amivoringyou | QUOTES & QUESTIONS MEME

QUOTES & QUESTIONS MEME

idk I felt like it. Five quotes that describe, etc, You know the drill.

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.
-Doris Lessing

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.
-Shirley Temple

The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.
-Edna O'Brien

There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
-Lois McMaster Bujold

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.
-Bonnie Friedman

This is also now a QUESTIONS MEME because I also felt like that. I play Sword/Riful here, on Onyx, and that is it. I will also answer questions about Asuka/Ginger if you really have something burning to ask about. :U

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I'm interested in your thoughts on what Awakening means to a Claymore, what it thematically represents, how it changes and defines their sexuality, and your sense of Riful's sexuality in particular!

Hffffff WHAT IT MEANS IN THE MANGA ITSELF well on the surface it's a pretty obvious metaphor for control over one's own sexual pleasure tbh, at least ... in my opinion. That makes it somewhat problematic! Because essentially, that means Awakened Beings represent a fulfilled and satisfied sexuality and claymores represent a suppression of sexuality and that's ... not good when your story is one that's about women. Except then we have the complicated aspects of the partial Awakening and the Twins (both non-failure sets of 'em, anyway) who have a controlled Awakening and Miria's current situation, and ... it becomes a lot more ambiguous how much of it is a bad thing, really. And there's also the fact that yes, yes, the Abyssals are clearly man-eaters, but the thing that I love about the Abyssals is that they seem self-fulfilled. Okay, not Luciela, but she's clearly found her way to some way of coping with that giant ragged hole in her heat where her sister used to be, at least when we meet her. But Riful and Isley are both ... very secure in themselves and in who and what they are, and I'm like ... this kind of self-satisfaction seems very difficult for claymores to achieve, in away, b/c claymores are almost always restless, they're driven by something that compels them forward obsessively. They might be very good at patience, don't know how to slow down. Whereas Riful and Isley are ... ssssso settled. The only other characters who achieve that kind of settling are the other claymores who broke away from the system or the people traveling with them, and even then, only Galatea and Raki really seem to have found it. So I can't help but think even though the obvious analogy is obvious, just by presenting the characters the way they are it's a lot more complicated than it initially appears. And there's also the fact that some of the characters read as asexual and fine w/it (including, imo, Isley, but idk if that's a minority feeling or not), too, which means saying that all claymores are repressed - a very easy station that train of thought I started with could stop at - is absolutely a bullshit argument and not to be trusted, so I don't like it (because I'm tired of statements that even give off a whiff of "ace = repressed").

But one of the things that is canon is that youma are creatures of hunger and predation and that their impulses are tied to the sexual and the intensely emotional, I mean, there's no way to get around that. To be a claymore means to have to know the limits of your lusts, whether they're lust for power, lust for control, sexual lust, or the ever-present bloodlust, and to know how to healthily express those things. "Healthily" being key, b/c I think claymores can totes have relationships with each other. I am ... honestly torn on what kind of relationships their surgery has denied them, because on the one hand that is gross, but on the other hand that's gross, and the few scenes that we have to go on in terms of just what, exactly, was done to their bodies are not conclusive or suggestive enough to make me feel like an unequivocal argument could be made either way. I'll have to pick one eventually for how to play it in Aather, I think, because I can't avoid it forever (especially not if I ever play out a Riful heart game), but my honest preference is to Schrodinger it and leave it up to the story I'm writing which way it's going to go. Also because I dislike the idea that you can't have sex if you want it just b/c you're mangled in some places, that reeks of ablism. I BET YOU COULD FIND A WAY TO PLEASURE YOURSELF AND HAVE OTHER PEOPLE PLEASURE YOU ... it's just not how "normal" people think of it, but who cares about "normal" people. I'm fairly certain most claymores don't.

Anyway, to get back to Awakening vis-a-vis youma ... idk man, youma are natural cruorvores, that's just what they are, and they're just naturally compelled - by magical impression or by a genuine biological response, idk - to funnel all their emotional responses into the addictive rush of consumption. That means devouring, that means violence, that means endorphin release is tied to these ideas in the mind ... it's like vampires, I really really don't blame any youma for getting off on murder as a substitute for/compliment to fucking, because HOW ELSE THEY GONNA EAT, especially when it's so enjoyable! But also, for Awakened Beings, they have their experiences as a claymore to take into consideration - and claymore culture is, you cannot deny, a culture that teaches its members that you express yourself best in the clash of blades and in the joy of combative excellence. As meaningless as the numbers sometimes are, they create that mentality in the claymores anyway, that urge to compare and clash and compete. Aggressive physicality is how you say you care, Aggressive physicality is how you say you're sorry, aggressive physicality is how you say you're sad and confused and insecure and confident.

