track: woh humsafar thaa by qurat-ul-ain balouch
poetry: khalid ahmed and naseer turabi
When we parted ways, neither he, nor I dared to cry
But why is it then since, sleep hasn't touched our eyes
He was my companion but not in harmony were we
Like sunshine and shadows, separated yet intertwined, you see
We had our share of fights, our difference of opinions and beliefs
My lover had it all, but not a speck of infidelity in him
He was my companion, but not in harmony were we…
: kyra dione
(urdu words can have multiple meanings, and i had fun playing around with them in this video and trying to draw out the ones that i wanted you to know. i'm providing the translation for those of you who are interested in a more straightforward approach.)
special thanks to @miscelium and @nettlepixie for taking a second look at two very different stages in the process and for their advice!
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I know I harp on the weed and losing line but it is so juicy to me in terms of how shane behaves when he feels threaten or cornered like here's ilya who has been moody and standoffish the whole time that they are supposed to be enjoying the holidays with shane's family in shane's hometown and when the fight breaks out shane has this locked and loaded even though he hasn't brought up the weed or how bad the centaurs are to ilya he's filed it away and had it ready to use in the same way that he has the weaknesses of other players filed away just in case because in this moment ilya isn't just his boyfriend who is lashing out ilya is rozanov and shane hollander is going in for the kill
Portrait of a Boy on the Other Side of a Glory Hole
Most wounds are circles, so it’s no surprise
you’ll find me here. Alone. On my knees, on evenings
when the moon hangs low. The brown boy
behind the hole—not quite the size
of a cave or a cigarette burn. Splitting open
my lips the way a saint parts his mouth to banish thirst
or famine or to greet his flock. I have stories
and sadness to share, known men
who moan like injured dogs, others like horses
off to the glue factory. Their dignified shape
reduced by the deep vermilion of my rim.
I used to be scared. Eyes locked to the heavens.
My trembling voice wrapped around their hard-ons.
They only feel me through the hollow space
they briefly occupy. I am all mouth. Cavities and throat.
Obedient. Never see, never touch.
Some call for Jesus as if that were my name.
I have lost so much around here.
—Eduardo Martinez-Levya, from Poetry Magazine (January/February 2024)
‘i wonder how jacob is going to adapt the boxing day fight… i really hope he takes all the toxicity out and especially the part where ilya backs shane into the wall :(’ okay well i actually love that ilya’s been bottling up all his anger and resentment and fear and communicating in passive aggressive eyerolls for months and blows up out of nowhere during a nice boxing day afternoon and then shane responds by saying the nastiest most hurtful most breathtakingly clueless thing he can think of like a cornered animal and then ilya pulls his usual emotional cutoff and tells him to get the fuck out of his house because he’s done with the fight he started now and then shane refuses to leave and keeps repeating the same question over and over again and then ilya straight up has a cptsd rage blackout and realizes in a very visceral and horrifying way how deeply maladaptive his coping mechanisms are because by refusing to acknowledge that he has any needs at all in order not to hurt shane he is now HURTING SHANE <3 like i know it makes both of them cry and have to take a very hard look at how they’ve been acting as partners and people but it makes me happy to get all that catharsis so :)
Fascinated by the negative responses to your 'is Ilya a service top? no' post (which I agree with btw) so I hope you don't mind me sending you thoughts which you can ofc ignore if you like. Because some of the things people said chime with a thing I have seen play out in other places where people with submissive tendencies/less interest in the experience of the dominant partner will sometimes wish for someone to be mean to them (or hurt them, or engage in a fantasy of cruelty etc) but not want someone who truly WANTS to be mean to them (etc) because that feels too dangerous and scary. And this results in fantasies that describe the dominant partner's experience entirely through the curation of the submissive's experience which ties most closely into service topping. And leads to a rule set/culture that serves to constrain BDSM dynamics, which is actually deeply uncomfortable with particularly the dom's desires (but also BDSM in general). Bc if doms are not allowed to enjoy the sadism part of BDSM then why are they doing it? Why is anyone engaging in this if they are not seeking pleasure? Surely it is more beautiful that their desires were made for each other before they met, rather than one partner shaping themselves for the other? Anyway I thought it was fascinating how strongly people reacted against your read of Ilya, and I think it was because it was too much in the perspective of dominant pleasure for some people who have never examined a dynamic they enjoy from the other side.
