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fumifooms · 2 months

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The Nakamoto household - facts & theories masterpost

Table of contents:

the hierarchy & general situation

The parents

The Maizuru situation

The siblings

The other retainers

Izutsumi

Toshiro

Conclusion

I also made tldr summary charts here. This post is about collecting facts about the setting and characters, but it’s gonna be a lot of analysis on what it means through the lens of Toshiro as well, his relationship and place in everything etc etc. They have entangled drama the scale of Daltian Clan. Things are so interwoven it’s hard to keep topics neatly in their own section, because of this pictures may be relevant at several point of this but I mostly won’t be putting them in twice, you might have to do some scrolling up while reading if you want the visual proof to accompany statements. Unlike with Chilchuck’s family there’s less ambiguousness and more intricate details and implications so it’s less theorizing & headcanoning and more stringing together all the crumbs canon gave us. I also dig into some cultural parallels, especially since characters from Wa are the most culturally coded in the series. Also disclaimer that I’ll be calling Shuro Toshiro through this whole thing bc that’s his actual name & Shuro isn’t even a nickname he likes, for accuracy’s sake. The servant girls have real names but are typically called by their code/given names so I’ll call them as such, except for Izutsumi who was named Asebi which I won’t be using.

The general situation

To start off, what’s the situation in canon? All three kids of the head of the house, the three sons (Toshiro and his two younger brothers), are sent out on a vague mission to find something interesting for his father to pick the heir. Each son is thus on their own journey, out with their own group of retainers for an unsure length of time, during canon it’s been 2 years that Toshiro left the house for this mission, and they seemingly all drifted towards dungeons. It’s important to remember that this state of things is the exception and not the rule, and before this the sons lived at home and had different uses of their time, and the retainers had other jobs than care after them. See the next paragraph.

The household offers ninja services, no exaggeration or misuse of the term, mostly spyint but also "covert maneuvers" which could include anything including assassination of people high up. That’s the job of their servants/retainers at least, the heads themselves are more like managers probably, possibly samurais themselves though especially since as we see with the heirs (besides the samurai armor) they also got trained in fighting as their skills showcase. I need to dig into the history of samurais more before I can draw the parallel confidently though. The Nakamoto household is noble/wealthy, distinguished as the Adventurer’s Bible puts it, but it works for and puts its service at use for "their local lord". It buys servants, but also has families who have served it for generations like with Hien. The comic shows that there aren’t only women servants, it’s just the ones we see all happen to be because Toshiro’s retainers are only a small team of all of Nakamoto’s servants.

Above, in a page showcasing characters’ relationships with their party leader: 父親の部下を借りている状態なので、距離がある。Doubtlessly there must be a translation of this already somewhere but I’m lazy and impatient so I turned to machine translation instead, this translates into: "Since he is borrowing his father's subordinates, there is a distance between him and them". Calling the servants retainers is what most of the fandom does and it’s accurate so I’ll be calling them this.

Hien and Toshiro were childhood friends which means the servants do have some degree of contact not even just together but with the heirs too, or maybe just specifically Hien, since both their parents were ninjas for the Nakamotos she ended up getting raised there and they let her play with him as an exception? They did end up drifting away as adults as their relationship got more professional, so it’s possible. The servants eat and sleep in shared spaces, separate from the masters, though Maizuru has her own bedroom, if the room configuration at the in is to be believed + it’d make sense since she’s governess/head servant. I’m hesitant wether to say it’s implied that this group of 4 retainers was always a bit of a team or it wasn’t and got formed for Toshiro specifically. We know that Benichidori had little contact with Toshiro before they were sent out together for example, but we do see all three girls with Izutsumi in Inutade’s extra when they were younger, and them eating in the same japanese styled room etc. The inn they stay at on The Island is western styled though they do have futons rather than beds (there’s only one bed in their shared room and Hien has it because of her rank).

From Izutsumi’s Adventurer’s Bible profile: "Maizuru, who was also Shuro's governess, is the one thing Izutsumi fears. After Izutsumi was taken in by the Nakamoto family, Maizuru forced her through a harsh training regimen of speech, common sense, and fighting skills. Since Izutsumi refused to listen to her, Maizuru set a curse on her that would activate if Maizuru didn't touch her within a set time frame: "Ninja Art: Babysitter." "

Maizuru, called a governess, is the one training the girls, at least some of them, we know for a fact she was the one to train Izutsumi for example, and in general she’s the one in charge of the ninja girls we see. She was a ninja herself but retired from frontline missions, but has a central role managing the servants instead. Inutade for example is strong but not stealthy, and it’s said that it’s Maizuru’s job to choose how to train her and what role to give her in consequence. Her training includes manners but fighting as well, notably kunais and martial arts. Hien is shown to use bombs and Benichidori is implied to be good at disguises, Inutade uses a bold weapon like a club but it’s implied with "ogres and clubs just go together" and Maizuru not knowing where to put her to use that it’s uncommon for Nakamoto servants to use those. Their board game artworks also show their specialties neatly. When brought into the household, the servants are given new names and their whole lives become devotion to the house and their duties. The names might be intended to act as code names due to them being ninjas? It’s implied that they never use their non-code names anymore once they start serving the household. Maizuru’s training also contains language and "common sense"… Critical thinking? As well as implied etiquette. This isn’t surprising, as she was the one put in charge of raising not only Toshiro but his brothers as well.

Oh yes I want to mention that all the retainers’ "first deaths" are in the dungeon during canon, considering our main cast we’re used to death being permissible because dungeons make resurrections possible, but it’s relevant to remember that these people never died before. Never. These girls are professionals, ninjas with a sometimes very dangerous job. Messing up means death, permanently.

From what we see and with who we see, the hierarchy is:

Father (head of house, his word goes)

Mother (has status which puts her wishes above others’ and give her some control over the house, it’s unsure how much though, but hierarchy wise she’s very much above the rest but below the father)

Maizuru (governess, in charge of (at least some) servants and raising Toshiro. Two dots)

Hien (leader of their squad, trained servant from a family devoted to the Nakamotos. Two dots)

Benichidori (trained bought servant. Two dots)

Inutade and Izutsumi (bought servants. Power wise from their rank it’s unsure just how much the difference between Inutade (who has one dot), Izutsumi (who has none) and Benichidori (who has two) is, since Hien is team leader between the four servants at least that’s measurable. Inutade gets some janitor duties, and Izutsumi has a curse put on her so she doesn’t run away I suppose. Power wise it’s unsure, but socially/role wise Inutade and especially Asebi are treated worse.)

I didn’t add the sons because I’m talking more generally about the power structure and it’d depend on each sibling, like Toshiro’s wants and directives during canon trump Maizuru’s, but Maizuru is also his nanny and manages the girls so she has a lot of importance and sway even on the final decisions.

The parents

I am so pissed I forgot that we know Toshiro’s father’s name, Toshitsugu, from these panels showing the progression of the family tree. I am so pissed I’m adding this halfway into writing this whole thing, I am not gonna go back and replace every "the father" by his name atm.

The father is the part of this puzzle most important yet most shrouded in mystery, or rather a lack of details. What we do know paints a pretty full and vivid portrait: impulsive and cares mainly about his own entertainment. Maizuru calls him a fool, his sons are exasperated and go "This again?" when he summons them saying that they’re boring/dull, everyone knows he’s having an affair and he often has undignified demeanor, but what he says goes so yes Maizuru will take Izutsumi under her wing, yes the sons will be going out right away into the world to find you the 8th world wonder, yes whatever you want lord. He seems to have little care for how his action affects others, like crashing into Maizuru’s room at night and asking she take care of a catgirl, or sending out his sons suddenly with kicks to the butts. He does what he wants hen he wants and others have to comply.

Like we see with Izutsumi and Inutade, he tends to take a liking to slaves here and there and buy them on the spot, usually at entertainment places, like sumo wrestling matches for Inutade and a freakshow for Izutsumi. The Adventurer’s Bible states him acquiring Inutade as "By coincidence, Shuro's father came to see her first match; he liked her and bought her for the Nakamoto family." and Izutsumi as "She was on display as a "cat-girl" in a sideshow when Shuro's father took an interest in her and bought her." In Maizuru’s extra, he calls Izutsumi a "souvenir" he got for her, and he’s drunk so it could well be assumed that buying Izutsumi was a drunken whim, and that he mitht be alcoholic. You can’t really say that he picks them out because he sees potential in them to be a ninja or would be useful, since with Izutsumi she had no fighting training and Inutade doesn’t fit the skills they seek like stealth and she has trouble fitting in. You could assign noble goals to him like maybe wanting to help or relating to the misfits, but I think with what we see of him it’s more likely that he likes to pick up "oddities", like a catgirl at a freakshow or an ogre, especially since one of the only things we know of him is he wants his sons to bring back interesting trophies from their travels. Toshiro, about his father buying Inutade, says: "People in power desire ogre as servants, and ogres are chosen as opponents in tests of strengths or military exploits. My father bought her for similar reasons."

Also from this we can infer that he goes out to events often, like circus and sumo wrestling, again mostly for entertainment from what we see. I like to think it’s implied that he used to travell maybe still does, due to his own liking for it as a test and because he visits various places like the sideshow, plus his forearm scars in Toshiro’s extra… But him being a samurai in service of a lord could definitely explain that.

This all paints an interesting picture doesn’t it… The Nakamoto’s lifestyle is super encased in rules and social propriety, duty and hierarchy. Old noble man who’s been surrounded by propriety all his life and just wants some spark of interesting stuff happening amongst the humdrum of his lavish cushioned life at home, and is shitty to people around him in consequence and due to his privilege allowing him to. He’s despicable, but from his 3 appearances he becomes an interesting well-fleshed character, at least proportionally to the screentime he gets…

We also know that the affair with Maizuru is well known at least inside the household, so there’s no genuine secrecy around the topic. Makes sense that the wife would hate her guts.

Ahh yes the mother. Little is known about the mother, except that from Maizuru’s profile "Shuro’s mother can’t stand the sight of her, to the point where there are areas on the property Maizuru is forbidden to enter. Maizuru, however, is impressed by his wife’s strength of character." From this I glean that she does have enough power/respect in the house that she can make rules like where Maizuru is allowed to go. Also the implication that otherwise Mazuru would have access to EVERYWHERE in the house despite being only a (high-ranking) servant is a bit interesting. Wether the mother’s "strength of character" is overt and hot-headed or understated and cool-headed is unsure, but I imagine the latter more. I could see Maizuru’s angle in many ways, from being able to tolerate "that fool" aka the father both just in general and with knowing that he’s cheating on her, to knowing how hard it is to be respected as a woman and admiring her putting up with it all and still being able to have sway in the household. This is I think the only mention of the mother anywhere. Doesn’t seem like she is an important figure to Toshiro at all: in fact we hear about her on Maizuru’s profile, and seeing all of this we can see the importance of her in Maizuru’s backstory and life, moreso than Toshiro’s. I imagine she’s a bit of a recluse, which is part of why Maizuru not being allowed to roam the full house is important, because them running into each other at the house is high.

It’s unsure how much contact the parents have with their kids. What we know is that they left the principal tasks of raising the kids, or at least Toshiro, to servants. Toshiro’s profile says that he’s more attached to Maizuru than his parents, and that’s the phrasing. From the comic where their father summons the sons, it does seem like they’re more or less used to interacting, with the sons’ "This again?". So it’s not that they’ve only interacted with them few times enough to count on fingers, but how meaningful were those interactions? From Toshiro’s profile we know he has a complex where he thinks he’ll never get recognition from his father or be able to measure up to him… But is that more born out of secondhand gossip and expectations, or from direct interactions with him that made him feel that way? Likely a mix of both, especially since the father does seem to be very dismissive, uncaring and insulting with his sons. Oh, but it’s definitely notable that in the Hag monster tidbit (below in Maizuru’s section) six years old Toshiro runs to his father scared shitless for help against the shikigami, and his father casually helps him without batting an eye. Toshitsugu knows how to deal with Maizuru’s shikigamis, and he does so efficiently and without any sense of worry or urgency. Although the event traumatized Toshiro and he was very scared, it doesn’t seem like his father offered any comfort, beyond just helping getting rid of it and letting him cower behind him without comment. Toshitsugu gives hungover vibes in that one imo haha. It’s shown he was already training as a ninja, perhaps this event only reinforced Toshiro’s complex, seeing his father, the samurai the achieved man who has expectations for him, so unfazed and uncaring like that.

The Maizuru situation

Let’s establish a timeline first. It’s left vague how much time she’s served the Nakamoto family for, or how she came to be in their service. The central point is that "She was put in charge of raising their children at a young age". If straight from his birth, Maizuru started taking care of Toshiro when she was 15 years old. If from toddler age, then 16. It’s uncertain if when she stopped getting front-line espionage missions, but we know it’s late rather than early despite having kid raising duties. But well, since she’s also in charge of the ninjas she’s definitely has a multitasking role even now.

The dad prob has around 5-10 years more than Maizuru, I’d say. We only see half of his face and only a good few years in the past, around ~3 years ago probably with the shuro quest and a good 7 years with Izutsumi as a kid, but visually those are the vibes I’m getting. From Toshiro’s birth, it’s possible that the father was 15 when the baby was born too? But conception would have been closer to 14 years old then, and yeah I don’t think they marry and have kids that young. Toshiro is 26 years old in canon and is unmarried, and the heir hasn’t been officially picked, so marriage and kids don’t seem to be in the family’s priorities. Even if Maizuru do say that the father would love if Toshiro brought back a wife.

Now the elephant in the room: she has an on-and-off affair with the father and it has been si for many many years, at LEAST 7 years since that’s when we see that comic of him going into her chambers about Izutsumi, and in the comic above, Hien in that panel has an ambiguous age. Regardless it’s definitely implied that it’s a long, long-standing thing. Hien’s phrasing above makes it sound as if it’s not purely physical, as if feelings are involved, "he’s head over heels for his confidante", and who knows if this relationship is part of why Maizuru was chosen to be the governess, or even hired at all.

It’s in the feud with his father that we learn about maizuru’s affair and how after learning it he started shutting her out emotionally. It’s left vague when Toshiro learned about it, Hien made it sound as if everybody always more or less knew but I don’t think Toshiro started shutting her out when he was still pretty young. Regardless, the two are implied to be linked, his dislike of his father/complex and how he stopped getting along well with Maizuru/being emotionally open with her. Is it that he now feels as though Maizuru is actually on his father’s side and not his own, that after all if she had to choose she’d pick him over Toshiro too? Or is it that, because his father’s known to be a self-centered frivolous jerk, that knowing she lets it happen, "can’t seem to shake it", he respects her less? He has an irresponsible reputation and she does give off the vibe of needing to clean up his messes, so that wouldn’t be unplausible either.

On the flipside from her perspective, since he learned she was his dad’s mistress he emotionally shut her out, which can partly explain why she’s SO fussy with him and happy at the slightest hint of happiness or compliance, like when he listens to her and eats, or maybe even being happy that he lets her help him dress and keep tidy (imo this is supported by how they interact in the page showing him interacting with all his party members). She wants to regain that closeness they once had and for her baby chick to be alright as he’s slipping through her fingers. Man so sad to think about him rejecting her when he’s the only thing in her life. She’s raised him for 26 years, no wonder she’s so attached to him, the only thing in her life she feels true unconditional attachment for. Maizuru says that she thinks Toshiro’ll be a better head of the house than the father, too. The respect and care is somewhat onesided, given freely from her side but repressed from his end. When she cares for Toshiro is when her demeanor immediately and drastically softens. She gets easily carried away when it comes to him, rambling enthusiastically or smiling widely or tearing up. Her tendency to ramble or tell anecdotes about Toshiro is shown making Hien and Benichidori go "Here she goes again…" twice through canon.

