#and receiveing comfort

[skeletoninthemelonland]

since many people were asking for a hug from Graveleaper,

[shevr]

[wavywhiskers]

NO ONE has been released!

Play it on browser or download it on Itch.io! ←

As the first winter comes, the hermit, once the almighty batter and purifier of the Modern World, decides to look for clothes to protect himself from the cold ravaging the desert island that houses his deepest fears. Sadly, he won't be leaving anytime soon.

[blindmagdalena]

Heeyy a bit of a self indulgent ask here but I had a phobia/trauma trigger today and it caused me to have a messy sobbing panic attack. Do you have anything on how Homelander would deal with his s/o having a panic attack like that? almost completely inconsolable. I know this is self serving and indulgent and I’m sorry for over sharing homelander is a comfort character for me and you write him exquisitely. If you’re not comfortable with this just ignore

Homelander was sixteen when he had his first panic attack. He'd flown further and faster away than he'd ever had the freedom to and collapsed in a dense woodland, sobbing and rocking his body against the cool forest floor.

He'd pulled his hair so hard it should have come loose, grit his teeth so tightly they should have cracked, and choked so badly on his own constricting throat that it should have caved in.

They didn't. He's invulnerable, after all. As solid as marble.

It was the first attack, but not the last.

That's how he recognizes it so quickly in you.

"Hey," he says, ears attuned to the rabbit-like pound of your heart. "Heyy, hey, it's okay. I'm right here, you see me? Hey." He's only just found you, he doesn't know yet what your trigger was, but he can ascertain that later.

Your staccato breaths and sharp sobs, the sea salt smell of tears streaking your cheeks, are nearly enough to rouse his own panic by proxy. He needs it to stop. He needs you to stop. He cares about you too much for you to scare him like this.

"Hey, you hear me?" He asks, cupping either side of your face. You can't answer through it. Your tongue is gnarled with panic and you're sobbing so hard he fears you'll choke yourself on it. He's not even sure you see him.

He takes you into his arms, one moving smoothly around your waist while the other cups the back of your head. He holds gently at first, grip gradually tightening, compressing your body against his in the hopes that the hammer of your heart will meet and match the steady beat of his own.

"Sssshhhhhhh," he shushes by your ear, lifting you just enough to keep you on your feet, but take from you the weight of your own body.

"I've got you. Whatever it is, it's okay. It's okay. I've got you. M'gonna take care of it, alright? Ssshh," he says, rocking you the same way he used to rock himself in the corner of the bad room, soothing himself with the thump of his own skull against those sterile white walls.

He knows it's working when you slip your arms around him in turn. He continues to hush you, whispering more honeyed assurances in your ear, the core sentiment always the same.

I'm here. You're safe. I love you.

It's everything he can think that he always wanted to hear in these moments of raw, horrifically human weakness.

Eventually, your breaths begin to even out, though your heart continues to thunder in his ears, still convinced that the danger hasn't yet vanished. He tries not to take that personally and scoops you up the rest of the way into his arms.

"That's it, just like that," he coos, pressing a firm kiss to your forehead. "Breathe. Breathe. Good... Light as a feather now, okay? Like you can fly," he tells you, sharing the greatest comfort he's ever known. His only real escape has always been his weightlessness, the ability to shed gravity at will. He uses his strength in an attempt to share even a sliver of that sense of freedom with you.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. All he knows is that your heart starts to slow alongside the flow of your tears. He kisses your wet cheeks, the bridge of your nose, your forehead. He whispers praise and love with each one, voice barely above a whisper.

"I'm sorry," you choke out. He's appalled that would be your first instinct.

"Don't," he says firmly, though his voice is still low. "Don't. I can carry it for you. Carry you. What's the point of super strength otherwise?" He murmurs, a smile playing at the edges of his lips.

You almost smile back, and that's enough for him. He kisses the crease between your brows until it smooths, and the highs of your cheeks until the tears dry up, and your lips until they're ready to speak again.

He'll hold you for as long as it takes your body to realize the threat was only ever in your mind, and that there isn't a thing in this goddamn world he would ever let hurt you.

