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elvisabutler · 2 years

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jealousy

summary: you know better than to talk to other guys sometimes in elvis's ear shot. elvis reminds you of why. fandom: austin butler | elvis ( 2022 ) | elvis presley pairing: austin butler elvis x female reader rating: m. word count: 2100 warnings: throat fucking. possessiveness. big daddy elvis ( so '74 to '77 timeframe ). mildly dubious consent. elvis's paranoia. elvis's prescription drug use. daddy kink, because elvis does actually refer to himself as daddy in this. gratuitous use of nicknames ( lil one, baby, honey, darlin', the whole nine yards ). mild hint of face fucking. kind of faintly almost d/s element but not quite. oral ( m receiving, f implied/referenced ) author's note: welcome to day 29 for kinktober, throat fucking with austin!elvis. okay so everyone needs to thank @butlersxbirdy for this one since at the time she and I literally were losing it over big daddy elvis. we still are, but it was basically hey which version of austin elvis should i do, and she was like big daddy without missing a beat. i'll have a 68 special version out possibly tonight or tomorrow but this one got top billing because i wanted to. but basically everyone else gives you soft big daddy, i'll give ya some fucked up big daddy. ( i'm going to give y'all a very very soft big daddy for the holiday season, don't worry. ) imagine whoever, this is supposed to be austin elvis but timeline i picked makes it tricky y'all know my particular drill.

Elvis is possessive, a fact that everyone who ever spends longer than two minutes with the man and has him like them is vividly aware of. You are Elvis's or you are not, there is that strict dichotomy that very few if any people break- and you are not one of those people. Priscilla, when you've interacted with her during handoffs for Lisa tells you it didn't used to be this bad, that yes, he could sleep around but she couldn't and that her finding her way into his former karate instructors bed after she left him made him so angry he was almost unrecognizable, but she figured it was fine and would settle down. Then she heard the stories from Linda and now you and- well she likes to pretend you'll calm him down. Not fix him exactly but you've already mildly tempered his pill usage and have him actually eating healthy despite being on the road. Maybe third time's the charm?

Except- here is the inherent problem, you're younger than him, not hard seeing as he's around his 40s but you crave attention in a way that he doesn't always provide. You wouldn't say he disregards the fact that you could leave- oh far from it- his worship of you legendary to all members of the Memphis Mafia and anyone who's had any sort of contact with Elvis as far as touring or recording goes. But sometimes he forgets- sometimes in the haze of his pills and every other thing he forgets that you can run free, you can easily run away from him and never look back- he's spoiled you with enough clothes that even if you had no marketable skills to speak of you could handle yourself on selling his trinkets alone.

You sometimes flirt as easy as breathing, a quality that Elvis will swear up and down is one of his favorite about you- you're pure, baby but Lord have mercy, the things your eyelashes fluttering can do to a man he had once said after you had told him about your sexual history. You flirt and flirt and boy- men- have a tendency to fall for it, tend to become wrapped around your finger in ways that would make your Mama blush. It gives you a rush of power, reminds you that even if Elvis is ignoring you for the fourth day and night in a row that you're attractive, you're the sort of woman men want and it gives you a little pep. But you know as well as anyone that you can't let Elvis hear or see you do what you do when you flirt though so you always make sure it's done out of his earshot, his eyesight and while he's preoccupied.

At least that's usually what you do, it's the fifth day and while you don't mind Elvis leaving you alone for a bit, for a day or two when it starts inching toward a week you can't help but feel bitter and angry. It's that feeling that leads you to where you are, your hand on some guy's- you think his name is Jeff- arm giggling at something that is not even remotely funny but you know how to charm a man. You're wrapped up in trying to make sure he's smiling that you don't hear the telltale sound of Elvis's buckle clanging as he walks up to see what you're doing. You don't notice how your conversation partner freezes as his eyes look behind you. You don't notice the scent of Elvis freshly showered until you feel his heat up against you, until you feel his breath against your neck and until you feel the growl emanate from his deep in his chest. You freeze after that.

"Darlin'." He says, his tone deathly calm. "Who's this? A friend?"

You open your mouth to say something before Jeff ends up muttering something about needing to head off but it was so nice to meet you and you turn to face Elvis a snarl forming before you can even stop it.

"Oh now you want to pay attention to me." You move to make sure Elvis doesn't try and grab for you. "Find someone else and you appear out of thin air."

Elvis's eyes narrow and darken making you very quickly realize you might have messed up. They're not as clear as they have been in the past weeks which means that just maybe he's not all there. That you've stepped into a minefield that he'll take you out of, just not right this moment. You move to grab his arm before he yanks it out of your reach. "Oh no, honey, you know better. I was- Come with me to our room, baby. Think I need to talk to you. Remind you of some things." He turns from you with a growl that has arousal curling low in your abdomen and has you traling after him in a way that sometimes embarrasses you with how eager you are to do it, but you can't stop yourself from doing it nonetheless. The walk and elevator ride up to where he's staying and where you should be staying is a silent one, punctuated only with Elvis grumbling something to himself and your heaving breaths the more you think about what Elvis is planning on doing to you. You enter the room and in an instant find yourself crowded against the wall, Elvis using his both his weight and his arms to make sure you're not moving any time soon. You open your mouth to talk before Elvis shakes his head and cuts you off.

"Ya know how jealous I get lil one. Know how I damn well wanna kill men when they're lookin at you as you're cumming just from me brushin' against ya. And yet ya let one of them think he could have ya." His hand moves to your shoulder and makes a movement like he wants to force you to the ground but he holds off for at least the moment. "Got me so goddamn riled up and jealous, baby. Got your Big Daddy angry. You wanna know what I do when I'm this angry with ya? What I've always wanted t' do when you get me this angry?"

You look at him in what you like to think is an attempt to look innocent, an attempt to charm him with those eyelashes you know he can barely resist only to see the look in his eyes, see the look of barely restrained anger written all over his face and realize that it won't work. The words you had meant to say die on your lips, swallowed in the guip you take as you nod.

"On your knees." He commands and leaves absolutely no room for questioning, his hand remaining on your shoulder in case you need some help getting down. "And deal with my pants while you're at it."

You comply, falling to your knees quicker than you ever thought possible, your hands working at his belt buckle and at the button and zipper of his pants, your hands shaking just a tad as you pull them down. He hadn't asked to have his boxers taken off so you left them, not that it did much to conceal what was happening underneath, how he seemed to be getting harder by the moment.

His hand that was on her shoulder moves to the back of your head, his ring covered hands moving to grip your hair in any way he could. "Little boys wouldn't know what to do with ya. Wouldn't treat ya like I do. Wouldn't have you coming nearly as hard as ya do with me." You shift a little, trying to produce some form of friction between your legs. You're so focused on that task that you don't notice how Elvis's eyes zero in on the motion. All you actually notice is how he ends up letting out a laugh that sounds downright evil. It sounds like that young boy who sang that he was evil and you shiver. "I'm gonna make sure you can't fuckin' talk to them for a week. Gonna wreck your throat so that all you can do is nod for yes daddy." He pauses and growls. "Bet you're gonna cum right now. Bet if I touched you right this second you'd make a mess of the goddamn carpet."

Leaning forward, you start to nuzzle at his cock through his briefs and realize that you can't feel any shame about it. You don't feel any shame about it, too busy trying to calm Elvis down and too busy remembering just why as much as you might want to stray from him when he wanders just a bit- you don't. "Daddy, I would. I would make a mess, but please daddy, you can touch me I want you to touch me."

Elvis yanks at your hair and thus you back a little roughly and you hiss. "No nuzzlin'. This ain't you getting a treat. This is you being reminded who you belong to." His tone is shifting into something that almost sounds like a growl. "Whose thick thighs you cum on. Whose cock you love having in that pretty pussy and mouth. Whose is it, darlin'?"

"Yours." You whine, pulling down his underwear without him actually asking to. "Your thighs, your cock."

His lips curl into a smirk as he uses the grip on your hair to force your face into his crotch. You have the foresight to open your mouth but even so you end up choking a little around his cock. He pauses when he realizes you're struggling, not wanting to hurt you exactly. You grip his thigh as an okay and he continues to push his cock further into your mouth until it's tickling the back of your throat. You swallow involuntarily and Elvis groans, low and in a way you want to hear over and over again. He starts to move, using his grip on your hair to control how quickly he's fucking your mouth, how deep his cock is reaching. You gag a little even as you try and relax just from the sheer force of his cock hitting your throat.

"Swallow, baby, do it again." He murmurs, trying to feel your throat start to constrict around his tip. "Fuckin' love this mouth. Most perfect goddamn mouth. Never gonna let it go. Never gonna let those boys take you from me. I'll shoot 'em before they do. Might not look like 'em anymore but they couldn't handle my girl."

You whimper at the words, your eyes starting to roll in the back of your head as you rut against the floor, wanting to touch yourself but resisting the urge. Elvis is still controlling the pace but you can feel how he's starting to struggle to keep up, his movements becoming a little less controlled, a little less consistent. You help out, making sure your mouth stays on him, that his cock still is hitting the back of your throat until you taste the saltiness of his cum and feel the warmth of it filling your mouth. You swallow, struggling just a little but Elvis doesn't let up, doesn't let you off until he's finished and you've swallowed as much as you can. He finally lets go of your hair and you lean back, breathing heavily, trying to ignore the throbbing of your clit and the mild burn you still feel in your throat.

"Wasn't flirting." You force out, your voice sounding like you had every sore throat known to man at once. You try and swallow thinking it will help before realizing it doesn't. "Want to cum, please."

His eyes are lidded when he looks at you, looking almost like he might want to fall asleep on you before he hums, holding out his hand to you. "Up on the bed. No talking till you come. Wanna hear you scream my name with my face in your pussy."

You take his hand, using the leverage to pull yourself up and frown. "I don't think I can scream. Won't make the noise."

He pulls you close and pulls you into a kiss. "You will. Then you can lose your voice. Then we can both know I fucked that throat of yours completely raw."

If you raise an eyebrow in a challenge, that's your business. And if after that eyebrow you don't speak for another week because you practically croak when you try? Well. That's yours and his business.

#austin butler elvis x you #austin butler elvis x reader #austin butler elvis #austin elvis #austin elvis x reader #austin elvis x you #austin butler elvis x y/n #austin elvis x y/n #austin butler #austin butler elvis smut #austin elvis smut #ally's kinktober 2022 #kinktober 2022 #ally writes #think i did all the tags?

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pokememes · 1 month

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I have thoughts on ttpd

And I don’t know where else to share them without my criticisms and qualms being written off as blind hatred so here goes

Quantity over quality was definitely the motto with this one. She said at one of the eras shows that this album was when she needed writing more than ever. That doesn’t however, mean that everything she wrote needed to be on this album. Part of what makes an album good is an artists ability to edit their songs into a cohesive work.

Going off of that last point: I blame the vault tracks. Swift and her team saw how much people loved the vault tracks and went overboard with the concept of “give the people more.” The vault tracks worked so well because they felt like a bonus. When the whole album feels like “vault tracks” it loses some of the allure.

The concept is pretty weak overall. The aesthetic that was used to market the album only fits about half of the songs. I was hoping for literary references beyond just name dropping various poets and artists but so far Cassandra is the closest that I can recall that actually references poetry. I’m sure there’s some connections I’m missing so please enlighten me, (my academic background is in art history, not literature).

I feel like conceptually there are at least two albums here. The first is the actual ttpd concept of poetic sad songs, and then there’s a second set of songs that feel much more modern and feel like they belong on a different album (Florida!!!, down bad, imgonnagetyouback, etc.). I wish she would’ve taken the double album concept all the way and grouped the songs into more cohesive narratives.

Imgonnagetyouback is the exact same idea as get him back! by Olivia Rodrigo. I just feel like there’s some irony there because didn’t Taylor sue Olivia for something similar (I don’t know the ins and outs of that whole situation so forgive me if I’m missing some nuance)? Not that two people can’t write about the same thing but something about these two songs in particular seems too similar. They don’t sound the same but specifically the lines “key his car… make him lunch” in Rodrigo’s and “be your wife … smash up your bike” in Swift’s are the exact same “domestic tasks/destroy vehicle” dichotomy. Idk man something isn’t quite right about the whole thing to me.

A lot of the lyrics do not fit the melodies AT ALL. so many lines feel oddly paced, either stretched out where they shouldn’t be or too many words crammed in. The melody should fit the lyrics and it’s just not happening in this album as a whole. So many of the lyrics are just too wordy and awkward. Poetry doesn’t need to be long to be good.

Some of the lyrics are just so bad that they take me out of the song. I’m sure anyone that’s read this far can think of a few instances that made them pause. Hearing the words “finance guy” in a song was absolutely jarring.

Overall I just feel like it’s a poor representation of her abilities. She’s shown that she can write better. Her other albums were better sonically. There’s just nothing about this that is phenomenal. Very few memorable songs. No standout radio hits. It’s not the worst album ever made but it’s just so mediocre.

This album was made for a specific type of fan; someone who is up to date on her personal life and will listen to find Easter eggs, someone who will buy all of the vinyls just to complete their collection, someone who will love these songs just because they are Taylor Swift songs. I think every fan can find a few songs they like but I’d be shocked if anyone could genuinely say that they enjoy every song on this album, or that they think this album is one of Taylor’s better releases.

#ttpd #taylor swift #the tortured poets department #criticism and thoughts #media criticism

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jeannereames · 3 months

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Hello! Dropping by to say that I’ve been loving how much attention DwtL has been getting and I’m devouring the new Cambridge Companion edition on ATG lol. Super interesting stuff, and it’s explained in a way that makes sense to someone like me who has no official humanities research background—and thank you for always entertaining our questions :)

A little unrelated to ATG, and more so an overall question. Something that has always intrigued me was the dichotomy between revered goddesses in Ancient Greek religious practices, and the way the society treated its own women. (Athena = goddess of intelligence, among others = super derogatory attitudes toward women’s intellectual capacity?) Not limited to Greece only, of course: so many ancient cultures worshipped female deities, but suppressed their own women. I’m wondering if you had any theories for why this phenomenon persisted, because it’s been something I was mystified by for a while now.

First, thanks. I'm glad that more people seem to be discovering the novels, and apparently liking them well enough. And YES, the Companion is a great new addition. I'm especially pleased that Cambridge decided to price it such that more people can actually afford to buy it, besides academic libraries. That was one big problem with the prior one (2003) from Brill.

Down the decades (centuries) a lot of folks have asked your question! It’s one reason I point out that the status of goddesses (and heroines) shouldn’t be taken as indicative of the actual power or even agency of women in ancient Greece—although that also varied from place to place.