It's about power and dominance at the core, about owning your world and making the world know your name, and the characters who don't care still express their disinterest with a physical aggressiveness - see also Helen and Deneve and uhhh, Sophia and Noel I think their names are, and Audrey and Rachel, there's a reason this kind of relationship recurs in every generation ever you know - that kind of BROFIST!!!!-y cheeriness.

Man I keep trying to talk about the nature of youma and I just keep circling back to claymores instead, that's special of me. The problem is that I feel like claymore identity really does define how Awakened approach their sexual identities, because ... it's also canon that the crucial step in Awakening is that their emotions become too heightened for them to control, so to talk about their sexuality afterwards is to be talking about a sexuality defined by being THE SAME EXACT EMOTIONS, BUT MORE INTENSE/EXAGGERATED plus all the usual "happy" and "intense" emotional directions suddenly being slaved to the feeding impulse, so to understand how their sexuality works now ... you have to understand how it worked then! I don't believe in a discontinuity of personality between claymore and awakened youma, because canon outright states there is none thanks to Ophelia's Awakening and then reaffirms that approach when Priscilla returns in the late 90s.

But at the same time, they have become a different being nonetheless, with different perspectives on desire because they genuinely no longer share the same nature - as claymores they're already giving up their humanity, but as youma they've discarded it completely. The tradeoff is that it's let them become ... more like a person (since claymores are taught how not to be one and not to want to be one, after all)! As we see, Awakening restores them to their pre-claymore eye and hair color and skin tone; in a way its a reclamation of themselves against the violence perpetrated on them for the Organization's benefit and I think that's an interpretation the series supports, too. By becoming "monsters", they've made a strength out of what's been done to them.

(While I think the average youma is depersonalized pretty hard by the story and many of the other Awakened get treated like dangerous animals in need of killing and that just makes canon's portrayal of Awakening even more filled with unfortunate implications than it already was, to a certain extent that's neutralized by the Abyssals being so clearly people that the story wants to be understood as such. I'm not saying they're sympathetic or morally non-reprehensible people, but idk one of the things I love about Claymore is that it has that spectrum of consideration for its characters. It's not ... great, because it ends up being the fictional equivalent of "well you're not like those other ___" when looked at from a certain angle, rather than a potential personalization of the others, and it's left too easy for the reader to go that route, but it still adds ambiguity to the issue that makes me dig my claws in.)

So they've become people again, by destroying their humanity, and - by my personal narrative kinks - that is my favorite thing.

In Riful's case, what it means is that her life took someone who already was ready to view the world through solipsistic, brutally pragmatic eyes and intensified those tendencies to the point of sociopathic selfishness - Riful is, in general, a "secondary sociopath" anyway - in combat and in bed. And she did not grow up in a world where modern conceptions of consent even existed, so this whole "consent" thing people request of her in Fred is totally foreign to her and the only reason she doesn't really care about it is 'cause she has no frame of reference to care. For her sex is just another form of power dynamic, meant to be explored and conquered and enjoyed just as thoroughly as all the rest - and power is most straightforwardly expressed through/as violence, so she enjoys violent sex. Honestly she's almost innocent about it in a way - for her violence is an expression of joy, and when she's happy she likes to be violent, so for her, if sex isn't violent, she isn't enjoying it, and clearly the other party can't be enjoying it either, because it's her pleasure that matters in the relationship anyway. As she says at one point, she keeps Dauf around not for his scintillating wit, but because he's the only guy she's ever met who didn't break. So basically, there is no way I can write Riful sleeping with people and still feel IC if it doesn't involve violence, you know? At the very least even if she's "being gentle" for whatever reason, she's still going to fuck them hard enough to bruise, because that's a way to mark them, to know that she's held them and fucked them and they've been reached by the experience. If she likes (... "likes") them some legitimate torture might be involved. People are for giving her pleasure okay, a little pain on their part to make things more enjoyable only spices things up better. Maybe even she might let them hurt her too, if it makes them more entertaining, gets them more invested in the act (if she wants to see how they feel thrown against her).

