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luxicides · 1 year

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A Look (👀) Back on Don’t Look Up: Politics, Social Media, and Art

So, 2022, huh?

I'd say 2022 has been a pretty good year for film. We got NOPE, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Top Gun: Maverick, X, Bodies x3, et cetera et cetera. The list quite literally goes on.

And that got me thinking about the Oscars, past and present.

It's the big showstopper of awards shows, the inciter of daily fights on Twitter, the one definitive reflection of what the film industry feels...

Well, at least, that's what they're supposed to be. In reality, the Oscars have become a mere watered-down version of what it used to be, a blithe imitator of itself in its heyday. Now, instead of being a respected indicator of the film industry's changing perspectives and visions, it's become a shallow archival of all the big pop culture moments.

Okay, maybe I'm giving it too much flak. Maybe I am being too harsh on it. Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt.

But then again, Don't Look Up was nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay last year. Sooooooo.....

Alright, alright, I concede. Don't Look Up wasn't all that bad. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it - After all, it is a satire, and satires have jokes. Don't Look Up is full of them.

Some of them land.

One really curious thing about this whole discourse around Don't Look Up is how we treat its subject matter - that is, the film's symbolic impending comet that is set to annihilate the entire planet. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (literally!) to deduce what it hardly tries to subtly hint at. The comet is - duh - a representation of global warming and climate change and the inevitable course of destruction humanity is leading ourselves down.

Let me preface this by saying, yes, I agree with Don't Look Up's core message (which is in itself incredibly messy and difficult to untangle, but besides the point). I do think that we as a society (hah) have become dulled to the severity of these very real and very potent issues. We spend so much time online, seeing these horrific events through the partition of a screen that we don't really feel how terrible and important they are. I do think that our governments and institutions are far too concerned with saving face rather than saving its people, which is what they're meant to do. I do think that large tech giants are gaining a dangerous amount of power in our world, and I do think that that is something to be incredibly cautious of.

That all being said, I don't think Don't Look Up was exactly a great depictor of these issues.

Don't Look Up is 2 hours and 25 minutes long. It has a lot to say, and there's a lot it's trying to say. But even with the pretty long runtime, everything feels a little... short. I didn't feel all that absorbed in the story, nor all that invested in the characters and their lives. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these characters were one of the most boring ones I've seen in a while. And, no, it's not that I can't relate to them. I can understand and empathise with their anger at these systems that have ignored them and slighted their warnings just to preserve their images. I know that feeling. What I don't know are the people at the core of this film.

And there are so many other things that made me ick at the film, like:

the editing, which was actually atrocious

the script, which at times was... questionable

the pacing, which was the main reason why i felt so out of place watching it

et cetera, et cetera

Of course, these are just my opinions. But regardless of what I, a single individual, feel, there are also plenty of film critics and academics (oh, how I hate saying that) who aren't too impressed with the film either. The film has a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes! I'm not saying that Rotten Tomatoes is an all-accurate estimator of a film's objective worth, but I am saying that there is some merit in popular (mostly) reputable opinion.

Okay. All that long spiel. And for what? Let me get into it - I think it's weird that everyone on the Internet seems to be conflating the film's message with its technical worth.

WHO CARES IF A FILM IS "BAD"?

I have watched plenty a "bad" film in my short time here on Earth. I liked the Twilight movies. I watched all of them. Did I think they were a great masterpiece rivalled only by GDT and Fincher and Gerwig themselves? ...Not exactly.

Besides, what even makes a "bad" film? Art is subjective, after all. There is no one definite way to analyse and understand at a film. Similarly, there is no concrete method to determine a film's "worth".

Does "bad" have to do with its technical aspects? The editing, the cinematography, the performances, and such? That isn't exactly the full picture, is it? What about the content? What about what it's trying to say?

As I've said before, Don't Look Up has an incredibly important core message. Its themes are current and pertinent and real - It's not like it is completely fluff. It has a message. It has a point.

Evidently, deeming a film "good" or "bad" is an incredibly perilous task. More often than not, no satisfying answer will present itself. There will always be loopholes with how we view art. Always opinions we haven't yet reconciled with, always sides we haven't considered.

So, we once again arrive at the question - Who cares?

Should we dismiss a movie simply because it's made "poorly"? No, not really, wouldn't that be a disservice to the filmmaker and his intent? Right, right, so, then, should a film's technical qualities impact our opinion of the message? Well, no, because what if it has a good message but a bad execution? We can't let some bad editing or bad directing get in the way of that!

But... Doesn't it?

NOTHING EXISTS IN A VACUUM.

Really. Nothing.

How we interpret a piece of media is affected by how it is presented to us. Obvious, no?

Well, can the same not be said for Don't Look Up?

One of the most basic effects in film editing, the Kuleshov effect, demonstrates this: If you show an audience a shot of an old man, cut to a family, then cut back to the man smiling, he's probably a kind old man. If you replace that shot of a family with a young girl sunbathing, he's a pervert. Gross.

(If you want to see Hitchcock explain this infintely better than I just did, you can watch it here.)

It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. You derive more meaning from sequential shots, things working together, rather than in isolation.

Film in general, really, does not work in isolation. You work as a team, to create a product that is greater than just the sum of its parts. When you make a film, the content and the meaning you want to get across as filmmakers affects the technical decisions you make. And the technical decisions you make then affect how your audience gets the meaning you are putting across.

Film does not work in isolation.

And that's precisely what I find so fascinating about Don't Look Up and the discourse surrounding it - Because so many people seem to view it in isolation.

For me? I couldn't click with Don't Look Up's message. Believe what you want, but I did try my hardest to get behind it. I really did. I wanted to like Jennifer Lawrence's character, I wanted to feel sympathy for Leo DiCap, I wanted to root for these characters.

But the film made it so, so difficult.

There's a lot of punching down - Criticising our generation for taking a global climate crisis and trivialising it into a social media trend. Calling out artists who capitalise on these issues for their own financial gain. And there's a lot of punching up too - The hyperexaggerated (yet still, kind of true) capitalist government that is willing to brush aside the threat of millions of casualties in the name of their own politics. The mega corporations helmed by manipulative CEOs who really only have their own interests in mind.

The film points its finger at everyone, until it's kind of hard to make out just what it wants us to do.

Thomas Flight and Demi Adejuyigbe both have really great reviews on LetterboxD:

[Don't Look Up is] a movie that will only be watched by people who already know the message by heart, while they pat themselves on the back for “spreading” the message- meanwhile it just looks absurd to anyone who’s actually the target of its message. The important upside here is that unlike Christian Evangelicals Netflix can afford the cast to make it marginally entertaining. [...] The pain of Don’t Look Up is that it just hits us in the face with something everyone who’s bothering to watch the movie is already frustrated about, and then acts kinda self important because it did. All while doing nothing to actually illuminate real issues. It’s part of the distraction, but imagines itself not to be.

— Thomas Flight

but i can’t help but feel like there’s a “kids these days” element to this movie that feels… pointless. like, okay, kids these days are distracted by other things. let’s say your movie works, and they are all paying attention. what now? is it the problem of the wealthy taking control or the problem of the people? because it seems like the former, but you spend so much time tsk-tsking the latter! i don’t know, man. I have a lot of respect for adam mckay for genuinely trying with this stuff (especially because let’s be honest, subtlety with stuff like this relegates political messaging in film to mid-budget indies and small essays no one will read) but i don’t know that this is it

— Demi Adejuyigbe

A film's objective worth does matter. Its execution does matter. As demonstrated by Kuleshov, nothing exists in isolation. When we talk about Don't Look Up, we talk about its political messaging as well as its technical aspects - Because one is informed by the other. And vice versa.

So there we have it. Our answer. Don't Look Up means well, but doesn't do well. Its meaning is befuddled by its execution, and for us, it is case closed.

Right?

WAIT... WAIT... HOLD ON.

WHO CARES?

LIKE, WHO ACTUALLY CARES?

At the end of the day, does it matter if Don't Look Up's message trumps its objective filmic qualities? Does it matter

...I'm inclined to say: No.

Film is a powerful medium for change. Yes. That is the way with art - The most ancient yet pervasive part in humanity's progress. We have waxed poetry about love, we have captured the brutality of war and sacrifice, we have used art for both good and for bad. All this to say: Art has purpose.

But still, there is a time and there is a place. Earlier, I wrote that film does not exist in a vacuum. I want to revisit that.

We can do this dance of good or no good? for eons, and it will get us nowhere. As a matter of fact, we have been doing this dance. We've been dancing all this while without even stopping to think about why.

Don't Look Up was meant to inspire a conversation. Spark change. Encourage debate.

Art is not made in a vacuum. Art is not meant to be discussed in a vacuum. When we talk about art, we must also talk about its context - Its past, its present, its future. And what all of that means for us. Humanity.

But what we are doing instead, is arguing with each other on Twitter about why it did or didn't deserve the Oscar nomination, going about in silly little trivial circles on whether or not it's objectively a good film or a bad film.

Just as I did before.

In an excellent article, Tony Dutzik writes:

“Dropping the storyline” might provide an opportunity to admit that when it comes to climate change, we are all “riding the blinds” [...], not quite knowing where it is that we’re headed. And it might liberate us to see ourselves and others neither as heroes nor villains, inexorably bound either for victory or disaster, but rather as people called upon to act in ways that create “less suffering” rather than “more suffering” – a decision that provides all of us with infinite opportunities for freedom of choice each and every day.

— Trapped in the story: “Don’t Look Up” and the limits of climate narrative, Tony Dutzik

Don't Look Up showed us the problem. But now, all we do is talk about how good it was at showing it.

If you're seeing this, thank you for reading all the way through (I hope)! I know this is a really long post, and a far cry from what I normally publish on this blog. But this has been weighing on me ever since I saw Don't Look Up, and I decided to finally make that leap and actually write what I thought.

This is my first experience writing a sort of social commentary thinkpiece thing, so forgive me if I rambled in some parts. If you have any thoughts you would like to share, or even if you disagree wholeheartedly with me, please do feel free to share them in the comments!

Just know I am extremely sensitive to criticism and will breakdown in uncontrollable nervous sweat at the first hint of aggression. Whoops. /hj

But once again, thank you for reading. Hope you have a nice day!

#don't look up #adam mckay #films #netflix #think piece #analysis #film critic #cinema #movies #film analysis #commentary

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automatismoateo · 10 months

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"if religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason we would be living in a quite different world" via /r/atheism

"if religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world"

I'm just gonna start this off with a little story that made me think about this quote a bit more than I did before.

In a conversation with a Muslim friend of mine about religion and existence, she admitted to having thought about the possibility of religion being taken too literally/religion being nonsensical and the non-existence of an afterlife, yet the biggest thing holding her back from doubting Islam is the promise of an afterlife and the fear of "rotting in hell" if u eventually become less religious or even atheist.

She has had thoughts about the inevitability of death, god and an afterlife not existing, religious stories being more of a moral/society control related matter rather than actual events, but pushes them away in order to avoid an internal conflict.

It is very interesting to see how one of the oldest human worries - the question of whether something happens after death or not and the fear of not abiding by your god's rules well enough for theists - can be used by religion (ofc providing an "answer" to that) to make itself become that deeply rooted into her mind, preventing her from even trying to find other answers.

I personally was basically raised non-religiously; all my parents ever said was "there is a god" which as I got older did not make sense to me anymore at all and I had no hard time rejecting god because I was never tied to him the way some theists are from childhood on.

I thought the quote above might explain/summarize these things quite well (while this also isn't the only message behind it, this is just my focus point rn), however I also wanna know how you think about this, so please share your thoughts!

Submitted July 04, 2023 at 12:19AM by HuTao1703 (From Reddit https://ift.tt/LrDvm1A)

#reddit

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monster--boyfriend · 1 year

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I won’t keep track of all those questions if I read through them all, so let’s see what questions we get when I ask you to do multiples of 11.

11. Do you think you have a particularly unique view on life?

I think I do but also that's probably because I keep it to myself a lot of the time so I'm not sure if or how many people would agree with me. To put it as simply as possible despite everything I'm overall a long term optimist and I believe in a potential for good things.

22. Do you want children? Why or why not?

I really do. I thought I didn't for years, then I realized that I did but I didn't think I should be allowed to have them. Now I think I should be allowed to have them but that I can't until I'm more financially stable and I don't know if I ever will be.

But I want to raise kids, raise people as I saw someone put it. I want to be able to take in children or have children, and care for and raise them so they can be happy and healthy adults, be someone they can depend on. And I don't even feel like I want kids to somehow like, keep my family name going? It's more like I personally feel like I can and want to contribute to society as a whole by caring for and readying the next generation.

33. What are your predictions for the next few years? Or tomorrow, even?

I think 2023 is going to be another slow year for me. After I just fucked up my knee again on Saturday I feel like surgery for that is inevitable. Then I'm supposed to have top surgery something in fall 2023. So for next year at least, I think it will be another year of healing.

44. What's your pettiest "dealbreaker" in a relationship or friendship?

I don't think any of my dealbreakers are petty. I think having a standard, any standard, is fair. If something is a dealbreaker then it is such for a reason and if you try to ignore it because it's 'petty' then it could just become something you resent so much that in the end it will drive you apart anyway.

55. What reminds you of your childhood?

Most distinctly the smell of Van Houtte brand Vanilla Hazelnut coffee. It always takes me back to a different time and place. Particularly the smell of it outside in the morning.

The gas station on the corner near our house sold that brand for years and I would go over there and get mom and I coffee some mornings when there was none in the house. Usually after staying up all night so I was awake anyway. I know it wasn't technically childhood the way people think of it because I was probably 18/19/20 years old but something about that period of my life feels a bit like my childhood.

66. If you are gay, did you struggle to accept your sexuality? Would you change it if you could?

I think I struggled more with accepting that I wasn't Just A Lesbian more than I ever struggled with being not straight. Accepting my sexuality was tied directly to accepting my gender which was hard to nail down. I also had to deal with some outside forces trying to put me in to specific boxes of what I was allowed to be according to their opinion. So while being Not Straight was easy to approach and accept, being not A Lesbian was strangely difficult to accept.

77. How long can you go without socializing?

I suppose that depends on what you consider socializing. If you mean keep to myself and speak to no other people by any means of communication, then not long at all. If I'm completely alone in the house all day I will at some point speak to someone of my own accord. I don't do well if I don't have someone nearby, physically or via text messaging in some way, to reach out to. I need low key constant validation that I have worth in peoples lives. It's the mental illness. As far as going out and hanging out with people? I can put that off for weeks. Though that is mostly because I don't have many local friends at all.

88. What's an unusual but useful trait or talent you have?

I've mentioned before but I'm very good at navigating as long as I'm not underground.

99. Do you enjoy "slice of life" media?

I really do but they have to also have some kind of story? If it's JUST slice of life, I tend to get a little bored? I miss when shows had more filler episodes I guess, I want there to be breathing room. I want that down time.

Those were all actually really interesting questions, especially since you didn't really pick any just gave me a grouping

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ftsmanufact · 2 years

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As with just about every subject

When children are young, it is easy to control the type of music they listen to. Mostly, children listen to what the parents do. Parents may choose to listen to music written specifically for kids, but at other times, the family may listen to whoever set the stereo station last.

The question becomes: Is Rock music safe for children?

Nearly all the best-selling albums of all time are Rock. But is this 'rebellious' genre of music having a positive or negative impact on children and society?

As with just about every subject, there are many pros and cons.

The fact is: Rock is a form of art that promotes creativity and expression. Many songs have very poetic lyrics and send off great messages to people. A big message sent through music these days is world change.

In 1985, Live Aid was put on by many rock musicians from Black Sabbath to U2. It raised over 232 million dollars for famine relief in Ethiopia and was inspired by the song 'The Tide is Turning' by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.

Even today, many bands put on benefits for a plethora of causes. Several bands have toured in Iraq to perform for our troops overseas. Also many rock benefit concerts were put on to raise money after the 9-11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake.