Time for my periodic reminder: ancient Greece wasn’t a single country. It was a series of independent city-states. Each of those belonged to one of three major (and a couple minor) linguistic dialects with their own unique social and religious traditions.

E.g., there’s not really such a thing as “ancient Greece.” That was a post-Persian War construct that owed more to propaganda than reality.* “The Greeks” fought each other more than they fought anybody else until quite late.

It’s very easy, especially at an intro-level, to accidentally conflate Athens with ancient Greece. Partly, it’s an evidence problem. Most of our evidence about ancient Greece comes from ancient Athens.

When it comes to women, this results in a particularly negative picture of female agency in pre-Hellenistic/pre-Roman Greece. Women in Athens were particularly disempowered, both (te) legally and (kai) actually. Let me explain that last.

Legal power = what a society ostensibly allows

Agency = what actually prevails, positively or negatively, in contrast to actual power

It’s important to recognize this distinction. Down the millennia, women have got rather good at circumventing legal restrictions via “subversive” power. We all know this. It’s why someone like Olympias got slammed by the likes of Plutarch. She didn’t “know her place.” Never mind that her legal “place” in Epiros versus Macedon versus various southern Greek city-states varied. Women in ancient Greece often found ways to exercise power outside legal bounds. Rather than “illegal,” we should refer to this as “alegal.”

Yet supposed legal power can be deceptive the other way too: it my imply more power than women actually have…just ask any rape survivor who has to testify in court in the face her reputation being smeared by the defense.

So, all that laid out as a basis, let’s look at mortal women vs. immortals.

Next point of definition: immortals are immortals not because they’re “good” or should be imitated but because 1) they don’t die (although some can be killed), and 2) they’re more powerful than mortals. They don’t play by the same rules and aren’t held to the same standards of “proper” behavior. Afterall, Zeus married two of his own sisters (Demeter, then Hera).

Religious festivals were also known for allowing “transgressive” behavior normally restricted in regular/normal/profane time. So, for instance, during the annual Thesmophoria, married women left their families to camp out together and form their own “city-state,” even electing temporary magistrates to run this 3-day city-of-women within the larger polis. Young girls on the cusp of their periods in Attika went camping to play the bear for Artemis at Brauron (and apparently other places). Etc.

Religious festival served an important function in ancient Greece, providing much-needed interruptions to the drudgery of daily life. In antiquity, relatively few cultures had regular “breaks” like weekends. Rather, religious festivals provided this function; these might range from a half-day break to something a week long or more. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that divine behavior was considered exceptional. The sacred (numinous) was sharply divided from the profane (normal).

Additionally, it’s no surprise if farming societies, or any society with a strong connection to the earth, should develop powerful goddesses. There are, of course, male fertility deities, but Mother Nature/Mother Earth is nearly universal. The only religion I can think of where the earth is male and the sky is female is ancient Egypt. (Recall Isis’s starry robe!) There are probably more, but it’s not exactly typical.

I’m not getting into the much-fraught debate about why women’s power in most historical societies has been less than men’s. Theories breed like hydra heads. But it is pretty well recognized that in societies where women had some control over their fertility (when to have babies, and how many), as well as independent control over their finances, their social status was higher. Beyond that, the best we can say is that which societies developed higher status for women depended on a constellation of factors.

Ironically—and perhaps counterintuitively—these factors didn’t involve the relative importance of female deities. Perhaps for reasons outlined above. Not all societies saw their divinities as living in ways mortals should imitate.

In her groundbreaking Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves—one of the first books to really look at the role of women in ancient Greece—Sarah Pomeroy herself noted the problem with the status of goddesses versus the status of flesh-and-blood women. Discussion of women in ancient Greece has grown more nuanced since. For a great little overview, let me recommend Lin Foxhall’s Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity (2013). I love this book because it looks at more than just texts (which is Pomeroy’s more traditional, Classical approach). Foxhall uses a lot of archaeology, which, when it comes to women (and slaves, for that matter) really fleshes out our perspectives. There’s also the more recent Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World (Allison Surtees, Jennifer Dyer eds., 2020). It’s one of those great “collections” where you get the advantage of multiple voices contributing. It’s more about gender variance than women, but I quite like it. Last, let me also recommend Helen Morales’ Antigone Rising, which looks at Classical myth today, or reception studies. Morales is one of those Classicists who (like me) thinks it important to engage with the wider public, but she’s rather more prominent and respected. 😉

So, there’s some good, reliable literature to get you off the ground too, most intended for a non-specialist audience. (I’d tackle the first two and last before trying the collection, which is more specialized with some linguistic discussions, etc.)

——-

* Even in the Greco-Persian Wars, more Greek city-states didn’t fight the Persians than did!

#asks #Greek women vs Greek goddesses #women in ancient Greece #why is the status of Greek women so low when they also worshiped goddesses?#ancient Greece #Classics #religion and the status of women

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alannacouture · 1 year

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Sigh. Okay, look, you wanna have an Alicent Hightower Appreciation Week, fine, go nuts. But you can’t talk about Alicent without mentioning the fact she’s a big ol’ hypocrite. Alicent’s entire personality the last few episodes revolves almost entirely around the fact that she is an extremely devout, religious woman (playing into the Madonna/Whore dichotomy between Alicent & Rhaenyra). But Alicent uses her body to get information. She might not like it, it might make her uncomfortable, but she still freely & of her on volition uses herself in order to get info from Littlefinger 2.0 (or Larys Strong, feel free to decide how you refer to him, because I literally had to look him up since I couldn’t remember his name). Now you might argue, “She’s just showing him her feet! He has a creepy foot fetish!”. This is true. However, you don’t get to preach at others & act all holy while using your body as payment for information. (And I want it made very clear I don’t have a problem with women who do this, both in the show & irl, as long as it’s consensual. In the HOTD/GOT universe, women had few options to make their own money. You either had to get married, so you had access to the money your husband was willing to give you, or be clever enough to use yourself as collateral for future earnings or information you could trade for better circumstances. We are introduced to many women who started as prostitutes, but made themselves invaluable to important people, therefore changing how they were able to survive. There is nothing shameful about this & these women should, frankly, be applauded for figuring out secrets were a more valuable currency than sex.) But Alicent’s ‘do as I say, not as I do’ behavior is straight up hypocrisy. Either you’re a devout woman who follows all the tenets of your star faith or you embrace the fact you’re willing to do whatever is necessary to get the information you need. But you don’t get to preach at others and pretend you’re somehow better than them when you’re not an actual follower of your faith. Alicent is a hypocrite. She’s lots of other things too, & I get why people are celebrating her, but you can’t ignore her hypocrisy while touting what a wonderful woman she is. It’s a lie. She’s a complex character with many facets, one of which is her hypocrisy. So just embrace it, Alicent fans! Embrace all of the complicated, messy aspects of an interesting character. Don’t ignore the parts of Alicent that make her such an fascinating player in the game.

#house of the dragon #house of the dragon text #hotd #hotd text #alicent hightower #queen alicent #house hightower #we light the way #sorry about this next tag #anti alicent hightower

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understandingbimbos · 1 year

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I was going to wait to expand my thoughts on that last post but now I'm motivated, let's talk about disgust.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a week ago, who's an outsider to all this bimbo fetish stuff, and they said this, which struck a chord with me immediately.

As much commentary there is about unrealistic and artificial beauty standards being pushed and average women (average people, really) being made to feel insecure, the reality is that most people will prefer "natural" beauty and what they consider sincere -- real. It's an extension of the Madonna-whore complex and goes back what I said about respectability. The ideal woman, to a lot of men, is a woman who would make a good wife and homemaker. In the long-term they want a woman who's proper, that they can view as a human being. This is not a new idea, not remotely. Think of Super Freak,

She's a very kinky girl The kind you don't take home to mother

Legally Blonde, The Girl Can't Help It. There's the woman you (men) see as a sex object and the woman you (men) see as a partner. Take Legally Blonde for example, Elle Woods is far from a bimbo but she's treated as one because she doesn't have the "right" look or attitude for a political career. Despite being smart, capable, and not slutty at all she's still too feminine to be taken seriously by Warner, she's an embarrassment.

In The Girl Can't Help It (1956) you have an inversion of that. Jerri Jordan is a Madonna (loves cooking, cleaning, wants to have several children) but her gangster boyfriend wants her to act like the whore, which she very much looks like, being played by Jayne Mansfield.

And there's so many more examples I can bring up (like Drake's entire career), but I think I've got my point across. Or have I? My point is that, historically, men don't really like women who look or act sexy. Or at least don't respect them. And part of that is tied to the look. It's actually not the norm or even that popular to like women who are very "done-up" and fake-looking, or women who are sexy of their own volition, despite what porn has told you. I CONSTANTLY see men talk about pornstars have "ruined" themselves by getting plastic surgery. But it's usually the "ruination" that attracted me to that pornstar, model, actress, or whatever in the first place.

There's also the botched surgery subreddit. On more than one occasion I've seen women I follow because I think they're very hot reposted there to be gawked at and called gross, sad, and disgusting by thousands of men and women. Same pattern on Twitter. A repost of a sex worker I follow will go viral with a caption like "surgeries are getting out of hand." Millions of disgusted gawkers and commentators.

Personally, I never got the memo. And my admitted unasthamed attraction to these women who look and act the whore was seen by my peers as an indication of desperation rather than a preference or I guess more accurately, a fetish.

Some people think bimbos should be cute or traditionally attractive, I don't. I think it's hot when a woman acts obnoxious and looks sloppy and ridiculous, like a parody of a woman. Or a bastardization of the human form itself.

I knew there was a disconnect when the last season of a Euphoria aired and people were mocking Chloe Cherry for her lips and saying she looked weird while referring to Sydney Sweeney as a bimbo.

To me, the bimbo exists in obscenity. She openly expresses her own sexuality, primps and preens herself to a vulgar degree, and is dumb as fuck. It's like if you took the stereotypical whore, of the Madonna-whore dichotomy, and turned her up to the nth degree. Like a whore monster. Not only is she the opposite of what men respect, to the point she becomes unattractive to most, but also an affront to public decency. And in that way, like my friend said, the performance of femininity becomes masculine. In expressing what she does the way she does the bimbo becomes both the embodiment and antithesis of male desire. For most men she's just... too much. Too dumb, too sexy, too fake, too confident, too over-the-top.

As @severedsheriff put it, the attraction is the taboo. The appeal can be found in the lack of appeal. I suppose a woman being dumb, plastic, and provocative is a bit more accepted now than it was in the early 2000s, but just barely.

#understandingbimbos #b1mb0 #bimboification #bimboization #bimboism #bimbohood #jayne mansfield #the girl can't help it #legally blonde #reese witherspoon #elle woods #jerri jordan #chloe cherry #sydney sweeney #euphoria #madonna-whore

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mcl38 · 6 months

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why did i think u were british this whole time. i just now noticed the romanian and i have been following u for an embarrassingly long time. omg i'm so sorry.

i was going to ask u if the UK is really this puritanical bc like. i was raised by some right-wingers who taught me that if i even danced with someone i was not married to, i would spend eternity burning in hell, and i still couldn't rlly bring myself to care abt a guy in his mid-20s making sex jokes enough to be offended abt it. but i mean u are not british so that doesn't matter now.

this also begs the question why are ppl getting moral/life advice from multimillionaires. like if lando gets a STD, he just goes and gets treatment. if an american gets a STD, they go bankrupt. u rlly have to put how promiscuous u can be in perspective of ur circumstances unless u want gangrenous genitals from chlamydia. also like if ur george russell or lance stroll or max verstappen or— and u physically harm someone, all u have to do is issue an apology. if ur quite literally a normal person, ur going to jail for that shit like u cannot behave like a multimillionaire under any circumstances unless u are also a multimillionaire bc one of three things will happen: 1) jail, 2) bankruptcy, 3) the end.

sorry for making u read my incoherent thoughts again but i know u appreciate a good landogate. i just don't really get this one. like wow local man in his twenties cracks nsfw jokes w his friends and experiences horniness. did these people never become traumatized by omegle. bc this isn't abnormal behavior for a man in his 20s spotted in the wild online. it's actually quite tame.

hi anon! so like first off ur not entirely wrong abt the british thing - i am romanian but ive been living in the uk for like 4 years now, u mightve seen a reference to that and assumed i was english. but bc ive been living there for a while i can quite confidently say that no, english people are not generally puritanical at all, much less than in america anyways. maybe theres more value put on decorum and politeness but i generally associate religiously-fuelled prudishness with american protestantism lmao. anyways

my thing is ive just come back from a vacation where i had no roaming so i genuinely have no idea whether ive missed smth major lmao. from what i could tell the thing ur talking abt is lando making dirty jokes on stream and ppl allegedly getting upset at that (??) which unless thats all been happening on twitter and i just havent seen it bc i deleted the app (god bless) (likely), the whole 'drama' seems to stem from one clickbait article by a clickbait sports news publication that seems to b based in india rather than the uk. was this abt the way landos (british) friends responded to him on stream? bc from what i could tell they were also participating in the moaning and calling themselves daddy activities. otherwise like what predominantly british public did u see upset? its quite odd as a thing to happen

not saying this isnt a pattern w lando tho - back in 2020 idk if u were around but if u were, u should rmbr how dire the situation was. basically anyone who'd make a sex joke around lando was essentially corrupting god's most darlingest little baby boy, how dare they. theres a certain amount of infantilisation around lando that thank god isnt happening as much anymore but maybe its reared its ugly head again. or, if ppl r getting mad at him for Corrupting His Audience (if theyre getting mad at all - again ive only seen ppl saying it was totally fine and funny), then this just represents his full flip into the whore part of the madonna whore dichotomy. the same reason miley cyrus twerking at the 2013 vmas wouldve been so much more scandalous than another female singer that hadnt previously had a child-friendly teen star image.

i dont rly know how to address the whole life advice paragraph - i rly dont think lando talking abt a girl character in fortnite shooting cream out of her palms or propellers or smth is exactly life advice. lando specifically has quite a complicated relationship w his position as a role model and he often worries abt the 'advice' he gives ppl - smth thats also like, true, hes a v sheltered 23 year old who lacks a lot of normal life experiences bc his professional career basically started around age 7. idrk what to say abt the whole std thing bc like not only have i not heard lando talk actual details abt his potential promiscuity beyond a couple vague jokes, but also bc ive never had to think abt going into debt over chlamydia doamne pazeste. also like idk if i push someone nothing happens but if max verstappen does it on an international broadcast he has to do community service for it so 🤷🏻‍♀️ u win some u lose some. not rly sure of the point u wanted to make if im totally frank lol

tldr like yeah f1 drivers r mainly irresponsible athletes in an extreme sport and u shouldnt model ur life after them. but also op ur life sounds terrifying like 'jail / bankrupcy / the end' sounds like either the way US capitalism works (big up the prison industrial complex) or oscar wilde's new years resolutions in january 1895 lmao

#wondering abt 'again'? is this a recurring visitor #if so welcome back #r u the esteban / pierre anons from a couple days ago #or are you the oscar stan anon come back from the war?? if so missed u #anon #ask #lando #(vaguely)

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quibliography · 8 months

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Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans

Synopsis: This horror fantasy graphic novel series is about a group of friends who are drawn back into a world they thought they had finally escaped as teenagers. Ash, Angela, Isabelle, Matt, and Chuck thought they had left the world of Die behind when they reappeared back in the real world years after mysteriously disappearing into a role-playing game on Ash's 16th birthday, a game designed by Solomon. But 'Sol', whom they had left behind in Die twenty five years ago, seems unable to let them leave.

