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netherfeildren · 11 months

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Kiss, Kiss, Kill, Kill!

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: Joel is a long haul truck driver. One day he finds a pretty girl in a diner and decides he’d like to keep her.

Murder and sex ensue!

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No outbreak; Graphic depictions of violence; Murder; Blood; Gore; Threat of SA; Impotence; Unprotected sex; Creampie; Loss of virginity; Virginity kink; Breeding kink; Spit kink; Rough sex; Pussy slapping; Dark!Joel; Mean!Joel (also kinda crazy and pathetic); Obsessive behavior; Possessive behavior; Discussions of suicidal ideations; Unreliable narrators; Alcoholism; Consensual non consent kind of (But not previously discussed - they're both into it tho); Use of misogynistic language; Grief

A/N: Hi :) Another one just bc I have no self control.

Parts of the narrative read a little disjointed and/or confusing. This is intentional. I was kind of trying something weird out here, I guess.

Word Count: 9.7K

Read on AO3

The first time Joel sees you, it’s a Thursday. His least hated day of the week, but not his favorite, for he doesn’t really have any favorite things anymore. Your eyes’d stunned him at that first look. They sparkled as if dusted with frost – speared him with an intensity that burned.

But no… that was a lie, and Joel is trying not to be such a liar anymore. He does have one favorite thing now. This middle-of-nowhere diner, this place where’d he’d found you.

The first time he’d actually talked to you, you’d interrupted his own stubborn, sour silence with a silence of your own. Different, agonizing, compared to your usual persistent fishing for his attention.

“What’re you doin’ out here in this wasteland, sweetheart?” Because you look sweet as that cherry pie you’re always trying to push on him.

“Been here my whole life.” It’s verging on evening, the sky gone to melancholy, and there’s a young girl with dark hair weeping on the shoulder of an older woman in the booth over. He wants to snap at her, demand to know what the fuck she could possibly have to cry over? He’s sure she mustn’t have a dead daughter like him, and so there really seems to be no reason for tears.

“No plans to leave?”

You shake your head, hum a little, set the coffee pot down on the edge of the table to pop a hip out and think on your answer. “Guess you could say I’m a little bit weak or scared, don’t know.”

“Doubt that,” a surprised laugh forced out of him. Entirely improbable, he knows this just by looking at you. “You’ve got eyes that seem as if they’ve never held fear within them in your entire life.” And he makes you laugh at that, head thrown back, throat rippling. The sound like the tolling of the bell indicating the start of the rest of his life.

When you’re done gifting him your laughter, you ask, “What about you? Why are you here?”

“My daughter died.” Plain.

Your eyes seem to shutter or flicker, something like a chimera about them, “When?”

“Two years ago.” He watches the crying girl and the old woman get up to go. And then the two of you are alone. You move to sit in the booth across from him. He’d been coming in here to see you for more than half that time since, and now, the first time the two of you are having an actual conversation, and this is what he’s decided to open with. But really, it’s the only story he has to tell anymore. He watches you watch him for a long moment, as though you’re searching for something within him, or mulling over what it is you want to say to him, the shift of your jaw from side to side as you chew on your words. He feels easily frightened now – fragile – and yet vibrantly malignant, at the same time. A juxtaposition on two opposite ends of the spectrum of good and not so good, or perhaps, verging on very, terribly bad, in the grocery store line of human morality. Two Joel’s at the start and end of the queue who could not seem to come to terms with one another. Enemies – they were enemies of each other. A Joel who’d once had a daughter, and a Joel who now did not. A Joel who’d pulled a trigger at his own temple, and one who’d never even considered such a thing. He draws his finger along the line of scar tissue at his temple.

For a long time he’d wanted to tear a hole in his world and escape, but he was no master of inventiveness. On the contrary, he found his attempt rather miserly – had short changed himself at the last moment and flinched. But perhaps, it had been for this reason – for you, to find you. He wishes he could peer inside your mind, crack open your skull and read everything you’re hiding away from him inside there. A violent thought, but you make him feel slightly violent, or – no, that’s not it – for Joel is already a violent man. It’s more that you pull a specific hue of violence out of him, incite it, like he needs to move, to howl, to claw at something, at you, scream and scream and scream to keep your undivided attention on him forever.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” you say finally, voice quiet. “How old was she?”

His loss. That was a funny way of putting it. It had never felt like a loss. The word was too small. Four letters was not enough to describe what it really was. There was no word for what it felt like. An emaciation of his very self until he simply ceased to exist. Something that had sucked his soul, his heart, his brain out of his body, but they didnt feel lost. They felt destroyed, decimated, or like they had never existed. Sometimes the feeling left him confused, disoriented – this strange purgatory he’d been relegated to, it was like it had never happened in his mind sometimes, or like it had happened to a different man. Like that life with that beautiful little girl with the green eyes who’d had a father who loved her, who’d then died, had happened to someone else. Someone who wasn’t Joel. Like a war that had raged and raged for centuries, and now nothing was left in its wake. Only that terribly fraught reminder of a violence too grotesque for a human mind to conceive.

How could he miss something, wish for something so, so, so fucking desperately he’d peel his very skin from his body himself to get it back, but also feel like it didn’t belong to him anymore? Like it had never happened to him, like he remembered it out of his own body? A dream that belonged to someone else, and Joel’d only been told of it second hand. His mind was fractured now, he knew this. He wasn't right – broken or glued together the wrong way. His bones didn’t fit in his joints the way they were supposed to anymore. He was all wrong and ugly and fucked.

“She was twelve.”

“My whole family’s dead,” you say it almost casually, with a half shrug of your shoulders. “Is that why you started driving? To get away?”

He’s been a long haul truck driver for going on two years now. Started just after Sarah – needed to get away, to get lost. He didn’t enjoy it – he does not enjoy it. Not because the work is bad or boring or what have you, but because he doesn’t enjoy anything anymore. But it’s productive and pays well and… well, he does appreciate the solitude. There is that, at least. He’d been on the route from New Mexico to Washington for several months now, and it was fine. Occasionally, he’d head up to the Dakotas – not so fine, longer, harder trek, but he managed it. He preferred this one, preferred the darkness of the north west corner of the country. He never went further south than New Mexico, though. Absolutely never into Texas. He’d never go back there again.

“Sure… to get away.” He couldn’t be there anymore afterwards, had nothing left. “My neighbor, Anna, she’s got a teenager, Ellie. Sweet kid. Weird kid,” he laughs fondly, remembering the two of them. “The kid was friends with my daughter, Sarah. And after everything– well, after everything, Anna made sure they both stuck around. Didn’t let me shut myself away the way I wanted to,” ill-shaven recluse, confused, fractured, “They’re good people. You’d like them, I think. They’re… they’re my friends.” They were another reason he kept doing the driving, he liked to send money back to Anna and Ellie. He knew they didn’t need it, didn’t want it, but he had to. He needed to feel like he was still taking care of someone, contributing to someone’s well being. It was just part of who he was.

“I’m sure I would.”

He watches your silent enrapture as you listen to him tell you of his pseudo life. After a while he’d realized that was all he’d started doing, making his way back to you, to this diner where you work. A sad place for ugly men to stop in on a pause from their interminable journeys and lay eyes on an angel. He hadn’t even really realized that’s what he was purposely doing or that it’d become a pattern. He just needed something to see at the end of the tunnel, a light to look towards when he was lost in the darkness. That’s what you are, a single flickering light in the abyss of darkness he exists in now.

You’re small – tiny compared to Joel’s own hulking size. He thinks he could break you, easily, if he isn’t careful, if he so felt like it. And you were – you are so fucking pretty. He thinks of you so often. Almost as often as he thinks of his dead daughter which might seem wrong or strange, but it’s really nothing more than the two opposite ends of a spectrum of perfect beauty that he’s known within his lifetime that now he cannot reach either end of. Sarah – dead, forever out of reach. And you. Too perfect for consideration, too beautiful and good for these monstrous hands of his. The thing he’s become in his grief is not worthy of a gorgeous creature like you. His existence post Sarah’s death had become some sort of apocalyptic dysphoria where the only monster here was Joel. But he does like to watch, and he does like to think of you. To come to your diner and sit and watch you serve coffee to your customers – the scum that muddles through here isn’t worthy of laying eyes on you – men like him. Sometimes, when he sits here silently, pretending to ignore you and not be entirely beguiled by you, he feels as if he has a purpose again, like the money for Anna and Ellie, getting to inconspicuously watch over you, make sure no one gives you a hard time gives him purpose. And when he goes, even though he never really wants to, he takes you with him in his mind through the long stretches of his hauls. When there are nothing but ghosts to keep him company. When thoughts of Sarah and that dead life become too overwhelming, he calls you to mind, plans his routes to make his way back to you.

You’re also fucking persistent – not giving him the chance to wallow away in his silence and brooding. He was rude at first, gruff and unresponsive and wouldn’t ever acknowledge your queries of, How’s it going today, and, Oh, back again I see. Sometimes he wanted to snap and just spit the truth at you, ‘course, I’m fuckin’ back, I’m here to see you, I’m obsessed with you. And rounds and rounds of, Can I get you another cup of coffee? The same as usual? You’d memorized his order. Pestered and pestered and pestered for his name until he’d finally ceded it to you, and, How ‘bout some cherry pie this time? After a while you’d gotten sick of his recalcitrant bullshit and just dropped off the piece of pie, slipping it onto the edge of the table and sliding away without a word or a half look back at him. He’d eaten the whole damn thing, savored it, and caught your sassy, little smirk after he’d finished. He’d wanted to bend you over the counter and spank your ass until you cried after that. He bets you’d taste as sweet as that pie, that if he slapped your cunt enough times he could get it red as a cherry. He bets you’d like that – that you’d like it a little rough, a little dirty, a little mean. You might look like an angel, but Joel’s seen the way you look at him, the way you follow him with your eyes, leaning against the counter, chin cupped in your small palm watching him eat his eggs and drink his coffee.

You want him.

But Joel is frightened – frightened and cowardly and not right, and as much as you look like an angel, he also worries you might have the ability to entice him into very, very bad things – to provoke him into depravity, even. There is a part of him, large or small given the day and the mood and the weather that he walks in here on, that has the rotten half of his mind whispering at the not-so-rotten half that he wants to defile and debase you, and that he’s pretty sure you’d like it if he did. He wants to fuck you full of his come and then watch it leak out of your used, gaping hole. Then he wants to lick you clean, kiss it all better so that he can do it all over again.

The first few times he’d stopped at your diner, he’d pretended he hadn’t even noticed you, would lie to himself in his mind and tell himself that he had no interest in a little thing like you. He had no interest in women, in making connections, in having conversations. Occasionally… well– no, not occasionally. Twice, it had happened twice now, when the urge had struck, the itch had become too persistent, and his hand not enough, he’d gotten a hooker. The first time he’d shut down completely, lost his hard on and not been able to finish. The second time… he’d finished. He might’ve even made the woman come, he hadn’t bothered to ask, but he thought he might have. Then he’d gone back to his truck and cried great heaving sobs. Like he’d said… not right, he wasn’t right anymore. Couldn’t even fuck a whore without blubbering like a baby. He’d wondered if perhaps his grief had made him impotent. That’d be funny. That type of funny thing that is also a humiliation… you know the sort?

But after a while, the lie had become too much of a farce, even for his own mind. He knew, from that first moment he’d walked in, and you’d spun around, a bright smile and chirpy, little voice telling him to sit anywhere you’d like, be right with you, mister, that he’d taken notice. More than notice. He’d put you in his pocket that day and had carried you with him in some way since. Like a stone chosen off the beach, washed up by the tide and deposited in the sand just for him to come across, or maybe like a fucking infection, like the plague, for he did not want this. He did not want to think of you. He did not want to think of anyone or anything. He wanted to be alone and without anything or anyone for the rest of his life. If he did not have anyone, if he remained alone, then he could never again experience that loss which was not truly a loss, but something much worse and devastating, and even, perhaps, a little hilarious, in that way that a hilarious thing can also sometimes be humiliating and shameful… there it is. A loss that is not a loss for it is a thing so devastating it becomes something else entirely. A humiliation to one’s very existence, a decimation, emaciation, all the things, all the things, and nothing at the same time.

His mind was wont to ramblings, on occasion now. Perhaps, incoherence, was the better word. Anxiety, as well, panic, tears. Couldn’t even fuck a hooker without weeping, howling, a few sobs.

He had wandered so far, and sometimes he thought, I want to go home, but of course, that home no longer existed. It had been put in the ground two years ago and lost forever. The dissatisfaction of constant ennui. He could, perhaps, return to the geographical place, but nothing familiar would remain. He couldn’t live with the memory, he couldn’t live away from it. It was like it had simply ceased to exist that day that she’d died, and every moment since that moment was just a series of moments filled with a yearning for some place that no longer existed. He didn’t think he’d ever again feel at home anywhere.

And yet…

He turns back to look at you.

“How did they die? Your family.”

“Home invasion – murdered. He never found me, hid in the boiler closet.”

“Little rabbit.”

“Hmm,” a huff of a laugh, “Maybe. Someone once said I was lucky. Pretty fucked up, no?”

“Do you feel lucky?”

“Never. Angry – that I’d been left behind.”

“Yeah…”

“Alone.”

“Are you alone?”

You turn back to him. Inspect him. He watches the slant of your eyes take in his hair, his face, wrinkled, haggard, his chest, his arms – he feels a flush flare beneath his ribs, then back up to his eyes. He wonders if you’ve ever been fucked before. You’re young – but he can’t imagine how you wouldn’t have been. He thinks he’d do anything in this moment to get between your thighs, but also, he hopes you haven’t, hopes you could be all his, only his, his his. Mine.