Yes, excellent ask, thank you! And I’ll add onto that —
For sure people are scared of the real life desire for cruelty, and I think you're right that it lends itself to some people wanting doms & sadists to be essentially playacting or only doing it because of external pressure/being of service, rather than having an intrinsic want-lust-need for enacting that cruelty themselves. Because then we're getting into territory that asks us to humanize the people (my Ilya!) with that desire for cruelty, but isn't that just the definition of a Bad person? Or a broken person, in need of fixing or healing or getting help?
I'm gonna go on record and say that it feels TO ME very much in line with a culturally Christian value set to place more judgement on someone's desires or interior motivations than on the outcome of their actions. If your desire for enacting cruelty ends with hurting someone else who, ultimately, isn't getting what they want out of the experience, then yeah - it's your responsibility to right that wrong. To apologize and make amends or do what it takes to rebuild trust. But if your desire for enacting cruelty ends with hurting someone who *is* getting what they want out of that experience - whatever that means to them - then great! Ethically, it doesn't matter what your internal motivations were. It doesn't matter whether you're doing it because you like it for your own sake or because you think someone else will like it for theirs. But wouldn't it be more fun for everyone if we were all acting in line with our own intrinsic desires, rather than what's expected or imposed upon us?
I’m reminded of a line from a wonderful stucky BDSM fic I read years ago (the bene castigat series by Nonymos, which is excellent fyi) where the dom character says ‘Sometimes he thought subs had it easier; they didn’t hurt anyone, even in their dreams.’
I think this is basically the conflict for people, where readers are (generally) coming at things from a submissive point of view, because their fantasies often feel safer when they simultaneous absolve themselves of the guilt and shame around those desires by having the dominant be in control, by having something done *to* them rather than participating in something that feels taboo or shameful. There’s nothing wrong with that obvs, I’m not trying to kink shame, but I do think it means that people don’t want to examine what it means to want the same things from the opposite point of view, because then they have to confront the fact that this is sometime two people are choosing together, and they have to confront all that shame and guilt again when there isn’t that more socially acceptable buffer of a lack of agency any more. But if Shane isn’t dirty or wrong or shameful for wanting Ilya to hurt him, why do people fail to see it isn’t for Ilya to want to hurt him either?
Also, maybe this is too woke but…I think it’s also related to how people don’t want to examine their own sadistic tendencies, which are increasingly prevalent with the rise in reactionary politics - lots of people want to burn someone else at the stake for their mistakes these days, to see people be punished for every minor transgression, but no one wants to examine the fact that we have that urge to hurt someone else or make them suffer. A dominant or sadist who is honest about enjoying someone else’s pain is threatening to the cognitive dissonance most people walk around with re:punishment and cruelty.
OOOOOH can i jump in to talk about purity culture as it relates to cultural framing of dominance and submission?
because we're right on the money regarding the absolution of the masochist. christianity (and by extension, cultural christianity) has morality through victimhood baked into it. the idea that suffering has a causal relationship to moral purity is foundational, built into the gospels, at the very root.
and then we add purity culture to the mix. purity culture has two sides for "each gender." for women, those two sides are: 1) you do not desire; 2) men's desire is dangerous to them, so you must protect them. for men, those two sides are: 1) your desire is dangerous, and you must resist it; 2) any woman who pursues you sexually or romantically is dangerous, and you must resist her.
so we see here ^^ that pursuing pleasure, being the aggressor, wanting someone and taking action to get them is Dangerous and Bad and Evil and Sinful. nobody in that equation actually wants a man to desire a woman, or for a woman to desire a man. they want the carefully controlled and sanitized performance of desire (chivalry & courtship) that then cut-scenes straight to pregnancy. the actual desire is a threat.
generally, left-ish and leftist spaces have done a good job at acknowledging that women are people and therefore have desires. but the other parts of purity culture? the ideas that a man's desire is inherently dangerous, that sexually "aggressive" women are dangerous, that it's never okay to be the aggressor? oh we've done fuck all with those. those are still EVERYWHERE. and lets be fucking forreal, we still culturally associate masochism and submission with women and sadism and dominance with men. obviously that isn't how BDSM actually plays out in the real world, but we'd also be goofy to pretend that those cultural associations aren't coloring the way we think about BDSM.
