must make!” Their escort placed a stern hand on both their shoulders and promptly ushered them from the tent, but not before Peeta could glance back at the mysterious woman, whose jet black lips were quirked into a smug smirk on her tattooed face. He couldn’t explain the reason for it, but her expression gave him an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach, as though the feast he’d eaten earlier had come alive and was attempting to make an escape from his belly.

The feeling stayed with Peeta as he led Katniss through the crowd of socialites and gamemakers and politicians. By the time they bid farewell to the highest-ranking officials in Panem and boarded the train, he couldn’t keep it in any longer. “Do you think she was right?” he asked Katniss as soon as the door to their shared bedroom slid closed behind them.

“Do I think who was right?” Katniss asked, distracted as she went to work tugging the pins out of her elaborate braided hairstyle.

“That Madame Alcina woman. Do you think she was right about our… well, our destinies being so closely wrapped around each other and all that?”

Katniss gave a derisive snort and massaged her scalp, now freed of its updo. “Of course she was. We’re engaged now, Peeta. The whole country knows that, so yes I guess you could say our destinies are entwined.” She held up her fingers and made air quotes at the last word, rolling her eyes. “It’s all mindless drivel, anyway, just like everything else in the Capitol. I wouldn’t waste your time worrying too much on it.”

“Yeah, but didn’t you notice something… I don’t know, something different about her? She seemed real, Katniss. Not like the preps, or even like Effie. I think she knew we’ve putting on an act.” This gave Katniss pause as she thought it over. Yes, the woman’s black eyes had given the impression that she was more intuitive than most in the Capitol, almost like President Snow in a way. Not quite in the same cold and calculating manner as he, but in a more discerningly subtle way. Then there was the fact that something about the woman had sent unusual shivers tingling down her spine from the moment they entered her tent, but Katniss had attributed that to the lateness of the hour and the awkwardness of the situation.

“I think our fates were pretty much sealed the moment I held out those berries in the arena. She probably realized that and took advantage of it to try and scare us.” Katniss reasoned.

“Maybe you’re right,” Peeta said, though uncertainty clouded his voice.

“I am.” She nodded her head as though the matter was settled. “Don’t let it bother you. We have so many other things to worry about right now, as it is.”

She has a point, Peeta thought, as they climbed into bed together. It was silly to worry about the fleeting words of a woman they didn’t even know. Not when real dangers from real enemies lurked so clearly in the periphery of their lives. Katniss nestled herself into Peeta’s side and he wrapped his arms around her, just has he had almost every night they’d spent aboard this train. Despite his troubled thoughts, his exhaustion- combined with Katniss’s body heat and soothing rhythm of the train as it slipped through the night- lulled him into a dreamless sleep almost instantly.

It was Katniss who woke first the next morning, the sun a mere sliver of brightest orange on the horizon. The train compartment was still mostly blanketed in darkness, and the scenery was whipping by much too quickly to determine where in Panem they could possibly be. With a measure of sweeping relief, her first thought was that wherever they happened to be, it was certainly far from the Capitol. Also that sometime today, they would be home. Her second thought was that she needed extract herself from Peeta so she could use the bathroom. She made to gently disentangle herself from Peeta’s still sleeping form, dragging back the blankets and attempting to exit the bed as quietly as possible. Then she lost her balance the second she tried to step down onto the carpet, landing on the floor with an almighty crash and an even louder yelp of shock.

The reason for her fall was explained at once when Katniss tried to pull her feet underneath her into a standing position, and she found that the left leg of her pajama pants hung flaccid and empty. The right was presently splayed out in front of her, but the left leg appeared to be missing entirely.

She only had one leg.

Her arms flailed as she felt around wildly for her missing leg, her hands landing on her upper thigh and following it to the end where it tapered into nothing but smooth skin and bone just below the knee. Katniss froze, the rising panic in her chest overwhelming her as the light from the bedside lamp flicked on and Peeta leaned over the side of the bed to investigate the commotion.

“Katniss, are you alright?” Only it wasn’t Peeta’s concerned voice that called out to her. And it certainly wasn’t Peeta’s face, either.

It was her voice. Her face. Her body.

As he peered down at the fallen body on the floor, Peeta realized at the same time Katniss did that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. For he was looking down at himself, sprawled out on the floor wearing only pajama pants and noticeably missing his prosthetic leg. His eyes flew down to inspect himself still in the bed, noting the tanned, slender hands that could not possibly be his own and the raven hair fanned out across his torso. He brushed the long strands away from his chest and his hands froze on his body. Were those… breasts? He ventured a squeeze, and sure enough, under his palms were two plump mounds of flesh. Small, but most definitely present. He gaped at his chest in horror, his newly silver eyes meeting the blue irises of the body on the ground that- by every law of common sense and plain reason- should have belonged to him. Yet inexplicably, it didn’t.

They held the gaze for a long time, chests heaving with panting breaths and minds racing for an explanation. This wasn’t possible. It simply wasn’t, and yet…

“Katniss,” Peeta whispered, “I think we’ve been cursed.”

As absurd as it sounded, as absolutely, utterly impossible as it was, instinct told Katniss that Peeta was right. What other explanation could there possibly be? Still in a state of shock, Peeta climbed out of bed and grabbed the prosthetic leg propped against his nightstand. It was subsequently the weirdest sensation in the world to help Katniss put the leg onto his body from the outside. He fastened it around the stump below the knee and watched as the Capitol grade alloy melded itself seamlessly with the flesh of her (his?) leg. He pulled her to her feet and she wobbled, unused to the indescribable feeling of solid floor beneath an extremity that did not exist.

“It takes some getting used to,” said Peeta.

“I don’t want to get used to it. I want to fix it!” Katniss snapped. But upon seeing the look on his (her?) face, she backpedaled at once. “Peeta, I’m sorry. I just- I don't get it. How did this happen?”

“I don’t know," he replied, wracking his brain for a reason, any reason that would explain why he woke up in Katniss Everdeen's body this morning, and she woke up in his. If he was correct, and they were in fact cursed, someone had to have done this to them. But who? President Snow seemed the most likely candidate, but how on earth could he have managed something of this scale? And better yet without their knowledge? He was a cold, calculating, monster of a human, but still he was just a human.

"What if... what if whatever did this to us isn't… human?" Peeta supplied. Katniss merely raised her blond eyebrows. "What if the Capitol created some kind of mutt or virus and we came into contact with it unknowingly at the party last night?"

"It's possible," Katniss said, though doubt filled her voice.

“Maybe Haymitch knows something about it. He’s been around the Capitol for a long time. He might be able to help us,” said Peeta.

“No! We can’t let anyone else know about this.” There was an unmistakable ferocity in her voice that belonged to Katniss alone, regardless of the body she happened to inhabit at the time. “We have to hide this until we can find a way to reverse it!”

Peeta had opened his mouth to respond just as a sharp rapping on the door made them both nearly jump out of their skins. “Up up up!” Effie’s voice trilled though the door. “We have our last big day in front us! You two will be back to District Twelve in just a few short hours!” With a mutual flood of relief, they heard the click- clacking of her heels marching away from the door.

“Look, we won’t tell anyone,” said, Peeta, his tone low and conspiratory. “Not yet, anyway. But for now if we don’t want anyone to find out, I think the best course of action is for each of us to act as much as possible like the other. Do you think you can manage that, Katniss?”

Katniss wondered- could she pretend to be Peeta Mellark? He was so much better than her already, not only at putting on the act, but also at making it believable. Between the two of them, he carried most (okay, practically all) of the weight of the star-crossed lover’s ruse. His were some awfully big shoes to fill, but at the moment she couldn’t see any other choice in front of her.

She had a feeling her face showed as much doubt as she felt when she gave him an affirming nod, but if it did, Peeta did not say. Instead, they gathered the clothes Cinna and Portia had chosen for the day’s closing ceremonies and headed their separate ways to change. Peeta into the bathroom while Katniss remained in the bedroom.

When the bathroom door had closed behind him, Peeta hunched over the sink, locked in a staring contest with his reflection in the mirror. His long hair hung in a wild tangle around his shoulders, his grey eyes over bright with shock in the sunken purple rings surrounding them. The strange thing was, he didn’t feel any different in this body, save for the fact that he had two intact feet standing on solid ground. If he closed his eyes, Peeta could have sworn up and down that he was in his own body and this was nothing more than an elegantly crafted nightmare, courtesy of the Capitol. He switched on the tap and began furiously scrubbing his face with the icy water flowing from the jet, as though he could scour away the olive skin and return it to its normal pale and freckled state. When he looked up at last, Katniss’s reflection stared back at him, entirely unchanged.

With a grunt of frustration, he turned defiantly away from the mirror and grabbed the pile of clothes he was meant to wear. I can do this, he thought. After all, how hard could it be to impersonate Katniss Everdeen?

Back in the bedroom, Katniss sat gingerly on the edge of the bed to remove Peeta’s pajama pants, still unsteady on his prosthetic leg. How on earth had he learned to walk with this thing as smoothly as he did? Some days she forgot he even had it at all, as sure and steady was his gait. That was, until he’d take it off at bedtime with a groan of relief and her eyes would flit away from the remaining stump of his leg. The stump itself wasn’t what bothered her so much as the reminder of how it had come to exist in the first place.

She wasn’t brave enough to remove the underwear despite the fact that Peeta had been wearing them since yesterday; she knew they’d both worn underwear for much longer periods of time in the Games. One more day would do no harm. His jeans, however, did turn out to present a bit of a problem. Once she managed to finagle the left pant leg up the metal leg without tripping and falling flat on her face again, she found that the seam of the pants, centered as it was, rested uncomfortably against her crotch. Having had no idea this was how it felt to wear pants as a man, Katniss decided she wasn’t terribly fond of the sensation.

Katniss took a couple of precarious steps around the room to test the waters before coming to the conclusion that this simply wasn’t going to work. Given that she had no intention of asking Peeta how he always managed this situation, she did the only thing that made sense. She dove her hand valiantly into the pants and shifted his package away from the seam and to the right. It did feel better off to the side, though it still felt strange to have something dangling there at all.

She startled when Peeta exited the bathroom and tried to look as though she hadn’t just had her hand down his pants. He was fully dressed with the exception of one article of clothing clutched in his first. “I don’t need this thing.” He thrust the bra at Katniss and she flinched away from it as though he’d tried to hand her a venomous snake.

Interpreting his reluctance to mean that he couldn’t figure out how to put it on, Katniss fought to keep the corners of her mouth from turning upwards into a smile. “Oh yes you do,” she said.

“Why? It’s not like… well, I mean- it’s not like there’s all that much there to support.”

She folded her arms across her new masculine chest and glared at him with narrowed eyes, but she had to admit privately that Peeta did have a point. Her breasts weren’t particularly prominent, which is why all of the bras Cinna designed for her had a little additional padding in them. The extra boost was usually necessary to fill out all the pretty dresses he’d made for the Victory Tour, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell Peeta that. “Because... because if you don’t Haymitch and Effie and Cinna will definitely notice and they’ll suspect that something is off,” she said, which was true enough anyway. “Here, I’ll help you. Take off the dress.”

Without stopping to think of the ramifications of doing so, Peeta followed her instructions and slipped the dress over his head. Suddenly Katniss was face to face with her own bare chest; the small but proud breasts peaked with the cool air of the train compartment. “Turn around,” she gulped, her mouth sapped of moisture while her face flooded with color. In the back of her mind, she wondered why the extra parts in her pants twitched at the sight.

Equally as beet red as Katniss, Peeta turned away from her to face the wall. He felt her arms encircle his waist and her hands at his back, fastening the garment. He was eternally grateful that he wasn’t currently in possession of his penis when her fingers brushed his nipples as she adjusted the cups of his bra, but there was still an unfamiliar surge of electricity that jolted in the hollow valley between his legs.

The blush had not faded from either of their cheeks when they left their room to join the others for breakfast. For once they were grateful for Effie’s incessant prattle about schedules and timetables, for all they had to do in response was nod and smile. Katniss thought she caught Haymitch giving the pair of them the occasional sideways glance from behind his flask. She looked away each time it happened, convinced that their mentor would see her behind Peeta’s eyes if she allowed herself to make eye contact with him.

They stumbled through the rest of the day (for Katniss this was literal- damn leg) pretending to be each other.

While Katniss was prepped and ready for the cameras hours before they were to arrive in the district, Peeta gained an immediate understanding of why she always bemoaned the prep process when he was forced to sit through her beauty routine for the first time. He’d thought he had it bad, but the hours Venia, Octavia, and Flavius spent slathering him in pungent goo and curling his hair and powdering every inch of exposed skin was mind-numbing to the point of torture. It went on and on and on all morning long. Luckily the preps chatted amongst themselves about the party last night as they worked on him, with Octavia notably disgruntled about the fact that she’d not had her fortune read by the Great Madame Alcina.

“I’m going to be famous in the Capitol one day,” Flavius said with a wistful sigh. “Madame promised that I’d soon have my very own tribute to style.”

“Oh, that’s just wonderful!” Venia gushed. “She told me I’m about to find the love of my life! What about you Katniss? Katniss?”

Peeta was only startled out of his reverie when Venia’s hand landed on his shoulder, momentarily having forgotten that to the prep team, he was Katniss. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” He put on his most Katniss-like expression and tried to recover from the fumble.

“What did Madame Alcina tell you about your future?” Venia hedged.

And then it hit him. Madame Alcina. The fortuneteller. Of course. He could have slapped himself for not realizing it sooner. He tried to cover the moment of hesitation. “Oh! She… she said Kat-Peeta and I are going to have a long and prosperous life together.”

“Did she say anything about children?” Octavia pressed eagerly.

“She... hinted at that.” Peeta said evasively.

“Oh can you imagine!” Octavia gushed. “Any little baby of theirs would be absolutely adorable! With his hair and her eyes…” Peeta let them carry on about the nonexistent Everlark (really, how stupid) baby that would never be, but his mind was racing. What had the mysterious fortuneteller said to them last night? The hour had been so late and he had been so tired, but he squeezed his eyes shut, picturing the scene and willing his brain to remember.