He hopes he won’t cry if he gets the chance.

“Entirely,” you say finally.

“I had– have– ” shakes his head, “I have, I guess, a brother. Tommy. But the last time I saw him… I was horrible.” They seldom saw each other now – lie – they never saw each other now. Truth, Joel. We’re telling the truth now.

You laugh lightly, shrug, “Happens.”

“Sure…”

“What’d you do to him?”

“Ah, just couldn’t get a handle on myself after everything. Things got bad enough eventually, and we fought… a lot. Violently. I was violent. One morning I got out of hand, terrible – one of my biggest regrets. We hurt each other with our words and our fists, and in that way only two people who know each other too well can. He cracked my ribs, gave me half his orange in the evening, afterwards – said our apologies. He was gone the next day. Haven’t heard from him since. I just got to be too much for him,” he says again, needs to reiterate it, make sure you understand that he is too much and too dark, too unmanageable – ugly. That you should not be sat here with him. That he has a violence within him, and that you should probably run as fast and as far as you can, but that he cannot promise he will not follow. “I had…” he is ashamed of this part, surprising for he sometimes wonders if he still possesses the heart to feel shame, “I had a problem with drink for a while – not anymore, though,” he says quickly. “I promise, not anymore.” He should not be promising you anything. “I got control of it – knew it was making it all worse rather than better. Felt like I was trapped underwater with my damn ghosts – that … What's that thing called when – when sick people get like – like trapped inside themselves or somethin’? You ever heard’a that?”

“Locked-in syndrome.”

“Yeah– yeah. I read about that once or heard it somewhere – that’s what it felt like when I was drinkin’ – fuckin’ terrible. Let it go after a while… but by that time… Tommy was gone, done with me. I was – dunno… like some sort of demon or somethin’ – somethin’ bad.” He huffs a small, derisive laugh, looks at you with that ridiculously charming, crooked half smile.

That laugh sparks a kindling of anger inside of you for him. This is a broken, angry, creature of a man, you think. Something fractured – not whole, and he must be handled with care and gentleness. “How could he just leave you?

“Didn't give him a choice. Sometimes people deserve to be left.”

“I wouldn’t have.” That sobers him, wipes the smile right off his handsome face. You think of the invisible giants hurting this man in some unimaginable fashion; of the endless tenderness coiled up inside of him and how the crushing of that tenderness – the death of it – has given way to what may be considered madness. Because after all these months of watching him, of him watching you, you can see it, recognize that tenderness for what it is, but also the madness, for it is impossible to ignore if you’re really looking. Soft marrow at the center of a hard man.

“I did other things… worse things.”

“Try me.”

“I tried to kill myself.”

You whistle, long and low. You actually had not been expecting that one, at least, not the admittance of it, “You’re just full of truths,” for looking at him – the sort of man he’s built as, the thought that he could be felled by anything, even his own hand, is a little hard to believe.

“Feels like a sort of confessional in this–”

“Shithole–”

“Diner–”

Your voices overlap. You both laugh. You think you quite like the sound of your voices intermingling one on top of the other.

“What happened?”

“Flinched–”

“I flinch all the time.”

“Have you ever thought about killing yourself?”

You hum, tilt your head side to side on your neck as if you’re letting the thought slide from ear to ear within your skull. “Perhaps only the peripheral idea of it, but never with much imagination or dedication. I don’t think I have that much to kill myself over, you know?”

“Your family?”

“Not really – it’s sort of become just this… this thing that happened once. I don’t feel much ownership over it anymore. Don’t know why, exactly.”

“Sure, that’s how I feel about it sometimes too. That belongs to a different man now – like– like some actor or a facsimile, and I just look in on it as if from a distance. Enjoy the sight of someone else's suffering…” He shakes his head, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, no, I understand. Something to do in the way that a tragedy can be compelling to watch. You can let go, let go of your awareness of yourself and experience it in a way you’d never do so in the present moment.”

“A dissociation.”

“Yes. Why would you want to go and relive the basest parts of yourself all alone, over and over again? Not likely.”

“But it was me.”

“A dissociation,” you repeat, smile.

“Yeah,” he pauses, turns the coffee cup round and round with the slow spin of his wrist as if to dissolve the remains of the grounds you know the shitty machine has left deposited at the bottom. There is a small dusting of golden brown hair covering his wrist and disappearing up his forearm beneath his flannel. You want to taste it, follow the trail to places unknown. “Not so well adjusted, us two,” And he laughs then. A real laugh. He lets you have a real laugh of his, and it is powerful – special.

“Well… no.” Of course not. “I don’t think either of us could ever claim that.”

“Bet you’ve never been bad a single day in your life, have you?”

You cock your head, let your eyes slide from him to peer out the dark window. His lonely semi is parked under the single flare of light out there. The evening has sunk into a deep blue, the hue of mourning, of melancholy, and the pavement is wet with evening rainfall.

You'd heard that some trucks had spaces behind the seats where truckers could put a bed, have a place to rest. You wonder if he’ll take you back there and fuck you in his little bunk. And honesty is a fickle thing when discussing a topic like this, isn't it? There’s a depravity about him, and you can’t tell if the truth or the lie would placate him – incite him – more. To be similar in such a way as that which he’s imagining. A little bit of both, then. After all, intent holds weight – imagination, desire, it has a mass to it that can, if enough pressure is exerted upon it, be transformed into something else.

“Not yet,” you tell him, sliding your gaze back to meet his, “Haven’t had a chance – but there’s still time.”

“What would you like to do?” He wants to take a bite out of that soft flesh you’re encased in, draw blood.

“Something depraved?” You’re taunting him – trying to provoke. It makes him slightly angry, but also hard. You should know what it is you’re toying with here.

He frowns at you, at the lilting song of your words trying to beguile him into doing whatever it is you think you want him to do to you. “What is it that you think you want here? You don’t know what I was, how I lived. Shouldn’t be sat here with me, little girl,” he scoffs. “I was– was not– I don’t fucking know, not a man. I’m not, I’m not. Not a person anymore, just this thing that continues to exist. I should not have been expected to survive. This should mean something to you too. You also have no one. You’re alone too. You’re alone in the world. You know what it feels like to only live in the winter.”

You’re quiet for a long moment, and then you say: “I think I’ve come to quite like the winter.” And at that he knows he’s taking you for himself, whether you agree in the end or not. You’re going to be his.

But he knows he must also let this roiling anger, this depraved hunger settle before he lays hands on you. Like this, in this state, he’d be too rough, break you, nothing compunctious about him or his jaggedness. He excuses himself for a smoke, your only response simply more of that inciting silence – more thoughts of cracked skulls and a cherry red cunt and tears after failed trysts with someone who doesn’t even know his name. He’s fucking embarrassing. What would Tommy say if he knew Joel couldn’t even get it up for a paid fuck anymore? He’d laugh in his face, never let him live it down. He misses his brother very much. He misses lots of things.

He’s sucking on his Red under the awning of the diner’s entrance, imagining what it’ll be like to suck on your little clit, when he hears them.

“She’s usually out about midnight. We’ll snag her then.” Grating, guttural voice.

“But I get to fuck ‘er first. This was my idea so I go first.”

“Yeah, whatever. S’only happenin’ ‘cause of me. Too fuckin’ stupid to see the plan through after all these months of watchin’ ‘er.”

“Fuck off.” Silence, and then almost with giddy elation: “We gonna kill her too?” Something cold and terrifying settles within Joel.

A beat, “Should we?”

“Dunno, man. Might be fun, huh? Never done it before.”

“She’s fuckin’ pretty,” the voice draws the vowel out in a high pitched, sacharine whine. “Got the face of an angel.” Joel’s angel, his, his, only his.

He’s got his Bowie in a sheath on the back of his belt. Perhaps, this would be a useful exercise in release. After he’s dispelled his excess energy he can come back and touch you, take you.

“Can’t wait to taste that cunt.” His cunt.

“Seen her tits, man? Fucking round and bouncy. Wanna make ‘em bleed.” And there’s only one avenue of consequence after that. After all, this is not the first time Joel’s done this.

His most well kept secret.

Sometimes, when the itch cannot be eased, abated, by his hand or a fuck or a drink or any of the other readily available vices, he turns to this. Only when the straits were dire. Only when he saw no other recourse. Only after his daughter was dead and in the ground and his brother gone away from him

But sometimes… sometimes it’s just fun. Sometimes it’s useful for a man to do that thing that he really feels he wants to do, if only to enjoy himself, if only to let go of some of that suffocating tension. If only to keep vermin like this away from an angel like you.

“We’ll chill in the woods for a while, wait the little thing out, yeah?” Joel edges his way towards the edge of the building closer to them, peeks a lone eye around the corner. Two men, middle aged. Not a problem. Not for a man like him.

He waits for them to make their way to the edge of the tree-line, watches them disappear into the gloom. He looks back into the diner through the murky windows. The warm glow of the overhead lamps washing you in a hue of golden light that brings out all the warm goodness in you he’ll take for himself once he’s snuffed out this issue.

No one’s going to touch you but him. No one’s going to hurt you but him.

As he rounds the corner of the diner there’s a piece of metal pipe propped up against the building by the dumpsters. Very nice.

He goes after them.

At the edge of the tree-line, under a swaying, low hanging branch, there is a tiny unfledged bird, helplessly twitching its way towards death in a puddle. He pauses to watch its struggle, gathers his skin about him, tightens his seams – prepares to gorge. He watches the inch by inch pilgrimage towards its last breath, then stillness. He feels so much older than his years, like he’s lived a thousand terrible years, watched a thousand terrible deaths. But there is a buoyancy about him, as well. Filled with a saccharine sweet fizz of sticky anticipation. He’s going to taste your cunt after this is done.

He moves into the gloom. He’s going to kill them for you, and his cock is hard at the thought.

Stepping beneath the canopy of the trees, into that cold, damp darkness, he sees the absolute truth of the world. On the heels of two men who’d do you harm, he knows that he’d failed to save someone he cared about once, he’d not be bested by failure a second time. Darkness implacable, the crushing black vacuum of their overheard words buzzing in his head like flies, of the harm they’d do you. Two hunted animals moving away from a creature much darker than they could even imagine, scurrying on borrowed time. What most moves him is that the things they’d do to you are not so dissimilar to the things he plans to do to you, as well. The only difference being that after he’s done defiling you, he’ll keep you for himself, with all the care and gentleness a little thing like you so deserves.

You press your ear to the cracked open door leading to the back of the building. It’s not the first time those two’ve talked their filth regarding you. The murdering is new, though. You’d not thought they were smart or inventive enough to come up with an actual kill plot. Rape enough of a hardball for minds as shallow and small as those two’ve got.

You’d never really considered them much of a threat. Or maybe you’d just never really cared enough to pay them much attention. But as you watch the broad, rippling expanse of Joel’s muscled back stalk after them, his pause at the tree-line to look down at something on the ground, you think he must be more in the vein of taking a stupid man’s shit talk to heart than you’ve ever been.

He has a thick, forearms-length of steel pipe gripped in his huge fist, and there’s a wicked looking knife strapped to his belt on the back of his hip.

Interesting.

You look back at the empty diner, the lonely parking lot beyond the glass of the windows, only Joel’s semi still taking up residence on the wet pavement. You turn back to follow after the three men.

One you want, two you’re interested to see what fate awaits them.

For some reason, when you step outside, you’re expecting there to be snow on the ground, but there is none.

You move across the pavement towards the forest-line, and the pilgrimage towards the verdant darkness feels very much like your one-way ticket out of this forlornness you’ve been trapped in your whole life. You’ve been stuck in this small town for so long, for too long. One man had already tried to forcibly evict you, had taken your entire family with him, maybe this one, maybe Joel, would do so in a way you’d more likely enjoy.

There’s been a steady, faint drizzle all day long, and the puddles of rain look like holes in the dark pavement, apertures into some other realm that glide past underground. You wonder if you stepped through if you’d disappear below into some other place. You wonder if he’d be able to find you even in that unknown other.

You cross the line into darkness.

The familiar terror of silence – you don’t seem to find it here. There is only the sound of your rushing blood, the cadence of his voice rumbling through your psyche, firing your neurons up into a frenzy. There is a twisting heat low in your pelvis, dampness between your thighs. What’s he going to do? Why’s he going to do it?Is it for me? Is it for me? It’s for you.

You let out a low whistle between your teeth and move beyond the trees. There is a giddiness about the darkness of the wood – the motley of shadows, the aroma of mushroom rot.

The familiar terror of silence. Perhaps, that is what they are experiencing now. The great horror of being set upon by a beast more terrifying than anything they could have ever conjured up on their own.

That infinite tenderness from before, that acute madness – it coalesces in the gap in the trees as you come upon the three men.

Joel has already started on the first. He murders almost tenderly. With great care, but infused with an aroma of agitated frenzy that seems flavored in the same notes of erotic buzzing that hums beneath your own skin. There is blood and viscera splattered on his face and clothes, in his hair. That great hunting knife embedded in the throat of the first man. The body lays facing you now, eyes open, shocked at his own death. Funny. Perhaps, that’s how they would have liked you to have ended up once they were through with you.

Oh, how the tune changes when the monster is on your side.

What are you? Be a creature. Be a creature. Be a creature!

You take Joel in. Thick, massive frame. You love his hair, it was one of the first things you’d noticed, thick dark curls streaked with the silver veins of his age and experience. Something that promised of care and knowledge and patience. His patchy beard with the heart shaped gap in it, you’re going to write your name into that space. His powerful arms, muscles coiled tight, his shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders as he brings the steel pipe up above his head, pauses to look down at his next victim.