With Izutsumi’s timeline we see Izutsumi was taken into the Nakamoto household at 10 yo, and since in the comic with Maizuru and the dad she’s shown as stinky and all I imagine she arrived there the same day, so Maizuru was in charge of her since she was first here. In fact if we assumed that it’s the same day as when he bought her at the circus show, then we could assume that buying her was a drunken whim like mentioned.

Since Izutsumi was taken in at 10 and she’s 17, this would mean that Maizuru is 34 years old here. She looks younger without makeup, but lower than that is mathematically impossible besides maybe 33 if Maizuru and Izutsumi’s birthdays line up just right.

Time for the second elephant in the room!!

Maizuru’s magic

Maizuru is the only person in the Nakamoto household, anyone from Wa really, who we see using magic, I doubt she’d be the only one who can use magic in the household but as the governess it wouldn’t be unplausible I suppose. From what we see, the magic is estimated by Marcille to be an "appropriation of gnomic magic" with an eastern script. For my analysis of written magic (though with only a brief glance over Maizuru’s magic), see this post.

If you scroll up and read the little section on Maizuru’s profile, Ninja art: babysitter: "One of the curses put on Izutsumi is Ninja Art: Babysitter, which manifests as a terrifying hag shikigami. Unless Maizuru touches the victim within a set time frame, this terrible curse makes a hag appear and chase them around with a carving knife. Maizuru originally created it in an attempt to keep Shuro from getting lost, but it ended up traumatizing him…"

From Izutsumi’s profile: "Maizuru, who was Shuro’s governess, is the one thing Izutsumi fears. […] Since Izutsumi refused to listen to her, Maizuru set a curse on her that would activate if Maizuru didn’t touch her within a set time frame: "Ninja Art: Babysitter." It was put on her when she was 12. Since Toshiro had it as a kid, presumably the curse can be lifted off rather easily, Marcille was confident on reverse engineering it as well. It’s unsaid what the time frame is, it’s kept vague everywhere and Izutsumi herself says "who knows" how long it is. Izutsumi ran away despite the very real risk of it killing her. Essentially, Maizuru can put people in a timebomb collar

… MAIZURU WHAT THE HELL

As we might have expected, Maizuru being given the task of rasing a child at 15 did not go perfectly. This, a babysitting technique??! This comic happens when Toshiro was 6 and so Maizuru was 21. Interesting to note that Toshiro didn’t even know it was Maizuru’s doing before this conversation during canon, and he doesn’t know how to bring it up or deal with it how it affected him. Maizuru seems surprisingly uncaring of Toshiro’s feelings on the matter here, oblivious to his conflict her and fondly recalling it all.

This curse is a shikigami. From her profile: "A shikigami user, Maizuru has a variety of shikigami that have been sealed in paper as her servants. Her favorite seems to be Gyuki, a bull ogre." Now don’t ask me when Gyuki appears, I do not remember it. But before we go into the cultural/historical basis for this practice, let’s take a second to recognize the parallel that Maizuru has servants she keeps sealed unless useful in the moment, even despite having enough "attachment" to have a favorite. She’s the governess in charge of the other servants, and she has shikigamis, which she has used on the heir and the runt at the bottom of the hierarchy alike.

Shikigami, in traditional japanese folklore, are conjured to exercise risky orders for their masters, such as spying, stealing and enemy tracking. Shikigami are said to be invisible most of the time, but they can be made visible by binding them into small, folded and artfully cut paper manikins.

Shikigamis are from onmyodo, onmyoji is a profession-legal title historically but it’s what you call a practitioner of onmyodo, and so I feel content in saying that Maizuru is an onmyoji, or based on it. Her outfit reminds me of a shinto priest. It’s interestingly closer to a shinto priest outfit than a miko/shrine maiden’s (in picture below, 2 instead of 5), and I feel like red being chosen for the inner sleeve is a very charged decision since the white & red color combo is the shinto clothes color combo. Especially white clothes with red inner sleeve. Shinto priests can be women nowadays but they’re rare, and onmyojis can be considered shinto priests though it’s a more complex than that. Image below as example, source. Now I don’t think Maizuru has the role or prestige of a priest at all- But the association with onmyodo and spirituality is definitely meant to be made I think. Onmyojis are usually clothed similarly to this.

The babysitter ninja art seems to be based off of the hannya yokai. "They were once human women who were consumed by jealousy and transformed into demonesses", twisted by anger and resentment. Interesting considering her being a mistress to a man whose wife hates her. Hannyas are associated with wisdom because of its name, but there is nothing positive about them. At its highest level of "demonic corruption" if I can call it that, their body tend to become serpentine, fun link to make with her name being from the snakeberry plant.

Other cultural ties or symbolism on Maizuru’s character could be found in the motif of cranes due to her sleeves, in the tales of the crane wife, origami cranes (called orizuru, from deformation of 鶴 "tsuru" aka "crane". All names are written in katakanas in Dungeon Meshi, but thus if we had had the kanjis it’s possible her name would have been written with the kanji for crane), tennyos, and japanese crane symbolism in general. I thought cranes might have been associated with motherhood, but seemingly not in japanese culture at least, I was thinking of storks haha.

Ok speaking of her name. Maizuru is the name of an existing japanese city (舞鶴), meaning "dancing crane". From @room-surprise’s work in progress research paper on Dungeon Meshi characters’ names: "Maizuru is her ninja code name, and comes from “maizurusou”, which is maianthemum dilatatum, the snakeberry plant/two-leaved Solomon's seal/false lily of the valley. Lily of the Valley is a plant associated with motherhood and virtue… So Maizuru being a false Lily of the Valley implies that she is a false, replacement mother, and also hints at the way that Toshiro became cold towards her when he realized she was his father’s mistress, and not a pure, virtuous mother-like figure that he thought she was. Also, lilies are toxic to cats, which makes sense since Maizuru and Izutsumi have an extremely bad relationship." For more details I’ll leave it up to Room when the paper is ready to be released.

So some big themes of her character are: (false) motherhood, spirituality/magic, control, cranes, woman’s jealousy.

The siblings

Alriight so besides Toshiro the eldest at 26 years old, there is Toshiyuki (Toshitsuge in one fantranslation) the middle son and Toshizane the youngest (Toshikage in one fantranslation). They were all said to be raised by Maizuru. "A strange level of distance" is interesting. Why strange? I feel like this implies they do interact regularly, and that they’re all rather civil wirh each other, but they still have little bond to speak of. That wouldn’t surprise me, especially since even inside the family etiquette and propriety and rules are enforced, the summoning by his father feels very formal and they all listen to him standing in silence despite having snappy inner thoughts. It’s unsure if they were largely raised together or apart, but since Maizuru was their (at least main) caretaker/governess it implies that they were imo. They were put in competition with each other for the title of heir to the house, though it’s unsure to what degree. It’s examplified by their family all having names that start with "Toshi" that the legacy is very important and thrust upon them, cogs in a machine almost. They all think the same thing when their father summons them and has a spiel, so they’re used to the same sort of treatment and they are indeed brothers for being on similar wavelengths haha.

Toshiyuki, as seen in the comic about his retainers, the poor soul sent into Darkest Dungeon, is brattish. Rude, selfish and rather lecherous, does not hesitate to be mean to his retainers and complain he wasn’t given women retainers. Visually he looks what, 14 years old top. I wonder if Maizuru stopped using her babysitter ninja art on the heirs after it traumatized Toshiro, and if so maybe that explains why Toshiyuki Knows No Fear In His Heart™️ and that’s why he can spout off stuff like that.

The retainers for the youngest brother, Toshizane, don’t seem to be as clad in ninja gear as the other two, seems like the priority is to take care of the very young young master there? Rather than truly go adventuring and dungeoneering, perhaps. Not that it’s ever said by anyone that their quest is to go into dungeons specifically, only to find something "interesting" to bring back, but both Toshiro and Toshiyuki are shown to have ended up drifting into dungeons. Toshizane looks young, I’d clock him 8 years old personally. He’s drawn looking rather innocent, especially the headshot doodle above and in the Toshitsuge complaining about his retainers comic. ALTHOUGH on the latter, interestingly as we see with Toshiro having a smug smirk in that same panel (or alternatively a smug indifferent/uncomfortable "i don’t care about this, even though you want it so much" look which at the very least is very exaggerated from how he emotes in reality), it’s Toshiyuki’s unreliable/exaggerated vision of his brothers and it doesn’t necessaeily reflect reality, though it’s still interesting to note that that’s the vision Toshiyuki has of his brothers/the impression Toshizane gives off. That can imply juicy dynamics for the brothers, for example if Toshiyuki feels as though he’s in competition with his brothers, feels superior to them, that instead of pushing the shitty family dynamic angst onto his father he puts the blame for it all onto Toshiro. Toshizane seems maybe too young to notice the tensions and seriousness around him, maybe more coddled… IS WHAT I WOULD SAY BUT in the comic where their father send them away he’s as well-behaved and serious as the others, so clearly he has a grasp on his role.

When talking about which retainers go with who, it’s said it was the father’s choice. I’d like to assume it wasn’t an airheaded/random choice. Maybe he knew that Toshiyuki would be weird about having women in his team of retainers? And wants to forge their character or protect them in the way they need. Though how Toshiro’s party only has women isn’t only pointed out and commented on by the comic with Toshitsuge but also in the main Dungeon Meshi story, both Marcille and Chilchuck going "his party is fully made up of women", one more loudly than the other haha. So it does feel like a somewhat pointed/purposeful decision, if not that the 4 girls were already a team like I mentioned.

The other retainers

Already made an analysis of Hien and Benichidori’s relationship (+ moment compilation) here. Honestly my juices are exhausted so quick rundown:

Hien’s parents both serve the Nakamotos, so she grew up with the family and was even a childhood friend of Toshiro. She assumed he and her might end up in a Maizuru-Toshitsugu situation ‘just because that’s how things are’/‘it’d be a natural development’ if we’re to believe Hien, ahh what growing up in the Nakamoto with those role models will make you believe is normal hah, and was surprised when it ended up not in that way at all. They grew more distant with time, in good part because of the professional nature of their roles in relation to each other (truly a reversal of the Maizuru-Toshitsugu situation). She’s the leader of their lil squad, under Maizuru, she’s confident and she gets the perks, like getting the bedframe in the shared inn room. For all the details just read her page. She has two dots, showing her rank as a full fledged ninja.

Benichidori was bought, by "the Nakamotos" so we don’t know who made the final decision. She’s perceptive and submissive, her specialty is implied to be disguise. She never had much contact with Toshiro before she became part of his party. She has facial dysmorphia where she fears the judgement of others if she doesn’t wear makeup and highly values beauty, in her extra her anxiety really shows and she ends up angrily snapping at Hien. Benichidori ends up taking a big liking to Hien and from there on they’re implied to be inseparable. She has two dots, showing her rank as a full fledged ninja.

Inutade is said to worship Toshitsugu because he "saved her" from her horrible life conditions, buying her personally from the sumo matches, she’s extremely grateful to the family and is happy to do any work they give her and is highly satisfied with her current living conditions. She seems to find Toshiro intimidating, though. She was separated from her parents from before she can remember and raised as a sumo wrestler in inhumane betting matches, where her front tooth broke. It seems she has very littke ambitions and dreams besides obeying orders day to day, but after Izutsumi fled away she was happy for her and mused that she’d love to go out and find her one day. They’re so besties Izutsumi gave her a dream of her own I’m sobbing… </3 She has one dot, showing she still has to be attributed her role and earn her stripes.

Their approval rating of their leader. The highest total score from all the parties.

Izutsumi

Sighh where to even begin. Her timeline was put in Maizuru’s section of this post but the rundown is "taken away from parents and turned into a beastkin" at 6 yo (the human half of her soul), "sent to a sideshow on the island of Wa" at 7 yo and bought by Toshitsugu at 10 yo when he took an interest in her when he visited the sideshow. Maizuru put the curse on Izutsumi at age 12, so from then on she always had to not stray much far from Maizuru or risk death, it’s unsure if Inutade’s extra is from before that time, before she was 12, so she could still attempt many many tries to run away. If that’s the case, then Maizuru’s curse was very much treated as a last resort, honestly beyond everything else I can see it being a pain that Maizuru would need to touch her every so often on Maizuru’s schedule as well. The alternative is that, not unlike Kabru who had no regrets dying in a dungeon rather than staying with Milsiril, she’d risk her life to get a taste of freedom. Besides, you know, being a slave and having a timebomb collar with Maizuru’s curse, her frustrations with her life with the Nakamotos is most concisely put in the comic just up above, Inutade’s extra.

She has no dot tattoo, meaning she’s at rock bottom of the hierarchy. It makes sense, since unlike Inutade she’s rebellious and needs threats to obey orders, and even then might try shifty business.

This last part where Izutsumi tries sleeping with Toshiro is most interesting to me. So she’s sought out contact with Toshiro before, she considers him "the stuck-up guy" but she doesn’t exactly hate him. I wonder if this comic is set in the inn on The Island or back at the Nakamoto household, because if that’s the latter it implies that she could get access to his room if she’s sneaky.

Oh oh also, this is fanon but since Toshiro’s weapon is one used usually on horseback, and with the steadfast and upright character of horses I associate Toshiro with horses a bit, though this is wild fanon. What’s interesting is that the plant Asebi was named after is a plant infamous for being toxic to horses. Hehe hehehe he wears a ponytail… Hm now that I think of it hairdos have importance for samurais, should look into that.

Toshiro

God. Ok. Everything was leading up to this guy. Need to split open his head like a geode and vibecheck his brain crystals. Let’s get some interesting details out of the way first.

His weapon is a tachi, not a katana. The wikipedia on tachis is more in depth if you want, but I consider the article I linked to be in deoth and digestible. Tachis are heavier and longer blades than katanas, and make for better horseback weapons than close combat. The way Toshiro uses one instead of a katakana shows that he’s extra strong… And does make sense, since most monsters won’t fight in as close quarters as human fighters. If katanas aren’t a thing in the world yet could make a difference, since tachis were invented first, and once the katana was invented and spread tachis became something more common in higher-ranking samurais. In the monster tidbit of the Hag, it’s shown that even at 6 years old Toshiro was training and learning ninja skills, his first instinct to the shikigami besides running being to fight.

Toshiro knew that Izutsumi wanted to leave, for sure. He may have been sympathetic, if his cryptic look back at her in the ‘Toshiro interacting with his party members’ page means anything. As seen below though, him being sympathetic doesn’t necessarily mean that much. Also, Toshiro had to have known about the curse on Izutsumi, where if Maizuru doesn’t touch her once in a while she’d die. "Asebi must have ran away, leave her" can be seen as subtle support for her to gain her freedom, but it could just as easily be seen as him leaving her behind to die. Because the outcome options are 1) she gets killed by Maizuru's curse, 2) she finds a way to break the spell, 3) she finds a way back to them.