Then his eyes flew open. He had to find Katniss.

Also on AO3 and FF.net

Worm Liveblog #70

UPDATE 70: Mannequin

Last time Mannequin had arrived to crash Skitter’s attempts to do damage control in her territory. Things are bound to get bloody if these civilians don’t get away as soon as possible! Which seems...rather unlikely. So all they can do is hope for the best. Let’s continue.

Mannequin doesn’t waste time! Mr. Wildbow continues his streak of the chapters starting with action immediately, with Mannequin lunging forward so quickly his arms just...flail behind himself. It’s scarier than it sounds when I put it like that, because, you know, blades. Besides, it’s effective, the speed gives momentum to the arm when Mannequin stops and swings, the arm at the end of the chain flying forward to slice Skitter’s head off.

I parried it with my baton.  The hit was heavy, more like trying to fend off a sledgehammer than what I’d expected. I almost lost my grip on my weapon.

What was Mannequin’s...entire being made of, again? He was a parahuman that was pretty good with self-sustaining enclosed environments, so I’m sure he had access to rare stuff. I thiiiiink I once read something about this shell being made of a ceramic-looking material. I bet he made it specifically to give strength to his attacks. Weight can increase the force of impact, as far as I know.

Mannequin’s first attack was blocked, he spun in the opposite direction, flailing his other arm towards her, without missing a beat. Instead of blocking, Skitter dodges, the chains wrap around Mannequin. Looks like his strategy is to make circles with his arms and blades. Keep Skitter away, all that. Not that she could do much, anyway! Armsmaster could, because he had the nanomachine halberd. Skitter doesn’t. I think all she can do in this fight is try to keep him away from the civilians, deter him in some way. Defeating him seems like a bit too tall of an order.

As his detached arm reeled in, the fingers folded backwards around the end of one of his feet, gripping it.  He retracted the blade at the toe of the other foot and dropped that foot flat on the ground.  The motion seemed to unbalance him, and he teetered, almost falling over.  Then in one sudden motion, he righted himself and thrust out with his other leg and the three-foot blade that was now attached to it.

Hm. Maybe that can be a way to try to get an edge over him. I’m not sure, but this gave me the impression making him lose his balance could be a possible strategy. How to do such thing, though? And how would that help? Because he could right himself up with ease, you know, a strategy can’t rely on that too much.

I didn’t have time to get out of the way, to bring my baton up to defend myself or even to do more than belatedly realize his near-collapse had been a feint.

Oh, nevermind. Good thing her costume is very resistant against blades. Skitter can only be on the defensive, try to conceal her movements and roll around. It fails and she gets struck, chance Mannequin uses to come and slit her throat – or at least try to.

In one heartbeat, I formed and initiated a plan.  I grunted and made a choking sound, which was all the more realistic because he’d just pulled a length of metal hard against my windpipe; I did want to grunt and I did choke.  Then I went limp and had every bug in the area cease moving.  Like snowflakes, the flies began drifting down from the air.

Kudos for thinking of a plan so quickly. I hope she can think of something else just as quickly, because if he thinks Skitter is dead now, then he’s going to kill everyone else here, that’s a guarantee, and it won’t take him long to slice through many civilians. The challenge here is that Mannequin excels at endurance. He can’t feel tired, so he’ll continue pressing on no matter what. He’s strong, fast, has range...and some extent of physical resistance against attacks. Honestly I’m stumped. I can’t even begin to think of a potential plan.

He could sense me somehow.  How? It had been reckless of me to assume that he used sight to get by, especially when he didn’t have eyeholes in his mask.  The fact that he hadn’t noticed I was faking meant he wasn’t relying on sight, or his sight was limited enough that he couldn’t make out the lack of blood through the cloud of bugs around us.  If he wasn’t hearing my breathing, I doubted he had super hearing either.

Well...on his favor I’ll say that a swarm of insects isn’t a good wall when it’s about hiding from sight, unless it’s really cluttered, and even then if the swarm moves along with her that would make it easy to pinpoint her location. That said, maybe something like heat sensors? That could be it! It’s not like a dead body would cool down immediately, he wouldn’t notice right then and there that she isn’t dead.

It’s said in a moment of crisis the processing power of the brain increases. I can believe all these thoughts are happening in the half a minute or so that’d take for a civilian to lose their cool and try to run.

If I was going to attack, I needed to find a weak point.  But he was smart.  Before the disaster that had turned him into this, he had been on the brink of solving many of the world’s crises.  Overpopulation, renewable energy, effective recycling, world hunger.  Even with tinker abilities offering the means, it took someone special to manage that and actually make progress.

I had to go check what Dragon had said about Mannequin, about how his wife and children were killed by the Simurgh. I can imagine Jack and whoever else was in the team back then would get a kick out of destroying a promising parahuman’s future and life by throwing salt into his wounds until he joined the team. Something like what Bonesaw did to Panacea! But it sure sucks that one of the few people who would be able to improve the world went into the hardcore villain life.

Despite that, being smart at these science feats doesn’t make him invincible. There must be a weakness somewhere, right? Because Worm isn’t ending here. Skitter must have been able to do something.

What would I do in his shoes, with his power?

I wouldn’t leave any vital openings uncovered.  That was a given.  My focus -Mannequin’s focus- would be on designing way to make himself a completely closed system.  It wasn’t just sensible, it was the whole point of his transformation.

In that case...hm. Well I think it’s a given he won’t be destroyed by Skitter, no way, no how. Maybe she could disable him for enough time to get everyone away from him? Hardly, since once he recovers he would go pursue them. The more I think about this the more it seems like driving him away is the only option, and that can only be done with something he can’t overcome. The problem is that an abandoned warehouse/factory/where they are right now is not the kind of place that has anything that could be used that way.

intake of energy by absorption of heat

For a moment the possibility of depriving him of heat crossed my mind, but there are problems: one is that they have no way of depriving him of heat, the other is that I bet he has some sort of batteries inside to supply energy if that’s cut.

I’m growing more convinced he may perceive the world around him thanks to heat.

Putting myself in his shoes, I had to think of his motivation.  Why this form?  I’d make myself resemble a doll or a store mannequin because… it was an eternal reminder. Didn’t his wife and kids die when the Simurgh attacked?  There was a story there.

But what else? Why resemble a human?

Mobility’s sake? Being used to a humanoid shape for who knows how many years and not wanting to delve into uncharted territory? A wish to use the uncanny valley effect to unsettle people? Who knows.

To mislead? Maybe the configuration of ‘my’ organs and parts wasn’t human in the slightest.

And then it will turn out Mannequin divided his brain into pieces and buried them in, say, his ankle. Hah! Okay, no, I think many physical attackers would be deterred by the hard carapace, and even if they got through it, I’d have a few failsafes. Just in case. I think Mannequin’s brain or something is here, inside the body instead of somewhere else.

If I were him… I would have spent hours carefully balancing the ‘ecosystems’ of each individual part of my body.  Something that exacting and that fine tuned would be sensitive, fragile.  They’d be resistant to impacts, I wouldn’t go around getting into fights if they weren’t.  But heat and cold?  A crack in that exterior of his?  It could wreak havoc.

Then I insist he’d have failsafes for such situations. Crush anything he has? Another three start working surreptitiously. I’m just picturing Mannequin as if he’s some sort of underwater city: since it’s, you know, underwater, you need to have there everything you need in case something breaks, like replacement pieces, machinery, etc, already inside the environment. That’s the logic I’m following with Mannequin here, that it’s likely he’d be ready for when anything breaks inside him.

Bugs dealt with threats that were encased in hard shells all the time, didn’t they? They dealt with other species of bugs. There were a hundred solutions there, if I was willing to look for them.

That was the spark of inspiration I needed.  In a matter of seconds, I had a plan.

You know what, I’ll ask Google. No useful results. That’ll make whatever Skitter planned a surprise, then. I sure won’t see it coming because I’m still stumped, haha.

It wasn’t a good plan, but it was something.  As a just-in-case measure, I could try some other smaller plans, on the off chance that they might distract or even work.

...hm. In personal experience, no plan worth doing is started with ‘it wasn’t a good plan’. I hope it goes better than I expect by now, Skitter.

Whatever plan she has right now requires two minutes of preparation, since she needs materials from her lair in order for it to work. Meanwhile she has to wait, hope nobody will make Mannequin attack, and try not to move. It’s nerve-wracking for her to have to do all that, to stay still and not let anyone know she’s still alive, and keep hearing how Mannequin is getting ready for mass murder. A kid gets Mannequin’s attention. She can’t afford to wait any longer and stands up, all bugs in the area rising from the floor. So...all she can do is try to endure until the supplies are here. With as little pain as possible, hopefully!

Mannequin either doesn’t care Skitter just told him to stop and fight her, or he wants her to do something harsh in her attempt to save somebody from him. Most likely the second one, I think. So of course Skitter obliges, thanks to the hero instinct that makes her fight for the civilians, and tackles Mannequin’s legs. He does fall down. Hah! Well that gave enough time for Mannequin’s targets to run, so sure, that works! Except the part of getting a leg around her throat, but that’s nothing she didn’t see coming, I bet.

Not counting the time I’d spent lying on the ground, buying time, how long had I lasted? Less than thirty seconds?

You make it sound like nothing, Skitter! That’s a fourth of the time you need. Good enough! Supposing she was lying there on the floor for another thirty seconds, that’d mean she’d have half of the time already. Not bad, I’d say!

Mannequin has Skitter in a headlock, and he’ll try to chop her into bits with his blades as if they were a fan, she manages to damage those blades enough to make the unable to spin quick enough for that. In a rather daring effort, she strikes at the joint of the leg several times, mere inches from his face. That’s dangerous! She must have one heck of a steady hand! Even though her costume is good against blades, something with enough force to pierce it could injure her, right? I bet this didn’t amuse Mannequin at all, because he throws Skitter into a pile of wooden boards with nails and screws, while still holding her. It’s the perks of having limbs that are attached to your body with a chain.

To get herself free, Skitter uses her knife as a crowbar, getting away with just a headache, bruises and a blurry spot on a lens of her mask. All in all, she’s not doing too badly against a Slaughterhouse Nine member! She sure has lasted much longer than before this time. Still not enough for the bugs to arrive with what she needs for her plans, apparently, but that was longer than when she got shoved into the floor and Mannequin tried to kill her

Could I hold out for long enough?  Could the bystanders?  The moment my bugs arrived would be the moment I could begin my plan.  I’d still have to survive after that, and there was no guarantee it would work.  In fact, my gut was telling me it was a long shot.

A long shot is better than nothing. I don’t think Skitter has mentioned exactly what supplies her bugs are bringing. It can’t be anything too heavy. Whatever she’s planning will have to be very clever, since she can’t rely on strength or weight for whatever she wants. She needs around a minute more before her bugs arrive.

What was going on behind that expressionless mask?  Was he coming up with a battle plan?  Maybe, maybe not.  He didn’t really need one.  It could be that he was calculating how best to destroy me: not just killing me, but ruining me.  There were enough ways he could do it.  Inflicting lifelong scars and injury.  Or he could go down the opposite road and murder the civilians, leaving me as the only one standing.  Both were very real possibilities, both devastating in their own way.

He already tried to kill Skitter, I really doubt he’d maim her, kill everyone else and call it a day. He’s going to try his best to destroy her. Kind of a double-edged sword here, the more he thinks, the more time the bugs will have to arrive, but he also may think of better and cleverer plans.

Or maybe, behind that hard shell, he was in the throes of mental anguish.  Maybe he was spending every second of every day reliving the day he lost his family and his dreams to a nigh-unstoppable, malignant force.

I don’t know if at this point that’s possible. Wouldn’t anyone take measures to not to think about that? He sure has the means better than anyone, being a tinker and also having Bonesaw in the team. I lean more towards he planning Skitter’s horrible, horrible demise.

Not having any other option and maybe not wanting him to come with novel ways to kill her, she goes with Plan A: jam the mechanisms with bugs. While he bludgeons Skitter with some of his weapons, she manages to cram insects inside the slots those weapons came out from, and tries to clog the system. Well if the bugs are large enough and the mechanisms are small enough that could work.

Mannequin stepped back, and I watched as he retracted all of his blades, the slots they’d speared out of sealing closed behind them.  A wave of pressure and heat killed off every bug and likely most of the gunk I’d managed to smear inside.

Ooooor he could do that. Self-contained environment, with ways to counter common problems like insects. Oh well. It was worth a try. For Plan B she’ll need her baton. How exactly she’ll use it...well she sure won’t be able to jam the baton anywhere, that’s for sure! While her bugs go fetch the baton, he lunges at her.

This time, his attack was frenzied.  If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was irritated.

She said heroes and villains better than her have faced Mannequin before, but I wonder how long they have lasted? Because Skitter sure hasn’t done badly! And maybe that does irritate him. I’d like to think it does.

Mannequin flails around, blades and limbs going around, hitting her and throwing her back into the pile of wood. She acquires one to try to deviate a blade towards the floor, another two strike her chest, getting stuck in her armor. See, I bet that’s another thing that may be frustrating Mannequin. Skitter is not a parahuman known for being invulnerable, she has no amazing physical strength, she’s as squishy and defenseless-looking as she can be, yet he can’t kill her, he just hasn’t been able to do it yet. That must be frustrating, especially for a killer, yeah?

She lasted long enough for her swarm to arrive. They don’t seem to have brought anything. Hm.  But if they had to come all the way from her lair instead of using bugs that are here and now, then...I think I’m onto something, but I just can’t take this train of logic to the last station. I feel like I’m forgetting something important, like I should have figured it out already, but I just can’t pinpoint it, no matter how hard I think.

There’s emphasis on how the bugs are moving in a symmetrical pattern, and on Mannequin’s peculiar way of sensing things. He can feel the bugs somehow, so maybe I was wrong about it working with heat sensors. Every time the swarm sweeps over him, he staggers. Hm... Skitter’s getting her behind kicked pretty hard here, yet the bugs keep passing over him, three times by now.