[mylittleredgirl]

i realized this definition is missing from my mental glossary, and instead of just asking what it means, i'm making a poll!

none of this has to be an x-reader situation if you engage with your favorite characters in a different way! if you know what it means but don't have one of your own you can still answer with your definition, but i also included an i don't know option at the bottom.

if you have more than one & it's different for different characters i'd love to hear about it and get more confused!!

[bi-shop]

kind of a dumb idea but hear me out ... maybe just Maybe we should throw angst at constance more ... like , lots of it ... throw her down the stairs , idk ...

[sleepsucks]

[bacchuschucklefuck]

love thinking kipperlilly spends her afterlife looking for lucy in a familiar forest

[wishfuldivine]

Gaz is comforted by Price after a very long and horrible day at work?

He should've known that today would be hard. After all, it's not every day that you get the honor to train the majority of the fresh recruits. If you do, that meant that the higher-ups trusted you to the maximum.

He felt extremely honored and proud to be chosen. It's a rarity for sure. It only made him feel like his hard work was paid off.

But it all went to shit when some of the recruits decided to have a shitshow fight. Two groups of friends have a go at it without much or a care.

He tried to break them up. It was futile. His only result is a bruise on his eye and a busted lip, which it angered him to some extent.

When he was about to make them feel the wrath, a very angry Price reprimanded them all. Not only was it for the disobedience, but because his boy was hit without being involved in the mediocrity.

That was two hours ago. They had gotten off work and were not cuddling. Gaz had his head on Price's chest, the other caressing the back of his neck gently and lovingly.

They didn't need any words. This was Price's way of showing him comfort and more. And Gaz? Gaz received as much as he could with no complaints. Eyes closed as he listened to his captain's heartbeat.

[chaoticace2005]

Inside of me there are two wolves.

One wants my favorite characters to find love and happiness.

The other wants to see them go through horrible shit.

[fearthhereaper]

Little Helaegon angst/comfort because I need it.

.

.

It is late at night. Jaehaerys's funeral was over and everyone retreated back to their rooms to mourn his loss and process the devasting consequences that will soon follow it. Aegon has disappeared to the first tavern he saw on his way to the Red Keep, to drink the sorrow away.

Climbing the steps, stumbling over his feet, face red, swollen and wet from neverending crying and raging at the injustice committed.

He cannot be alone tonight. A part of him fears what he might do if he's left alone in his grief, and another part cannot bear the idea of sleeping in the King's chambers surrounded by reminders of a father that he wanted so badly to be nothing like.

He's quiet, defeated, when he walks into Alicent's chambers. She turns to look at him. Both wanting to say so much, yet unable to speak. He takes a tentative step forward — "Stop." He freezes. "I-" "Please leave." He reaches a trembling hand as if to close the distance between them, but Alicent, taking a shaky breath, turns away from him.

He will not find the comfort he so desperately seeks in his mother. "Good night, mother." Silence is her answer.

He finds himself wandering the halls of the Keep, dreading the idea of dreaming, dreading the reality of it not happening that night at all. He goes to his rooms, defeated.

Inside he sees a shadowy figure. Preparing himself (and secretly wishing for it to be) for an attack he places a hand on his sword, ready to strike whoever dares to try to get at him.

"Aegon?" Helaena moves into the light. One hand placating Aegon and the other hidden until she moves and Jaehaera peeks behind her mother's skirts.

She could not find any sleep after the funeral. She no longer felt safe in her rooms, no matter the dozens guards that were now places in front of it. She could not put Jaehaera to sleep next to the place where her brother was murdered. Every sound made her jump, every shadow dancing across the walls made her remember the feel of the blade against her neck. Every moment spent in her rooms was suffocating her, draining her. She picks up Jaehaera, ignoring the violent shiver that moves through her body as she remembers doing it on that horrible night.