He’s very conflict averse. Wether it be in relationships like with Laios or the status quo. Will not stand up for 99% things including himself. He obeys his father quietly despite his anger and dislike. This is the same guy who can't even get himself to speak up to correct the butchering of his name, the slippery slope that got him tangled in the Laios party seemingly without resistance. It’s very japanese etiquette from even nowadays, never saying a direct no to not be rude. ALSO THAT PANEL, has Toshiro beaten an ogre before?? Is that a brother of his?? Does seem in character for Toshiyuki the most, unless Toshiro was desperate to earn his father’s attention with feats. On the right I’d say the ones in the foreground are two of the brothers, maybe the third being the one to gesture to the ogre. It’s worth noting that inheritance laws during the Edo period often made the heir the son with "the most merit".

When with a goal that’s important to him he’s fine with even starving for it. Although what we see him be like that about in canon is Falin, aka self-admittedly in the post-canon proposal comic "the first person he has liked this much", which for him I feel is like admitting she’s one of the first things he has truly wanted for himself and fought for, soo… It’s more like an exceptional freaking out moment than something that would be recurring, most likely. How disheveled he got is a testament to how much he would forego propriety and rules for people of his status for the person he cares about most. Maizuru says the first personal request he’s (ever?) made was for them to help him rescue Falin.

Which ahh yes, his crush on Falin. I do think idealization plays into it, he doesn’t know Falin that well for sure, but it’s more complex than that too. Falin is pretty and can have an ethereal energy to her, she’s caring and gentle kinda motherly which Toshiro would find soothing I imagine, BUT MOST OF ALL. She’s weird!! She’s just weird enough to allow and be charmed by!! Shuro was fully shaped by his upbringing and environment of nobility, social etiquette and whatnot. Yeah she’s weird and quirky, but still quiet and sweet-mannered enough that he’s like "Yes, she wouldn’t bring shame on my family name". And why would he be charmed by her weirdness? Because all he’s ever known is rules!! Conformity, fitting in!! Unlike the others he knows, she is weird without being overbearing as well. "Woah she’s so different… She’s kind and soft and doesn’t care about fitting in… She is out of this world, she’s free, she shows me a world where tenderness and authenticity is possible…" She’s like his comfort character. MOREOVERRR I had totally forgotten about it, but Toshiro was shown watching a snail behind a bush and losing sight of everything else (like Maizuru calling him) as a kid in the Hag monster tidbit, the moment he fell in love with Falin it was when she looked enthralled at a caterpillar and he mentions how "most girls would have screamed or recoiled in disgust", and in the beach chibis page he’s crouching and collecting shells thinking about Falin… He likes bugs and crawly critters guys, he wishes he could be cottagecore too… It’s a genuine shared interest… . Someone pointed out that Toshiro & Falin’s relationship probaboy references this japanese folk tale, and I think that’s very interesting to note.

And Maizuru is like his mom but it’s a Thistle situation where they can’t just be a normal family and normal affectionate either- and when he learns about his father having a thing with her he feels weirded out. And like. Who knows how much he even got out of the mansion. He got homeschooled. He’s distant with his brothers. The family is in shambles

Shuro’s issue is that he was taught to be perfect and have the upmost respectable behavior, so if something annoys him he has to be righteous about it and that it’s the annoying thing’s fault or moral failing. Bro just let yourself be petty sometimes it’s healthier. With the feud with his father it’s explicitly stated that the pressure and expectations of the family name weigh on him a lot.

But then, that makes his beef with Laios so understandable doesn’t it. Not justified, but explained certainly.

Laios & Shuro and the whole mess coming to a head

I’ve made an analysis of the Laios-Shuro fight from Laios’ pov before, here. This is the Shuro pov analysis. Yes yes in The Fight, Shuro is dehydrated sleep-deprived and underate, he’s majorly off his rocker, BUT his frustration and the underlying issues are still things he felt on any day and it’s interesting to note.

Toshiro has been raised from his birth with the priority of propriety, nobility, etiquette, rules, conforming elegantly, appareances and reputation are everything. He’s modest, humble, quiet, stays in his lane and bottles all his feelings up. Wait who is this loud guy coming up to me being inconsiderate and loud af?? Does he not see me blinking in morse code that I’m not enjoying this and want him to leave?? Was he raised in a barn?? He’s overbearing and rude and way too friendly- He’s weird wtf! Not conforming to basic etiquette is illegal??! And people just… Let him do whateve he wants?? He lives well, no one stops him or kills him?? What the fuck, I’ve followed rules and etiquette thoroughly all my life, and it’s thankless work I get no recognition for, meanwhile he gets to be oblivious af and do whatever he wants without getting clapped?? Resentment, frustration, dislike, anger anger anger, jealousy.

Laios might even remind Toshuro of his dad in a way, because he SEEMS impulsive and like he does whatever he wants without a care to people around him, without thinking of how it might affect them. Doing things without thinking through the Implications. And interestingly this is a bit paralleled to to how Shuro is serious, strict, and big on the duties that come with having a leader role and the family dynamic it brings, like Laios’ own father, who Laios also dislikes… Dealing with his anger towards Laios, especially knowing that Laios doesn’t mean anything bad by it like Toshiro admits, is probably very healing to him. He stops repressing and thinks through his issues a bit, realizes what parts of his life he’s unhappy with and where all the negative feelings come from. I do think he bottles up his dislike for his father a bit, he has to at least for appearances. His beef with Laios is repackaged internalized anger for his father, but it’s ALSO repackaged frustration from his etiquette-bound lifestyle. He says it himself, when Laios is like "You never told Falin how you feel…? Alright, when I can I’ll tell her for you buddy!!", "that’s the part of you that I envy". Laios’ ability to just come out and say what he wants to, what he means. He wishes he could be free of all the rules more, that he had te courage to speak out, like with Inutade, or talking things out with Maizuru, or nit having to act like he’s not angry with his father. This narrative point of Toshiro envying Laios’ ability to say things freely and being frustrated by not being able to himself is ESPECIALLY examplified by their first interactions, the basis of their relationship: Laios enthusiastically befriending him, giving him a bad nickname and roping him into joining his party, with Toshiro never turning it all down despite wanting to, too hesitant to act possibly rude.

And now is time for the laishuro addendum… Because of personal experiences it’s a bit of a sensitive spot to me so while I see timelines in which I enjoy it I’m very picky… This is all further theorizing from me btw I’m not pushing my view here onto ppl as facts, but I think there’s more interesting bits and scenarios to bite into here. Laishuro has very cute and sweet potential. I personally don’t see the "Oh wait Laios is just girl Falin… 😳" angle because to me if anything that’d just make Shuro disillusioned with Falin lol, but like yes make Shuro learn that it’s ok to be weird with Laios 🥺 They DO have differences first of all, important ones, especially from Toshiro’s perspective. Laios is overwhelming, whereas Falin is soothing. Laios is loud and asks things of him where Falin is a calm, quiet presence. Laios pushes himself onto Toshiro, whereas Falin is content on just doing her own thing in her corner alone.

Hot take but the ultimate laishuro timeline is the one where he DOESN’T bring Laios back home, because he knows he’ll be seen as an oddity and clown by his father, and he doesn’t want Laios to be treated like the tapdancing monkey there to please and entertain his father the way he himself has always kind of been. Wouldn’t inflict that onto someone he loves. He can recognize when people are taken advantage of (mostly) like Inutade, and it doesn’t settle right with him. He might be especially sensitive to it in Inutade’s case because it’s about seeing his dad in a better light than he deserves, though. His father is his weak spot, THE weak spot.

It gets me so emotional thinking about it actually because seeing Laios played like a fiddle by his father, Laios so happy to find someone who’s enthusiastically listening to him ramble and engaging, would destroy Shuro emotionally I think. Like. On one hand being like "Oh of course my dad would find Laios fun, unlike me his boring son", super angry as coping mechanism for his intense sadness of not having positive parental attention, and then on the other he’d see Laios being treated as a clown and identify with it and that would remind him of how he gets treated similarly which he’s in denial about (more or less, but since he puts up with the family rules and follows along he hasn’t given up on getting recognition. He wants his father’s approval, and he couldn’t blame Laios for being happy with it despite how hurtful that attention truly is without Laios’ knowledge), which would be such an overwhelming conflicted mess of emotions and his worldview would shatter a bit because he has to repress it all even now, and he’d have a breakdown.

And similar deal but if he brought Falin home… Bc ok yes he idealizes her and doesn’t even know her all that well, but like I said imo what he sees in her is that "Woah she’s so different… She’s kind and soft and doesn’t care about fitting in… She is out of this world, she’s free, she shows me a world where tenderness and authenticity is possible…" So meanwhile with Laios he’d have mixed feelings on him getting treated like a clown and identify with it, bringing Falin home and having her be demeaned would be like having his perfect comfort character dunked on and he gets reminded that the world can’t have anything good actually. With both Toudens it’d make his resentment towards his father even worse, he might snap. I’m not the biggest on gendered analysis tbh but Kui evidently does like to do it to some degree, with the genderbending changing their life considerably and different fantasy cultures having different gender roles and all, but Shuro idealizing the Touden sister as something perfect he cannot attain while being jealous and frustrated at Laios for being something he cannot attain is like. So compelling actually. With Maizuru’s hannya of female rage weaponized there could be a theme of pushing the blame and responsibilities of things onto women too, the responsibility to raise and to manage and to dish out the work and to clean after mens’ reckless decisions. Anyways just a tangent.

Shuro on a bad family angst day is everything I love in a blorbo… He can be a lil shitty as a treat to make his healing arc more fulfilling. Toshiro snapping after he sees how they treat Laios/Falin and he gives up the family headship to LEAVE. Maizuru arc where she has to choose between loyalty to the clan and loyalty to Toshiro, will she stay with the boy she raised or go home… To me Maizuru is much less sympathetic than Shuro, but she is pretty tragic and her selfless love for Shuro is her one redeeming quality. Babygirl take no shit no more, but also better yourself and turn your life around please and thank you… She is so evidently taken advantage of but like. What else does she have? So she just takes care of and loves the boy she raised like her own kid and goes about her daily life in servitude and doesn’t think too much about it all.

Shuro is awful a nickname but also, I think Shiro would be a good nickname for Toshiro, because it gets rid of that ‘Toshi’ first part of his name that all the male members of his family share. It severes the link to his father and the tied pressure from his family.

Laishuro brotp turning slow burn romance would be so lovely. I think college au for laishuro would be peak actually… Shuro so is the repressed "I am so normal" guy who has a furry liberation identity crisis arc… I also quite like the potential he’d have with Namari, as both work-oriented misfit foreigners cast out of their homes, and she’s also bolder so it’d be good for him, and he could bring her stability… That’s a topic for another day tho. Even he and falin are sweet tbh, they could have traveled around together even if just as friends… Bc yeah she does value him as a friend at least somewhat, she says she’ll visit him~! Mostly I want Izutsumi-Toshiro brotp fancontent.

Conclusion

The household is very hierarchy oriented, and honestly the system doesn’t seem to make anyone happy, or at least not healthily so. Sighh feudalism.

Obviously their situation are very different, but still Toshiro and Izutsumi react to the same conflict in opposite ways: when a hierarchy and lifestyle of rules and duty is thrust upon them, Toshiro obeys and believes that it’s how things simply are, always having it been drilled into him since being a baby and being privileged enough to live ok with things as they are, meanwhile Izutsumi rages and eventually breaks free and never wants to submit herself to rules or hierarchy ever again, even if that perceived hierarchy is a mutually beneficial professional party dynamic or having a role inside a well-meaning team, like Laios’ party. WHICH IS WHY THEY SHOULD HANG OUT AND HAVE AN ARC TOGETHER. LET HER INFLUENCE HIM TO GET WILDER AND THINK OF HIMSELF MORE. FUCK INHERITING THE HEADSHIP. THE SIBLINGS NARRATIVE.

As always if I find more stuff to add i’ll edit it in. Rn I’m thinking that I’ll look into ninja & samurai feudal history and try to find specific terms that might fit their roles and situations more. I should reread the first chapter with them to try and notice the hierarchy at play more, sigh, and Izutsumi’s end of the Toshiro-Izu dynamic as well.

Ah yes yes, I forgot to talk about it but we don’t know what Toshiro’s retainers have been doing with their time on The Island, especially while he was dungeon diving with Laios and co. Ah although in the anime’s ed in this shot we see them "stealthily" follow him around, so presumably when he’s not in dungeons they’re tailing his moves.

Afterword here, it has summary charts about the power structure & relationships and complementary pages and artworks, couldn’t put them in here because SIGH 30 pictures per post limit.

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featherquillpen · 1 year

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Gained in Translation

I speak four languages (at varying degrees of fluency) and do translation both for smooth and peaceable family reunions and for fun, with works of literature I enjoy. It's practically a truism at this point that meaning gets lost in translation; in fact, I'm currently reading an excellent book, Babel by R.F. Kuang, in which there is magic powered by the meaning lost in translation. But a topic I hardly ever hear anyone discuss is how meaning can be gained in translation.

Example 1: References

A type of meaning that can be gained in translation is that when you translate from language A to B, you can make references to other texts in language B that the person who wrote the original in language A wouldn't have been aware of. Here is an example from a translation I did of a Pablo Neruda poem:

Yo te recordaba con el alma apretada

de esa tristeza que tú me conoces.

I remembered you with my soul gripped

by the tragic ordeal of being known by you.

These lines in Spanish reminded me a lot of the meme based on the viral New York Times article about how you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known in order to reap the rewards of being loved. So I decided to make a subtle reference to that quote in the way I phrased the English translation. This meaning, of course, doesn't exist in the original Spanish; I added it in.

Example 2: Meaningful Distinctions

Meaning is often gained in translation because the target language makes a distinction that the source language does not. The translator has to choose one side of that distinction, and so meaning is gained.

Here is an example from the Spanish localization of the Japanese RPG Fire Emblem: Three Houses. There are two unlockable scenes in which the character Hubert is given a gift as a romantic gesture. Now, I don't speak Japanese, but through reading the analyses and translations done by Japanese speakers, and by checking for consistency in the kanji, I can see that the same word for "gift" seems to be used throughout these scenes. However, in Spanish, there are multiple words for "gift" with rather different connotations, which becomes relevant in the localization.

In Spanish, there is no generic word for "gift" that applies in every situation. There is a distinction made between gifts that are personal, between people who care about each other, and gifts between people who are not close, such as charitable gifts and formal gifts given to a diplomat. The translators of the game had to choose which of these words to use in the Spanish, and they used the distinction to add some very interesting meaning to these romantic scenes.

In each scene, what happens is that Hubert notices the person has a gift and comments on it, thinking it's for somebody else. In these lines, in Spanish, Hubert uses the personal intimate word for gift. Then, when he finds out the gift is for him, and reacts very awkwardly, he switches to a formal word for gift, creating an emotional distance between himself and the romantic token. This is excellent characterization and adds a layer of meaning in translation.

Example 3: Meaningful Ambiguity

Sometimes, the opposite phenomenon occurs, where the target language does not make a distinction that the source language does, and that ambiguity or vagueness adds something to the translation.