Bands also promote Christianity in their music, especially in today's day and age. Popular bands, such as P.O.D., Flyleaf, Pillar, and many others, widely and openly promote religion through their music. And other bands, such as Breaking Benjamin and Chevelle, subtly promote it through their poetic and abstract lyrics.

Looking at their generosity of both their talent and money, it is clear that many Artists have chosen to spread joy. Are there other benefits?

Music in general, as well as Rock, can inspire children to pick up a healthy hobby of playing music. Learning an instrument helps a child find a form of creativity they can express in an unimaginable amount of ways. Even if they aren't going to become the China OBM Wooden calendars next icon, enjoying music can often grant the listener or player an outlet for emotional issues or traumatic events as life progresses.

However, much like all good things, inevitably, you will also find the bad.

Many artists express their feelings through morbid and perverse metaphors and talk about dark taboo subjects. These artists have a breathtaking talent that people should be open to, but they are simply not for children.

Parental advisories can't always be trusted. For instance, the songs 'Digital Bath' and 'Lhabia' by Deftones talks about a daydream of grisly melancholic acts, acted out of boredom. This album has no parental advisory on it at all. Yet, that same band has songs against drugs, racism, and other positive influences, but is also not for young children.

As much as the R.I.A.A. tries to help, they are not the parents of America.

As our children start to discovery their own taste in music, parents need to monitor the content and words. Maybe your child has found a singer or band that they really like. You have listened to the song and approve. Make sure when you buy that CD though, you carefully listen to all of the songs or simply purchase the one song that you approved.

Rock seems to be the most controversial but it also has many positive influences that should be taken in to consideration. There are some negatives that come with it, and those should be filtered out by the parents.

As a family and society, we do not want record companies, or anyone else for that matter, to decide what we feel is appropriate or not. We enjoy the privilege of making that decision. We do appreciate their input, hence the labeling. But, when it comes down to it, we are the parents; we will take responsibility for what our children are plugging in their ears.

So, the next time your child wants to listen to a song they like, instead of immediately refusing, listen with both ears. You will learn much of what your child likes and dislikes. You will gain insight into the thinking of your child. You will also learn what to absolutely deny your child.

#Wooden calendars manufacturers

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jjmichaels · 2 years

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It Starts Here

Everything that I do I must do to the fullest extent. This is my obligation, my duty, and my responsibility as a thinking and breathing being. I could not look at myself in the mirror and be content with the reflection starting back at me if I knew I did not do a great job and also if I did not give it my all, my 110 percent. That is all it takes, for me, to be happy.

Often times we get discouraged. We hone into the pessimism and failures' of others. We don't get to where we want to be in life, simply because we are not in control of our lives; our emotions are. And I want to be completely transparent, emotions are a good thing. They are the reason why joy feels good and sadness feels, well, sad. But most of the time our emotions work against us; they contribute to our down fall as well as our demise. We need to be aware of these negative emotions because that awareness is the key to regaining control.

The purpose of this page is to show people that there are ways to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. These obstacles are often seen as hardships; although to really win in life you have to shift the paradigm by which you see; you have to change the lens by which you operate and allow yourself to see that these obstacles are not hardships but rather stepping stones. These obstacles actually fuel our successes by propelling us forward and augmenting the quality of our lives by equipping us with tools that are imperative to survival. These tools then become the foundation; the key to living a long lasting, fruitful, and healthy life.

My goal is simply to change the narrative; to create an environment where people can be their best selves. This environment would be one without judgement, scrutiny, or condemnation of any kind. I want to create a safe space where it is ok to talk about mental health because the reality is; no matter how much progress we've made in the mental health sector, generally people still cringe when they hear the words suicide, anxiety, and depression. These words are seen as a manifestation of vulnerability; and if you're a guy (which I am) you are told/shown repeatedly by society that you are not suppose to feel or "be weak". As men we are told to suppress our emotions and hide the fact that we are hurt. But this of course isn't realistic. In-fact It is actually inhumane. According to Naturalist Charles Darwin, emotions evolved because they were imperative to human viability. Emotions allowed mankind/womenkind to survive and live lost lasting lives. We all know that when you suppress your feelings they come back stronger and with a vengeance. And often this is because of the propaganda that we see all over social media. And if you're a women, they'll tell you to stop overreacting, to "stop being so sensitive". Essentially they want you to become something that biologically, you're not; and to fight this natural phenomena that would be going against god, who created you with the perfect image in mind. People will dismiss our feelings as if they do not matter and after some time we are inevitably convinced, that they do not. Now our own self worth is at stake.

Society dismisses the realness and the realities of mental health, and this is what I am trying to fix, it is what I hope to one day eradicate. I would like to create this newer, more wholesome standard of life. But I can't do this on my own. I'll need help, and lots of it too. So, if you're still reading this, help join me! Help spread the messages of positivity, resiliency, and unrelenting grit. By making a genuine commitment to help those in need; you are engaging in a selfless service. And I, amongst the people who we are to help, appreciate you dearly. Join in on the conversion by following me on instagram @JJ.michaels_ and following my Youtube Channel at JJ Michaels, where content is posted on a weekly basis.

Thank you for taking the time to read my words, and have a blessed day!

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

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Concerning the incredibly far and deep reach of CCP’s propaganda, the narratives the government can spin and call the truth; does ‘the common normal populace’ actually know what’s really going on?

Hello everyone!!! Happy Chinese New Year!!

I’m grouping these asks because if I hear them correctly, they’re all related to this question: how much do people in China know about the atrocities committed by their government, and why don’t they do something about it?

It’s a difficult question, isn’t it? A potentially upsetting one too, just to think about. My answers are more opinion-based, more personal this time. Since there’re no polls about what people know, they have to be based a little more on my own impression, which has more chances of error. Please bear with me and proceed with caution ...

As with people in most countries, what people know is hugely dependent on individuals. Specifically, re: politics, I can think of at least three reasons why people don’t have the facts

1) they have limited access to information 2) they’re being lied to about what they know 3) they’re not interested in current affairs.

1), of course, is what most people think about when it comes to China. You’re right, Anon(s), that VPN use is indeed rampant in the country and is essentially an open secret; there’re no official numbers but surveys have estimated the number of users can be up to 100 million, most of them being youngsters. They use it to do exactly what most of us would imagine: gain access to things they don’t have otherwise. Instagram has been (sporadically?) blocked since 2014 September and so while users may have set up their accounts while being overseas, it’s indeed, (very) possible, that they’ve set up and maintained their account under VPN use.

Wait, you may ask, so you mean the Great Firewall of China doesn’t exist?

That’s exactly the official stance. Not because of private VPN use, but because individuals/companies can apply for a license via their telecommunications company to visit all internet sites. Hence, the government’s claim that the Great Firewall doesn’t exist—you’ll be let through as long as you ask (and we’ll watch your every step)! There are also no explicit laws prohibiting the use of private VPNs; only a handful of arrests associated with private VPN use have been made and only since 2019, and the punishment is considered light—no imprisonment, just fines. It is, in contrast, against the law to *provide* private VPN services, and while companies have been shut down, the crackdown has still been incredibly sluggish by Chinese government’s standards, especially when the Xi regime has made its intention of banning VPN known and directives have been issued for that in 2017.

Why has VPN continued to enjoy this “grey existence”? Because without VPN, a lot of foreign businesses would leave—some, for example, require the most efficient online tools developed outside China to track the foreign markets, and talents have rejected job offers in the country when they realised they couldn’t get on their favourite social media. The science and tech sectors also rely heavily on VPN—programmers relying on Google to search stackoverflow, for example, to find known solutions to bugs.

VPNs have also served political purposes—Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-critical communities all over the world are all painfully aware of the Chinese government’s practice of hiring its own collection of internet commentators (”50 Cent Party”), and at times, mobilising their youths (gamers, fan circles) to scale the Firewall and astroturf, throw insults at the “CCP enemies” and bomb message boards with pro-CCP messages.

Also, a significant fraction of VPN companies, both in China and overseas, have been reported to have Chinese ownership, by companies with government connections. These VPN services provide a false sense of security for those who do not enjoy having big brother peeking behind their backs while acting as surveillance tools that extend beyond the country.

(Please be careful about free VPNs).

The next question: If until now, users of private VPNs only rarely get into trouble, what’s holding them from scaling the Great Firewall and learning the facts?

It is this: the law isn’t about “climbing the wall”, but what one does outside the wall.

Article 6 of the 2016 edition of Cybersecurity law states the following:

第六条　国家倡导诚实守信、健康文明的网络行为，推动传播社会主义核心价值观，采取措施提高全社会的网络安全意识和水平，形成全社会共同��与促进网络安全的良好环境

Article 6: The State advocates sincere, honest, healthy and civilized network conduct; promoting dissemination of the core socialist values, adopting measures to raise the entire society's awareness and level of network security, and forming a good environment for the entire society to jointly participate in advancing network security.

What this article implies is this ~ legally, Chinese citizens are bound to the Chinese government’s rules of good internet conduct, regardless of whether they use VPN to get on the internet. As with many Chinese laws, however, the vagueness in wording invites more questions than answers. Is it getting on Twitter, a banned website, “sincere, honest, healthy and civilized network conduct”? Obviously, it’s illegal to interact with other users about the Xinjiang’s internment camps, but what if one only goes there to talk about their favourite stars, because on Weibo supertopic they can’t even mention the stars’ name, can’t ahkgkhagjkfaskjgdf about their favourite fics? What if one goes there to discuss a M- or E-rated fic? Where is the line drawn and given its vagueness, will that line move tomorrow? How?

Most people, therefore, have opted to simply stay away from VPN. After all, China offers its own version of many of the fun websites out there (Weibo-Twitter; Instagram-Oasis; Tiktok-Douyin; Youtube-Bilibili). For those who do use VPN, they tend to stick to websites that are unlikely to cause issues (such as Instagram; Instagram became an issue when Hong Kongers started to upload information about the protests on there).

Now, let’s proceed to 2): People don’t know the facts because they’re being lied to about what they know.

There’s a difference between having access to facts and knowing that they’re facts. This is among the most painful lessons, perhaps, for those who followed the politics of the United States in the last few years (please forgive me for the US-centric-ness of the following few paragraphs!). Even with equal access to identical information, people can vary a LOT in their understanding of what are facts and what are lies.

This illustrates the power of propaganda—and propaganda in the US isn’t even centralised. Some media outlets and individuals (political leaders and analysts) have more say on what should be viewed as the truth, but parties without significant power—small foreign and domestic interests, fringe political organisations, conspiracy theorists, regular folks—have also made critical contributions to the “fake news” phenomenon in the US. There haven’t been apparent coordinations between these parties; little concerted effort has been made to create one coherent story out of the many tales told.

In China, the propaganda effort is centralised, coordinated, free of distractions from competing story lines. The One Story the government decides on is repeated, over and over again, on newspapers, in shows, in textbooks, on signs on the streets, on social media. To put it another way, when it comes to political discourse, the country is designed to be an echo chamber with 1.4 billion people. Over time, the One Stories inevitably become firmly held beliefs—so firmly held that even if the people are exposed to facts, they no longer believe in them.

This is especially true when the source of the facts are countries with strong traditions of freedoms of speech and press, where the facts are often laid out with a critical eye to the administration and with vastly different opinions attached to them. While we view the latter as evidences that the values we embrace are alive and well—a critical eye to the administration means the Fourth Estate is doing its job, and the different opinions means freedom of speech gets to live another day—people who haven’t been exposed to these values tend to interpret these things as signs of weakness of the government. They may think the Chinese government is better than its counterparts elsewhere because no one is penning scathing criticisms against it. They may think the Chinese government is stronger because it unifies the opinions of their people—the failure of which, they’ve been taught, would lead to social chaos and economic free-fall.

The Chinese population has also been “immunised” against the truths that may be exposed about their government by a propaganda talking point used since Chairman Mao’s days—that the “Imperialist” western world, particularly the United States, is always scheming its downfall. The phrase often used is 美帝亡我之心不死 (”The heart (intention) of Imperialist US to bring us down will never die”). Unfavourable truths exposed must therefore be part of the “bring down China” scheme. This decades-old demonisation of the political apparatus of the US and Europe also prepares the people to accept what most would see as outrageous conspiracy theories: for example, in March 2020, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that the US Army intentionally planted COVID in Wuhan during the 2019 Military World games. “Foreign interference” becomes a frequent and convenient scapegoat for policy decisions gone wrong, sometimes to a (somewhat) hilarious effect ~ for example, a Taiwanese journalist calculated the cost required for the CIA to fund the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, as the Chinese government had claimed—and it turned out that the CIA was too poor to do it.

(Many of us in the US would probably laugh at the idea that our government is capable of secretly paying 2 million foreign-language speaking strangers to show up together in one march.) (It can’t even get the COVID relief payments to its own people right over a period of months.)

(Fun trivia for turtles! As 美帝=“Imperialist US” is the synonym of a feared, imaginary super-villain—super organised, super efficient, super everywhere and super impossible to take down—c-BJYX, the indestructible No. 1 CP fandom in China, has been nicknamed “美帝 cp” by those not so enamoured with it.)

Finally, there’s the psychological factor. Once a set of beliefs becomes personal truths, listening to alternatives can be very upsetting (for those in the US: imagine the blue voting block made to listen to Fox News). Hence, even when people gain access to the facts later—for example, when they study/work abroad, even emigrate—they often don’t take advantage of the access. Instead, they remain logged in in the Chinese social media sites where they’re comfortable with not only the politics but also the language and the friendships they’ve built, and continue to immerse themselves in an environment heavy with CCP propaganda. They remain defenders of the Chinese government; some have even gone out and harass people who disagree with it, in the name of freedom of speech that their country of origin never offered to them.

Censorship, of course, is an important component of building a One Story echo chamber, and I should add a note about it: censorship in China comes in vastly different strengths. The restrictions on LGBT+ issues, for example, are fairly lax, relatively speaking—“homosexuality” remains a term one can find on their internet and a topic the administration continues to address, and while BL dramas are censored, their adapted versions, along with highly publicised discussions of their original material, have so far been tolerated. The strictest form of Chinese censorship would’ve allowed neither: any mention of the 1989 June 4th Tiananmen Square massacre , for example, is immediately removed, including any hints that the event may have happened. When the former leader of the Chinese government, Jiang Zemin (江澤民), was rumoured to have passed away, the censorship apparatus went so far as to remove all mentions of Jiang, which also happened to mean “large rivers”. Chinese netizens therefore joked that major rivers had ceased to exist in China that day, as one couldn’t find any information about them online.

(LGBT+ activists have therefore remained optimistic about the future of their campaign, despite the current state of affairs. To put it simply: the Chinese government has bigger fish to fry. Sexual minorities haven’t had major clashes with the administration, haven’t embarrassed the Chinese government with their demand for rights as the ethnic minorities—the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, the Mongolians etc did. Political dissidents, including the millions in Hong Kong, are also (far) ahead in the ranking of fish size.)

For most issues, the censorship effort sits somewhere in the middle and is often inconsistent over time. The people, therefore, often have knowledge that an event has happened — even when the event is considered, beyond the Great Firewall, damaging to the reputation of the Chinese government. However, critical information is often missing in their knowledge, or is heavily distorted. For example, overseas Chinese citizens have insisted that the motivation of the 2019 Hong Kong Protests was economic, echoing the longstanding CCP propaganda that Hong Kongers have been jealous of China’s prosperity (reality: China’s GDP per capita was $10,268 USD in 2019, and Hong Kong’s, $48,713—more than 4 times higher). They missed out a critical fact: while the fast economic growth of China has created some unease—Hong Kongers have always known the Chinese government has only tolerated them and their freedoms for their ability to generate wealth—what has truly ignited Hong Kong’s anger is the Chinese government’s violation of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, and the terms it had agreed upon to get back the then British crown colony. Hong Kong hasn’t been demanding autonomy and freedoms because it’s a troublemaker, but because these things were promised to the city as conditions of the 1997 handover. As residents of the world’s third largest financial centre, Hong Kongers are diligent drafters and executioners of contracts (which international treaties are) and above all, faithful believers of them. For an asker (the Chinese government) to claim a contract as “historical” because it has received the goods (Hong Kong) and no longer feels a need to pay (allow Hong Kong 50 years of freedoms and autonomy) is offensive to the principle, the very heart and soul of the city.