The swarm consisted of pairings of flying insect and arachnid.  Every spider from my lair was clutching a bee, a wasp or a larger dragonfly, who clutched the spider in turn.  A thousand pairs.

That’s what I was having a hard time remembering! Right, she has all of her strong silk-making spiders in her hideout! The ones with the strands that can get really strong when weaved correctly. If she had to bring them, then her plan is to use it against Mannequin somehow. So the reason why the swarm is passing over Mannequin is because they’re leaving silk on him, then? Trying to...restrain him? That’s where this thought is kind of falling apart. True, these strands can be resistant, but that’s only when weaved properly and when there are many strands together. They’ll have to pass many times more over Mannequin to have enough silk for that.

That said, looks like Mannequin can’t detect something as minute as spiderweb strands. That could be worth noting and remembering, perhaps? Hm...

The very next paragraph confirms what I think Skitter is doing. Her focus is on his joints; I suppose that means she’s going to again try to mess with the mechanisms inside his body. What may stop this from not working just like it happened with Plan A is that he can’t notice the spiderweb, as I said not too long ago, I think. So...the moment he realizes it is the moment the plan is over, most likely. Hey, worth a try, anyways, since the Plan B of bending and damaging his blades didn’t work.

When Mannequin fires the arm aaaaaall the way to where Skitter is, she focuses her spiders and webs onto the chair, trying to gum it up as much as possible.

The last quarter of the retraction process was a fraction slower.  Silk glue gumming up the works, I could hope.  I saw him look at his arm, then flex the fingers, as if to test them.

It’s working! I admit I’m surprised. She wasn’t wrong when she said it was a long shot, it’s a good thing it’s working! It doesn’t take long for him to realize what Skitter’s doing, but he doesn’t seem able to counter it. He swings a blade, most likely trying to sever any strings that may be around him, and strikes down a couple civilians. Dang, it was all going so well and not-so-bloody so far. It’s a good thing he’s far too busy to keep slicing at people.

When he moved to retract that chain, the mechanism stalled.

I remember he had closed everything before he was able to incinerate the stuff inside the shell. If he can’t retract the chain all the way, then maybe he can’t. So now he’s going to have that arm hanging around, that may throw him off balance a bit.

A better cape than I might have had a quip there, an insult.

Add a campy pose and maybe it will work.

Since he can’t retract the chain, Mannequin snaps the chain and slams the hand in its spot again and, in what I’m interpreting as a move that shows how irritated he feels right now, he gets all his blades out and spins them to cut as many webs as possible and goes towards the civilians. Even though he managed to cut most of what was over him, Skitter wastes no time in throwing more webs on him.

He doesn’t stop advancing towards the civilians, so Skitter goes with the second part of the plan: turns out half of the swarm did bring objects, and they throw everything on Mannequin. Pieces of costume, paints, glue, everything. There’s a lot of stains on Mannequin, the pieces get stuck on him, it’s...it’s actually rather rewarding to read about. Against all odds, she’s managing to fight and humiliate him. It’s very impressive.

Taking advantage of the moment, Skitter hits with a piece of wood and makes him fall to the floor, chance she uses to grab the arm and pull, pull so hard she snaps the hand off. She also throws from the head, until she separates it.

Mannequin must be lighter than I expected, Skitter’s managing to drag him a bit. She’s struggling, so a burly civilian comes forth to help. Good thing it’s safer now than before. Between the two of them they manage to get the head all the way to a few steel bars, where she ties the head. Her plan is that Mannequin may not want to leave without his head, so...if the chain is too strong, then he won’t break it, and therefore he won’t be able to leave.

Even with stuff gumming up the works, his chest clearly had stronger mechanisms inside it than the rest of his body did.

Guess that confirms all that’s important is right there in the chest instead of the head. She tries to continue, but she can’t, she wanted to hit the head with the cinder block. Hoping to crack it open? Unlikely she’d have been able to do it, anyway. Mannequin stands up...

Had I pissed him off?

Oh, definitely. No doubt about it. His body is all damaged, he lost an arm – arm that’s trying to crawl towards the rest of his body – and he has a lot of spiderwebs and many assorted stuff all over him. He never seemed to me like someone who didn’t have emotions anymore, so yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s royally pissed off right now.

To stop him from reaching his hand, Skitter gets in the way. That must have been the last straw, because he reaches into his neck and takes out a knife that has Armsmaster’s nanomachine technology. Ah. I suppose he took it with him when he went to recruit him, or he recreated it from what he saw at that moment. Okay, Skitter has to dodge that no matter what.

She’s actually dodging it! And while she does, that burly bystander does what she wanted and hits the head with the cinder block a few times. Say, maybe you should consider offer him a job, Skitter. He deserves some sort of reward. He may have saved your life right now. The head disconnects from the chain and falls onto the floor. The hand tries to return to the body, Skitter covers it with more webbing, stopping it in its tracks. Victory?

If disabling the hand wasn’t decisive enough, then carrying and gluing the arm to the ceiling may be, Skitter even uses that chance to make him lose his balance again, falling to the floor. She even asks him if he wants to keep going. It takes a moment for him to answer, he stands up and makes a gesture of disapproval before...leaving. He’s actually leaving. I think I need to say it again:

Skitter just managed to drive away Mannequin of the Slaughterhouse Nine. That’s a feat no matter how you look at it.

The moment Mannequin is many blocks away, Skitter gives herself time to rest, falling to her knees. All around her people start murmuring, and Charlotte comes to help. Oh hey, Charlotte, you still were around! Quite an impressive show, eh?

I couldn’t take the criticism, and I didn’t deserve any praise.  How many people had been hurt while I fought Mannequin?  How many people had died because I hadn’t been on the alert?

The narration said like five people got hurt during the fight, and before it all happened, Mannequin killed two paramedics and the woman who was so against Skitter. Not a negligible amount of wounded and casualties, but...she really stopped it from getting worse. If it hadn’t been for her, maybe someone would have been found cut and strung with chains, just like one of the unfortunate victims from the Wards interlude.

Mourning the loss of the lives that were lost, Skitter apologizes to the corpse of the woman that was killed, and instructs Charlotte to throw the head and the arm down into the ocean. Mannequin abandoned the head because it seems it was damaged enough to require being abandoned, there’s some fluid starting to leak from it. Leaving it all in any random place could be risky in case Mannequin can track it down and wants to recover it, so yeah, to the bottom of the ocean it will be. Not wanting to face the residents of her territory, Skitter leaves.

I’d won. So to speak.

Somehow. Seriously, that was a feat.

Now that was the end of the chapter. That was the fight with Mannequin! I...I have a couple opinions. Judging by the reactions I got from my inbox when I expressed my dissatisfaction last update, I think one of those opinions may not be entirely welcome, but hey, that’s what happens with a liveblog. It’s the risk I take when I say what crosses my mind about a story!

Before voicing them, though, I’ll do what I said I would do. An anonymous contributor messaged me. There were reasons as to why this was a good place for the Mannequin fight, and why it’s good it’s happening. At the time I didn’t read more than a few words, so I wouldn’t be influenced and I could get to the fight in more or less the same state of mind I had when I stopped last time. Blind liveblogs thrive when opinions are authentic at the time of the reading, I’d say! So now that I finished reading the fight, I think I can pay due attention to the message. Let’s see...

Anonymous says: We know from 11.d that Mannequin likes to target people who are helping others or trying to make the world a better place. Basically anyone who's trying to succeed where he failed. Right now, skitter is doing more than basically anyone else in the city to help people survive the attack. It makes sense that that world make her his number one target.

Good point. It was mentioned that was some of Mannequin’s preferred targets. He did show disapproval at Skitter’s actions of trying to save people. Quite the fast reaction from Mannequin, though. It has been...what, an hour since Shatterbird made all glass and sand explode? Word sure traveled fast to Mannequin. I’m blaming Cherish for that.

Anonymous says: Plague stands for the spreading of scourge. This arc is the stablishing of how to deal with the arrival of the S9: You dont. Because this isn't your generic story where by villains throw themselves one at a time to be picked off. The group acts as this individual all-encompassing threat of escalation, where each member is going so all out each of them is an umoredictabke disaster. Except we KNEW Mannequin hates people trying to help others. The glass thing was a tone set for the scale of CONT...

Nnnnnot entirely convinced. When you put it like that it makes it essential for every other member to be out there causing chaos right now. Maybe they’re doing it offscreen, maybe they’re not, but right now, from what I read and see here in the story, and leaving Shatterbird’s song aside, Mannequin’s looking a bit like a lone incident, in terms of attacking people in the city.

Anonymous says: Cont... Things to come, how terrible is the plague. I cant imagine writing an entire arc of skitter and co helping people in the sameish manner while the S9 just stand by when they have just officially announced that they are here and the games have begun. It just doesnt make sense tome that the murder hobos wouldn't be out there murdering, just for the sake of our character having a breather. All other problems at the start were for groups. Even the glass, but its a testament to WB's CONT...

...yeah, I suppose...it wouldn’t make sense. I thought they’d be busy enough...I don’t know, discussing what to do regarding Tattletale’s challenge. They have/had to discuss it, after all. Change their plans accordingly. Modify their tests plans to make sure they’d win. Maaaaybe they already did so, and now they’re out there having fun. I don’t know.

Anonymous says: Writing that we were so into Taylors mind that it seemed like her problem to solve. "but fuck me most of all" she says as she walks away from the HUNDREDS of people she just saved while her legs probably cramp up from all the lactic acid. Now mannequin, THIS is a threat to Taylor as a powered individual, THIS is the response for her first majorly heroic acts in a while. I would love to hear more of your opinion though!

I like the thought that this is the consequences of her efforts to save as many people as possible, I admit. The universe balances good actions with bad consequences, that’s how the Worm universe works. All in all...hm...well it’s time for my opinions now that I read the fight.

First, I’ll admit it was better than I expected. I came to this fight without many expectations, mostly because, well, you know by now I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. Now that it’s over, I’m looking back and I find my opinion has improved. It was mostly the last part what made me change my mind, though. Until then, I was feeling kind of underwhelmed – because I couldn’t know what exactly Skitter was planning, and because if she had lost and everyone had been slaughtered, well, it’d have looked like gratuitous death to make things harder for Skitter. It’d have been a sentiment stemming from how outmatched she’d be against a killer that’s a worldwide threat.

But that didn’t happen! She actually was able to fight and do her best. Even if she hadn’t won, the fact she was able to hold her own would have been enough for me. I think that’s what turned this fight into something worthwhile. I didn’t take for granted she’d win since Mr. Wildbow isn’t afraid of letting the main characters suffer defeats, and this time I’m glad it didn’t happen.

So...yeah, I’m okay with this turn of events now. Fine. You win, Mr. Wildbow, you convinced me. Kind of at the last moment, but you did.

I will stop for now. See you next time.

Next time: in two updates

do people ever try to absorb the souls of recently dead loved ones (presumably with their prior consent), like in some morbid attempt to be with them forever? or could someone deliberately absorb a soul and then sacrifice themself, allowing the second soul to take over? seems like something a hopeless romantic might try, or the potential beginnings of a cult!

 ohgg,  thmank you for the question… always interesting to consider other things I didn’t think about before lol! hmmm… Both of these things are definitely possible, but like with most nonsense in realm of magic, there would be a lot of potential downsides and ways it also wouldn’t work well lol. ((tw for vague mention of death and occasional mention of suicide in the context of self sacrifice)) [also i think this ask is in reference to this post about soul magics here (link), so there’s the context] 

It could be done, though they would have to keep in mind that, there can really only be one main soul in a body at once (with the exception of a few very temporary things like possession or certain soul magics where people enter the dreams of others or etc.). 

Absorbing the soul would inevitably mean the other person would just fade away into the Main Soul, so though perhaps you could communicate with them inside of you for a while, they would eventually fade and just become an indistinguishable part of you. Which I guess could have symbolic meaning to a person, but it wouldn’t be as if you could keep them alive within you and have regular conversations with them forever or anything. 

But I guess would be interesting, or moreso creepy, to know like, the past 10 loved ones that have died you just absorbed into yourself, you could get more powerful while also possibly justifying that you now ‘’carry a part of them everywhere you go’’ or something… though I’d still see the decision to absorb them rather than find a better solution for dealing with the souls as somewhat suspicious (like even if it was consensual I’d wonder if the people absorbed were tricked by a possessive partner into thinking that was the only option, or were otherwise not well informed, since the field of soul magic would have plenty other ways to keep people alive longer if that was the goal, thus them choosing to absorb the souls would indicate in some way that their goal isn’t to keep them alive/spend more time with them,  but merely to absorb for the sake of getting some emotional satisfaction out of knowing they’ve consumed their dead loved one into themselves, which again,, Suspicious lol… )

 Though the idea does present some interesting dynamics, especially with secrets and stuff, like if you absorbed a loved one and went through that process where you can experience bits and pieces of their consciousness for the first few days and were to find out something through their secondhand memories or traumas that they had never even told you about while they were alive, and now it’s too late to address since they’ll be fading away soon, or etc. And other similar possible ~~dramatic~~ issues which could occur lol

 (rest of info  under a read more since this got long bhbh)

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This would probably just be pretty pointlessly masochistic (not in a sex way lol but like, general concept of ‘knowingly putting yourself in pain’ ) for the person doing it though, since as mentioned, soul absorption is incredibly painful physically, as well as I’d imagine it’d be kind of difficult to be bombarded with a mild first hand experience of your loved one’s internal state and fears and memories and probably even have some degree of a dialogue with them while they’re fading away.. I don’t know anything about this stuff since I never have relationships or anything, but I could imagine that if you have a loved one who has died and is currently trapped within you and fading further, temporarily adopting elements of their internal experience would be like.. worse??  Like you can’t even step away from the fact that it’s happening and your consciousnesses are now briefly merged to a degree, you basically are dying with them in spirit as they pass away a second time from your soul entirely consuming theirs, hearing their last thoughts as they pass away, feeling the emotions they feel as they die and become absorbed into your own soul (all whilst you’re probably having severe physical health issues from the magic and etc.).. just seems.. Bad… 

But I guess I could see someone impulsively deciding to do this out of weird desperation despite it basically being pointless suffering for a few days only to have the consciousness and personality and etc. of the loved one as they know it STILL be entirely lost after all the effort anyway. I accidentally tend to ignore the emotional side of things and the fact that people don’t always act rationally (the biggest area where I think my own personality and mental illness based emotional deficits kind of limit me when worldbuilding, I always forget to think about stuff like romance or attachments to others or feelings about people making you act in not entirely logical ways and how that could affect magic/the world/etc, since that’s so entirely removed from anything I could ever personally experience lmao) , so given that, it’s definitely possible someone somewhere has done this in the  millions of  years that conscious living beings have been in Nanyevimi. Not all people would use soul magic reasonably or be calm and aware of all possible ways to magically solve a problem, especially after a loved one has just died or something. 