I have a Finnish friend who has told me that fiction that plays with gender is often more meaningful for him in Finnish translation than in the source language, because Finnish does not have gendered third person pronouns. Where books like The Left Hand of Darkness or Ancillary Justice have to make a conscious decision about which gendered pronoun to use for characters that fall outside the Western gender binary (The Left Hand of Darkness uses "he" and Ancillary Justice uses "she"), the Finnish translations can just use the default neutral pronoun they use for everyone, and never have to resolve that ambiguity in any direction. My friend has told me that there are some books about non-gender-normative characters that he wishes he'd read in Finnish instead of English because the experience would have felt more authentic in some ways.

What It Means

The reason why I bring all of this up is that the concept of meaning lost in translation is tied to the idea of translation as an act of violence. Indeed, there is a saying in Italian, "Traduttore, traditore," which means "Translator, traitor." I agree that translation can definitely be an act of violence that destroys the intended meaning of a text and warps it to suit the needs of the speakers of the target language. But when we focus only on what is lost in translation, at the expense of what is gained in translation, then we deny that translation can be an act of liberation and power.

I was raised in a bicultural household speaking both English and Spanish, and when I translate between these languages, it makes me feel empowered and proud of my heritage. It feels insulting to me to claim that when I translate, I can only ever deplete the meaning. That is not true. Every translation requires a translator, and we are more than thieves and traitors. We are more, even, than archivists, trying to minimize loss and decay as much as possible. We are creatives and inventors who can add something beautiful and meaningful to the text via our translations.

#translation #on writing

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myfandomrealitea · 4 months

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I wish I had a place to post my fucked up arts without being cancelled 😭

Honestly I think the drawn arts have suffered perhaps the most out of modern censorship. Especially the communities, too, because when sites ban things to please advertisers, investors and the handful of people squawking about protecting the children, it creates this mentality of; 'if its been banned its bad, so whoever makes it or enjoys it is bad too.'

There will literally always be at least one person who comes after you for what you create. Lord knows I enough enough angry anons in my inbox on a daily basis and all I do is rant about antis and occasionally knock my braincells together with enough force to say something vaguely helpful.

My best advice for avoiding being 'cancelled' is to heavily, heavily curate your online space and the people you aim to include within it. This could be by:

Following specifically other blogs who post similar content or express interest in similar content to what you produce or your interests.

Pre-emptively blocking blogs who express disgust or hatred for the content you produce or like, blogs who express moral stances conflicting to yours, ect. This is expressly helpful on sites like Twitter where options to limit engagement are limited.

Tagging properly, and including trigger and warnings tags whom others are likely to have blocked. This prevents people from seeing something they don't want to, and also gives you coverage if they try to accuse you of 'spreading it around.'

In cases of art that may have more extreme content, try using spoiler flags or any filtration option that requires viewers to actively consent to viewing it. Relevant to above, nobody can cry wolf about 'being exposed' because they would've had to physically reveal the work to themselves.

DeviantArt unfortunately recently changed its policies to a frankly ridiculously constrictive degree, so while I previously would've recommended that as a place to host your artwork and find a safer community, I can no longer. Hopefully someone is successful in pushing for the site to reform to its previous rules soon.

ArtStation is an option. The site is not eligible to anyone under 18 and sexual, gore, fetish, and 'mature' content is allowed provided the usual stipulation that you aren't using it in order to cause, infer or threaten harm against someone. A lot of the site is geared toward marketing artwork, though, so you might be hard pressed to find more of a community aspect to it.

Rule 34.com is... Objectively one of the best places you can host your artwork if you create content that is based on sexual themes. The protective rights aren't the greatest, but anyone who uses Rule 34 has no leg to stand on regarding morality and censorship.

Reddit has a lot of subreddits for sharing art, and a bonus is you can find subreddits specifically geared toward artwork based on things like gore, violence, sexual content, ect. Filtering options and monitoring are basically non-existent, however. Also, Reddit sometimes spontaneously decides a specific post is against its TOS and yeets it.

There's also the option of building a Discord server based around sharing artwork of certain themes, which is objectively the format that allows you the most control over who views it, but it also means your art has a limited presence. (Can't be reblogged, ect.)

If you do check out any of the websites, always be thorough in reading the Terms of Service and the Community Guidelines.

#sephiroth speaks #myfandomrealitea #fandom #proship #proshipping #art #fanart #art platforms #artists #discord #deviantart #reddit

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coollizzylou · 2 months

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Hey gw2 peeps I recently learned that this interview exists (it’s from late December last year)

And I think reading through it gives a lot of context for why the latest update(s) may not have hit the mark for more story inclined people.

(My own thoughts/analysis under the cut. I’ll try to be vague spoilers but it comes with the territory)

Ok first to get it out of the way: my thoughts. I like this update! I think the new part of the map is beautiful as always, and it feels a LOT livelier than the first part. The new meta is less intensive than The Road to Heitor and feels fun to drop in and to replay, which is nice. I love all of the events that focus on helping civilians. I’m glad we have a portal from the Wizard’s Tower now, too! I haven’t really dug into all of the new weapon proficiencies on all classes, but I am enjoying engineer shortbow in WvW! I think this update has a lot more than a lot of people are giving it credit for, because what’s here is more mechanical gameplay than story instance content. I’m ok with the player character being A Hero and not THE Hero, but I do wish the commander had more speaking lines because it’s the little things that make the story so immersive and fun for me.

Speaking of, I want to highlight a quote from the interview I linked above. The rest of it is really fascinating, but this part stood out as specifically relevant to the discussion being had.

We’re learning a lot about how we develop and release content on this cadence, which absolutely has a downstream effect on the player experience. The overall shape of development between expansions 4 and 5 are very similar (timelines, resourcing, etc), even if the content and features are not. This means that we’re able to focus more on refining our development processes than reinventing them. The better that we can identify production issues like undocumented dependencies, bottlenecks, resourcing issues, etc, means that we can proactively address those issues in future dev cycles.

From our experiences with Secrets of the Obscure alone, we’ve adjusted development schedules, review processes, dev resource allocations, documentation and communication practices, and more. All of these contribute, to some degree, to improving the quality of what we deliver.

So basically what I’m getting here is that SotO was a huge adjustment, and if I’m reading between the lines correctly, I would guess that the adjustment was probably a little rough (to put it mildly).

I think this is why the story instance content was weaker than what other updates have provided. It makes sense that if a speaking part had to be cut/diminished, it would be the player character’s. 10 different voice actors for each line of dialogue is a lot more difficult to plan logistics for than a single voice actor reading ten lines.

But it also makes me hopeful that the devs at Anet will continue to learn from whatever might have gone wrong, and I am really excited to see what’s next!

#SotO spoilers

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familyabolisher · 1 year

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Sorry to ask something somewhat related to the recent discourse, but do you have any advice to someone trying to teach themselves lit analysis or lit theory? Seems like most online advice ends at "get an English degree lol"

first of all sorry for leaving this for so long, between work and various other Demands in my life i didn’t really have the time/energy to sit down and write up a proper answer for a while. anyway: imo, what’s more important than working your way through a long list of critical theory is honing an ability to respond to a text yourself; being able to take notice of your emotional responses, being able to ask questions about what the text does and what it responds to and whether you think it succeeds or fails. questions like ‘what is the text about?’ are often too vague, and assume that critical practice is a task limited to investigating the ‘correct’ metaphysical properties of a text that we have to uncover, as well as presenting literature as wholly utilitarian (under this framework, a text becomes a vehicle for a ‘theme,’ and nothing more.) in the list below, i’ve tried to be a little more precise about the kinds of questions that can help you become a more confident + critical reader.

[disclaimer: i am not any kind of expert, i have studied english lit at degree level and i do read a lot / make a habit of talking about what i read, but i would not consider myself especially ‘qualified’ and nor should you. i’m explaining a process that works for me, not providing a one-size-fits-all solution to the question of analytical methodology.]

the essence of literary practice is that a text has a terrain where it has to be met with, and where it will be accountable to forces that are often beyond its control or beyond its immediate borders, and a terrain where it asks to be met with, and towards which it will attempt to navigate the reader; the reader’s job is to meet with it on both terrains, synthesise them, and respond to them. so, some of the questions you should be asking about a text include:

what is its context? this can mean a lot of things: when and where was it written, and how might the conditions contemporary to its creation be informing the inner working of the text? is it considered part of a particular literary movement; how does it interact with the core characteristics of that movement? does it invoke other works; if so, how does it respond to them? what biographical information about the author might be relevant to the piece? some books will come with an introduction which, if written well, would cover at least the outstanding details on this list; you can also have a look on wikipedia or other such websites to get a feel for the conditions under which the text was created.

how does it respond to this context? rather than assuming a text to be a passive body onto which its external conditions are exerting their unilateral force, we should always understand a text as being in active dialogue with the context that shaped it. what are the questions typically posed within the movement or genre to which it belongs; how does it answer these questions? does it build on its predecessors in any way? if it’s a responsive text (ie. consistently invoking an earlier text), what does it have to say about the text to which it responds; how does it develop or contravene the template from which it was building? how might it be responding to the questions of its time; which paradigms are challenged? which are endorsed, actively or tacitly? what goes unmentioned? i emphasise critical engagement with context so heavily because it’s often where the meat of the text can be found.

what are the conditions which made this text possible? this is a little different to questions about context, which have a far broader scope; this is a question which seeks to treat a text not as a thing that came into existence of its own accord, but as a thing that emerged as a result of a process of material production that depends upon particular conditions. is it a mainstream publishing house, or an indie press, or self-published? how does this affect its authority, or the standard to which we hold it? how does this affect its relationship to narratives of cultural hegemony? what can that tell us about what hegemony can and cannot absorb? this is me being a big marxist about it but i think this question is woefully neglected in literary studies lol

why did the author make the choices that they made? one of the most important things to remember when it comes to literary analysis is that every choice made in a text is deliberate; every choice about what happens, what a character says and does, what a character looks like, how particular characters interact, how scenes and objects and settings are described, what prose style is employed, what word is used in a sentence, etc., is a deliberate choice being made by an external agent (ie. the author, sometimes/arguably also the editor, also the translator if a text is in translation), and those choices are accountable both to the deliberations of the author and the external cultural narratives with which they necessarily enter into a dialogue. ‘why does a character behave in a particular way’ is not a question that invites you to treat the story like a riddle for which you can find an ‘answer,’ but a question that engenders the following: what does their behaviour reveal about the character, and how might this be situated within the discourse of the wider text? does this behaviour reveal any biases on the part of the author? what sort of expectations does this behaviour establish, and are those expectations met or neglected or subverted? the same process can be applied to themes, settings, plot beats - anything, really. why is this particular adjective used - does it have other connotations that the author might want to draw attention to in relation to the object being described? why does this chapter end here and not here? nobody in a novel has agency that extends beyond the boundaries of the novel itself; part of the practice of analysis means discerning which choices were made and why, and whether those choices were good or bad.

what is your response? analysis is a misleading term for this practice; it’s less about dispassionately picking at a text in search of an ‘answer’ and more about evaluation - assessing the text’s successes and failures and cultivating your personal response to it, which means paying attention to your responses as you go along. some people would argue that ‘did you like/dislike this’ is a juvenile question, but i would disagree - knowing whether you liked or disliked something and being able to describe why it evoked that reaction in you is crucial to an evaluative practice. a text can be conceptually excellent, but falter if its prose is clunky or uninspired or unimaginative; being able to notice when a text isn’t engaging you and asking why that is is an important part of this evaluative process. similarly, what do you make of the themes and developments present in the text; does it dissect its themes with precision, or does it make broad gestures towards concepts without ever articulating them fully? is it original? does it have sufficient depth to it? do you agree with it? are you compelled by it? if you were asked the questions that the novel tries to respond to, what would you say; do you think that the novel misses anything out? has it challenged your own perspective? what are its limitations?

literary analysis is a learned skill, but by its nature of being a skill it gets a lot easier over time, and some of these questions will become intuitive. a good way to hone the skill and develop a greater intimacy with a text is through close reading; this refers to the practice of selecting a passage (or even just a sentence) and picking it apart line by line (word by word, even) to describe in intimate detail exactly how the sentence(s) came to be formed in the way that it/they did. i’ll use the first few sentences of daphne du maurier’s rebecca as an example.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.

so a close reading of these sentences might identify:

‘last night i dreamt i went to manderley again’ is in iambic hexameter; this rhythmically satisfying invocation makes for a smooth opening sentence, and contrasts with the longer, more complex sentences that follow on. the change in rhythm through such a contrast helps to maintain momentum throughout the paragraph.

the first sentence also introduces a few key pieces of information - that this story is being told from the first person, that we are opening with a dream (and that the narrative places stock in the significance of dreams), and that the speaker is going to manderley ‘again’ - ie. that this is opening after an event in which manderley was significant. that the speaker going to manderley ‘again’ in a dream holds importance implies an exile from manderley in the ‘real’ world; this already gives us hints at the broader shape of the narrative.

the speaker’s intimacy with manderley and disregard for ‘telling’ the reader what it is (we do not get, like, ‘manderley is a house’ or something - the passage continues as though we know what manderley is already) helps to develop our sense of immersion in the dreamscape. it also sets manderley up as a place of immense significance.

both ‘it seemed to me’ and the later ‘i called’ have a matter-of-factness to them, a certain dry reporting of the events of the dream which, rather than situating the reader within the texture of the dream itself, refortify us as outside of it, listening to it be explained after the fact.

‘for a while i could not enter, for the way was barred to me’ continues the theme of implied exile that the first sentence gestured towards. the iambic trimeter on ‘the way was barred to me’ creates a lilting cadence which, along with the use of the passive voice, detaches the speaker from an emotive response to this being ‘barred’; it is a reported dream that will not consciously acknowledge the speaker’s feelings about being exiled from manderley at this time. (we instead infer these feelings through how the chapter develops.)

‘there was a padlock and chain upon the gate,’ as a short sentence, falls into the same matter-of-fact register as that which i alluded to above, partly through the use of the passive voice, and - as i explained earlier - varies the length of sentences such that the paragraph retains a particular buoyancy.

the development from the speaker calling to the lodge-keeper to not getting an answer to seeing that the lodge is uninhabited tells a story wherein the speaker at first has authority such that a lodge-keeper would respond to her and let her in; this authority is negated by the lack of response; the lodge-keeper is found to be absent in a development that took place whilst she was herself away, presumably in the state of exile that we have inferred her to be in. ‘uninhabited’ is the kind of word you would expect to be used for an area of land, often with a colonial connotation; this introduces a theme that this chapter (& the book as a whole) goes on to develop, of manderley being a site of colonial decay; as reinforced by the ‘rusted spokes.’

in my experience, close reading is a technique best practiced on poetry, but it’s a very helpful skill to develop in general, and implementing it with prose can elucidate the nuances of a text far more clearly than you might initially realise. in a well-written novel, language is very deliberate and precise!

i think the best thing you can do to develop your skills as a critical reader is to read carefully, and to keep track of your responses to a text as best as possible. keeping a note of what you think a text achieves and how you respond to it each time you read one can be a good way of sorting your thoughts into something coherent and developing your ability to articulate a response. anyway, hopefully this has provided something resembling a guide for how to develop the thought processes that go behind critical practice!