(Gg’s former boss was a Hong Konger, and his experience working for him was a rather accurate reflection of Hong Kong’s view on business. What made an impression to Gg—that the posters should be without rips and misprints, even if these imperfections were not the fault of the design company—is a no-brainer to the Hong Konger in me reading the interview. Delivering high quality goods and services isn’t an act of kindness but rather, of professionalism and respect for the contract.)

(This interview is a highly recommended read, for those who’ve missed it!)

(One more example of “conveniently missed critical information”: remember GG’s show on Chongqing? Did you know the underground bombing shelters were not built by the Communist government, but the Nationalist government that was still ruling China during WWII?)

Anyway, where was I?

Right. We’re getting to 3): People are not getting the facts on the political situation in China because they’re not interested in current affairs.

Some—well, many— people are not interested in politics.

Some of you may be thinking: well, I’m not interested either. I follow politics because it’s important.

Why is it important? Because political engagement means you can do something about the many ills of the society, speak for those who cannot, force the government to change by voting, by voicing your opinion, by going to marches and protests etc.

What if you follow politics and still can’t do most of these things? What if, if you do choose to do these things, the price you pay may be astronomical? Will you still follow politics or devote your time, your energy to something else, something you’ve got more control over, something that won’t be as saddening, frustrating because it’s something you can actually change?

3) is therefore intricately related to why people often don’t do anything, even if they manage to find out about the facts.

There’re no national elections in China. Marches and protests are practically banned because while the Chinese Constitution guarantees the freedom of assembly (as it does freedom of speech and press; Article 35), it also explicitly states that "Citizens of the People’s Republic of China, in exercising their freedoms and rights, may not infringe upon the interests of the State, of society or of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.” (Article 51) — ie. the freedoms and rights only go as far as if they do not stand in the government’s way. Social media and all communications platforms are under constant surveillance, and so only opinions tolerated by the government is allowed...

And so, the fact, social ill that has broken your heart—you can’t tell for sure if it isn’t talked about because the government has censored it, how many people know about it and more importantly, how many among the people who know about it will agree with your take. If you break your silence and voice your concerns, how many people will have your back, even if you also conceive them as victims of the social ill? If the social ill is the lack of rights of a minority group, for example, will they appreciate your speaking out, or will your “rocking-the-boat” make things even worse for them? A heavily watched net means communications with the oppressed/vulnerable social groups are often filled with obstacles, if not outright impossible. You don’t know how these groups feel; you don’t even know how many affected individuals are there. You watch the and news and shows and they all talk about how wonderfully things are going; how everyone seems so hopeful and positive and happy with their lives—are you the only person feeling that way? Are you wrong? If you speak out then, will you be yelling into the void, or worse, yelling at the police who “invites” you for a chat in the police station? To speak for those who do not have a voice to speak, are you ready, willing to take the risk of also becoming one who no longer has a voice to speak? Is your family ready?

To put it another way: the opportunity cost of “doing something” about the political situation can be astronomically high in China, compared to the opportunity cost of us doing something similar in our own country.

If I want to support the LGBT+ population in my part of the US, for example, I can do so effectively with minimal investment and most importantly, with minimal risk. By pasting a rainbow flag on this Tumblr post, for example, I’ve already signalled to those who need support on this issue that I’m ready to give mine. And this “signal” of mine will join the hundreds and thousands on the site, collectively telling the activists doing the “on the ground” fighting that they’re not alone; that they have my vote of support. I pose no danger to myself in doing so; no one will accuse me of, arrest me for infringing upon the interests of the State and the Collective. The rainbow flag, a display of my stance, will not turn into a blurred blob the next time I look at it, transform overnight from a symbol of solidarity to a warning sign to those who may wish to join the cause. There’s no danger for me, even, to carry an actual, huge rainbow flag to Pride, perform my activism in person. I don’t have to worry about my phone already giving away my identity as a protester to the government, especially in post-COVID times. I don’t need to watch out for plain clothes pretending to be my allies. I don’t have to look at the many surveillance cameras present and wonder if I’ll get blacklisted as a troublemaker.

Am I still being tracked and taken pictures of? Possibly. But for this cause, at least, I’m not afraid that these information will be used to arrest me. If I were arrested, I know there'll be lawyers and activists who would come to my aid. LOUDLY. ANGRILY.

I’m not afraid. Period. I’m having fun. And I doubt I can say the same if I try to carry a rainbow flag to Tiananmen square and march there.

This vast difference in the opportunity cost of taking political action is the reason why I’ve refrained from demanding those who live under authoritarian dictatorships to stand up for their neighbours who’ve been oppressed / bullied by their governments. I’ve refrained from criticising them for looking away, minding their own business. Do I wish they’ve take action? Of course I do. Am I aware that their lack of action is potentially more harmful because of the frequent atrocities happening around them? Yes. But I also understand that going on a fight is far more frightening when one doesn’t even have a sense of how many will join their side of the fight; I understand that fighting for what one deserves—freedoms, rights, justice—should never equal martyrdom, and just because a regime has elected to put equal signs between the two doesn’t mean those equal signs should ever be there. I remind myself that, to ask the people in any authoritarian dictatorship to stand up for a political cause is to ask them to make sacrifices that we, as people in relatively free societies, do not need to make when standing up for the same cause. In a country where a father demanding the truth about the milk product poisoning of his own son got jail time for “eliciting social disorder”, to stand up for even a single issue, no matter how small that issue is, requires courage that I’m not sure I have.

I can’t ask anyone to do anything I may not be able to do myself.

And this is why I, too, have chosen to support these people, even if many of them are single-issue activists, even when many support the Chinese government on other issues that matter. For example, the late Dr Li Wenliang, one of the eight COVID whistleblowers in China who passed away from the disease, was an opponent of the Hong Kong Protest, but I still (greatly) appreciate, respect him for what he did. As long as they’re not actively helping the government to cause (more) harm to others, as long as their cooperation with their government falls within what is demanded of them as citizens, they have my support. Why? Because most people who speak out in China cannot afford to stand up for more than one cause before it becomes dangerous for them. Because even if it’s only a tiny vulnerable social group, one small minority that makes a tiny step towards more rights, more freedoms, more justice, it’s still a victory in a country where rights, freedoms and justice are luxury items for those with neither political nor economic power. Because those who’re not part of the ruling class cannot afford to cherry pick their allies, cannot afford to in-fight when the ruling class already holds absolute power. Because I still believe in pay-it-forward, that most people who’ve benefited from someone standing up for them, even for one small incident, one minor cause, is more likely to stand up for someone else.

This is, admittedly, not always an easy choice to make—not for me, at least. I do get frustrated, can’t help but think at times that those who subscribe to and spread propaganda are, to a certain extent, corroborators of the atrocities committed by their government. (So, to those who’ve felt this frustration, you’re not alone!). And the Hong Konger in me has every reason to be furious with everything about China right now—all I could think of, when I listened to Gg singing 異鄉人 Foreigner the other night, are all the Hong Kongers fleeing the city now, as refugees, because of their political beliefs.

But for now, I’m hanging on. I’ve been able to tell myself that given the country’s political reality, given its tradition of collectivism (which tends to view confrontational dissent with scorn), the paths to freedoms, to equal rights and acceptance, will not be the same as what I’ve seen, what I’ve wished for. They’ll likely be slow; They’ll likely be long and winding, taking three steps forward and two steps back; they’d likely be unexpected in places, offer us surprises —

And since it’s Chinese New Year / Valentines and I’m feeling brave (irresponsible?), I’d venture a little bit of speculation and say this ~ yes, I’ve wondered if one of these many paths may be trodden, intentionally or not, by two beautiful male idols and their millions of turtles. Is it wishful, fantastical thinking? I’d be the first to admit the answer is yes. But the BJYX scheme has been so well executed as of now, so effective that I can’t help but wonder if it’s leading towards some sort of a goal, whether devised by the humans involved or by the gods/Fates who, as c-turtles have said so romantically, have been writing an original BL story with our favourite boys. The goal may be personal —simply two people being able to act more like themselves again under the spotlight—or a bit more ambitious…

… Because the sneakers + ice-cream post did catch my attention (will probably have to devote a post on that?). Another small incident that has caught my attention, unrelated to Gg and Dd but can significantly change the path they may be trodding, is this — in June 2020, People’s Daily, the state controlled newspaper, boasted its country’s increasing friendliness towards the LGBT+ communities on Twitter . While the tweet was met with skepticism and soon removed, the message it sent is this: the Chinese government may have figured out the the Western world (in particular, the younger generations) view LGBT+ rights as a measure of progressiveness. While I’m still leaning towards the government maintaining a tight grip on LGBT+ rights within its borders, with the strengthening call to boycott 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics because of the country’s poor human rights record, I can see a glimmer of possibility that the same government may do the unexpected and cater to the queer community for the sake of propaganda. As I mentioned, the queer community hasn’t caused much headache for the Chinese government, and so it’s far more likely to be chosen as the “benefactors” of such a “we’re a human rights champion too!” propaganda campaign than, say, ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Promoting dissemination of core socialist values has always sat high on the CCP’s agenda list, and its target audience has always included foreign, non-Chinese populations; this effort is known as 大外宣—“The Great External Propaganda”. And who better to cast as leads of an international propaganda campaign on LGBT+ rights than two of its own stars who’ve already demonstrated loyalty to the government, who’ve already garnered international fame from a TV series widely viewed as queer, and who may actually be queer?

(And if—if!!!— this ever happens, may I ask everyone to please consider doing the following? Please do not feel a need to express gratitude. Please do not act as though it’s a gift. Celebrate as you would celebrate anyone in a free country exercising their birthright to live, to love the way they want — no less than that, no more than that.)

(For those who’ve asked ~ as international fans, not allowing the CCP to modify our expectations of how a government should behave may be one of the most effective ways to protect Gg and Dd.)

(I call this learning from the best: get the goods we want (more rights for the people in China), refuse to pay the cost (subscribe to CCP’s propaganda), and RUN! ❤��💛💚)

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx #pie answers

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feelingbluepolitics · 3 years

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"Even without the rise of the Delta variant, no one should be surprised to see some people develop infections a few months after vaccination. Though there may be value in eventually giving an additional dose or two to strengthen protection against disease, we’re unlikely to prevent all infections with booster shots. But the key message is that if you’re vaccinated, you’re well protected against life-threatening disease.

..."Vaccines alone won’t prevent all infections or eliminate the coronavirus, but widespread vaccination could turn COVID-19 into something more like influenza. As a society, Americans have shown that we are willing to live with 12,000 to 60,000 deaths from influenza each year. COVID-19 is more dangerous than the flu. Approximately 630,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus to date. But if we could cut the death rate by 90 percent or more, it would be on par with what we see in a bad flu season. We don’t shut down the economy for the flu. We socialize normally during flu season.

..."Americans have to recalibrate our expectations about what makes a vaccine successful. The public discussion of the pandemic has become distorted by a presumption that vaccination can and should eliminate COVID-19 entirely. Under such an unattainable standard, each breakthrough infection looks like evidence that the vaccines are not working. But in reality, they continue to perform extremely well.

..."Many Americans’ unrealistic expectations of the COVID-19 vaccines may have originated with real-world evidence published by the CDC in March, showing that in the first couple of months after vaccination, two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine were 90 percent effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections, not just disease. People, including many experts, took this to mean that vaccinated people basically couldn’t get infected and couldn’t transmit the virus to others. This set the stage for the CDC to say that fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear a mask in most situations. Many Americans believed that if they were vaccinated, they couldn’t get COVID-19 and could end all precautions. But longer-term follow-up showed that vaccine effectiveness against infection later dropped to 66 percent. Responding to public anxieties about such findings, the Biden administration declared last week that it would offer Americans booster shots beginning in late September.

..."Shots in arms are much better at preventing disease than preventing infection. After vaccination against any virus, your immune system generates antibodies that can neutralize that virus, but those antibody levels will drop over time. If your antibody levels didn’t drop after every infection or vaccination, your blood would eventually turn into a thick sludge full of antibodies to every pathogen you have ever been exposed to. High neutralizing-antibody levels soon after vaccination are predictive of high vaccine effectiveness. But when those levels inevitably fall, you still have protection against severe disease.

"That’s because vaccination also spurs your immune system to make memory cells, which rev up antibody production if you’re later exposed to that virus again. After vaccination, though, your immune system’s memory needs three to five days to kick in. Vaccines are most effective at preventing infection with viruses that have a long incubation period, such as measles and smallpox; the immune system’s memory kicks in before the virus can fully establish itself in your body. But some invaders, such as influenza and the coronavirus, have a shorter incubation period, so vaccines are less likely to entirely block infection. In other words, the virus can still enter your nose and throat and start replicating.

..."But vaccines also stimulate branches of the immune system, including T cells, that don’t prevent infection but are important in controlling disease. This results in a shorter duration of infection and possibly lower amounts of infectious virus in the body, which in turn translates into milder disease and possibly less transmission. (When doctors and scientists talk about 'mild' COVID-19, they mean that the coronavirus isn’t wreaking havoc in your lungs, causing your oxygen levels to plummet, and endangering your life. You may still feel really sick, but you can recover safely...

..."Shots also do a better job of inducing immune responses in the bloodstream and internal organs than they do on mucosal surfaces such as the mouth, nose, and throat. Yet respiratory pathogens such as the coronavirus and the influenza virus enter our bodies through these mucosal surfaces. So, while vaccines do an excellent job of blocking viral replication from progressing in the lungs, they are not as effective at preventing initial infection in the upper airway. You see that level of protection against infection in the upper airway only soon after vaccination, when neutralizing-antibody levels are at their peak.

..."[W]hile vaccines provide partial protection to individuals against infection and transmission, their most important benefit is at the population level. The more people get vaccinated, the less transmission occurs in the community, reducing everyone’s risk of infection. Over the long term, other precautions, such as better ventilation and air filtration, can reduce the risk even further. And just as face coverings became the norm for many people in East Asia after outbreaks of SARS and the avian flu, they will likely become part of America’s COVID-19 endgame too—at least during times of the year when respiratory infections are most likely to spread.

"Because early data on vaccine effectiveness reinforced the perception that the vaccines could block all infections, news that they do not has unnecessarily shaken many Americans’ confidence. The goal isn’t to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 infections. We can’t, no matter how many booster shots the United States gives. The goal is to slow the spread, save lives, and eventually turn COVID-19 into something much less deadly—something more like the flu."

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mst3kproject · 3 years

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Battle of the Worlds

Several times on this blog I've featured movies that have more than one title. In almost every case, the new titles were better than the original one, and this is not an exception. Battle of the Worlds is fairly bland, but it tells you that you're going to be seeing a movie about some kind of space-based conflict, without giving away the details. The Italian title was Il Pianeta degli Uomini Spenti, which is a fucking spoiler.

An earlier draft of this review contained a couple of jokes about the classically phallic 60's spacecraft in the movie, but I went back and took those out. Bezos has really set a whole new standard for Giant Dong Rockets and I can no longer accept anything less.

A group of astronomers have just discovered a rogue planet, which they have dubbed the Outsider, is entering our solar system. Everybody is worried about it hitting Earth except for nasty old misanthrope Professor Benson, who says it'll be a near miss. As it turns out, nobody's exactly right – the Outsider doesn't hit us, but it doesn't just pass by, either. Instead, it settles into orbit, and when humanity attempts to explore it, it responds by sending out squadrons of flying saucers to blow our rockets out of its sky! After one of these crashes on Earth, Benson is able to learn how to deactivate the Outsider’s defences and land on it, where humanity can finally confront its inhabitants... or can we?