However, since someone has to be high level in soul magics to do any absorbing to begin with, I still think it would be likely they would find a better solution. There ARE many cases of loved ones dying and people using soul magic to trap their soul into an inanimate object temporarily until they can find another host for the soul, then like, going out and murdering someone to use their body to put the soul of their loved one in so they can live on or etc. etc. But this is still limited by the fact that, high level soul magics like this are very inaccessible to a majority of the population, and you’d also be taking a huge risk, you could easily fracture or damage your loved one’s soul during this process, leading to a lot of situations like the super common trope of “i did some weird magic shit to bring someone I love back to life and they’re not totally the same any more/I wish i hadn’t have done it due to the consequences/They don’t remember me anymore/They’re a monster/They’re in so much pain i hate seeing them this way it isn’t worth it/etc” . 

It can definitely work fine, it would just be highly uncommon to face no complications lol. This is something people do with themselves a lot too, though likely if you’re able to do soul magics you’d also be advanced enough to find an efficient way to keep your own body immortal, some people do practice regularly jumping from body to body when their old one dies, constantly taking on different identities and etc (especially people who have lived thousands of years and maybe just want to , ~~spice things up~~  by living in various bodies, though the same thing could be more easily achieved through just keeping one immortal body and regularly using heavy shape-shifting, I could still see someone deciding to exclusively take various living unaltered bodies for The Authenticity or something lol ). I would say body jumping or finding new forms for your soul/the soul of a loved one to inhabit would be a  more common tactic of soul/life preservation than like, trying to just merge their soul with your own. 

I guess a way the soul merging with a loved one COULD work is if you timed it exactly right , like how I mentioned that if you die before fully absorbing the souls you’re attempting to absorb, it can lead to being alive yet permanently trapped in a strange partially combined state?? So I guess that would be possible, to like make your physical body die somewhere halfway into the process and hope you get the desired result and then jump that soul into a new body in your new combined form… However there’s still so much that could go wrong, it would be impossibly rare to actually time correctly and get the intended result of your souls now existing as one bigger soul split evenly between the both of you with 100% of each soul still fairly in tact (as opposed to the more likely options, loosing parts of yourself or parts of them, destroying both of your souls entirely, etc. Especially if you’re the only one in the pair that can use soul magics, if something goes horribly wrong during the process with YOUR soul, you could easily trap them in a situation they don’t have the skill to get out of, so now they’re like traumatized that you destroyed yourself trying to save them and on top of that, stuck in some shitty half fractured soul void state and unable to do anything to help themselves since you’re the only one that can do that type of magic and now you’re gone or so faint/broken that you can’t perform the task anymore, etc.) . 

Additionally idk how like, good that would be in the first place, most situations where two separate souls live in one body are cases where things have gone badly, situations that nobody would actively choose, since there becomes a lot of control issues in terms of being able to effectively pilot the body with two sets of impulses and moods and experiences happening at once, being able to use magic while technically two people of different levels are existing, even stuff like being able to think with two consciousnesses occurring simultaneously, etc. Two souls combined into one don’t take turns in a body, especially if partially merged, they’re effectively in a weird state of counting as one singular Main soul yet maintaining separate aspects, so it’s basically just a constant “one arm wants to do this and the other wants to do this” type situation, it’s not like one person can take charge and control it or you guys switch out, it’s more of a constant, everything at once always all at the same time.. which predictably, people are not very fond of. 

Even if they’re like, the love of your life or something, it would be incredibly difficult to co-pilot a body together. For the few freak cases where this has actually happened to people, usually even simple things are hard, like just feeding yourself or walking or doing anything really.  I guess theoretically you could train yourselves to be so incredibly in sync that your impulses and thoughts and etc. are no longer as conflicting and you can operate mostly okay (maybe like how some conjoined twins are that share a body or etc.), but it would take a very very long time to get used to since you weren’t born that way and had previously existed separately, and additionally would likely still be dealing with the leftover health effects or consequences of that type of magic so.. idk?? It’s an option, but I’m not sure how satisfying it would be… especially if you ever fell out of love or started to dislike the person and then it’s just like.. lol well.. now you’re trapped in the same body?? so, whoops

Additionally, over time there is a natural tendency to merge anyway, even in the case of a big ‘’Soul Magic Gone Wrong horribly fractured  5 people trapped together at once into one big Main Soul most all of them being in an incomplete state’’ sort of thing, it would still gradually lean towards everyone else fading into whichever the strongest or most present soul is. Like if they’re all broken partial souls but one person has retained 75% of their soul and there are no big power level disparities that would tilt the balance otherwise,, that may be the main soul others integrate into. So even if you could manage piloting one body for a while, you’d still gradually merge into one another, inevitably loosing the unique consciousness of one of you (or in the rare case you’re fairly equal then perhaps you’d just combine into something like a new unique person that is a strong combination of both), it would just be over the course of  years, as opposed to all at once in a matter of a few days like in actual soul absorption. Maybe if you were really really skilled at soul magics and handling souls you could do things to delay this or etc., but any case where multiple presences are in one body at once will always lean towards complete absorption of some sort, it seems to just be a natural law of this sort of magic for whatever reason. 

And probably by a few years you would have long decided that two people living in the same body, despite loving each other or whatever, is extremely difficult and you’ve got to find someone with the skill to separate the both of you back into unique souls again,,, Which again would just lead back to ‘why did you even initiate absorbing them in the first place if you could have kept their soul separate and found another way to keep it alive, which would have saved you the trouble of merging and separating first’ .

But again, I could see it maybe being done impulsively, or in the rare case that someone somehow has high skill in soul magic yet is ignorant of all the effects or things you can do with it (perhaps someone using borrowed powers, or who is pretty reckless and doesn’t read up on their craft as well as they should since they think they can skate by with raw skill alone, etc. etc.), so when their loved one dies they panic and capture the soul and think “oh, I don’t have a safe place to store them until I find them a new body, I guess I can just put them in my own for now!!”,,  totally unaware that the second they do this they’re going to begin to irreversibly eat away the essence of their loved one.. that would probably add a whole extra layer of trauma to the usual awfulness of the soul absorption process lol.. Well I Was Trying To Just Do One Simple Thing  I Foolishly Thought Would Quickly Save Someone But Now I’m Crouched On The Floor In Pain Throwing Up Blood And Slowly Consuming Their Entire Soul Into Myself,, So Yes, My Day Is Just Fabulous Thanks For Asking. 

Like imagine seeing your loved one die, rushing into the situation to extract their soul to save them before they fade from their body,  thinking you’ll just store them inside of you for safe keeping until you’re out of a dangerous situation, only to a few minutes later collapse in extreme physical pain and start hearing them speaking from inside your own mind about how they feel weak and like they’re fading away, eventually after a few hours your just laying there hiding in a bush you dragged yourself to or something in so much pain you can’t move, and you can’t even hear their consciousness anymore, you know you did something wrong but your not sure what, but you think you killed them, or something like that.. but hey! you feel a little bit stronger! Almost like you’ve absorbed energy from an outside source or something! Hmm! That would be A Lot Of Bullshit to go through in a just a day or twolol.. this is why you read up extensively on magic before using it, especially not knowing what you’re doing when it comes to such extreme magics like soul magic is just, very very dangerous and potentially tragic.

Though if you don’t know what you’re doing, you may be more likely to die than actually absorb the soul, since like I think is mentioned in the broader magic post, you can’t really perform an action you don’t have the energy to do, and soul absorption is a sustained channel of energy over the course of usually a days - weeks.. I would assume if someone did that accidentally, they may not have planned to exert that much magic ahead of time, so instead of involuntarily absorbing the loved one fully they could always just, both die during the process due to the one entirely depleting their magical energy and then some.. which if the idea is that the person doing it is inexperienced already, I think would be the most likely way for it to end up lol.

 People accidentally kill themselves ALL THE TIME due to not having the experience to predict when a feat of magic would be too much for them to try, or using it incorrectly , or etc. etc. There are too many non-magic species for it to be like, the number one cause of death in the realm but, definitely among the magic capable portion of the population, various complications involving self-inflicted/accidental/unforeseen consequence related/etc. magical injuries would be the number one reason people die lol. Out of the population of magic capable species all together as a whole, probably around a good 50% die by magical means, mostly through accidents. If you don’t even know enough about soul magic to know that when you try to put a soul inside yourself you’ll likely start to absorb it (unless it’s done in a special way like in the case of temporary possessions or etc.), then you probably don’t know enough to pull it off in general, and rather than the despair of accidentally killing someone you thought you saved, it’d be more likely you’d just like, drop dead from not being equipped to handle the spell you just unknowingly set in motion. 

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As for sacrifice, you couldn’t always sacrifice yourself necessarily, since it’s essentially ‘the strongest soul is the one that merges with the Main Soul’ (which is usually hard to calculate due to how vague of a concept all this ‘soul’ stuff is anyway, but can be decently estimated.. sometimes).  So if you’re like, a jhevona (humanoid demon) skilled in soul magics and they’re a fairly unskilled average elf or something. They die, and you decide you’re going to sacrifice yourself, by putting their soul in your body so they can have it instead, no matter what you WANTED to happen (their soul piloting your body instead of you), you would inevitably just absorb them into your own soul because your life force is the stronger one. However,  if your soul is the weaker one then you probably could, since even if you initiated the soul absorption process it’s likely (even if they didn’t want this to happen), your weaker soul would end up being the one absorbed. Though I would wonder a lot about the trauma of putting them through that lol, they died and came back to life just to know that they only have a few days of dialogue with you before you fade away and merge with their main soul permanently, and then they resume life living literally in YOUR BODY, piloting theform of their dead loved one that they’ve just consumed into themselves, unable to escape reminders of the fact that you’re gone, unless they shape shift or find another body, which if they’re not skilled in soul magic and would be unable to do that, then you’ve kind of trapped them. 

They’d probably at the least be annoyed with you after the fact that you initiated the soul absorption process on them, knowing that they’re going to be the one ending up absorbing you, in the two or so days that you’d still exist enough to chat with them you’d probably get a lot of lectures after their initial shock and acceptance of what’s inevitably going to happen. If they were skilled in soul magics they could probably reverse what you did in the first few minutes before it could take effect (maybe you could fight back and forth for a while lmao, one initiating the soul absorption process and the other immediately stopping it, which would be Comedy TV Show Funney Hee Hee Ha Ha until one of your souls breaks into pieces or one of you just drops dead), however if they couldn’t do soul magic they’d just kind of have to.. chill.. nothing to do but wait around until they absorb you into themselves kind of against their will.

 You could possibly give your body to someone to use in a much easier way if there was a third person involved, though it wouldn’t really utilize soul absorption. You could kill yourself right after your loved one dies and have the third person take the soul of your loved one and put them in your body, so they would have a living form (since after you die you wouldn’t be able to transfer them yourself). Though this would really only make sense if, in this case, there are no applicable bodies/forms around anywhere close enough to get to, and your loved one’s body has been entirely destroyed by whatever killed them, thus in the group of the three of you, there are three accessible souls, yet only two currently utilizable bodies, yours and this third person. So you let your soul fade away, and then your loved one’s soul gets to keep your body.   But again I feel like it’d be very situational.. 

The biggest barrier for people not being able to do stuff like this is just, the fact that soul magics on this level are very rare and extremely difficult and risky to pull off, but it’s kind of like, once you’re someone who’s already high level in soul magics, your possible solutions to the situation would expand to the point that you wouldn’t need to do stuff like this? Unless it was a deliberate choice or mistake on your part. But kind of like, with the above, you wouldn’t HAVE to kill yourself to give them your body, if you had the skill you could maintain them trapped in an animal or even an inanimate object or something until you find them another body. And if their body is still fine, you could just use healing magic to heal their body, then place them back into their own body. Though I guess maybe if you were fairly low skill, and their body had been entirely destroyed beyond repair, but you would still need a third person to do the transfer after your body has died, so either that person would probably be skilled enough to help you find another solution, or like… not to be morbid but uh,, you could kill them and put your loved one in their body lol,, instead of just having them help you kill yourself and etc… If I was the third person in the above situation (especially if I was just some random dude that wasn’t really important to the other two people) and the High Level Soul Mage started to look at me right after their loved one just died I would probably… run away as fast as possible or get prepared in a fighting stance…. you know they’re about to kill you and take your body as a vessel to save the other person lmao

But! maybe in the case where YOU don’t know soul magics but your loved one does, and their body is completely destroyed, if they were still existing outside of a body temporarily but there weren’t any possible options around for them to hop into, knowing that if they’re out of an acceptable vessel for too long they’d entirely fade away, you could offer to expel your soul from your own body so they can then take your form and live on. But also I guess if they know soul magics they’d probably try to find a way to save you after the fact, either decline the gift of your body entirely or accept it and take your form but then capture your soul as it leaves and like.. seal it into a rock or something to carry it around with them while they desperately run around trying to find some living thing to murder so they can place you into a more applicable form before they’re no longer able to sustain you within the rock lol.   If they found you a body maybe they could eventually switch you both back (instead of them just piloting your body from now on and you having to be some random graveyard body). That’s probably the most plausible situation for sacrifice, where the person doing the sacrificing is the one who DOESN’T have the soul magic skill and is merely offering themselves as a vessel for someone who does,  etc etc etc,  but there are endless hypothetical scenarios, all of which are complicated and dangerous lol

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As for the cult thing, yeah there are already a decent handful of cults that are basically just schemes for people to gather souls, idk if you read much about the Avirre’thel species (basically vampires) when I post about them, but that’s why people are always suspicious when things like the situation with the Avan and their ‘’god’’ happen (basically one of the groups of the Avirre’thel like, secluded themselves in caves and devotes all their time to the worship of a certain ancient demon named Yvteii). Since even in vampiric culture, where it’s extremely acceptable to make deals with jhevona (demons) and is one of the few cultures in Nanyevimi that doesn’t view them as some frightening other and actually adapts them fully into their society, even they are still suspicious when it comes to ancient demons, especially ancient demons having relationships with or followings among other less all powerful living beings..