#ask #long post #resources

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seravphs · 10 months

Text

ੈ♡˳·˖✶ — GETOU SUGURU x FEM READER

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.” - On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

wc — 5.3k

tags — cult leader Getou, follower/non sorcerer reader, religion, the intimate relationship between a god and a devotee, thus inherent power imbalance, occasional plot relevant use of honorifics, love as worship, don’t question why Getou like that, he just is, he’s so delusional, Getou pierces your ears and it feels like something more

His body is unnaturally cold to an unbearable degree, as it always is. He’s not quite human after all, though you don’t have a name for what he is. He calls himself a sorcerer, but you don’t trust everything that comes out of his mouth.

You shouldn’t. He likes to lie, especially to you.

Geto traces the curve of your ear with his chilly fingers, forcing you to repress your full body shudder. You’d never admit that you like it. You’ve grown used to the frost on your face when he kisses you, the ice seeping all the way down through your bones until you’re wracked with shivers, relishing in the physical reminder of your god.

Do normal worshippers kiss their gods?

Probably not the way you do, but their gods aren’t quite so close. They’re rarely so willing to touch, or so quick to initiate. Like most divine beings, Geto likes to watch over. He likes to hold his fragile little possessions in the palm of his hand. He likes to own.

Your ear is numb. He’s preparing you for what comes next, shockingly gentle. There’s trepidation in you, still, though to be hurt at his hands means something. It’s an offering. You’re willing to accept the cost of that when you have nothing else to give.

“Will it hurt?” Your voice is all but a whisper.

“Come now,” he says, vaguely amused. “I’m pushing a needle through your ear. Of course it’ll hurt, my little lamb, don’t be silly.”

“Don’t say it like that, please,” you whine piteously, curling your fingers into the sleeves of his yukata. He indulges you like a particularly beloved pet who’s done a cute trick for him. There’s adoration in his eyes, though you’re sure he sees you as not a partner but a plaything.

“Be brave,” he says, turning to the table he’s set up to his right. “You asked for this.”

Like with most things, you had just wanted his attention. Even now, your fear is mostly exaggerated. It’s all for the sake of seeing him, letting him fawn over you.

You wish he’d keep speaking. He has a nice voice. It’s probably easier to concentrate when he’s not talking, but you wouldn’t mind if he screwed this up. It would just be another excuse to see him again.

The crunch of your cartilage startles you so badly you almost jump, ruining the entire thing. Getou presses you back into your seat with a hand on your shoulder. The pressure just borders on painful. His hand is heavy.

You love being under your God’s thumb.

“Shh-shh,” he murmurs mindlessly as he works, pushing the needle all the way through. Your ear lobe feels just slightly heavier as the metal locks into place.

“There,” he says, satisfied. He steps back to survey his work. You can’t see it, but he looks pleased with himself, so that’s enough for you. “How pretty.”

He laughs when you turn your head to the side, gracing you with more love, more touches. He could give you his affection until it drained him dry and it wouldn’t be enough. You want all of him.

“So eager,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “Slow it down. I don’t want to hurt you.”

But you’d take anything he gave you.

The second ear is noticeably easier than the first. He’s surer of himself, and you’re less trembly.

When he’s finished, your ears flash two new sparks, piercings to match your beloved divinity. He doesn’t mind if you’re arrogant, so you take your time to preen over yourself in the mirror. He stands behind you, a shadow to your flame.

“We’ll stretch it slowly,” he promises. “I won’t let it hurt.”

“We’ll match,” you say wonderingly, touching your ears even though he told you not to. The image of yourself with earlobes stretched with gauges like his is strangely appealing.

This is love, to be made into the image of your god. To become something worth protecting.

It’s all you’ve ever wanted.

Your mother thinks you’re being possessed by the devil.

It started a year ago. In the beginning, it was a creeping sensation down your back, like fingers walking down your spine. Over time, it grew more malicious. You shook with chills in the stifling heat of summer, teeth chattering with an unseen force. Something else lives within you, sucking on your breath.

Malaise chokes the air around you. It chases you, illness and black smog. Life through a chilly, viscous haze is no life at all. You’re the epicenter of a misery so strong the physical world would bend to it.

In some ways, it felt deserved.

You’d been raised to believe that things happen for a reason. A careful balance had been set on your life at birth that you had unknowingly tipped.

If you suffer, it must be karmic.

It feels right. You’ve always felt a desire to atone for your life, though atone for what you can’t specify. The weight of whatever curse you’re carrying around feels like divine justice.

(Later, you learn that curse is indeed the correct description.)

But if your punishment is divine, so is the source of your redemption.

You meet Getou on an auspicious day.

A total of seven wedding processions are spotted on your way to the temple where the man who will save you resides. Everyone is trying to take advantage of the lucky day, including you.

The brides you pass look so different from you it’s as if they’re in a world entirely apart. You feel no connection between yourself and the beautiful women in their bright white shiromukus, an undefinable distance too wide to explain.

Like the moon, their faces glow with the promise of new happiness. They will enter their new lives with joy and humility, as befitting a married woman. Although you are the same species, when you look in the car’s vanity mirror, the resemblance falls short. Eyes, a nose, lips - you all share these traits of humanity, and yet something about you feels fundamentally different.

Your mother has noticed your gaze. She reaches over the center console to grasp your hand, squeezing it lightly.

“Everything will be alright,” she says reassuringly. “Getou-sama was highly recommended.”

You smile at her but say nothing. A million exorcists have tried and failed to cure you. You no longer have any faith in this industry, if it truly is one and not just a series of one con-artist after another trying to take advantage of vulnerable people like your mother.

If this Getou is a scam artist, he’s a successful one. Even if you try to fight it, a sense of awe overcomes you at the grandness of his temple. A staircase has been carved into the side of a steep cliff. The white stone gleams, polished everyday by the natural elements. Salt spray and wind take precedence here, reminding humans that their reign over Earth is only a blink in the eye of a long history.

Here, the world feels old.

Even from below, the temple is large enough to be seen. The red of its wood burns in the sun, making it appear as if the grand building is ablaze. As you get closer, you can see the hanging shimenawa ropes and the shide. You feel small beneath such grandeur.

Even by the millionth step, when pain overtakes your legs, the awe doesn’t leave you.

Can you call it a trap if you walk into it with your eyes open? Though you know all of this wonderment is intentional, you still feel it tearing at your heart. Your condition makes it hard to leave your home. The bright blue of the sky burns your eyes after days spent trapped within your room, walking only as far as you’re able to pace. Standing on the solid stone, feeling the wind tear at your hair, you feel half wild yourself.

There must be a reason the temples are always located in nature. There’s a howling in your heart.

Witnessing Getou Suguru inspires a feeling in you similar to that of the temple. Wearing his monk robes and a small smile, something about him feels otherworldly. There’s a depth to his eyes, a predator hiding beneath the waves. It’s a curious blend of comfort and fear. Even when the idea of approaching him seems as appealing as placing your hand beneath a knife, you feel a call to him.

Your mother says he’s a saint.

That doesn’t feel right.

His hands are gentle when he guides you to sit before him, but you feel the strength in them. The grip he has on you is intentional, like he’s holding something infinitely precious - or infinitely fragile. You fold your legs underneath you, adopting the traditional position for prayer. When he brings your hands together, you clasp them faithfully, and it feels like worship.

It doesn’t matter what else it could’ve been when it feels right. You don’t need to think of anything else.

He guides your head. With your chin tilted down, you can no longer see his eyes. There’s something unsettling about them, like looking into the cold killer pupils of a shark. Without them, you feel slightly more at ease, and paradoxically, more unsafe.

A hum builds in the room as he works. Your ears pop as he traces a slow circle around you, watching, waiting.

“Eyes closed,” he reminds you as you start to fidget.

Your spine jerks under a sudden pressure. You double forward onto your hands and knees, gasping for breath as it pushes down harder. There’s a growing ache in your straining ribs, but you keep your eyes shut as you were told. Your mother makes a muffled noise of distress.

“Patience,” Getou says. “All will be revealed in time.”

He stops in front of you. You can hear the rustling of his robes as he moves. Desperately, you want to open your eyes. The longer you wait in the darkness, the more terrified you feel. In the absence of sight, you feel the intensity of every other sense that much more, trying to make up for this new vulnerability.

In your hindbrain, you register how submissive your position is. You’re prostrate in front of him, begging to be saved. And as if that was all he needed, an acknowledgement of your own deference to a greater power, his hand slides under your chin. You raise your head with him, tears leaking out of the corner of your eyes as you feel yourself beginning to be crushed under him.

When he kisses your forehead, there’s nothing but relief.

The pressure you’d grown used to lifts off your spine. Your body shudders and throbs with bright flashes of not pain, but something adjacent. Only the wetness on your cheeks reminds you that you’re still crying without noise.

You feel full.

There’s something inside of you, something greater. Proximity to Getou feels like holiness, burning up that dark smog you’ve been carrying around your whole life. It feels like you’ve swallowed a star that’s been searing you the entire way down, but the pain is bright and beautiful.

You’re too sensitive to be touched, but someone’s holding you. Your mother is rocking you like you’re a baby again, whimpering into your hair like she’s a child herself. You weep together, one silent and one deafening. All of your anguish pours its way out through her, like she’s a conduit for the things you cannot open your mouth to say yourself. Her noise is yours.

Getou stands over the two of you, waiting.

Something about the way he’s looking at your mother makes you want to divert his attention from her. He’s a god, but a dark one. Every movement is painful at the moment, but you manage to bring your hand to clutch at his robes.

“Thank you,” you whisper through a cracked throat.

He brings something to his mouth and swallows. Revulsion works its way over his face and disappears instantly. He’s like still water - nothing moves him. It all passes through him, diffused into nothing. He’s simply too great to be colored by things as simple as human feelings.

“It was nothing,” he says, and you get the feeling that for him, it was.

Your mother kisses the hem of his robes, thanking him and Buddha. To her, he’s the miracle worker who saved her child. She didn’t see his expression.

“How?” You ask.

“The details would bore you,” he replies. It’s a non-answer and you know it. “It’s all thanks to the merciful heavens.”

But your mother accepts this without complaint, pushing even more money at Getou than she paid for this initial service. Her hands are shaking as she counts the bills, then gives up entirely, pushing it all at him. You’re just as grateful to Getou as she is, but you’re worried about her. Gently, you take her by the shoulders and try to lead her out of the temple as fast as possible after giving him your own thanks.

“Wait,” Getou says. “Leave your daughter here.”

Your mother freezes. Her mouth forms a thin, wavering line of upset, but you can see it in her eyes. She suspected something like this might happen.

“Please, Getou-sama,” she says. “She’s my only child. If something were to happen to her-”

Getou takes her hands in his. “Rest assured, she will be treated with the same care as if she were myself. Nothing will happen to her while I live, I promise you.”

“I can’t-”

“With the curse that I just exorcized from her, I fear she might be weak and vulnerable to attack from other spirits. She may be repossessed as soon as she leaves this building, but she’ll be safe with me. This is the best course of action.”

“Getou-sama, I understand but-”

“Mama,” you interject. “It’s alright.”

You feel a faint sting of regret at the look of open betrayal on her face. Your mother has done so much for you, putting up with a cursed daughter without complaint. You want to spare her that life.

“I’ll get well soon and return to you.”

“I don’t know…”

You put your arms around her, trying to swallow the lump in your throat. She’s carried the burden of your existence for so many years. You want her to let it go, just this once.

So you stay, and she goes.

Getou gives you a room in the temple and promptly washes his hands of you, as you suspected he might. If he’s keeping you around, it’s for his own purposes, though you may not know them. Instead, his servants remain at your beck and call.

You never want for anything, but your days are lonely. Anything is better than how you were living before, however. After that, you can endure anything.

Despite the wishes of his secretary, who’s the most common face you see these days, you’ve taken to having night walks outside. The temple is still as painfully beautiful to you as it was the first time you saw it.

Sitting outside, with your feet dangling over the ledge and the chilly wind against your face, you feel like you’ve been born again. The air is quiet here. You let your cheek rest against the rough stone of the handrail, your arms pillowing your head. There are a million stars in the sky tonight.

A million stars, and you count each one, placing them on one side of the balance.

A point towards goodness.

One for bad.

Another bad one.

The game gets boring after a while. You have no way of determining where your scale falls. Only someone like Getou could do that. Someone blessed.

Your breath is coming in short puffs again. Even pressing your head to the cool stone doesn’t help you swallow down your nausea. Maybe you aren’t cured, after all.

Maybe whatever’s in you is incurable.

Something brushes over your shoulder and is gone in an instant.

When you turn, Getou is standing behind you. His throat works, in the last actions of swallowing. The breeze ruffles his hair as it did yours. Silhouetted against the darkness, he looks even closer to divinity than he did in the temple. It’s like he was made for this - to stand here in nature and command it.

A god.

“What am I going to do with you, hm?” He says, and his voice is pleasant but the undertones aren’t. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“A little bit of night air isn’t going to kill me, Getou-sama.”

“I told you spirits were going to come for you.”

“Is that what that was?”

He looks at you, amused despite himself. It all seems despite himself, as if whatever Getou presents himself to you as is nothing but a skin the real creature inside wears. It peeks out at you from time to time. You’d like to get to know it. Though scary, it seems more appealing than this facade.

“Suit yourself,” he says. He turns to walk away, but you’ve been lonely. Even a monster is a welcome sight when your only companion is silence.

“Where have you been?”

His back still to you, he pauses. “Is that any business of yours, little lamb?”

“You promised my mother,” you remind him. “You said you’d take care of me.”

When he said it, you knew full well he had every intention of breaking that promise as soon as she left. True to form, he continues walking.

Desperately, you throw out, “I want cake! The next time you’re in town, you better bring me some. All you eat here are fruits and vegetables.”

Getou doesn’t stumble, but his step stutters. There’s a jump to his shoulders like a hiccup - or a stilted laugh.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he says.

Then, rare honesty.

“For a second,” he says, his smile bitter, “you just reminded me of someone.”

There’s cake at your next meal, and two children. One you were expecting, and the other two you weren’t. They’re hovering in the doorway, watching you with wide eyes.

Or rather, they’re watching the cake. They’re practically salivating as you lift the fork to your mouth. Feeling a little mean, but not mean enough to stop, you jerk your fork left. Their eyes follow it, entranced. Right. Again, their eyes trace your movement. You wave it in the air. Like bobble heads, their chins bounce with their movements as they watch your fork like a hawk.

When you break out in laughter, they realize they’ve been caught.

“Don’t run,” you cajole as they turn, stumbling over themselves. They’re the only other people you see besides the servants. Getou doesn’t visit, and why would he? The divine have no need for the mortal realm. “Come here. I can share.”

They dart out like little fish in a school, never straying too far from each other. Rather than separate beings, they seem like a two headed creature as they snatch the plate you offer them and scurry back towards the door. It’s alright if they’re shy.

They’re children. You understand, even if you’re lonely. No one will talk to you in this vast, empty cathedral. None of the servants will answer you with more than clipped responses, single words to everything.

You miss Getou, his holiness and inscrutability. Miss the way he felt larger than life.

You ask after him, but you never see him. Instead of Getou, his secretary arrives to ask you to not be a nuisance. She’s polite about it, of course, but the message is clear regardless. Someone like Getou is too important to be bothered by the likes of you.

Sometimes, they let you watch him from a distance. It’s not special to you. He has public exorcisms, shows he puts on for his devoted bass of followers. None of them live in the temple like you. His secretary keeps a careful eye on you, never letting you get too close.

