#absolute narcissist wouldn’t irl

[tockamybeloved]

Five things that first drew you to Ronghao.

Thank you for the ask! (sends detailed note later) AND thank you for narrowing it down to 'first drew'. I found myself writing a tangent late last night. I hope this answers your question.

(Long answer)

1) Episode 2

A single figure appears in a painting, colors washed and muted by a broad stroke of sepia. But that was me looking at it from a Western view. I had to switch off my mind to those associations. It is not the color sepia- it is yellow. Yellow, the balanced color, the one that tells the viewer you are entering a place of freedom and earth and royalty. We are being told this man is peaceful, calm. He travels a river whose waters are ruled by the melancholy notes he plays. (Is he the only one to use music this way? Question for another post.)

The painting is a real space. Chang Heng appears standing behind him on the punt. 

The music stops. The man who is alone no longer turns to greet his visitor - and smiles. After being teasingly accused of arrogance, he smiles! 

Life for Rong Hao, Fairy Lord, is reflected in the colors around him: His face outlines beauty; the clarity in his eyes a longing for peace implied in the calm landscape. 

Dressed in white I immediately thought “death”. But it is also a symbol of renewal and innocence. 

This is a world away from everything. He desires to be separate from the noise and crowd. A purposeful introvert. 

Both the inhabitant and the artist of the painting, here he is his own master. Confident, secluded, and peaceful.

2) Observant. And clever. Discovery of the orchid on the handkerchief, done by exposing a secret without permission, seemed not to be malicious. 

I thought, here is a man who cares enough for his friend that he notices the love-sick face and because he also knows Chang Heng will not speak what is on his heart forces him to open up. Who but a true friend sees their vulnerable heart? Who but a long time and honest friend wants to help carry the worries and sorrows of another? 

3) The Green Flame Wine. In an instant my impression of Rong Hao as a one note (!) character is pushed away. A clear - unknown to us - deep bond exists. And yet Rong Hao never puts his lips to the bottle. I asked myself why. The act is subtle and I wonder why Rong Hao doesn’t trust the current god of War fully. 

There is pain or betrayal lurking beneath the perfect lines. Who caused the rift?

4) Episode 6 (Episode 3 for a moment. Anytime I’m presented with a masked character I’m going to use all my skills to try and predict who it is. I second guessed myself on this one, but I shouldn’t have. The form of his lips gave it away.)

At the Soul Transformation Grounds we see the masked persona: Rong Hao, Lord of Haishi. Dressed in black he wears on his shoulder splashes of all the colors. I am dissecting the why of all! Why all the colors? The answer is exactly in those colors but I was now also invested in this second world he exists in. It’s destruction, chaos, everything opposed to the painting. 

He is stern, direct. An opposed feeling of safety rises because of his power to influence. 

5) How quickly he figured out who Orchid is! Clever again. A constant gatherer of information he intelligently uses that information to further and succeed in his plan. 

Who is the true self? The man with the peaceful heart, or the one who coldly commands?

I am going to mention a sixth because in this moment I knew I could not break free. It is a brief dialog and might easily be brushed aside as inconsequential but like the entire show every detail is important.   

6) Episode 7

Rong Hao does something very father-like: He guides her vision away from the others and leans down eye to eye distracting her from watching the gathering of the evil qi. The movement is reminiscent of redirecting a child when there is an intensely emotional situation and the adult needs them to remain calm. 

But it’s not a single act. There are multiple things happening here. 

He is meeting her on his own terms without suspicion to gain knowledge. 

To Chang Heng, it appears that maybe Rong Hao will embarrass him in front of all, maybe giving away his secret feelings. Rong Hao doesn’t though, and gives a knowing smile furthering Chang Heng’s trust in him. 

The others see his questioning as curiosity or as I said, an elder or father being concerned for a child. 

It’s devious, self-serving, and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. As he speaks of his master, a distant gaze as he dwells on moments of happiness playing before his vision. There is a heart. 

Will he choose destruction, or peace?

Now for the irrational part told in pictures because I have lost the ability to speak sense.

This Smirk. Playful and familiar. Instantly I smile in return because I understand the thoughts behind such a look. He’s absolutely out of reach and untouchable which makes me want to do exactly that. Terrible.

2. So thoughtful. Much intelligence. Teach me this game?

3. The mask. Look at the distorted hand cradling his chin. I want to be that hand. The MOUTH. He speaks and all I can do is stare. I am a mess. THE HEAD TILT. YES YES! Analyze the fuck out of me with your eyes!

4. Poor immortal looks like he’s been stabbed in the heart. Who dares betray him? What foolish thing has been done to thwart his perfect plan?!

5. Now I am being stabbed in the heart. I CARE!! Aaaghghaghh

Yes, I know. He’s the villain - the one who will destroy everything to make his happiness be reality. In the end, he destroys even himself. Love over duty; love distorted as time passes. The way to keep his love alive is tainted with selfishness and becomes poison.

BUT THAT LOOK.

[threewaysdivided]

So, I've noticed that DP fans and authors have a sliding scale for Vlad. They vary from "haha look at poor little meow meow who fails at everything" to "Vlad is an absolute psycho and the Fenton parents are criminally negligent for allowing him near their kids". I'm very curious as to how you view Vlad and his relationship with Danny because that variance is so huge, and since it kind of slides between the two in canon as well.

Ah, Vlad.  Perpetual runner-up of Dracula lookalike contests, consistent bronze medallist in the race for most-culturally-relevant-Vladimir, and called by the internet everything from Psychopath to Meow Meow to I regretfully inform you Daddy.

One of the things that makes interpretations of Danny Phantom characters more fluid/variable than others is that (as you said) canon can be rather slide-y at times - something which lends itself to multiple quasi-canonical potential readings.  I think I’ve mentioned before that for me this means I have a bit of an annoying tendency to change my headcanons depending on what best facilitates a given story concept, rather than being wedded to One True Version™.

That said, Vlad is probably the major-character who I have the most consistent read on.

Vlad’s Character

When it comes to the question of whether Vlad is an entertainingly pathetic failure or a dangerously unhinged threat, I would say the answer is that he’s kind of both.

My core reading of Vlad is that he’s a narcissist.  He sees himself as exceptional/ superior, he has very little empathy for others, and he often treats other characters less as people and more as prizes to be won or as existing to support/ serve him.  His ghost powers probably exacerbated this, but since he behaves pretty similarly during Masters of All Time it’s likely that this is a part of his native personality.

Now, on its own this wouldn’t be a consignment to villainy - there can be narcissistic or egocentric hero characters (early MCU Tony Stark is like this, and it’s basically Neil’s whole bit in Class of the Titans) - but Vlad combines it with a bunch of significantly nastier traits.  He’s entitled, he can be extremely petty, he’s immature and he holds grudges to an irrational degree.  He also twists narratives; finding ways to position himself as the victim or somehow secretly the victor/ mastermind even when he loses.  Most of all, he’s controlling and part of that comes out as sadism - he enjoys the power that comes from hurting, inconveniencing, frustrating and generally making life miserable for others.

All of this means that Vlad can be incredibly dangerous toward people/ in situations where his self-concept is threatened, where he feels slighted or where he has been denied something he feels should be rightfully his.  That sadism combined with his lack of empathy, his manipulativeness, his capacity to hold petty grudges for potentially years and his ability for patient, premeditated planning has the potential to be terrifying.  At his worst, Vlad is a malignant narcissistic abuser with wealth and superpowers.

But on the other hand, it’s those same core traits that make Vlad kind of pathetic and even tragic.  Like many narcissistic antagonists (and IRL malignant narcissists) he creates a lot of his own suffering.  Someone else on this site put it well when they said that Vlad doesn’t care about people, he cares about the people-shaped objects he’s trying to stuff into the holes in his lonely, miserable existence.  Vlad had multiple opportunities to course-correct and build the kind of genuine, sincere relationships with Maddie, Jack, Danny and Danielle that deep down he seems to want, but he burned those bridges himself with bad choices and worse behaviour.  He has needs and desires, and on some level he has the capacity to change and choose better, but until he learns to care about people for their own sake and to treat others with consideration and respect he will always end up driving those things away.

Vlad’s strategic plans fall apart for similar reasons.  He’s unwilling to admit when he’s wrong or has been bested which means he doesn’t really change his opinions of people or adjust his strategies accordingly (Jack will always be “an idiot”, Danny will always be “an underperforming fool wasting his potential” etc), he doesn’t really pay attention to people unless he’s fixated on/ wants something from them, and because he sees his perspective as universal and/or doesn’t value empathy, his plans often have big gaping weak spots that people can easily exploit. 

There’s an almost classic-tragedy element to Vlad; his compassionless hubris is his hamartia and it walks him into nearly every reversal of fortune.

But also… yeah, watching him repeatedly trip over that ego and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is funny.  This is a character who never holds himself accountable or bothers to grow; at some point you run out of sympathy for the whiney middle-aged man who uses his tremendous wealth and power mostly to skulk around a big empty mansion while creeping on a married woman and her teenage son, and seeing him become a perpetual karmic butt-monkey of his own making can be very satisfying.

Vlad is both at once; simultaneously a potentially terrifying villain and a deeply pathetic little man living in a selfish mundane suffering of his own creation.  Forget The Fright Before Christmas, a holiday morality visit from Scrooge’s ghosts would have done Mister Masters a world of good.