 People who have the ability to do so and the moral compass to allow it will do anything to get souls, since it’s such an easy way to access more power and grow your strength, and with how scattered and isolated the supernatural realm can be sometimes, it’s uncomfortably simple for someone, especially who’s an advanced magic user, to like, show up in a random group of isolated people living in a forest and help them and perform a few ‘’miracles’’ (just regular high level magic, but maybe a type these people haven’t seen before, are too isolated to know of, etc.) for them, convince them to basically take you on as kind of a cultish religion leader and regularly reap souls from them. There have been many religious figures and etc. in the past that were just high level mages or ancient demons putting on a few fancy shows of magic for an otherwise magically ignorant group of isolated people, so they can basically just trick the people into believing in them and then make up some excuse for the people to give them soul pieces, or sacrifice whole souls, etc. 

Kind of like in those weird like, resource management type games where you can upgrade certain resources to gradually accumulate in the background whilst you do other stuff, some ancient jhevona or other beings will have like, 10 or 20 various cults lined up scattered in different places all across the realm who are regularly sacrificing to them or making deals with them and etc., giving them a steady income of power growth, new souls coming in monthly or weekly or whatever. Though, this usually gets old pretty quick since really the only groups you can trick into stuff like this are non-magical groups (since anyone in a culture that regularly practices magic would at the very least know to not give part of your soul to people or etc. and would be suspicious of any outside being coming and asking for sacrifices, even if they tried to be tricky and didn’t outright say “give me some of your soul”, and would also not be able to be wooed by Fancy Magic Tricks and Seeming Miracles, since they’d just be like “uhhh, that’s just normal magic” lol), and non magic groups typically have much weaker souls and shorter lifespans, which means inevitably your cult would die out and you’d have to go start a new one every few hundred years or so probably, and even then, it’s a lot of work for mostly weak souls that don’t amount to much gain when you’re already an immortal nearly all-powerful being lol. 

Soul harvesting cults are usually seen as like, a Baby Beginner Ancient Powerful Being sort of activity, since once you’ve been alive for like 15,000+ years you’re going to get tired of keeping up with all of them. It’s similar to how many ancient demons in their earlier years when they were just starting to get super powerful would do stuff like, shapeshift and become world leaders or etc. (the whole ‘all of these important historical figures are actually the same person!’ conspiracy except like.. actually true and done with magic lol), but then eventually you just get funcking tired of changing your entire identity every few hundred years and going through the same boring political exchanges to become royalty or lead an army or something when people seemingly never change and you’re just pulling the same nonsense but with a different face, etc. The cults and recognition that most powerful beings have are usually not ones they want or recognize, since once you’ve been that way for so long you usually just seclude yourself in a mountain somewhere.*(1) Because you’re basically the closest thing to an all powerful god being, no matter how much you try to hide, people will always attempt to find you and hunt you down and summon you to ask you for favors or powers or etc, and may even start a cult around you or consider you a god or etc, but usually at that point you want nothing to do with it. Voluntary cults are usually something powerful beings like ancient jhevona and etc. will grow out of pretty fast lol. 

So yeah, cults usually get old after a while, since if you have the power to start stuff like that in the first place, you probably have much better things to be doing than tricking random small villages into thinking you’re a god just so you can get a soul every few weeks or so. Many powerful beings would rather go for fewer more powerful souls, than larger amount of weaker ones (killing a few high level mages and absorbing their souls could be equivalent to a years worth of soul sacrifices from a tiny human farming village), have another better way of growing power, or are at the point where they don’t even feel they need to grow power anymore at all since it makes little difference. 

 BUT ANYWAY..  

In a way more similar to what is mentioned above, yeah I could also see it being a thing where you maybe use your ‘’close’’ (in “” since if one side isn’t being authentic then is it really ‘’close’’??)  relationships with people to trick them into willingly letting you have their soul after death, then secretly setting up situations that will kill them, and ‘’’consensually’’’ attaining their soul.  You could probably garner some sort of cult following using love and affection to manipulate people into giving souls to you, which I guess to me seems like too much effort like.. just be a plain ass serial killer then, what is the point in emotionally manipulating people ahead of time if you’re going to murder them anyway lol, but I guess some (incredibly shitty) personality types could get an extra kick out of that, or maybe the small strings of morality they have left in them require them to get ‘’consent’’ of some form first, even if under the context it’s not true consent and doesn’t matter, it could still help them rationalize their actions to themselves or something.

 But yeah.. soul cult stuff is rare simply due to the inaccessibility and rarity of soul magic in the first place, but as you can imagine, cults and other gimmicks to attain souls  can be pretty trendy among the tiny group of people who can actually gather them for absorption (at least for a while, until they get over that phase in their life lol). I could see a recently dead ‘’loved one’’ culty soul scheme being a thing. 

Hmm, but yeah lol, good questions! There are a lot of different ways things like that can go, and you always have time limits and ability limitations and amount of magic you can expend and the general risk and instability of magic (especially higher level magics) working hard against you, so I feel like many people would not try things like this in the first place, either due to their knowledge of a better solution, or just due to the risk (like maybe they’d rather their loved one just rest in peace rather than taking the huge risk of damaging the persons soul or condemning them to extra suffering and trauma or etc. due to unpredictable magic), but there are certainly scenarios where it may be applicable, or done as a matter of personal choice (especially in unhealthily dependent and abusive relationships, choosing to absorb the other person despite there being other ways to manage their soul after death may be plausible, definitely if you’ve just ‘’accidentally’’  killed them and can delude yourself into thinking it’s somehow noble or meaningful to keep them as a part of yourself or something gross shitty like that,, or just two well meaning but confused people who don’t know enough to understand there’s better options both agreeing to let one absorb the other since they think there’s not a better way, or perhaps misunderstand what actually happens (maybe they falsely believe you can keep someone around forever by absorbing them,etc)) , or out of desperation/lack of knowledge/lack of skill/emotional impulse/etc. Same with the sacrifice thing, though there may be better ways to go about it, if the person has the skill and is willing to take the risks, there are definitely situations where things could play out that way for whatever reason. Both are plausible applications of magic which I hadn’t considered until now!! 

 - 

 [ side note 1: I put this down here since it wasn’t really as related to the rest of the text and didn’t fit in between those paragraphs  lol

The typical (very broadly generalized/simplified ) life cycle for an ancient demon (which is basically just a term for an extremely world alteringly powerful being, they don’t actually have to be demons/jhevona, it’s more of just a title at this point than a true descriptor)  is usually like:

start off as totally regular person who trains extensively and studies magic  

>>>

either work your way up normally with an enchanting business or do shady shit like killing people and absorbing their souls in order to grow your power and exceed your natural magical limitations (though you’ve got to have a very driven or otherwise power hungry personality to be motivated to do this in the first place, to go literally like 10,000+ years gaining your power without ever stopping or changing your goals (or dying in magical accidents).. like it usually takes 10,000 - 15,000 years to get powerful enough to even be close to being considered an “ancient demon” so like.. you’ve got to really be a purpose driven person) 

>>> 

wow now you’re strong enough to start cults and tamper in world affairs and etc! lose your moral compass for about 100 - 500 years while you go through your baby power trip phase and abuse your abilities 

>>>

 become disillusioned with life because you feel like you’ve seen everything before and done everything and have no challenges left to conquer and kill yourself with magic OR turn away from the world and focus on a new challenge (you’re also probably at the point now where, whether you welcome this or not, people are trying to hunt you down to ask for favors and power, and some see you as a god (or a threat), so you have to hide from them now)  

>>>

 find a hiding spot to just bunker down in , create your own realm or something, and live your your days entirely detached from reality and the rest of humanity focusing on whatever your new goal or interest is (you’re also probably powerful enough at this point to need to abandon your physical form, or constantly shapeshift, so you don’t have to keep up healing magic from your body destroying itself from the inside out daily because your energy is too powerful to be kept in an organic form)

>> >

idk just do this until you get bored, either find something else to do or just die by your own magic whenever you feel you’ve accomplished enough

This is usually why the exact personality profile of pretty much every ancient demon alive right now is like, “weird isolated nerd hiding in an ancient cave somewhere wholly and completely focused on some obscure task like unraveling the true nature of magic” or etc. Most any other type of person burns out after a while and just chooses to die (people who were only in it for power or glory with no higher motivation, people who were fools and died using their powers irresponsibly, people who got too involved with the world and it ended up being their demise,people who found it too hard and quit growing their power, etc.), it’s really just the very focused scientist types who have the motivation and reason to keep going, since you never run out of new material to study and things to be interested in if you’re the type of person who really wants to understand the nature of the entire world and is easily interested in everything etc. 

Of course this doesn’t mean many of them aren’t also like, completely weird as hell, or extreme power hungry narcissistic freaks who revel in their power over others and etc lmao.. You don’t live like..25,000+ years without developing a bit of an… “interesting” personalty. All of the 40 or so ancient jhevona currently known to exist are like.. absolutely ridiculous people in some way or another lol (at least in the few interactions they’ve had with the outside world, some are way more hidden than others, but none of them show themselves very often enough for anyone to know what their personality is truly like, but even based on one or two occurrences, it’s enough for people to be like “What the hell is like.. wrong with this person.. have they been living alone in a cave for 8,000 years or something?” (Yes, Actually.. They Have)). But just that at their CORE, regardless of what other traits they have, pretty much all of them have some element of 'extremely curious and highly motivated hermit scientist’ type in their personality. You don’t live 28,000+ years driven by a very shallow or single purpose, it usually tends to be people who have a lot of questions they want to answer or a lot of things they want to do (usually creating or discovering something, things that can be ongoing rather than one time goals), since that can be something you keep up for many many lifetimes without loosing motivation or becoming bored/disinterested. 

The act of being an ancient jhevona tends to favor the curious problem-solving scholar types, as even after thousands of years they can still find new issues to tackle, new interests to explore, new theories and challenges to unravel, etc. Even if their other traits vary wildly and many of them are legit like… downright insufferable on a level that only an ancient nearly all-powerful immortal being could be, they AT LEAST usually all have that trait in common. 

But anyway, so yeah like.. usually after a while they just dedicate themselves to some problem or area of study or something and hole away in a cave or other isolated place to experiment and think about things in peace, far away from the rest of the outside world. Though starting cults can be initially promising for them, pretty much any ancient jehvona who’s been around more than 16,000 years has passed that point in their life and is already in the 'Okay I’ll Just Be A Nerd Hermit Then I Guess’ phase where they become increasingly more obscure and detached enough that they couldn’t be bothered to maintain a cult presence or etc. ] 

BUT entirely off topic rambling about demons aside, thanks for the question!!

We Are In The Underworld And We Haven’t Figured It Out Yet

https://medium.com/@schoolofmyth/we-are-in-the-underworld-and-we-havent-figured-it-out-yet-5d48d2c988aa 

As both a mythologist and wilderness rites-of-passage guide I am frequently asked to comment on climate change, collapsing stories, and what on earth to say to our kids about the future. I am no kind of pundit, so choose my words sparingly and carefully. What follows is a few thoughts.

***

The real horn being blown at this moment is one some of us simply cannot hear. Oh, we see — the endless television clips of crashing icebergs, emaciated polar bears, and a hand-wringing David Attenborough — but I don’t think we necessarily hear.

Climate change isn’t a case to be made, it’s a sound to be heard.

It’s really hearing something that brings the consequence with it — “I hear you.” We know that sensation, when it happens the whole world deepens. If we really heard what is happening around us it’s possible some of it may stop. From a mythic perspective, seeing is often a form of identifying, but hearing is the locating of a much more personal message. Hearing creates growing, uncomfortable discernment. Things get accountable.

I worry I have been looking but not hearing.

When I hear, I detect what is being disclosed specifically to me at this moment of shudderation and loss. What is being called forth? Whatever it is, I won’t likely appreciate it.

We remember that the greatest seers, the great storytellers, the greatest visionaries are so often blind. Listening is the thing.

In ancient Greece, if you needed wisdom greater than human you went to the market square of Pharae in Achaea and created libation for Hermes, god of communication, messages, storytelling. There stood a statue of the bearded god. After burning incense, lighting the oil lamp, and leaving coin on the right of the deity, you whispered your question in its ear. Once complete, you swiftly turned and left the sacred area with your hands over your ears. Once out, you removed your hands, and the very first words you heard were Hermes speaking back to you. You curated these insights into your heart, pondered and then acted on them.

You didn’t see Hermes, you heard Hermes. You listened.

It’s said that in ancient Greece the deaf were shunned through their supposed lack of capacity to hear the gods. That was considered dangerous.

Isn’t it interesting that the enquirer to Hermes kept their ears blocked till they were out of the market square, so as not to be assailed by idle, above-world chatter and think it divine? I wonder if we may be asking the question to Hermes but removing our hands too early.

As a storyteller I have noticed when an audience is profoundly absorbing the import of a story, they close their eyes to do so. It deepens the encounter. Anyway, onto my main thought:

I think we are in the Underworld and haven’t figured it out yet. Both inside and outside us.

The strange thing about the Underworld is that it can look an awful lot like this one. It’s not situated in those esoteric graphs and spiritual maps we study, it’s situated as a lived experience.