“We won’t bother her anymore, never again – p– please, please, I swear,” the man on the ground begs and cries. There are tears and snot bubbling down his ruddy, pocketed face.

Joel is silent and terrifying and glorious above him, and then a small nod: “That’s alright… I believe you.” The metal comes down in a whistling arc, makes contact.

Flesh and blood splatter, the sound of it is pulpy and wet and vindicating. He starts with the man’s knees, then his head, caved in like the shell of an egg, the yolk spilling out like vermilion drool.

He heaves silently above the man that would have done you harm. Makes the threat go away.

You step forward, cunt pulsing and wet and eager for him. When he’s gotten his fill of bludgeoning he turns slowly back towards you, as if he’d known the entire time that you’d been stood there watching.

And the look on his face, it makes something electrifying and sticky buzz up your spine and ooze down your veins. You shift back on your heels

He shakes his head, his eyes are huge, pupils blown wide. “Don’t run,” he says slowly. If you hadn’t just watched him murder two men in cold blood – no, in your defense, he saved you, he protected you, fizzy heart full of satisfaction – you’d say he almost looks a little doe eyed.

A hollow pounding begins in his heart, as if it had remained silent for the past two years and was only now taking notice of its own silence. His cock, hard enough to burst, angry and throbbing beneath the confines of his blood soaked jeans. Fuck this scum laying on the ground beside him, look at what he has infront of him. Nothing else matters but you. A goddamned angel. Damned for he’s found you now and nothing good can come of this. He takes a step towards you, and you match him with one backwards, away from him, his blood starts to howl in his veins. Different to the humming frenzy that had filled him as he did his murdering. This is hot and viscous and ravenous, and he knows he’ll get to keep his catch once he’s gorged himself on it. He knows he’ll get to keep you once he’s caught you.

You take two more nervous little, quick steps away from him. Your eyes are slightly manic, face flushed, frame jittery, excited. A rabbit that knows it’s about to be caught. He watches the pause of your limbs as they fill with coiled energy, getting ready to make the bound and leap towards escape. He lunges, goes in for the kill, teeth bared, talons brandished.

Faster than you can even comprehend, he lunges, takes you to the ground with one massive, powerful shoulder to the vulnerable, soft of your belly, one huge paw cradled at the back of your skull to protect you from the hard ground. Your spine hits the cold, wet earth, the breath knocked out of you. You think you let out an animal noise, high pitched and supplicant. A thing that knows it’s been caught and is soon to be devoured. Your limbs scramble against the dirt, heels digging into the ground for purchase, you feel the loss of one of your shoes, as you try to get away or to crawl closer, who can be sure. A spider caught in the web or a larger, hungrier arachnid. He sets the huge heaviness of his muscular weight over your much smaller frame, one strong hand caged around the column of your throat, the other pushing your chest into the earth as he shoves his hips into the cradle of your own, forcing your thighs apart and your skirt to pool at your waist. You feel the stretch of the center plaque of your tights as his wide breadth settles between your legs, making room to take you for himself. You bring your own hands up to the wrist holding your throat and dig your nails into the skin there. You can feel the light smattering of hair covering his forearm beneath your soft palms, the cold, wet dirt beneath you, the searing stretch of the inner muscles of your thighs spread wide for him, the damp of the air surrounding the two of you. He leans forwards, pressing you down into the ground, and you have the fleeting thought that you want to transfuse yourself into the earth, into him.

He pauses then to look down at you, appreciating the gloriousness of his catch. “Caught ya.” And he’s filled with an exuberance, a sort of victory. Look at what he’s snared – all for himself.

You try and struggle again, if only to see the flare of annoyance in his eyes. It makes your cunt tight and achy. Even more than it already is. There’s a part of you that thinks you want him slightly angry – rough or mean. That you might like it even more if it hurts. Be kind enough to be cruel about it, you want to beg him. He leans forward to press his nose to your cheek, drags the cold vermillioned flush of it along your jaw, down the line of your throat, bites harsh and painful at your collarbone then over the peak of your breast.

“Are you a virgin?” He whispers into your skin. It sounds very much like a threat.

“Yes.”

“Saved this cunt all for me.” And it is not a question. Yes, you moan anyways. Let him know. Let him know that this defiling is a gift you’re granting him. He sits up on his haunches between your thighs, his hands sliding down to press on your lower belly and digs his fingers into the center of your tights and pulls, ripping a hold in them for his pillaging. You try and press your knees shut at the feel of the frigid air on your sensitive inner thighs, dig your nails into the ground above your head to try and drag yourself away from him.

He digs his own fingers harshly into your flesh, his nails biting painfully into the soft skin of your thighs and ass and brings you back towards him. There’ll be streaks of pain left in his wake after this. Bad little rabbit. He smacks the inside of your thigh, watches the smooth flesh ripple for him. You let out a warbled, angry screech, little nails still trying to claw yourself away from him. He laughs then, a little mean, condescending. “Fight harder, little baby. This is pretty pathetic.” He rips your thighs apart, keep your fuckin’ legs open for me, his hands slick with the blood of his victims slide up the back of your thighs, anchoring his palms beneath the damp creases of your knees to press you open and wide for him, slaps your cunt, hard, over the soaking gusset of your panties.

“Who the fuck’re you wearin’ this tiny little thong for?” he growls. It’s white lace, with a sweet, little pink bow adorning the front. “Me? Wrapped yourself up all nice and pretty for me?” Your little foot sneaks up under his armpit and tries to push with, what he’s sure is all your valiant might, at his chest, trying to unseat him from his conquering position above you, but he takes your ankle in a vice like grip, bites harshly into the meat of your calf so that an animal squeal of pain is clawed out of your throat at the same time that he slots his fingers under the damp center of your panties. “Sing as loud as you want, sweetheart. No one’s gonna hear you out here.” He can feel the soaking wet seam of your cunt against the backs of his knuckles, and he rips them clean off you. The sound of the last remaining barrier of protection of your cunt against his ravaging being decimated has you going shock still – prey that knows it’s caught and has decided to give up. Good, this is how he wants you. Your big, wet eyes look up at him as he flings the lace towards the still steaming dead bodies. That’s all they’ll get of you. The rest is only his. Mine, mine, fucking mine.

You let your arms go limp above your head, soft and pliant and ready for ravaging, melting into the earth.

He presses your knees back and up, letting the red blossom of your wet cunt bloom for him. It’s slick and swollen, and he knows when he shoves his cock inside it’ll be burning hot. “Look at this gorgeous virgin pussy, baby. All for me. Only for me…” he murmurs, hypnotized, mesmerized. He drags the back of his knuckles over your slit, uses his thumbs to spread your lips apart, admires the swollen nub of your clit. You’re just as hungry for him as he is for you. Messy, eager little whore. He moves to undo his belt and free his aching length. Huge and brutish, thick veins pulsing just beneath the thin skin. He’s going to split you in half, break you, mold you in his image.

He spits right onto your soaked folds, watches the thick glob of saliva slide down to mingle with your own leaking slick. He’s not even going to make you come first. Little virgin cunt and he’s not going to even bother getting you ready – just gonna shove the whole, unforgiving length of himself inside of you. Force you to take it. He fists his thick fist around himself, jacks his cock once, twice, squeezing at the bulbous head so that a trickle of precum seeps out of the slit. He presses his head to your clit, slides down to give you a small threat of pressure at your opening. When he looks back up at your face your eyes flutter shut, a look of pure contented submission washing over the gorgeous planes of you.

“Not gonna be gentle, baby. Don’t got it in me.” He notches the fat head at the slick mouth of your entrance and crams his cock inside of you in one go, meets that thin barrier that says you still belong to yourself and rips through it. Mine now. No reprieve, no respite. And God, the feel of it, cleaved in half, scorching hot, filled to the brim and never deep enough. He is a rabid, snarling beast of a man as he hits the very end of you, grinds his cockhead at the mouth of your womb. You let out a warbled, pained moan, little fingers coming up to claw at his throat and chest with kitten-strength, down to dig into his thick thighs as he pins you down, and you tilt your hips to let him in deeper or escape him, he doesn't know. He doesn't care. He pulls his hips back and forces himself back in, too thick cock wedged into the too tight space. “Christ, goddamn tight fuckin’ pussy – made for me,” he grits through bared teeth.

He fucks you raw and cruel, and he needs you to just lay limp and still and take it.

And you do. And he does not cry this time.

He sets a brutal pace, throbs deep in your belly at every pause as he grinds at your cervix. It must be painful for you, perhaps, but the flush in your cheeks, the fever in your eyes, the ripple of your cunt around his driving length tells him you also like it. “What a good girl, taking my big cock,” he coos. You preen, tilt your hips this time in supplication he’s sure, hitch your feet higher along his sides. There are tears running back down your temples and into your hairline. His cock makes you cry. If he could, he’d split your throat and drink, he would. But he cannot, so he’ll split your cunt instead. He thrusts into the hilt, complete negligence for care, for gentleness lost in the dark wood, for the desperate necessity of feeling your virgins blood coating his cock. Your protestations lost to the louder song for more, for harder, for deeper

Joel, Joel, Joel.

He’s going to listen to you sing his name for the rest of his life.

He feels unhinged, a thread picked at too many times, spun loose, unraveled and frayed. That edge that separates good and evil – his bloody fingers clamp down hard on the edge of your jaw, forces you to open for him, and he spits into your mouth – direct, dirty … warm. “Lemme see…” he rumbles, and you stick your tongue out for his inspection. Once he nods, pleased and smug and conquering, you close and rub the slick of his saliva onto the roof of your mouth with your tongue, savor the taste of him. This was the taste that you’d longed for… that which teaches you what that professed edge really is. Is he good, is he evil – he’d just killed two men, you’d watched him, cunt wet at the sight of it. Albeit to protect you… sure – but does it even matter? You swallow his spit down. Probably not.

He is huge and life altering inside of you. Your virginity scoured away on his invading length.

He leans forward, hand clamped around your jaw to pierce you with his manic gaze, like his cock pierces your cunt. He smells like the forest and sweat and power. “Little fuckin’ tease,” he grits, “Bringing me cherry pie like that all the time – fuckin’ provoking me. You just wanted me to pop your cherry for you. Didn’t you, little girl?” All you can do is nod dumbly and take what he gives you. He hooks one of your knees over his elbow, the other propped over his shoulder, foot bobbing limply at each slam of his hips. He has you bent entirely in half, cunt splayed wide open for him to fuck down into the deep, devastating end of you. Your vision goes blurry, black stars streaking across the back of your eyelids. All you see is him. Perhaps he’s all that exists now. Maybe you’re just as dead as the two bodies laying beside the two of you. You wonder peripherally what the sight of the four of you must look like. Joel’s hulking form fucking you like an animal into the dirt. You open your eyes to look up at him, there’s blood splatter across his face, in his hair. His skin is burning hot against yours. You think that perhaps you’ll have scorch marks in the shape of his fingers in your skin after he’s done with you. Two dead, brutalized bodies cooling beside the place where the two of you are fucking.

“Can feel ya tightening up, baby. Gonna come all over my cock.”

He does something to change the angle, and it fucking hurts. “Too much,” you beg, try to push him back weakly, but your cunt pulls sharp and tight, and then your muscles are rippling around him, womb contracting painfully as your orgasms blinds you with its sudden intensity.

“Don’t care,” he growls back. “Do not fucking push me away.” No, he must not care. Prey doesn’t decide how it’s felled, after all.

He pulls out and back then, suddenly, slaps your cunt harshly, once, twice. You mewl, high and shocked, writhing around in the dirt. He grabs you by the hips and flips you so fast you’re left disoriented, pulling your ass up, up, up.

“Fuck, you’re so fuckin’ pretty,” he croons, bends to bite down on the meat of your asscheek, and then notches back at your gaping, fluttering hole, orgasm still running through you, and pushes back in. You’re soaking wet, slick and fucked open by him and the taking is much easier this time. You feel his thumb press down on your asshole, “Gonna take this too. Gonna have every part of you, every piece. Gonna swallow you whole.” All you do is arch your back further, cheek smushed into the dirt, fingers digging into the cool earth for purchase, for salvation.

The sight of you stretched around his thick base, so slick he feels you dripping down his balls and further below, into the bloody earth. There’s a red tinge of your own blood coating his skin, and he’s going to come. He’s going to fill you up with his spend and fuck it deep into you until it takes. Until no matter how far you want to run, he’ll be with you, always. He lets his head fall back on his neck and stares up at the dark canopy of the trees, groans low and deep.“You’re gonna be my little hole now,” he promises, presses one large palm into the small of your back to deepen the angle and fuck down into you. “Gonna take you with me and fill you up whenever I feel like it. My gorgeous little cumslut.” The ramming of his hips starts to grow sloppy and stuttered, close to the edge now. Victory is so, so near.

You start to claw at the dirt and wiggle again. Little knees chafed raw and scrambling against the hard ground trying to get away. He slaps your ass hard, hopes there’ll be the print of his hand to appreciate later.

“Not inside, not inside – not – no birth control,” you stutter, beg.

“I’m not fuckin’ pulling out.” He twists a cruel and unyielding hand into the back of your hair and presses your face harshly into the ground. Your eyes pinch and tears seep and mingle into the blood and dirt beneath you. “Gonna pump you raw and full. You don’t gotta worry about anythin’ anymore, baby. Gonna take care of you,” he grits and you press yourself harder back into him. There is an existential seesaw inside of you – a volleying of your wants – you want him to hurt you, to force you, to take care of you and keep you, all at the same time.