so ilya wanting shane and taking control of shane and wanting to hurt shane already puts ilya on the moral backfoot in this equation. he's doing everything that waves purity culture red flags. he needs to repent via victimhood, and therefore he needs to be shown the pleasure of bottoming, of submission.
and don't think i didn't clock the original sin framework where grigori and ilya are concerned. eve grigori did wrong, which means that ilya is born into sin starts off needing control but once he's ready to repent healed and forsaken the world settled down with shane, THEN he'll be ready to accept the lord into his heart try submission with shane and that will save him because he "deserves" it.
#there’s definitely this idea that is taught to us#responsibility to the larger collective#it isn’t enough to sacrifice yourself for just one other person#that choice has to have moral backing#and those morals are determined by the collective#not by two people in a relationship#so the framing that ilya IS a service dom or subtop (not just can be) is there so that he’s only doing these things for shane yes#but there’s this added layer of he needs to be these things it needs to be there in the writing#so that the viewers/readers are absolved of the sin of wanting to control his sexuality#of our own sadistic desires to strip ilya of his pleasure#otherwise- we would be leaving it up to the text/their story how they tell it#this tension also shows up in tlg so i’ve been thinking about it#how shane justifies the sacrifices that they are making by not being out in the open by stating that it would be distracting#he’s echoing organizational rhetoric#because deep down#he doesn’t really want to hide if everything would be okay#if there wasn’t social pressure
"of our own sadistic desires to strip ilya of his pleasure" EVERYBODY LISTEN UP
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i can see itttt 'shane come.' And he just has shane follow him around the neighborhood maybe hes a little confused but hey shane has never had an issue with hanging out with his husband and ilya keeps a hand on him most of the time maybe his back, the back of his neck, if shane starts to get a little too far ahead ilya pulls him back and if shane starts to lag behind ilya whistles and. Sure. shane says hes being an asshole for whistling ('im not a Dog ilya.' 'hm. okay.') but maybe hes a little red while he does a little half jog to keep up and maybe he feels some satisfaction in his chest when ilya rewards him for returning to his side (coming back to heel....) with a kiss to his cheek
they finish their walk that apparently had no destination and ilya tells him 'good boy' and shane kind of splutters and says 'for what?' And instead of answering ilya asks him if he wants a treat and they fuck and its all. I mean. They fuck all the time, its nothing unusual
They go on walks every day after dinner for weeks, and every time shane gets better at keeping pace with ilya to stay by his side and every time ilya rewards him for it with sex
And then one day they finish dinner and clean up and ilya goes to the living room and sits down and turns on the tv. Shane kind of lingers in the doorway confused, goes and sits with him, shifts. Shifts again. 'Hollander what are you doing?' 'Nothing.' 'Then stop moving around like you find new and exciting way to sit on couch' 'well i just. Uh. I thought we would -' and then ilya smiles, so slow and knowing and shane knows immediately hes been caught in something he hadnt registered and ilya says 'im sorry sweetheart, did my good boy want to go on a walk?'
sasha and svetlana as markers for places at which shane’s feelings change: an ilya scene with either of them is always followed by a moment where he realizes that what they are doing right now isn’t cutting it. he wants more. sasha being brushed off the way he is, quite similar to the way shane is brushed off at the sochi arena (not here/here?). the scene after this is shane watching the game where ilya wins the cup- where shane realizes that ilya has no intention of letting up this punishment that he’s putting shane through for the transgression in montreal, where he talked about russia. he wants to be put out of his misery. he wants to be with ilya again. when ilya is in the car with svetlana, she’s asking him all of this questions that he isn’t really in the mood to answer. curt responses. just like the ones in that vegas penthouse. svetlana, there’s no need to be jealous. we're friends who sometimes fuck, and that's the most serious thing i've got right now. right after that? we get the tuna melt scene where shane realizes that they both like each other, the feelings are there, but he can’t just be friends-with-benefits with ilya. he wants more with ilya; he likes him too much to pretend. ilya, on the other hand, also realizes that what he has with shane is affecting his perception of what should be enough for him and that haunts him at times: ilya looking at shane's guileless texting where he's so worried about ilya despite the silence, svetlana telling ilya that sasha says hi in the car (there’s still time to hook up with him and turn back), ilya tells shane that svetlana is really busy these days so he doesn't get to rely on her company as much. he doesn't really have big moments of realizing he wants more because he literally can't. these moments are him seeing how he's subconsciously letting that want drive him anyways.