But hurting them is always going to be part of the equation, because she just isn't the sort of personality to accept sex that she can't fuck the other person with.

IDK IF THIS MAKES SENSE, I SPENT A LOT OF TIME FLAILING ABOUT "AM I SAYING EVERYTHING RIGHT" b/c this is something very close and I have a lot of neuroses about expressing things I care about, esp. in a context that leaves it open to concrit on the "you are a bad person for liking this thing and you should feel bad because it means you're wrong" vector.

REVERSE, BUT ABOUT CLARE? If you feel like it :x

I am curious if Josh left any impression other than !.

"I WANT TO BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF HIM :D" no seriously. It is also not an expression of dislike but an expression of interest, 'cause Riful is Riful. Really, there's not much more to say than that. She thinks he's kind of adorable though.

REVERSE?

Yeah, I figured that with Riful being Riful, that was part of it.

HE IS...idk how to put this. Very guardedly liking her? He knows she's dangerous and he kind of intuits that because he pings her she is dangerous to him potentially, so he's got a base level of wariness, but he's also...well, canonly he faces down Mars Ultor and wins his respect, so he's good at playing the predator game. And honestly, it doesn't bother him...that much that he's food to her, because Mitchell desensitized him. He's aware of it as a consideration but she seems civilized enough to not attack him unless he invites it somehow (which is one reason he keeps dancing around the spar idea).

But it is kind of a positive impression, and approving of him and Ven -- even if it's in a very Riful way -- gets her points. Would thread with again.

(Hilariously, when he gets his tactician skill back he'll settle down around her, because he'll be able to read hostile intent from her body language.)

What does a friendly spar entail for these two?

HEY RIFUL how do think about your Ruby buddy :U

I am curious as to whether Ven left any particular impression on Riful?

WELL HE HAS NOW hahahahaha uh.

I am going to be a terrible person and be blunt about Riful's feelings on Ven: she thinks he's most likely the one getting hot dickings from Josh and not the other way around, and would be hilariously tickled to find out this is not always true if it isn't. He's too compassionate for her to consider him uh, capable, because he's too likely to consider others' feelings first and that means he's more likely to be swept up by others.

Hilariously she also doesn't care that they're banging (she just wanted to confirm her suspicions, p much ... it wasn't important enough to wait and find out from observation) because she's familiar with close inter-team bonds due to lol Claymore character lol. JUST BECAUSE CLAYMORES ... DON'T, USUALLY, SEEM TO CARE ... DOESN'T MEAN THEY'RE NOT THINKING ABOUT IT/NOT DOING IT. Also Riful's v much of the free love school of fucking, so that's another thing.

She's also ":?" about Ven being a magic thing she has no senses forrrrr but that's really not an overriding thing, she may just ask him outright to show her because it's not important enough to actually try and observe.

REVERSE?

HAHAHA, no, you're quite right that Ven, on a good day, can top...a pillow. I mean, they haven't actually gotten to the hot dickings in that sense, but I suspect that is what will happen; although if Josh is curious too, Ven would be v. willing to return the favor. It's less a compassion thing, I would say, they're both really partner-focused, and more that Ven just...is pliable and makes really fun noises when Josh pins him.

Blah blah excuse me while I ramble about sex. Anywho! Ven honestly, after all that weirdness, has a pretty positive impression of Riful. She pinged him as okay, yeah, probably a horrible person, but also friendly and interesting to talk to. So kind of like Beatrice, except obviously not as close because not a teammate. (And he didn't get introduced to her awful side first, which happened with Beato because of hilarious timing.) And at this point, he's pretty chill around horrible people; it's really more a question of whether he considers somebody an active threat in Aather. And since he doesn't know about LOL EATING PEOPLE and her other adventures, and has a lot of instinctive KNIGHTS ARE ALWAYS COOL, he doesn't. (He's new, he never knew knights like Seishirou or other-Lucifer. The idea of an active threat or even a creeper being a knight just does not compute for him.) Also she triggered his sympathy buttons by getting herself injured and so on.

So honestly, yeah, a quietly positive impression with a side note of yeah, she's probably a horrible person in some ways, but so are half the people I sleep around every night, whatevs. Finding out she's hurt people in Aather, more than anything else, is what might whip that around, because at this point Peridot has adjusted him to "if somebody's an active threat in Aather, I will keep that in mind, but otherwise, really, it's none of my damn business."