It’s enough just to watch at first, studying him, but soon it falls flat as well. It’s no replacement for the actual man. The distance between you feels like miles.

For the most part, they leave you to wander.

The temple is even larger than you thought it was from the outside. You lose yourself in the winding hallways. Every red paneled door and gold lacquered intersection looks the same.

Inevitably, you get lost. Your feet have carried you far from your room, and now there’s nothing to do but keep moving.

Hall after hall blurs together until you hear the sound of voices. You follow the low timbre of Getou’s voice until you come into a screened room. There’s a hole in the patterned cloth, and when you put your eye to it, you see Getou and a young man.

Dim candles burn in the room. The fire leaps in tune with Getou’s breath. As the boy lies on the floor, Getou murmurs over him. Sweat beads on the boy’s forehead as he lets out little shuddering breaths. His muscles move in violent spasms. Your own joints ache in sympathetic pain.

Finally, Getou holds his hand out, though you can’t see what it contains, and swallows once more. He grimaces, as if the taste is revolting. His lips form around the word ‘weak’, then he’s helping the boy up and escorting him to the door. The air becomes suffocating without a third force to stand between the two of you, as if the boy had been a buffer. Still, you watch him.

“Come out,” Getou calls. “It’s not polite to spy on people. Should I tell your mother?”

“Then you’d also have to tell her you’re neglecting me.”

“I’m not neglecting you,” he says, moving the screen aside.

“You said I’d be treated like your own blood.”

“Haven’t I given you whatever you asked for? Even cake?”

You suppose he has.

He gives you a funny look.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He says, his voice warm and light.

It feels fake, but it still soothes you. A god is a god even if the altar is plastic. All it takes is one worshiper.

“You saved me.”

“Hmm,” he says in response. “You haven’t attracted any menacing spirits lately, little lamb. I suppose I won’t have much more saving left to do.”

Cold fear strikes you with your epiphany. You pick up the subtext behind what he’s saying, even if he’s not aware of it, ever casual in his delivery. The minute you’re free of your demons, you won’t matter to him anymore. You’ll return home and never see him again.

Somehow the idea breaks your heart, when once all you wanted was to be free.

Devotion makes you do stupid things. Underneath the catacombs of the temple, you sit on the cold stone floor, only a single flickering candle to illuminate your path. You don’t know how this works, or even if it’ll work.

You’ve never tried to be possessed purposefully, after all, but where the idea of demons once scared you, now the idea of leaving Getou’s side is more terrifying. You can’t bear the idea of losing your god, not when you just found him.

The candle jumps.

You try to steady your breathing, reminding yourself that this is what you want. Slow, syrupy, your thoughts begin to tumble towards nothingness. You open yourself up to pollution, purposefully making yourself vulnerable. Whatever was preying on you when Getou first found you that night is invited in.

Your breathing starts to come harder. Stars pulse behind your eyes, and a sickly sensation comes over you. You find you can’t stand, feeling a overwhelming pressure physically holding you in place.

Please, you think through bleary thoughts. This has to work.

The pressure is so great you fear your spine will snap. Your world tilts sideways as you slump down to the ground. All of a sudden, you feel so, so tired. As if you could go to sleep right now.

Right before your eyes close, someone gathers you up into his arms.

“You’ve attracted another strong one,” Getou says. “Do you enjoy getting into trouble?”

It’s unseemly for you to disrespect your god so, yet you’re so delirious from your experience that you can’t seem to remember propriety as you curl closer to him.

“I wanted to see you,” you murmur, your eyes filling with tears unwillingly. You wipe them away, feeling childishly embarrassed. How much less he must think of you, to see you reduced to tears by nothing. “You never come visit.”

“I was busy. Why would you even try something like this?” He’s walking now, the rocking motion of his steps making it hard to stay awake. “How did you even know if I would come?”

“I know you.”

A little, anyway. You’ve been watching him, trying to piece together the little moments he slips.

“What would you understand about me?” Getou says. “You’re so weak. All of you are.”

For a moment, something ugly hangs over the expression of your savior, your god. You only catch it because you’re always watching him. His teeth pull back into a cringing smile, as if he’s repulsed by you. As if there’s some kind of inherent taint to your existence. But all of these things pass over his face and are gone in an instant.

You don’t mind your weakness. Otherwise, you might not have met him.

He stops in front of your room. For a second, you think he’ll let you down, and he seems about to, but instead, he pushes through the door. He carries you right over to your bed and pulls the sheets back to lay you down.

“Thank you for saving me, Getou-sama. Again.” You smile up at him.

He laughs, then looks startled by his own reaction. “That’s all you have to say in response?”

“You’re a god, Getou-sama. Of course you think I’m weak. It’s why I need you.”

“You know,” he says. “I can’t tell if I love you or hate you.”

It’s the most honesty he’s ever showed you. Warmth swells in you. You feel obligated to return the favor.

“But you’re being so kind to me right now, Getou-sama. I couldn’t imagine you hating me.”

“You’re right,” he says, caressing your cheek. “I can’t.”

It’s a lie, but that’s alright. If it’s from him, you’ll take even hard love. It doesn’t have to be good. He doesn’t enjoy it. But he does like you, a little, even against his will. Whatever force pushes him away from you, there’s a force of at least equal strength pulling him in.

Something changes between the two of you that day. Getou’s still cold, still keeps you at a distance, but he lets you hang around him. They way you’re treated makes you feel almost like a pet, but it’s alright.

He tells his secretary off for you. She tries to intervene, to pull you away as she often did in the past, but this time Getou stops her with an easy command on his lips. His arm shoots between the two of you, warning her away.

Ever the consummate professional, the shock melts from her face almost instantly as she respectfully nods and fades into the background. You don’t know what this means for your relationship, but now he lets you tag along with him whenever he’s in the temple.

You try not to read too much into things you can’t be certain of, but sometimes the way he smiles at you makes you think he might find it cute, the way you trot on his heels. If he finds you particularly good that day, he might even reward you with a little spoiling, granting you little touches like tucking your hair behind your air or stroking your cheek.

He takes some meals with you now. If it’s breakfast, he’ll make small talk with you, asking you about your never changing days. Even though nothing ever happens here, he stills shows interest in everything you have to say. You preen under his attention, blossoming like a morning glory.

During dinner, he prefers the quiet. The days exhaust him now. You know he’s preparing for something, though you’re not sure what. He’s a little stranger these days, a little more on edge. Sometimes his eyes dart behind your chair, following things you can’t see, though he never lets them touch you.

If you catch him asleep, it’s never peaceful. He dreams restlessly, calling out in his sleep for a man you don’t know.

All you know is that whatever he’s planning is taking it’s toll on him. It’s hard to guess what he wants when he would never show weakness to you. Gods don’t allow their devotees privileges like that.

But you’re determined.

You know he likes you sweet and warm. He calls you his little lamb, his darling thing. You’re the peace he finds when he comes home from hunting spirits or gathering followers. You like to be that for him.

The next dinner you have with him, you pull your chair closer. Normally, you sit at opposite ends of the table. Today, your chair is right next to his.

“What is it?”

Instead of responding, you gather a little bite of every plate on the table and place it in his mouth. He blinks hard, momentarily surprised, and then his mouth curves into a smile. He swallows willingly.

Spoon by spoon, you pick apart each plate to reveal the best, most tender bite. When you’re done, Getou takes your hands and folds them in his. He dips his head and kisses your palms, then each finger, one by one. Slow heat spreads across them as you feel something like divinity move from him into you.

The next dinner, your chair is next to his already, and he’s waiting.

“Hello, my little lamb,” he says. There’s a spoon of food already in his hand. When you sit, he brings it to your lips instead.

One night, he brings you cake and two little shadows.

“Come here, children,” he calls when they hesitate, staying in the dark corridor instead of the warm candlelight of the dining room.

Turning to you, he says, “I hope you don’t mind. Mimiko and Nanako like sweets.”

The shadow creeps into the light, and reveals the face of the two-headed creature who you had tried to coax with came weeks earlier. You smile at them. Only one smiles back, the other looks away, shyer.

Like Getou, they seem to see something you can’t, only they’re much more obvious about it. When Getou catches you tracking their gaze, his hand falters. He nearly drops the cake before Mimiko catches it.

He seizes your shoulder. “Do you see it?” His voice is a hushed whisper, but intense.

It scares you a little. “See it?”

“I knew you were special,” he breathes. “I knew you were different. You’re not like the rest of those filthy mortals.”

“I don’t understand,” you stammer.

“You must have some cursed energy, maybe just a drop, but it’s better than nothing.“

Mimiko and Nanako are smart children. They’ve already crept out of the room, leaving you just with him.

“I don’t think - Getou-sama,” you say, trying to catch up with his thoughts. “I’m possessed, I’m not like you. It’s the devil in me, not a god.”

“The devil can’t have you,” Getou says. “You’re mine.”

The working title for this in my docs was: Getou not like other girls you except replace girls with humans

#sera writes #getou suguru x reader #geto suguru x reader #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader

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tibby · 7 days

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i think it's partly bc of rerecording her albums and having fans love the vault tracks that she now feels she cant leave anything on the cutting room floor just in case

i definitely think that's part of it, but - and i say this as someone who likes a majority of the vault tracks - i think it was a good thing that they were initially left on the cutting room floor. including them originally would have detracted from what the albums were trying to say.

speak now and 1989 are the best examples of this. the point of speak now was two things: taylor wanting to prove she could do it on her own, and each song referencing a specific person or scenario. with the exception of when emma falls in love (the weakest of the lot imo) and castles crumbling (which has a feature), the SNTV vault tracks are more...vague in who/what they're about. and sure, if they'd been released on the original album with the secret messages we might have more context, but that isn't something we can say for certain. speak now is the only album that's about multiple people and we can pinpoint who or what each song is referencing (except maybe sparks fly which was included for the fans, and haunted but that could be because i've never cared enough to investigate if it's about john or joe).

as for 1989, i think the vault tracks are definitely stronger than some of the songs that made the cut (as much as i love WTNY and HYGTG, they're not her best work), but i don't think they would have fit into the story she was trying to tell. whether taylor successfully made an album that is about independence and not love is up for debate, but she claims that was her intention. IION and say don't go aren't great fits for that story, especially since it was one she was trying to tell within the secret messages.

i think red's biggest problem is that it was already too long of an album (which is also part of speak now's problem). i think the red vault tracks fit the theme of all the varying degrees of love, but red TV clocks out at over two hours. it's possible that forever winter in particular was too raw a song to release at the time (has she played it live yet? i haven't kept up with eras tour that much).

and while i love the fearless vault tracks, i do wonder if including them would have earned it less acclaim. they're good songs, but fearless is by far her most polished album imo. even the deluxe tracks, which i also adore, kinda take away from how well rounded the standard album is. it's very possible it's only capped at 13 tracks because cds back then could only hold so much, but i also think that it was a better decision for the marketing of the album itself.

but now, with ttpd and the eight million versions of midnights, it's harder to find the good shit because it's surrounded by so much filler. and yeah, part of it is that some of the songs on those albums are just...not good (bejeweled my deepest enemy), but i think a culling would have greatly benefitted them. ESPECIALLY with ttpd. taylor's always been songwriter who releases stuff that could be diary entries, but at least before it was like...you at least edited this. now it just seems like we're getting every single journal entry as is. and it's tiring. 31 songs is too much. hell, 16 songs for lover was too much.

ultimately i think it comes down to the fact that she no longer gets any push back from the people she works with, and fans are both willing to accept quantity over quality and (for many swifties, but not all) there's just a refusal to criticise her work at all. and i think taylor's desire to constantly release new content (which i think is a combination of a constant need for relevancy combined with the fact she's always writing) combined with being surrounded by yes men and adoring fans is impacting her work negatively. which has been the case since lover if not earlier, but i think midnights/ttpd are her most glaring examples of it.

anyway lmao sorry this got long. sorry for never being on here and then finally showing up to have opinions about taylor swift. do you guys still think i'm hot.

#ask #anonymous

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hauntedestheart · 1 year

Text

A Business Proposition (Male Bodyswap)

This is loosely inspired by the premise of the Netflix film Perfect Date (2019)... very loosely, with a tf twist.

Peter Turner loved people- he went to college for it, he often joked.

Unfortunately getting a job in the field of anthropology without a masters degree was damn near impossible, and the only thing more impossible was finding a way to get the money to fund graduate school.

His bachelor's degree had landed him a lofty position at Starbucks, and while the employee discount was nice, it barely paid the bills. Peter had to look into alternate revenue streams to supplement his income, and he decided to play to his strengths: his looks.

Back in high school he'd run a silly "perfect date" program where, for a price, he'd spend an evening offering the illusion of romance to a girl. He'd be a pretty face to listen to them talk and compliment them– all perfectly innocent fun, and he loved to make people happy so it worked out well for everyone.

Kickstarting the business back up as a 24 year old college grad was... a bit different. It had been one thing when he was a teenager holding hands with a classmate, but adults had different expectations and while he was clear he was NOT a prostitute, if he had to spend one more afternoon pretending to be a side piece to make an ex-husband jealous, he was going to give up on his dreams entirely.

Recently some sudden unexpected expenses had arisen and put him in a tight spot so Peter was desperate, desperate enough to consider taking up some of the more dubious offers he'd received because the money might be too good to pass up.

That’s probably why he didn’t get up immediately when a guy plunked down in the seat across from him.

“Kim?” Peter asked, eyeing the boy sitting across from him. He was a gangly looking Asian fellow, probably around Peter's age, who looked like he didn't get out much if his rumpled clothes and shaggy hair were any indication. His pale skin highlighted the dark bags sagging beneath his eyes, which despite the rest of his appearance were bright and alert.

He was decidedly not the girl Peter had been booked to see.

“Yeah that’s me." The boy flashed him a sunny smile, as if nothing was wrong. “Thanks for showing up, I saw your posting and knew that you would be perfect.”

“Sorry, I don’t do dates with dudes.” Peter said, crossing his arms in the way he knew made him look vaguely intimidating. “Pretty sure that it said that in the description.”

Kim chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m not hitting on you. I’m just here with a business proposition.”

“A what?” Peter was confused. He shook his head. “I’m not interested in pyramid schemes man.”

“No, I assure you it’s relevant to your business,” Kim leaned forwards and smiled wolfishly at Peter. "You run a dating service, right? I'm about to revolutionize your business model. What if I told you that, through clever allocation of your resources, you could outsource your labor while offering clients a one-of-a-kind personalized experience? And all it'll take for you to get there is to sit here and listen to my pitch."

Peter wasn't an idiot, he had a college degree, which is why he was certain that that had not been an acceptable answer.

"Look," he tried again. "I promise this is not me being homophobic but like I said, I don't do dates with other men."

“You misunderstand," Kim said blithely. "I don’t want to go on a date with you. I want to go on a date as you.”

The young man paused as if this were some sort of mind blowing revelation but Peter just stared at him for a few seconds, dumbfounded, then rose to his feet.

“Yeah, sorry dude, whatever it is you’re after I don’t think I’m gonna be able to help you,” he said, then he turned to walk away.

“Wait!” Kim shouted after him, and something in his voice made Peter stop. The other guy sounded… genuine. Peter turned back to face the guy, and was surprised by the serious look on his face. “I know that this is very weird but I wasn’t sure how to ease us into this topic and clearly a cheesy line was the wrong approach. But you’re gonna wanna hear this, I promise I'm not wasting your time. I think we can help each other out.”