My Quibs: I'm not really a hit-the-ground-running kind of reader (probably because I'm very easily disoriented). But Gillen definitely throws you in head first: no instructions, no sympathy. And the story will take off without you. Do you know anything about TTRPG? No? Too bad. (Although also, why are you even here in the first place. This is your own fault.) But the premise aside, Gillen will throw all these references around with no subtext to help. It's almost like reading in another language. Have you read Charlotte Bronte? HG Wells? Have you seen LOTR? Game of Thrones? Do you know about Cleopatra's reign? Thankfully, I am just nerdy enough to keep up, and what was actually difficult for me was to keep up with were the five(six?) main protagonists. I've always had trouble juggling a big handful of story lines. Especially when they don't share much thread except for their origins. But at least each character has specific motivations and history that, if I distill down to its core, is enough for us to relate to: Matt has grief, Angela has regret, Ash has shame, etc. And we get to see them process it whether by force or by choice as teenagers and adults. It's an interesting dichotomy of human behavior but drenched in depressing horror, real and existential. I mean, the characters even ask of themselves "Do we treat this like it's real or fantasy?". As a reader, do we embrace all their twisted demons into ourselves or keep it at the distance of a page. Gillen takes on so much and personally I think four books is not enough to take on and resolve six heavy topics adequately. It slammed me into the ground, dragged me through the worst of ourselves, and flung me back out into the real world. I might need twenty years myself before I go back in.

Should you read it? If you like ultra nerdy content and tabletop role-playing games.

Similar reads? A graphic novel about TTRPG? Is there another one out there?

(Spoiler Alert!) Gillen's take that we are all part of Die seemed a little too The Most Final Epic-est of Destiny Reveals and as much as I love ouroboros-y stories, in this case based on the story that Gillen had been telling, the fact that "it is what it is and will always be" seemed doubling down on the depressive aspect and a cop out. I mean, the fact that we, each, have so many stories in which we live and die, succeed and fail, shows there is will, in a way sort of, and we are not chained to any specific story line. *I just had a realization. I recently finished Bioshock Infinite (I know, waaay late to the game) and is Gillen trying to say something like Levine? Elizabeth also tells Booker something similar. "Constants and variables. Sometimes something's different, yet the same." Does Sol always gift himself the dice every time? Is there no way to end the cycle? Eh, if I were to choose then, Bioshock tells a much better story. Also, has it actually ended? The sacrifice of Chuck, giving Sol his place in the world, either read like the smallest hook into a spinoff/sequel or just a tongue-in-cheek farewell to his character.

What did you think of Die?

#die #kieron gillen #fantasy heartbreaker #split the party #the great game #bleed

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distraughtmary · 1 year

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Your Kisses Taste Like Sorrow. Chapter 2

‘Let me see him,’ Adrian demanded from his father for the fifth time.

They were in Francis Railen’s office, a high-ceilinged room with a full view of the city. Or so one might think because the office was actually underground, but the elevator, not unlike the fancy one Adrian had used to reach the staircase leading to the roof, had a confusing movement for a reason. Many people were hungry for Railen’s blood, and assassination attempts had been made on him, sometimes by people inside the company, so more effective measured had been implemented to counter them. While it pained Adrian that he could lose his father any moment (though Francis was more than confident that his creation would put him back on track), he perfectly understood why the population craved for his dead body. Francis Railen might be a good father, but a good person he was not, and the dichotomy was killing Adrian. And in the ongoing situation he doubted even the good father part.

Francis did not say anything and kept himself busy at his table with multiple hologram laptops and a long screen hovering above it. However, Adrian knew that his father was only pretending to be working, and the trick was not going to land. Francis had a brain-implanted chip via which he could send important instructions and receive feedback. It was the safest route that could not be intercepted by even the most seasoned hackers. Adrian had such a chip as well, but he never used it, although he suspected that it was to blame for his father’s quick detection abilities. He wanted to sympathize with his father’s protectiveness, but he also wanted a bit of freedom, too.

‘I know you aren’t working. Your son is not an idiot,’ Adrian taunted his father.

Francis inhaled deeply and stood. He was a handsome man: well-built, a fair quiff on his head with no signs of balding owning to permanent hair implants, a young-looking face that would make one unfamiliar with the Railen family mistake him for Adrian’s older brother. Unfortunately, everyone in the state was aware of who he was, and Adrian had never experienced a cute moment of confusion. There had never been any cute moments, considering who they were.

‘Adrian,’ Francis said while approaching his son. ‘If you’re so perceptive about your poor father, then you should also know that your father needs to think before saying anything in such situations. But first…,’ Francis’s face hardened. ‘Tell me why you still think that my support of you is not genuine.’

The statement was like a slap to Adrian’s face, and he flared up. It was true that there were moments when Adrian thought that his father’s positivity regarding his sexuality was manufactured, and his dismissal of Scott did not assuage Adrian’s suspicions. Neither had the ruin of Adrian’s previous romances. Still, Adrian remained silent.

‘I don’t know what to do or say to assure you that I am fully on your side,’ Francis continued. ‘You know that I’ve been involved with a guy. You know I donate to charities, support housing opportunities for malakians. Two of your bodyguard are married, and while the common sense says that they should be separated in the work setting, I let them be because of how close you all are. What more do you need, Adri?’

‘You were involved with a guy during the time you yourself refer to as a “phase I wouldn’t want to return to”. You must understand what that sounds like to me,’ Adrian was more than ready for the conversation. ‘Like you expect me to grow out of it. As for your other ventures, good, but let’s not act like the company doesn’t hurt my people even more than it helps them, and who knows, maybe you’re doing all that specifically to compensate for your shortcomings.’

Francis winced and put a hand under his ear, pensive. Then he looked at his son with some kind of clarity mixed with pity.

‘Okay, I can see that you’ve been building all that frustration up and haven’t been able to release it. Alright, let’s have this conversation,’ Francis started pacing around the room. ‘So… that guy. When I say that I don’t want to return to that time, it doesn’t mean that I regret hooking up with him. It’s just that I was hooking up with everyone, and it wasn’t something I’m proud of. My father, your grandfather, was legitimately ashamed of me. And speaking of him, he was the reason it hadn’t worked out. I was fond of that guy, you know. But my father was conservative as hell, which almost ruined the company, and went against the very foundation of this country. While I miss him, I’m glad that you never got to meet him.’

‘Some say you killed him,’ Adrian said flatly.

‘This is preposterous,’ Francis shook his head.

‘He had more than enough resources to live well into his 100s yet he just dropped dead in his sixties. And I have this feeling that you didn’t kill just to take over the company sooner. I think you killed him for me, and I don’t know to feel about it,’ Adrian confessed uncomfortably.

‘Adrian, I didn’t kill my father,’ Francis’s voice was pure metal. ‘Anyway, no, I don’t believe in growing out of your attractions, but I’m not sure if you’d consider me one of you, malakians, but I’ve been there. I know you find it hard to accept that I’m so open-minded while being filthy rich, but it happens. Unlike other countries, where they genetically engineer perfect corporate heirs, almost like clones, with all the desired features, we conceived you naturally, and we were prepared for anything. Yes, it cost me a lot in the end, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re the best child I could ask for.’

Adrian teared up slightly and wiped out a small tear forming in the corner of his eye.

‘And we have a solution for your situation, too. We can combine your and your partner’s… husband’s semen with a synthetic egg cell, producing a perfectly healthy child. There is absolutely no problem,’ Francis went into a professional mode.

‘The problem is that you don’t want Scott’s semen in the equation,’ Adrian pointed out crudely.

‘He cannot produce any in his… condition,’ Francis deftly dodged the issue.

‘I’ve noticed,’ Adrian deadpanned. ‘But isn’t the point that he’ll be able to do it again after the recovery process?’

‘Yes,’ Francis admitted reticently. ‘It’s the plan, and it’ll take a year for him to stop shooting blanks. Maybe more.’

‘I’m patient,’ Adrian smiled despite himself. ‘Once he fully recovers and re-debuts in the society, I’ll make a marriage proposal to him. I don’t care if your stocks plummet, although we both know they won’t. If anything, it will cause them to skyrocket. Imagine – the first fully functional revived marrying his benefactor’s son. The fact that you fail to see the immediate benefits of this really shows how biased you are.’

If Francis wanted to flinch at that, he managed not to show it and kept his composure. However, the look he gave Adrian was not his favourite. On the contrary.

‘Adrian… As your father, I have the right to be concerned about your life and who you might tie yourself to. I can see the appeal of Scott, but I don’t see how you two will work as a couple in a long term.’

‘You just want to marry me off for political or business reasons, even though all the bachelors my age are unavailable,’ Adrian smirked and raised himself from the most comfortable sofa in the history of humanity. ‘Anyway, let me see Scott, and we can pretend that this embarrassing conversation didn’t happen.’

‘I don’t want to pimp you out if that’s what you’re implying,’ Francis dusted invisible specks off his jacket. ‘I just want you to find someone worthy. And, for your information, the Governor’s son’s come out as… something. He says he’s open to the possibility of dating boys and non-binary people. And his family happens to have a dinner with me later tonight.’

Adrian openly laughed at his father contradicting himself in the same reply, but he was amused at the prospect of Martin being anything but straight. The boy had been a womanizer since his balls had dropped.

‘Very smooth here, Dad. And conveniently ignoring that I do have a worthy boyfriend. Sorry, but I’m not about to be Martin’s gay guru or whatever,’ Adrian made a face.

‘Adri,’ his father said pleadingly. ‘The boy’s been having a hard time. He had a fiancée, and he had to break off the engagement. Many are understandably outraged by that. It’s not about him being a… malakian, but he did have a certain image and important obligations, and now everyone needs time to adjust. Mr. Governor thought that you could help him. You’re still close with his sister, right?’

‘Yes, Beatrice is still my best friend,’ Adrian said coldly, partially because his father was so obsessed with his love life that he tended to forget his friends and partially because Beatrice had not broken the news to him herself.

‘She’ll be there, too. I hope you three will have fun,’ Francis said cheerily without suspecting anything.

‘I’m about to burst from joy,’ Adrian rolled his eyes.

‘As for Scott… He will be released from the examination room tomorrow. So even if you decide not to attend the dinner, it won’t bring his arrival closer,’ Francis acted as if he could read Adrian’s thoughts. Adrian swore very quietly.

‘Care to share why he was taken there so swiftly even though Sal said that nothing was wrong him?’

‘Doctor Salidon did find something that could be a good or a bad thing, but he didn’t want to worry you two. I assure you – it wasn’t your punishment for having sex,’ Francis gave Adrian a smile he did not return.

‘It sure felt like one,’ Adrian hissed through his teeth.

‘And one more thing before I let you go,’ Francis approached his son and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘With two men, it’s obvious that someone has to take… the receiving role.’ Adrian’s face immediately acquired the colour of a beetroot. ‘It’s perfectly fine. I wasn’t disappointed about that. Just about your general lack of discretion.’

Francis winked at Adrian for a good measure, but all Adrian could do was to push his father’s hand off him and dart to the elevator while shouting ‘I hate you’.

***

In the safety of his bedroom, Adrian was lying on his bed covered with baby blue sheets and blanket. He was in a short black crop top that did a poor job of concealing his stomach and pink briefs that highlighted his thighs. While he generally preferred country-coded clothes, sometimes he wanted to feel sexy and free. Adrian was considering attending the dinner in just that. The Governor’s family was like his second one, and no one had ever criticized his outrageous fashion choices. But it seemed to be a formal affair requiring smart clothes, and Adrian cringed at the thought that one day he would inherit the Railen Corporation and be forced to wear the most boring suits for the rest of his life. His father had better create a clone of himself and spare Adrian such a fate.

While lamenting his lot, Adrian instinctively dialled Beatrice on a hologram console. A second later her beauty-masked face appeared on the wide screen.

‘Ri?’ she asked while squinting her eyes.

‘Bice, your brother is WHAT?’ Adrian cut straight to the point.

‘Oh,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t even ask. I learned about that along with everyone else. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Things have been… busy.’

‘He didn’t tell even you? Is he for real?’ Adrian could not believe his ears.

‘I’m livid. He knows my circle, he knows that I’d be totally fine with that, he knows that I’d support him, and yet… I don’t get it,’ Beatrice made a sobbing sound.

‘They say that it’s different when it’s your family member,’ Adrian sat on the bed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘But sometimes it’s the opposite, and your family is so supportive it makes you want to die.’

‘Did you father suggest hiring waiters in thongs and frontless uniforms for the dinner?’ Beatrice giggled.

‘No, but I’d rather he do that than saying bottom rights,’ Adrian’s face flushed.

‘I-,’ Beatrice was speechless for a moment and then broke into a fit of laughter. Someone knocked at the door, called her name, and then entered. It was Martin.

‘Who are you talking to, Bice?’ he asked and then looked at the hologram screen, noticing Adrian in all his unglory. ‘Oh, Adrian.’

Martin went red and hastily left the room. Beatrice recovered from one fit of laughter just to be lost in another.

‘Bice, enough,’ Adrian winced.

‘It’s just so… this is so… funny… and the way Martin ran… he must have… a crush on you,’ almost every other word was followed by a snicker.

Adrian gave Beatrice a meaningful look and adjusted his crop top that was showing a nipple, which might have been the reason for Martin’s fast retreat.

‘I still can’t wrap my head around this. He used to be such a fuckboy, but everyone gave him a pass because he was the governor’s son and wrote his behaviour off as ‘boys will be boys’. And every time I had to break up with a guy because my dad offered him money, he had a nasty habit of flaunting how happy he was with a new girl. Like, maybe it was all for the show because deep inside he was insecure, but it doesn’t make me like him more,’ Adrian mused.