Well, if you speak Italian, you already know the answer, because this is The Planet of Extinguished Men. The aliens are all long dead and their spaceship has been following its programming for millions of years without them, including the part telling it to destroy the Earth. Bummer.

I actually have quite a bit to say about this movie. It centres around some interesting musings about human emotion and curiosity, though it never comes to any solid conclusions. As a movie, unfortunately, it's not very well-made. This is a story in which the world as we know it nearly comes to an end more than once, and yet very little seems to happen in it.

The opening sequence is terribly clumsy and does very little to place you within this world. We start off with two characters kissing and being excited about starting a new life together, but we have no idea at this point who they are or why they want to leave this place. When the Outsider is discovered, the scientists beat around the bush and try to keep it a secret, even from the audience. Only Benson is willing to be upfront about it. This does establish him as a realist while making his colleagues seem spineless, which is what the movie wants, but it's also terribly frustrating for the viewer.

Later there's a sequence in which a craft attempting to land on Mars is nearly destroyed by the gravity of the Outsider, and some quick thinking saves the astronauts' lives, but this is directed like the battle sequences in Invasion of the Neptune Men. We have no idea where any of these craft or planets are in relation to one another, and have to rely on characters sitting at desks to tell us what's happening. Even worse, we never see the chaos the looming end of the world wreaks on society. Astronauts who have recently returned to Earth note that they've heard there have been suicides and riots as people fear the Outsider will impact our planet, but we never see any of this.

The movie does a little better later, when the Outsider's close approach causes disastrous tidal forces... these are represented by black and white footage of floods and volcanic eruptions tinted red to try to make it match the rest of the colour film. As always, this fails, but at least they tried. Other special effects are equally pathetic. There are the inevitable plastic model kit rockets with their flame exhaust that rises in what's supposed to be a zero-gravity vacuum. The 'flying saucers' the Outsider launches to defend itself look like nothing so much as giant fried eggs.

The Outsider itself is particularly sad to look at. They have a model they use for it in a few shots, but this is about on a par with the original MST3K spaghetti ball. In other shots, the Outsider is represented by a photograph of the Moon. Absolutely no attempt is made to disguise it, and so of course the effect is a dismal failure because everybody knows what the goddamn Moon looks like. They couldn't even, I don't know, turn it upside-down or something?

On the other hand, the inside of the Outsider is actually pretty cool. The sets aren't exactly believable, but you can see what they were going for. Upon entering the caverns, the explorers find themselves in a series of tunnels full of strange red tubes and textures that look more organic than geological. Entering the Outsider is like wandering around within a living organism. My favourite part of this is that absolutely nothing we see here is comprehensible. Professor Benson, the genius, claims to be able to figure out what's going on, but his declarations seem arbitrary and nothing we're looking at makes visual sense. Even the aliens don't look like anything in particular. Were it not for Benson, we would not recognize them as living (or dead) creatures.

Like First Spaceship on Venus, Battle of the Worlds is much more interested in its ideas than in anything else, including what is supposedly its plot. The characters are important mostly as the embodiment of those ideas, rather than as people in themselves, and the ideas the movie wants to study are about logic and emotion and how they affect human priorities.

The character of Dr. Fred Steele finds himself facing the potential end of the world, and decides that the most important thing to him in this situation is the love between him and his fiancee, Eve Barnett. Professor Benson, on the other hand, thinks the most important thing is to understand the threat they're facing. Partly this is so that humanity can save itself from destruction, but knowledge for its own sake is also important. In between these two men is Eve herself, who thinks love and science are both important and tries to find some middle ground between the two. This is difficult for her, because Benson wants her to stay at the observatory and assist him, while Fred wants her to leave with him so they can get married. When Eve tries to convince Fred to stay with her, both men see this as her having chosen Benson, and it poisons the relationships between all three parties. Only with Benson dead are Eve and Fred able to strike a balance again.

But the movie doesn't want us to think that there is no middle ground. The movie's other romantic couple are the two scientists from the Mars Base, Bob and Cathy. They got married because they were both lonely and a psychological evaluation suggested that they had compatible personalities. As the story progresses, however, they find that they have indeed fallen in love and want a future together that would include things like children – but this is ultimately denied to them, as Cathy is crushed by falling debris while exploring the Outsider.

Benson dies when insists on staying aboard the Outsider to try to decode its computers despite the fact that the military is about to destroy the entire object. As the others escape, Fred intones the movie's beauty killed the beast line: “poor Benson, if they opened his chest they'd find a formula where his heart should be.” And yet Benson died happy – as the Outsider explodes he is triumphant in his ability to understand its secrets, and laughing at the foolishness and cowardice of his fellow man. It is the survivors who are miserable, mourning the loss of Benson himself as well as of Cathy, whose death was entirely meaningless.

I'm not sure what the movie is trying to tell us about these different approaches to life. It seems to present them as ultimately incompatible, that attempts to give logic and emotion equal weight can only end in tears. Only Benson, who was unswerving in his devotion to science, is ultimately satisfied. Perhaps the take-home message is that whatever your principles are, happiness lies in following them to their conclusion.

There's a second message, too, in different approaches to science itself. Modern physicists will often describe themselves as either theoretical or experimental... the two fields do compliment each other, but they often take place in different rooms, and one will be seen as leading the way for the other. The search for the Higgs Boson was theory-led: people were pretty sure it existed, they just had to find it. A great deal of astrophysics, however, is result-led: what we see tells us that there are things going on, like dark matter and dark energy, that we know nothing about, and the theorists must do their best to figure it out.

For most of his life, Benson has been a theorist. He sits in his greenhouse chalking on the floors, spinning theories out of other people's results or out of pure mathematics. Until the arrival of the Outsider, he had no interest in going out and exploring or experimenting. But it quickly becomes clear to him that he cannot understand the Outsider through pure theory, as his calculations cannot account for the decisions of its makers. In order to know it, he must see it for himself, so he grandly announces his intention to leave his 'den'. Nobody ever asks him if it was worth it, but his maniacal smile at the moment of his death suggests that it was.

Battle of the Worlds had potential to be a really interesting movie, but ultimate the way its shot and edited make it mainly a very dull one. Like its own characters, it fails to find the balance it needed.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #battle of the worlds #60s

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 4 years

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I don’t need you to love me, I love me

I’m gonna miss writing about Pearl.

As the loneliest Crystal Gem, a loyal servant who became a fierce ally, then a spurned lover, then a grieving survivor, Pearl’s story is about discovering who she can be on her own terms. Like Steven, she believes that her value comes from being valued, but unlike Steven, she was literally programmed this way and has an even harder time breaking loose, so she starts off at the toxic level of selfish selflessness that threatens to consume him, directed towards someone who’s been dead for years. She defines herself by her relationships, but struggles with all of them because she only understands a dynamic where one person is superior and the other is inferior; as such, her life is an endless evaluation of whether she’s worse or better than the people around her, thus whether she should be deferential or condescending. Her problem goes beyond not knowing how to develop loving relationships with equals: she doesn’t know how to love herself.

But she changes her mind.

“We need to talk about us.”

The first act of Change Your Mind (which lines up nicely with its first quarter) sets the stage with Blue and Yellow both converting to Steven’s cause, and while compelling, it’s appropriately intense. That intensity gets even higher as the episode continues, but this is still a big finale, so it’s about damn time for some fanservice.

After a quick “go to your rooms” to reinforce that White Diamond is the Diamonds’ mother more than their older sister, Connie gets the body part pun train rolling: “face-off” will soon be followed by “did you have a hand in this?” and “lend me a hand” (which earns a chuckle from Blue), Pink’s legs succumb when Steven takes a knee, and getting into White’s head becomes the primary goal of the second act (so all of this second quarter and most of the third). Still, the levity seems fleeting before two glints in the sky bring us the one-two punch of Bismuth leading the charge and Lapis and Peridot showing off their threads.

Bismuth fits right in as the leader of the B-Team, as beyond her seniority she’s clearly more competent at running a show than the other two (see: The New Crystal Gems). But her reverse electric guitar soon cedes to a glorious harmony of Lapis and Peridot’s themes as we see their new forms: Lapis gets pants and sandals, and Peridot gets ridiculous shades and a trashcan lid, the perfect adaptation of Static’s saucer for the Crystal Gems’ resident raccoon. Peridot goes ham with three stars, while Lapis wears a subtle dark blue variant that includes all five points if we count her legs. For a moment, everything is right in the world.

Their timing couldn’t be better, and not just because we need some stress relief. Steven begins the finale with one friend on his side, then he gets two Diamonds on his side, and now he has three reinforcements on his side, and this growing group of allies all represent what the Big Three Crystal Gems can’t: the family that Steven has chosen, rather than the family he grew up with. These relationships are all a result of his effort, whether going out of his way to befriend Connie or winning over the five former enemies that now stand at his side, and together they‘re one huge reminder that you can reach people if they’re willing to be reached. White Diamond isn’t a villain because she’s cruel, she’s a villain because she quashes any effort to change her mind.

Furthermore, seeing Lapis and Peridot in particular next to a pale, prejudiced, recently-discovered member of Steven’s extended family who disagrees with a parent’s name change evokes that other long episode where Steven went out on a limb to change someone’s mind, and the comparison does wonders for putting White Diamond’s bigotry in perspective.

I’ve already made my defense of Andy, but in short, his irritable first impression masks how open-minded he ends up being. Sure, he has some lousy beliefs, but he’s willing to sit down with folks he disagrees with and try and look for ways to either compromise or straight-up be convinced that those beliefs might be wrong. On its own, Gem Harvest could be read as a little too hopeful, especially as it came out weeks after the 2016 election gave proud bigots the White House, but next to Change Your Mind it expands on the finale’s message: keep an open heart and mind, because people can surprise you if you give them a chance, but don’t let yourself be a doormat in the process.

White Diamond would never have come to the Crystal Gems’ table. She still hasn’t even shown up in person since Legs From Here to Homeworld, using a warped version of the same delegation Steven practices in his talks with the Diamonds: he helps others bring their individual experiences to light, showing that his position isn’t unique, while she blots out their individuality and replaces them with her. Blue and Yellow’s contrast has been a plot point for far longer, but Pink and White (and now Steven and White) are an even starker pair of foils, divided not only by personality but by size and age.

Knowing how hard it will be to reach White, Yellow and Blue again suggest that Steven and the Crystal Gems bail, offering their own ships now that Pink’s is unavailable. While this shows how profoundly they believe in him, it again reveals how unfamiliar these two are with being “good.” Beyond the plan only delaying the inevitable (White Diamond for sure could send more troops to Earth in this scenario), Steven points out that his mother failed in both of her identities to confront the problem in a healthy way, and continuing to avoid it will mean it never gets solved. Rose is still a progression from Pink and Yellow and Blue, as fighting for your beliefs addresses the issue more directly than running away, but Steven in turn is a progression from Rose.

Then Connie’s opening words in Blue and Yellow’s conversions pay off. This time she’s the one ending the conversation, and she’s gained enough of their attention that they don’t write her off as a blathering human. Steven never got to meet Rose, rank-and-file Gems don’t have parents, and White Diamond seems to be the root of it all, so Connie is the ideal voice to reach the Diamond Sisters: she’s the only other person on the planet with a living mother. Where Dr. Maheswaran at her worst once stood in for Yellow Diamond, she can now represent the bigger fish, both in her similar brand of maternal tyranny and in the hope that her attitude can change after a good talk.

And just as Connie takes over Steven’s role as the big finisher for Blue and Yellow, Steven takes over Connie’s role as the voice introducing bigger voices now that it’s time to face White. He works with his aunts to bring his grandmother to a standstill—not by beating her statue-like ship into submission, but by joining the arm-ships to the body and completing the picture—and says his piece briefly before ceding the floor to a pair that White has victimized for far longer than the past week or so.

I love that Yellow is the first to speak, flipping the Diamonds’ conversion order and subverting the notion that the more emotionally open Blue might take the lead. This isn’t just a matter of clarity, but bravery, and Yellow has always been the more confrontational of the pair. It’s also that much more impactful to see Yellow push past her fear and allow herself to be vulnerable, given how hard she’s worked to maintain her air of stoicism. Patti LuPone’s raw power has served the character well, and she keeps up the same petulant energy that saw Yellow dishing about White in Familiar, but now she funnels all of it into a stirring argument against the exacting nature of Homeworld society. And because Yellow helps pave the way, Blue can deepen their point by defending Pink’s role in the quartet and detailing how White’s orders have caused the whole family to suffer.

Steven bookends the Diamonds by suggesting that White can start helping everyone by helping her daughters. Then White shows what kind of “help” she’s willing to provide.

Pink’s former pearl was already proof that White Diamond has the power to possess others, but it’s another thing to see it in action. The whole episode so far has been about building up hope again after Steven is knocked down by Homeworld, but all it takes is one agonizing glare to send everything backwards. Blue and Yellow are even worse off than they were before, and as they’re brought into White’s fold, their arms follow suit. White drops the Crystal Gems and lets them fall, then Steven drops the Crystal Gems and dives after them.

As he slides down alien architecture on his shield, the soundtrack gives a nod to the theme song to prepare us for more fanservice. Now that White has made it clear that talking isn’t going to get us anywhere, it’s time for more action. Now that we’ve established the importance of Steven’s chosen family, it’s time to reconnect with the family he was born into.

Amethyst is first, because of course she is. She’s usually the quickest to reform, and she’s the only Gem that Steven has fused with, so Smoky Quartz is the best start if the goal is reeling off three fusions in a row with a growing sense of excitement. Smoky’s theme heralds this new development with glee, evoking the pure joy of seeing a new fusion from Earthlings as it becomes clear what the show is doing. Fusion has recently featured as a stand-in for marriage and an act of rebellion, but now it represents familial love, and doubles as an elegant plot device to get the poofed crew back in action. The wonder of fusion has always been that beyond whatever metaphor it currently serves, it’s also just a really neat piece of magic that lends itself to awesome visuals, and this whole sequence revels in the glorious spectacle.

Pearl is second, because we’ve already seen another version of Rainbow Quartz, so the biggest reveal is bound to be the Garnet fusion. Rainbow Quartz 2.0 blends the old with the new, immediately showing off the latest clever fusion of weapons (a shield and a spear into a parasol) and introducing a blue jacket that will soon belong to Pearl. The drumkit/chiptune mashup of Smoky’s theme is replaced by a piano/chiptune mashup, and then this new fusion opens their mouth.

Of all of Steven’s fusions with a female or female-presenting partner, this is the one with a male voice actor, and it couldn’t be more perfect. Rainbow Quartz was the only one of Rose’s fusions that we saw, and Now We’re Only Falling Apart shows that she was the second-ever cross-Gem fusion after Garnet (that we know of), so she was clearly something special. Pearl’s romantic interest in Rose complicates matters further, as Rainbow Quartz is an embodiment of a deeply imperfect relationship. This is a character with a lot of baggage, but casting Alastair James puts a hard stop to the idea that this is the same Rainbow Quartz, even before we hear them refer to themself as “2.0.” After the literal nightmare that begins Change Your Mind and the figurative nightmare to come, it’s wonderful to have one more piece of evidence that Steven and Rose are different people.

Amethyst and Pearl, like Lapis and Peridot, get great new looks, and they’ll soon be followed by Garnet (after the commercial break). If this was just for the sake of fanservice, it’d be more than enough: it’s always fun to get outfit changes, and between that and the fusions (including Sunstone and Obsidian; again, after the commercial break!) we get a pleasant treat to sate us between the drama. But as always, the show finds a way to create deeper meaning in the magic.

The Diamonds look the same now as they did thousands of years ago, and one of the reasons why is that they’re unbreakable. Creating a new form requires poofing, which is a very silly way to say that the Crystal Gems have found a way to grow through pain.