I recently saw a mist suddenly descend on my garden, it just rolled in out of nowhere. Everything changed, just like that. Very quickly all appeared different: no shrubs, no apple trees, it was a foreign landscape. The dead felt usefully closer, the silence deeper. In just a moment, the Underworld seemed present, as an atmosphere rather than concept, a tangible, seasonal shift not a distant idea.

This world can be Otherworld, Underworld, heavenly, hellish and all points in between. It can still be Arcadia, Camelot, Eden almost. That’s why it’s confusing. We still get to go on holiday, drink wine, watch beautiful sunsets. We still pay insurance and kids still go to college. But there is something happening. An unravelling. A collapsing, both tacit and immense in scale.

We are frightened and we do not know what will happen next.

And into that fraught zone drifts quite naturally the Underworld. This is not the dayworld, this is the nightworld we are entering. It’s not a mistake or aberration, it is fitting with the times.

But we are still using dayworld words. This is why so little works.

When we move into Underworld time, mythically the first thing to go is often the lights. This is a shadowed or even pitch-black zone of encounter. Nothing is how it seems on the surface of things. We have to get good with our ears. So to repeat, our eyes alert us to the wider situation, but it’s our ears that alert us to the personal, the particular, the micro in the macro. This tends to be when the heart is alerted.

And there’s just more of the Underworld about. Its tactile, tangible attributes. We have Penthos (Grief),Curae (Anxiety) and Phobus (Fear), those gatekeepers of the place roving ever more readily amongst us. Either chronic or acute, acknowledged or not, they are present at our table. So what happens when the underneath, the chthonic, the shadowed material starts to become more and more visible in our lives?

We start to fess up.

The Underworld is a place where we admit our red right hand. We give up the apotropaic.

An apotropaic act is when you ritually ward off evil. When you claim innocence unduly you are attempting a similar, unseemly act. Keeping your hands clean. So we could entertain our own hypocrisies for a while. That would be suitably sobering. When we start to remove the scaffold of smoke and mirrors propping up our lives, what is left? That is part of an Underworld etiquette.

I also have to say something deeply unfashionable: it is not relentless self-absorption that makes us realise our interior mess is directly mirrored outside ourselves. That’s not vanity, that’s attention. It’s not hubris, it’s horrifying clarity. If you don’t attend to your soul’s vitality with intent, then suppressed it’ll run you ragged. They are not above catastrophe to get your attention.

Soul seems more dangerous to talk about than sex, violence, death or money these days.

As many nerve endings as there are in a body, are the messages attempting to issue forth between place, animal and person in regards to climate change. I think we should forget the rest and attend to ours. Staggering spiritual repair is called for. It is not just those bad white men in power that did this. We all did.

I believe something will crawl back out of the Underworld. It will. It always does. But it may not be us.

The Underworld chews up soundbites, gnaws on the feeble marrow of platitude, pummels certainty or sweeping predictions into the greasy darkness of the cave to gobble later.

The Underworld speaks out of both sides of its mouth.

So being that’s where I think we are, I suggest we should develop a little etiquette. Hold a little paradox, to speak out of both sides of our mouths.

In the Underworld, even a spirit takes on more than one form.

In Roman such spirits were called — di manes, or in Greek — theoi cthonioi. One being can have several bodies, all communicating things a little different. The one fixed position erupts into the polyphonic many. A stuck position, a one sided position, is child’s play where we’re headed.

So with those standpoints vivid in mind, I’m going to ask us to hold two, seemingly contrary positions at the same time. That we could deepen into both.

1. Stop Saying That The Earth Is Doomed

You may be doomed, I may be doomed, the earth not so much.

And anyway, do you have any idea how offensive that is to the gods? To any amount of offended magics? Especially to your children? To the perpetual and ongoing miraculous? In the Underworld, such grand protestations reveal a lack of subtlety. Even hubris.

And who are we, with our unique divinatory access, that we seem to have information withheld from everything else in all time and space. And now, now we are suddenly cleaving to the “facts” of the matter? Facts don’t have the story. They have no grease to the wheel, they are often moribund, awkward clumps of information that can actually conceal truth, not promote it.

I’m not even asking for hope or despair, I’m suggesting responsiveness to wonder. To entertain possibility. And to deepen.

Cut out the titillation of extinction unless we are really are prepared to be appropriately stupefied with loss. To stop trafficking in it just to mainline a little temporary deep feeling into our veins as we post the latest Ted Talk on social media. It doesn’t mean it’s not true, doesn’t mean that rivers, deserts and ice floes don’t daily communicate their flogged and exhausted missive, but there’s an odd twisted eroticism, a Western Thanatos that always comes with excessive privilege. And let’s be clear, most of us reading this are excessively privileged. I think some of us are getting off on this. That it-all-will-end assists some poignancy to a life deprived of useful hardships. Not ever knowing appropriate sacrifice is not a victory, it’s a sedative.

But when we prematurely claim doom we have walked out of the movie fifteen minutes early, and we posit dominion over the miraculous. We could weave our grief to something more powerful than that. Possibility.

Let the buck stop with you. Where is your self-esteem if you claim the world is doomed with you still kicking in it? How can that be? What are you, chopped liver? Is that really your last word on that matter? I’m not suggesting a Hercules complex land on your shoulders, but if ever you longed for a call to action this is the moment. And, at the very same time:

2. Approaching The Truth That Things End

Dancing on the very same spear tip, we accept our very human response to things ending. We don’t like it. We loathe it. The good stuff at least. Though it is a historical inevitability, a biological place-holder, could we start to explore the thought that earth may appropriately proceed without us? Without our frantically curated shape? Could our footprints become pollen that swirl up for a moment and then are gone? I’m not suggesting we are anything but pulverised with sorrow with the realisation, and our part in its hastening, but I persist.

I’m offering no spiritual platitudes, no lofty overview, but for once we stop our wrestle with god and feel deeply into the wreckage of appropriate endings.

That even, or especially such catastrophic loss requires the most exquisite display for the love we did not know how deeply we loved till we knew it was leaving.

I think even to operate for a second in the Underworld without being annihilated we have to operate from both wonder and grief, at absolutely the same time. One does not cancel the other out, it is the very tension of the love-tangle that makes us, possibly, a true human being.

Notice I said approaching, not accepting the truth that things end. That’s to swift a move, too fraudulent, too counterfeit, too plastic. Approaching is devastation enough.

This terrible, noble counterweight is what we are getting taught. But it doesn’t end there.

There in that very contrariness something gets forged: something that is neither-this-nor-that, a deepening, the blue feather in the magpie’s tale, the Hermian move to excruciating brilliance through the torment of paradox, the leap of dark consciousness that we, in the name of culture, are being asked to make. The thunderbolt that simultaneously destroys and creates.

These are grand turns of phrase I’m using but I don’t apologise. You’ve been in love once or twice, you know what I’m banging on about.

I once heard that to become a sovereign of Ireland you had to attach a chariot to two wild horses. One would lurch one way, one the other. You revealed your spiritual maturity and general readiness for the task by so harnessing the tension of both that a third way forward revealed itself. The holy strain of both impulses created the royal road to Tara. A road that a culture could process down. I’m talking about something like that. That’s Underworld character.

And such sovereigns were not defined by what they ransacked, what they conquered, but how they regulated their desire, how they attended to the woes and ambitions of their steeds for a third way to reveal itself. Under great pressure and with immense skill.

The nightworld is where we are. I say it. I say it till we may hear it.

And in that darkness, we remember what we love the most.

That itself is the candle.

Copyright Martin Shaw 2019

Martin Shaw is a writer, mythologist and teacher. Having led the Oral Tradition and Living Myth courses at Stanford University, Dr Shaw leads the Westcountry school of myth in the UK. An award winning author, recent books include The Night Wages, Wolf Milk, Courting the Dawn:Poems of Lorca, and a conversation and essay on Ai WeiWei, Myth in Real Time.

www.drmartinshaw.com

www.cistamystica.com

www.schoolofmyth.com

Unashamed (Naked)

It started with a prayer request. My friend asked me over the weekend to send her my prayer requests because she was going to early morning prayer / sebyuk gido for three days. “But think about it,” she said. “Take your time and write them to me.”

I did take my time to think about them. Some of the prayer requests were obvious - the things that worry me on most days: my job search, my upcoming licensing exam, and something else that’s private. But when I took the time and space to listen, almost as if I was praying for what I want to ask prayer for, there was another request that surfaced from the depths of my heart:

“I want to be the version of Josie that exists when it’s just Josie & God,” I wrote to her. “And I need God’s help to find that version again.”

You’ve seen me write about it so many times on this blog. On most days, I felt lost and in the eye of a confusing storm. Time with people, whether virtually or in the flesh, was both encouraging and complicated. Every time I shared about my life and someone suggested the slightest “should,” I would feel guilty and confused, especially when the “should”s were in conflict with each other. Without an anchor for my identity, I found myself reverting to my old habits of adjusting my personality to please or mirror the person in front of me. When I lose my grip on who God created me to be, I become a disembodied spirit, frightened of the void and hungering for a model to morph into.

You may see me stressing out so much about my identity and think “Wow, that’s quite the self-centered project.” But I disagree. To me, being who God created me to be is exactly how I glorify Him and live out my calling on this earth. It is how I know that I am not making myself in the image of other idols (other people, the dominant culture, whatever identity/personality that will get me worldly rewards or the love of people). I believe that God is an exquisitely intentional God, who made all of us distinct with a purpose. It deeply excites me when a group of believers, rather than morphing into the same basic Christian template, boldly bring their unique personalities and gifts and work together for His Kingdom purposes. It’s a similar excitement to the moment you see an ensemble of distinct and often conflicting personalities in action movies or shonen manga/anime unite together to defeat an impossible enemy. SASAGEYO!!

This is why it bothers me on a spiritual level when I feel out of touch with myself. It is a sign to me that I am hoping for something else to give me the love that I yearn for. It is a sign to me that, rather than living in the love of God, which frees me and empowers me to be who God created me to be, I am living under the fear of man. It is a sign to me, that, rather than charging forward in boldness for His kingdom, I am tied up by the snares of the enemy. 

I sent my friend this prayer request (thank you, by the way for your labor in prayer!) and began praying into this myself. I think it helped that I am catsitting/housesitting somewhere else for the week. Though it was exhausting to live out of two apartments and bring things back and forth constantly from one place to another, it felt like a mini retreat. A different environment away from my usual distractions and fertile ground for the renewing of my mind. 

I wanted to end the cycle of being the Josie that other people want me to be, and even the Josie that I am trying to find through my own fevered analysis of my life. I wanted to be the Josie that God *c r e a t e d* me to be. I wanted to be the Josie that He had in mind when He knit me in my mother’s womb. The Josie that He would delight in. I want that so much - for Him to be delighted. To be pleased. I want to make His heart fill with joy because I am living out the life that He intended - not the life that anyone else on earth wants for me. 

***

After studying all day for the licensing exam, I made a trip back to my apartment to move some furniture for the contractors tomorrow. I took the opportunity to restock on food supplies and take a shower in my own bathroom. It was while I was taking a shower that the feeling hit me. “This is it!” I wanted to squeal. “This is the most divine version of myself!” If the past couple of months felt like a roulette of personalities, I felt like I had suddenly chanced upon the right one. The jackpot. And I desperately wanted to write the feeling down, right then and there, because I didn’t know when the roulette would start and the feeling would disappear again. (In reality, what ended up happening was I jotted some notes down as soon as I got out of the shower, but had to walk all the way back to the cat apartment, fed the cats, make some dinner, and then eat dinner before I had the chance to actually sit down and write this post). 

I still can’t quite describe what it felt like. The first word that came to mind was creative. The therapist part of me cried, “Hey, that’s not a feeling word!” But I don’t know how else to describe it right now - I know I’m the best version of myself when I feel deeply creative. It’s a different experience from the creativity that comes from a brainstorm (the creativity of a million different ideas exploding in connected branches and fracturing in a million different directions). It’s the opposite of the feeling I get when I write most of the time (accompanied by the voice that says “NO! NO! THIS IS TRASH!” or “YOU’RE A BAD PERSON”). It’s also an experience that’s distinct from the moments I’m home alone in my thoughts, wandering through the mists in a restful state. I think... the feeling I’m trying to describe is the opposite of shame. It’s funnily appropriate that I had the feeling when I was in the shower because we describe our perfect relationship with God and one another before the Fall in terms of nakedness. But I think that’s how I felt, even when I was fully clothed and walking down Locust St. back to my friend’s apartment. I felt so exquisitely connected to everything: the twilight sky, the people I passed on the street, my own thoughts and ideas, the people who genuinely love me, to God... The veil of shame between me and everything around me had been lifted, and I didn’t realize there was always something mitigating my interactions with the world until it was gone. I didn’t realize I was feeling the world through cloth until it was gone and I felt it on plain, bare skin. 

***

In this time of reconnection with myself, I also reconnected with the characters of my fantasy world, the world of the novel which will never be written. One of the characters is a traveling swordswoman with a “curse” - every cut she inflicts on her enemy cuts into her own flesh. She is able to mitigate the effects of the “curse” with a magic charm that reduces the ratio of harm, however. For example, if she severs the limb of her opponent, it will appear on her body as just a scratch where the cut was made, instead of her own limb falling off. Even so, this makes her economical with her strikes and she deals killing blows very sparingly. (And what happens if she needs to user her sword against an enemy but loses the magic charm? Dun dun dun...)

She came into my mind one day when I was thinking about empathy. Empathy, which I would loosely define as the ability to understand the feelings of experiences of another, comes in so many different forms. I have a lot of empathetic friends and they are all so different. I have friends whose empathy always results in action - they feel for me and get me a cup of tea as I’m crying about my dog dying; they feel for me and help me come up with a concrete plan as I’m a mess. I have friends whose empathy results in exactly the right encouragements I need to hear, almost as if God Himself was speaking to me - they rebuke lies and affirm truths that I cannot comprehend myself when I’m in the weeds. I even have friends whose empathy is not so feeling based but based in cognition and observation. They might not feel me, but in their own way, they understand, and honestly sometimes it’s really comforting to not have my feelings be amplified and felt by another but just thought about and responded to. 