‘I’m with you here, Ri,’ Beatrice reassured him and peeled the mask off her face, exposing her tanned complexion. ‘And I can see what pop’s doing. They couldn’t make a match out of us for obvious reasons, but now he has a chance with you and Martin. Railens are here to stay, but pop’s in power for as long as he has your father’s back. And I think your father’s back’s slowly turning to Katases, no offense.’

‘Dad wanted me and Ryo to be a thing for ages,’ Adrian reminisced. ‘And we were almost one, but then Carl came along, and Scott started his band, and the rest was history.’

‘How’s Scott, by the way?’ Beatrice asked while combing her purple hair. ‘Is he recovering?’

‘Yes,’ Adrian was curt. Beatrice only knew that Scott was sick, but Adrian suspected that the excuse would not hold for long, and he would have to concoct another story. Beatrice was a rare person he wanted to confide in, but his father’s conditions were clear. The story of the accident had been wiped off the face of the earth, and even Scott’s parents had been told been half-truths. He had wanted it that way. Francis’s plan was heinous – if Scott’s recovery succeeded, the story would be available online again as if it had always been there; if it did not… no damage to Railen’s reputation. But his father had promised Scott would make a full recovery, so he did not consider the other scenario.

‘It sucks that he’s bed-ridden and stuff,’ Beatrice made a sad face.

‘Yeah,’ Adrian said without much enthusiasm. Lying to Beatrice sucked. ‘Anyway, my father wants me comfort Martin or something. Is it really that bad?’

‘I’d tell you how exactly he’d want to be comforted, but I know how you feel about Scott,’ Beatrice grinned. ‘But in a nutshell, it’s a disaster. Pop’s ratings are dropping. No one wants Martin’s endorsements anymore. The situation online is a civil war. Also, they ship two of you hard. The AI sector is overflowing with pictures and stories. Saw some of them and had to bleach my eyes. It’s like watching two of my brothers going at it.’

Adrian made a throwing up gesture.

‘Though, granted, it’s not as far-fetched as me and Alice Chashina. There’s some chemistry, I must admit. Even if it’s you hating him, and him showing off his girls around you as a sublime message.’

‘It’s never happening,’ Adrian groaned. ‘I guess I’ll ask my father to do something about it, but maybe he’ll be violently happy since I’m being railed by someone who isn’t Scott in those arts.’

‘I didn’t even tell you who was railing who,’ Beatrice yelped. ‘Admit it, you’ve been searching that up.’

‘Bice,’ Adrian said with a half-smile. ‘Let’s not kid ourselves, okay?’

She finished preening herself and lied down as well, her bodice not leaving much for another’s woman imagination.

‘We’re gonna play games at your fancy room, right? You’re not going to sneak out with a boy and leave me alone and miserable?’ Beatrice asked seriously.

‘I can’t see Scott until tomorrow, and I’m not interested in fornicating with your brother, so yeah. Clarissa will be there. Maybe Lena, too. Since it’s an official dinner, the security will be tight.’

‘My second mothers!’ she exclaimed. ‘Anyway, I really want you to attend it like this,’ she pointed at Adrian’s skimpy outfit. ‘Add some mascara, maybe.’

‘Make-up’s more of Scott’s thing. And he makes it look hot,’ Adrian shook his head. ‘I’ll just end up looking like a clown. But the offer’s tempting.’

‘No one in my family will mind it, that’s for sure,’ Beatrice laughed, and Adrian joined in.

***

Scott was held in a sort of an emergency care room, where multiple scans and tests were being performed on him simultaneously. He could not move, he could not breathe, although breathing was more of a performance in his case. If he did not breathe, it would unnerve Adrian, make him uncomfortable. Perhaps Adrian knew he was being deceived, perhaps he did not care. Scott had to care about too many things not to seem like a corpse, and it was taking a toll on him. Being virtually eviscerated was not so bad.

‘Scott, do you feel anything?’ asked one of the doctors supervising him, Doctor Manny. He liked them more than Salidon, who was also present. Salidon was only attached to the ‘project’ because Scott was intimate with his main patient, and his official task was to track how the said intimacy affected both him and Adrian. So far the answer had been ‘in no way,’ yet they had found something, and he was dying to know what it was. Or he would be if he was not already dead.

‘Nada,’ Scott replied. ‘Don’t I need pills?’

‘That’s the problem, Scott,’ Doctor Manny regarded him with a mix of fear and curiosity. ‘We believe that they won’t work on you anymore.’

Scott winced. First Adrian had told him that they would not have sex anymore. Then the doctors were telling him that the pills wouldn’t work anymore. His love life was utterly obliterated.

‘Why?’ he asked weakly.

‘We’re trying to determine the cause, Scott. All you need to know is that your body keeps rejecting them, and the sensations you acquire are connected to something else. We’ve studied your… liquid. There’s no chance your body managed to absorb the pill’s content,’ Doctor Salidon summarized.

‘But that’s how… it always worked for me?’ Scott was confused. ‘I take the pills, I throw up, I start feeling things. Up until now, it wasn’t an issue.’

‘You’re right, Scott,’ Doctor Manny gave him an unapologetic smile. ‘We also thought that it was normal. But science is malleable and evidence-dependent. As you’re our first breakthrough case, we considered your reactions to the pills a product of your accelerated recovery. Other patients experience nausea, too, but it happens much later for them, and while we don’t want to jump to conclusions here, it’s evident that the subsequent vomiting indicates the end of their sensations. But in your case, the vomiting occurs prior to the return of all sensations. Yet, we wrote off your peculiarities as simply another variation of the norm. However, Mr. Railen allowed us to run some tests on another subject, who shares your predisposition to faster recovery. She had never taken pills before the tests began, and we didn’t have the relevant data. But now we do, and the preliminary conclusion is that… Scott, you’re unique. The problem is… we can’t say for sure if your unique nature will eventually benefit you or serve as a major obstacle to your recovery.’

Scott’s heart fell. Doctor Manny’s explanation was too technical, but he had the gist of it. He also had not missed the mention of another patient like him. Wherever she was, it was not the lab. Regardless, she was only loosely similar to him, as he was ‘unique’. Scott used to be proud of his faster-than-usual recovery. He had thought he was special in a good way. But maybe he had been a failure all along.

‘I still don’t get the part about the sensations,’ Scott said in an annoyed voice. ‘You’re saying that they aren’t caused by the pills. Then what causes them?’

Both doctors sighed.

‘We don’t know,’ confessed Doctor Manny. ‘We have some ideas, but the evidence is flimsy.’

‘I know I’m asking for too much, but can I get at least something here? It’s my body, after all,’ Scott turned to them, his eyes downcast.

‘Fine,’ Salidon relented. ‘So, your case is complicated for many reasons, and that’s why we’re unable to get straight answers. We’ve established that your body has unique reactions, which is one problem. Another problem is that you’re the only subject that’s intimate with a living person.’

Scott could not flush, but he absolutely would.

‘It’s not a problem in a way you might think,’ Salidon quickly reassured him. ‘Manny and I monitor both of you closely, we know that you’re safe, and so on. The real problem is that, again, we have no one to compare you to, and we don’t know whether intimacy with a living person plays a role in your overall recovery. Other patients stick… to themselves. Both parties tend to take pills, regain the sensations, do whatever they have to do, and eject them in a known way. If the pills have no effect on you, than there’s an assumption that a pre-intimacy rush you experience while taking them might be the real reason for your sensations.

‘Um…,’ words got stuck in Scott’s throat. He wanted to cover his face with his hands, but they were still strapped to the bed.

‘In other words, we can only speculate about the causes at this point,’ Doctor Manny gave Salidon a disapproving look. ‘Although doing some tests on Adrian wouldn’t hurt. But Doctor Salidon and his father seem to be against the idea.’

‘I don’t want Adrian to be a guinea pig either,’ Scott shook his head.

‘Still, you should talk to him and ask him to consider the offer,’ Doctor Manny ignored Salidon’s invisible spears thrown their way. ‘It’s for your own good, and I’m sure that Adrian will be willing to help you.’

Scott pondered over the idea and decided that he would talk to Adrian. And if it was true that the pills were useless and that it was something else (hormones?) responsible for his sensations and that something was somehow linked to Adrian, it was only a good thing. Perhaps they would not have to act like chaste maidens around each other.

‘There is also someone we want you to meet,’ Salidon said after clearing his throat. ‘And you can’t tell Adrian about it. In any way. Francis… Mr. Railen will be very upset if you do. But he agreed to the meeting because we need to be honest with you, Scott. You need to see what could await you if your recovery stalls. And you need to see why Mr. Railen has a particular interest in your recovery that isn’t related to the business side.’

As he was saying that, a woman was rolled into the room on a stretcher. She was obviously revived, with pale skin and grey hair. Scott was the only one whose hair colour had been restored. He could not guess her age as death blurred the lines for anyone who was not a child or an elderly person, but she was probably older than him. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing, which took Scott aback.

‘Scott, we’d like you to meet Mrs. Railen,’ Doctor Manny announced, and Scott looked at them, dumbfounded.

***

There were three topics that one should not discuss with Adrian in order not to trigger him. The first one was his previous boyfriends, the second one was his love for a farm boy cosplay, and the third one was his mother. Such were the rules, but for some reason Adrian had ended up discussing every single topic with Scott, which had made him feel special. The boyfriends were a touchy subject because Adrian’s father had forced them to break up with him and even paid them money. The most humiliating fact was that everyone had been aware of the ‘transactions’, but nobody had said anything or supported Adrian. Nobody could have defied Francis Railen.

‘When I was around sixteen, no one dared to approach me,’ Adrian had said, his eyes glassy. ‘And the only boy I could be seen with was Ryoichi Katase. I did like him, but I think that the whole arranged thing didn’t let us become… more, though we both could see that our parents wanted it. Oh, I also could hang out with Martin Santorelli, you know, the Governor’s son, but he’s a jerk and straight.’

Scott hated that he had felt jealous then, as both guys were dreamy and undeniably better matches for Adrian than him. Still, he had found the strength to console Adrian and wiped off his tears.

‘I’ve always dreamt of a countryside life,’ Adrian had remarked once. ‘I hate the city. All the trees and shrubs are fake, everyone keeps android pets instead of real ones, and the air… bleurgh. I used to go to Grandma’s farm every summer, and it was like being on a different planet. I haven’t been to the countryside for years, though. My father is afraid that I’ll meet some farm boy, and we’ll start rolling around in hay stacks. But maybe that’s what life should be about?’

Scott had said nothing and tried imagining ‘rolling around’ in hay with Adrian. He might have had a point. Scott had rewarded Adrian with a kiss and run his fingers against Adrian’s chequered shirt, feeling the smooth skin behind it.

‘My mom died giving birth to me,’ Adrian had confessed during a spontaneous conversation about their families. It had been uncomfortable for them both. ‘And you know what the worst thing about it was? My father had the fucking technology to revive her, and he didn’t. He had a choice, and he blew it. And he never remarried. People say that he loved my mother too much to do that, but I’m not buying it. If he really loved her, he would’ve tried. I know that I’d revive you without a second thought. Not that I want you to die in the first place.’

The conversation had taken place a week before Scott’s accident. Adrian had blamed himself for having jinxed Scott. Scott had been happy that Adrian’s words had held some weight.

All Scott knew was that Adrian was sure of his mother’s death. Adrian had shared with him how much being raised by his father (and an army of nannies) had defined him. And Scott could see how tough Adrian was behind his soft front. But he doubted that all the toughness could save him if he discovered the truth.

Eva Railen suddenly woke up and tried sitting on the stretcher. Scott noticed that there were marks all over the exposed parts of her arms, and he gulped. The revived tended to harm themselves out of despair and unwillingness to continue living, but they could not die for the second time. Only damaging the brain could do the trick, and one revived had shot himself in the face while the entire lab had been watching, including Scott. The image had hunted him.

‘You must be Scott,’ Eva looked at Scott and smiled weakly. ‘How is my baby doing?’

And her eyes were as blue as the sky. Just like Adrian’s.

#your kisses

0 notes

autodialog · 1 year

Text

I never could get the hang of Thursdays

Hey.

So... how've you been?

In the past I would, at this point, put on a show about being abandoned and unloved until everyone dropped what they were doing to tell me that I had some value. But I don't do that anymore.

No?

No. It's infantile. It's manipulative. It's the shit Rush Limbaugh used to pull to get laid. It's also completely against our new principles that we've been practicing.

You're referring to the dichotomy of control, aren't you?

That's one way to look at it. Because we're only supposed to worry about what we actually control, the things that actually depend on us to exist, we are freed from the need for other people to tell us we're good. It's nice to hear, but in some contexts it has no meaning.

Like all the apologies our Mother made us say when were being real shits as kids. We'd be forced to apologize and we'd say we were sorry but we resented it. We didn't mean it.

Exactly. Remember that time in the pizza parlor with our class on some field trip and you broke down in tears because you were afraid of being alone?

Why do you always remember the embarrassing shit?

It's my nature. You needed that hit of social validation so you went ahead and caused a scene and manipulated other people had to prop you up. We don't need to do that any more. In fact, the last time your manager told you you were doing a good job you were embarrassed.

Well, my job is my job. I don't really have a job that lends itself to quiet quitting.

Only because you don't have a formal job description and the very informal one you have you carved out for yourself. Sure, other people gave it to you. Do you even know what your job title is?

No.

When people ask you what you do for a living what do you tell them?

I'm in operations, which is frankly completely and utterly useless. I play with large datasets.

By the way, aren't you supposed to be working right now?

My work computer wasn't responding this morning and Windows wants to run updates.

So that's 40 minutes of your day gone.

Yup. So I thought I should check in with you.

I see how I rate with you.

Is this you trying to be manipulative again?

At least you're aware of it. To be perfectly honest, part of my job is to manipulate you. Part of my job is to use whatever trick is necessary to get you back on track. You are struggling with work, yes?

The phrase "drinking from the fire hose" has come up several times this week. Big deadlines, lot's of people need to do their part first, but I'm the one responsible.

No, you're the one who has to catch the ball once they throw it. You can't start until you have the data from them.

But I'm the one management asks for updates.

So "Pending these guys doing their job" is a perfectly fine response. You're no their manager so you can't really make them do anything. You're feeling pressure that isn't really on you. You just feel responsible for it all. You're not. You have your job, they have theirs.

But business shit rolls downhill. I'm pretty much the bottom of the crevasse. I can't push it back up.

That's two.

Two what?

Two times you've started a word with "but" and that's how I know you're still deluded into thinking you control your coworkers. I get it. You don't want to send daily updates to their manager with "so-and-so still hasn't responded" because you feel like a snitch. You only feel the need to control their actions because you feel like you are in charge of them. You're not in charge of them. You can only do what you can do. Not sending daily updates, not keeping their managers in the loop is a disservice to yourself, and to the company.