“Promise – promise me you won’t leave me,” you cry and beg because really, that’s all you want. All you’ve ever wanted. For someone to stay, for someone to never leave, no matter what.

“I promise – fuckin’ swear.” And you go loose and passive again at that – his to do with as he will. Nothing else really matters after all that.

He senses the change. The loosening of your muscles into capitulation. He stops his thrusting and grinds, strums at your clit. “Oh fuck, you want me to fill you up? And what happens if I do? What happens if it takes? Want me to get you fuckin’ pregnant?” Starts to fuck into you again, “I think you do.”

Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care.

“You’re mine. Fucking mine.” He says it again and again and again, yes, yes, yes, lets himself fall forward, anchored above you with one strong arm as he presses as deep as he can physically go and starts to fill your pulsing cunt with his come, the heat of his spend inciting you to roll into one more throbbing orgasm. He brings his face down close to yours, open your eyes, little thing, lemme see you. The fluttering of your lashes, sweaty, dirt-streaked face, and you are seraphic, the wet crimson heat of your blood pounding beneath the delicate membrane of your skin. Gorgeous, perfect, conquered and his.

“Fucked full’a me now,” he whispers, presses a soft kiss to the tender skin of your eyelid. You nuzzle into him, and then look up at him with the warmest, most vibrant gaze he’s ever seen. Fucking pleased and sated.

“They wanted me, but only you get to have me now,” you whisper. “How does that make you feel?” Provoking, provoking again.

“Like I fucking own you.” He grinds his still spitting cock further, feels the pull of your muscles milk him deeper.

He lets his weight fall partially over you, too heavy for the full mass of himself. You are, after all, a delicate thing, and he must remember to handle you with care, occasionally. He feels the pulsing and quivering of your cunt around his softening cock, and the two of you settle to lay there in the dirt, bodies still dead, virginity scoured and stolen, and stare at each other.

“Have you ever been in love?” you whisper, dragging the tip of one little finger, whisper soft, over the arch of his brow, the slope of his nose.

“I feel a little in love with ya right now,” he confesses, and you press that finger against the seam of his mouth, begging for entrance, and then inside, against the flat of his tongue to inspect the wet gleam of it. It’ll be inside of you soon enough, you should take a look at that which you’ll be writhing against in due time.

“Good. That was my plan all along.” Smug, conniving little creature.

Once it’s full dark, he packs you into his truck, buckles your seatbelt for you, tucks a blanket around your dirty knees and drives off as if he hadn’t just murdered two men and taken your virginity with their blood still hot on his skin. He goes for miles and miles, eventually finds a dark, secluded spot to park the truck for the night. He takes you into the back bunk and fucks you like you’d wanted him to, on your side, one leg slung over his shoulder, hand gripping the lush of your ass to pull you onto his impaling cock, watches your ass bounce against his thrusts. A demanded play with it, lemme see ya push it back in, as he watches himself drip out of your messy hole. Eats your cunt until you cry. Afterwards, the two of you lay, naked and damp, facing each other, tracing the lines of one another in the quiet dark.

Sometimes he’s worried he’s blood hungry – or pain hungry. Starving for something he doesn’t have a name for. But he thinks that, perhaps, he can use your name to fill in the blank space now. He’d always felt as if his devotion was a punishment to the receiver. After all, everyone Joel has ever loved has left him. But as he looks at you, there’s something in your eyes that tells him that perhaps, you’ll remain. Perhaps, he can compel you to, force you to. Perhaps, he can anchor you to himself, and in turn, give you everything.

“Are you a ghost?” he asks.

“No. Are you?”

“Sometimes I think I am.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re like a fuckin’ angel or somethin’. What were you doin’ out here in this wasteland?” He asks you again.

“Maybe I was waiting for you.” This answer he likes.

He’s quiet for a long time after that – taking you in, cataloging you, memorizing you. His fingers ghosting over your face, your hair, strumming the fan of your lashes. Later he asks: How do you remember the memory of someone else? How do you keep them when they’ve gone somewhere entirely unreachable?

“Because you love them,” you tell him.

“That’s enough?”

“Of course. Will you ever forget that you loved her?”

“Never.”

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

#my writing #joel miller #the last of us #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller/you #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fic #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction #joel miller smut #joel miller imagine

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transmutationisms · 16 days

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oh i would actually be curious to hear your thoughts on lolita book covers in that case. i do get the sense that some of the covers are designed to uncritically titilate and seem to misunderstand the text, but that could obviously be an assumption on my part lol.

oh i agree that the cover designs tend to run counter to nabokov's intentions, both in the text and in the literal instructions he gave about covers lol. they pretty clearly rely on putting some young girl on display, which is exactly what nabokov did not want to do visually; they also tend to suggest dolores as some kind of seductress (sultry gazes, pouty lips, &c). clearly this is precisely the opposite of what the text tells us about her.

however when evaluating these visual choices i find that many people portray them as some kind of originary and culturally polluting act: that is, a narrative emerges that the problem here is people misinterpreting 'lolita', and then publishing it with covers that will do harm to young girls &c. i think this is lazy analysis and fundamentally makes idealist assumptions overestimating the effect of cultural products (books, book covers) on problems, like the sexualisation of children, that are in fact grounded in material relations, such as in this case the status of children as legal property and the total power granted to adults over them. that is to say, these broader conditions are at root the reason that cultural products like the cover of 'lolita' look the way they do, and chalking it up to individuals not understanding the book is never going to get us very far; and also, although some of these covers are pretty egregious, they are the reflection rather than the cause of the sexualisation of children, a problem that would continue to exist even if every edition of 'lolita' ever printed just said "humbert humbert is an unreliable narrator and dolores haze is a child he is preying on" on the cover.

fundamentally i also think this sort of conversation often elides some more interesting points about whom these covers communicate to and what they say. you suggest they are meant to "titillate"; although i would agree dolores is often shown as sexual, desirable, and seductive, i'm not sure that's the same as assuming the cover is trying to arouse the potential reader. for one thing, to put it bluntly, this style of cover tends to be associated more with books marketed to women than to heterosexual men. and more broadly, and this is something the lolita podcast really fails to understand imo, the phenomenon of people reading 'lolita' and relating themselves to dolores is not mutually exclusive with this type of rhetorical construction of dolores-through-humbert's-eyes. that is, often what appeals about dolores is, i think, precisely the fact that through her, people find a way of discoursing about or simply re-enacting the kind of sexualisation that they are already subjected to or have been in the past, whether or not at a level as explicit and extreme as what nabokov depicts.

i'm not really interested in a simple moral condemnation of the people who design these covers; that critique writes itself. they are obviously bad and facile, and reflective of precisely the culture of child sexual abuse that nabokov's text condemns. but if we are interested in the reception of these objects, or interrogating the cultural meaning and implications of their existence, i just think there's a lot more going on here than what the podcast portrays as a simple sort of 'broadcast' model of mass media wherein the 'lolita' book cover and trope is beamed out to unsuspecting innocents who are then exposed to its nefarious elements. dolores appeals to people for lots of reasons, some prurient, some pitying, some openly self-projective, and these are not mutually exclusive with one another nor are they mutually exclusive with readings that reproduce elements of the very lolita character that humbert creates and uses to silence and re-write dolores. we can be uncomfortable with that and refuse to talk about it but if that's the position someone wants to take then i'm not likely to be interested enough in their opinions to, like, listen to their podcast about this book lol.

#lolita

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where-dreams-dwell · 6 months

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Roderick Usher is such a good bait and switch of a villain! You spend most of the show watching his ‘downfall’ and corruption, knowing that he’s going to become the monster Dupin knows him as. But you still want to believe he can’t be all that bad, and he somehow knows this and plays right into it until the very end

Roderick is telling his story and peppers it with all these asides and moments that make the audience feel some sympathy for him. That make us believe he either has good intentions beneath everything else, or originally had them and was corrupted by power.

He implies he truly didn’t know Ligodone was addictive: he tells Dupin ‘you belive the chemist when he you tells you the drug they made isn’t addictive, you trust your company not to abuse the use of that drug’. He reminds Dupin (and by extension the audience) that he ‘didn’t make the damn thing, I just sold it’. And then it cuts to show that the drug company was originally acquired by Roderick’s predecessor as CEO, who took his pitch for a pain free world and ran with it. This makes the audience feel some small sympathy for Roderick: not enough to think he’s a victim in anyway but it worms in there and makes him not as monstrous as he was a moment ago. It implies he is not solely to blame.

The audience see’s (we think) Roderick getting corrupted and swayed to the dark side of corporate greed. Brilliantly they show Roderick in present day acting in ways that seem in character for what we have learnt about him, and then flash back to the 70’s to reveal that those lines or attitudes where originally those of the old CEO who Roderick *hated*. It appears as if pure innocent and trusting Roderick who runs straight at injustice has been corrupted by the old CEO, has become the monster or villain that he once hated. It’s a small tragedy mixed in with a busy narrative but it impacts the audiences view of who Roderick once was. We interpret this as an originally good if naive man corrupted by power and wealth. Coupled with all those scenes in the 70’s of Madeline being more emotionless and pragmatic, pushing Roderick to be more manipulative and strategic, it appears as if he has been ‘forced’ or ‘groomed’ into his role against his original intentions. Part of the scenes we then spent in the 70’s is spent quietly mourning this version of Roderick, as we know it doesn’t survive his ascension.

But there are enough moments to imply that Roderick is still being an unreliable narrator. When Dupin first apologised for faking an informant, saying he feels that his lie had some role in the death of his children, Roderick’s first response is to run with that false impression. The way he responds to Dupin’s apology sounds like he’s gearing up to lay into him about his role in Roderick a children’s death, to double down and agree that Dupin does bear some blame for how they died.

And then one of his dead children appear to him. They make him pause, collect himself, and acknowledge what Roderik knows to be true: Dupin’s lie had no bearing on their death (his deal with Verna is the reason they’re dead) and any impact of that lie on their final fate is solely due to Roderick believing it and then placing a bounty on the supposed informants head. He turned his kids against one another, Dupin’s lie was just the vehicle. Roderik only voices this when he is forced to by his literal ghosts.

There are several moments when it appears his dead children are ‘keeping him honest’. When he’s getting off topic Perry or Leo appear to shock him and remind him to keep telling their stories. When he tries to downplay his part in the creation of Ligodone and argue that the horrors of its addiction are actually due to a street derivative which ‘hasn’t been FDA approved’ Camille’s appears behind him to force him to reconsider and eventually interrupts him so abruptly he trows a glass at her. When he’s lamenting Frederiks death and remembering him as a child not an adult (the last time Roderick was any kind of father to him) Fredrick takes over child/Frederick’s body to remind him of how he died and to get back to the story. It’s almost like he’s saying ‘you don’t get to remember me like this, you don’t get to miss remember and pick and chose: this is how I died and it’s because of you so keep going’. It’s only in hindsight so we realise this was Roderick trying to subconsciously control the narrative and change this confession, to reframe his actions and those deaths. And the kids didn’t let him get away with it.

Even Juno as a narrative device helps to hide Roderik’s rotten centre: she is such a bluntly honest and sincere person, she lends a little credence of honesty to Roderick. We think he must have some small good in him (albeit wrapped up in all the ‘old enough to be Juno’s father, makes the opioid she’s addicted to, doesn’t defend her from family cruelty’ BS of his ‘love’) as she is devoted to and loves him. Plus when we first meet her he states he loves her, he is always shown to be gently affectionate towards her, and even claims she is one of his ‘two favourite ladies’ along with his granddaughter who we know he dotes upon. But then at the very end his twisted horror show of devotion is revealed: anything close to love he holds for Juno is warped by her being a living totem of his product, something he can point to and use to further his cause. Juno is an object to him, one he enjoys complete control over. He has never seen her as a person in her own right, just a doll/puppet to prop up his drug empire, and he can’t separate her or his feelings for her from the drug she is dependant upon.

Added to this, towards the end of the show we discover that this ‘unburdening’ of Roderiks sins, this confession to a litany of crimes, which will give Dupin closure for both his life’s work and answers to Roderick’s betrayal of him in the 70’s… that isn’t even Roderick’s idea! Verna told him to confess. Even at the end Roderick isn’t mending bridges of his own volition.

And then his final revelation: he’s been lying the whole time, maybe his whole life, to everyone. He had always know people would die to ensure his success, that he would have to climb over ‘a mountain of bodies’ to get to the top and it never once made him pause. He wasn’t corrupted, he didn’t get poisoned by the old CEO and his views, he didn’t change to take on more of Madeleine’s views. He just noticed the best way to get work done and adapted.

Dupin had it right from the start: the only good that he ever saw in Roderik was a reflection of Annabelle lee’s. Like the moon has no inherent light of its own, Roderik hid his darkness behind the strength of Annabelle’s goodness until the time came when she couldn’t shine on him anymore. And he was revealed for the empty dead husk he had always been.

And Annabelle even said it herself, when then kids chose Roderick over her. They were starving and he told them to gorge themselves but he could never actually feed them, because he had nothing real to offer. Empty through and through, and just. So. Small.

#the fall of the house of usher #mike flanagan #fuck Roderik usher #spoilers #tfothou #roderick usher #unreliable narrators #character analysis #media analysis

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nemastraea · 6 months

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Doormat extraordinaire: Andrew Graves is down horrendous for his own sister | Part 1

Or as I like to call it, actual literal word vomit attempting a proper character analysis!