My kind of empathy is absorption. My previous clinical supervisor said “You’re like a sponge.” Many times, I won’t know what to do, or even what to say (and many times I am envious of those who are able to mobilize into action). But if I am listening to you, I am not only processing the information you’re saying - I’m experiencing you. That is how I thought of this idea of a character hurting herself when she hurts other people... Even if they are her “enemy.” And how, in certain cases, she must grit her teeth and do it anyway, even though she knows so acutely that it is causing someone else pain. (I also wondered how it would affect her mental health to have to do this over and over... Hurt people and feel exactly or a small fraction of the pain you are causing them. Would you truly be able to numb yourself the way that other killers would?)

Empathy can lead to deeper connection, but it can also lead to pain - whether it’s by feeling the pain of another or being taken advantage of. There are times when people love the way you make them feel more than they love you (and treat you like trash when you stop making them feel good). I’ve learned that this will happen sometimes. But when I get lost, and when I forget, I only need to run back to God, who loves me not because of what I can do for him (what a laughable thought), but because of who He redeemed me to be. If anything, God knows the pain of empathy - He became a human and suffered the consequences for our sin so that we could be in unashamed (& naked) communion with him again. 

REN’S SEMBLANCE: EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION / EMPATHY

general information on empathy.

listen, i jump on semblances pretty quickly. i cannot remember when i first came up for mana manipulation with ren when i took him up properly eons ago, but it was after volume two or something. so i understand that a lot of my theories are liable to be eventually proven wrong and i do end up altering them accordingly. dudebroski, it does not really affect me a ton when i’m wrong, i either keep or don’t keep the fact, like i did with the assumption that ren was his given name and just kept it, because it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me to change it now. anyway—

grimm rely on negative emotions (more specifically fear) to sense other living beings, it’s hard for me to determine whether they go for animals because the only interaction i’ve seen might have been ooblek launching zwei at them through a rocket propelled thermos (don’t quote me on that, it might have just been white fang). in volume four we see that the shroud ren places over himself and is capable of throwing over other people makes them invisible to grimm (and confirming nora’s v3 allusions of his ninjaness/ which were further developed through his fucking naruto shoes). the effects washing over himself and others comes with it a notably more calm visage and the ability to function better under pressure. my automatic assumption when seeing this had to be some kind of empathic thing. it only came to me so fast because i’ve,, made an oc with the same ability when i was far younger but this made a lot of sense to me and i found it appealing?

i mean these posts are permanent things, a lot about ren is subject to change as i mish mash him with canon facts.

ren negates negative emotions.

in addition to this ren can also sense people through heavy emotions (tyrian’s bloodlust). he can also negate positive emotions, and push negative and positive emotions onto other people. also, in a non-combatative state, he absorbs and reflects the emotions surrounding him (ha, like a mirror, when will my reflection show who i am inside). i think about how lively and sassy ren was prior to the attack on kuroyuri and headcanon that his guarded and expressionless (volume 1 and 2 showing very little differentiation in his facial expressions/ i often joke that i can count how many times ren has smiled on one hand) expressions are due not only to trauma but the activation of his semblance. he is naturally good at keeping his composure, the ability to negate negative emotions also works passively, and has bled into his reactions and personality making him more calm and collected over time. it has also had a negative effect, making expressions of love and happiness very hard. because he can read emotions, even when he is not actively using his semblance he has a very accute bullshit detector, which made it very hard for him to trust jaune prior to volume two.

ren is afraid that he doesn’t have enough of a personality to avoid a kind of psychopathic nature, as he has at one point shown a lot of these traits, common even in small degrees. changing yourself to appease others is something he hates in himself.

it is a part of his personality to want to reflect and alter part of his image to either appease or better suit the situation at hand, or the person he’s communicating with. it stems from a subconscious need for harmony, or at the very least balance, which ties in with the thematics of ying and yang applied to his characterisation. ren was raised in such a way that he had to reflect an image to better suit the differing opinions and personalities surrounding him, making him flaky, and without a solid sense of self. he has been working on this prior to beacon, having nothing to hold him back anymore his notable lack of response is cautionary, he takes too long to figure out how to react to a situation and by the time he does it’s too late to do so. it frustrates him greatly, especially considering his father’s advice was to ‘act’. over time ren does develop the habit of replacing words with actions, built it into himself that he shouldn’t waste breath when not needed.

but ren struggles to tell how much of him is his semblance, and how much of his personality is actually his own. he has a lot of trouble locating a sense of self, and having a semblance like this one, which basically reads, reflects, and deflects the personalities and emotions (through absorption and active deflection of feeling) of those he surrounds himself with, making it difficult for ren to find and define himself. it gets easier the longer he stays in beacon and finds himself surrounded with people that will accept him regardless of his nature, which explains the gradual increase of expression over the course of the seasons (he’s even regaining his sass and sense of humour to the point of making jokes (A FUCKING PUN IN GRIMM ECLIPSE/ ROASTING JAUNE ABOUT HIS HOODIE IN V4). his lack of a personality during the beginning of beacon was as much a journey for him as it was for me trying to establish him.

my first post about the empathy semblance, as speculated immediately after kuroyuri was released.

skype convo speaking about the moral ambiguity concerning the dangers of ren’s emotional manipulation semblance.

because of this semblance, ren’s emotional intelligence has been skewed and altered. there are five parts to emotional intelligence:

SELF AWARENESS. “recognising internal feelings.” i’ve said this before but ren hates introspection so much. he actively avoids self reflection for fear or spiralling into doubt, anxiety, and depression.

MANAGING EMOTIONS. “finding ways to handle emotions that are appropriate for the situation.” ren used to reflect what people thought would be best of him, this has lead to (prior to beacon) the response to shut down his emotions instead of sorting through them like ordinary people would. it’s incredibly unhealthy. he doesn’t talk about his problems. ruby and jaune still aren’t aware why destroying the nuckelavee was so important to him because he just doesn’t talk.

MOTIVATION. “using self-control to channel emotions towards a goal.” this he does relatively well actually.

EMPATHY. “understanding the emotional perspective of other people.” ren finds it easier to focus on other people instead of his own relationships, which makes it hard to be an introvert and need occasional alone time, when alone time also makes him unhappy if indulged in for too long.

HANDLING RELATIONSHIPS. “using personal information and information about others to handle social relationships and to develop interpersonal skills.” he’s working on it.

a conversation i was having with joxxy that prompted me to write this post.

[10/04/2017 4:13:34 pm] NINΞ: he tries [10/04/2017 4:14:00 pm] NINΞ: at least i think he is [10/04/2017 4:14:31 pm] Joxxy: I mean it looks like he's trying [10/04/2017 4:15:25 pm] NINΞ: because by now he also has a good grasp on what is socially acceptable and accepted and what might be expected of a normal person [10/04/2017 4:15:37 pm] NINΞ: that empathy talk the other night really fucked me up too man

[10/04/2017 4:16:32 pm] NINΞ: i feel like some level of me doesn’t know my muse anymore [10/04/2017 4:16:58 pm] Joxxy: Hey maybe that's a good thing [10/04/2017 4:17:04 pm] Joxxy: It gives you more stuff to discover [10/04/2017 4:17:20 pm] Joxxy: Omg Ren purposely turning off his emotions and doing something totally dark [10/04/2017 4:17:27 pm] Joxxy: While his friends look on in shock [10/04/2017 4:17:43 pm] Joxxy: "You looked really freakin' terrifying just now. What happened???"

[11/04/2017 9:20:32 am] NINΞ: and i didn’t see that at first, but yeah, i am a fan of the idea of ren turning his emotions off and doing something dark [11/04/2017 9:21:34 am] Joxxy: I can see it getting to a point where Ren can't tell if his lack of emotions during a certain situation are under his control or if it's his semblance taking over [11/04/2017 9:23:29 am] NINΞ: yeah, and it can get out of control in the opposite way too, if he’s surrounded by a lot of people who are panicking, because he works as an emotional sponge as well, when he’s not actively using his semblance [11/04/2017 9:24:09 am] NINΞ: he can’t do it yet, but another layer to this semblance is that he can force more of an emotion onto someone else too [11/04/2017 9:26:09 am] Joxxy: Maybe he doesn't discover it at first because he thinks it's because of his dragon Faunus heritage smoke properties [11/04/2017 9:26:33 am] NINΞ: oh yeah [11/04/2017 9:26:49 am] NINΞ: i really need to cement the emotions for the smoke, they keep changing [11/04/2017 9:27:09 am] NINΞ: at the moment there’s four: happy, furious, nervous, aroused [11/04/2017 9:27:15 am] Joxxy: You could say it amplifies emotions where adrenaline or passion is involved [11/04/2017 9:27:26 am] NINΞ: ooooo nice [11/04/2017 9:28:39 am] Joxxy: Yeah scientifically speaking, adrenaline can correlate with emotions that have rapid heartbeats or a flushed face [11/04/2017 9:28:48 am] Joxxy: So anger could definitely be on there [11/04/2017 9:29:05 am] Joxxy: For happiness I guess it would be endorphins [11/04/2017 9:29:11 am] NINΞ: yeah, anger never leaves, because that was the primary reason i wanted the smoke

Jaxon Whittemore   ⚜   ???   ⚜   17   ⚜   The Ringleader   ⚜   ESTP

Not everyone has to like you…

He remembers the exact moment when perfection became so preeminently important to him; remembers the echo of the screen door as it slammed shut behind him and the evening air that prickled his cheeks as he let the tears fall. He was thirteen, and it was one of the last times he’d let himself indulge in such a shameful display of self-pity. It wasn’t that he stopped pitying himself - not in the least. It was merely that he understood the choice he was being given, as only an adolescent boy would; You can either get sad or you can get angry.

Anger won out. And with it, a kind of steely determination that drove everything he did. Before that night, he’d been an entirely different person - just a boy, as he liked to think of it. Just Jaxon Whittemore. He didn't know any Millers. No Gordon, no Margaret. Those names meant nothing to him. Until he learned they were his parents. His birth parents. The truth had been kept from him all along; until that fateful night when his adopted parents had finally confirmed what some lady had told him at a walk-in clinic earlier that day. He’ll never forget the guilt in his mother’s eyes - or the explosive argument that followed with his dad. It was a turning point; one that ripped him from the lap of luxury he’d grown up thinking was his birth right. Now, everyone who’d known the secret turned into people who’d been laughing at him behind closed doors all along. Jaxon was sure of it; and the more his own insecurities grew, the more he hated all the people who’d known the truth about him before he did.  

          {Winning isn’t everything... It’s the only thing.}

Life changed for him in highschool. Correction; he changed life in highschool. No one else could take credit for his shrewd rise up the social ranks, for the friends he made - and those he set aside. No one could take credit as he found the two sports in which he excelled; swimming and lacrosse - and became captain of both teams in the time in took most highschoolers to grudgingly pick up a single extracurricular. Athlete of the year three times over, and enough trophies in his room to blind a gold-digger. He’s not half bad on the academic spectrum either; never the top nerd, but juggling enough As and Bs to silence any jealous naysayers who’d love to think that he’s just a dumb jock.

And then in grade twelve, the tables turned again. Because a nobody by the name of Scott McCall - who’d caught more balls with his face than he had with his net - got suddenly better. Not just better; but faster, stronger, sharper. It all seemed to happen overnight. And it wasn’t just Jaxon who noticed; pretty much everyone who was anyone in their school took note. From coaches, to fellow students. Since then, McCall and his merry band of misfit losers have become the perpetual thorn in Jaxon’s side. If this rise to highschool stardom wasn’t insulting enough, McCall’s single-sidekick social life blossomed into an ever-widening group of friends. 

But things like that don’t just happen. Jaxon has poured enough blood and sweat into his medals to know that. This isn’t a feel-good Lifetime movie to give underdogs everywhere delusional dreams of grandeur. And he sure as hell isn’t about to be dethroned by someone who had it so easy. So Jaxon has made it his goal - nay, his obsession - to find out how the hell Scott did it. How he’s still doing it - and before he can take his secrets with him to college. Rumour has it they might be headed to the same one; and although the mere thought infuriates him, Jaxon is resolved that this freakish stroke of good luck won’t continue for McCall. He’ll make sure of that.

                                                             … Not everyone has taste.

Web of Connections

Lydia Martin: Together, they aren’t fire and water - but a lit match and gasoline. To everyone else, they’re an obvious choice; the most popular girl in school and the reigning star athlete. But the truth is a lot more complicated when the cameras aren’t around. There’s a connection stronger than any he’s ever experienced. It’s intense enough that he’s even come close to blurting out the ‘L’-word once or twice in some of their more intimate moments. And it isn’t just the mind-blowing sex; he’s had plenty of that with plenty enough people to know the difference. They understand each other in ways he can’t even explain, and beneath the superficiality that surround them - there’s something real. Despite his self-absorption, Jaxon knows that Lydia’s been having her own struggles lately. And he worries about her, although it doesn’t always manifest in a manner that’s helpful to either of them. As a result, there’s been noticeable strain on their relationship lately, and although he’ll never admit it, it kills him.

Joshua Rosza: The first friend he ever made in elementary school. The cheerful boy approached him when he was brooding around the basketball court one day - watching the older kids play, and the rest, as they say - is history. They drifted apart over the years, especially in highschool. Different grades, interests, ambitions, social circles…  He lost track of Josh when the latter graduated from highschool, relying on the odd (though still amicable) run-in around the Quarter. They became increasingly rare however, and now Jaxon hasn’t seen head or tail of him in months. He’s heard the rumours though; That Josh dropped out of college, that he’s living on the streets - that he’s peddling drugs. Jaxon doesn’t know what to believe, but suffice to say, he’s concerned.