Life will always have its share of pain. Part of growing up, maybe the biggest part, is figuring out what you’re going to do about it. The Diamonds react to pain by closing themselves off and letting their problems fester rather than addressing them head-on. But over the course of the series, Lapis and Peridot and Amethyst and Pearl and Garnet have put in the work to learn from their pain and heal, and because they’re literal projections of their true selves, they get a physical manifestation of that growth that can only come after weathering one more blow.

To be clear, pain itself shouldn’t be glamorized. It sucks, and it’s okay if your reaction is to take care of yourself rather than use it for Creative Fuel. But the Crystal Gems are what happens when you deal with your pain, and the Diamonds are what happens when you don’t. And because Steven shares the legacy of both, Steven Universe is about him helping others through their pain and Steven Universe Future is about finally confronting his own.

We end with the most frustrating commercial break of the three, coming right in the middle of the second act, so we’ll just keep on going with fusions and new outfits next time. But if we have to stop partway through a scene, at least we get a Monty Python Foot to stamp out the first half of Change Your Mind.

I Can’t Believe We’ve Come So Far

Hilary Florido is the only storyboarder with their own recurring segment in Steven, Universally. But every other storyboarder had plenty of opportunities to make a fully realized High School AU in their promo art, and none of them did, so that’s on them.

Florido is obviously more than her promo art, but it speaks to a specific level of nerdy passion that made her and longtime coboarder Jesse Zuke so dang good at Peridot episodes, starting with just their second collaboration, the iconic Catch and Release. From there they gave us Too Far and Log Date 7 15 2 and Barn Mates and Too Short to Ride and Beta and Gem Harvest, and Florido kept the ride going with Raising the Barn. Peridot would not be Peridot without Hilary Florido.

In terms of more serious clods, Florido is the only person to board all three Kevin appearances (Alone Together with Rebecca Sugar and first regular coboarder Katie Mitroff, Beach City Drift with Zuke, and Kevin Party with final regular coboarder Danny Cragg, who also stopped boarding after the movie). She gave us as Ronaldo at his worst in Rocknaldo and Aquamarine at her worst in I Am My Mom. And as if she needed further proof of her prowess with harrowing material, she gave us Alone at Sea and A Single Pale Rose.

It’s weird to attribute good Steven writing to any one boarder, given he’s in every episode but Jungle Moon and he’s generally pretty great, but Florido worked on some of the most important moments of Steven letting us into his deeper thoughts: she’s behind him getting real with the Cool Kids in Joy Ride, with Amethyst in Steven vs. Amethyst, and with himself in a rare monologue in Lion 4. His ability to discuss the uncomfortable subtext of Mystery Girl’s visual similarity to Rose is key to the magnificent tone of Last One Out of Beach City, and his introspection about his mother’s older identity is just as important to Familiar.

In short, Hilary Florido rocked at characters with rough edges, whether it was Peridot’s ornery id, a bevy of outright villains ruining everyone’s day, normally sympathetic characters doing dubious things, or Steven giving himself enough of a break to complain. She stepped up as a storyboard supervisor for Steven Universe Future, but even if she hadn’t, her legacy would be secure.

(Frankly it’d be secure even if the only thing she gave us was this.)

#change your mind #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

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asherwarf-archive · 3 years

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i saw ASHER WARF at a coffee shop in QUEENS today. i forgot how much HE looks like DANE DEHAAN. they are a THIRTY-THREE year old WAREHOUSE WORKER who’s been in nyc for THIRTY YEARS now. every time we run into each other, they are always SELF-AWARE AND DILIGENT but i’ve heard people say they can also be ASOCIAL AND PESSIMISTIC. HOLD IT TOGETHER BY MIKE SHINODA reminds me of them every time it comes on the radio.

TW: drug addiction, recovery and relapse, mental illness, divorce, social services, and prison. brief mention of violent crime.

born in philidelphia, pennsylvania, asher’s parents were your average “high school sweethearts”, having hit it off during their senior year; both able to relate to one another’s working-class backgrounds. his mother’s pregnancy was unplanned; however, it wasn’t unwanted, the couple welcoming a son into the world on a september evening – the thirteenth to be precise. one of asher’s earliest memories was at aged three when he and his parents moved from their quiet philly suburb home to brace the chaos of new york, hoping to open a door of new beginnings and opportunities for the three of them.

growing up, it became apparent that asher was something of a “difficult” child, teachers throughout kindergarten and elementary school often reporting incidents of tantrums and picking fights with other kids; however, his parents never had much concern regarding this. after all, kids go through these sorts of phases, right? perhaps it was something that should have been nipped in the bud, though, as adolescence was when his behaviour started to take a downward spiral. during this time – unbeknownst to asher – his parents’ marriage was beginning to crumble and soon lead to an inevitable divorce when asher was sixteen, his father deciding to up and leave their home one evening. this, of course, took a toll on his mother and, over the following months, caused her to sink into a depressive state. though he and his mother never discussed it, asher had his suspicions that perhaps he was to blame for his parents’ separation. with this weight resting on his shoulders, asher’s behaviour as a teenager got worse – he started mixing with bad crowds, finding himself roped into a world of recreational drugs and misdemeanour. his rebellion combined with his mother’s deep depression made it difficult for her to cope as a parent, social services soon having to step in and offer extended respite care as a solution.

living out of plastic bin bags hurt like hell for a kid of his age, though there was no resentment towards his mother for his living situation – he knew deep down that perhaps he had a lot to answer for. nonetheless, his continuous misbehaviour led to another inevitable: him being a high school drop-out. between the ages of seventeen and into his twenties is when things took a turn for the worst; recreational drugs and misdemeanour becoming more serious affairs – an addiction to prescription opioids and the means of getting his fix. of course, this was a somewhat expensive addiction for a young man with no qualifications or earnings to his name and, in a desperate state, asher entered a local convenience store one evening; making a decision which would lead to dire consequences.

october the fifth would forever be a significant date after that evening – at aged twenty-two, asher was sentenced to prison for armed robbery, a manic decision fuelled from the desperation to scratch an unbearable itch. arguably, this was perhaps another inevitable in his life; his behaviour and acts of misdemeanour as an adolescent being something of a foreshadowing. however, despite his delinquency growing up, asher was, in fact, not built for a life behind bars. being tossed into a cesspool of those described as “society’s worst” was a daunting experience – handfuls of erratic personalities forced to live with one another, some white-collar criminals, others responsible for someone’s last breath. it was, indeed, an unpredictable culture within those concrete walls and barbed wire fences; one that would be enough to push a man over the edge. the desperate craving for a fix lingered; however, with mere pennies to his name – and therefore limited commissary to trade – asher turned to a cheaper option that would offer similar effects; abusing heroin among other drugs throughout his sentence.

his twenties spent behind a steel cell door, it wasn’t until his thirties – aged thirty-one to be exact – that asher was able to, at last, experience the freedom of the outside world after almost a decade; having lost what were, arguably, his most precious years of adulthood to a life that some wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemy. though comparable to a deer in the headlights upon his arrival at the prison facility all of those years ago, returning to the “real world” was something of a disconcerting experience in itself – he had grown accustomed to an existence defined by rules, set mealtimes and discipline; never able to move freely outside of his assigned wing without a set of handcuffs and shackles, and a warden at either side of him. of course, those still incarcerated would give up everything that they owned for a mere glimpse outside of the merciless steel beams and mesh that surrounded them; however, self-awareness was, perhaps, one of asher’s few “positive” traits and he knew all too well that the task of returning as a conforming member of society wouldn’t be a simple one – a large chunk of civilization immediately declaring people like him as being the scum of humankind. ever the pessimist, there was a period of time upon his release where asher was in a metaphorical hole, continuing to abuse heroin as a means of numbing even the slightest bit of emotion or anguish that he might have felt.

though it was somewhat difficult for him to admit, asher knew deep down that he had a problem that required a solution, and fast; having been a witness to what the wicked substance could do to those who continued to abuse it. however, recovering from excessive use of such a drug was, indeed, much harder than it seemed, urges to relapse growing stronger as the weeks passed; some of which he succumbed to. fast forward to now, asher is still battling the immense hardships that come with recovery, relying on doses of prescription methadone to aid him through the process. symptoms come and go; however, the long-term effects are prominent in his mental health; unpredictable mood swings and signs of paranoid schizophrenia, though no official diagnoses. with no qualifications and a criminal record to his name, asher works perhaps one of few careers that would allow him a second chance at life; a low-wage warehouse job, packaging and labelling boxes for hours on end – it's a repetitive, tedious task, but all to make ends meet.

—

aaand scene! first and foremost, i will apologise for the fact that i suck at concluding a piece of writing - it isn’t a strong point of mine (which i think we’ve gathered). i’m roo, and this absolute car-crash of a human being is asher, a character of mine who i’ve had for close to ten years now; however, this is the first time in a looong that i’m properly getting to explore his characteristics and whatnot so i’m quite excited about that. i’ll leave a link below to some ideas that i've come up with for connections / plots, but please, please, please do feel free to message me with any ideas of your own. i’d love to work something out!

CONNECTION / PLOT IDEAS

#villageintro #tw: drug addiction #tw: relapse #tw: mental illness #tw: divorce #tw: social services #tw: prison #tw: crime #i hope that i've covered everything #i suck at concluding a piece of writing apparently

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wisdomrays · 3 years

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TAFAKKUR: Part 433

THE MAIN FACTORS IN THE SPREAD OF ISLAM: Part 2

A. J. Arberry has also pointed out that the reason for the spread of Islam is Islam itself and its religious values. (Aspects of Islamic Civilization, p.12)

He writes:

‘The rapidity of the spread of Islam, noticeably through extensive provinces which had long been Christian, is a crucial fact of history. The sublime rhetoric of the Qur’an, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy…and the urgency of the simple message carried, holds the key to the mystery of one of the greatest catalysms in the history of religion. When all military, political and economic factors have been exhausted, the religious impulse must still be recognized as the most vital and enduring.’

Brockelman, who is usually very unsympathetic and partial, also recognizes the religious values of Islam as the main factor for the spread of Islam (History of the Islamic Peoples, p.37). Rosenthal makes his point as follows: ‘The more important factor for the spread of Islam is the religious Law of Islam (Shari‘a, which is an inclusive, all-embracing, all-comprehensive way of thinking and living) which was designed to cover all manifestations of life.’ (Political Thought in Medieval Islam, p.21).

Besides many other reasons which are responsible for the spread of Islam, it is the exemplary life-style and unceasing efforts of individual Muslims to transmit the message of Islam throughout the world which lie at the root of the conquest of hearts by Islam. Islamic universalism is closely associated with the principle of ‘amr bi’l-ma’ruf (enjoining the good) for Islam is to be spread by Muslims by means of ‘amr bi’l-ma’ruf. This principle seeks to convey the message of Islam to all human beings in the world and to establish a model Islamic community on a worldwide basis. The Islamic community is introduced by the Qur’an as a model community: We have made of you an Ummah justly balanced, that you might be witnesses (models) for the peoples, and the Messenger has been a witness for you (2.143). A Muslim or the Muslim community as a whole thus has a goal to achieve. This is the spread of Islam, conveying the truth to the remotest corner of the world, the eradication of oppression and tyranny and the establishment of justice all over the world. This requires the Muslim to live an exemplary life, and thus the moral and the ethical values of Islam have usually played an important part in the spread of Islam. Here follow the impressions of the influence of Islamic ethics on black Africans of a Western writer of the nineteenth century:

‘As to the effects of Islam when first embraced by a Negro tribe, can there, when viewed as a whole, be any reasonable doubt? Polytheism disappears almost instantaneously; sorcery, with its attendant evils, gradually dies away; human sacrifice becomes a thing of the past. The general moral elevation is most marked; the natives begin for the first time in their history to dress, and that neatly. Squalid filth is replaced by some approach to personal cleanliness; hospitality becomes a religious duty; drunkenness, instead of the rule becomes a comparatively rare exception chastity is looked upon as one of the highest, and becomes, in fact, one of the commoner virtues. It is idleness that henceforward degrades, and industry that elevates, instead of the reverse. Offences are henceforward measured by a written code instead of the arbitrary caprice of a chieftain–a step, as everyone will admit, of vast importance in the progress of a tribe. The Mosque gives an idea of architecture at all events higher than any the Negro has yet had. A thirst for literature is created and that for works of science and philosophy as well as for the commentaries on the Qur’an.’ (Quoted from Waitz by B. Smith, Muhammad and Muhammadanism, pp.42-43)

The tolerance of Islam is another factor in the spread of Islam. Toynbee praises this tolerance towards the People of the Book after comparing it with the attitude of the Christians towards Muslims and Jews in their lands. (A Historian’s Approach to Religion, p.246). T. Link attributes the spread of Islam to the credibility of its principles together with its tolerance, persuasion and other kinds of attractions (A History of Religion). Makarios, Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch in the seventeenth century, compared the harsh treatment received by the Russians of the Orthodox Church at the hands of the Roman Catholic Poles with the tolerant attitude towards Orthodox Christians shown by the Ottoman Government and prayed for the Sultans (T. Link, A History of Religion).

This is not the only example of preference by the followers of the religions for Muslim rule over that of their own co-religionist. The Orthodox Christians of Byzantium openly expressed their preference for the Ottoman turban in Istanbul to the hats of the Catholic cardinals. Elisee Reclus, the French traveller of the nineteenth century, wrote that the Muslim Turk allowed all the followers of different religions to perform their religious duties and rituals, and that the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Sultan were more free to live their own lives than the Christians who lived in the lands under the rule of any rival Christian sect (Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, vol. 9). Popescu Ciocanel pays tribute to the Muslim Turks by stating that it was luck for the Romanian people that they lived under the government of the Turks rather than the domination of the Russians and Austrians. Otherwise, he points out, ‘no trace of the Romanian nation would have remained,’ (La Crise de l’Orient).

The Muslims’ attitude towards the people they conquered is quite clear in the instructions given by the rightly-guided Caliphs: ‘Always keep fear of God in your mind; remember that you cannot afford to do anything without His grace. Do not forget that Islam is a mission of peace and love. Keep the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) before you as a model of bravery and piety. Do not destroy fruit-trees nor fertile fields in your paths. Be just, and spare the feelings of the vanquished. Respect all religious persons who live in hermitages or convents and spare their edifices. Do not kill civilians. Do not outrage the chastity of women and the honour of the conquered. Do not harm old people and children. Do not accept any gifts from the civil population of any place. Do not billet your soldiers or officers in the houses of civilians. Do not forget to perform your daily prayers. Fear God. Remember that death will inevitably come to every one of you some time or other, even if you are thousands of miles away from a battlefield; therefore be always ready to face death.’ (Andrew Miller, Church History; Ali lbn Abi Talib, Nahj al-Balagha)

A historical episode which Balazouri, a famous Muslim historian, relates, tells about how pleased the native peoples were with their Muslim conquerors is of great significance

When Heraclius massed his troops against the Muslims, and the Muslims heard that they were coming to meet them, they refunded the inhabitants of Hims the tribute they had taken from them, saying: ‘We are too busy to support and protect you. Take care of yourselves.’ But the people of Hims replied: ‘We like your rule and justice far better than the state of oppression and tyranny in which we were. The army of Heraclius we shall indeed, with your help, repulse from the city.’ The Jews rose and said: ‘We swear by the Torah, no governor of Heraclius shall enter the city of Hims unless we are first vanquished and exhausted.’ Saying this, they closed the gates of the city and guarded them. The inhabitants of other cities–Christians and Jews–that had capitulated did the same. When by God’s help the unbelievers were defeated and Muslims won, they opened the gates of their cities, went out with singers and players of music, and paid the tribute (Futuh al-Buldan).