Here's a link to the AO3 version for archive purposes: The doormat extraordinaire has a bit of a romantic streak,

Content warning: This will heavily feature spoilers from Episodes 1 & 2 of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. Trigger warning: Abuse, cannibalism, child neglect, codependency, harassment, incest, murder, self-harm, and suicide. Disclaimer: I will occasionally reference an extremely normal essay from Sufficient Velocity commenter Leyleyfication (here). It would be a lot easier to read this essay first as Leyleyfication does a pretty good job establishing the following: - Ashley is dependent on Andrew to assure and validate her of her own insecurities, and - The game heavily implies that Andrew wants to fuck his own sister.

Anyway: The Coffin of Andy and Leyley! A game in early access where a pair of siblings are stuck through a seemingly never-ending quarantine together, desperate not to starve to death. When their cultist neighbor dies in a ritual gone wrong, they rationally resort to cannibalism. Fun!

I am definitely going to assume that you read Leyleyfication's extremely normal essay (I am on my knees, begging you to read that). Which is why this essay immediately starts with, "yeah, Andrew definitely wants to fuck his sister" as its baseline.

What I will be adding to that funny little cauldron of fucked up sibling dynamics in a horror visual novel are the following: Andrew's fixation and sexual attraction manifests as his desire to control, dominate, and possess Ashley. And it is framed as a fatalist attraction and the totality of his existence (for worse or even worse).

Because of Tumblr's limit for 30 images per post, though, I'm going to have to split this extremely normal and reasonably lengthy essay into... multiple posts! Yeah! I have no idea how long this will fucking go!

So first things first: how can we tell that Andrew is even attracted to Ashley in the first place?

Nemlei (Devlog 05). Note the hickeys above and below Ashley's choker and her left inner thigh, and Andrew's left hand creeping into her right thigh.

As Leyleyfication points out, the game primes us to believe that Andrew is a pushover and Ashley is his abuser. This occurs in the Steam page as it explicitly says Ashley is "in fact, very bad" and Andrew is a "doormat extraordinaire." Moreover, it's very easy to tell that Ashley is, on some degree, obsessed with Andrew:

She's happy to hear that Julia broke up with Andrew over the phone;

She repeatedly accuses him of finding the Lady from Room 302 attractive and he 'tried anything with her;' and

Her flashback to wanting to punish her friend Nina ("the Bitch in the Box") for crushing on Andrew.

Episode 1, dream and memory. Leyley previously said that Nina should know better than to 'steal from another woman,' referring to herself. The implication that Andy is hers is toyed with after this moment, when she says she'd put Andy back in the box.

The game does prime us to think that Ashley is Andrew's abuser. It also suggests that Ashley projects an unrequited and incestuous love onto Andrew. Before we consider Episode 2's narrative, Episode 1 gives the initial impression that if Andrew comes to reciprocate her feelings, it's more of a reaction and subsuming to her will. That it may not be something he wants for himself and independent of Ashley's manipulation.

But again, I do believe Andrew wants to fuck Ashley. And always has been. He just frequently vacillate between 'subtle' and 'really fucking obvious' tells that completely take advantage of the game's third person limited POV.

Keep in mind that both Andrew and Ashley are extremely unreliable narrators. We aren't going to get information they personally do not care about and that is on top of our own choices as the player.

(A digressive example: you will not learn that the founder and CEO of Toxisoda's company was a former surgeon unless you interact with the television in Andrew's Episode 2 dream and memory of their blood oath. Otherwise, it neatly ties into the surgeon that Mrs. Graves conveniently says she was directed to regarding the siblings' quarantine in the main story.)

When it's really fucking obvious

When you play as Andrew in Episode 2, his post-dinner argument with Ashley carefully frames them both. They are cramped in the foreground and Andrew's left arm is conveniently blocked by Ashley and the kitchen knife, as seen here.

Episode 2, common route. Prior to this, you can interact with Mrs. Graves for her to pointedly comment on the siblings being inseparable.

At this point in the game, their physical closeness is something we're used to by now. After all, we've already seen Ashley on his lap at least twice; Andrew slept in her bed in Episode 1; and Ashley confirmed they've shared the same motel bed multiple times in the one-week interim between Episodes 1 & 2.

But the game abruptly shifts to Mrs. Graves' POV when she enters the scene and not only do we see the two as physically close, but we notice a few more details.

Episode 2, common route. The first picture transitions from Andrew's POV to Mrs. Graves as it introduces us to her entering the scene.

The contrast of how spacious the kitchen is from Mrs. Graves' POV to Andrew's cramped POV is obvious. More importantly, Andrew's fingers loop through Ashley's belt loops when the two are huddled together. When Mrs. Graves clears her throat, the two don't really separate.

Ashley pivots on her left foot so that her body is turned to their mother, not Andrew, but she doesn't step away from him. Andrew, meanwhile, recoils from Ashley and withdraws his hand. But he isn't turning his body to face their mother like Ashley does here. His attention, at least in this moment, is still towards Ashley (and, yanno, the sink).

Episode 2, common route. Two things to consider in the second picture: Andrew hides Ashley's bite mark on his cheek with his left sleeve and he conveniently moves the pillow from behind him to his front.

The 'tell' isn't so much as the two are unusually physically close. Again, we're used to that by now. But it's how the two siblings react whenever Mrs. Graves comes into the picture. Ashley doesn't really give a fuck about whether or not people assume the worst of her or even her intentions regarding Andrew. To Ashley, their proximity is normal and anyone who sees that as a problem is not worth an explanation or reason.

But Andrew is at least subconsciously aware it's 'not normal.' As far as these moments are concerned, Andrew instinctively tries to do damage control by either putting space between them or keeping his hands occupied so they aren't visibly touching Ashley. Still, he either does not mind or actively appreciates his physical closeness with Ashley.

When it's really fucking obvious (but only in hindsight)

In Episode 1, Ashley passes out after trying to clean up after the apartment. Regardless of her passing out in the living room, the bathroom, or their parents' room, she will wake up on the couch with her head pillowed by Andrew's lap.

Episode 1, Ashley's POV. Andrew's hands often hover over Ashley's head, but more than that—

I personally didn't notice this until I replayed Episode 1, when I basically have the hindsight of Andrew's fixation with hair. But yes, his fingers idly twirl through the ends of Ashley's hair as they watch TV. It's implied that Andrew can and will do this when Ashley pillows his lap, awake or asleep. He does not recoil from it when Ashley does wake up and later on, in Episode 2, even continues to brush it from her face.

Episode 2, common route. Ashley fell asleep at the passenger seat, so Andrew had to have transferred her to the back seat to pillow her head again. Though, technically, she's more cramped at the back seat than if he'd just reclined the passenger seat.

So far, we've seen that Andrew has a natural tendency to not only be physically close to Ashley, but to hover over her personal space and be in constant and direct contact with her. Whether it's by having her head on his lap, twirling her hair through his fingers, or even constantly grabbing her by the head in various states of comfort, playfulness, or outright threat (but let's put a pin on that for now).

The weight behind this candid contact shifts when Episode 2 draws a pretty explicit parallel between Julia and Ashley. Assuming that you interacted with Julia's landline and heard Ashley's voicemails, you know (and Andrew knows) that Ashley draws that connection herself:

DO YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME!? Just because you can fuck him and I can't? You think that's love?! Are you fucking delusional?? Cumdumpsters like you are just that. He will never love you. Not like he loves me. I am the only one. I am everything. I am the secrets you'll never hear. When he lies in bed at night, and when he needs someone to hold on to... It's not you he seeks out. It is me.

Episode 2, common route. Andrew's dream and vision implies that Andrew's heard these voicemails before.

That connection extends to the hair contact as well, as Andrew goes in to hug Julia, cards his hand through her hair and requests she tie her hair up.

Episode 2, common route. Andrew's dream and memory of Julia when they're older. From the use of Andrew's present-age portrait, suggests is closer to the timeline of the game's events than his and Ashley's memories as Andy and Leyley.

From this moment, we can have one of two assumptions: either Andrew wants Julia's (black) hair put up like Ashley's, or Ashley caught onto Andrew's hair kink and puts her hair up to imitate it.

Regardless, we infer the following:

Andrew teases affection through touching and even pulling on one's hair.

His fixation on ponytails and pulling on them does not exclude his own sister. It still stands and without reservation, perhaps more explicitly since he can do it so candidly, as we saw before.

The last of that Julia-Ashley parallel is self-contained within Episode 2. But only if you end up in the Burial route regardless of Ashley's platonic or incestuous vision.

Episode 2, common route (first picture) and Burial route (second picture). It's worth pointing out that Andrew is actually disinterested and moody during his conversation with Julia, and only perks up when he mentions Ashley or feigns care for Julia (since he extends his care of Ashley to her as well).

The game ends up drawing parallels on how Andrew treats Ashley, for better or for worse, with his ex (which is definitely worse, poor Julia). In doing so, the game blurs the lines between romantic affection for Julia and 'platonic and familial' affection for Ashley.

Y'all, this isn't even getting into how Andrew respectfully gives his parents space and only crowds them when he threatens them with his cleaver. In his mind, Ashley and Julia are in that same space of physical and romantic displays of affection; something he reserves only for them (only without reservation for Ashley) that does not extend to anyone else. His ex-girlfriend, and his sister. Shit's wild.

When it's obvious BUT it's violent!

That isn't to say that his hair fixation (hair kink?) is completely innocuous, though, as it rears its ugly head (pun unintended) in Decay. Which is what that previous pin was for! Yay!

You end up in the Decay route if Ashley doesn't trust Andrew with keeping an eye on their parents. Here, Ashley sleeps on their parents' bed by herself and has an alarming vision: an unknown party chases after her through the in-between and when they catch up to her, it's Andrew. Ashley has nowhere to run and Andrew eventually grabs her and threatens to kill her.

Whether or not Ashley can defend herself depends on Andrew expending all of her gun's ammo when he deals with the hitman, or not. But that outcome divergence will matter much, much later (so that's another pin for us to come back to).

The sequence of events actually mirrors the way the siblings ambush the Lady from Room 302 back in Episode 1. There, Andrew closes in on her and grabs the Lady by her wrist and uses his front to pin and restrain her. With his cleaver to her throat, the Lady is completely at his mercy.

Episode 1 & 2, common route (first picture) and Decay route (second, third, and fourth pictures). Note that Andrew restrains the Lady from Room 302 by the wrist while with Ashley, by her hair.

Andrew asserts control of the person and the situation through violence. Whether it's by killing them (the wardens) or by threatening physical violence (the Lady from Room 302 and Ashley). It's always on the table for him. As Leyleyfication puts it, "He's so calculated in how he approaches his use of violence [here]."

That violence includes Ashley. It's always on the table where Ashley's concerned. The game even juxtaposes when Andrew threatens violence and physical assault 'playfully' versus when he's seriously out for blood:

When you interact with the wall of call girls' numbers and Ashley jokes about leaving her number on the wall, Andrew 'jokingly' threatens to backhand her for even thinking about it.

When you interact with their parents' latched window for a second time, Andrew 'teases' slapping Ashley if she doesn't find a way to open it. (Ashley jokingly asks if it's on her ass or at her face, and assumes it must be the face when Andrew says she'll have to find out.)

The two other times that Andrew exerts violence against Ashley are both in Episode 1 & 2. We can remember when that happens in Episode 1, when Andrew's had it with Ashley's fits and threatens to kill her:

Episode 1, common route. Y'all, Andrew was choking her hard enough for his grip to bruise.

It happens again in Decay when he confronts Ashley about repeatedly calling him Andy and therefore, breaking the promise he coerced her into from Episode 1.

Episode 2, Decay route. Another thing to keep in mind is that Andrew's outburst is preceded by Ashley prodding him about his current state and insisting that Andrew was fine with 'Andy' during their home invasion.

In Episode 1, Andrew resorts to harming Ashley because he's fucking had it with her accusing him repeatedly of trying anything with the Lady from 302 and, in her eyes, his 'infidelity.' Where she accuses Andrew of not loving her enough that if his eye catches another girl, he'd leave her behind or flip on her. In Episode 2, she's poking and prodding on his boundaries on 'Andy' and whether or not, once again, he's with her on their now-committed life of joint crime.

If I can give another example, it happens in Andrew's common route memory of Nina's death and his blood oath with Leyley.

Episode 2, common route. Prior to this, Andy expresses immense exasperation at Leyley's tantrums over him 'thinking about that bitch again.' When he goes to grab the kitchen knife, cleans it, and returns to Leyley on his bed—he's briefly considering killing her.

Andrew threatens Ashley violently whenever he intends to confront her on her perceived brattiness, for lack of a better word. And keep Leyleyfication's essay segment on Ashley's insecurities and need for Andrew's validation in mind here—when Ashley does this, she wants and even needs Andrew to comfort her. But her aggression treads Andrew's patience and really, his tolerance of her behavior.

When Ashley's anger, clinging behavior, insecurities, and possessiveness of Andrew slips his control and tolerance, he resorts to violence to coerce or even dominate her.

I think (or hope, if it's clear enough) it reinforces what Leyleyfication points out:

The truth of the matter is, Ashley can only make Andrew do anything because he lets her. I don't mean in the sense that I'm saying abuse victims let their abusers emotionally abuse them, I mean in the sense that he is clearly considering his options on the table and choosing to discard those that could stop her, or bring an end to any of this.

It also reflects on another aspect of why Andrew resorts to violence: in all three situations, Andrew remarks on Ashley's behavior and her sake. If she acts up again once they're out of the apartment, it'll cause trouble for him while they're evading authorities. If she's going to call him Andy from hereon out, what's the point of running away with her. If she expects him to leverage keeping 'her secret,' he won't because it's for her sake.