You're really going to argue the company has interests?

It's a useful bogeyman. People matter more than any fictitious legal entity, but your job is to manage these datasets. You need their input, you don't need to take the blame for how they do or don't do their jobs. I think your computer is almost rebooted.

It's still trying to log in.

Fine. Have you considered what your actual job is? What is it that you are supposed to do?

I suppose so. It's still vague.

But this project has clear, defined goals?

Yes.

So what's stopping you? Other than coworkers who don't step up and a computer that takes 40 minutes to reboot?

Nothing, really.

See? You're getting it. Now get back to work.

0 notes

mypoisonedvine · 3 years

Text

Perks of the Job | dark!Boba Fett x reader x (soft)dark!Din Djarin

summary: the only thing worse than one bounty hunter on your trail is two. the only thing worse than a bounty hunter who wants to abuse you is a bounty hunter who wants to make you into a lesson for his makeshift apprentice. the only thing worse than a villain is a villain who thinks he’s a hero.

word count: 5.8k

warnings: smut (noncon, including vaginal, oral m receiving, anal, and dp… so you know, basically everything), a specific kink of mine which I have dubbed "no, not there!" or NNT for short (betcha can guess what that means), din catching feelings lowkey, hair pulling, choking, bondage, forced begging, all the good stuff

Boba had proven to be unendingly useful in bounty missions, even if he was a little bit rough around the edges and slightly more ‘shoot first ask questions later’ in his attack style. Still, Din was grateful for his aid and was happy to tag along when Boba explained he was tracking a target to Florrum— just a smuggler, wanted by the New Republic for trafficking death sticks all across the Outer Rim, nothing too serious or high-profile.

Turned out Din was less useful than he wanted to be, because only Boba was able to get into the club he’d traced your beacon to, so Din was instead left to wait on Slave I and try not to get into any trouble in the meantime.

After less than an hour of resting his eyes in the cockpit, he heard Boba’s voice come in through the comms system. “Target acquired,” he rasped, and Din instantly noticed the distant sounds of struggle and the destruction he must have left in his wake. “Be ready to take off when we board.”

Din leaned forward to hold down the blue button; “Roger,” he replied quickly as he kept an eye on the camera feed of the loading platform, opening and extending it so the hunter and his bounty could board easily. The man appeared on the visual soon after, dragging a woman by the scruff of her neck.

It was you, with your hands tied behind your back and your mouth restrained by a makeshift gag. You were putting up quite a fight, but not nearly enough to stop a man as ruthless as Fett. The second the two of you were inside, Din triggered the loading platform to return to its upright resting place as he started the engines, the ship’s gyroscopic insides tilting against the lift-off sequence. He turned his attention away from the screen as he saw Boba toss you to the ground, focusing instead on his task of exiting the atmosphere and getting the ship into hyperspace so you could be returned to those who sought you.

Hyperspace was quieter, which meant he could hear the sounds of your resistance more easily even with you in another part of the ship entirely. Wondering what all the fuss was about (and, secretly, a bit curious about this feisty young woman Fett had captured), Din made his way out of the cockpit and towards the cargo bay where Boba was wrestling with you.

It didn’t really seem like a fight, in the traditional sense of the word, since a fight implies two opposing forces— it seemed more like you were giving everything you had to try to wrench out of his grip (and go where?, Din was forced to wonder, we’re in hyperspace) while your captor was merely humoring you by not immediately knocking you out and freezing you in carbonite.

Your desperate grunts and whines were muffled by your gag, screeching to a halt as Boba used one hand to hold your torso and pull your back against his chest, the other gripping your jaw tightly. “Stop fighting, little girl,” he hissed, “you’re just going to get yourself hurt.” That deep commanding voice enough to intimidate even Din; thankfully, Din was on Fett’s good side, for the moment, and was pretty sure his own ‘bounty hunter voice’ (as he referred to it only in his own head) was at least 80% as scary.

You made this little motion like you were considering disobeying his instruction, but your rebellion was quelled by a gloved fist tangling into and subsequently tugging your hair. You winced, but relaxed a bit as you gave in to the reality that you’d been bested.

Din didn’t understand what was happening when Boba bent your bound-and-gagged form over a console, but he knew it couldn’t be good: not with the way tears were pouring down your face and soaking the cloth tied through your mouth, not with the way you struggled underneath his grip in your hair and on the back of your tunic.

“What are you doing,” Din asked, although it didn’t come out quite like a question without that uptick at the end, his voice firm and steady and deep even as his heart started to race.

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m taking my bonus,” Boba answered plainly, kicking your flailing legs apart to slot his body between them.

Boba must have seen the younger man’s confusion, even through his helmet, because he took a pause from his work to look back at Din.

“You can fuck ‘em before you chuck ‘em, you know,” Boba informed him, like it was obvious— like this was open secret that he was amazed he hadn’t already acted on. Truly, the thought hadn’t really crossed Din’s mind before. His upbringing had been devoid of any sexual education, even to the point of drawing a clear line between right and wrong. Then again, right and wrong were always a blurry mix in his mind as a bounty hunter: instead of that dichotomy, he was taught that there was the Code and nothing else. And the Code didn’t have anything to say about this, specifically, even as guilt and fear tingled up his spine along with the sickly addictive feeling burning in his gut— arousal, as he realized with a little gasp.

Fett leaned down to push his helmet against your ear, as if you’d be able to hear him any clearer even though the helmet’s modulator made it all sound mostly the same anyway. “Don’t try to fight me,” he insisted again. “Just stay still and keep your mouth shut.”

After a shaky breath, you nodded a little, and Boba sat back up, letting go of you with both of his hands— Din was pretty surprised to see you actually stay still, clearly the threat had gotten to you. Fear, as the Mandalorian had learned many times, was a much more powerful tool of control than force. Boba had you beat in both regards.

There was a little grunt from the man behind you as he reached down to fiddle with his trousers, finding the belt and opening which he reached into. From where he was standing, Din couldn’t really see what exactly his travel companion was doing, but even he wasn’t so naive not to figure it out.

A harsh, cracked sound spilled from your mouth, muffled through the gag, as Boba roughly pulled your trousers down and slid his cock between your legs, teasing you— taunting you. It wasn’t enough to violate you, apparently; he had to degrade you, siphon every drop of terror as he reminded you what was happening. You shook your head, and even though your words were objectively unintelligible, it was apparent to Din that you were pleading with your captor to stop.

Din got the sense that he should leave, but his feet were welded to the floor. His eyes were trained on you, shaking and breathing unsteadily where you were bent over and your head was turned to the side to press on the cold metal. You closed your eyes tightly, and Din recognized the expression as ‘bracing for impact,’ although in your case, it wasn’t that you were about to be impacted but impaled. Of course this couldn’t be right, Din knew enough to know that, in fact he was pretty sure it was illegal on some planets, but they weren’t on any planet right now, and Din had done things that are illegal on every planet. Maybe this really was normal bounty-hunting fare, and he was just too inexperienced to realize that. Maybe this was a relic of how hunters operated in Boba’s time; and Din, of course, had a lot of respect for tradition.

Maybe, more than anything, Din had lost track of the part of himself that cared if it was right or wrong, overpowered by a much more primal part of himself that had been chained and suppressed for far too long. The funny thing about monsters is that they get hungrier the longer you keep them caged up.

The way your fists clenched and shook as you were forced to take the hunter’s cock inside you, the way your teeth ground together and a hiss leaked out from between them, the way you whimpered and cried and he could see the shiver run up your spine… Din was obsessed with it, and his chest burned with a foreign emotion that could be described as jealousy, but that wouldn’t explain all of it. It was more than that, indescribable even to someone much more fluent in the language of feelings than Din was.

You sobbed quietly as your body went limp underneath his tight grip on the back of your tunic, just between your shoulder blades. He was already moving his hips quickly, chasing the pleasure he stole from your body. Din could see that he was hurting you, pain unmistakable in the way your expression twisted, even as the rest of your body seemed to have resigned itself.

Din wished, against every instinct of justice still firing wildly in the back of his mind, that he was hurting you like that, and not his companion. Although, he also fancied himself noble enough that, given the opportunity, he would treat you fairer than Boba would. And he was right, but then again, to be less cruel than Boba Fett takes little chivalry.

Your cries were sharp, loud enough at times to echo around the ship’s interior, other times completely silent as the brutality of Boba’s movements knocked the wind out of your lungs.

“Take her mouth,” Boba offered, “it’ll be a good way to shut her up.”

Din’s head was spinning as he tried to process that. It was like his body was moving on pure instinct as he stepped closer, his trousers getting tighter as you looked up at him. Your eyes were pleading for something: mercy, presumably, but he felt helpless to do anything but obey Boba’s order. It was an order, right? He had to do it.

A gloved finger tucked under your gag and pulled it out of your mouth, the fabric falling around your neck as you licked your dry and cracked lips.

“Please,” you whispered.

He kept one hand weaved into your hair as the other opened his pants, his cock bouncing free the moment it was given any space to do so. He held it at the base tightly, afraid it would all end too soon if he didn’t.

“Please, don’t do this,” you insisted, whimpering a little as he rubbed his cock around your lips, smearing the clear precum over your cheek.

The hand he’d tangled into your hair moved to grip your jaw, forcing your mouth open, and he gently pushed his cock inside— barely enough to rub his cock on your tongue, to feel the humid moisture of your breathing. You didn’t close your lips until he pushed his cock deeper, enveloping him in the silky skin of your mouth as he tried to keep his cool. How it felt was one thing, but how it looked was another entirely— your lips stretching over his girth, your cheeks bulging where the head of his cock pressed against the inside, your eyes blinking up at him as they brimmed with fresh tears. He hadn’t even been creative enough to imagine something like this those few times he’d gotten himself off with his hand, those few times basic biological need overcame confusion and naivete and ineptitude. Now it was going to be the thing he thought about every time, which was why he was doing his best to commit it to memory now.

Every groan and whimper that Boba forced you to make was vibrating through his cock, making Din sigh shakily and hold your head with both hands.

“Maker,” Din whispered as his head fell back, even though he didn’t believe in the Maker. At least, he hadn’t before.

“Good, isn’t it?” Boba encouraged, his voice tinted with the curl of a grin. Din couldn’t imagine what Boba was getting out of sharing his spoils with him, but he wasn’t one to question the nature of a gift when it felt like this, like your hot, wet tongue massaging the underside of his cock.

“Yes,” Din agreed hoarsely.

You yelped around his length when Boba brought a gloved hand down to smack your rear, the sound almost as erotic as the way your flesh rippled and shook with his aggressive touch. “Go on, suck him harder, give ‘im a real show,” Boba instructed to you darkly. You whimpered but did as he’d said, hollowing your cheeks and creating the most wonderful pressure as you sucked on Din’s swollen head.

Boba shed himself of his right glove, tossing it aside to palm at where your flesh had turned red in the shape of his hand already. Din shivered as he watched Boba’s thumb move inward— he couldn’t see where it was, but he had a pretty good idea based on the way your entire body tensed up, a weak whimper of confusion echoing around Din’s cock.

Instinct told him to take his cock out of your mouth, even if the idea of not feeling you for a moment was unpleasant in so many ways. Still, he figured he needed to hear whatever it was you had to say.

“Don’t,” you pleaded with Boba. “Not that.”

“Bet you’ll like it,” Boba assured, and he must have pushed in to the first knuckle because your whole body jolted forward, running from the sensation as you winced. “Relax,” Boba instructed firmly.

“Stop,” you whimpered, and Din’s heart twisted to see you in pain.

“Do what he says,” Din suggested— not a command, just his best proposal of a solution. In situations of inequitable experience, Din deferred to Boba liberally; certainly, Boba knew more about this than he did, even if that was a very low bar.

“Please, make him stop,” you whispered to him, more of a conversation than the two of you had had before. He was almost tempted to honor your request, even if he would never consider standing up to Boba, but his body was pulsing with need and it overrode any sense of decency left.

“I’m sorry,” was his only consolation as he pushed into your mouth again, and though it wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t very useful to you, either.

He held your neck as he pushed himself deeper, his sense of shame deteriorating in favor of pleasure. It was embarrassing enough to be doing this at all, let alone with Boba right there, watching him— well, Boba didn’t really seem to be watching him, too preoccupied with watching you squirm beneath him, but still, he could see it and that was a fact Din preferred to ignore. He imagined instead that this was a private, intimate moment the way it ought to be, the way that he had deduced these activities were usually conducted. He also imagined that you wanted to do this to him, that you were on your knees willingly as opposed to bent over a table by force. It was so easy to picture you wanting it, begging for it, even. Let me do this for you, I want to taste you, I want to make you feel good, you would offer as you knelt down, and he would still feel guilty for it but he wouldn’t stop you, either. Din hadn’t previously allowed himself to fantasize about having a companion of that nature, but as he indulged himself in his imagination now, he decided you would be unendingly generous: with your time, with your love, with your body. In return he would protect you… from exactly the sort of thing he was subjecting you to right now.

Renewed guilt seared through his chest as reality hit: you’d never care about him, you hated him, he could see that clearly in the way you looked up at him while he used your mouth. And he didn’t blame you for it at all, although he wished you would appreciate that it was Boba’s idea in the first place and that his crime was far worse than Din’s. Fett seemed to get off on your reluctance, relish and savor it, while it was just a compromise to Din.

You closed your eyes with a little sigh through your nose, relaxing your mouth further for him to thrust his hips forward into. He realized that you were trying to relax like Boba had told you, and for good reason— Fett had replaced his thumb for two fingers, and Din was almost curious enough to lean forward and try to get a glimpse of your puckered hole opening up to him. You looked pretty with your eyes fallen shut, those eyelashes delicately resting on your cheeks, but it wasn’t as good as being able to gaze right at you.

“Don’t close your eyes,” Din instructed quickly. When they opened again, he saw your stare dart around his helmet, seeking somewhere to latch onto. “Right here,” he clarified, releasing one hand from your throat to tap on the tinted visor. When you looked at where he had told you to, it was almost like you were really looking him in the eyes— although, truthfully, he was sort of glad that you couldn’t because he was sure you would find more there than he wanted you to see. It would be impossible to hide his nervousness, his inexperience, his fear if it weren’t for the beskar in the way. Even now, your bright eyes threatened to pierce right through him.

“You’re gonna come, aren’t you, girl?” Boba rasped, the closest Din had ever heard him to beaming with pride.