To sum up, although most Western writers, under the instigation of biased Orientalists of the Church, have alleged that Islam spread by the force of the sword, the spread of Islam was because of its religious content and values, and ‘its power of appeal and ability to meet the spiritual and material needs of people adhering to cultures totally alien to their Muslim conquerors’, together with some other factors. Some of these factors are the tolerance which Islam showed to people of other religions, the absence of ecclesiastic orders and hierarchy in Islam, mental freedom and absolute justice which Islam envisages and has exercised throughout the centuries, the ethical values it propagates, and Islamic humanitarianism, universalism and brotherhood, and its inclusiveness. Sufi activities, the moral superiority of Muslim tradesmen, the principle of ‘enjoining the good’, and Islamic dynamism and the magnificence of the Islamic civilization contributed of their own to the spread of Islam.

The main religious qualities which attracted people to Islam were:

(i) the simplicity of the theological doctrines of Islam based on the Divine Unity;

(ii) rationalism of the Islamic teachings;

(iii) the complete harmony of the Islamic ideals and values with human conscience;

(iv) the inclusiveness and comprehensives of Islam, covering all aspects of physical, mental, and spiritual life of individuals and societies, hence the harmony of religion and life which it established;

(v) the lack of formalism and mediation;

(vi) the vividness, dynamism and resilience of the Islamic theology, and its creativity and universalism, and its compatibility with established scientific facts;

(vii) the cohesion and harmony of the Islamic principles, and

(viii) the shortcomings of other theological systems.

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my-fanfic-library · 4 years

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Something Different {BBC Dracula x Reader} [23]

Masterlist

Warnings: dirty talk, Dracula swearing, very VERY dom Drac, mention of a breeding kink you’re welcome, biting, fingering (f receiving), oral (m/f receiving), thigh riding, squirting, just Claes Bang in general

A/N: since you were all so lovely to DraccyBoi in your asks (he’s still anticipating more asks btw), you receive a gift of smut! Also this one is so long I’m so sorry (pun intended)

~^*^~

Jack was smiling awkwardly at you. You hadn’t seen nor heard from him since you left Yorkshire and you were certain thar your friendship had come to its second end.

“Your mum invited me.” He explained and you rushed over to hug him.

“I am... so glad to see you.” You confessed, “but why the hell did you come all the way down just for a stupid party?”

“Well...”

How could he tell you? There was a lump in his throat that stopped him from speaking any further. If he told you, he would shatter everything that you had built. By the way you were quite literally glowing, he knew that you were finally enjoying your life. He was happy for you, of course. He couldn’t tell you. Not tonight. Besides, if he was lucky, word would reach you by the morning from somebody else, anyway.

He shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m here now and you’ve been a terrible friend by not messaging me or anything. For all I knew, you could have become a bloodsucker.”

“He won’t turn me.” You told him, “now come, there is alcohol in the kitchen.”

Taking his wrist, you lead him into the kitchen and straight towards the many half-drunken bottles of alcohol. The patio doors were swung open, the sound of laughter breezing in as many of the fishwives very obviously stood flirting with Dracula. He had been trying to get away and get back to you for the better part of 10 minutes but with no success. You ignored the sounds, helping Jack to pick the best alcohol for his mood and stood laughing with him for a minute or two.

“Hey, um, I was wondering if we could possibly go talk somewhere a little more private?” Jack suddenly piped up.

“I hope this won’t be like your private “talks” with Lucy.” You teased.

“Oh god, no. I don’t want to die just yet.” He chuckled.

“Very well. I’m sure you remember just where we can go.”

The place was another little sacred trove that you and Jack only knew about. This one dated back much further than Robin Hood’s Bay and had been the location of many break downs, underage drinking sessions and of course, your outrageous teenage gossip. Taking his wrist, you plucked up your own glass and pulled him out into the garden. You ignored the stares of the many women who suddenly began excitedly whispering.

However, it was almost too hard to ignore Dracula. You knew that being seen with Jack would hurt him, and you truly didn’t know how far you could push him before he left you or killed you. But Jack very rarely wished to speak privately with you. If he did, it wasn’t for no reason.

The bottom of the garden seemed miles away with such an angry, hot glare being sent your way. Had the man somehow developed laser vision within the next second, Jack would have been left without the lower half of his left arm, you were certain. With your betrayal being spoken so carelessly as if you weren’t even there by the wives, Dracula’s temper was rising quickly. You were definitely going to pay this time. You knew it. When you reached the bottom of the garden and both you and Jack disappeared beyond the small cut out in the bushes, Dracula’s temper surged. He finally waved away all of the women and made his way inside to slump down on the sofa, ignoring all the questions of the men.

When you emerged on the other side of the bushes, a small shed greeted you. Still painted with all the little flowers and signs Lucy, Jack, Daniel and yourself had painted, it reeked of a time long ago when you had been care-free and happy. The inside was a little dusty, but the cushions were still useable and the fairy lights still worked, so it wasn’t completely abandoned. You took your seat.

“Okay, so what’s going on?” You asked, taking a sip of your drink.

“I... well...” he hesistated.

“Jack, I hate to pressure you, but my very angry vampire boyfriend may just kill me for being with you right now, so the last thing you can do for me is tell me. I’m practically on my death bed.” You rolled your eyes.

“I’m moving back to London.” He blurted out.

“You’re what?! Why?!” You were shocked. Jack had settled in nicely in that little cottage you had left. He had begged you to stay. He was convinced that living by the sea was where he wanted - no, needed - to be!

He knew he was going to have to lie to you. He refused to ruin your evening further. Just his presence had caused a shift in the mood, he knew it. There was no way he would admit the truth. Not until at least tomorrow.

“I just... I missed it here. I’m... I want to be back down here, with you. With my family again.”

“Jack,” you sighed, “youre an awful liar.”

“I know.” He smiled sheepishly, bowing his head.

“If you can’t tell me why, I understand.” You smiled softly at him.

“No, it’s just- I-.. I can tell you but, I don’t want to ruin your evening.” His eyes looked up at you through his lashes.

“Then tell me tomorrow. Should we go coffees or something?”

“Yes but... you’ll need to bring Dracula.”

Okay. Something was wrong. You could tell by the way he strained to say his name that Jack did not like vampire one bit. After all, he had turned Lucy into a monstrosity and stolen you away from him, leaving him alone hundreds of miles away from anyone he knew. For him to ask you to bring Dracula to talk to him, no, something was definitely not right.

“Jack, what is going on?”

“Please, just... we’ll talk tomorrow. Until then, I missed you.”

He moved on, pulling you into him. He had truly missed you so very much, and if weren’t for the fact that he had begun to see you a little differently than before, he’d be livid with you for leaving him as you did.

You spent a little more time in the privacy of your little shed, just catching up on the weeks that you hadn’t spoken. It was nice to be with him again.

Whilst you were in there, Dracula was sulking hard. He had heard the wives (who had come inside for the comfort and privacy of Jack and yourself) whisper about how Jack suited you much better than he did. ‘Well he’s much closer to her age, they have much more in common’ one had whispered. ‘Yes, and they’ve been friends for so long, it’s inevitable that something would happen eventually.’ Would it be bad if he went in there and tore her head off? ‘And the way he looks at her! I don’t think she realises. That Dracula looks at her like she’s food.’ They laughed. ‘Now, come on, Sally, that’s how your Mike used to look at you!’ Another bout of laughter.

Music was playing quite loudly in the kitchen, drowning out their voices, but Dracula could hear them clearly. His fingers gripped onto the arm rest of the sofa. Is this what society had come to? Mother’s bashing their own children and the people in their lives? How sickening.

“Awe, look!”

The room burst into sounds of endearment and Dracula finally stood. Stepping forward, he turned to look through the kitchen and out of the window. You had emerged again with Jack, and you were on the patio, arms around his neck, his hands dropped to your waist, swaying to the music.

‘Give me reasons we should be complete // You should be with him I can’t compete // You looked at me like I was someone else, oh well // Can’t you see // I don’t wanna slow dance // In the dark’

You threw your head back at something he had said, and he buried his head into your neck, right on top of where the bite Dracula had given you was concealed.

A hand came on to his shoulder and he turned his head to see your father. His cheeks were a little red and his eyes were glossed with alcohol.

“Don’t worry,” he began, “she’s only doing it to control her tyrant of a mother.”

“Her mother is insistent on picking her suitor?” Dracula folded his arms.

“You see that fella over there?” He pointed to a man standing in the corner. He was around your height, with a round, slightly puffy face. He wore a visibly expensive suit, fat fingers gripping a sherry glass which was empty except for a thin layer of liquid at the bottom of the glass. His flaming orange hair stood out, and he was currently talking to another young lady who was clearly jusy a little repulsed by him.

“Yes, I see him.”

“She’s been trying to get [First] to date him for years. Silly woman. He’s nowhere near good enough for my baby.”

Your words rung in his ears - “tall, handsome Mark” - and he scoffed in amusement and disbelief that you had played him like that. He looked like every middle class asshole portrayed on the television. And by the way he was shuffling closer to the lady he was engaged in conversation with, he could see why you constantly rejected your mother’s advances.

“I feel that someone should go and rescue that poor girl.” Dracula chuckled, thinking of how he could possibly get you back. He looked over at you once more. Now that the song had changed, so had your dance.

‘How long // Til you play me the song // That will me belong to you // One dance // With my baby tonight // And we’ll dance til the night is though’

You were a little more carefree, twisting your hips and laughing. Your fingers were interlocked with Jack’s as you lead your arms high above your head and arched them down and out. Jack was flushing a little and you laughed, pulling some space between the pair of you but keeping your hands locked. You were singing the lyrics. Your voice had always been pretty.

“I think it should be the taller of us, go give him a good scare.”

He intended on scaring two people tonight...

He glided across the room, quickly finding himself at the side of Mark and the lady. He pushed down his mischevuous smirk.

“I am sorry to interject, but I was just wondering if I could have a word with this fine lady.”

Her eyes lit up at his intrusion and he watched relief flood her face. He was her knight in shining armour, and he was going to milk it for everything that it was worth. Her hand immediately came out to wrap around his exposed forearm and pulled herself closer to him.

“Yes, thats fine-“

“Aren’t you supposed to be with [First]?” Mark sneered, looking Dracula up and down with disgust. It wasn’t the first time someone had looked at him like that, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last.

“Weren’t you?” Dracula jeered and Mark’s face deepened with a scowl.

“Come on, boys, don’t fight.” The lady beside Dracula spoke, trying to keep the peace.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dracula turned his head to her, “it would hardly be a fair match.”

“Why you-“ Mark’s face reddened, really bringing out the orange on the top of his head.

“Now if you’ll excuse us. Come along, pet.”

Using his free hand, Dracula placed it over the top of the woman’s and lead her away quickly.

“What a creep.” She retorted, “you’re Dracula, aren’t you?”

“Great observation. Though, I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.” He lead her over to the sofa. Her pulse was lively. He sat down, and she, like a magnet, took a seat right next to him she pulled herself closer so that their legs were touching and she was almost moulding into his side. Dracula smirked. Please, please let you walk in and have a taste of your own medicine.

“Chelsea.” She purred.

“Beautiful. Now, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself, Chelsea? While I have you all to myself.”

“Are you sure you should be talking to me like this? You came with [First].”

“Do you see her around?”

Her eyes lit up once more. So she was one of these girls you spoke about with such distaste. A “thot” if he remembered correctly. A man-stealer. He could not have chosen a better target.

~^*^~

You spent another hour or so in Jack’s company, and it was during this house that the house began to die down as people began to leave. Your mother had asked you and Dracula to stay the night, as it was quite a drive back to his apartment and it would be dangerous to drive so late. ‘He’ll be too tired to drive!’ She’d almost wailed, as if she had a premonition of you getting into an exhaustion induced car accident. You assured her that he wouldn’t be tired at all he hadn’t slept in hundreds of years he wasn’t going to start today. But you ended up agreeing, anyway. She had kept your bedroom the same, including the single bed, so you didn’t really know where he’d be for the night. Maybe she’d force him to stay downstairs...

Once most of the people had left, you and Jack finally decided that it was a good idea to go back inside. After all, it was getting quite cold. Your mother was in the kitchen, talking to the last two wives who had yet to leave and the two eyed you when you walked in. You rolled your eyes. You hated her friends with a passion. In the living room, the last few men were stood laughing with your father. Mark was still floating around, sending sharp looks over to the sofa. Jack was quick to grab your hand, but regretted it when you squeezed in so much anger that you almost broke all of his fingers.

“Jack.” You spoke through your gritted teeth.

“Calm down.” He whispered, “don’t give them something to gossip about tomorrow.”

“They’re already going to be gossiping about us. Might as well juice it up a little.”

“Seriously don’t. Chelsea of all people isnt worth it.”

“I swear I’m gonna go over there and rip her damn extensions out of her fucking head.” You narrowed your eyes, “look she’s touching his chest!”

Your display of jealousy was making Jack chuckle behind his stoic face. He continued to hold your hand, thankful your grip had loosened. Sure enough, Chelsea was running one of her long fingers down the opening of his shirt where the expanse of his chest was available for her to touch. Dracula looked oh so very pleased with himself. Jack immediately knew was was happening and had to snort at the scenario. Trust Dracula of all people to give you a taste of your own medicine.

Chelsea laughed at something Dracula had just whispered into her ear and she pulled herself closer, wrapping one leg over his and curling her fingers around his bicep.

“I’m going to break her fucking kneecaps!” Jack pulled you backwards as you balled your fists.

“Calm down.” He chuckled. You snapped your head towards him, and he pulled you back into the kitchen.

“After I’ve put her in the hospital, you’re next.” You warned.

“You do realise that he’s doing it on purpose, right?” You pushes yourself away from him as he spoke, scowling.

“I don’t care why the fuck he’s doing it. The point is that-... that fucking slag has her hands all over my boyfriend! All over! And only I’m allowed to touch his chest!” You crosses your arms, unable to stop the pouty scowl on your features. You were mad.

“You are never drinking again.” Jack decided, “alcohol makes you vicious.”

“Sluts throwing themselves onto my boyfriend make me vicious!”

Jack burst into laughter. Your frowned settled deeper into your features and you very almost followed through with your urge to throw a glass at him. This was not funny! You could hear your parents saying goodbye to another set of guests and you finally decided enough was enough. Your heels clicked on the tile floor and then the sound shifted onto wood. You stood before Dracula, whos arm was around the other woman’s shoulders as he laughed with her. He looked you up and down with a cocky smugness that had your blood boiling.

“Oh, hi [First].” Chelsea gave you an obviously fake smile.

“Up now.” You ignored her, gaze burning into Dracula’s face.

“I am very comfortable here, thank you.” He retorted, not holding back his smirk.

“Up.” You growled. Dracula raised his eyebrows, mouth dropping with the smirk still evident.

“Someone’s moody.” Chelsea whispered. And that was it. The switch was flipped. The button was pressed. The red mist came down and you were no longer going to hold it back.

“If you ever step foot into my parents’ house again, I swear to god you will regret it. And if you don’t remove your hands and legs from my boyfriend within the next half-second, I going to drag your rat-ass onto the street and kick your fucking ass into next year.”

Dracula was looking at you like you were a meal. He had seen you upset. Yes, many times he had pissed you off. But this jealousy driven rage you were in right now? It was the hottest thing he had ever experienced. And he’d been in some very sexy situations.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Her scratchy voice pierced the air.

“Did you not hear me?” You stepped forwards, eyeing her down like she was a piece of rotten meat covered with maggots, “did all of the plastic surgery on your face ruin your hearing? Should I repeat myself?”

Jack was in hysterics in the kitchen. Your father was watching in the corner with the proudest look on his face. Dracula was ready to jump you and help with your pent up anger.

“You bitch!” She rose, but before one of her hands could connect with you, you had grabbed her firmly by the hair and was dragging her through the room. She screamed and tried her hardest to get out of your grip but your fist had turned to steel. She pushed you hard into the door frame and you let go of her hair at last. One of her hands flew up, connecting with your face. Dracula rose.