Andrew rationalizes his attempt to control of Ashley's behavior as being for her sake. But really, isn't it him confining her behavior to something he can tolerate and personally handle?

I'd also like to point out that Andrew admits that he noticed Ashley push for calling him 'Andy' during the home invasion, and he did not argue with her on it while they held their parents hostage and readied to sacrifice them. We can infer that when Andrew calculates his use of violence, that can also factor when, where, and how he exerts it.

Well, that's where I can reasonably end this half of my word vomit! Now, onwards, to part 2!

#lia's conspiracy board #The Coffin of Andy and Leyley #TCOAAL: Andrew Graves #TCOAAL: Ashley Graves #ship: coffincest #character analysis

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scribefindegil · 7 months

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Some thoughts on unreliable narrators as I procrastinate on writing several tricky scenes with unreliable narrators:

Every narrator is unreliable. Just like there's no such thing as 'objectivity' in journalism or academia, there's no such thing as a truly reliable narrator. The narrator's viewpoint is limited, they're shaped by their culture and personality and experiences, they overlook things and make assumptions. It's all a matter of degree. But usually we talk about "unreliable narrators" when the gap between what the narrator says and what the reader/author believes to be true is prominent enough to be narratively significant.

Where is the gap?

Unreliable narrators are not all duplicitous. In fact, many are telling the truth as they understand it. But some are not! This is by no way a comprehensive taxonomy of narrators, and even within a single story there are likely to be shifts and overlaps, but here are some Types I find helpful to consider:

Oblivious The reader doesn't get crucial information because the narrator simply was not paying attention. Maybe they were missing context. Maybe they were bored. Maybe they were distracted by a hot girl (Gideon I love you). Alternatively, the reader gets clearly false information (especially about how other characters are thinking or feeling) that the narrator wholeheartedly believes to be true (Breq I love you).

Repressed You the reader can tell that what the narrator's telling you they think/feel and what they actually think/feel are not the same, but the narrator themself has no idea. For narrators that lack self-awareness and don't understand why they do the things they do or for narrators that are really good at not looking at things that make them uncomfortable.

Liar (internal) The "Sure, you keep telling yourself that, buddy" version, where the narrator is on some level aware that they're lying to themself but doubles down on it anyway. Tends to involve a lot of rationalizing or misdirection. It's very common for a character to have a realization about something important partway through a story (that The System is corrupt, that they're in love with their best friend, that their actions are actually more self-serving than altruistic, etc) that makes them switch between Repressed (passive internal conflict) and Liar (active internal conflict). Or, you know, they might have a realization and not immediately start lying to themself about it, but where's the fun in that?

Liar (external) Usually shows up in first-person stories or in-universe writing, since it requires the narrator to be aware that they have an audience and be attempting to intentionally mislead them. In this case, there is a deliberate disconnect between what the narrator's understanding of events and the account of it they're giving for the purpose of spin or deception.

Coerced This is where the gap comes from an external factor, usually magic or sci-fi nonsense that messes with a character's mind and changes their perception of themself and/or reality, (eg they can't talk/think about a certain subject, they've had their memories altered, etc). It's a different flavor than the other sorts of unreliability and can overlap with any of the others depending of how aware the character is of what's been done to them.

How Obvious Is The Gap?

Another thing to consider is at what point, and to what extent, a reader becomes aware that a narrator is unreliable. Is it clear from the beginning? Is it played as a reveal? Is is a slow dawning realization? Is it something that you could overlook on a first readthrough that only becomes obvious once you put the pieces together? All of these can be effective, but it's good to know going in. If you want the narrator's unreliable nature to be a reveal (that is, there's a point where the reader realizes that they're lying and that recontextualizes the whole story), you're going to approach it differently than if you want your readers to be screaming about the dramatic irony from the beginning. If your point is that the reader shouldn't actually know how much of what the narrator's telling them is true, that's going to look very different than a story about a narrator who has an on-page realization about one of the big things they've been lying to themself about and has to navigate the consequences.

#writing #posts that are just me rubber-ducking at myself because i don't want to actually write the Hard Things #(one fic that's just All Repression All The Time with shades of Liar (internal) and one scene that's. um.#coerced dramatic-irony-horror slide from repression to liar while screaming)

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iamadequate1 · 4 months

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Izzy and Media Literacy

I keep seeing variations of this:

The show established that a wound on the left side isn't fatal, so Izzy should have survived!

Is that what the show established? Not at all! What the show established is that a wound only matters as much as the plot demands. It's the same internal logic as the travel: people pop in and out of locations as the plot demands it.

For example, Stede was gut stabbed in 1x3 and 1x6, but only 1x3 had any lasting physical effects on screen in order to set up his meet cute and bonding with Ed. The one in 1x6 was just to show that Stede was a maniac who could beat Izzy unconventionally, and Stede was just fine afterwards. I mean, Ed was saying this "left side" stuff while his intestines had been perforated and had doomed himself to a death by sepsis, but the plot demanded he lived.

And, really? If we're talking wound logic the show established, Geraldo died of the same wound.

Where are the cries that it's so unfair that Izzy didn't die instantaneously? Well, Geraldo didn't have to give a dramatic monologue, so his death was instantaneous. Izzy had to stick around to help give Ed closure, so he didn't die right away.

Izzy was a dead man walking in the show. There was nowhere for his story to go. This post really summarizes the options. He was never going to supplant Ed and Stede as a protagonist, and he was never going to be allowed to survive threatening and coming close to murdering the romcom leads. He had no character traits besides being the antagonist of S1 and being narrative embodiment of the what was holding Ed into the pirate life he hated and was throwing him into a suicidal spiral.

Ed: You ever heard of retirement? Izzy: That's not much of an option in this line of work.

And here is the media literacy point: the writers weren't spraying bullets at the cast and it was only your favorite blorbo who got caught in the crossfire. They didn't accidentally shoot him and say "Ope, it's on the left side! Let's kill him anyway!" Izzy was going to die in 2x8 no matter what and he was going to give a final apology deathbed speech to Ed no matter what. Is there a way they would have done this without angering the canyon? Absolutely not. This "left side" argument is a distraction.

In media arguments, look at what they put on screen and what was highlighted. These characters aren't real people, and they are just vehicles for a story. When people say that Izzy isolated Ed, it's because that's what the show emphasized. When people say that Izzy was a terrible pirate and leader, it's because the show never demonstrated him acting competently (Dunning-Kruger: high confidence is not directly linked to high competence). When people say that Izzy tried to kill Stede, it's because that's what was on the show! When people say that Izzy threatened Ed unless he performed properly, it's because that's what was on the show! (If I see another person give a reductive "People don't like Izzy just because he was mean to Ed and Stede in S1", I swear...) Izzy may say things to the contrary (and people like Geraldo or Steak Knife may fall for the High Confidence), but we're in a medium of Show, Don't Tell, and Izzy is an Unreliable Narrator.

What the show didn't show was Izzy doing any "protecting." He wasn't protecting Ed in S1, and he wasn't protecting the crew in S2. If he had, it would be easily read on screen. Just in S2, we see him whining to Ed that the crew isn't doing their job, we hear Archie calling him a dick, we see Izzy shaming Ed in front of his crew with a lie that it was Ed's soft feelings that was the problem, and we see Izzy trying to pass off equal blame of the situation onto Stede. There is nothing onscreen that supports a "protection" reading. The crew has sympathy for him because they're kind to people, not because they think Izzy is a protector or really care about Izzy as a person specifically.

(Aside: this media reading is also why I don't abide "Izzy and Lucius should have bonded because they were both traumatized!" Well, Lucius was just helping Ed and got pushed overboard as a thank you, and Izzy, well, *waves at his reign of terror in S1* Izzy was a great and fun antagonist of S1, and I don't like this sanitization.)

When we look at Izzy's death, I'm sure the next argument step is "He should have sacrificed himself while protecting the crew!"... and... why? He had never had a protection arc. That wasn't his place in the story. He was a pirate, The Pirate, who antagonized and threatened the crew in S1, who put Ed on the spiral at the beginning of S2, the pirate who SOLD THEM ALL OUT to the English for personal gain. He was a Walking Plot Device for Ed, and his use was over. His luck had simply run out at the hands of the likely S3 villain, someone from the English navy, and this has allowed Ed to move onto the next stage of his life.

Ed, no. No, I deserve this. At some point in a man's life, he has to face the music, for the things he's done, and the people he's hurt.

Stede really foreshadowed Izzy, didn't he? (Appropriate this was on one of Izzy's many attempted murders of Stede.)

And if we're going there, what kind of physical wound would have been acceptable in this heroic sacrifice scenario?

So, that's what I got. If you're upset at this appearing in the #izzy hands tag without an "appropriate" marker, might I suggest getting your friends to start using a properly curated #canyon izzy or #fanon izzy tag instead of harassing people who want to talk about canon? Stop trying to scare people away from the fandom. I'd sure like to post about what I liked about Izzy in S1 without people thinking I'm in the canyon.

#our flag means death #ofmd #media literacy #izzy hands #izzy canon #ofmd meta

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ofbreathandflame · 8 months

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and also just to add one thing my last point:

i think the toxic canon thing really forms a basis for the foundational problems of the series - narrative. its one of the reasons i believe feyre often gets dubbed an 'unreliable narrator.

because in theory - feyre is not made purposely to be unreliable. honestly - the problem is that the story makes feyre's thoughts declarative for the series as whole. feyre tells us one thing, and the story shows us another.

for example: when the story tells us 'tamlin didn't fight for me,' - its implying that tamlin has the tools to do so. bc the story establishes an entirely difference scenario. we learn that (1) amarantha is madly obsessed with tamlin, so she keeps him next to her every night and (2) tamlin doesn't really have skills to navigate utm. what im saying is - feyre says these things about tamlin which are dubbed 'canon' but they don't actually reflect the reality of the situation. the story gives us to no solutions as to how tamlin could have actually helped feyre under the mountain. and i should also add that feyre couldnt have left ANYWAY -- she made a bargain. had she not did her part, the trials, her life would have just been forfeit.

and then on the flip side - we get told that rhys had to bring feyre to those parties and drug her so would forget (which is dubbed canon) but the reality of the scenario doesn't reflect that. rhysand never had to make feyre dance or embarrass her infront of everybody.

why? let's look at the established information:

rhysand disables the guards through his daemati abilities, so feyre is safe in her cell:

“No more household chores, no more tasks,” he said, his voice an erotic caress. Their yellow eyes went glazed and dull, their sharp teeth gleaming as their mouths slackened. “Tell the others, too. Stay out of her cell, and don’t touch her. If you do, you’re to take your own daggers and gut yourselves. Understood?”Dazed, numb nods, then they blinked and straightened. I hid my trembling. Glamour, mind control—whatever it was he had done, it worked. They beckoned—but didn’t dare touch me. Rhysand smiled at me. “You’re welcome,” he purred as I walked out.”

2. feyre is given a hot meal in her cell everyday - which again, establishes her cell as a relatively safe place:

“From that point on, each morning and evening, a fresh, hot meal appeared in my cell. I gobbled it down but cursed Rhysand’s name anyway. Stuck in the cell, I had nothing to do but ponder Amarantha’s riddle—usually only to wind up with a pounding headache. I recited it again and again and again, but to no avail.”

and even after she has to dance every night, this does not change:

“I awoke ill and exhausted each morning, and though Rhysand’s order to the guards had indeed held, the nightly activities left me thoroughly drained.”

so - the whole point of taking feyre out of cell is instantly negated, as her cell was never a place of torture. if anything - the only person actually making her cell a place of horror was rhysand. when he drugs her, she becomes so sick that she can't keep the food down; he leaves her essentially naked in her cell, so she's cold and shivering, and her leaves her so exhausted that she can't even think about the solving the riddle.

3. nuala and cerridwen have the ability to walk through walls and actually usher feyre through utm without ever being seen or caught:

“a tapestry that hadn’t been there a moment before falling over us, the shadows deepening, solidifying. I had a feeling that if someone pulled back that tapestry, they would see only darkness and stone.”

so when we get this line in maf:

“So we endured it. I made you dress like that so Amarantha wouldn’t suspect, and made you drink the wine so you would not remember the nightly horrors in that mountain.”

or his explanation in tar:

“Working Tamlin into a senseless fury is the best weapon we have against her. Seeing you enter into a fool’s bargain with Amarantha was one thing, but when Tamlin saw my tattoo on your arm … Oh, you should have been born with my abilities, if only to have felt the rage that seeped from him.” I didn’t want to think much about his abilities. “Who’s to say he won’t splatter you as well?” “Perhaps he’ll try—but I have a feeling he’ll kill Amarantha first. That’s what it all boils down to, anyway: even your servitude to me can be blamed on her. So he’ll kill her tomorrow,”

none it actually make sense. we are offered several solutions to how rhys could have respectively helped feyre without sexually assaulting her. like for (1) if he wanted her to forget, he could have given her the wine in her cell (2) he didn't have to bring feyre to those parties. amarantha doesn't even remember feyre is there until rhys brings her, and she never finds out about the food or the guards. (3) nuala and cerridwen can actually walk through walls and veil feyre, so whose to say they couldn't have sneaked feyre from utm (4) rhys can mindspeak which means he could have always just talked to feyre without visiting her cell. (3) his plan of 'making tamlin angry makes no sense as the book already established that amarantha was warded against physical attacks, hence why it makes no sense for the story to demonize tamlin for not fighting back as there's no established canon way he could have. it also makes rhysand's display of fighting amarantha pretty much pointless as if he could have just killed her, he would have just done it earlier. its also why i don't forgive the kiss bc the only valid motivation was rhysand's jealousy which literally is why i can never forgive the kiss. he (and tam) put her in the situation by bringing her there in the first place and putting the paint all over her body (and he literally prove that he could altered the paint at any time so it served no benefit but to dehumanize feyre.

soooooo that's what i mean when i say people take canon without factoring into the story as a whole. if the story doesn't actually have things that back up declarative 'canon' statements, its not useful.