My preferred use of Vlad

Okay so, despite everything I’ve managed to say above, I’m now going to cop to the fact that I… don’t find Vlad super compelling as a character.

Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s very useful as an antagonist and source of schemes that can be complex while still being beatable, but in isolation he just doesn’t have a lot going on under the hood for me at that deepest level. 

This might be coming from personal experience - I’ll spare you the details but there are some abusive malignant narcissists in my extended family and I’ve observed this kind of behaviour and its consequences in real life.  And the truth I’ve found is that once you strip all the layers back it’s depressingly simple.

I completely understand other people’s fascination: when you first encounter this kind of mindset, it can seem deeply compelling.  It feels like there has to be a reason, an answer, an explanation.  A lot of time can be spent searching for that; trying to puzzle out how a person could be like this, what kind of moral framework they must have, what internal justifications a sane and reasonable person could have that would possibly excuse doing something that seems so obviously wrong/ hurtful.  But deep down the answer is: they just don’t care.   There is no moral rationalisation because morality never factors into it.  They want, so they do and the only thing that will give them major pause is if it will have negative consequences for them personally.

In this regard Vlad for me sits more in the realm of Fire Lord Ozai, Batman’s Joker or YJS1’s Vandal Savage.  These characters aren’t super complex or compelling in isolation (there’s a reason people write feature-film-length analyses on Zuko and Azula but not Ozai himself).  They’re more like a force of nature and while you can definitely interrogate the specific context of their origins, their self-perception and get a lot of mileage from dissecting the ideology that they use to rationalise their actions to others (and how those arguments often don’t hold up to questioning) underneath all that grandiose posturing the evil they represent is eerily mundane and commonplace.  Just reactionary id and ego run rampant, detached from compassion and placed in a position to exert itself indiscriminately.  Power and control.  Want and do.

I think that’s part of why they’re striking - we expect some grand ideological philosophy to match the presentation and instead what we get is something small, hollow and pathetically human.  It feels unfair and unsatisfying and that’s because it so often is.

Because of this, I’m often more interested in stories that focus on other, more layered members of the cast and their struggles (it’s a bit weird how little involvement Vlad has in a lot of my favourite DP fics and fic premises).  When Vlad is present I usually prefer him to function more as an antagonistic force for other characters to struggle with than stories which try to justify his worldview or make him “relatable”.  Like I said above, Vlad at his worst is a controlling, manipulative, abusive stalker and that can make him a very effective villain in horror-thriller style character dramas.

Vlad and Danny

On a meta-level Vlad and Danny work well as character foils.  They share several surface-level flaws (both can be superficial, immature, judgemental, prone to grudge-holding and tempted to misuse their powers) and in some ways Vlad is a warning for what Danny could become were he to allow his power to go to his head and separate him from other people.  But at their cores (heh) there’s a fundamental difference to do with compassion and responsibility that sets them apart.  Vlad is an exceptional man with power and status but no empathy or accountability, and deep down, beneath all that performance he’s alone­ - still skulking around the fringes of the ghost zone, using threats, lower-power mooks and bribery when he needs someone to do his bidding.  And then there’s Danny, unexceptional by many metrics, who might feel stressed, lonely and overburdened at times but who genuinely cares and tries, and without even realising it has a lot of powerful allies who would rally to his aid as a result.

As for what they have in-story, I wouldn’t really call it a relationship.  They have a dynamic, but to me relationship implies some kind of mutual participation, and I don’t think Vlad sees or treats Danny as a person.  He doesn’t seem to care about Danny’s interests, feelings or needs: his fixation is mostly on shaping Danny into an heir/ apprentice of his own design, and getting yet more revenge on Jack by supplanting Jack as a father figure.  Danny is the son-shaped-object that Vlad is trying to shove into one of those holes, and once Danny makes it clear that he will never willingly submit to that, Vlad goes full supervillain.

From an audience perspective there is a tragic element to this, since we can see how much Danny would have benefited from having a genuinely supportive mentor, and how it might also have helped Vlad as a person… but Vlad burned that bridge himself.

In that regard I think it’s good that Danny doesn’t have any prior attachment to/ affection for Vlad or desire to please him.  Vlad isn’t a healthy person for Danny to be around, and it’s pretty obvious that Danny knows this and tries to minimise contact with him as much as possible (outside of the occasions when he gets stupid-teenager-brain and decides to poke the bear by pettily antagonising him).  I think that that’s really the best outcome; minimising a toxic person’s presence in his life so he can independently pursue things that are actually healthy and productive.  

Ultimately, Vlad is a grown man who makes his own choices, and he is not Danny’s responsibility.  Yes, it is admirable to extend understanding and respect to others but there is a limit on that and a relationship requires input from both people.  As they say, it takes two to tango; it’s not for one to be doing 100% of the work when the other is unwilling to sincerely engage or compromise with them.  And it is especially not the responsibility of a teenager to be playing that role for an adult (particularly an adult who routinely manipulates and threatens him). 

The biggest issue for Danny is that he can’t fully remove himself from Vlad.  Vlad has too much power and influence; as Masters he’s an important businessman (and at times political figure) with sway in Danny’s hometown, as Plasmius he’s a powerful ghost who can use those powers to bypass physical barriers (when he isn’t sending mooks to harass him), and as a person Vlad’s the kind of creepy stalker who will use his power, influence and resource-access to literally plant spyware in the Fenton family home.  But, most difficult to avoid, Vlad is also a close family friend of Danny’s parents from their college days and Danny frequently has to play nice with him for their sake.

And let’s talk about that last one.

Vlad and the Fenton Parents

The Fenton Parents have some the most divisive interpretations in fandom (short of Vlad himself and sometimes Sam).  Their presentation ping-pongs all over the shop and whether they read as “good but flawed” or “absolutely awful” really depends on how much you want to take things at face value, read into implications and/or recognise certain scenes as being purely hyperbolic Rule of Funny Nicktoon gags.  The only readings I would call a mischaracterisation are ones that paint them as actively disinterested, uncaring or malicious towards their kids - the fact that they do sincerely love their children despite their behaviour is part of what makes them compelling.

However, I want to talk about them because - while you can certainly make the case that they are “criminally negligent” in other ways - the fact that they don’t realise how bad Vlad is, or that he shouldn’t be allowed near Jazz or Danny isn’t one of them.  It’s actually pretty believable to me.

Something to remember is that, as an audience observing a story from the outside, we often have a much more omniscient perspective than any of the characters within it.  Even when characters think they are “alone”, we are observing them through the fourth wall - we get to see What You Are in the Dark.  Fandom loves to joke about how obvious it is that Danny is Phantom or Clark Kent is Superman but that’s kind of forgetting that we get to see things from a Doylist perspective while all the actual characters are stuck being Watson.

Just from that viewpoint, it makes sense that Maddie and Jack aren’t aware of the true nature of Vlad’s character.  Maddie might recognise that Vlad is a creep toward her specifically (Jack meanwhile is cluelessly naïve and loyal to a fault) but most of Vlad’s worst moments take place outside of their awareness and he often behaves a lot better in their presence in order to keep them close.  Danny has seen much more of Vlad’s darker side and Jazz is aware of that through him, but since most of it is connected to Danny being Phantom they’re not exactly rushing to share.  From Maddie and Jack’s point of view, “Vladdie” is a dearly beloved college buddy who might be a bit eccentric and incel-adjacent but is otherwise mostly harmless.  And sure their kids might not like him but of course teenagers are going to complain about hanging out with their parents’ friends - they’re teenagers!  Plus, Danny and Jazz have frequently objected to other aspects of their parents’ lives, so it’s not like that would raise an immediate red flag on its own (let’s be real: even at their best, Maddie and Jack are not the most attentive parents).

So to me it’s pretty reasonable that they wouldn’t notice those initial signs.  And (speaking again from IRL experience) even assuming they did notice some of them it would make sense for them to not want to believe it.  It can be really hard for people to accept that someone they’ve known and respected for a long time has done something awful.  We want to give people in our lives the benefit of the doubt and that can lead us to make excuses for/ try to defend them in ways we wouldn’t for a stranger.  There’s also a level of fear and guilt that can get in the way.  If our judgement about one person turns out to have been that badly wrong, then we could be potentially wrong about everyone; suddenly the world is a lot less safe/ certain.  And then we have to face the question of how complicit we might have been by ignoring, excusing, or enabling their actions.  It’s not really surprising that even well-intentioned people can end up reflexively dismissing whistle-blowers and victims; it’s a self-protective impulse as much as anything else.

I think that’s why Danny’s “mutually assured destruction” threat is so effective.  If Maddie and Jack accept Danny being Phantom then they wouldn’t be able to deny what Vlad has done as Plasmius.  And, once they can’t deny that, they probably wouldn’t continue to accept Vlad as a friend.

And that’s another bridge that Vlad has burned himself.

What a cheese-head.

[korissideblog]

So! I decided I wanted to info dump about my bby, and I’m gonna do it here. Consider this a living document, cause ill be editing new questions and answers as they come in <3 if you have any more questions just comment them (or ask on anon if you want, I’ll answer both here and there)

Question from: @bobittybob20276

while Aito tries to train like the rest of her classmates (though sparring) his quirk really isn’t a fighting quirk, so yeah, most of her training happens out in the wild. He mostly trains on his classmates and teachers, but will occasionally go out of the school and try to charm random people she bumps into ;) . she continues his training after graduation, and keeps getting better and better the longer she’s in the field.