You shook your head against the intrusion in your mouth, and Din pulled out to give you a chance to talk. (Perhaps it also served the secondary purpose of delaying Din’s orgasm, which he had been holding back for so long now as he found himself oddly insecure about his stamina, but that’s neither here nor there.) “No,” you denied, but your voice was wavering as your eyes darted to the floor.

“She’s lying,” Din announced.

“I know,” Boba replied. “I can feel it— on the inside,” he hissed, and Din wasn’t sure if he was addressing him or you but it made a jolt of electricity shoot up his spine either way. You seemed to react strongly to that, too, although any verbal reaction was lost to him shoving his cock into your mouth one last time— yes, this time he had no intentions of stopping until he pumped his come right into your throat.

It was all happening so much faster than he intended, due in part to your moans shooting right down through his shaft to his balls, which grew tight with his impending release. He’d never felt anything like this— he hadn’t realized before that it would feel different when it wasn’t his hand. I mean, of course everything before the orgasm would feel different, but he imagined that the peak itself was the same. That assumption was beyond inaccurate— he’d never fucked his own hand the way he was fucking your throat, he’d never moaned the way you were making him moan now, he’d never tightened his fists like he was now, and even if he had, it wouldn’t have meant choking you and hearing all your cries come to a sudden halt.

Without your noises it was only the slapping of flesh and the occasional filtered breath through a helmet. He missed your moans, and yet he relished his power to take them away so suddenly.

He could feel the shape of his own cock through the thick skin of your throat, bulging into his hand, accentuated by your pulse just nearby. He could feel you fighting for air. He understood now why Boba had more fun with this than he did with hookers in cantinas— your helplessness was his power. Your weakness was his strength. And Din had never felt so strong.

He relaxed his grip to give you a chance to swallow as he came, pumping into your throat, grunting with each pulse of his cock filling your mouth.

Suddenly the sensation felt like it would become too much, forcing Din to pull his cock out of you and step back. At the same time, Fett stepped back too, which was odd because Din was pretty sure he hadn't finished: if he had, he was a lot more subtle about it than Din was.

“You want your turn, don’t you?” Boba addressed Din, making the latter feel awkwardly exposed.

“I thought this was my turn,” Din answered.

“With her pussy,” Boba clarified, and Din was sure that he had managed to blush hard enough that it was somehow visible through the helmet.

"And you?" Din asked, not wanting to impose.

"I'll be attending to… another matter," Boba explained with that audible smirk in his tone, and Din had a few ideas of what that could mean, all of which caused him to swallow thickly as Fett grabbed you and pulled you up to stand before unceremoniously dropping you to the floor. Din joined you there, not quite sure what he should be doing but figuring he should get on with it as the other man knelt down behind you.

Pulling you onto his lap, you spread your legs to straddle him in an unexpected show of submission which Din thoroughly appreciated. One arm held you up while the other grasped his cock, still hard and hopefully not too sensitive so he could actually do this— he could actually fuck you. It felt unreal; it felt beyond real, hyperreal as he started to slide his cock through the soaked and swollen intricacies of your sex. You must have come like Fett said you would, otherwise he couldn't imagine how you'd become so wet… he could even see it glistening on the inside of your thighs.

When he found the opening he was looking for, all Din had to do was lower you down onto him, gasping slightly as he watched and felt you sink down onto and around him, a little grunt coming out of you as your hips met his.

It was lucky that he’d already come once, in your mouth, because otherwise he would’ve lost it right then and there— you were so warm inside, soaked thoroughly such that his movements were smooth and easy as he instantly started to fuck you, groaning at how perfectly your body accepted him.

“Slow down,” Boba grunted, “I need to get in.”

You cried and shivered as the other man pushed into your available entrance, your head falling exhaustedly onto Din’s shoulder. He looked down at your face, then, and brushed your hair away so he could see it better, peeling strands from where they had been stuck to your forehead and neck by the thin layer of sweat that covered you. He wanted to comfort you, to promise that the pain would ease soon, but he couldn’t really think of anything to say; so, he just held you tight as he began to move within you again, and saw the other hunter do the same.

He made a conscious effort to not look at Boba’s cock, for fear of comparing it to his own. It was disturbing enough to be able to feel it, slightly, through the thin barrier your body provided. How inconceivable that Din had woken up a virgin and would fall asleep tonight with the memory of this lodged in his mind forever. In one day of sexual activity he’d gotten more done than many would in a lifetime, and yet he still lacked the most common things: love, passion, consent… perhaps someday he’d find those, even if it could never be from you.

Not worried anymore about an attempt to fight or flee, Din reached back and untied your wrists from each other, hoping he wouldn't get scolded for it by Fett who thankfully remained silent aside from his own restrained sounds of pleasure. You clung to him instantly, your freshly-freed hands clutching at his back, and he decided to interpret it as a token of affection even if he knew that was a bit of a stretch. If nothing else, maybe you recognized him as the lesser of two evils.

He opted to take credit for the way your moans were different from before; even in his wildest fantasies could he not convince himself that he was better at this than Boba was, but he could swing at the idea that you preferred him because you were meant for him. It was probably more outlandish, yes, but it was so easy to believe that you were made to be his when you felt so good around him. Din hadn’t even known anything could feel this good.

Something Boba had said earlier gained clearer meaning when Din felt your inner walls seize up and shift around him. Trying not to be too loud, he resorted to coping with the feeling by gripping your waist tightly. The idea that he could leave bruises on your skin excited him more than he would have anticipated (if, of course, he had anticipated any of this).

Another tug on your hair from Boba wrenched your head back. "Gonna come," he grunted at you lowly, "in this tight little ass. You want it?"

"Please," you whispered, not quite sounding enthusiastic but managing to give him whatever he was looking for, apparently, as another choked noise signalled his release. Your body reacted strongly to that, clenching down hard on Din's cock.

"You like it," Din posited. "I can feel it," he reminded you when you tried to deny it with a shake of your head, "from the inside."

Boba took his time pulling out, the most peculiar sensation that made Din shudder a bit. As tight as you were when you were full in that way, Din preferred having you to himself.

"I'll be in the fresher," Boba announced as he stood up and tucked himself back into his uniform, looking so composed in a way Din envied; he was sure, somehow, that he looked a complete mess even with the armor covering him. "I'll leave you to your fun. Don't take too long."

“I— I won’t last much longer,” Din stammered, wondering immediately if it was too much information.

“Not inside,” you begged suddenly.

Boba chuckled a little as he left, and Din wondered if it was what he said or what you said that made him laugh. The thought was forgotten as the hunter left, and he suddenly felt a wave of nerves wash over him— the way he always felt when he was alone with a pretty girl. Not that he'd ever been alone with a pretty girl quite like this.

Not sure what to say, he opted to just not say anything as he held you tight and bucked his hips up into you. You wouldn't let him off that easy, apparently, as you reiterated yourself: "You can't come inside, please don't—"

"This isn't a negotiation," Din reminded you firmly.

He was too close to imagine stopping now, anyway; the snug grip of your insides was too good to be ignored, his body was incapable of slowing down as he fucked you deeper and faster than ever. He noticed which angle of his hips made you moan loudest, hoping to feel you come around him just like Boba had.

“Come for me,” he instructed, hearing an impression of Fett in his own voice as he tried to come across as dominating, “I wanna feel it.”

You shivered a little, whimpering into the crook of his neck before he lifted you by the jaw to look at your face. You looked exhausted, eyes blown wide and dark, lips swollen and bitten red, hair tangled and unruly from being used essentially as reigns.

“Can you do that? Can you come?” he pressed, grinding his hips up into yours and watching you whine at the sensation of being filled so deeply. You nodded, but that wasn’t enough for him. “Say it.”

“Yes,” you answered, “I’ll— I’ll come.”

“Good,” he praised plainly, doing his best to hold himself back until he got his chance to feel you reach your peak.

Your head fell back as your hands weakly tugged at his shoulders, and Din hoped that tearing your tunic down the front to grope your breasts would speed things along for you. He hadn’t taken off his gloves, but even so he relished the weight of them in his palms, curiously pinching at a hardened nipple which made you flex around him again.

“Are you close,” he asked, losing that intonation of a question again, focusing instead on trying not to sound exasperated.

“Yes,” you hissed, “I’m gonna— fuck,” you interrupted yourself.

You were moving a bit on your own now, instead of him holding you still and letting you limply take it like a ragdoll— no, you were rocking your hips in time with him, pushing down against him. You wanted it, obviously, and Din was more than happy to give it to you. He slammed into you with each thrust, held you down so you couldn’t squirm, groaned when he felt your body pulse around him. A new surge of wetness gushed between your bodies, your broken cry echoed right against his ear— if this wasn’t a dead giveaway that you were coming, he wasn’t sure what was. Unable to hold back anymore as you sobbed and shivered on top of him, he finally released into you, everything building up so fast only to snap in a moment, an embarrassingly weak moan slipping from his lips.

He was sure he had never been so exhausted, but it was the most incredible feeling as well. A little tear fell down your cheek— from terror, maybe, or disgust, or even pleasure… he had no real way to tell.

As he began to catch his breath, he wondered if he should say something; and, if he should, what that would be. Thankfully, he felt the lurch of the ship leaving hyperspace— the weight of gravity sinking a little heavier as you slumped down on top of him.

He picked you up and set you down on the floor, standing as he delicately stuffed his cock back into his trousers. “Looks like he’ll bring you in soon,” Din mumbled, but you didn’t really seem to care much, just laying on the floor and staring into nothingness. He watched his seed leak out of you and onto the steel, making a mental note to clean that up later, hoping you weren’t too angry with him for disobeying your request that he finish elsewhere. “You’ll need a new tunic,” he noticed as he realized it was probably less than ideal to bring in a target who had been so obviously violated. “I’ll bring you something to cover yourself with,” he decided.

Heading for his sack to search for an old cape or blanket that you could wear, he passed by the cockpit where Boba was steering the ship.

“I’m keeping the reward,” Boba interjected suddenly without turning back to look towards him, making Din stop walking, “since I was generous enough to share the… fringe benefits.”

“Of course,” Din nodded, not having expected a share of the bounty in the first place since all he’d done was keep lookout during the actual hunt. He was ready to walk away, but Boba spoke again as he turned the captain’s chair and faced Din, finally.

“Did you do what she asked?” Boba pressed.

“What?” Din choked, taking a moment to remember what he was even talking about— when you asked him not to come inside, apparently. “Oh, um, no.” His face warmed beneath the beskar as Fett chuckled to himself.

“Good,” he nodded. “Never take commands from a target, or a whore.”

Din shuffled nervously but said nothing, considering he had no idea how to respond to that.

“Besides,” Boba continued as he turned back to the controls of the ship, “if she’s pregnant that’ll be the New Republic’s problem.”

Din figured he was free to go now, taking a moment to glance over Boba’s shoulder at the planet ahead before continuing ahead. His quest for a cloak for you was nearly forgotten as he tried to clear his mind of what Boba had said so casually. He needed a shower, desperately, but he didn’t have time before the ship landed— and Fett probably intended on making Din complete the transfer and bring the credits back, since the older hunter wasn’t exactly a friend of the Republic.

He ended up grabbing an old shirt of his, tossing it at you when he entered the room where he’d left you, finding you standing with your trousers pulled back up. Silently he wondered if you had made any effort to clean yourself of his come or if it was still there between your legs, but neither of you said a word as he put you in more formal shackles than the rags that Boba had tied you with originally.

The New Republic officer definitely reacted to your appearance when Din brought you forward, all but dragging you as he gripped your arm. “When’d she get so roughed up?” the young officer interrogated as he handed Din the credits he was owed.

“Found her like this,” Din shrugged.

He didn’t seem to buy it, with the way he scanned your form and raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything else as he motioned for two guards to take you away. Din considered looking back but decided against it, returning to the ship and immediately surrendering the credits to their rightful owner in Boba.

“Next job’s on Dantooine,” Boba informed him gruffly as he piloted the ship out of the atmosphere. But Din wasn’t listening, instead watching your new prison shrink and disappear into a dot, hoping to find in himself the carelessness that Boba had already mastered. He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask his hunting partner— Is this how it always goes? Will it happen again? Do you really think she could be pregnant? — but he wouldn’t even consider speaking any of them aloud. It was almost funny that they had shared something so disturbingly intimate and Din still felt unable to be direct with him, although neither of them had the sense of humor to appreciate it.

“Thank you,” Din blurted out. “For teaching me about the job.”

“My pleasure,” Boba replied gruffly, and with a jump back into hyperspace, the ship was submerged once again into silence.

#dark!din djarin smut #dark!din djarin x reader #boba fett x reader #dark!boba fett x reader #god how tf do i tag this uhhhh #din djarin x boba fett x reader #din djarin x reader x boba fett #the mandalorian dark fic #hopefully that's enough

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eijispumpkin · 3 years

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On Allegory, Imperfection, and Inadvertent Subversion: A small essay about Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish and Salinger’s “A Perfect Day For Bananafish”.

In the story of Banana Fish, Yoshida references Salinger’s short story “A Perfect Day For Bananafish” (which henceforth shall be addressed as “Perfect Day” simply for ease of reading) several different ways, both in-universe and out. It is exceedingly evident that the character of Ash Lynx is heavily based on Seymour Glass, and one might surmise that Banana Fish is an allegorical retelling of “Perfect Day”, especially given that in the original story, Ash Lynx dies of what is arguably a “passive suicide” – that is, when faced with an injury that isn’t immediately fatal, he chooses to bleed out rather than seek help, which when framed as a suicide, parallels the much more violent and sudden suicide of Seymour Glass.

However, this surface-level allegorical reading ignores a very important variable in the story of Banana Fish, namely the counterpart to Ash’s Seymour: Eiji’s Sybil. While Ash and Seymour share many similarities (both are traumatized, troubled geniuses with partly-Irish roots who grew up in New York City), the similarities between Eiji and Sybil are very few. Eiji does symbolize a world of innocence to contrast with Ash’s world of horrors, but unlike Sybil, Eiji is an adult with agency of his own, and though he retains some of Sybil’s childlike innocence and is able to connect deeply with Ash as a result of it, Eiji’s agency and decisions ultimately change the narrative and its meaning.

That is to say, by introducing Eiji as an imperfect Sybil, one who has agency and can actually provide Ash with understanding and support of the kind that Seymour never got from Muriel or others around him (and which Sybil, being three years old, was in no way equipped to provide), Banana Fish directly subverts “Perfect Day”’s original message of cynicism in the face of a material world unconcerned with the horror of lost innocence and its resulting isolation.