just want to put this in the post, @anacoluthas, but yes, the same principle operates during the funeral scene + the phone call!
svetlana tells ilya that she'll always be in his life in some capacity, supporting ilya. and shane's, while on the call, is happy to do just that, but he also wants more than loving ilya while reminding himself that ilya can choose someone else. he wants a claim! he wants belonging! and he verbalizes it this time around: maybe, you can teach me russian someday? how do you say i wish you were here? he has to wait a bit more, though. ilya responds to those queries either evasively or in russian. it's not time yet, but shane has stated what he wants. it's ilya's turn to follow up. and at the cottage, ilya verbalizes how much shane's presence in his life has spoiled him for anything else- i could marry svetlana... she would help me with getting a passport, but that would be the extent of the marriage. we would still be friends. i would have been quite happy with that. but even then, i only think about you. he doesn't just ignore svetlana when she mentions sasha or tell shane that he wants to find someone regular for convenience. no, he is fully honest about how he wants shane in his life permanently. even when he shouldn't, even when he's inconvenient. so, being able to come out and say all this , for the both of them , makes the difference. allows them to get to the i love yous instead of taking a step back. and that is possible partly because svetlana's permission to pursue something serious with shane (when she had earlier arranged for a secret hookup with a man) allows ilya to be honest about the fact that he actually wants, which then lets shane know that he can ask ilya for more because ilya will let himself have it.
So, I’ve been pulled over a few times in my life. Not many, but a few. And I’ve also been in a couple of cars that got pulled over. And let me tell you, if you were actually doing something wrong, the officer doesn’t make any small talk, just straight into “I clocked you doing 70 in a 55.” The only time I’ve ever gotten the “do you know why I pulled you over?” was the time when I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and I got let go even though he insisted to the end that I was doing 87 in a 70 (white privilege at work).
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” is a trap. It means there’s a good chance the officer doesn’t actually have a good reason to ticket you, and is trying to get you to waive your 5th Amendment rights and incriminate yourself. If you make a guess, that’s a confession of guilt.
But there’s another trap, that I’ve heard of but haven’t yet experienced. It’s “do you know how fast you were going?” With that one, they’re hoping you’ll say no, because then they can name whatever speed they want – you just said you didn’t know how fast you were going, if you deny the speed they name then you’re lying to them.
Oh, I’ve had that one. Go with “yes.” Don’t give them a number, just say “Yes.” Then they still have to offer a number and you can deny it without contradicting yourself. They could just ask you, at that point, but that’s suspiciously similar to saying they don’t know, and they tend to avoid doing that.
Also, you can always go to court and contest a ticket, and a lot of times you’ll win. Or if the cop thinks you’ll win they won’t even show up and you’ll win by default.
They like to target out of state plates because anyone who would be majorly inconvenienced by a court date two months away is a lot more likely to just pay it.
sasha and svetlana as markers for places at which shane’s feelings change: an ilya scene with either of them is always followed by a moment where he realizes that what they are doing right now isn’t cutting it. he wants more. sasha being brushed off the way he is, quite similar to the way shane is brushed off at the sochi arena (not here/here?). the scene after this is shane watching the game where ilya wins the cup- where shane realizes that ilya has no intention of letting up this punishment that he’s putting shane through for the transgression in montreal, where he talked about russia. he wants to be put out of his misery. he wants to be with ilya again. when ilya is in the car with svetlana, she’s asking him all of this questions that he isn’t really in the mood to answer. curt responses. just like the ones in that vegas penthouse. svetlana, there’s no need to be jealous. we're friends who sometimes fuck, and that's the most serious thing i've got right now. right after that? we get the tuna melt scene where shane realizes that they both like each other, the feelings are there, but he can’t just be friends-with-benefits with ilya. he wants more with ilya; he likes him too much to pretend. ilya, on the other hand, also realizes that what he has with shane is affecting his perception of what should be enough for him and that haunts him at times: ilya looking at shane's guileless texting where he's so worried about ilya despite the silence, svetlana telling ilya that sasha says hi in the car (there’s still time to hook up with him and turn back), ilya tells shane that svetlana is really busy these days so he doesn't get to rely on her company as much. he doesn't really have big moments of realizing he wants more because he literally can't. these moments are him seeing how he's subconsciously letting that want drive him anyways.