Tell me about Riful and the free love school of fucking! (I typed ducking at first, clearly I need more coffee.)

How's being Booked affecting/going to affect Asuka?

See my reply to Tanz!

I've been a terrible stalkerrrr, does Roxas even know Ginger exists, and also, how's it feel to be Emerald's tiny these days.

He knows he replaced someone named Ginger, and that the team took her disappearing tough. He doesn't really know what she was like as a person, since it was a painful topic when he first came in. I'm assuming he at least learned for a fact that she was a girl, at some point. But yeah, she's in his 'Emeralds we need to get the heck out of there' category. 'There' being book or statue, natch.

Roxas is extremely attached to Emerald. Especially these days, they are his primary source of stability, since he's starting to realize that canon has gone kerplooey (though he doesn't know all the ways it has, at least.) I could easily see him becoming, as Knife put it, Emerald's Violently Protective Girlfriend, but the yan tendencies are curbed by his impression that Emeralds don't do that sort of thing.

To tangent for a moment, the way I started Roxas as a nigh-blank slate meant that whatever team he wound up on would play an immense part in what kind of person he developed into. If he had wound up on Peridot, for instance, he would have been much more ruthless - and especially more callous. Emerald influenced him to actually think through his morality and open up his monkey sphere, if you're familiar with the term.

It would be really interesting to see if he and Ginger ever wind up discussing self-formed identities. It's an area they've both struggled with and feel strongly about.

Speaking of - would you say that Ginger has any identities she's discarded as definitely not her, in her quest to solidify who she is?

Update ~

How dependent is Asuka's character arc on the memories she recieves back? Is everyone being so much farther along in their registries when she gets back going to be hard for her?

Asuka's character arc is/was heavily dependent on the memories she gets back and how they interact with her context in Aather - so technically her Aather experience forefronts it, but the memories give rise to how she responds to her Aather context - a really bad memory makes her responses more brittle and oversensitive, depending, or more overcompensating, whereas a really good one will make her a little more ... solidly grounded - one of the things with Asuka is that she's very uncomfortable with her own self-identity, at least Ginger is, I should say, because it's something that all Asukas are prone to but the circumstances of Aather's setup make her more prone to it - every Asuka has a tendency to create an identity solely for others out of their own insecurity in who they can be, themselves, but because Asuka Langley Shikinami is actually less capable of succeeding at it than her other iterations it means her attempts are less stable and she knows it, and in canon she just stopped trying, sinking into vidya games and shoving everyone away (physically, if necessary). Whereas Ginger has at least moved along in her arc enough to recognize that she doesn't want to shove everyone away and other people don't want her to shove them away and she actually cares about those people, so ... she's trying, but every time she gets a memory back it's another battering ram to that identity she's trying to build and another reminder that what she's doing is something she's never going to be any good at. She had a half-formed impulse of "try to be Knife instead, since I suck" but since she never articulated it, it never became a fully-considered and attempted idea, even if she was pretty obviously doing it anyway sometimes.

It's going to be hard for her, yes, but so long as Lloyd is around to top her it won't be as horrid as it could be. She'll just isolate herself and have to be coaxed out of her shell patiently, but that much feeling of abandonment will trip her over into introversion rather than extroverted outbursts for a while (.... unfortunately for Mithos, he will probably end up getting the brunt of her FEELINGS that she's too upset to let anyone else in on, because he'll be ... an easy target ...), since Asuka can only aggro for so much, so long, before internalizing and shutting off/out. This won't stop her from going to practices and probably sulking where Lloyd can see her and inevitably getting topped out of it against her will, because it's Lloyd. Lloyd why are you her dad, idek.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS WITH NUNNALLY'S DATES (are you going to give lelouch a heart attack with your scandalous behavior, meadow, are you, are you)

I DON'T REALLY PLAN THINGS. . . though I did think it'd be hilarious if Nunnally ended up with a harem in Aather, since having a harem and getting people to inexplicably care about her stupidly complicated life and issues even when she's clearly a hot mess is kind of a vi Britannia family trait that Nunnally never gets a chance to exercise in canon.

SO SWORD, WE HAD AN INTERESTING CONVERSATION. Riful's thoughts on that?

ASK ME ABOUT IT ONCE IT'S ACTUALLY FINISHED or i can come back to it then.

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QUOTES & QUESTIONS MEME

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