To understand what this means, it’s important to first understand the meaning and context of “Perfect Day” and the circumstances in which it was written. “Perfect Day” is a story written first and foremost as a critique of American materialism in the wake of WWII; Salinger echoes the concerns of the Lost Generation before him, in a way, by really driving home the alienation from modern adult life felt by those who were exposed to the horrors and traumas of the battlefields in wartorn Europe, only to return home and find a culture completely removed from it all. Seymour Glass is a stand-in for Salinger himself—Kenneth Slawenski, in his 2010 biography of Salinger, notes that on returning from the European theater, Salinger “found it impossible to fit into a society that ignored the truth that he now knew.”

If that sounds familiar, good, because it should! This is precisely the motif of “Perfect Day” (as well as some of Salinger’s other work featuring members of the Glass family, such as Seymour’s younger brother Buddy, which, as an aside, is a name that might stick out to Banana Fish fans. Whether this is an intentional reference or a coincidence, I can’t say for certain, but given the depth of other references within this allegory, I’m inclined to think it’s intentional).

As a quick summary for those who may need a refresher, “Perfect Day” is a story about a deeply traumatized man who feels isolated from the rest of society because of the weight of the horrors he has been exposed to. Muriel Glass, Seymour’s wife, is the epitome of this: she represents the materialistic culture that Seymour feels so alienated from, always talking about brand-name things and luxuries and upward mobility. Seymour rejects her company in favor of playing the piano for children and spending time on the beach, where he tells three-year-old Sybil Carpenter a story about bananafish, fish that gorge themselves on bananas in holes under the sea until they’re too fat to escape the entrances to these little banana dens, and then they die. Instead of dismissing this story as something bizarre, Sybil claims she sees a bananafish in the water, which endears her to Seymour, until she leaves, at which point he returns to his hotel room and shoots himself in the head.

In “Perfect Day”, this interaction (between Sybil and Seymour) is the center of a set of dualities. Sybil represents the state of childlike innocence that Seymour longs to return to, and because of her innocence, she can “understand” him in ways that the material adults like her mother or Muriel do not. Seymour’s isolation is a product of his society and the lack of support and understanding for traumatized veterans returning from war, and it shows in the way that adults his age cannot connect with him, and he cannot connect with them. This disconnect between worlds is what eventually results in Seymour’s suicide—he can fit neither in the world in which he wishes to be, nor in the one in which he must reside, and it ends in his death.

The question is, then, how does this relate to Banana Fish?

As mentioned previously, Ash Lynx is a very clear parallel to Seymour Glass. He’s a young man faced with immeasurable trauma from which he believes he can never recover, and there is a clear motif of duality in his entire character arc: his world (one of violence and trauma) versus the “normal” world (where innocent people who have “regular” lives may reside). Like Seymour, Ash feels trapped in a world he can’t escape, knowing “the truth” that he knows, about the horrors that people are capable of.

It follows, then, that Eiji Okumura is a parallel to Sybil Carpenter, who represents childlike innocence and a world that Ash longs to be part of but can’t reach. And to an extent, this is true: Eiji is sheltered and innocent, comparing real-life to TV shows and being completely unexposed to kidnappings, drugs, guns, and violence. However, there is a sharp contrast between Eiji and Sybil, one that fundamentally changes the relationship between Eiji and Ash and makes it radically different from that between Sybil and Seymour:

Eiji is an adult, and as such, he has agency of his own.

Unlike Sybil with Seymour, Eiji can make his own choices and face Ash as an equal. Where Sybil is a child who runs back to her mother after playing with Seymour at the beach, Eiji actively and consistently chooses to stay with Ash, over and over. He even explicitly tells Ash “you are not alone”, which is a huge and direct contrast to the message of inevitable, devastating isolation from “Perfect Day”. Whereas Sybil’s innocence serves as a reminder to Seymour of what he’s lost and cannot regain, Eiji’s innocence is a beacon of comfort and companionship to Ash. Eiji is someone with whom Ash can relax and be playful like a boy his own age, as noted by Max and Ibe watching them interact.

This communication and connection are present between Sybil and Seymour, but in a very different way. Seymour prefers to play make-believe and tell silly stories to kids, because he went from being a wide-eyed innocent to being traumatized and longing for a place to belong, and Sybil as a child represents what he wishes he had, while the adults around him (most notably Muriel, his wife) are a world he doesn’t understand that feels false.

This is not the dichotomy of worlds that Ash faces. Ash faces a world of trauma and suffering that he sees himself as trapped in, and a world of peace and security that he thinks is beyond his reach. Where Seymour yearns for a return to innocence, Ash yearns to escape his pain, and the combination of this subtle difference with the effect of Eiji’s agency and the narrative structure of Banana Fish results in a subversion of the themes in “Perfect Day”.

Banana Fish is a long-form narrative, while “Perfect Day” is a short story. Part of the inherent structure of a long-form narrative is character growth and development, which for obvious reasons is much less prominent in short stories. As a result, Eiji’s impact on Ash is clearly visible over the course of the narrative, and it becomes impossible to declare that Ash is firmly rooted in the world he sees himself as trapped in. By the end of the story, even Ash wavers on this assertion; although he ultimately succumbs to suicide, a narrative choice that been criticized ever since its publication, in the moments leading up to his stabbing, he does believe that Eiji is right, or at least right enough that he wants to see him one last time (this is ambiguous and open to interpretation, of course).

Why did this narrative choice spark so much controversy and outcry from fans? Not every story that ends in tragedy is criticized as poorly written for it; examples range from Shakespearean tragedies to “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, a film in which the entire cast dies in the climax. Yet just about all fans agree that it fit the narrative. Clearly, then, it is possible to craft a story that ends in death and tragedy but still feels well-written. What makes Banana Fish different?

I would argue that the answer lies in this imperfect allegory. By creating a Sybil-esque character that can interact with the Seymour-esque character as equals, can stay with him, and can listen to him and support him through his grief and pain, Akimi Yoshida inadvertently turned “Perfect Day”’s message on its head. The tragedy of “Perfect Day” is Seymour’s isolation. By giving Ash a warm, compassionate relationship in which he is assured over and over that he is not alone, Yoshida upturns this entirely.

Ash is led to believe in this dichotomy mostly by his isolation. He believes that since Eiji is in mortal danger as a result of being special to him, he needs to send Eiji to safety, i.e. somewhere far from him and far from the reach of those who would hurt them both. This isn’t a miscommunication issue or anything of the sort; this is Ash being afraid for Eiji’s life; Eiji isn’t averse to returning to Japan itself. Eiji is averse to returning to Japan without Ash, as he mentions when he talks about how Ash could be a model, and tells him about kami. In establishing this as a consistent tenet of Eiji’s character, Yoshida ensures that Ash is not isolated in the same way that Seymour was.

In addition, Eiji can move freely between both worlds set up in Ash’s perceived dichotomy, a motif made explicitly clear when Eiji leaps the wall to freedom and light at the beginning, leaving Ash (and Skipper) behind in captivity in the dark. Despite this escape from the world of violence and crime, Eiji returns of his own volition and stays with Ash, experiences his own fair share of horrific traumas, and still leaves in the end to return to his world. This makes it clear that the dichotomy is less stark than Ash is led to believe, unlike the repeated validation of his isolation that Seymour receives, and is another reason that the ending of “Perfect Day” is inconsistent with the ending of Banana Fish

A quick sidebar: Banana Fish has no real Muriel, but if pressed, I would posit that the closest parallel to Muriel that exists is Blanca, whose main purpose in the narrative seems to be to reinforce to Ash that he can’t escape the world he feels trapped in and longs to leave. But where in “Perfect Day” Muriel symbolized the materialism of American society after WWII, Blanca has no real established reason to be so invested in keeping Ash down, and in conjunction with the fact that despite his own traumas, he can retire peacefully to the Caribbean, his role in the story falls to pieces entirely. Where Muriel represented a lifestyle that Seymour fundamentally could not reach, thereby reinforcing his isolation, Blanca is supposed to parallel Ash to a degree, but his words to Ash do not match his actions whatsoever.

Therefore, if anything, Blanca’s assertions serve only to strike a contrast with Eiji’s (and Max’s, to an extent, since Max and Eiji both agree that Ash can escape this and they want him to heal). Moreover, Blanca’s relationship with Ash is that of a mentor and a student, a relationship that is shown to be fundamentally unhealthy, given that Blanca willingly worked for Ash’s abuser, a mafia don who he knew trafficked children. Some argue that Blanca was blackmailed into this service, but given that Blanca chose to betray Golzine at the end and work with Ash with seemingly no real provocation or change in his relationship with Golzine, this supposition seems flawed. Blanca’s assertions about Ash and his ability to forge bonds and leave his world the way Eiji does, and indeed the way Blanca himself does, are simply incorrect, and the narrative itself provides us all the tools we need to realize that Blanca is wrong, even without the extended context of a parallel to Muriel Glass.

Returning to the main issue at hand, i.e. that of the imperfect allegorical connections between Sybil and Eiji, and the dichotomy between worlds that Ash perceives, it’s clear that in creating a positive, nurturing relationship between Ash and Eiji rather than a one-off encounter, Yoshida inadvertently created a story about connections rather than isolation. Ash’s attempts to keep Eiji safe from harm by sending him home are countered by Eiji’s assertion that he only wants to go to Japan if Ash comes with him, which is a kind of selfless devotion that reaches through Ash’s isolation until he decides that he won’t try and separate himself from Eiji anymore, which is a massive blow to the dichotomy of his supposed two worlds. This is the narrative acknowledging that both worlds can coexist.

Not only this, but also Eiji, who has his own trauma—he’s kidnapped several times, shot at, drugged, sexually assaulted, attacked with a knife by a drugged friend, exposed to several deaths, shot at people in fights himself, and ultimately nearly killed by a gunshot wound—despite all of this, Eiji is still allowed to exist in the world of peace and regularity. Eiji’s innocence is sharply tempered by traumatic experiences, and he can still walk between worlds. If Eiji, Max, Ibe, Jessica, Sing, Cain, and Blanca can all experience traumas, why is Ash the only one who cannot escape? Is there some kind of magical bar of “too much” trauma, like an event horizon on a black hole?

Obviously, no.

So it comes to this: Essentially, the reason that the ending is so controversial, and why I personally believe that the open ending of the anime is an improvement to the original story, is that the allegory between Banana Fish and “Perfect Day” falls apart because of Eiji’s agency. Ash wants to protect Eiji, and to protect Eiji’s innocence and light, because he feels that it’s beyond his own reach, but Eiji forges a bond with him that is rooted in mutual respect and care, and in doing so, undoes the devastating, painful isolation that led to Seymour’s suicide. This is why Ash’s death can feel so hollow—it doesn’t follow the pattern of “Perfect Day”; after the entire story is about Ash’s bonds and those who love him unconditionally, it feels almost like a shock-value plot twist tacked on, rather than a tragic inevitability.

I don’t believe that Yoshida intended Banana Fish to be a subversion of “Perfect Day”. I believe she meant it as a one-to-one allegory, and this is why she kept the ending as Ash choosing death. However, due to the changes in themes because of the characters and their relationships, Ash is not isolated in the profound way Seymour was, and his death is therefore not nearly as impactful.

#this is 2600 words i am so fucking sorry but also im not sorry im just verbose #banana fish #banana fish meta #asheiji #ash lynx #eiji okumura

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wings-of-a-storm · 3 years

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I have a question. My favorite character is obviously Benji, but this season I started to get an ultimate rancidity of him.In the end I understood why he was acting like this, he has a PTSD because of dating Derek, his parents shitting him and alcohol and the accident. It's about the accident I wanted to know about, I didn't quite understand what this accident was and why he started drinking. I get upset that Benji's story is the least explored in the series, in my opinion, it should be explored more

Sorry for late reply to this, Anon! I know a few others already replied to this but I figure I’d still add my take into the mix for you. :)

I think many of us share your frustrations about Benji’s story being drip fed to us instead of being looked at more deeply. It’s a very interesting history so I really hope that in season three we might actually get a more decent look at it…

BENJI’S HISTORY / WHY HE STARTED DRINKING:

Throughout both seasons we learn that Benji has struggled with mental health.

In the most simplest of summaries: Benji struggled with internalised homophobia -- he hated himself for being homosexual and fought against it. He even experimented sexually with girls (which he briefly mentioned in S1), but in the end, he couldn’t deny that he was gay. But acknowledging he was gay and being able to accept it are two different things. He hated being gay.

In order to cope with that self-hatred and fear, he turned to alcohol to dull his reality and in turn everything he felt. He’s still learning to like himself even now in season two.

In Benji’s own words: “Before I came out, I was kind of a mess. I knew I was gay but I didn't want to be. So I drank. A lot. (1x07)” And: “Coming out was really hard for me, Victor. And it is still hard for me to be who I am. (1x05)”

BENJI’S CAR ACCIDENT:

Benji said that when he was younger, he drank 'a lot'. From that statement alone we can infer that he knew he was drinking more than his peers were. Most likely that went beyond social drinking -- he was probably also drinking by himself at any opportunity.

There is an age limit for drinking for good reason: our brains don’t fully develop until we are in our twenties, and as such, when we are younger we are more likely to make riskier choices. Adding alcohol into the mix is just asking for trouble -- as Benji found out when, one night, severely inebriated, he lost control of his vehicle (or misjudged his surroundings) and drove through/into a building. “One night I got super wasted and decided that I wanted Wendys real bad. So I took my Dad's car to the drive thru and that's exactly what I did -- drove through the Wendys. (1x07)”

That is some serious stuff right there! On so many levels!

Firstly the physical toll: he ‘totalled’ his dad’s car. To have a car written off as too smashed to be driven, that car had a huge impact! And not surprising since Benji said he drove through the building. Whether that was through glass or a into a sturdy wall, to crunch up the metal of his car, that is a massive hit. We don’t know the extent of his injuries (he just said he was ‘banged up’) but we do know that he was at the very least knocked unconscious and/or had a head injury from it (“Waking up in the hospital with my parents standing over me…” 1x07).

Secondly, the emotional toll: when Benji gained consciousness and woke up in hospital, he said he “realised that I could have died." (1x07) That is a very frightening thing to confront -- your mortality. It spooked him enough that it was the catalyst for his Coming Out. He didn’t want to die without “ever really being who I was” (1x07); to have only lived his life as a lie and not known his true self…

Most of us, I’d wager, haven’t had to confront our mortality at such a young age -- like truly confront it after going through a life-threatening experience. In that sense, he is on a different level to his peers and Victor -- a big part of his innocence has been broken and re-formed.

There is more to the emotional toll though -- not explicitly mentioned in canon but pretty much common sense:

The pain of recovery in hospital and at home (whatever “banged up” means, he was injured in some way)

The guilt of knowing his actions could have caused innocent people to have been hurt or killed. No one was hurt, he said, but just knowing they could have been is a really heavy thing to have on your conscience.