Question by: @zedthebuggy

kinda a tough question here, lemme try to explain how Aito’s quirk works; so pretty much it’s not really Aito’s gaze that makes it work, like his pupil doesn’t have to be trained on someone. His quirk works through her iris (the yellow bit). it looks normal most of the time, but when being used, it becomes wildly complicated, confusing the eye of her target and scrambling their brain a bit. pretty much, the brain normally simplifies everything so our eyes can kinda take shortcuts and let us quickly take in as much info as possible, but Aito’s irises are so overly complicated that the target’s brain is forced to focus excessively on them to keep up, making them very suggestible. that’s why Aito has to speak his commands, so that the target’s brain confuses Aito‘s voice for it’s own command (and also why the target won’t do anything too complicated or out of character. if the brain thinks too hard about what it’s doing, it could fall out of Aito’s control) his quirk would be better described as a sensory overload, but without the panic or any negative feelings. It actually feels rather nice to be charmed, like being a hot room with a cool fan blowing in your face, or drinking a warm drink in the snow. Very positive, yet opposity feelings at once if that makes sense

(side note, when Aito gets older, she can control when his quirk is “turned on” but while she’s in UA, it just constantly on all of the time, hence his choice in hairstyle)

so! To answer your question, if someone doesn’t know about Aito’s quirk, they have 0 clue that they’re being charmed, and will have 0 memory of whatever they do when charmed. If someone does know about her quirk though, their brain will recognize the feeling and will be able to combat it (she can still be pretty effective, but he still has to work harder for it) if someone knows about the quirk, their vision will get a bit darkend around the corners and may see quick flashes of darkness as their brain kicks off to focus on Aito’s irises. it takes a lot of willpower to fight Aito’s charms- or, just a very very simplified vision, like Aito’s mama has (if someone asks, I’ll talk later about Guadelupe’s vision, it’s actually pretty interesting) (side note again, if someone tires to fight her charm, it could leave them with a gentle headache <3)

and FINALLY Aito’s quirk doesn’t require her to physically see, as long as her target can see her, it works :)

Question by: @gatortopia

Aito decided to become a hero because… he’s perfect! And he wants everyone to know how perfect she is!! And everyone thinks heros are perfect!!! And soon EVERYONE will see how PERFECT he is!!!!!!!

(side notie <3)

when Aito’s father left them, he was cemented in Aito’s brain as someone who couldn’t see how perfect he was. Aito just wants to be seen by her father, but because he doesn’t know who he is, he assumed that the only way to get the man’s attention was to prove how perfect she can really be, and the only way she could figure out how to do that is by becoming a hero.

after he gets her license, he immediately starts heroing like others do, with big fights and capturing villains and saving people… but… that really didn’t work for her. No matter how strong or fast or clever she was, he couldn’t match up to his peers in the heroing world.her quirk just wasn’t made for that kinda work. He took some time off to figure himself out, and after a bit of time (and a lot of conversations with Michi, both professional and personal) he finally figured out that his best place to work was behind the scenes, collecting information and going undercover in villain hangouts and social events. he wears her support hero badge with pride. (and uhhh still sometimes helps with big fights and capturing villains and saving people. Hey! She spent good money on his hero suit! He’s gonna use it!!)

Question by: @ratty-memes

ooohhhh ok! This is the question I really wanna answer!!!

so! to clarify, Aito absolutely thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips, like even in the deep parts of her brain, she thinks he’s The Blueprint. I would almost describe her as narcissistic bordering on psychopathic. THE ONLY REASON I WOULDN’T DESCRIBE HER AS THIS THOUGH- is because of her reasoning

so- Aito was raised by his mama exclusively, and he thinks his mama hung the moon and painted the stars. Like she is a capital M capital B Mama’s Boy. He absolutely adores his mama and thinks she’s absolutely without flaw or defect. (She didn’t instill this in him, Guadelupe’s just a very nice lady and Aito was really messed up after his father left, so she clung to any semblance of a good parent she could find. (Even though he’s technically out of this stage already, and it’s much less pronounced, something similar happened when he met Sato. Guadelupe never dated after Aito’s father “because my mijo is the only person I’ll ever need” and because of that, Sato is the first positive male role model in his life. Most of his acting out actually is a product of wanting to keep Sato’s attention on him, and to subconsciously keep him from leaving like his father did))

Aito’s brain pretty much went “ok, my mama is Absolutely And Positively Perfect… and she really really loves me… she wouldn’t love a kid with flaws… so I must also be perfect!!” And that’s why she thinks she’s all that! She thinks his perfection is as obvious as the sky being blue, and his want for validation just his way of checking out the window and seeing the color or they sky. they sky is blue, and everyone knows that, and Aito is perfect, and everyone should know that!!

Question by: @cosmic-goof

you only get repercussions if you’re caught ;)

but also she’s promised multiple people that she won’t steal from strangers. In the classroom setting, people know that when your wallet or your ID card or your phone go missing, you should talk to Aito before you do anything else, strangers don’t know that, so whatever she takes is for keeps. He really doesn’t like keeping things from people as much as he just likes the act of pick pocketing, so if someone asks for their item back, Aito will immediately return it and will probably explain how and when he took it if they let him. only problem is, you obviously can’t do this with strangers, so instead she does other things, like asks them for a harmless favor that someone would never do for a stranger (“hey there, can you help me move tomorrow?” “Hi! Do you mind if I take your picture?” “Hello sir! can I look through your phone for a sec?”)

Question by: @cosmic-goof

at the moment, it’s usually an adult who knows about her quirk and tries very hard not to be charmed (think sato). she can still charm adults obviously, but it’s a bit harder to do bc she’s just a little baby. maybe when she trains more she’ll get stronger, but at the moment, that’s her limit (sorry if this is a weird answer, willpower doesn’t exactly come in like a points system irl, so I can’t be like “7 willpower!” yk?)

Question by: @glitchviper

I talked about this before with Rin’s blind eye (something I’ll probably add here) but being blind in one eye wouldn’t stop Aito’s quirk (as long as you look at her with your non-blind eye, you can still be charmed, hence why when looking at Aito with only her blind eye, Rin wasn’t charmed)

the only was to not be charmed by Aito is to just not see her eyes, so total blindness or some kind of visual abnormality (like her mama has. somebody PLEASE ask me about Lup’s eyes. I have diagrams) but! if a person is seeing, but can’t hear Aito (be it because of deafness, or some issues in the environment like loud noises or earmuffs) a person can be charmed, but cannot be commanded <3

((p.s. I’ll be talking a lot about blindness or other disabilities while discussing Aito’s quirk, but if I say or display any ableist language or sympathies, please know it’s out of ignorance and not malice, and correct me when you can.))

[the-arcana-but-saucier]

Lucio, his route, and IRL narcissists.

So I recently started playing Lucio’s route and freely admit that I have fallen for this Big Scared Idiot Man.

However, I am *slightly* concerned about the implications of his route in general, although it seems the devs have been pretty careful not to portray it in a way that alludes to the situation I am about to describe. I would like to say now that I am absolutely not accusing the devs of trying to portray any sort of ‘narcissist/healer’ relationship, nor am I accusing them of saying that that sort of relationship is in any way ok. I simply got a feeling of unease about the situation and wanted to put my feelings into words.

Hot (and kinda long...) take under the cut so read if you want! (CW: abuse/abusive relationships, also there are major story spoilers!)

So! Lucio. In more or less every other character’s route, Lucio is not a nice guy. Not at ALL. He force-fed Julian a plague beetle. He sent thousands of people to quarantine on the Lazaret, knowing they would die. He killed his own father, tried to kill his mother, made deals with the devil out of selfishness (or perhaps a mixture of fear and a desire to prove himself, but we’ll cover that later...), fucked over many different people, and on top of that, ends up stealing MC’s body more often than not without a care in the world for them or anyone around them. Lucio is shown as a narcissistic, manipulative, whiny, selfish rich guy who has nobody to blame but himself for the unfortunate situation he’s in, and ends up hurting a lot of people to try and get out of it.

But what about Lucio in Lucio’s own route? Baby. He’s portrayed as largely a man who is very afraid. He’s VERY afraid of dying. He’s afraid of being alone, forgotten, gone.The writers wring sympathy from us for this poor man whose mother didn’t show him the appraisal he needed, whose friends didn’t really care about him while he was dying, or even after he died. Now, don’t get me wrong, I fell as hard for this narrative as the next person. I genuinely do like Lucio as a character (and that’s not just because he’s a huge sub and he brings out my dom side, I promise), and I have warmed to him substantially since I started the route. He’s hot, charming, a bit of a baby, and seems to genuinely just want to have a good time with friends, as it’s something he didn’t really get to have growing up in a mercenary tribe.

But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a little bit... hmmm. A bit yikes. A bit yikes that the devs showed us this ‘evil’, manipulative character who only does things for his own gain, and then told us ‘but oh! It’s because he’s afraid of dying so it’s ok!’, and I hate to say it but it DOES seem like they’re brushing it under the rug a little. MC seems to be a VERY forgiving person considering Lucio literally imprisoned Asra’s parents even after they made him the arm he wanted. And from the start, Lucio feels just a little bit like a ‘project to be fixed’, a person to be ‘healed’ from his wrongdoings.