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Text ID: I am not good, I am not innocent, I am not serene. My happiness and unhappiness are both unbearable; I am full of inarticulate voices and darknesses; I wallow, all blood and tears, in this warm trough of my flesh. I am afraid to talk. I adorn myself with false wings; I shout, I sing and I weep to drown out the inexorable cry of my heart. I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light.
Fascinated by the negative responses to your 'is Ilya a service top? no' post (which I agree with btw) so I hope you don't mind me sending you thoughts which you can ofc ignore if you like. Because some of the things people said chime with a thing I have seen play out in other places where people with submissive tendencies/less interest in the experience of the dominant partner will sometimes wish for someone to be mean to them (or hurt them, or engage in a fantasy of cruelty etc) but not want someone who truly WANTS to be mean to them (etc) because that feels too dangerous and scary. And this results in fantasies that describe the dominant partner's experience entirely through the curation of the submissive's experience which ties most closely into service topping. And leads to a rule set/culture that serves to constrain BDSM dynamics, which is actually deeply uncomfortable with particularly the dom's desires (but also BDSM in general). Bc if doms are not allowed to enjoy the sadism part of BDSM then why are they doing it? Why is anyone engaging in this if they are not seeking pleasure? Surely it is more beautiful that their desires were made for each other before they met, rather than one partner shaping themselves for the other? Anyway I thought it was fascinating how strongly people reacted against your read of Ilya, and I think it was because it was too much in the perspective of dominant pleasure for some people who have never examined a dynamic they enjoy from the other side.
Yes, excellent ask, thank you! And I’ll add onto that —
For sure people are scared of the real life desire for cruelty, and I think you're right that it lends itself to some people wanting doms & sadists to be essentially playacting or only doing it because of external pressure/being of service, rather than having an intrinsic want-lust-need for enacting that cruelty themselves. Because then we're getting into territory that asks us to humanize the people (my Ilya!) with that desire for cruelty, but isn't that just the definition of a Bad person? Or a broken person, in need of fixing or healing or getting help?
I'm gonna go on record and say that it feels TO ME very much in line with a culturally Christian value set to place more judgement on someone's desires or interior motivations than on the outcome of their actions. If your desire for enacting cruelty ends with hurting someone else who, ultimately, isn't getting what they want out of the experience, then yeah - it's your responsibility to right that wrong. To apologize and make amends or do what it takes to rebuild trust. But if your desire for enacting cruelty ends with hurting someone who *is* getting what they want out of that experience - whatever that means to them - then great! Ethically, it doesn't matter what your internal motivations were. It doesn't matter whether you're doing it because you like it for your own sake or because you think someone else will like it for theirs. But wouldn't it be more fun for everyone if we were all acting in line with our own intrinsic desires, rather than what's expected or imposed upon us?
I’m reminded of a line from a wonderful stucky BDSM fic I read years ago (the bene castigat series by Nonymos, which is excellent fyi) where the dom character says ‘Sometimes he thought subs had it easier; they didn’t hurt anyone, even in their dreams.’
I think this is basically the conflict for people, where readers are (generally) coming at things from a submissive point of view, because their fantasies often feel safer when they simultaneous absolve themselves of the guilt and shame around those desires by having the dominant be in control, by having something done *to* them rather than participating in something that feels taboo or shameful. There’s nothing wrong with that obvs, I’m not trying to kink shame, but I do think it means that people don’t want to examine what it means to want the same things from the opposite point of view, because then they have to confront the fact that this is sometime two people are choosing together, and they have to confront all that shame and guilt again when there isn’t that more socially acceptable buffer of a lack of agency any more. But if Shane isn’t dirty or wrong or shameful for wanting Ilya to hurt him, why do people fail to see it isn’t for Ilya to want to hurt him either?