The stress of dealing with insurance (for the Wendys, for the car). He would have had to burden his parents with sorting that all out.

Police would have been involved to investigate the incident and lay charges. That’s pretty darn scary.

Losing his licence and thus part of his independence

Seeing the physical damage of the Wendys if he ever went past it again -- knowing he had done it, knowing he had been in the car that made that damage and reliving the knowledge he could have killed himself…

He was so ashamed by it all, he didn’t want anyone at school knowing about the accident or about his drinking that caused it. In 1x07 the school still didn’t know so he really guarded that secret hard.

There’s just so much heaviness linked to that accident. And Benji has only had one year to process all of that. On some level, that stuff has got to linger.

THE INITIAL AFTERMATH:

We learn that after the car accident, Benji was in an ever worse state of mind than when he was drinking his life away before it. His mother reveals: “After your car accident last year you were so hard on yourself and things were pretty dark for a while there. And you decided to put in the hard work [to go to AA and get better]. (2x07)”

Referring to Benji's post-accident self as being in 'a pretty dark place' is a pretty big alarm bell. His mental health sounds like it was pretty much destroyed. It is so hard to rebuild yourself after falling into such a dark well, but over the year he must have pulled himself back from the brink. That is so, so heavy!

It’s hard to gauge whether Benji chose to go to AA himself (which seems to be implied), or whether it was a condition of his charge through the police, but he went there none-the-less to change his life and learn healthier coping mechanisms to handle stress/his inner conflicts.

Something else worth noting is that, timeline-wise (as messy as that always is in LV), Benji was dating Derek through all of this. His one year anniversary with Derek was in S1 but his one year sobriety was only in S2. Who knows how that would have complicated things. He wasn’t Out to his parents or anyone but he was dating a (adult) man. So he was simultaneously hating that he was gay and drinking his mind blank but still dating a man. That is a super stressful and conflicting dichotomy that he was dealing with in amongst all this… (“It is still hard for me to be who I am.” 1x05)

THE MOST IMPORTANT INSIGHT FROM BENJI’S DRINKING AND AA:

It is so important to take time and realise what being in AA means about Benji: as a young teen, Benji self-medicated his way through his worsening mental health by drinking to handle stress and internalised homophobia. He didn’t have any proper methods of handling stressful situations. He is now having to unlearn those behaviours and learn new strategies through AA and his sponsor. But he has only been doing that for one year! That is a blip of time in the hourglass.

Now let’s look at the events of S2: Benji has been inundated with stress while still learning how to cope with it without drinking. And he’s had to learn and practise these new coping strategies while:

Being in high school

Holding down an assistant manager job

Watching his significant other being emotionally wrung out by his mother’s treatment of him; dealing with his own rejection and banishment from Isabel

Reliving both his own coming out stress and homophobic aggressions at school directed this time at his significant other

Trying to deal with the shame of being in AA and keeping that a secret from all of his peers at school

Like far out, that is a ton of stress! Anyone would crack under all of that, let alone a young and recovering alcoholic!

So yes, when faced with stressful situations, Benji is not always going to react in the right way or say the right things. He’s still learning how to do that with his sponsor and AA meetings. He might come off as ‘rancid’ in S2, but really he is just a kid who is struggling and trying to do his best.

#LV ask #Love Victor #LV S2 analysis #Benji Campbell

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quillyfied · 3 years

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Acknowledging that Good Omens was written by an atheist man and a Jewish man and hung on a culturally Christian framework, and that I’m coming to it as a strugglingly religious but very spiritual Christian woman, there is a…thought…brewing, about the idea of scripture and the book The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch and the concept of a character living their entire life dedicated to the study and interpretation and even practice that the book encapsulates and represents, and the final message when more of that brand of book becomes available being “this character should be free to make her own choices in life based on her own judgement and takes back her own agency by burning the new book of prophecies”.

[[MORE]]

Because…as far as we know, Agnes Nutter wasn’t a pendulum-and-auras kind of witch. She was a woman with singular gift at looking through a cosmic peephole and writing down what glimpses she saw, and by the time we get to Anathema, witchcraft meant something completely else, and Anathema (so far) doesn’t HAVE that particular gift. She doesn’t need it—she has the family Bible, which guides and directs her, and the traditions and practices that her family picked up along the way are, from what we can see as the audience, not referred to at all in the book but integral to Anathema’s family life (as evidenced in the show by Anathema’s mother asking if she’d used her pendulum yet and Anathema groaning and saying she wasn’t a kid, of course she had). Agnes never says Anathema saves the world—Anathema’s family assumes it, in the generations of Devices that came later and added their two cents and their interpretations to the bare text of Agnes’ predictions. Anathema DOES help save the world, in several indirect ways, but none of them were prophesied about specifically, they were choices Anathema herself made. She chose to share the New Aquarian magazines and be kind and encouraging to Adam, she chose to goad Newt into using his catastrophic luck with electronics to disable nuclear Armageddon, she chose to let herself be driven home by a couple of weirdos in a vintage car and thus accidentally left her book behind to fall into the clutches of an angel who would just happen to be able to work it all out and get himself and his demonic counterpart to the airfield. All Agnes helped her do was get into position to where Armageddon truly was, and put her in a position to influence both the Antichrist and the Techless Wonder.

Speaking of Newton, his role both in Armageddon and in Anathema’s life as the one who against all outward appearances actually asks the questions and doubts the Device family Bible is also interesting, because his disbelief in the accuracy of a long-dead witch’s predictions and his incredulity at Anathema being completely guided by them is the perfect “skeptic vs believer” dynamic around which a lot of the underlying tension of Good Omens hinges, both between characters and within singular characters themselves. It’s the delicious dichotomy of Crowley the skeptic and Aziraphale the believer, and also Crowley as both skeptic and believer and Aziraphale as both skeptic and believer. It’s the line that Adam Young walks, whether to believe in a better future or to destroy everything now in skeptical fury, or whether to be skeptical of his own role and reject it versus believing the voices in his head and giving in. Belief and skepticism go hand in hand, inseparable, in Good Omens, in many different ways and permutations. What I find interesting is how this balance manifests and grows in Anathema, where she begins never doubting Agnes to ending up burning her second book of prophecies. About the beauty of taking Word of God as Anathema knew it and deciding she was better off NOT putting that expectation on herself again, on future generations of Devices.

Good Omens is very anti-establishment in general, which is fantastic, please do question everything, but what it has done for me in examining my real-world faith and beliefs and questions is perhaps best left to another post, because my conclusion for myself is slightly different than the conclusion that is drawn in the story and I don’t need to air that kind of tension here. I just find it interesting how in the context of the story, even a book of completely true prophecies becomes something of a bludgeon and a burden that Anathema struggles under until given the push and pressure to question it herself, and once finding understanding, she outgrows it—the physical text, and the weight of the expectations that comes with it.

#good omens #the point is that scripture is what you make it I suppose #and that it’s still a damn good refreshing twist that the most ‘religious’ character is a WITCH #religious meaning following a set path as established by a book and the interpretations thereof #idk just a weird late night thought

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peekbackstage · 3 years

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Would you be willing to talk about how standards of masculinity and femininity in Asia differ from those in Europe/North America? I know, it's a ridiculously broad question but I think you mentioned it in passing previously and I would be really interested in your answer especially in the context of the music industry and idols. I (European) sometimes see male Asian idols as quite feminine (in appearance, maybe?) even if they publicly talk about typically masculine hobbies of theirs.

Hi Anon,

Sorry that it took me over a month to get to this question, but the sheer volume of research that is necessary to actually answer this is significant, as there is an enormous body of work in gender studies. There are academics who have staked their entire careers in this field of research, much of which isn’t actually transnational, being that regional gender studies alone is already an incredibly enormous field.

As such, in no way can I say that I’ve been able to delve into even 1% of all the research that is out there to properly address this question. While I can talk about gender issues in the United States, and gender issues that deal with Asian American identity, I am not an expert in transnational gender studies between Asia and Europe. That being said, I’ll do my best to answer what I can.

When we consider the concept of “masculinity” and “femininity,” we must first begin with the fundamental understanding that gender is both a construct and a performance. The myth of gender essentialism and of gender as a binary is a product of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality in each culture where it emerges.

What you must remember when you talk about gendered concepts such as “masculinity” and “femininity” is that there is no universal idea of “masculinity” or “femininity” that speaks across time and nation and culture. Even within specific regions, such as Asia, not only does each country have its own understanding of gender and national signifiers and norms that defines “femininity” or “masculinity,” but even within the borders of the nation-state itself, we can find significantly different discourses on femininity and masculinity that sometimes are in direct opposition with one another.

If we talk about the United States, for example, can we really say that there is a universal American idea of “masculinity” or “femininity”? How do we define a man, if what we understand to be a man is just a body that performs gender? What kind of signifiers are needed for such a performance? Is it Chris Evan’s Captain America? Or is it Chris Hemsworth’s Thor? What about Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark? Do these characters form a single, cohesive idea of masculinity?

What about Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen? Miller is nonbinary - does their superhero status make them more masculine? Or are they less “masculine” because they are nonbinary?

Judith Butler tells us in Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993) that what we call gender is inherently a discursive performance of specific signifiers and behaviors that were assigned to the gender binary and enforced by compulsory heterosexuality. She writes:

Insofar as heterosexual gender norms produce inapproximate ideals, heterosexuality can be said to operate through the regulated production of hyperbolic versions of “man” and “woman.” These are for the most part compulsory performances, ones which none of us choose, but which each of us is forced to negotiate. (1993: 237)

Because gender norms vary regionally, there are no stable norms that coalesce into the idea of a single, universal American “masculinity.” What I mean by this is that your idea of what reads as “masculine” might not be what I personally consider to be “masculine,” as someone who grew up in a very left-leaning liberal cosmopolitan area of the United States.

What I am saying is this: Anon, I think you should consider challenging your idea of gender, because it sounds to me like you have a very regionally locked conception of the gender binary that informs your understanding of “masculinity” and femininity” - an understanding that simply does not exist in Asia, where there is not one, but many different forms of masculinity.

China, Japan, and South Korea all have significant cultural differences and understandings of gender, which has a direct relationship with one’s national and cultural identity.

Japan, for example, might consider an idol who has long, layered hair and a thin body to be the ideal for idol masculinity, but would not consider an idol to be representative of “real” Japanese masculinity, which is epitomized by the Japanese salaryman.

South Korea, however, has a very specific idea of what idol masculinity must look like - simultaneously hypermasculine (i.e. extremely muscular, chiseled body) and “feminine” (i.e. makeup and dyed hair, extravagant clothing with a soft, beautiful face.) But South Korea also presents us with a more “standardized” idea of masculinity that offers an alternative to the “flowerboy” masculinity performed by idols, when we consider actors such as Hyun Bin and Lee Min-ho.

China is a little more complex. In order to understand Chinese masculinity, we must first understand that prior to the Hallyu wave, the idea of the perfect Chinese man was defined by three qualities: 高富帅 (gaofushuai) tall, moneyed, and handsome - largely due to the emergence of the Chinese metrosexual.

According to Kam Louie:

[The] Chinese metrosexual, though urbanized, is quite different from his Western counterpart. There are several translations of the term in Chinese, two of the most common and standard being “bailing li'nan” 白领丽男 and “dushili'nan” 都市丽男，literally “white-collar beautiful man” and “city beautiful man.” The notion of “beautiful man” (li-nan) refers to one who looks after his appearance and has healthy habits and all of the qualities usually attributed to the metrosexual; these are also the attributes of the reconstituted “cool” salaryman in Japan, men who have abandoned the “salaryman warrior” image and imbibed recent transnational corporate ideologies and practices.

[...]

In fact, the concept of the metrosexual by its very nature defines a masculinity ideal that can only be attained by the moneyed classes. While it can be said to be a “softer” image than the macho male, it nevertheless encompasses a very “hard” and competitive core, one that is more aligned with the traditional “wen” part of the wen-wu dyad that I put forward as a conventional Chinese ideal and the “salaryman warrior” icon in Japan. Unsurprisingly, both metrosexuality and wen-wu masculinity are created and embraced by men who are “winners” in the patriarchal framework.

The wen-wu 文武 (cultural attainment – martial valor) dyad that Louie refers to is the idea that Chinese masculinity was traditionally shaped by “a dichotomy between cultural and martial accomplishments” and is not only an ideal that has defined Chinese masculinity throughout history, but is also a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

When the Hallyu wave swept through China, in an effort to capture and maximize success in the Chinese market, South Korean idol companies recruited Chinese idols and mixed them into their groups. Idols such as Kris Wu, Han Geng, Jackson Wang, and Wang Yibo are just a few such idols whose masculinities were redefined by the Kpop idol ideal.

Once that crossover occurred, China’s idol image shifted towards the example South Korea set, with one caveat: such an example can only exist on stage, in music videos, and other “idol” products. Indeed, if we look at any brand campaigns featuring Wang Yibo, his image is decisively more metrosexual than idol; he is usually shot bare-faced and clean-cut, without the “idol” aesthetics that dominate his identity as Idol Wang Yibo. But, this meterosexual image, despite being the epitome of Chinese idealized masculinity, would still be viewed as more “feminine” when viewed by a North American gaze. (It is important to note that this gaze is uniquely North American, because meterosexual masculinity is actually also a European ideal!)

The North American gaze has been trained to view alternate forms of masculinity as non-masculine. We are inundated by countless images of hypermasculinity and hypersexual femininity in the media, which shapes our cultural consciousness and understanding of gender and sexuality and unattainable ideals.

It is important to be aware that these ideals are culturally and regionally codified and are not universal. It is also important to challenge these ideals, as you must ask yourself: why is it an ideal? Why must masculinity be defined in such a way in North America? Why does the North American gaze view an Asian male idol and immediately read femininity in his bodily performance? What does that say about your North American cultural consciousness and understanding of gender?

I encourage you to challenge these ideas, Anon.

“Always already a cultural sign, the body sets limits to the imaginary meanings that it occasions, but is never free of imaginary construction.” - Judith Butler

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York, NY, Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York, NY, Routledge, 1993. Flowerboys and the appeal of 'soft masculinity' in South Korea. BBC, 2018, Louie, Kam. “Popular Culture and Masculinity Ideals in East Asia, with Special Reference to China.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 71, Issue 4, November 2012 , pp. 929 - 943 Louie, Kam. Chinese, Japanese, and Global Masculine Identities. New York, NY, Routledge, 2003.

#masculinity #asian masculinity #gender performativity #wang yibo #gender studies #Anonymous #ask #peek answers

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