And believe me, IRL, someone who did that many crappy things for their own personal gain is FAR less likely to say ‘oopsie, I’m sorry I won’t do it again, forgive me?’ in a genuine manner, but rather in one which makes you THINK they’re genuine, right up until they do the exact same thing again. I’m not a huge fan of the narrative that people such as Lucio (narcissists in general) can be ‘fixed’ if they find ‘the right person to heal them’ (in this case, MC). Narcissists IRL can and absolutely will take advantage of people who want to ‘fix’ them by manipulating that person to hell and back.

Now, overall, I understand that A) Lucio is a fictional character who is also being manipulated by the Devil, so not all of this is entirely his fault, and I wouldn’t consider him a ‘true’ narcissist, and B) that as Lucio is fictional, his personality and his ‘fixer-upper’ relationship with MC is not supposed to be either a good representation or reflection of reality. However, I just felt I had to point it out, and, more importantly, to tell anyone reading this that if you meet someone who acts like ‘evil’ Lucio in real life, please be careful. IRL narcissists are real pieces of work sometimes and many people end up trapped in abusive relationships with them because they believe they can be the one to ‘save them from themselves’. They can’t.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you found this interesting! Again, I want to re-iterate that I actually do like Lucio and I’m not ‘hating’ on him or his route, I just noticed this and wanted to make sure people are aware that IRL people aren’t as easily magically changed into nicer people as Lucio is.

[shatouto]

i have a sudden need to ramble (cw eating disorder ; repressed asexuality )

i used to think that this was because i am an artist since childhood: i genuinely can’t tell if a person is ‘hot’ if i just look at them. i can take notes on their features. i can find the shapes of their face interesting or uncommon. but i don’t get ‘hot’. i do find a person beautiful but only after i’ve known something about what they do, e.g. an actor who’s rly talented. if irl people, then i def only get crushes on ppl based on competency. (i have loved my childhood friends for years because he’s just so, so, soooo kind and sensitive and good at art and photography; i crushed horribly on this fellow actress in a theatre festival i participated in for One (1) week; i fell so hard for this girl in college who was AMAZING at giving dynamic presentations; then again for a boy who’s just rly adorably dedicated to the debate society he founded; etc. and all those time, it was more romantic than sexual.) i have never been able to articulate this and as a teen ive always felt confused and left out as hell when my friends gush over idols, all that. i briefly learned about demisexuality and thought that it fit quite well, but i didn’t look more into it out of some unexplained skepticism. generally i tried to conform; it took me a while to copy my surrounding’s reaction at conventionally attractive people to pretend i have the same capacity to perceive ‘hotness’, but the truth is i never really do.

it doesn’t help that my parents were horribly judgmental to other people’s looks and while they were polite on the outside, they were always making very mean remarks about their own friends behind their backs (i have trust issues for this reason; always worried my friends actually think im ugly and bad, like my parents do). they did that to my own friends as well, always criticizing even the friends of mine that they ‘approved’, especially this ex-best friend of mine who was fat and generally gender non-conforming - to the point where i was absolutely terrified of being anything like this person, even though they were my closest friend at the time. when this person came out as nb aroace, i was so frightened that i stopped contemplating demisexuality altogether. around that time also, i got sucked into the “anti-sjw” hole and i shut down every attempt at exploring my general non-conformity. in college, studying abroad and in a new environment, i berated myself for not being able to keep up with parties or ‘hook up’ the way my coevals could - i just felt very very sapped by those socializing activities. being alone in a crowd is tiring. somewhere amidst all this i went into a period of hyperfeminine presentation in hopes of grounding myself in conformity and also pleasing my parents - which gradually aggravated my deep-seated body image issues, dysmorphia, and finally full blown anorexia.

as i recovered and got out of that phase, got back into gender studies, i began to find myself. i was honestly very hesitant to consider asexuality when someone suggested it to me again. i have always been very very romantic and more or less touchy-feely (or as touchy-feely as a repressed kid brought up asian could be, lmao); i refused, for a long time, that i could be somewhere on the ace spectrum. even as i recovered, i was so deathly afraid of being a ‘snowflake’. i’ve only very recently accepted the fact that i do not experience sexual attraction the majority of the time. even romance; i can’t imagine romance without a long trusting friendship. ‘hot’ means nearly nothing to me at all, be it in the sense of ‘conventionally attractive’ or ‘inspiring sexual arousal’ (somehow). regardless of the label, that’s the way i am, and i can reject the label but i can’t force myself to feel things i don’t feel.

i wish as a teen somebody had told me that it was okay to be unsure and contemplating, and that i did not have to care about how narcissistic abusers judge people. i don’t know why im typing all of this out but i guess we all need introspection sometimes. i don’t know why im posting what i typed but i guess i feel the need to be perceived sometimes. at least this way if it resonates with someone, that someone wouldn’t feel alone as i did, hopefully.

[xdaveth]

Marlow (Uselesscat), the end of his life. Spare kindness and compassion for this pour soul. (updated)

Already expected something like this to come out from the guy, kind of mind boggling though how he thinks I was being played in some manner, the trauma and fear I caused to Marlow is too much for him as his relationship was falling apart and he wanted to break up with Chris yet again, the utter loneliness seeing as how he came to me all the time for ERP (the very thing he distastes about me) and affection almost daily personally indicates projection. I guess being diagnosed with Fetal alcohol syndrome and living a life of poverty along with his physical disability makes it so that he needs someone else to fill his void of emptiness with the illusion of love. *Shrugs* 

He copied what I wrote  to Eli in a similar format to me, his vocabulary is limited due to his social cortex in his brain not functioning properly so he has to mimic and repeat the same words and this is just damage control because he got caught and now Chris is mad at him.

Marlow has absolutely no friends, if he did he wouldn’t have the need to come to me almost daily for attention, as I have evidence of him doing so for the past weeks.

My analysis is that empathy hurts too much for him, when he said he was attached to me It was too scary for him to go all the way. His fear of abandonment is so great that he came back to me out of boredom. He considers me his Joker to his Batman, i’m a huge threat to him and he admitted that I changed his life forever. Such severe narcissistic tendencies, only to be turned against one self, wollowing in self-pity to his own sad life. Various contradictions he has written in the past just doesn’t do him any good. I told him straight up I don’t agree with him ERPing with me and others while he is in a relationship with someone.

I’m not affected whatesoever by him, I tried to help him out of the kindness of my heart, it is delusional for someone to behave this way, and what he wrote here is pure BS. I know Chris gave him a ultimatum to remove me and that’s probably what happened here, choose me or Chris, and in order to keep his sanity this is what he resorts to:

I did not screenshot most of our time spent as I do respect personal privacy and i’m not going to be a troll or try to fight them back with justice or exposure unless I need to, however i’ll leave him with a note:

“Marlow, I tried my best to help you, I think at this point you should go to a mental institute for your conditions.  You are not sleeping or eating much... You are only harming yourself, and sooner or later reality will catch up to you and you will be left with nothing and nobody to rely on.”

And Greytiger did not leave me. He is still with me. Sucks to be wrong huh? :)

And no to thsoe wondering I don’t care about Eli at all,  he never was my friend, the fact that he had to use that against me proves my point about him being a horrible person and that he truely doesn’t know any of my actual friends.

Does this mean he doesn’t care about his wonderful caring boyfriend? How hypocritical, but hating means that you care, so once again there is a contradiction in his thought patterns. I’m sorry but no empathy  for this guy he doesn’t deserve any despite what he suffers with irl 

Give him some love:   Blueberry Muffin#8254

Wonder what happened to his twitter...

[maerenee930]

19, 21, 43, & 50?

19.) Height : - i’m 5’1 🙃 i’m so short lol

21.) Favorite thing about yourself personality/character wise : - i would have to say how loving i am. that sounds weird... 😅 i mean like how much i want the people in my life (family, friends irl and any of my friends that i’ve made on my socials) to feel loved, that they’re not alone, that i’m always here for them and that they’re cared for. i really am proud of that. while i’m very lucky and have very loving friends and family members, i understand feeling so alone and like you’re completely unlovable. i don’t want anyone to feel that way 😣 it sucks and it hurts so much and i just really like that this is the person i am 💙 man, that sounds super narcissistic 😶🤦‍♀️ honestly, i promise i was not trying to! 😥

43.) What type of friend are you? (i.e. mom friend, protective dad friend, comedian, the shipper/matchmaker, the adviser, the nerd, the one everyone else worries about, etc, etc, etc) - i’m the mom friend for sure! besides being over protective over my friends and absolutely willing to hurt anyone who hurts my friends, i’m the friend who always has things in their purse just incase 😅 like, i always have a bottle of water in my purse, just incase 😂 i always have tweezers, nail clippers and a file, just in case 😅 bandaids for a while i used to have fruit snacks in my purse (i’ve learned that one over the past few years being a nanny 😅) and i just have so many other random things in my purse. but i’m also that friend that makes sure my friends are taking care of themselves and yeah, at times i get a little forceful about it but, it’s just cause i care 💙 i’m also the sarcastic friend and i love it 😄 i wouldn’t necessarily say that i’m the comedian, but i’m kind of funny 😅 in my own weird way lol. idk what other kind of friend i am, tbh. i feel like i’d have to ask my friends what they think 😅

50.) What you wanted to be when you grew up when you were in high school : - so this has pretty much been the same since i was a kid and it’s something i still want 😊 i wanted to be an actress or a singer 💙 i adore acting and singing! i’m so passionate about both and love both of them with all of my heart! 🖤 idk if i’m that good on an actress. i was in a few plays and musicals in high school (and a few musicals that a high school in my school distract was putting on when i was in elementary and middle school 😅) and i’ve posted a few videos on youtube and tiktok of me singing covers of a few of my favorite songs 😊 but i haven’t done anything with acting since high school. but who knows, maybe one day i could do either one could really happen and i could do it professionally. it’s a super super long shot 😂 but i (kind of) have hope lol.

thank you so much for asking these! 🖤 i really appreciate! ☺️ also, i hope everything i said made sense and i’m sorry if it didn’t 😓

[darkest-fluid]

valentine's day: 1, 4, 8, 17,49

1: do you have a crush on anyone?