Also, maybe this is too woke but…I think it’s also related to how people don’t want to examine their own sadistic tendencies, which are increasingly prevalent with the rise in reactionary politics - lots of people want to burn someone else at the stake for their mistakes these days, to see people be punished for every minor transgression, but no one wants to examine the fact that we have that urge to hurt someone else or make them suffer. A dominant or sadist who is honest about enjoying someone else’s pain is threatening to the cognitive dissonance most people walk around with re:punishment and cruelty.
OOOOOH can i jump in to talk about purity culture as it relates to cultural framing of dominance and submission?
because we're right on the money regarding the absolution of the masochist. christianity (and by extension, cultural christianity) has morality through victimhood baked into it. the idea that suffering has a causal relationship to moral purity is foundational, built into the gospels, at the very root.
and then we add purity culture to the mix. purity culture has two sides for "each gender." for women, those two sides are: 1) you do not desire; 2) men's desire is dangerous to them, so you must protect them. for men, those two sides are: 1) your desire is dangerous, and you must resist it; 2) any woman who pursues you sexually or romantically is dangerous, and you must resist her.
so we see here ^^ that pursuing pleasure, being the aggressor, wanting someone and taking action to get them is Dangerous and Bad and Evil and Sinful. nobody in that equation actually wants a man to desire a woman, or for a woman to desire a man. they want the carefully controlled and sanitized performance of desire (chivalry & courtship) that then cut-scenes straight to pregnancy. the actual desire is a threat.
generally, left-ish and leftist spaces have done a good job at acknowledging that women are people and therefore have desires. but the other parts of purity culture? the ideas that a man's desire is inherently dangerous, that sexually "aggressive" women are dangerous, that it's never okay to be the aggressor? oh we've done fuck all with those. those are still EVERYWHERE. and lets be fucking forreal, we still culturally associate masochism and submission with women and sadism and dominance with men. obviously that isn't how BDSM actually plays out in the real world, but we'd also be goofy to pretend that those cultural associations aren't coloring the way we think about BDSM.
so ilya wanting shane and taking control of shane and wanting to hurt shane already puts ilya on the moral backfoot in this equation. he's doing everything that waves purity culture red flags. he needs to repent via victimhood, and therefore he needs to be shown the pleasure of bottoming, of submission.
and don't think i didn't clock the original sin framework where grigori and ilya are concerned. eve grigori did wrong, which means that ilya is born into sin starts off needing control but once he's ready to repent healed and forsaken the world settled down with shane, THEN he'll be ready to accept the lord into his heart try submission with shane and that will save him because he "deserves" it.
i hate writing tips posts but i'm losing my mind so i'm going to be a hypocrite for a second. if the scene is in a bathroom you don't have to tell me there's a toilet. i assume there's a toilet. if there's NOT a toilet in the bathroom, this is strange and you must tell me. but otherwise no. likewise sink. this rule applies for many other rooms, places, etc. beds in the bedroom. trees in the forest. etc.
if the bed is messy or the trees are ominous and this is important to character/plot/mood then by all means. but if they are simply there then no. don't tell me. i can infer. (unless their there-ness becomes oppressive or notable. the presence of the bed during a moment of sexual tension or extreme exhaustion, etc. trees that suddenly seem more numerous than they were a moment ago. other such examples.)
Is Sex What Makes Us Human? Shamhat and Enkidu Weigh In
Some extended thoughts on The Epic of Gilgamesh.
When I was a little kid, I had a big book of world mythology. Abbreviated versions of several episodes from the Epic of Gilgamesh were included, such as the taming of Enkidu, and the battle against Humbaba. And I remember how they described Shamhat teaching Enkidu to be human: she bathed him, and fed him bread, and taught him to speak, and taught him "the myriad words for love." I thought that was so lovely and poetic, when I was 12.
In the original epic, Shamhat teaches Enkidu to be human by having sex with him a lot.
Like she does do the other things too: teaches him to bathe, to eat bread and drink wine rather than graze with the gazelles and drink from the lake. She teaches him to speak. But it's the sex that changes him. She ensnares him, bares her breasts, works her charm, gives him humanity separated from the wild animals, by having sex with him for a week straight.