#anti sjm #anti rhysand #anti sjm: feyre archeron #anti feysand #tamlin #anti acotar #anti acomaf #canon discourse #anti feyre

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clearancecreedwatersurvival · 7 months

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OKay so having learned that there are people dedicating their tumblr time to whinging about how spop is ‘romanticizing abuse’, I have some things to say.

For The Record, spop is a story about ending cycles of abuse and overcoming indoctrination from christofash evangelical holy war shit. I’m sorry, but do you expect a story about These Topics to not actually show anything related to it?

I have said it before but I’ll say it again, simply portraying a topic in fiction is not Romanticizing it. You cannot write a story that is deconstructing a thing without Including The Thing.

It is worthwhile to talk about how sometimes, especially in film, a story that discusses some topic will do so in a way that objectifies the act of whatever it is. Such as when a movie that is about rape culture or a rape revenge narrative or whatever, gets a little too objectifying and voyeuristic in the framing of events. That’s good critique and useful to talk about to unpack the societal underpinnings.

But assuming that the mere presence of something within a story means that the thing is being romanticized is just always the worst take, and I see it pop up So Often on tumblr.

As another example, it is useful to critique the way adaptations of Lolita miss the point of Lolita and portray the unreliable narrator’s bullshit editorializing on the events as reality. But if you think that the actual text of the original book is actually excusing the narrator then you straight up do not understand the book. There are like six video essays on YouTube by different people explaining exactly this already, please just go watch them if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

So once more. Spop is a story about overcoming indoctrination from christofash fundamentalist holy war death cult shit, and ending cycles of abuse. These are heavy topics. But I think Spop handled them fucking beautifully and if you don’t then congrats I have to assume you’ve never had family or community members who were lost in the fundie sauce and I’m happy for you.

#spop #catradora #she ra #nate stevenson #moralizing fiction #shipping discourse #purity culture #Caitie speaks #christofascism

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venusssssssssss · 2 months

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I rewatched ep 10 here are some thoughts:

We knew Jin took the video but he is an unreliable narrator, I don’t think he leaked it even if he said he did. Someone else leaked it but who? It would be such lazy writing because we, the audience, already saw Jin had Twitter on white mode and the video was leaked by someone who had dark mode. Why would the writers miss something so obvious? Anyway.

I understand Phee’s POV (if he’s being truthful): he did not sign up for murder nor did he know what he was really getting into. It’s also a very human thing to fall in love again and I liked that they played this card as well (not because I care for this ship or for any other ship tbh but because it such an earthling thing to do. “I love you despite of it all & i fell for you even though this started as a lie & we are both flawed & we are both guilty” bla bla bla. Love it and I will eat it up each time) Phee in this case plays the role of some of the audience (an important part of the audience is on New/Tan’s side regardless, while the rest is thinking this is too much and he needs to be stopped. There are also people who see them as simply gray characters and think that none are pure and aren’t taking any sides because they think it's pointless, but the writers don’t care about them imo. They want the first two categories to fight in the trenches about who’s right and who’s wrong and miss important details along the way - because we want so badly for some characters to deserve what they are getting).

White. We don’t know who White is and it’s been 10 episodes. This is supposed to be a slasher/thriller/murder mystery and the writers made sure we love him and hate his boyfriend Tee. But the actors said in several interviews that White is very similar to Tee and also described him as vain. Now why did they do that? The writers made sure the audience hate Tee. Now that could mean 1000 things. Maybe they are playing into the narrative: White is a colateral victim, Tee was a shitty kid but a kid too who was the product of the very bad adults around him & although he is flawed look how much he loves White. They already gave us fluffy flashbacks episode with PheeNon & Pheejin. Are we getting another one with TeeWhite this late in the show? I don’t think so. White remained spotless ‘till now but I feel a twist coming. He is probably related to someone very important or withholds some very important information from us, the audience. Are they gonna explain to us White and Phee’s little moment in the beginning of the show? That had to mean something. Some people say White is just a colateral victim. Because we saw already that New doesn’t care if people who weren’t directly involved die. So I see why people believe that as well. But White is one of the main characters so I don’t think he is just a damsel in distress.

Phee is also an unreliable narrator. He thinks New did all that but he doesn’t know all the details. Phee at this point knows less than the audience and is showing us what he thinks is true. What we saw half of this episode is what Phee thinks happened, but New is telling the audience nothing so we can't be sure.

New never trusted Phee. He already warned him 2 years ago, he already saw how his dynamic with Jin would play out, he predicted a lot of his moves, he used him but did not tell his real plan (and why would he? New wants the world to burn he has no time for feelings).

More people are going (and need) to die because this is a slasher. They have 2 episodes to kill pretty much everyone and I wanna be entertained. I want this to go out with a bang.

Also this is just my opinion and burning desire but i want a big reveal. I don't want the big reveal to be that Tan is New because it wasn't a big reveal for the audience (who already saw it coming) and it surely was not a big reveal to the other characters involved.

#i might be wrong about everything i am watching this show for entertainment and it s a thriller/slasher so i want to be entertained #dff #dead friend forever #dead friend forever the series #dff ep 10 #dff the series

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verycharismaticdragon · 9 months

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Okay, so I went a lil overboard with a reply to LBH criticism over at @controversial-blorbo-bracket, and I figure 4.5K words that probably should be put under a community label are a bit too much for a reblog, so I'm posting it separately.

CW for general discussion of sex, and for rape mention (assumption of rape is discussed and rebutted).

------

You know what, I was going to reply to this the usual way, you know, 'oh look at that, another person with surface level reading who hates binghe!' because fr every single binghe disliker has the same talking points - which, you know, individually were long discussed (and disproved) by ppl in fandom - but then I was suddenly hit with a spoon beam so now I'm writing a long-ass answer.

Starting with the most glaring, this sentence:

Their dynamic ended up coming off more as SQQ tolerating this unmanageable man-baby and letting him fuck (and hurt him in the process, and then cry about that, more than SQQ himself did) him just to get him to shut the fuck up sometimes, like giving a toddler a biscuit to appease them.

has clued me in to the largest thing anon has missed. Remember how I said "surface-level reading"? Let me explain. There are great many avenues for analyzing a book, especially one as crunchy on a meta-level as svsss (you'll see what I mean by that later).

But the most basic thing - the LVL1 if you will - is asking yourself the following questions: (1) whose POV is the book written from? (2) is that POV omniscient or limited? (2.1) are there cases where the POV character doesn't know something we, the reader, have inferred? (3) if it's limited, how reliable is their narration? (3.1) are there cases of their actions not aligning with their narration? (3.2) are there reasons for them to lie to themselves and/or the reader?

For SVSSS, the answers are: (1) mostly Shen Qingqiu's POV; (2) limited; (2.1) e.g. he doesn't know what's going on in Luo Binghe's head (we'll get back to this more in-depth later), most notably not realizing Luo Binghe is in love with him for good 2/3rds of the book; (3) unreliable; (3.1) think him insisting he is fine when he's clearly grieving post-Abyss - which we can see both from other characters' reactions, and from stray thoughts that he himself has and then dismisses (eng.edition chapter 4: "No! Bah! Shen Qingqiu mentally slapped himself. Who are you calling a grieving widow?! Whose husband died?! That's not something you should just say--you're really getting worse by the day.") (3.2) off the top of my head: the trauma SQQ is going through, with his two coping mechanisms being 'not thinking about it' and 'making light of the situation'; internalized toxic masculinity - as in, the idea that it's shameful for a man to have emotions; internalized homophobia - as in, being unable to examine his attraction to men (evident from very early on, actually) without having a knee-jerk 'it's wrong!' reaction.

To sum it up: Shen Qingqiu's POV is limited and his narration is unreliable. What does this tell us? That we should take what he says in the narrative voice with the grain (or like, a spoonful) of salt, and that it's worth to close-read him. Don't just believe him when he says something; look for evidence!

Going back to anon's words, saying that SQQ appears to just 'tolerate' Luo Binghe tells me that you have not caught SQQ's lies at all.

(cont. under cut)

SQQ is, pardon my language, fucking obsessed with Luo Binghe - just in a different way than Luo Binghe is with him. He is constantly thinking about Luo Binghe even when the latter is not around! (Contrast it to how he thinks about his family from his og world like, 3 times over the course of the book, despite loving them.) And when LBH is around, SQQ can't go a page without mentioning how incredibly beautiful he is! (And then blames it on Luo Binghe being a protagonist, like, of course the protagonist is the most beautiful person in the world, that's natural!.. We later get the POV of a literal author of the world, btw, and he says he wrote LBH as a conventionally beautiful prettyboy type, and his own ideal man is completely different. Which is how we know that SQQ going on about LBH's radiant showstopping obvious-to-anyone beauty is really only his own opinion that he's trying to sell to us as a universal truth.)

And, speaking of LBH's crimes anon mentions (I will not be calling them 'warcrimes', sorry, none of the very few less-than-moral things he does can be classified as that) - you may notice that, for both actual things LBH did and for things SQQ attributed to him mistakenly, those never changed the way SQQ feels about Binghe. He thinks LBH killed his kinda-friend and still jumps in to sacrifice himself to save LBH's life. He sees the guy LBH mutilated, and is disturbed by that... but still continues to protect LBH. Gives him a lil forehead kiss like 20 minutes later.

Oh, and let's not forget the scene where SQQ is punished with a hyper-realistic dream of original LBH tearing off his limbs, and his reaction to that is "I need to see my Binghe asap immediately like rn, I need my cute version of Binghe to feel better about this."

This all is to point out that SQQ continuously fails to be normal about LBH. That's a feature! That's what makes their relationship fun! "Clearly you are perfect for each other pls dont involve anyone else in whatever the fuck is wrong with you" kinda situation.

But you must look through the cover of SQQ's misdirections for it - like again, trauma! toxic masculinity! internalized homophobia! It's difficult for him to admit his feelings even in his head, but he is getting better about that. In Mei vs Ge extra, SQQ admits he wanted LBH to push a little more about them sharing a bed and that he would have agreed. And is kinda put out that LBH simply accepted his refusal. Then in Deep Dream extra, SQQ is literally the one to jump LBH. And in Wedding extra, he almost manages to look directly at the fact that he's very happy that LBH is proposing to him! So yeah, he is getting better at admitting it too. But honestly, his feelings about LBH were always really intense. In different ways over the course of the novel, but he adored LBH from before he transmigrated, and that adoration never lessened, despite everything that happened between them. You just gotta look at his actions and not his 24/7 mental stand-up routine.

All right, next, in the same paragraph the previous thing came from, I'll abridge and highlight for relevancy:

Their dynamic ended up coming off more as SQQ tolerating this unmanageable man-baby and letting him fuck [...] him just to get him to shut the fuck up sometimes, like giving a toddler a biscuit to appease them. And it came off very gross, especially in the epilogue, when Luo Binghe was blatantly manipulative about that, pushing and cornering Shen Qingqiu into doing more than he already was, and using his tears to his advantage, in a way that was clearly in the text not unintentional.

...Listen, for someone claiming to hate how one-dimensional LBH ended up, I'm seeing a distinct lack of effort at actually understanding the character. Luo Binghe's teary act (in the moments when it is an act, because there are also many moments when his tears are genuine, we'll get to that later) is, first and foremost, for Shen Qingqiu's benefit.

Shen Qingqiu admits it himself that he finds it easier to be "frank" with Luo Binghe who is "willing to cling to his legs and throw a tantrum to seek comfort" (Return to Childhood extra). It's the internalized toxic masculinity and homophobia thing again. It's actually pretty interesting how he rewires his brain from its knee-jerk reaction of "homosexuality wrong" by mentally comparing Luo Binghe to a girl - like calling him Bing-mei, thinking he's acting "like a lovesick maiden", etc. God I want to study this man like a bug. Anyway, yeah, the point is that LBH acting cute and whiny helps SQQ be more comfortable with giving affection to a man, something that he struggles with because of his personal issues.

And Luo Binghe, while not aware of the exact nature of SQQ's issues (having grown up in a world where homophobia doesn't seem to exist), does understand this - that Shen Qingqiu’s thin face and pride make it difficult for him to show emotions. And it's not something LBH intrinsically knows either; he has to figure it out (not without help, everybody say thank you papa Airplane), confirm it for himself (the "But other than hearing Shizun crying..." - "Who was crying?" - "Other than hearing someone crying, [...]" scene comes to mind), and then accept it as truth (which he doesn't seem to fully do until at least the Maigu Ridge, and Shen Qingqiu outright saying "I do it for you and only you!" - if not even later.) It takes him time to learn how to work with this knowledge too...

And, to be brutally honest, how blatant and over the top he gets with the act is entirely due to how SQQ keeps rewarding the behavior.

Now... you might consider this a conjecture, given how we only get the tiniest glimpses into Luo Binghe's mind - in the rare moments the author shifts out of the primary POV. But fortunately, one of those moments can be used to prove that Luo Binghe is not, in fact, "pushing and cornering" Shen Qingqiu into doing things Shen Qingqiu doesn't want to do.