Not at the moment. At least, not the way that I define it. My crushes tend to burn out quickly, because I need some reciprocation in order to maintain romantic interest. (And the pandemic is not doing me any favors there.) That said, I do have the usual assortment of celebrities and fictional characters who I like and find attractive, in a more casual/fun/appreciative sort of way. Which could be defined as like... low-key crushes. It is kind of an amusing blend of ‘people who are way out of my league,’ ‘people who do not actually exist,’ and ‘people who I might actually date irl.’

To name a few:

Summer Bishil

Brian Dechart and Amelia Rose Blaire (as a pair, because I could never choose between them)

John Oliver

Kwamie Liv (Danish musician)

Chris Hayes

Steven Yeun

Half the characters in Baldur’s Gate 3.

4: what was your first kiss like? 

Awkward.

When I was 16 I started dating a girl I met online. We were very close as friends, but when it came to physical and romantic intimacy, the chemistry just wasn’t there. At the time I didn’t really know any better, as I’d never had that kind of chemistry with someone, and I did that thing that kids often do where they mistake platonic love for romantic love.

Anyway, she was up visiting and we were alone in the house, talking on the sofa. She put her arm around me and I kind of froze. Then she kissed me. Now, some background: growing up I basically had to provide all of my dad’s emotional support (because he is a narcissist who never learned how to take care of himself) and one of the things he trained me to believe was that rejecting someone was the absolute worst thing I could ever do. If I didn’t want to hug him, for example, he would get super wounded and ice me out until I apologized and gave him a hug. What I wanted was not important. If someone needed something from me and I withheld that thing, I was a cruel and terrible person. It took me YEARS to de-program that part of my brain, and I still struggle with it sometimes.

So when my girlfriend kissed me and I didn’t like it, instead of asking her to stop I just sat there and let it happen. I have vague recollections that it was a very wet kiss, and of being sort of preoccupied by how weird and slimy it felt. Still, it probably wouldn’t have been that bad if it had lasted a normal length of time. But it didn’t. It lasted for HALF AN HOUR. After a couple of minutes I started trying to signal that I was done by leaning back and physically moving away, but she did not take the hint. At all. Every time I moved back she just... followed me. Until I was pressed against the arm rest and there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. At that point I think I started to kind of dissociate because the memory gets fuzzy.

Eventually my mom came home. I have never been so happy to see my mom in my entire life.

This story is a great example of why affirmative consent is so important.

(On a positive note, I have had many, many wonderful kisses since then.)

8: favorite fanfic trope?

Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Porn with Feelings

That thing where two people with a lot of trauma and emotional problems try to pretend they’re not falling in love, but then the love happens anyway.

17: what’s the most attractive thing a person could wear?

Hmmm. Honestly? Anything that makes them feel confident and sexy. Which will be different things for different people. Everyone has their own style, and I think you can really see the difference when someone is happy with their clothes versus when they aren’t.

That said, I do have a fondness for fitted black t-shirts, skinny jeans and leather boots.

Also: tattoos.

49: hand kisses or nose kisses? 

Hand kisses. Nose kisses always feel patronizing to me.

[bluubard]

just a little vent because im really, really tired, my anxiety’s been kicking my ass hard for the last few weeks, and i just feel on the end of my rope dealing with shit even though i literally said i was doing fine in therapy today (spoiler: im not fine)

i feel like i need to preface myself. let it be known. i do not hate my friends. in fact, i care for them quite a bit. i care about their wellbeing, their happiness and health. i enjoy their friendship, and presence, and spending time with them. what i do hate is pity, myself, and the fact that trauma has made my brain so fucked like this to begin with.

so, long story short, its sad boi times, i’m super fuckin’ lonely and isolated, and the grand idea that i’m always gonna be that way - that i’ll never have a partner or a best friend i can just... lean on, bar nothing, nor a happy fulfilling life really rears its ugly head and hurts like a motherfucker sometimes. nothing new.

a long story long...

so i’m a pretty fucking depressing person in general, right? i’m not pleasant and i know it. i bitch a lot, i’m salty, i’m absolutely not the nicest, and a lot of the time i come off a lot meaner and more bitter than i’d like. i don’t mean to. i try to be positive or to look out for others, y’know? at the end of the day, i’m just like every other person. i just want to be liked. to be wanted. to belong.

most of the time... i never feel that way. and like, y’know? its nobody’s fault, really. i know it’s past abandonment and abuse that makes my brain think everyone actually hates me. but sometimes that feeling is founded, which is i suppose how my brain gets away with still feeling like that to begin with.

i’m forgettable. i’m nobody’s best friend, i don’t think i’m lovable - not likeable either, really - nor partner material though i wish i was, and im so sick of being so fucking lonely all the time. i don’t even think my friends consider me friends generally. i’m not really anyone’s friend, yeah? i’m an acquaintance they have to put up with and tolerate when i inflict myself on them.

you know those memes, that are like always making fun of the weakling, the friend who walks behind everyone or who gets picked last in the group (if they’re included at all), that friend who’s never invited to things, or gets pitied? that’s me.

or debatably worse, means so little that if i just disappeared, it wouldn’t matter even a mote. that one really stings. that one i know for a fact is true, and i don’t mean that in a guilt tripping way. just that it’s the way it is. it really kills me.

and like..... i don’t have any irl friends. i didn’t come from a great background anyway, but i attracted a lot of trouble and negativity and in my own pain i pushed away a lot of people and hid until i didn’t know how to be human anymore, and now i can’t, and im alone. there is literally nobody that would actively come check on me or drag me out of my house if i was feeling down. and i’ve tried. i really tried. it’s hard sometimes, to try. maybe being a narcissist or a serial abuser’s playtoy is the only thing i am good for. and this is even before covid, much less now where everyone’s isolated or else.

the people i can genuinely say i love with all my stupid little heart are all across the country and the world. even people i care about in the same state are hours and hours away across literal mountains. that’s all i’ve got. long distance internet friends. and i feel selfish and terrible because i want more and i hate it.

all of those friends have partners. and if they don’t have partners, they already have their best friends. their irl pals. their communities, and groups, and friend-families and companions and lives and just.... i don’t mean that badly. everyone is more than entitled to their life and happiness and i guess i just....

i wish i was part of that. for someone.

i don’t want to be an obligation to respond to, or just..... someone on the edges. the fringe friend. and with online friends i am, i absolutely am, worse than anything. im something to pity and tolerate when the real time is spent having fun with their actual friends and loved ones. i’m nothing to anybody. i know if i just walked away, just closed down discord, blog, wherever else and vanished, nobody would ... i dont know. they’d just shrug, go ‘eh, whatever’ and move on easy and simple. no worry. no concern. and that’s great for them, but i just... want someone to care on principle. its not the guilt trip of the action. it’s the idea of i wish someone would care if something happened to me.

i hate internet friends because i don’t want them to be internet friends. some of the amazing people i know i just wish i could see, whenever i wanted. that i could hang out with them, bring ice cream and bad movies when they’re sad, see and hear them laugh, and have fun, and care. i wish i could just have a big house and my friends could be housemates, or live in the same apartment block, or a fucking little cottagecore farm commune out in the woods where we can all live off the land and each other and grow crops and animals and just be happy. or just... something. something. but i know i’ll never be included in that. everyone else would go. be happy to see each other. just... without me, the ‘not really a friend’, the fucking acquaintance, the stupid, stupid naive little idiot.

i’m so touch starved and sleep deprived and exhausted. my heart always hurts and i’m so full of anxiety and i just. just desperately, DESPERATELY need a hug, and just to be told “bluu, it’s gonna be okay, you matter to me and i care” but you can’t do that when it isn’t actually true. you just can’t. you can’t fake that.

i know nobody would go to bat for me. i’m alone in my own corner. if i have a breakdown, i have to have it alone and shoulder myself because nobody’s gonna be there at my side. i know i’m always gonna be watching from the sidelines, as everyone else is happy, and doing their thing, and has their family and loved ones and i...... shouldn’t even fucking exist.

and i dont want pity. i dont want platitudes or ‘i’m sorry’ or guilt, or ‘i would but...’ or any of that shit. nobody’s supposed to feel bad over this. i’m not in the business of toxic guilting, and im not in the business of fake friendships. that would defeat the purpose of literally anything.

i just...... really wished i had someone who would hold me up and (platonically or romantically. anything.) go “this one! This is the one I want to keep around for as long as possible, please. i want this one.” 

and no matter how hard i wish and pray, that’s just something i’ll never have, and i know it.

