Would You Like Me To Seduce You?

would you like me to seduce you?

forever in awe of people who pay attention. people who wait for you while you tie your shoes while the others have walked away. when they continue listening intently while the rest of the group stopped listening. noticing your moments of silence when everyone else hasn’t. “this made me think of you” noticing things you never even noticed about yourself. people who say “text me when you get home safe.” people who make you laugh until you cry. childhood friends who keep in touch. people with genuine intentions. people who are soft when the world has given them every opportunity to turn hard. the “let’s get ice cream” at 3am friend. the turn up the music in the car and sing friend. people whose actions match their words. people who make the world feel less chaotic. kindred spirits. the trustworthy and honest. hard workers. good listeners. clear communicators. people who love you for who you are. people who don’t ask you to be anything other than yourself. people who choose you. people who stay.

sometimes a healthy relationship isn't 50/50 because it can't be, and that's okay.

disabled people who cannot take on an equal portion of the work in a relationship deserve to be loved too, if that's what they want. and as long as their partner is getting the support they need, and is happy to take on that work, then what's the issue? it's nobodys business but your own the way that works in your relationship.

if you or your partner are disabled, and you can't split the work in the relationship 50/50, that's okay. you're not abusive, or a baby, or unloveable because of that. I promise

where's that quote abt like. being embarrassed abt the thinness of ur life the way ur embarrassed by a threadbare piece of clothing. bc like yeah

Ink Artwork by Endre Penovác

it's interesting to me that torture just works to us, as a literary device. It's everywhere in movies and stories and whatnot, from big-budget dramas to little grindhouse short stories. It fits neatly into the requirements of plot: character doesn't want to offer information, Gets Tortured, has to offer information.

the issue with this is that it isn't how it works.

torture is a display of power. It fouls interrogation, this is known; a person being tortured will tell you whatever you want to hear to make it stop, which is more often than not a lie, made up on the spot, or if the truth an incomplete and useless version of it. It isn't generally done for information's sake anyway, but as a form of what the ancient Greeks called hybris, the violent exhibition of your power over another person.

This is, every once in a great while, done right in fiction, but it's a challenge to write vs. the idea that it's a shortcut to one character revealing plot-critical information to another. Pretty much every form of torture works this way, even the ones that are legally permissible. Psychological torment or physical discomfort also produce an animalistic desire to escape harm and foul interrogation. The forms of torture the cops can do? The cops do it not to gain information (or if they think it will, they're lying to themselves) but because it makes them feel powerful.

There's probably a master's thesis in it for somebody studying the rise of torture as a plot device since the beginning of the war on terror and the contemporaneous development of the Broken Windows theory of policing. I'm not really aware of any similar level of disconnect between what Works in fiction and what happens in real life!