When he saw that Peter wasn't moving, he cleared his throat and continued. "Just hear what I have to say and even if you think it's a load of crap, I'll give you a thousand bucks. Sound good?"

Peter sighed. "Okay, fine. What is it?"

The other boy glanced around, almost nervously, and then gestured behind himself.

"Not here, we need to go somewhere private," Kim whispered, his previous confidence gone. "Are you comfortable going to one of the conference rooms? I'm not gonna do anything crazy, I promise."

Peter took a moment to mull over his options. On the one hand, going off with a stranger to an enclosed location seemed like a very bad idea but on the other hand, he was probably four inches taller than Kim and Peter could probably bench press the boy so he didn't feel very threatened. What he did feel, however, was curious.

"Lead the way."

Kim, it turned out, was Kim Shinwei, an eccentric young tech millionaire who had made his fortune developing a range of programs and technologies that included the very service Peter had used to build his own app. But his real passion was a secret, experimental project he'd been working on for a few years.

"You're joking, right?" Peter asked incredulously. He waved at the air. "Is this a hidden camera show or something?"

Kim seemed less than impressed. "I'm dead serious."

"A body swapping machine?" Peter scoffed. "You expect me to believe that?"

Kim's eyebrow quirked up. "You think I can't do it?"

"I think it's impossible," Peter said flatly.

"Nothing's impossible if you really put your mind to it." Kim paused. "Plus have the funding, the time, an extensive knowledge of the relevant, fields, and so on and so forth. But I wouldn't be talking to you if I hadn't already tested it and been 100% certainty that it would function."

Peter was skeptical. "How does it even work?"

"Honestly it's a lot of math and science that would take too long to explain, and I doubt you'd even understand most of it," Kim winced, as if processing his own words. "No offense, it's just really complicated. The point is I have it, it works, and I wanna use it with you."

"Alright, let's say I do believe you," he eyed Kim's skinny frame distastefully. "Why would I want to trade bodies with you?"

"Not permanently, I would like to stress that," Kim hastened to say. "The technology operates off of a neural link modifier that, in my simulated studies, struggles to maintain a connection for longer than about a week. This would be strictly temporary."

Peter crossed his arms. "Doesn't answer the why question."

"And that's an excellent question!" Kim nodded. "I can understand why you'd be confused by the prospect of seeking a new body since you're..." Kim's eyes scanned Peter, lingering for a moment too long on his broad shoulders and toned chest. He licked his lips. "You're quite the physical specimen. I, however, am confident enough to say that I am not. You have something that I want and I'm... willing to pay for it. Even temporarily."

"So you'd pay to switch bodies with me?" Peter clarified, dumbfounded. "Temporarily?"

"Exactly!" Kim exclaimed, misreading Peter's confusion for enthusiasm. "It's perfect."

"So you're suggesting that I let you rent my body?" Peter repeated. "Like it's an Airbnb?"

Kim's brow furrowed. “Dude, you rent out your body to girls all the time.”

“Yeah, but usually I’m still the one in it.” Peter stood up, offended. "I'm not interested."

“I’ll give you $10,000 for 24 hours. That’s all.”

Peter stopped. That was… a lot of money. A whole lot of money that he could very much use.

He sank back down into his chair and sat there for a moment, chewing his lips and mulling over his options. Kim leaned back in his chair, a smug expression on his face.

"And this would all be above the board, right?" Peter asked. He couldn't believe he was actually considering doing this, but the money seemed too good to be true. "You're not gonna try to double cross me or run off with my body or something, right?"

Kim chuckled. "As wonderful as it would be to look like you forever, I have built a life with this body that I'm not keen on giving up."

"And I get to set some of my own terms right?" Peter shifted in his chair uncomfortably. "Because I don't want you to do anything nasty with my body."

"My lawyers have already drafted up a provisional contract," Kim said smoothly, with the practiced confidence of someone who had closed dozens of business deals before. "You're free to have your own legal counsel look over it and propose revisions."

Peter nodded, although he knew that hiring any sort of lawyer would be out of the question given his financial straits.

“Why me though?" he found himself asking.

Kim smirked. “Let’s just say you were the right combination of willing to talk, desperate enough to swap, and hot enough for it to be worth it.”

Peter frowned, but didn't argue with the fair assessment. “Isn’t this just another expression of late stage capitalism where everything, even our bodies, are becoming commodified?”

“Pretty with a brain, I like it,” Kim shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah probably. But then don’t you want to get in on the ground floor of it?”

Peter's realized that he was out of questions, and his stomach sunk when he realized he had his answer.

"I'll do it," he sighed and rose to his feet, sticking his hand out for a handshake. Kim stood up as well, but paused before he took Peter's hand. A strange expression crossed his face.

“Actually…”

Peter blinked. “What?”

“Before we do this, drop your shorts.” Kim commanded.

Peter did a double take. “What? Why?”

Kim crossed his arms and smiled. “If I’m shelling out this much money I want to see what I’m getting first.”

“Seriously?” Peter asked. Kim’s expression didn’t change, and he glanced down at Peter’s shorts and back up again, quirking one eyebrow. Grimacing, Peter unbuttoned his shorts. He knew what he was packing and had never been ashamed of it, but he also didn’t make a habit of showing it off to strangers. As he let his privacy drop to the floor he prayed that the awkwardness of the situation wouldn’t cause his junk to shrivel up. Every inch counted right now. Kim’s eyes widened when he saw Peter’s manhood, and his mouth practically began to water.

“I’ll throw in an extra thousand.” He finally said, after an uncomfortably long beat of staring. “Congratulations, by the way. You’re… you’re very gifted.”

“Thanks.” Peter mumbled, trying to avoid eye contact. “So the deal’s still on then?”

“Oh the deal is absolutely on.”

“Then can I put my pants back on?”

Kim sighed. “If you must.”

Peter and Kim sat across from each other at a table in Kim's kitchen, a small white bead jam packed with electronics anchored to the back of each one's neck, and Kim pressed a button on his phone. (The device was controlled by an app, of course.) There was a jolt and the two young men went blank, then after a moment the two snapped back to attention as if “rebooting.”

“Holy shit it worked…” Peter said, his hand going to his throat when he heard the sound of Kim’s voice rather than his own.

“Oh my god, this is so cool!” Peter’s body shouted, now under the control of Kim. He leaned back into his chair, stretching the length of Peter’s body as he felt the muscles and sinews of his body pulling. It was a far different experience than that of his own body in ways he had never even considered.

He arched his hips and groaned when he felt his new member pushing into the fabric of his jeans, stretching into what felt like forever. In an instant he was on the feet with his shorts on the floor, freeing his new cock to bob before him in the open air. He gaped like a fish as he stared at his borrowed appendage with awe, and the real Peter yelped in surprise.

“Um, excuse me?” Peter was shocked by the other man’s forwardness. “You’ve been in my body for ten seconds and you’re already hard?”

Kim didn’t say anything in response, he just grinned from ear to ear as he flopped Peter’s increasingly firm erection around.

“Dude, stop acting like an idiot in my body!" Peter's unfamiliar new face flushed red. "It’s a penis, you have one too.”

“Yeah but like, not like this.” Kim exclaimed, popping his hips so his dick bounced as if to emphasize his point. “You’ve had this thing your whole life man so you’re used to it. This is new to me and it’s fucking awesome. How big is this thing, you ever measured it? Doesn’t matter, I can find out later. I’m hung!” He shook his prize.

“No, I’m hung. I’m just letting you borrow it for 24 hours, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, right, of course.” Kim said, flexing Peter’s muscles. He giggled slightly as he watched his biceps balloon outwards, bouncing them up and down in turn like softballs. “Damn… you work out?”

“Obviously I work out, people don’t just look like that.” Peter rolled his eyes.

“No, they do not.” Kim mumbled as he stared at his abs, rubbing both hands over them to familiarize himself with the ridges. “They most certainly do not.”

“I can’t believe that this is real…” Peter pressed his hands on either side of his body, twisting side to side to observe himself from all angles. “I haven’t been this skinny since I was in middle school.”

“Middle school?” Kim asked, pausing in his examination of his new body to shoot Peter an amused look. “Nice humble brag.”

"Just saying," Peter shrugged. It was surreal to see his real body from the outside, and even more surreal to see him groping himself like a horny idiot. He watched his face light up as Kim's hands found his ass for the first time, and he wasn't sure if he should be feeling violated or flattered.

"Anyways, we've been over the rules," Peter continued. "No drugs, no alterations to my physical appearance, nothing illegal, and no sex."

Kim winced at that last one. "And you're sure about that?" He palmed at his new crotch and grinned. "Because I'd be willing to pay, I didn't realize it would be this good."

Peter deadpanned, unamused. "Yes I'm certain, and I believe we have a contract.

"Alright, alright," Kim waved his hands in defeat, then an impish grin split his face. "Maybe next time. Anyways, you're free to hang here but I'm heading out– the clock’s ticking and I wanna get my money’s worth.”

Kim bounded out of the room on his new, powerful legs, and Peter sighed behind him. He really hoped that this wasn’t a mistake.

#body swap #bodyswap #male body swap #I know people like a picture with the story but I'm bad at finding those so just use your imagination

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murkycran · 2 years

Text

Human!Dreamling AU

Hob is a former soldier turned history professor (original, I know)

Dream is a successful author; he writes under the pseudonym of Morpheus because he likes his privacy

Dream starts sitting in on Hob’s history classes because he’s doing research for his next book

Which would fine and all, if only 1) he had bothered to tell Hob that rather than just showing up one day, and 2) he wasn’t so distracting for the actual students in the class

As it is, Dream just starts showing up after class one day and Hob is like “um?? Can I help you???”

Dream: “your Department Chair said I could be here”

Hob: “well no one told ME that”

It starts off a bit contentious; Dream refuses to tell Hob what he’s writing about, just asks vague questions, and his attitude makes Hob feel inferior or like he’s being judged

In truth Dream is just an awkward idiot who has a hard time talking to people, hence the need for writing under a pseudonym and saving his privacy

Hob, finally reaching his limit with feeling like he’s being judged and deemed inadequate, asks why Dream doesn’t just sit in with the other history professors

Dream, getting huffy and defensive, says “my sister praised your passion and depth of knowledge in your field, but if you truly find me so bothersome, I’ll find someone else”

Hob: “sorry, did you say sister?”

Hob served in the army with Death, who was a combat medic

Death and Hob kept in touch after being discharged from the army, but they both kind of got busy with life and only occasionally saw each other on social media

While Hob went on to get his degree in history and teach, Death got her PhD in medicine and opened her own practice

When Dream complained about needing to do some research on an era of history for his next book to Death, she suggested Hob and talked about how good of a teacher he was. So Dream pulled some strings and got permission from the Department Chair to sit in on Hob’s classes.

Hob is a little embarrassed - he considers himself a pretty average professor and doesn’t have the same years of experience as some of the other professors - but feels honored that Death recommended him so highly

Ofc before he can actually say anything like that, Dream leaves because he’s Offended and needs to sulk

Feeling a little bad about how they parted (only a little bc Dream can be an ass when he wants to be), Hob reaches out to Death again and tells her about it. She’s pretty much like “sigh yeah that’s Dream for you, dw I’ll talk to him”

Cue her calling Dream and calling him an idiot and telling him he needs to use his words more rather than expecting everyone to simply accommodate him.

Death uses Older Sister Voice to strike a blow!! Dream sulks about it some more but realizes she’s right and shows up to the next class Hob is teaching

He doesn’t really apologize but he does say he overreacted; Hob DOES apologize for misjudging Dream, however. He’s still willing to give Dream a shot now that he knows Death specifically recommended him to Dream

Hob tried to ask Dream about the books he’s written before but Dream Will Not tell him what his pen name is; hob also tries to ask what the current book is about, and Dream still won’t talk about it

This is all frustrating to Hob, bc if he knew even what genre Dream was writing he could probably help more than by just giving a basic history lesson. He could be specific about what he tells Dream, give plot relevant info, etc etc.

Dream dgaf tho and plays it all close to the vest bc he doesn’t want someone ‘interfering’ with his writing process. It irks Hob, but he comes to see it as a game, trying to figure out Dream’s pseudonym from little clues in their conversations.

Leading to not only many more classes where Dream shows up (Hob’s students are INTRIGUED bc who is this man randomly hanging around our professor?), but also some one on one meetings either at Hob’s office or at the New Inn over drinks. Dream even offers to pay Hob, but Hob insists he just pay for the drinks when they go out, bc he sees his talks with Dream as a favor to his Death, who saved his life more than once out in the field

What started as a rough partnership evolves into a comfortable friendship over months, as their meetings eventually start to progress past just talking about history to other topics. They get to know each other outside the original context of their meetings by talking about things that, yknow, friends talk about. Food, hobbies, family, past experiences, etc.

I think the tipping point for Hob realizing he’s got a crush on Dream would be him coming into the university building where he teaches one day and seeing Dream talking to another professor.

All the social studies and liberal arts are taught in the same building. Dream showed up early for Hob’s class bc he thought he heard a different professor reciting Shakespeare to their class once. He likes Shakespeare ofc so he thought he’d show up a little early to listen to the Shakespeare class out of curiosity. He ends up in a discussion after the class ends with the professor. The professor, named Will (bc I think I’m hilarious), is an English professor who teaches a class on Shakespearean Literature to third and fourth year students.

On his way to his own class, Hob sees the two of them talking after the Shakespeare class ends, and feels a little weird about it but he has a class to teach so he ignores it

Or at least he tries to. The feeling grows when his class starts and Dream is nowhere to be seen for at least the first 30 min of class. When Dream finally does come in, it’s the latest he’s ever arrived and it bugs tf out of Hob so much he tells Dream after class that they can’t meet that day bc there’s a faculty meeting that Hob forgot about.

Dream is a little surprised and disappointed, but is okay with putting their meeting off for another day. After he leaves, Hob finds himself wondering exactly why he told Dream they couldn’t meet, bc now that Dream’s gone he regrets lying and just wants Dream to come back. Now irritated with both himself and Will the English professor, Hob goes home for the rest of the day to grade papers. If there’s a little more red on the essays than there normally is, that’s only bc his students had a particularly hard time with the recent unit and not at all bc he’s mad.

Hob doesn’t have any classes the next day, but he does actually have a meeting with the Department Chair about next semester’s classes, so he goes to the university. After his meeting with the Chair, he happens to walk by Will the English professor’s class out of curiosity and sees Dream sitting in the back of the class. Hob gets aggravated all over again, stewing outside the closed classroom door (it’s one of those with the window on the door) and thinking not very nice thoughts about Will the English professor when Dream looks towards him and sees Hob at the door. He looks surprised.

Without even thinking about it Hob automatically leaves bc shit! Dream caught him standing outside the class like a creepy stalker! Fuck. Hob drives all the way home mortified and cursing himself before he realizes he’s blushing all over. Cue the realization that hey maybe this is about more than just his friend becoming friends with Will the English professor.

I have more for this AU, but this post is getting a little long for mobile so I’m cutting it off here (for now…)

Now with a Part 2!

#dream of the endless #hob gadling #the sandman #dreamling #human!dreamling au #fanfiction #fanfic #too lazy to write this but it wouldn’t leave my head so here you go

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sophieinwonderland · 3 months

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i was scrolling r/SC and its weird the mods are saying you arent responding to their modmail responses and claiming you are "threatening sub members". I have seen no evidence of this anywhere.