Evelyn Jones: Their connection is minimal; which is just how he plans to keep it. Evelyn recognized him one day when his name was called at the walk-in clinic. He’d just gotten the cast removed and was happily on his way out when she approached and dropped the bombshell. Apparently, she’d been close friends with his parents before the car-crash. He still remembers the lurch in his stomach in learning that he was adopted as Evelyn stood there blabbing about a time before he was born; expecting him to… What? Thank her? He hated the sympathy in her voice when she realized he hadn’t known; hated that he felt like an impostor in learning he wasn’t truly Jaxon - son of David Whittemore - as he’d been led to believe all these years. Some research and an explosive confrontation at home confirmed it. Mrs. Jones has tried to engage him a couple of times since then, the overtones of guilt very much apparent, but he’s managed to cut that to the quick with his cold, aloof retreats.

Kol Mikaelson: So he doesn’t know the guy well, but that won’t stop him from getting to knowhim as well as it’ll take in order to get what he wants out of him. Namely, answers. He saw him in a scuffle in an alleyway - outnumbered a good six to one. And yet before Jaxon could even think about whether he wanted to blow the whistle or duck his head and keep walking, every single one of the guy’s assailants were decked. Blinking only confirmed that the sight was real - and the victim turned victor seemed happy to indulge his captive audience. For a few seconds anyway. A wink, a mocking bow - and he was gone. But Jaxon’s seen enough crazy, superpower shit lately that this one’s definitely the straw to break the camel’s back. He wants to know how he did it; Training? Drugs? Something new on the market?… He won’t stop looking for the guy until he gets his answers. No matter the cost.

Mercy Lewis: Merit Lewis was one year older than him in school, but that never stopped them from being friends. They hadn’t met through school anyway. He barely remembers how they met, except that it was during a time when he was very, very young when he’d been suffering from inexplicable vertigo. They’d tried everything; doctors, specialists, prescription pills - nothing had worked until his mom had decided to turn to ‘natural medicine’. For reasons that are still beyond him, Merit’s mom was able to cure him of his vertigo after only a few months’ worth of herbal therapy. Getting rid of the illness was one thing; making a lifelong friend through the course of those events was even better. And if there was one person Jaxon hadn’t forgotten as he climbed the ladder of teenaged success, it was Merit. He kept an eye out for the kid; even defended him against older bullies a couple of times. 

But then Merit died. He learned about it via rumour in school, which was then confirmed with a solemn few minutes of silence on the PA system one day during the morning announcements. And that was it. He sought out Merit’s older sister, Mercy, but the last time they ran into each other she was positively feral; lashing out at him and accusing him of spying and creeping up on her… For whatever purpose is beyond him. It pissed him off, but also made him suspicious. Why was she so jumpy? What really happened to Merit? He wants to approach her again - more gently, if need be - in order to find out.

Plot Teasers:

There are skills far more valuable than being good at sports, and Jaxon will soon learn that athleticism is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to climbing the food chain for survival.

Jaxon will eventually get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Scott’s rapid rise to success; but will he have a choice in taking it for himself - or will greater forces make that choice for him?...

On the soundtrack of his life: Fallout Boy - I Don’t Care  (x)

FC: Colton Haynes, non-negotiable.

Fortunately for us, Jaxon is  T A K E N!! | Follow

You’re So Vain You Probably Think This Blog Is About You

<p><p>I can’t tell you what a nuisance it is being a person who is in constant need of assurance. This blog and its mere existence is proof of my utter self absorption and indeed self deprecation (because balance is important).</p> <p>Pre historically there has been some poor decision making on my part when it comes to choosing someone to bump nasties with.</p> <p>Without going into too much detail, because I am zen af, my last boyfriend was the devil incarnate. Despite being forwarned about his less than desirable behaviours and some very bold warning signs, I ignored the advice of EVERYBODY IN HUMAN EXISTENCE and went out with him for three years. </p> <p>You can imagine my surprise when it inevitably didn’t work out. </p> <p>It was a terrible relationship, however, I have taken a lot away from it. Most importantly that my judgment cannot be trusted. Unfortunately my people reading skills have not improved over the years. When there is a willy involved all I see is sunshine and happiness while my friends and family watch on in horror as I climb into to bed with Jack the Ripper.</p> <p>So how does one tackle such a problem. Well I’ll tell ya… You run absolutely fucking everything by your friends and you listen to them. Remember your friends are the ones who know you and love you all the same. Your friends are your friends for a reason. Don’t ever forget why your friends love you and want you in their life. </p> <p>With that In mind this entry has been lovingly co-written, unknowingly, by one of my best friends. The text in bold are his text messages to me throughout a very brief encounter with a very unpleasant man. His responses are to the screenshots of the conversations between me and the gentleman in question. It really highlights how utterly useless I am but also how wonderful it is to have people in your life who care so much about your happiness and really make you laugh.</p> <p>The story, as always, begins with I met this guy… (Never a good start) through Tinder (also not good: side note this was months ago and I’ve actually now liberated myself from the hoe app - I have got enough material from those three months to last me a lifetime). Anywho, as with having a type and sticking to it (because that’s done me so many favours), it came as no surprise to me that we have friends in common. Natural instinct in these situations sends you digging. I ask one of the mutual friends for a brief Curriculum Vitae of the dude, the first thing she says is “he’s really into choking girls” I am screaming laughing actual speechless. This all sounds very alarming but in context it’s fine however I must say that I really find it rather amusing that this should be the first words to describe someone. I would hate to be so known for a sexual act that it defined me. “Oh aye I know Rab she likes masturbating then crying herself to sleep.” No thanks. Anyway I immediately tell my friend this because it’s a hilarious piece of info and we henceforth go on to then affectionately nickname the guy Bible John and that his what he is referred to as, even to this day and probable eternity.</p> <p><b>“Rab you and this guy fascinates me. 50 shades of Bae. A want screenshots of this weirdo you’ve been texting”</b></p> <p>Admittedly in the initial days of this fleeting romance i’m pretty uninterested. I am at a strange point in life during the summer where I am on a voyage of self discovery and don’t really think I’m ready to be in a relationship again (another side note it’s winter now so form an orderly queue boys). </p> <p><b>“Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, Rab, why did you give him you number?”</b></p> <p>My early findings are that this guy is a bit much. It’s all too fast too soon. I’m a bit of a slow burner these days. There’s no skipping off into the sunset after a few dates with me. It’s a well thought out process that involves a council of men and women. </p> <p><b>“You’re playing with fire… Mrs Hudson”</b></p> <p> Anyway we go on a date. I am hungover and about half an hour late. In fact lets just say Im actually still a bit drunk. I am definitely still drunk. </p> <p><b>“He will want you to dress up as Zelda or something and clap him like a dug”</b></p> <p>So I turn up late and drunk. This was my life in summer. It’s what’s affectionately referred to as a ‘kitchen floor reset’ I thoroughly recommend it. </p> <p><b>“Rab man I don’t think you should be telling me that… Who was it? Please tell me it was Bible John?”</b></p> <p>There’s some choice language I pick up. I gather this person doesn’t approve of what I call “Hooring and Touring”. That’s a process that works in tandem with the kitchen floor reset. Again I thoroughly recommend it. It’s character building. </p> <p><b>“Whit wiz mad Ian Huntley saying when you met him?“</b></p> <p>Anyway that’s fine it’s not for everyone. It is for me & im completely unapologetic about it. It makes me no less faithful and much more seasoned. </p> <p><b>“I think he is a dick, you are just in heat atm. You’re having a Britney moment.”</b></p> <p>Don’t get me wrong I don’t go around introducing myself as a hoe. I’m not that. What I mean is that I don’t pretend that I’m just some poor gal who can’t find the right guy and is miserably searching the universe for someone who can accept my weirdness. Poor me, no. All I’m saying is sometimes you just want rattled and that is totally fine. Just go get rattled get it out your system. I am open and honest about it because that is who I am. </p> <p><b>“You gonny let him strangle you ya mad psycho. Don’t say you’re in his dungeon.”</b></p> <p>It is so so so so so so important to me that I do not allow myself to be quashed by another relationship. The worst thing you can do is succumb to someone who doesn’t believe in you and all that you are. It’s such a waste of the person that you’ve worked so hard to become. </p> <p><b>“Shut the actual fuck up. Why do you attract all the weirdos?”</b></p> <p>Unfortunately I find that a lot easier said than done. I’m all about reflection so I do always take responsibility for myself and my actions I very rarely point the finger at people. I’m more likely to look at my own failings and maybe what I could have done differently. That all said I am still just a lass and quite a sensitive lass so when someone is mean to me I do feel hurt. </p> <p><b>“Rab he is actually gonny kill you.”</b></p> <p>After a few more meetings It becomes pretty clear that we are not compatible for several reasons. He begins to say unkind things to me. They are not just mean but they are unfounded. Now an ordinary person would just walk away from a situation like that. Not me. It’s perplexing especially because, I believe, I am regarded amongst my friends as quite a strong woman but in situations like this I cave in on myself.</p> <p>“<b>Rab why are you even texting that cunt back.”</b></p> <p>I am strong… I can have an argument. I can even win an argument. I am opinionated and I feel like sometimes people don’t speak up enough. So I make a point of speaking up when something isn’t right. I’m not scared to ruffle feathers in fact I have been known to enjoy it. </p> <p><b>“Who does he think he is, your husband/da?!”</b></p> <p>Inexplicably this character completely diminishes in a romantic scenario. I don’t know if that’s some sort of PTSD shit or if I am just a spineless cunt when it comes to walking away from something that isn’t right. </p> <p><b>“No fucking way man, no bother mate. Get him slung Rab.”</b></p> <p>So yeah he is mean. Really mean. I find myself apologising for being me. This is actually a little bit sad. It reminds me that I’ve not perhaps come as far as I thought I had from that previous relationship where I swore I wouldn’t find myself lost in a sea of fuckery again. But here I am - surfing! </p> <p><b>“AW MY FUCKING GOD. YOU NEED TO GET HIM TO FUCK.”</b></p> <p>I still try to fix the situation. I am a fixer. I can fix this.</p> <p><b>“That’s heavy reverse psychology Rab. Whoever you are with next needs to let you be you and I seriously don’t think he will.”</b></p> <p>My fixing fails. The whole thing fails. Because fixing it would mean not being me. I find some of the things said so hurtful that I even cry. Tragic. This is probably the first time I’ve ever felt a bit damaged. </p> <p><b>“Tell me you didn’t take that serious Rab, fuck sake man the guy is off his nut” </b></p> <p>I then find myself questioning all sorts of ridiculously stupid trivial things about my life and wondering if maybe he is right.</p> <p><b>“Tell Bible John to get to fuck. Canny handle the Rab. ”</b></p> <p>I have got an Achilles heel or so it seems. I felt so affected by some of the things he said even though 99.9% of it was utter pish. What’s even more remarkable is that I took it. </p> <p><b>“Right can we just get Bible John patched I am worried you’re taking his opinion on board an no being Rab and that’s no right”</b></p> <p>After the dust settles and it’s all said and done. I am in process of picking up the pieces and I meet two of my good friends. I begin to tell them the story of Bible John and I have a full scale mental breakdown in the pub. Sobbing into my prosseco. Also tragic but slightly funny.</p> <p><b>“Right naw - that’s it done. Done done done.”</b></p> <p>But it’s good. I am not crying over him. He is obviously an arsehole. I am crying because I am sad that I allowed myself to get involved with someone like that. I am crying because I thought that after everything I had been through previously I would be stronger. I am crying because that person embodies everything I want to avoid. I am crying in Wetherspoons. This must be rock bottom I think.</p> <p><b>“OOOOOOft what an absolute cunt! Don’t let him get to you mate. Look at you now, happy as fuck and shagging away”</b></p> <p>I am kind of glad this all happened. The psychoanalysis side of this story leads me to believe that I hadn’t fully dealt with the end of my last relationship and the circumstances surrounding it. There was no crying though there ought to have been. I was just so completely exhausted by it all that I didn’t really process all the shit that had happened while we were together. I just went on my merry way happy to be free. Bible John helped me remember that I am only human and that sometimes to move on in life you need to allow yourself to be vulnerable and let it all out. </p> <p><b>“He doesn’t deserve you.”</b></p> <p>Since the mental breakdown I am actual happy as fuck. So I thoroughly recommend doing that also. I almost immediately erase all trace of Bible John because I do not give a single fuck about him and life is great… Until…</p> <p><b>“AW GOD NAW RAB WHITS HAPPENED”</b></p> <p>I go out with my two friends that I cried in Wetherspoons with. I’m as gay as a daffodil and absolutely loving life back on the sesh. The following morning we are in our hotel and I am hungover af but otherwise perky. </p> <p><b>“Mate… Whit happened”</b></p> <p>I’m having a pee and pondering life. Something I believe a lot of people do on the toilet. It’s gid.</p> <p><b>“Omg…”</b></p> <p>I have this absolutely horrid feeling in my tummy. I have just had a coil fitted some few weeks earlier so I wonder if it ’s just having a wee dance up there in my womb. How annoying I was thinking. Stupid fucking woman parts. </p> <p><b>“Mate……. Whit the fuck”</b></p> <p>The pain intensifies to a odd unfamiliar feeling I have never felt before. Now I’m thinking whit the fuck am I about to give birth… GIVE BIRTH ON THE FUCKING TOILET</p> <p><b>“NAW RAB ….. NAW?!”</b></p> <p>A few moments pass. Something is definitely travelling through my baby tunnel at an alarming rate. Then something comes out and lands with a thud in the toilet.</p> <p><b>“………………….”</b></p> <p>In this moment… This real character defining moment. I am 100% convinced that I’m about to turn round and see a foetus. </p> <p><b>“Please tell me it wasn’t…. Was it?”</b></p> <p>I am pleading with myself “Please don’t have just squeezed a foetus out in a hotel bathroom hungover” I take my time considering my options here. Is this actually my life.

>

Why the cunt never bothered to tell me that that had happened I will never know or understand but that really was the icing on the fucking cake of a shitty experience. (Side note went to see the sexual health nurse and I’m sound. Think an STD would of pushed me over the cliff edge.)

“The film ‘Shame’ is about you.”

For comic relief I took a photo. If I ever write a book it shall be on the cover.

Fuck my life. Fuck Bible John. He still follows me on Instagram. Smh.

Goodbye forever.