“Don’t.” Your father stopped him, “she can handle it.”

Your father was right. You kneed Chelsea backwards, face red with a livid and boiling rage. Really, you should have had steam coming from your ears. That’s how angry her hit had just made you. Your fist came up, connecting with her face and it did a lot more damage than her hand had done. She cried out in pain, trying once more to fight back but you tangled both of your hands into her hair. The door was still open, your mother having stepped out into the front garden to watch with a look of horror.

“Don’t you ever come back!” You screamed, driving her out of the door and down the path. When she was out of the gate, you threw her body and she tumbled into the road. She looked up, glaring at you. You were heaving. Your arm came out to point at her, “don’t you set foot on this fucking street again! I’ll know if you do and I swear to the devil himself that I really will hurt you next time!” You roared.

“Sorry, did I make you insecure?” She sneered, “it’s not my fault I’m a better woman than you could ever be.”

A scream of pure rage left your lips and you stormed into the road. A car was on its way, but you ignored the blaring lights as your foot connected with her jaw. Had it been disconnected from her body like a football, it would have disappeared over the houses never to be seen again. Your foot connected with her body again, this time her ribs and then you were pulled backwards by two strong arms around your waist.

You weren’t done with her yet and as his grip tightened, dragging you backwards, you bent your leg, tearing your shoe from your foot and launching it at her. It struck her right on her forehead, bouncing off with a thunk and she finally rolled on to her back.

“I suggest no one follow us, I’m going to calm her down.” His voice rang through your ear as he momentarily propped you down before grabbing your wrist and pulling you up the stairs. He had clearly been snooping during the length of the party, as he got your bedroom right the first time and swung you in. Due to the imbalance of your legs with only one heel, you stumbled. The door shut and you angrily turned to face Dracula. He had blocked the door.

“Move.” You growled.

“You are not going to kill anyone tonight.” He warned you.

“No, I won’t kill her. I’ll fucking destroy her.”

“Right. Calm down.” His voice was stern and had you not been so livid, it would have turned you on in an instant, “it’s not so clever now, is it? Sneaking away with other men. It’s not nice feeling such intense jealousy.”

It hit you that he truly had been doing it on purpose. He had let her crawl all over him, put her hands all over him - just to get back at you! You hadn’t seen Jack in weeks and you simply wanted to talk to him! How childish!

“I fucking hate you! You’re such an asshole!” You cried out, digging your fingers into your scalp as you tugged on your hair. You were so far gone into the red mist that it was beginning to feel difficult to leave it.

“You don’t hate me.” He stated plainly.

“Yes I fucking do! I definitely hate you right now!” You were red in the face.

“Is that so?” He cocked his head.

“YES!”

He was in front of you within and instant and his hands firmly gripped your waist, driving you backwards until the back of your knees hit your bed. You toppled backwards and his lips were on yours.

This dream was nothing but calmness. A warm water up to your waist. It rippled around you as you walked forwards with no problem. You were in nothing, and neither was he as he outstretched his hand. You were soon in his embrace, chests connecting as he tilted your head up to look at him. He held you close, freely falling back into water. It crashed over you, but you did not need to hold your breath, nor feel as though you would drown. Your hands moved to his face as you sunk further down, a darkness slowly overcoming you both. His lips came into yours and a warmth spread throughout you. His hands dug into your waist, pulling you close. Your legs automatically wrapped around him.

Coming out from the dream, you were panting, a string connecting yours and Dracula’s lips. You were now in the same position that you had been in in the dream - legs around his waist, hands on his face, his hands still firmly on your waist. It had calmed you down. Only a little. But it has definitely worked.

His eyes glossed over you and lifted you up a little, to undo the ribbon at the back of your necklace. He gently pulled it away , using his other hand to force your head up so that he could get a good look at your scar.

“Jealousy is a wonderful colour on you. I don’t think I’ve ever been so turned on so quickly in my 524 years.” He purred.

“You’re an asshole.” You breathed. On the outside, your body was calming down from the rage, but mentally, you were fuming still.

His mouth came down, tongue working on the beautiful mark he had made. You moaned out, fingers lacing into his hair at the contact. You wondered if this mark would feel the same if someone else kissed it? Or was it like werewolf lore, in which you were marked and connection by your mate with it was a nerve straight to your heat?

Either way, your body immediately lit up at the contact. You pressed a messy kiss to his cheek in response, breath hitching every time his tongue worked on the scar. Pulses were shooting through your body.

Dracula pulled away for a moment, kneeling up between your legs as he pulled them from his waist. His hands travelled down your left leg, fingers soon having the clasp of your shoe undone and gently pulling it away.

“I can’t believe you threw your shoe at her. I planned on keeping them on you.” He sighed.

“What do you know, Count Dracula has a thing for fucking girls in heels.” You teased with a roll of your eyes.

He began to chuckle and your hands worked at his jacket. You pushed it down his broad shoulders and he helped you pull it away from his arms. You laughed at the sight of him. His dress trousers were tight on his waist, accentuating his waist and you began to laugh harder. He was looking down at you with an unreadable expression. Most likely out of habit, his chest was rising and falling, straining against the shirt. His hair was a little disheveled.

“What is it?” He smirked.

“You look like you’re about to go and do the samba on Striclty!” You chuckled.

“At least someone is feeling better.” He smirked.

“Oh, I’m still fucking livid with you. I’m just taking the piss to keep myself calm.” You chuckled.

“Then maybe you want to take some of your frustration out on me, my darling?”

Using the material of his shirt, you pulled him back on to you, attacking his neck with kisses. He sighed at the feeling. Your warmth was spreading through him and all he wanted was to get you out of that dress.

“I need to tell you something,” you mumbled over his skin, your fingers now working at the buttons on his shirt.

“Yes, my darling?” His hands were running up and down your sides.

“I may,” a kiss, “or may not,” another kiss, “have forgotten,” another kiss and you pulled away to look up into his eyes with a faux innocence, “to put on any panties before we left.”

At your words, an animalistic growl tumbled through his chest like thunder.

“Fuck.” His hands stopped your own from undoing any more buttons and he pulled the material over his head in one swift movement, “you dirty fucking thing.”

You mewled. You’d never get used to way profanities spilled from his lips. You loved it. A rush went straight to your core. He came down once more, attacking your neck with kisses and working down to your collar bone. His hands grazed over your breats, still covered by the soft material of your dress. While he was busy, your fingers began work on the buttons of his trousers. When he had finally kicked them off, you pushed him up so that you could sit up a little.

“I should lock the door and leave you in here for the rest of night. And tie you up for good measure.” You whispered, paraphrasing him from the first time you had done this.

“Do you really think I’m not strong enough to break anything you attempt to bind me with?” He grumbled, moving to kiss your neck again. You stopped him.

“I want to try something.” A look of wickedness set in your eyes.

“What is it?”

“Go sit.”

He decided to listen to your command, making himself comfortable at the head of your bed. Within the next moment, you were straddling him. Your dress had ridden up your thighs. Dracula’s cool hands grazed up to the material.

“Can I?” He asked softly.

“You don’t need permission, Drac. Use me however you wish. Do whatever you want.”

He groaned at your words. With one fluid movement, the dress was off and you were straddling him, completely bare. He sucked in a breath at the sight of you. Chest a little flushed, nipples already perked up for him, legs over his, your hot core not quite touching him.

“Shit.” He whispered, “what do you want to do, darling?”

“Has anyone ever ridden your thigh before?” You sighed back, willing yourself to be still. There was something else that you were interested in riding, however, you knew that you couldn’t. You wondered if he’d every tell you why.

“I don’t think they have, no.” He sounded like all of the breath had been stolen from him.

“First time for everything.”

You shrugged and then manuvered both him and yourself so that you were straddling his left thigh, but you still did not make contact. His hands moved down your body, making sure to quickly give both of your nipples attention before resting on your hips. Your pussy was already drooling. How, he had no clue. He had barely touched you.

“Do I turn you on that much?” He chuckled.

“No, anger does.”

And you sunk down. Dracula watched the way you threw your head back, biting your lip as you help back your whimper at the feeling. You had only done this once before, and with with your ex. His thighs had never been too big and it had been a little uncomfortable for you. Dracula however... sweet Jesus. Such an expanse of muscle, thick and hard like other things, you suspected. His coolness spread over you and you wiggled your hips to get used to the feeling. You didn’t think you ever would.

“Move.” He suddenly commanded, voice dark. You dare not disobey, rolling your hips slowly against his thigh. The friction was enough, sending little jolts through your clit. Within a matter of minutes, your juices were covering most of the front side of his thigh, dripping down on to the bedsheets that hadn’t been changed since you were seventeen. Pink with white hearts. So mature.

He was enchanted. He couldn’t believe he’d struck absolute gold. The way you moved against him, the heat you were providing had him hissing. He was straining against his boxers, but he was too busy watching every minuscule movement of your body to care.

Your hands flew to his shoulders to stabilise yourself and you quickened your pace. Pleasure was building with the constant friction and you gasped when Dracula decided to flex his thigh beneath you. Your hands slipped, head rolling onto his shoulder and he had to grip your hips tightly, guiding your movements. You were trembling with the sudden build of pleasure and your hands moved down his firm front, coming to rest on his bulge. You smirked, biting lightly on his shoulder as one hand slipped beneath the waistband.

His girth was heavy in your hand, the only part of him other than his mouth that was hot. Your fingers couldn’t quite reach all the way around and you wondered if he was scared of hurting and if that was why he wouldn’t just fuck you into oblivion.

“[First]-“ he cut himself off when your thumb ran over his slit, collecting the few beads of precum that had collected. He groaned.

“You were saying?” You began pressing soft kisses against his shoulder. He flexed his thigh in response, a horrid tremble racking over your body and you sighed into his shoulder. His fingers were going to leave bruises. You were certain of it.

“You don’t have to.” His own head lolled back to rest on the highest metal bar of your bed frame.

“I want to.”

Your hand began to slowly pump his length, which was most definitely proportionate to his 6’4” tall body. Just feeling him in your hand had a hot wave of your slick dribbling down his thigh. You were going to cum. He knew this, too, slipping one of his hands down between your legs to help stimulate your clit a little more. The extra coolness, the firm, quick circles he drew had your body trembling as your orgasm washed over you. You kept your hand on his cock, loving the heat and the feel of it. When you had rode your orgasm out, you removed your hand and peered up at him.

He groaned at the look of you. Cheeks pink, eyes blown with the utter horniness you were currently in the midst of, lips parted and plumped from all of the kisses.

“Drac,” you began, in a quiet purr, “I need to taste you.”

“No.” He breathed sharply.

“Why not?” You repositioned yourself on him, purposefully connecting your core to the bulge in his underwear. Your hands flew around his neck, the utter feeling of it making you shakily moan. Your slick began to soack through the material.

“Because...” he began, “fucking shit.” You kept moving lightly, loving the way it felt. He gripped your hips once more, holding you in place, “stop.” He groaned.

“Drac, I need you. So badly. You can’t keep denying me when all my body craves is you.”

Oh, his heart. Of course, all he wanted was to pin you down beneath him and fuck you so hard that you forgot your own name. He had driven himself crazy thinking of all the things he wanted to do to you. He’d given himself all sorts of grief wondering how well you’d fit together, stretching you out, feeling you take him like how you took his fingers. There was just one problem.

“I can’t,” he looked over your face, clearly upset himself at having to deny you something you both wanted, “I’ll be honest...” he took a breath.

“Tell me.”

“The last thing you want inside of you is undead sperm, darling.” He whispered, catching your neck in a kiss.

“Why is that? Surely it’s all the same?” Your body was beginning to ache for more.

“It’ll kill you, [First]. Either way it goes in, that’s it.”

“But you... Lucy...”

“Do you really think I cared if she lived?” He looked up at you, “I love you, [First]. I want no part in hurting you. Ever.”

“Then I just won’t swallow.”

Another groan left his lips. Had he known you were such a fox in the bedroom, he may have thought twice before falling utterly head over heels for you. What on Earth was he going to do with you?

You managed to get out of his grasp, pushing yourself backwards, simultaneously curling your fingers around the waistband of his boxers and tugging. He lifted his hips, knowing that you were going to be stubborn on this. His member sprang free, hitting his somach as it did so. Now, it was your turn to eye him up greedily. Once his boxers had met the fate of the rest of the clothes in the bedroom, you lowered yourself down to all fours to assess your options. Your mouth quite literally dropped in surprise. Dracula chuckled.

“Have you finally realised that you may be a little too big for your boots?” He teased.

“Jesus Christ, Drac, you’re too big for my damn boots.”

He burst into laughter.

Seriously, how the hell were you meant to do this?! You knew he’d be hung, because, well, he was so tall! And broad! But you didn’t expect him to be so...

“What is it? Like six inches?”

“Why would I know something like that? It’s not like I go around... measuring. But since you asked so nicely, seven and a half.”

“Typical man. You all need to know your dick sizes, don’t you? What do you do, compare in the bathroom?” You chuckled.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the stereotype that women congregate in bathrooms together?”

“Yeah but guys are obsessed with their cocks.” You rolled your eyes.

Before he could get another word out, you had suddenly moved forwards, licking a long, slow stripe from the base of his shaft and to the top. Hot and heavy on your tongue, you hummed, letting the vibrations rack through him. He gasped. You smirked, running your tongue over the tip, collecting a little more precum.

“Promise me you’ll stop before I release.”

You nodded.

“Wait,” you peered up at him, “can’t we just use a condom?”

“Absolutely not.” He answers sternly, “I’m most definitely only fucking you with nothing between us. I want to fill you up with my children, watch you overflow with my seed, bulge with my offspring. There’s no way in hell that I will do with any such thing preventing me from doing so.” His eyes darkened considerably as he spoke, dick twitching at the thought of fucking you full of his cum. You felt your juices spill from your cunt, between your thighs.

“You kinky motherfucker.”

His moan ripped through the room as you sucked him into your mouth, tongue swirling over his tip. Your jaw immediately ached with the stretch of accommodating him. You couldn’t help but giggle at his response to your mouth, the feeling of your laugh heightening the sudden pleasure.

He gazed down at you, unable to conceive that this moment was his reality. Locking eyes, you sucked more of him into your mouth, and whatever you couldn’t fit, you used your hands. Slowly, wanting to savour him, you began bobbing your head up and down. In all honesty, you were surprised he could even get hard, considering he had no pulse and no way for the blood to course his veins. His taste was pretty much the same as any other in the world. Salty, the bitter taste of his precum silencing the taste of the skin. But, because it was him, it was just a little more of an enjoyable taste.

Your tongue worked as your head bobbed and his fingers soon found their way tangling in your hair. He was wasting no time in controlling the pace and the depth of your movements. Slowly but surely, he was forcing your down more. Noises of his absolute and pure pleasure filled the room and your stomach was flipping. You were soaked and then some, feeling your juices almost flowing down your legs. You needed something on your core. Anything.

“You can take it,” he groaned, talking about his entire length down your throat.

You probably could. You’d definitely taken bigger during your post-breakup hookups. But you were still pissed at him. So you pulled off, coughing just a little to make it seem as though you truly couldn’t. He gazed at you.

“I’ve had enough.” You stated stoically.

“[First]?”

Truth be told, he panicked. Had he pushed you too far? You stood, facing away from the bed to let your grin of pure evil break out on to your features. Dracula was momentarily frozen in shock. He couldn’t believe he’d just-... his eyes caught your reflection in your TV and he suddenly grew just a little angry again.

You moved towards your dresser, leaning against it as you looked down at the wood, inspecting the groves. He picked himself up, prowling towards you. You gasped when his hands tugged at your hair, pulling your head backwards. He was looking down at you.

“Bitch.”

The sound of his hand connecting with your ass filled the room (and most likely the hallway, too), and you squeaked, arching your back more. He watched the way his smack rippled through your flesh.