Ive seen the odd claims that somehow you are only citing older DSM sources because it "supports your narrative" but then they dont read the criteria for how vague it actually is. Nothing you have show has supported the sysmed claims and I have a degree! I've studied this for more then 6 years and I'm licensed! It's vague for a reason.

The mods there seem to think that our life should revolve around them just because I sent a message to them asking them to remove a post mentioning my name and age. I have asks in my box, and other posts I want to make. I got what I wanted from that conversation, which was proof that I reached out to them to ask them to remove comments naming me. I might respond further if I find the time and the interest. But I haven't yet decided.

As for threatening members of the subreddit... I really have no idea what they're talking about. If anyone there has received any actual threats, it wasn't from me.

I think either they're making things up, or are taking some sort of statement that I'll continue to post about their hate sub as a "threat."

I don't have any idea what they're talking about with citing older DSM entries either. I rarely discuss the DSM, and when I do, it's almost always the DSM-5.

I prefer the ICD-11 as my go-to source, as it explicitly acknowledges that you can have multiple "distinct personality states" without a disorder.

Furthermore, most of the published papers researching and acknowledging endogenic plurality that I cite have all come out within the past decade.

Varieties of Tulpa Experiences: 2016

The Plurality chapter of Transgender Mental Health: 2018

The ICD-11's Boundary With Normality for DID: 2019

Exploring the Utility and Personal Relevance of Co-Produced Multiplicity Resources with Young People: 2021

Conceptualizing multiplicity spectrum experiences: A systematic review and thematic synthesis: 2023

It's just a body: A community-based participatory exploration of the experiences and health care needs for transgender plural people: 2023

And many others.

Practically the only time I cite the DSM is when debunking people falsely claiming the DSM says you need trauma to be a system.

Otherwise, I generally don't consider it that relevant. It never claims you need trauma to be a system. It acknowledges possession states as real phenomena. And the existence of criterion C implies you can meet the other criteria without a disorder. But I feel there are better sources out there to use.

Like you say, it's vague. Despite leaning towards the existence of non-disordered and endogenic plurality, it doesn't go far enough to make it valuable for me.

I'm certainly not going to use older versions of the DSM as sources.

But yeah, there really is nothing to back up their claims. I've been asking anti-endos for years for even ONE single peer-reviewed paper stating that you can't be plural without trauma or a disorder. Just one.

Because I can name countless reputable psychologists and psychiatrists who have made it clear they believe in other forms of plurality in peer-reviewed papers from reputable publishers. I've seen others who are open to the possibility but seem neutral for no other reason than the fact their specialization is in trauma disorders, and they don't deal with people who aren't traumatized or don't have mental illnesses of some kind.

What I have never once seen is a single anti-endo provide a peer-reviewed source stating that you can't possibly be plural without trauma. And I mean this with any wording. It doesn't have to say "plural" or "system," as long as it communicates that this is the only possible way to have multiple self-conscious agents in your head.

See, for example, how the creators of the theory of structural dissociation have said in one paper that "self-conscious" "dissociated parts of the personality" may be involved in mediumship and hypnosis.

In the years I've been asking for this, not one person has been able to link to a peer reviewed source where a psychiatrist or psychologist has stated the opposite.

All they have on their side is The Big Lie. I've talked about this recently. Just repeat a claim over and over again until people believe it. Claim the experts support and agree with you, and you never need to source any of those non-existent experts. That's what r/systemscringe, and sysmeds in general, are depending on. That their members will be gullible enough to just accept whatever they say.

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the-mic-drop · 3 months

Text

Zelink gets Isekaied into BG3 Pt3: The Emerald Grove & First Camp

Zelda- High Elf Draconic Lineage Sorcerer

Link- Half Wood Elf Champion Fighter

Story so far- Zelda has collected the first four companions, and Zelda admits she is some kind of holy being. Everyone's still cool.

The party leaves the temple and continue on. Zelda and Gale continue to chat.

The party helps repel the Goblin attack on the Grove's gate with no casualties.

Once through the gate, they meet Wyll who tells them about Karlach and joins their party. Zelda sees Wyll like a real-life hero from a book. She wonders if this is how the citizens imagined Link before the Calamity.

They make their way down the stairs and after the Tieflings are sent away and they approach the guards, Zelda spots a familiar head of dirty-blonde hair. Before the guards can get through their spiel, Zelda yells for Link who (with the Master Sword on his back) immediately whips his head around and sprints toward her. She immediately wraps him up in a hug, which he returns after a moment of hesitation.

She introduces Link to the party as her 'protector and partner' or something appropriately vague like that, and then introduces her party to him. Wyll notes how he had a feeling she was tied to Link in some way.

Link leads the party toward Kahga and explains his story up to this point. He was looking for Zelda on the Nautiloid, and woke up after the crash to an approaching Goblin patrol. He struggled to take them out due to his dazed state and found his way to the Grove where the Druids healed him as thanks for taking out some Goblins.

They enter the inner sanctum to see Kahga tormenting Arabella. Zelda is having none of that! She steps between Teela and Arabella. When Teela hisses threateningly, she stares it down, appearing to use Dominate Beast without a verbal component which astounds Gale.

Link stands at Zelda's side and Wyll ushers Arabella away from the conflict.

Ultimately, no real change from canon; Kahga plans on going ahead with the ritual and Zelda intends to talk to Zevlor about getting the Tieflings out safely.

They talk to Nettie and Link actually feels a silent dread about the whole ceremorphosis situation.

After talking to Zevlor about helping the Tieflings, the group leaves the Grove and makes camp for the first time a little ways down the road.

Link, alone with Zelda for the first time asks her about the scales. Zelda realizes she has scales and is terrified. Is the Light Dragon coming back? Is she losing her identity?

Zelda with Link at her back asks Gale about the scales. He's a little confused that she hadn't noticed them before but explains that it's likely that she has dragon in the blood. This is where Gale feels he needs to confront Zelda about her mysterious nature. She knows she's holy but not that she's draconic? She's a magical prodigy that even Gale is impressed by, but didn't know what a spell was when she woke up? The party is uneasy and Gale tells her as much.

Zelda, with Link's counsel, resolves to come clean about everything. Hyrule, the Calamity, Zelda's power, the Master Sword, the Light Dragon, everything. Well, everything that seems relevant at the time.

Lae'Zel is intrigued and glad to have such formidable allies. When she asks for a description of the Light Dragon, she's a little disappointed at how meek it sounds.

Shadowheart is reeling, unsure what to make of it, but she feels a kinship with Link as a fellow amnesiac.

Wyll is humbled by their exploits and pledges to help them beyond their shared tadpole problem.

Gale is FLOORED and supportive, vowing to help Zelda navigate the world of magic. He also rides the momentum to come clean about his own secret; the orb. Zelda immediately voices her support and the rest of the party follows suit with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Astarion sees the benefit in having a pair of demi-gods on his side and so, after Gale, comes clean about his vampiric side. Nobody is surprised except for Zelda and Link who didn't even know that vampires were a thing.

#Legend of Zelda #Baldur's Gate III #Baldur's Gate 3 #BG3 #LoZ #Breath of the Wild #Tears of the Kingdom #BotW #TotK #Zelda #Shadowheart #Lae'Zel #Gale Dekarios #Astarion #Link #Hero of the Wild #Wyll Ravengard #Zelda x Link #Zelink

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mecachrome · 3 months

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no wait please go on more about oscar’s winning mentality… and most of all whether/when you think there will be tension of a fracture with lando because i’m sure it’s inevitable 🤧

hi anon!!! :') haha okay well this might be an annoying hot take but the reality is that i don't think there's such thing as a "winning mentality" in the first place T__T or idk how you meant it (and of course please feel free to elaborate if you'd like!) so i apologize sincerely if i'm completely misinterpreting your question, but for me personally what i appreciate from oscar is rather certain qualities he possesses / has been said to possess that i believe put him in a favorable position to better attain an optimized performance threshold, if that makes sense, which maybe sounds pedantic and many would argue is essentially a winning mentality but i still try to be careful with how much i correlate driver intangibles with outcome-based hypotheticals because i find that many fans + journos + team personnel alike can be eager to perpetuate an ideal of a "mentality monster" or "a future wdc" as though either construct is delineated by the same universal qualities when imo that simply could not be further from the truth…

…i've started and deleted like 5 paragraphs about car/driver/team development & the service ecosystem of professional sporting industries & human tendency toward recency bias and arbitrary pattern recognition but much of this is most likely not relevant to your question at all so let me try to be a bit more brief LOL.

the short of it is: motorsport and f1 in particular are interesting because all professional sports are entertainment products that rely on human unpredictability, but the level of agency its primary actors are privy to and the degree to which certain intangibles (e.g., mentality, drive, Wanting It, Dawg/60 as i say when talking about hockey, and in some sports even individual marketability) are upheld as competitive instruments vary widely per the nature, construction, contact level, global reach, etc. of each sport. with f1 the "front-stage" end product is of course the race package media companies are contracted to present to a global audience, but its primary actors (drivers) occupy a unique position in that they are both the vehicle facilitating that product but also occupiers of another, both figurative and literal, Vehicle that is in itself its own end product, only designed and manufactured in a back-stage black box. and so most of the time in sports, the entertainment is not only the product itself but also the discussion generated around the product, which is then enhanced by the exchange of external data and anecdote, but the problem with f1 is that this sort of end-product inception and the inherent secrecy of car development makes for third-party analysis of the sport that is equally complex and limiting… as in, f1 fans are constantly being inundated with soooo so much data because it's literally a sport built on relative numbers, but all of that data is pretty much useless without proper contextualization—sure, you can look at public telemetry all you want, but you can't really present an informed conclusion on certain approaches or styles or deficits unless you also identify nuances of both the car's inherent characteristics and its specific set-up during the session. which is also how i feel about evaluating driver mentality!!!

basically i think there's no such thing as a meaningful "winner's mentality" at the top level of any sport because everyone wants to win, inherently, and without this ambition you wouldn't be in f1 to begin with. i also think the adjacent idea of a mentality uniquely crafted to becoming a winner is in itself a vague concept for f1 because there's less of a binary quality to performance than compared to other true team sports (yes you technically lose every race you don't win, but it doesn't explicitly count against your season record). in this case i'll define it as becoming f1 wdc… which of course we all know is contingent much less on driver influence than on team direction and development, and again is why i dislike the practice of saying x or y is "wdc material" because that's a very meaningless metric at the end of the day.

god okay i know i never shut up about andrea (SORRY AGAIN.) but personally i really love the way he talks about oscar because i think he understands this relativity very well, and that a driver should develop specific, identifiable, and objective actions in order to support the optimization of their processes (and thus performance!) rather than to achieve any specific outcome (winning). that is to say… i guess honestly, my idea of a "winning mentality" is simply not having a marked preoccupation with winning in the first place, because what matters most is being able to consolidate the right now of what you can control in order to support the later of what you will achieve, and letting the results speak for themselves instead of getting caught up in the idea of needing to or wanting to win (when that should already be a given). which i do think oscar embodies! some astella quotes:

“I don't look how far we can go. I just look [at] what do we have to do now to go as far as possible?" (qatar press con)

"For me what is important is just a sense of journey. The results take care of themselves, so what you really have to focus on is, every day, try to be better than yesterday." (speedcafe)

"I'm not one that works by targets or expectations. I really work by process, by identifying what's the right approach, what's the right vision, and then let results come to you. [...] Let's not think about the results. Let's just think about ‘how do we deliver performance projects in this many areas of the car, such that we can be innovative, such that we can be fast in developing, but also developing at a pace that is sustainable over time?'" (btg)

My God… That's Oscar Piastri's Music!!! anyway i guess what i'm trying to say is that i don't really think there is any true characteristic a world champion must have because it is less about the characteristic itself and more about how it interacts with other characteristics and the way a person manages this sum total—take the idea of "consistency" for example, which is often liberally applied to drivers without any temporal/material granularity. do we mean over an entire career or a season or during a single race length? do we mean consistency in terms of race craft or qualifying pace or a specific metric like race starts and reaction time? being consistent is good if it means that you're consistently getting high positions relative to your competitors, but it can also veer into an overly conservative approach. so to me everything requires a very finetuned balance of raw pace, consistency, adaptability, and a healthy capacity for self-reflection, and it's why i really liked the way andrea talked about how oscar had natural speed as a rookie but also took this incremental approach to his weekends by working toward his maximum session over session, because pushing the limits in fp1 is useless if you're still navigating and identifying new areas of opportunity. but of course this then also relates back to the timeline of adaptability and how everything in motorsport is = the faster you can "adapt" (within a weekend but also over the course of a season) the higher your stock is, so this gradualism must also be well-managed. and the thing is that a driver's capacity to adapt as they move onto newer categories and face new technical regulations is something we as outside observers cannot truly predict or project even though we all love to try!!!

there is a whole spiel about defining what adaptability even means in motorsport here but i'll spare everyone. i think it's very fair to say that oscar is a generally adaptable driver (in that he can get up to speed with the technical components of a new car quickly, that every championship he won in his junior career was in a new chassis, that he has an ingrained "awareness of what the opportunities are" when driving and the "capacity to self-recognize where there is more to come from either himself or from the car," and he so far has shown marked improvements over the length of a race weekend that reflect positively relative to rookie expectation), and it can be assumed that his most pronounced weakness from 2023 will be much better mitigated now that he has crucial track experience in hand, since tyre degradation is expressly something simulator work cannot fully prepare you for. but at the same time i really reject any notion that ~now that he's not a rookie + because he's an adaptable driver + his mentality is sooo much better than lando's (when again it is about the Sum Total of characteristics and not how one specific characteristic is reflected in previous wdcs) his pace will immediately match/challenge lando's~ because first of all, no, and second of all the quantitative mystery is still, how much of that race-pace deficit can better management annul for oscar (or conversely how much of it is simply inherent to him)? so there are too many variables… and anyone who tells you they can predict that is lying!

also re: Potential 814 friction…!!!!!! i guess again as i always say there are really too many variables to make assumptions here... and i think it's hard to imagine, actionably, what a fracture would even look like for them, since lando and oscar are both people who manage the on/off-track separation well and i honestly don't really foresee any huge professional fallouts even if they do have to fight for positions on-track more frequently. but like andrea said, if oscar wins before lando then it means (unless it's a truly fugazi win lol) that mclaren has a car capable of winning, and i again reject this idea that lando is so mentally weak that he isn't capable of being motivated by that, and equally it is actually a Good Thing for a team to have "two #1 drivers" so long as that relationship is well-managed... will they even have two #1 drivers next season (i.e. will oscar really be that much closer to lando)? and if so will it be well-managed? that i cannot tell you!!!!!

honestly teammate dynamics are not something i'm ever confident in extrapolating much from because there are so many contingencies to Who wins first / does anyone even win at all (X to doubt) / who outperforms whom (and how do we measure that) / who "leaves more on the table"... all of that stuff......... but it is definitely a very interesting question. and i will be eager to witness how their relationship develops based on the mcl38's performance next season and of course its performance relative to rb/merc/fer!!!

#ask #i'm sorry anon this is probably not what you asked i feel like i do not know how to give normal answers T__T i have annoying pedant disease

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