When he had had his fill of her delights,
he turned back to the herd.
But the gazelles saw him and ran,
the herd of the wild fled from him.
Enkidu had sullied his spotless body.
The herd was running, his knees were stuck;
Enkidu was weakened and could not keep up,
but now he could reason and think.
(Sophus Helle, 2021: Tablet I lines 195-202)
And then in 2018 a new piece of text from the Epic was discovered, with a conversation between Shamhat and Enkidu about returning with her to the city of Uruk, where he can go to the temple of Anu and Ishtar, and learn a trade: "You, too, human as you are, will find a place for yourself. Leave the wild that the herdsmen fear!" (Tablet II lines P61-65). And then they have sex for another week straight. The Epic of Gilgamesh makes a provocative, to my asexual eyes, proposal about humanity: sex literally makes you human.
But also, it's not just sex: along with bread, wine, language, and living in a city, proper relations between the sexes are an important part of being a civilized member of society. Ancient Sumerian and Babylonian cultures emphasized a divide between the wilderness and the city, wildness and civilization. By having sex with Shamhat, Enkidu loses his wildness and enters into the human social contract. He is having correct relations between male and female, an important aspect of civilized order in the Sumerian world.
At the same time, sex crosses a boundary between human and animal, civilized and wild. Shamhat's nakedness attracts the wild Enkidu; is the sex the mechanism through which Enkidu becomes human, or is the sex something that appeals to Enkidu's wild nature, and functionally a trap to ensnare the wild Enkidu, take his power, and once ensnared, put him in a position to transmit to him the bread/wine/language/cleanliness/perfumes/city life/deity worship of humanity? There's ambiguity there. Notably, as far as I can remember, Enkidu is not described as having sex with anyone for the remainder of the poem after he meets Gilgamesh. (Neither does Gilgamesh after that point, for that matter.)
There's something else I want to say about sex and attraction in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Shamhat's naked body attracts Enkidu. The word the poem uses is kuzbu, which Helle translates as "charm," and explains that it's his attempt to capture the ambiguity and power inherent in the Akkadian word, "more like a magnetic sexual allure that pulls people to those who wield it" (p. 172). The Akkadian kuzbu means an attractive power that a person or body has, almost a magical force that emanates from the person who has it. It's sexual and sensual in nature but also wrapped up in force of power and personality. There's an inherent physicality to the concept, a draw. Attractiveness isn't a bad word for it, ultimately. Both men and women can have kuzbu; Shamhat describes Gilgamesh to Enkidu by praising his kuzbu, and just as Shamhat's kuzbu draws Enkidu, Gilgamesh's kuzbu draws Ishtar. Attraction is a force a body has, not so much a feeling a person experiences, in this framework. And it can affect and weaken the target of that kuzbu. (it reminded me a lot of how, a few centuries later, Sappho described eros.) Which is, of course, a quite conceptually different organization of the world and the forces at work in modern-day discussions of attraction!
i think there is barely any time between mybabybutch ilya starting t and starting to fantasise about forcemascing someone. i think he's pushing a needle into his thigh and instantly has an image of someone else being under his needle. it's just not until sweet little jane hollander that the image grows beyond shaking thighs, to the full figure of a nervous girl begging with her words for him not to change her into something new, while she's begging with her eyes for him to mould her into his boy
i also think ilya is doing DIY HRT . in this world let's say they're both playing hockey at college and ilya has all this diy shit in his dorm room. his lab his experiments. beautiful little jane can be his lab rat.
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reblogging YET AGAIN to cheer loudly and to add: ilya also lets himself just look at (and hold and suck on) shane's blissed out subspace-y face. ilya loves to watch (he's constantly watching his dick go in and out of shane while he fucks him, he orders shane to strip in front of him repeatedly), but this is the first time he's let himself actually enjoy it. vs in vegas when he's holding shane's jaw to pull him up, both out of subspace and to stop him from closing the physical distance between them, which ilya can only allow on his terms. the next thing he does is say no! compare that with here where the next thing he does is grab shane's face and neck and give him the world's most tender passionate possessive kiss ahhh i love them