The moment I'm talking about is in the Mei vs Ge extra: Shen Qingqiu, having agreed to "do some exploring together", sees LBH's giant 🐓, goes "absolutely not" out loud, and attempts to give him a handjob instead — which also doesn't go too well. Bringing us to (LBH's POV emphasized):

No matter how calm Shen Qingqiu kept himself, he couldn’t stop his expression from twisting. Luo Binghe had secretly been paying attention to his face the entire time. At this moment, he carefully said, “Then, Shizun, how about… you do it?”

LBH is attentively watching SQQ's reactions to figure out what he's thinking and feeling. The moment Binghe comes to the conclusion that SQQ is uncomfortable with bottoming, he offers to let him top. Notice how he doesn't start crying or whining to get his way, when it's something that might be a genuine hard line for SQQ?

And it's actually the same in the Regret of Chunshan extra: when SQQ shot LBH's idea down, LBH "looked a bit disappointed, but didn't push the issue". Yes, later SQQ will say LBH was "putting on a pitiful act"; but if you read the scene carefully, LBH did not do anything but look a bit disappointed - and SQQ just walked himself into feeling bad about refusing completely on his own.

Now, when does Luo Binghe use crocodile tears then? Well, the answer seems to be: when it's about small things. Like wanting to do it face to face (after they've already agreed on both sex in general and on who will top), or begging SQQ to call him 'husband' (after they have gotten married). Ultimately inconsequential things, and, likely, things that he suspects SQQ is avoiding only because of embarrassment and not anything more serious.

So, to sum up this section: Luo Binghe's crybaby act is for Shen Qingqiu's peace of mind first and foremost, and Luo Binghe does not actually use it to coerce Shen Qingqiu into anything he wouldn't be willing to do. LBH is not responsible for the fact that Shen Qingqiu has no bottom line when it comes to him and can't handle seeing him even minorly disappointed, let's be real.

Okay, last thing from that paragraph (yes there's another thing):

and letting him fuck (and hurt him in the process, and then cry about that, more than SQQ himself did)

See, with the way anon describes it here, I can't even tell which scene this references, but luckily I have a rebuttal for both options.

Like, is this about the Maigu Ridge? Aka the scene where LBH is not in his right mind (literally hallucinating, among other things) - and then comes back to consciousness to see that he, by all appearances, had brutally raped the person he loves with all his heart? No fucking wonder he starts crying?!.. And to clarify, he did not rape SQQ, because SQQ had given informed consent here. If anything, there was nobody in that scene less consenting than Luo Binghe himself.

Or is this about the scene in Mei vs Ge. Which is like. Entirely on SQQ, who decided to keep quiet instead of telling LBH that it hurts. Like, whatever that was about! It's only, oh, one of the major themes of the novel that hiding your feelings and struggles is bad, and will hurt not only you but people who care about you.

...Btw, if someone not in fandom is reading this with increased befuddlement for why those two are having so much painful sex. Well, aside from the scene where LBH is tripping balls because of a cursed sword, and the situation is forced by the literal will of the narrative (more on this later), our couple are two adult virgins with no sex-ed, and one of them is in possession of (canonically) the biggest dick in the world. Given those factors, it would be weirder if they were able to have flawless sex right away. (And it's a meta-commentary, something we'll also get to later.)

Speaking of the cursed sword, it's somewhat amazing that anon says all this

Why did they make him become this? I understand what he went through, I'm not asking about cause and effect, I'm saying the effect could have been so much better and more realistically (in my opinion and from my personal experience with trauma) written. I'm not saying he couldn't be burnt or bitter or jaded, nor that he couldn't be clingy or overly emotional or manipulative, I just think it could have been done better, and I HATE what his character became for the second half (realistically, most) of the story.

and completely fails to mention that between LBH's return from the Abyss and the end of the main story, LBH's actions are severely affected by a cursed sword that amps up his emotions with the express purpose of destroying his mind. Seems somewhat relevant to why his behavior isn't written as a realistic trauma response? And instead as a trauma response amped up to eleven and set on fire? And that's without even getting into LBH giving himself supernatural brain damage as a form of self-harm. Which uh. doesnt simply map onto any irl concept really.

Continuing from this, I think it's time for me to expand on one of the points from earlier: about how Shen Qingqiu doesn't know what's going on in Luo Binghe's head for most of the novel. It will be tied to this particular bit of criticism on anon's part:

I feel like the author utterly assassinated his character in the 2nd half of the novel (ever since he came back from the abyss) and turned him into a one dimensional caricature of himself, and I HATED IT.

What I want to suggest here is tied, once again, to how Shen Qingqiu’s POV is limited and unreliable. So, a new batch of questions: (4) is our understanding of other characters' actions affected by the limited POV? (5) is there a particular reason for the author to keep other characters' motivations opaque to the POV character? (6) can anything be gleaned by reconstructing other characters' perspectives?

The answer to (4) is a yes so resounding the POV character himself admits it: "First, he'd thought Luo Binghe was unbelievably cruel and evil, then he'd thought Luo Binghe was unspeakably strong and bright." (ch.21) Shen Qingqiu has the very same problem as anon does: he sees Luo Binghe as one-dimensional, making assumptions about how he's supposed to act - instead of trying to understand what's there.

Which leads us neatly into the answer to (5): people making assumptions about what's best for the other person instead of asking them what they need, and hurting them as a result, is also a major theme, present in many relationships throughout the novel! And that's only half of the answer.

The other half will require us to go a little meta. You see, BingQiu's relationship, among other things, are meant to echo the relationship between the reader and the character. The reader loves the character, but they are also the reason for their suffering - as for the story to go on, the character must continuously face more and more difficult obstacles. Shen Qingqiu both loving Luo Binghe and causing him unspeakable amount of trauma is meant to mirror that. Shen Qingqiu's expectations for how Luo Binghe should act, and attempts to fit him into one or the other archetype, are also, yknow, reader behavior.

And... are we not also readers? Are we not expecting Luo Binghe to act a certain way (for example, when I first read the novel, I fully expected him to keep being a classic ML: to swallow all his grievances and keep being unquestioningly and ardently devoted to MC. Which, once articulated, is such an unfair expectation!), and feel it's "character assassination" - to borrow anon's words - when he does not adhere to the role he's supposed to inhabit, based on our idea of his personality and place in the story?

So: is there a reason the author seems to deliberately make Luo Binghe hard to understand, irrational, or one-note, to both Shen Qingqiu and us? Making it harder to sympathize with him? For example, can it be commentary on oversimplifying complex characters to just their role, or just one aspect of their personality...

As for the answer to (6), I ultimately want to leave it for you to try it out and decide. I'm literally the person who wrote a 90k character study fic to try and figure out the minutiae of Luo Binghe's post-Abyss mental state, so my answer is I think obvious. He has a lot going on!

Which kind of brings me to another of anon's gripes:

And actually that made me really sad because I wanted to enjoy it so much, because I LOVED the beginning, and I love Shen Qingqiu, but the evolution of Luo Binghe and the refusal to let him KEEP evolving inescapably ruined the story for me. He was insufferable, and I kept hoping he would grow and get better, but he just never did.

Look, I simply cannot agree that Luo Binghe did not grow and get better; it just largely happens at the very end of the main story and in the extras. I know anon has missed that, since they missed the more obvious things like Shen Qingqiu being obsessed with Binghe right back and Binghe using the pathetic act to help Shen Qingqiu feel more at ease, so I'll get to that in a bit. But first, I want to make sure we are on the same page about everything before that.

The part of Luo Binghe's arc between the Abyss and the Maigu Ridge is a downward spiral. He's going through the corruption arc, just as the original version of him did; the narrative demands it.

And it's not like 'the narrative' is a nebulous force here; there are literal actors of its will in the story, the System and Xin Mo sword. Like, in particular, the Maigu Ridge sex scene is a perfect example of how those two actors push Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu. The System literally withholds a key item that can help Luo Binghe regain his conscious mind until Shen Qingqiu has sex with him - you know, until the demands of the narrative of a romance story are fulfilled. And Xin Mo literally corrodes Luo Binghe's mind so that he acts like the original version from PIDW, because the truth is, SVSSS Luo Binghe would rather die than actually force himself on Shen Qingqiu. (Binghe's first reaction to seeing what he'd done is to ask "Why didn't you kill me?" and like. understandable. im crying also)

Oh, right, I promised to explain how bad sex is meta, this is a good spot for that. You see, it's a commentary on the 'flawless first time' trope, and also 'sex is a cure' trope. The author posits that two virgins having sex would naturally be awkward and not magically good. And that having sex in a highly stressful situation where one of the parties is not in control of their faculties would naturally be really fucking bad, and also not magically good.

But back to narrative demands. The point is, Luo Binghe simply cannot get better until "the story" ends. He can't heal while the world around him is literally deadset on dragging him down to become a bloodthirsty, sex-obsessed tyrant. The only thing that saves him is Shen Qingqiu managing to get them into the happily ever after zone by the skin of his teeth. There's a reason the main story of the book ends with: "The story circulating through the world might already have ended. But the story between you and me has only just began". 'The story circulating through the world' is the narrative the characters were trapped in; only once it has ended can Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe be allowed to go free, to actually live their lives and be happy. (This novel is very meta, I'm telling you.)

All right, now, back to how Luo Binghe actually did grow and get better! We're almost to the end! I fear to see how long this post is, at this point!

Now, I could be pointing out specific details, like Luo Binghe letting SQQ be brought back to Cang Qiong because he thinks that's what SQQ would want - when his whole breakdown before was about how he couldn't keep SQQ with him. Or I could be reminding you of the second section of this post, and saying that Luo Binghe learning to bypass SQQ's embarrassment by playing cute is actually also character development, even if you didn't like it.

But I think we should go for the heart of the issue. You see, yet another prominent theme in SVSSS is toxic masculinity. It's baked into the setting, with the "original" book our MC transmigrated into being a heterostraight harem novel; it's something our MC struggles with, when his learned toxic behaviors screw over both himself and the person he loves; and - most important to our current topic - it's the chief source of tension within Luo Binghe's character.

Literally, there are even names for two polar axes of his personality in the story: Bing-ge (ge=big brother), coined by in-story fandom to describe original Luo Binghe of PIDW, and Bing-mei (mei=little sister), the nickname SQQ comes up with specifically for "lovesick maiden"-acting Binghe.

"Bing-ge" side, of course, represents toxic masculinity. Extremely obviously in OG!LBH's case, what with him being the protagonist of 'male wish fulfillment and misogyny: the novel', but if you think about it, SV!LBH also demonstrates toxic masc behaviors, starting post-Abyss and up to Maigu Ridge. Noticeably, exactly when he had Xin Mo fucking him up - Xin Mo in general is symbolic of the "original" narrative, pushing SV!LBH to replicate the OG's behavior. And also it's a sword. The symbol of toxic masc version of the narrative is. A sword. RIP Freud you would've loved Scum Villain.

But what does "Bing-mei" stand for, if we detangle it from SQQ's 5D chess with his own sexuality? We know Bing-mei cooks and cleans and gives waist massages. We also know Bing-mei shows affection freely, and isn't embarrassed to cry, and has a sensitive heart. A man who is caring instead of controlling, a man who is not afraid to be vulnerable and emotional... Bing-mei side is meant to represent the healthy / soft masculinity.

And Luo Binghe's arc is rooted in the struggle between healthy and toxic sides of masculinity. What I think is tripping up a lot of people is that he starts at the healthy place, in his "white lotus" days. He is caring, he is affectionate, he shows the full range of emotion.

Then, the world comes for him, and he falls (or, yknow, is pushed) into toxic patterns of behavior. He hides his vulnerability, the only show of emotion he allows himself are outbursts of anger, he tries to control the person he loves... and thus hurts people around him and himself. His breakdown at Maigu Ridge is about thinking he can never be good enough, no matter what he does - see, the very idea that there's some level of achievement that can make a person unequivocally lovable is a toxic masc mindset!..

But the thing is, him breaking down here - admitting that he can't "win", showing the messy, undesirable, emotional side of himself - demonstrating that he can't be the Bing-ge version - is what opens up a path for him to communicate with Shen Qingqiu. Giving him the genuine connection he needed, that Bing-ge could never have. And thus allowing him to destroy the toxic-masculinity-representing sword.

So, the evolution path the author charts out for Luo Binghe from there on is him growing into the healthy masculinity patterns. Starting with, again, putting caring about his partner above controlling him and letting SQQ be brought back to Cang Qiong. Which SQQ didn't actually want, but we've already covered that he's his own kind of freak(affectionate). And continuing to try to do better by SQQ and listen to him (eg the whole SQQ refusing to share a bed and LBH acceding so easily SQQ was left reeling, because he was planning to agree once LBH pushed). And learning that he can show emotion and be validated for it (see Return to Childhood extra with its "if you are unhappy, say so"). And accepting that he doesn't need to be perfect to be loved (the guy faceplanted trying to propose and still got his man...). And, hell - count 'doing his best to learn how to pleasure his partner in bed' with this as well!

So, once again, as a closing note: I simply can't agree that Luo Binghe doesn't grow and evolve. You just have to let go of your preconceived notions of what his character should be like, and learn to see, understand, and appreciate what's there. The same arc Shen Qingqiu, his most faithful reader, goes through.

For a book as meta as SVSSS, that's obviously no coincidence.

#cw rape mention #(assumption of rape is discussed and rebutted)#luo binghe #bingqiu #svsss #svsss meta #scum villain's self saving system #scum villain's self-saving system #mxtx #danmei novels

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