[ayeshintheclouds]

I watched Never Have I Ever!! And I have many many thoughts. Just about on every aspect of it so oops this might be kinda long. But I like having somewhere public to post it cuz I don’t have to be apologetic and guilty about making it long, cuz if I was texting someone id feel as if I’m making them obligated to read so much.

Anyways!

Overall, I quite enjoyed the show! There’s a lot of controversy around it, i keep saying a lot of indian girls complaining about being misrepresented. Which I agree that they have a right to, because it’s the first time we’ve ever gotten a main character representing us, and we can’t help but hold her to a higher standard. But I’m trying to look past that a little, past the stereotypes and see it more by itself in terms of a plot and character development rather than just the cultural standpoint.

In no particular order, here are some opinions about the show and characters:

I loved the realistic arguments they show the night of her dad’s death. Honestly, they were a bit jarring how similar they are to our family, and how sometimes under pressure everyone kinda turns on each other and doesn’t get along. I thought that was a really realistic scene how a little thing like losing a music sheet ends up turning into a lot of unnecessary drama.

I love Paxton! I still absolutely can’t decide who I ship more with Devi but I do love his character. He genuinely does care for his sister, and he’s so quick to sacrifice his pride and call Devi when his sister needs help, even though he’s really mad at Devi rn. I think it’s adorable that his sister even gives him relationship advice. And Paxton is genuinely such a good friend, although he’s tryna be all cool and stuff, he encouraged her to be herself in her indian dress and I hate how Devi disregards his whole personality and only wants him physically. It upset me that she only saw him as some status symbol to obtain, never really an actual human with feelings. He deserved better, so although I love him, I’m not sure I ship him with her after she kinda used him the whole show.

The car ride scene!!! With Paxton and Devi! Ok I watched this scene approximately a bajillion times! I think it might be my favorite moment in the whole show. I love everything about it, the subtle glances they cast each other the entire time, the neon lights as they drive through the city, the way for once in the show she seems somewhat like emotionally vulnerable and nervous rather than brash and hot headed. The music was beautiful too.

I love Fab and Eleanor!!! I love their stories and I’m so so glad they got the attention from the show at least since they didn’t get it from Devi. Fab is literally so adorable and I just wanted to hug her🥺 Eleanor’s mom made me so frikin mad and I’m truly really glad Eleanor learned to live without her and how Fab helps her deal with it. I know it’s pretty dramatic how she stays dressing all different and changing her personality, but I related to that so much:(when someone hurts me or walks out on me, it makes me feel not like myself anymore, and I often visibly and noticeably change my attitude and behavior for a while before springing back.

The Kamala plotline!!! Uhhhhh ok very mixed feelings. I thought Steve was adorable. They just discarded him when he was an absolute sweetheart and it made me so sad for him🥺poor Steve. I do like that they’re actually showing arranged marriage for what it is though. In my opinion it is a very traditional and flawed procedure, as we see when Devi’s mom has kamala wear a certain outfit and has her hide the career part of her personality, to try to be a certain way she’s not. BUT I think i am glad that they didn’t show it as something forced upon her, like she’s being married off against her will to some creep she’s never ever met. It’s more like a blind date but arranged by parents. And although she is pretty pressured into it, she has the power to back out any time (even if it’ll somewhat outcast her). And I like that they decide to continue their relationship but on their own terms and he likes her for who she is. I think overall it’s a pretty solid and realistic representation of arranged marriage: a very traditional way of doing things with many flaws, but not forced or oppressive or morally wrong in any way, and can usually work out quite nicely many times. Except why’d they break poor Steve’s heart like that:(((

Ben. Ok Ben grew on me a lot through the show. He was such a complex and interesting character and I thought his development was so amazingly done. I thought he was truly such a sweet soul for doing all that he did for her, letting her stay over, convincing her to spread the ashes, driving her there so fast. I almost feel like he doesn’t deserve her either😂. And hhfjdndndnd I really don’t know how to feel about that end scene that was wild omg. But romance aside. Ben is such a well written character and I think he really was neglected by his family and I really hope that changes or he finds a family in Devi’s.

I know her parents and the therapist were side characters. But I think they’re pretty cool. I like the really sweet relationship her parents had. It was so typical indian parents yet adorable. The motorcycle ride and the comforting scene🥺 I love them a lot they remind me of my own parents. And I think her mom is infinitely strong for dealing with the death of her soulmate and Devi being so absolutely difficult. I think the therapist was extremely patient and the scenes with her were hilarious. I loved most about her how genuine she was. No therapist irl would care enough for the patients health that they would so blatantly disagree with them and even suggest they find someone else if it’ll help them. They would never risk losing the money and offending the client. I once heard someone say that they’d love to be a child therapist cuz all they have to do is agree with everything the kids say, be like “aw yeah the world hates u ur parents hate u, ur right” like feed into their teen angst, and the kid convinces their parents to keep paying for your services. But Dr Ryan is like a mother. She just wants what’s best for Devi, and she’s willing to sacrifice her own profit for it.

Ok I guess I should probably talk about my biggest issue with the show which is Devi. I kinda hate her😭I tried so hard I really did but I genuinely cannot bring myself to like her character. I don’t agree with almost any of her actions and her behavior upset me a lot. And pls you don’t understand she nearly killed me with second hand embarrassment the first episode in approaching Paxton like that aaAAAA Like I was basically watching through my hands at that point. I know she’s going through so much, she really has a lot of trauma and grief. But I can’t help but feel like the way she handles it is not very realistic at all, cuz I know people with trauma and they would never use it to justify the awful things she does. I know that everyone grieves differently and everyone has different coping mechanisms, but I just cannot bring myself to like her. Coping mechanisms that hurt others immensely are so unhealthy and I feel like she should’ve at least redeemed herself somehow. Maybe I sympathized with her at some points. But never liked her. I think she was disgusting to her friends, she always assumed her problems mattered more than theirs despite Fab and Eleanor having such heavy stuff happening. She didn’t even bother caring, and I’m convinced the only reason she even came back and tried to make it up was because of her own selfish reasons: she didn’t want to be lonely and friendless (she literally admits that!) and she’s jealous of that new kid they’re friends with. She does not seem at any point to actually care for their feelings as humans, and treats them like status symbols, two objects she owns to show people she has a social life. She reminds me of Greg from Diary of a Wimpy Kid and not in a good way; he was so awful to Rowley and obsessed with popularity and narcissistic Blegh. Also with Paxton like I mentioned before, she only cares about his body and popularity and literally does not care for his friendship and personality the slightest bit. I think it was disgusting that she lied about sleeping with him like that, cuz it may have been manageable to him, but for a lot of people, that’s like a pretty messed up thing and I don’t think they’d want to be friends with someone who was that creepy and a blatant liar. The stuff she said to her mom about wishing she was dead, that absolutely broke my heart. I can’t imagine being her mother in that moment and hearing your daughter say something like that after losing the love of your life. I think that would be like the worst thing to say to someone grieving, and might potentially endanger their mental health. I was truly worried for her mom, even though I know it wouldn’t be that type of show. Honestly. The only reason I don’t like full on despise her and think she’s irredeemable is because I pity her so much. She lost her dad and wasn’t able to walk for a year. That’s a lot of pain. But truly, like Fab said, it’s not a free pass to be a jerk. And a character shouldn’t be written in a way that their only redeemable quality is that u pity them to hold them less accountable for their actions.

Overall I enjoyed the show!! Minus devi😭but besides that, I’m so glad we’re getting some representation and there’s a new really cute and fresh show to watch during quarantine. I NEED A SEASON TWO SO BAD PLS and I really really hope Devi grows up a bit more in it and maybe I’ll start to like her:)

[thephantomporg84]

Funny how [REDACTED] thinks she’s good looking, when she got triggered by getting called “unfuckable” and started using that on everyone else (me included). If anything - cowardly 5yr old that she is is projecting because she’s insecure. She’s not even the fun kind of narcissist - like she’s the DSM-5 kind. Pretty sure she was blessed with an ugly exterior to match her ugly heart.

From my experiences with them, there is no kind of fun narcissist to be around, irl. Like... once you meet one or two, they’re not even entertaining in fiction anymore.

Also, and I can’t stress this enough: she got called “unfuckable” by a 16 year old because she was calling that 16 year old a fake Jewish person and an animal abuser (their profile pic was a dog at the time) and then insinuating things about their sex life and calling them a whore when the first two failed. For no reason other her usual bullshit.

She called me that too (among like...everyone on her ‘naughty’ list lmao) and then went absolutely fucking berserk in my inbox when she sent me that one about “you talk about skin care, but I bet you look like...” one I included a few anons below — and I called her bluff and actually showed her my face.

If she had anything to write home about, she wouldn’t feel the need to try and say shit about the appearances of others — she would simply show off, as narcissists are wont to do. Remember how quick she was to show off her copy of The Inferno and whatnot, unprovoked, when people made fun of her terrible ao3 shit? You damn well know she’d be doing the same thing with her appearance if she had it to flaunt.

Don’t get me wrong, looks aren’t everything, but you better damn well be looking like Naomi Campbell* if you want to call a someone — let alone dozens and dozens of people — ugly to feed your own ego lmao. And you better be damn well prepared to be read to filth right back.

(*It’s still horribly cringey, stupid, behavior no matter what she looks like and only serves to look pathetic more than anything.)