“I wasn’t finished.” His mouth moved to your neck as his hand kneaded where he had just hit. He bit down hard on your scar, and you arched your back further, ass knocking into his dick. He hissed, “hand. Now.”

You offered him your hand and he lead it to his length. His other hand fell from your hair and moved to grasp your breast, pinching your nipple hard. Guiding your hand, he helped you to pleasure him and you turned in his arms, sinking to your knees. Taking both of your hands, you batted him away and leaned to drool all over the tip which was now blushing violently. He was close. Good. Wrapping your fingers tightly around him, you quickened your pace and he had to arch over you, gripping the edge of the dresser just to try and keep himself calm. As much as he had wanted these intimate moments to be sweet and loving, there was something in the anger that made this nasty, utterly fithy version feel phenomenal.

“Shit.” He growled through gritted teeth.

He twitched between your palms and you tipped your head back.

“What happens if it touches skin?” You inquired softly, slowing your movements for a moment.

“Nothing-“ he gasped, “don’t- don’t stop.”

His own voice stuttered and immediately, you picked up the pace. Oh, the growl that came from him as his hot seed shot out, soaking your chest in a sticky substance. It ignited your skin, a moan rippling from your own throat at the feeling of being covered in his cum.

When the strands stopped, and he began to grow flaccid in your hands, he took a step back to admire you. His seed was slowly seeping down your chest, over your breats, over your stomach.

With no hesitation, he picked you up and threw you back on to the bed, quickly settling between your legs.

“What a good little thing you’ve been for me. Look at you,” he meant your cunt, of course. You were soaked. Your legs gleamed with your juices, “all for me?”

“Every last drop.”

“Let me repay my debt.”

Your fingers balled the sheets the second his tongue darted out, trialling the taste of you. He groaned and went straight back for seconds. He lapped up your juices, circling your clit before moving back down towards the source of the sweetness coating his tongue. Thank god he read that book Lucy sent him on how much sex had changed, otherwise he would have never known bliss like his head being between your legs.

The feeling of his hot tongue giving your core much needed attention had you crying out. It didn’t matter that your parents were downstairs, or that Jack was most likely still here. Fuck them. You had a vampire eating you out like he was starving.

Your hands once again found their way to his hair and your hips began to move on their own accord. It had been so long since you had been in this situation, and the Count was most definitely outdoing every other person before him. He was devouring your cunt like a starving man and holy shit, nothing could ever amount to this. Your hips were quite literally jerking at the pleasure taking over your body.

Dracula’s hands moved to cup your ass and pulled you closer, prompting your legs to wrap around his head and hold him there. It only took a few more flicks of his tongue, a few more sucks on your clit before you let go, body trembling as your pussy contracted over nothing. More of your juices spilled and Dracula wasn’t quite done with you yet.

The hungry look he gave you when your legs finally released him had you rolling your head. You couldn’t go again. Your stomach was knotting.

He slid two fingers in with ease and the feeling of finally being full was enough for years to begin to stream down your face. The pleasure was growing too intense for your body to handle, but it seemed Dracula didn’t care anymore.

“I can’t-“ you panted, “I can’t go again.”

“Yes you can. You’re going to cum all over my fingers and prove to me who owns you.”

He began to thrust his fingers, loving the lewd sounds that filled the room. Your knuckles had turned white, your fingers curled. He was loving every second. His cum was drying on your chest now, becoming more visible as it stopped glistening. However, the sheen of sweat on your body gave you a heavenly glow.

Here you were, on the end of his fingers, eyes rolled back with the pleasure he was giving to you and you still managed to look like an angel. He breathed an amused sigh.

Your hips were grinding down into his fingers, you were spilling over his hand. Never had he met anyone quite like you... Who got this turned on by a vampire?

“Let’s see if I can just...” he trailed off, and when he pulled his fingers back, he inserted a third. The stretch didn’t burn due to the amount of lubrication you had created between your juices and his saliva. Instead, you felt even more pleasure, the stretch satisfying every thirst you’d had since... well, as long as you could remember being into the man currently using you.

“Drac-“ you whined through your tears, “please-!”

Though you weren’t explicit, Dracula knew your body all too well and bent down to press sweet and tantalising kisses to your clit. You whined, grinding onto his face and onto his fingers. Your stomach was burning with an ache of the overstimulation now and the orgasm that was building was going to be intense, you knew it.

Once again, his tongue worked on your clit and huge sparks of electricity coursed your body. His pumps grew faster and he widened the space between his fingers to stretch you even further. Your pussy was throbbing to release. It was so close. You squeezed your eyes shut, moans growing louder and higher.

“Holy shIT-!”

He pulled away as he felt a gush overcome his fingers. You clamped over his fingers so tightly as the most intense wave of pleasure came over you. He watched, mouth agape as the fluid squirted out, soaking the sheets below. Dracula held a smirk on his face. Your body convulsed as your orgasm continued to wash over you and a little more fluid gushed out. When you went limp, panting heavily, Dracula pulled his fingers out and couldn’t help but want to try the newest substance to come from your body.

It coated his tongue and...

“Well, now that’s better than blood.”

You laughed at his words, but the tightening of your stomach due to overstimulation made you “ow.” The realisation hit you that you had literally screamed down the entire house as Dracula had mouth and finger fucked you and you continued to laugh despite the intense pain in your gut. Dracula moves to your side, curling into you and laughing into your neck.

Breakfast was going to be awkward as fuck.

~^taglist in the reblog sorry^~

#did i get a measuring tape to ensure i didnt go over the top with the size #perhaps #did my own mother ask me why i was dying of laughter #whilst holding a measuring tape #i simply didnt want to go out of the bounds of realism #so 8 was way too long #;)#something different #dracula #bbc dracula #netflix dracula #dracula x reader #bbc dracula x reader #netflix dracula x reader #claes bang

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shadow-scenarios · 4 years

Note

Hello~ may I ask for something slightly specific? I wanted to ask about a scenario in which the reader recently obtains the Meta-Nav but instead of the PT finding out first, Goro does. See, the reader and Goro have recently become acquaintances and reader thinks that the Meta-Nav is something related to illegal activity so she goes to consult their detective friend on this mysterious app! Haha, sorry if this is too specific ;-;

Hey there simulationone, this isn’t too specific!! I like creative ideas that change the plot & this has been my favourite request to write so far.

However, I did change the request slightly. I made it so that the Reader awakened to their Persona & gains the MetaNav!! I hope that’s alright with you. If not, feel free to message me again and I can rewrite it.

{ Post Writing Note: Well, I wrote way too much!! Sorry if there’s less Akechi content than you thought, I got hyperfixated on how it would affect the plot. I’d love to write a Part 2 full of angst with this, so feel free to request it!! }

- Nexus.

Dance with Justice | Goro Akechi

Life at Kosei High was predictable. Like a metronome. Constant pressure to be the best & high achievement boundaries, it was a wonder how she was ever accepted without some sort of moonlighting as a prodigy. These stories of mental shutdowns & psychotic breakdowns made the world look grim & everyone seemed desperate to escape it all.

Comfort was found in the Phantom Thieves and how they manipulated hearts. Dancing the line between immoral & illegal, it was a grey area where the who was less significant than the how. Society grasped onto them as miraculous saviours as they solved cases faster than regular forces ever could: Kamoshida, Madarame, Kaneshiro, Medjed. The world was taken by storm, these renegade rogues looking to change the world & it seemed they were no longer an urban legend.

Their downfall was unexpected, to say the least. Okumura was murdered in cold blood, his mental shutdown playing onscreen during an important meeting where he was about to reveal an important factor in solving this buck-wild case. A calling card was found at the residence, the sigil of their misdeeds. Just when the mystery was about to unravel, the threads gave way to a bigger problem: Did the Phantom Thieves cause the very shutdowns everyone was trying to escape?

Swiftly, the media capitalised. Labelling them as criminals, demanding their arrest. Everything shifted so quickly & she was caught up by the egregious claims of both sides. There was one thing for certain: The Phantoms Thieves had killed someone and regardless of their previous deeds, they needed to be brought to justice.

Naturally, the first viable suspect she found was Yusuke Kitagawa.

He was of the eccentric sort, gaining a scholarship through art. Everything the strange man did was usually for the sake of ‘ Finding true beauty! ’, which was slightly melodramatic. Before Madarame’s case, he was fixated on art singularly. Now? He seemed to have other priorities. Whenever someone would discuss the Phantom Thieves in an art lesson, there was a glimmer in his eye & the paintbrush that had been on the canvas stopped in order to listen in.

A victim of Madarame’s plagiarism, which gave a plausible motive. Despite this, nothing was concrete. She thought about her friend, Akechi. Was this how he solved crimes?

Obviously, the next step was to follow Yusuke around. Sneaking around was rather easy, all she had ever been known as by the student populace was ‘ the girl who was friends with Akechi! ’, so standing out was not much of a problem. There was not much abnormal. Despite being somewhat of a social outcast, he had a small circle of friends. Six in total.

Five of them were clearly wearing the Shujin Academy uniform on the day she spotted them. One was tall in stature with fluffy black hair & thick framed glasses. Reserved in nature but he always appeared to have some sort of witty comeback. Soon he became known as Akira.

Another one was a blonde, around the same height. He wore the uniform much like a delinquent alongside a yellow graphic tee. Obnoxiously loud, as it was never difficult to hear what he was saying even from far away. The person closest to him was Ann. She had platinum blonde hair tied back into pigtails & features of an American.

Makoto was next. Clearly more of a calculating type, she wore the uniform immaculately. Wearing her hair in a French-braid styled headband, she had maroon coloured eyes & was around average height. Most of the time, she was commenting on the boy’s behaviour.

Haru Okumura was someone recognisable due to the news about her father’s death, which was saddening. In her uniform, she wore a fluffy pink turtleneck alongside white tights with flower patterns.

Futaba was just as strange as Yusuke. She used a mixture of gamer jargon whenever she spoke and was never seen in a uniform. About middle school age, she carried around a set of headphones everywhere that regularly rested atop her maple coloured hair.

Stuffed inside of Akira’s bag was also a cat that they tried to hide. Key word: Tried. Six of them & a cat.

They frequented a local cafe in Shibuya, LeBlanc. It was a nice location & she had even gone in there once to listen in. Boss was kind, to say the least. He served coffee with a warm smile & the curry combined perfectly enough to encourage a smile out of her.

On a Friday, the cafe was busy. They had gathered at one table & chatted casually. Most of them looked forelorn. Akira eventually gestured for them to take the conversation outside, where they would disturb fewer people.

Following behind them, she paid Boss & followed, attempting to seem casual. They never noticed. Conspicuously trailing into an alleyway, Ryuji pulled out his phone. Listening in was difficult so she opted to pull out her own phone and record. One of them, presumably Akira, simply said “ Mementos. ”.

Mementos. That singular word triggered something & changed everything. As the world began to violently shift in a strange phenomena, hues of vermillion & mauve dotted her vision. It was hypnotic. Eventually, she snapped out of the trance.

Concealed by masks & flashy outfits were the suspicious group she had been following. It was blatantly obvious by their hair colours. However, the animated cat creature was a surprise. It was reminiscent of the cat Akira carried around but even stranger was that it talked. Then it turned into a bus. Which did not seem all that strange.

Inherently familiar with their environment, they sped off down the escalator, leaving her alone with her thoughts. There were so many reds & greys. Thick red veins ran through the sides in mangled forms. The wall behind her was dilapidated & the only way to proceed was the escalator in front of her.

A fatal mistake, really.

Recalling the details of the awakening are fuzzy at best. These lumbering creatures formed entirely out of shadow began to take notice of her unwanted presence. Cornered, desperate and alone. Insurmountable pain; the voice of someone almost familiar; then freedom & rebellion.

With the pact of her Persona, everything was clearer. Life had previously moved in rhetorical patterns, it was now a whimsical dance. Eliminating the so called enemies with a weapon in hand, she eventually found a way back to the surface. The door at the beginning looked to be a way out, so she threw caution to the wind & took the chance.

Fatigue came first in this dingy alleyway. Adrenaline had been fuelling the push to leave alongside her newly granted power and once that was gone, nothing would spare her from raw exhaustion. Checking her phone in the hopes of finding evidence, the video taken was still there, though it cut off as soon as anyone disappeared.

Even without evidence, she knew that this group was doing something illicit. So she texted the one person she trusted with this secret: Goro Akechi. He was a detective, surely he would have answers.

;; I must speak with you in person as soon as possible. It’s regarding the Phantom Thieves, I have some evidence for you. You’re investigating them, correct?

Knowing full well that Akechi lived a busy life, she did not expect a response for a while. After gathering the strength to stand once again, she headed home. It was the most exhausting experience ever, physically & emotionally. A few minutes after returning home, there was a response from Akechi.

I am indeed investigating them. If you have any evidence regarding them, would it not be more convenient for me to receive it via text? ;;

;; Yes, it would be, but I can barely even believe the evidence presented to me. It’s better for you to see it for yourself. Are you attending school tomorrow?

Indeed I am. Pulling away from the public eye has benefits. If you are free during lunch, we can meet on the rooftop and discuss the supposed evidence that you have found. Does that sound like a compromise? ;;

;; Alright. I’ll see you on the rooftop tomorrow.

The next day was filled with trepidation. Everyone seemed to be mulling about & with how slowly the clock was moving, it was if the school was in a state of chronostasis. Although she did not share many classes with Akechi, there had been a moment where she saw a mop of hazelnut brown hair amongst a crowd, so he was likely to be there.

Sitting on the rooftop alone was slightly boring but she understood why he was late. Every time lunch began, Akechi would be surrounded by people who wanted his attention. It must have been rather annoying.

5. 10. 15. Minutes ticked by. During the winter, it was exceptionally cold so not a single soul came up. The chilly winter breeze nipped at her skin & for a moment she wondered if it was Akechi that she had seen. The brown hair easily could have been mistaken—

The creak of the door announced his presence. With a formal apology, he recalled how his teachers were intent on swarming him with catch up work that he would inevitably never complete. Dismissing it all & moving along with the subject, Akechi got straight to the point:

“ What was it you wished to speak to me about? ”, he asked.

“ I believe I have ascertained the identities of the Phantom Thieves, ” was the only reply she gave.

Looking astounded, he shifted his glove via force of habit & looked directly at her.

“ That’s quite the bold claim, ” he returned to a neutral expression as the mask of the Detective Prince slipped back on, “ Do you have any evidence? ”.

Recalling the story to the best of her ability was tedious. From the suspicious behaviour Yusuke had been demonstrating to the video evidence taken from her phone. Throughout the entire story, he maintained a neutral expression so she was never quite sure what to think.

“ Usually, I would disregard such stories as a strange dream or a vision you had & declare your footage as edited. However, I have... also had an encounter in this strange phenomena as well. ”

Everything began to make more sense as it was explained. Akechi rattled off about the cognitive world, Palaces, Personas & even how ‘ stealing someone’s heart ’ was possible. He explained that his plan was to lend the Phantom Thieves a hand in their next assignment & catch them in the very act. Specifically, their leader.

“ That explains a lot. Let me help you. I have a Persona as well & I can fight in that other world. I want to bring the Phantom Thieves to justice. They killed Okumura & many others if they are the ones behind the mental shutdowns. Tampering with the heart of another is wrong... ”

“... Alright. I suppose it will make things easier if it is the two of us. I hope you are a very good actor,” Akechi extended a reluctant hand for her to shake. His gaze was calculated, cold. Much different from his tone of voice. However, she took his hand & shook it.

With that, a contract was signed. Both herself & the detective would bring about the end of the Phantom Thieves.

Word Count: 1.9k

Publish Date: 27.09.20

#{ crow }#{ you don’t know how much i loved this request }#{ specific requests are always the best ones because you know they care }#{ turns out i’m actually an akechi stan in disguise }#{ i hand out akechi content like i hand out drugs }#goro akechi #akechi x reader #persona 5 royal #persona 5 royal x reader #persona 5 x reader #persona 5 imagines

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