[wintermutal]

Bro 4231 is not the most graphic thing on site, if you wanna leave it up I say leave it. If anon hates it so much they can blacklist or whatever, you’ve left that ditch of worms behind. What kinda stuff are you working on now, regarding your original stuff? THATS where the sexy writing is, where your passion’s at.

okay so for ORIGINAL stuff….man, it’s been weird since i left. im currently refitting the broken masquerade tale i was working on for the past year to a new universe. a lot of my extra energy has been being poured into a massive irl nonfiction project, which is coming together nicely so far, but as far as fiction goes i’m still missing like……….A Lot in this project. i usually write light stuff to help me sleep, resulting in a MASSIVE amount of random fluff and angst with my characters (including a 20k document i generated last year before overhauling the canon and having to start over) but that’s not like………Real Shit, you know? like, it’s still missing substance.

like, the problem with this is that Shadowgraphy, as original as the characters are, was still a foundation tale. the whole point of it was mocking the ‘we die in the dark so you can live in the light’ saying (thus the name; ‘shadowgraphy’ is the art of shadow puppets). as a result, for every fantastic original thing in it, there’s a fantastic foundation thing, too, including a scene where the villain has our humanoid-scp-protagonist strapped down to a chair for Torture Reasons and says “if i’m going to build a foundation, i’m going to build it from the wreckage of you”, which i’m not gonna lie is a a line i am never gonna be able to get back with the same amount of punch (actually, the entire scene preceding that one of the villain leading him down an ominous dark hallway from his chamber is also totally bopping, but i might be able to salvage that.) 

so, i have characters. i’m gonna keep the whole main cast and the villain (or…former villain? is he still a villain in this? idk) as well as a new character i made in the past couple weeks. here they are, as i’ve adapted them so far: 

-Miles Cuin. teenager at the time of…whatever story is happening. biopath, can cut people with his mind. accidentally killed his mom when he was 7 while discovering he could cut people with his mind. his dad, as an alternative to a prolonged juvy sentence, gave up permanent custody of him to DATH, Daytona Academy and Training Hospital (working concept here), a semi-locked down facility which trains biopaths to be surgeons and doctors. it’s a Big Deal to be operated on by a biopath because of the amount of precision that can be carried out fully without tools or even touching the patient, although wounds, in the case of Miles’ specific abilities, still have to be stitched up manually. In personality Miles is very literal, very analytical, and very serious/focused, which are all qualities valued if you’re a minor being trained to do high-risk surgeries. Has black hair buzz-cut to comply with hospital standards. gay, but hasn’t really had a lot of relationship experience due to his circumstances and therefore is…..Confused™ as well as touch starved. has some serious issues with self harm that started shortly after his mom’s death and continues to the present; being a biopath, especially with his particular specialty (’human scalpel’), makes self harm very easy to accomplish and harder to kick.

-Kilroy Fisher. also a teenager at the time of whatever story this is. technopath, is able to ‘cast’ himself into electronics and streamlines coding and reprogramming for any language of code he knows. lives in the mid-sized harbor town that DATH is at the edge of. recovering from a drug addiction that caused him to both drop out of high school and get kicked out of his mom’s house. now rents an apartment from an older technopath in town in exchange for helping him code some very sketchy stuff, leading to him eventually hacking into the Daytona communication system, running into Miles in the process. personality is lighter-hearted and more socially amiable than Miles, but also much more anxious and prone to outbursts and prolonged bad moods. bisexual and very fucking sure of it. long blond hair, very thick aviator glasses. 

-Dean Eiler. Mid 30s. DATH director; narcissist who appears like a fantastic person to the press as well as patients and their families, while meanwhile being an absolute nightmare behind the scenes. will go to extreme lengths to justify his behavior to himself, upto and including flat out lying with little hesitation. unfortunately a very skilled biopath, although how he got the training is opaque and uncertain and almost certainly wasn’t morally fantastic; past is overall shadowy. in charge of the everyday running of DATH, including daily interaction with trainees; doesn’t constantly terrorize them, but will seize any excuse to do so while in the mood. otherwise tends to be condescending and disturbingly confident in cutting people open. straight, cycles through a variety of girlfriends, none of which stay for long for obvious reasons. always dresses impeccably with his hair slicked perfectly back, and is very clearly concerned about his appearance. if not in surgery or training, wears black slacks and dress shirts with narrow ties. 

-Walter Wilde. Late 20s. assistant to Eiler. Almost was an author, but was pressured into pre-med and then into med school, landing him in a Daytona pseudo-administrative position. tends to be far kinder and more sympathetic to the trainees. still writes in his free time and has a book out, although it’s not enough for him to quit DATH, which is something he really wouldn’t mind doing if he didn’t feel so strongly attached to the kids…although it’s very clear that many don’t feel the same way towards him. 

-Wren. teenager. DATH trainee. haven’t actually decided on a gender for this person yet, but they’re very ambiguous in terms of expression. close comrades with Miles.  

-???? idk im still working shit out

anyway. it’s a cool universe so far but there’s no like….plot lmao like there WAS a plot but it was so foundation-oriented i need to completely gut it lol. also the worldbuilding needs more work 

[janiedean]

I don't like JC because it's horribly toxic for both of them, but I do feel so bad for Cersei as a character. It breaks my heart that people think she has no depth, I felt sick when I read that. No one is born evil. She was raised in a terrible unhealthy environment, and I know the response will be that it doesn't matter because Jaime became a good person with very few flaws and that;s true, but people react differently. Cersei needed help from a young age and never got it.

.... anon mind that I’m 100% up for having a civil discussion but did you have to go with:

I know the response will be that it doesn't matter because Jaime became a good person with very few flaws and that;s true

which I mean......... could you all stop presuming that my issues with cersei happened because of the fact that I like jaime and I think he’s a good person while she’s not?

(under the cut bc I don’t want extra discourse)

like, I’m gonna say it again because I don’t think people here got it: I marathoned books 1-4 and until half of three I didn’t like cersei but I had way less clear-cut feelings about my dislike and there were people I liked a lot less than her, then it happened that tyrion went in the post-red wedding council and she was smiling when discussing it and then talking as if she had orchestrated that whole thing *proudly*, and then I read affc and:

The smell of him made her wrinkle her nose. "Take the quarrel out of him," she commanded. "This is the King's Hand!" And my father. My lord father. Should I scream and tear my hair? They said Catelyn Stark had clawed her own face to bloody ribbons when the Freys slew her precious Robb. Would you like that, Father? she wanted to ask him. Or would you want me to be strong? Did you weep for your own father?

now: if it wasn’t clear from my entire blog, my favorite character is robb. my second-favorite stark family character is catelyn. and that was the moment where I went like ‘fuck this I’m out she’s dead to me’. like: if you think that kinda shit about the red wedding and you’re *HAPPY* ABOUT IT HAPPENING you’re narratively dead to me period, and the fact that she treats jaime like shit (or tyrion like shit, or everyone else like shit) helped later with cementing my opinion but ***that*** was the crux of my issues with cersei, so can we all stop assuming that since I loved jaime from the get go then the only reason I hate cersei is that (or that I ship jb)? like, not to be that person, but I’m really tired of this veiled assumption that since I like jaime and ship jb then it’s the reason why she’s narratively dead to me.

now: jaime and tyrion were raised in the same environment she was raised in. the difference is that she’s a textbook narcissist personality and they’re not. now: with kids like that either you send them to a child psychiatrist when they’re younger than ten or so because then there’s a chance to salvage them or there’s not much you can do. now: cersei thought it was fine to molest tyrion in the cradle and everything else we’re not going to think about which is not a normal thing to do, that jaime doesn’t even think about doing and that most other people in these books even from a fucked up environment don’t do. same as killing someone when you’re twelve (I mean, that’s gregor, but okay) and so on. the thing with cersei isn’t that she hasn’t depth as a character, imo, it’s that she doesn’t have self-awareness at all which makes her entire personality about herself and no one else, which according to some people means not having depth but doesn’t mean she doesn’t have it as a fictional character.

now: as far as I’m concerned there isn’t one thing about her that might make me feel sorry or identify with her on any level. if you feel pity for her and like her as a character absolutely fair enough, I mean I empathize with theon and a lot of people don’t, a lot of people say brienne is boring and I don’t think she is, a lot of people think cat is flat and boring and I don’t and so on, but like...... if someone says brienne is boring I feel bad but I don’t immediately assume that they can’t bother to empathize with her situation - maybe it’s not their thing. to me cersei is absolutely not interesting and her chapters are not my thing because I got bored after the second and tbh when I wasn’t bored she was giving me unhealthy bile movements because I hate people treating others like she does and I honestly don’t feel particularly sorry for her beyond ‘well too bad you were born narcissist’, but like...... in order to have help she should have gotten a child psychiatrist and those don’t exist in westeros and that’s not how the narrative was supposes to go so like.... you can absolutely feel about her like that, I personally would rather think about anyone else because I’ve had enough of similar shining personalities irl to excuse me from caring about the worst fictional version. *shrug*

but like, the fact that jaime is her entire contrary has very little to do with my dislike for cersei and tbh even if he was an asshole and I didn’t like him I still wouldn’t like her for treating him like that because no one deserves it.

btw: I 100% support that everyone needs help and no one is born evil, but if they’re born with conditions (narcissism) that imply that they hurt others from the get-go, no one is also obliged to feel sympathy for them, especially if they’re fictional and they exist to tell a story.

/peace

[shametheshadow]

We have this new employee who is trans. It took them about a week to go to a manager and ask very politely if they could be called Alix and be referred to with him/he pronouns. So we got his name changed on the schedule and for when he clocks in, just about everything that isnt needed for legal or financial documentation. 

So overall my work has been super supportive of him, to the point where I started to believe there would be literally no issue..

... in walks one of my fellow MiT’s who is an absolute narcissist prick. This guy once said that he wouldn’t go to a gay bar because his ass was so nice he didn’t want guys groping him. While in the car with me. Someone who likes guys and girls. Who could easily stop the car and tell him to gtfo.

One night we were talking during a close and he mentioned Alix. I mistook him for another, one of the more established employees whose name is Alex and got a little confused.

When I questioned this he goes, “No, not that one. The confused one. The one who thinks she’s a guy.”

And everything just came to a full stop as I stared, dumbfounded at him. Did he really just...?? Is this really happening? It’s way too damn late for this kind of discourse irl. I start telling him that he can’t call Alix confused, that’s just plain wrong and rude.

He tried to defend his thoughts by saying that our 60 year old coworker thinks the same, and I just had to remind him that when this guy (who is black) was Alix’s age there were people who thought he shouldn’t have basic human rights, but that didnt make them right either. He also said that he was from a generation that didnt believe in trans people... which was laughably stupid because he and Alix went to high school together and he’s younger than I am. We pretty much ended it when I said he could be transphobic all he wanted but to keep it to himself.

[spamzineglasgow]

(ESSAY) Musings on love online, by Maisie Florence Post

‘Love, love, love’, said Effy Stonem, ‘what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!’ Is 21st century L O V E the entropic experience of pure human emotion or just the haywire discharge of the ~ALGORITHM~?  As much as we wish we were still 15, with an array of exchangeable MSN crushes and hair big enough to rule the world, here we are still puzzling over what love means. This Valentine’s Day, put all the heart emojis on ice, grab a cherry coke and read this brilliant wee piece from Maisie Florence Post on love in the time of web 2.0.

> We are all looking for a connection. Be that an internet one or an IRL one, whatever the connection is, we want it. This feeling has become immediate. It is obsessive and sometimes narcissistic. We have to have it now, and we can - because of the internet. Gone are the times of wondering whether someone fancies you or not, now a simple swipe tells us. We can stay online and up to date with hot spots and airdrops. We can stay in love with dating and porn sites.

> Whilst perambulating online I stumbled across the word l i m e r e n c e, coined in the 70s by Dorothy Tennov, a psychologist studying the experiences of being in love. Tennov created this new word to describe her findings of the emotional feeling her participants had when they felt an infatuation with someone that was often unrequited and/or obsessive. They wouldn’t be able to commit to a simple task without thinking of their LO (limerent object) aka loved one. Something as normal as reading, Tennov noted, would become a thought bridge back to their limerent lover. These intrusive thoughts that Tennov described seem to be more apparent today, with the Instagram attention spans of millennials and addictive apps that allow you to obsess over complete strangers.

> Anna Biller’s 2016 film The Love Witch main character Elaine has many a love affair, desperately trying to find a man. She becomes completely obsessed with her LO’s (limerent objects), one being her friend’s husband. The film focuses on her infatuation with them and how she casts spells on them that make them her hapless dim victims. She is seen to quickly cast them aside when she realises they just aren’t good enough, before moving onto the next. Elaine retorts, 'What I’m really interested in is love. You might say I’m addicted to love.' The protagonist is obsessed with love itself, rather than the person she falls for.

> In Real Life Magazine Alexandra Molotkow argues that limerence is a narcissistic act in her essay Crush Fatigue, 'the great irony, of course, is that in chasing the idea of someone else, it can only wrap yourself up in you.' Love online could be just another way digital natives are obsessing over themselves. An ultimately selfish act. Or maybe it’s with the internet that we are becoming disassociated with love, enjoying fantasy escapism as we compare ourselves to people we’ve never met...

> Love is ubiquitous and if we peel it back to what it actually is: pure human emotion, it can’t ever be a waste of time or seen negatively. It is almost as if the internet has teamed up with society’s current turmoil to give love a bad name. Love is considered for losers, much like the 'live laugh love' signs that we see on forgotten bedroom walls. No one wants to admit when they love something and no one wants to be caught with one of those tacky wall decorations. Maybe we have finally reached a level of such melancholy and nihilism that living and laughing and loving is considered totally lame. Anna Biller tweeted, 'We're living in a culture now where love and sex are equally shameful concepts.' People are ashamed of being in love or showing love, just like it isn’t considered cool to stalk your ex, no one wants to be the first to say the ‘L’ word.

> It could be that people’s perceptions of love have changed due to the different corners of the internet that allow you to encounter moments that would otherwise be an intimate affair between two or more human bodies. More people are buying sex toys (Amazon stocks 10,000 various types) than actually having sex. More people are hooking up via their phones but fewer people are having sex and c o n n e c t i n g on a personal level.

> In the article Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex by Kate Julian for The Atlantic, the sex recession is raised and the internet is blamed. Julian argues that even though we are in the age of acceptance and sex before marriage is considered very normal, even 'Anal sex has gone from final taboo to 'fifth base'—Teen Vogue (yes, Teen Vogue) even ran a guide to it.' Yet we are having much less than generations before. She goes on to say, 'Further outside the mainstream, the far-right Proud Boys group has a 'no wanks' policy, which prohibits masturbating more than once a month.' The alt-right group’s founder, Gavin McInnes, who also co-founded Vice Media, has said that porn and masturbation are making people 'not even want to pursue relationships.' Albeit a rogue choice of comparison, there are corners online where the Proud Boys rule supreme, behind greasy laptop screens.

> Porn and masturbation are addictive, just like how Elaine from The Love Witch is addicted to love, people can be addicted to online behaviours that come with watching porn and masturbating. Today it is far easier to watch porn and jerk off than it is to go out and chat with someone and sleep with them.

> In Geraldine Snell’s book overlove (2018), the reader is taken on a journey of obsession and complete fantasy, with the crux of it being limerence. This lover imagines writing to someone she has never actually met. It is an addictive read, much like love itself is addictive, and being online itself is addictive; the marriage goes on and on. Snell perfectly captures the all-encompassing feeling of love that is inherently ~female~. It draws my easily distracted attention back to The Love Witch and Elaine’s fantasies and then the fantasies that we are able to make reality due to the World Wide Web.

> Love is holistic, it is a feeling felt by everyone at some stage. We are in a world where we are taught to value commodity culture over nature and emotion. Love online is predominantly as obsessive and addictive as the webspace allows it to be. What seems to be missing online is a type of love that translates to tenderness and romanticism. The internet has made it easier than ever to share, so why not share kindness and build foundations of sentimental sincerity rather than a narcissistic, individualist state of mind. As love, as primitive as it is, might be the most (dare I say the word) a u t h e n t i c thing we have left.

~

Memes: The Internet

Text: Maisie Florence Post

Published: 14/2/20

[wadjaya]

I’m still in a nostalgic mood, and I’m interested in reaching out to other old friends, but there’s one in particular I’m hung up on because they came up recently.

People following me near the beginning might recall his username if I mentioned it, and most of my irl friends would immediately hiss with disdain at the mere mention of him.

I feel like I was the only one who ever managed to drift away from him without immediately having any bridges burnt from his side. The only person who looks back on their friendship fondly. And there are very good reasons for that- he was a dick to everyone. They made everything difficult, many things which had no reason to revolve around him did, they were extremely judgmental and tried to make people around them live to his standards.

And I can’t help but think about rekindling with him, but being uncertain if it’s worth it. They could never mix with my friend group as it stands. The others would never be okay with his entry into our spaces. They all remember his influence negatively.

And it’s not like I was the only one he was nice to- he was almost equally rude to me as anyone else. He liked to believe he was intellectually superior, whether or not that was actually the case I don’t care to judge. He believed that he could get away with calling me stupid fifty ways from Sunday, and particularly loved a certain darksiders reference I didn’t understand and calling me his lackey.

And I was okay with it at the time. I mean, why wouldn’t I be? My dad had recently been married to a woman who treated me as nothing more than an obstacle in her ideal family, a narcissist who threatened to hurt me and actively hid my asthma medication every weekend while making my allergens worse and more plentiful.

So when my self-worth was at its absolute lowest, he was my friend. He got me interested in things I would be passionate about for the better part of a decade. He dealt with me being an ass because he always had his turn. But he always butt heads with others who cared about me.

But he hated himself too, I thought. He was dangerously depressed and bullied for so long even before I met him. So I thought he needed me. And I dealt with his hurtful words.

He always found himself alienating people whom I got along with. I don’t know if these were his attempts to make me pick a side as it were- or if he just never meshed with others I knew. He began dating one of my best friends, only to hurt them in a way which distanced the two of us for years.

He ruined hard work done by someone I view as family now, repeatedly. He ruined my hard work. He deeply hurt a friend’s best friend throughout a tumultuous relationship. He hurt my current and only partner years before I even met her.

So when I have the yearning to talk to him- I always get caught up on why. I always chicken out of confronting him for the things he did to people I love. I see him on discord and steam almost every day. I see him existing, and I wonder if it’s worth poking that bear for answers.

It probably isn’t. It probably never will be.