The guards take her to Aegon's rooms. She waits for him, clutching Jaehaera's hand and staring outside of the window, having that strange feeling she has when she senses something that will one day make itself truly known to her. She squeezes Jaehaera's hand tighter and moves them a step back from the window. Aegon coming into his room snaps her out of her thoughts.

No words are exchanged, they never really knew how to talk to each other anyway. He walks up to them, picks Jaehaera up, rests her little head on his shoulder and inhales her scent. He takes Helaena's hand in his own and leads her to bed.

Both wear their funeral attire. Both lay down listening to Jaehaera breathe between them. Neither will find sleep that night.

[dragonsbluee]

I see your gay uncles of the straw hats Jimbrook and raise you old, gay, heartbroken, pirate captians who find a loving, romantic relationship in each other as they watch over a group of chaotic youngsters.

Because Brook and Yorki had a heartbreaking goodbye, and Brook spent 50 years mourning, but now he has a second chance. He wasn't expecting anything, but then, lo and behold! A handsome, kind, capable fish man enters stage right, and Brook is smitten. Here is someone who understands the grief of losing a captian and partner, then having to take their place to hold the crew together, but ultimately watching thier crew fall apart or suffer due to factors outside their control.

For Jimbei the last few years have been a whirlwind of chaos. He was looking forward to a new adventure full of chaos of his own making and choices. Now, enter stage left, this fantastic, enigmatic, adorable skeleton (and he's a musician!), who is a wonderful presence on a ship full of younger pirates. Jimbei never really moved on from the loss of the Sun Pirates, and hasn't had time to mourn all the friends he's lost in the past few years. But now he finds companionship and comfort in Brook. Someone who doesn't expect him to move on, let's him reminisce, but keeps him from getting stuck in his mourning. He's never thought of romance seriously before, but now he finds himself wanting.

The two meet in the middle, center stage on a ship of dreams as they forge a new one together. They still keep and work towards their individual dreams but find pieces of each other in them. Brook looks forward to the day he can introduce Laboon to Jimbei, and Jimbei has promised to translate the whale's words for Brook. Jimbei will see freedom for his people and finds motivation in every new song Brook writes and story he tells. Together, they find peace, calm, and rest. They find excitement, companionship, and a harbour in the other after years of storms.

[anti-rop]

truly do not understand modern Hollywood's obsession with equating a 'strong' female character with having no other option or role but to swing a sword and be a warrior. how can people earnestly look at characters like Galadriel, Arwen, Éowyn, Ioreth, Lúthien, etc., and argue there are no strong, 'feminist icons' and stories within Tolkien's writing—that his works are not 'female-character friendly'. truly living in one of the worst timelines.

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[gofancyninjaworld]

No one is born knowing how to communicate

A: And that's okay...

Dr Kuseno made it look so easy. He just swanned into Saitama's apartment, proferred him a gift of beef and the hero's hostility melted away.

Fubuki felt positively foolish, and yet encouraged.

Since then, however, she's found that the only thing meat bribes pull in are dogs. Literal dogs:

And even dogs need more than meat to be loyal.

What gives? Well, it's obvious that Fubuki mistook Dr Kuseno's gift for a bribe: more on that later. Probably. And yeah, it's funny, but it's more interesting than that.

Learning how to communicate is complex. There are a ludicrous number of unspoken conventions and rules in every human society, so much so that we don't fully learn how to smile socially until we're in our forties. Dr Kuseno carefully judged his gift: he had a legitimate reason to offer Saitama a gift in the first place, out of gratitude for Saitama going out of his way to mentor Genos. Then he chose a gift Saitama would be sure to appreciate and presented it at a time when Saitama would be thinking about dinner. The worst that could have happened is that Saitama took the gift but insisted on the doctor going home (and taking Genos with him) -- it would still have left the desired positive impression. And things went really well. Kuseno made it look effortless.

Fubuki is only in her early twenties and her experience to date has been far from typical. She's learned that either she can intimidate people or she can flatter them into doing what she wants. With Saitama (and later Bang, Bomb, and Kuseno), she has to learn how to talk to more powerful people whom she cannot overpower, over whom she has no leverage, and who are unimpressed by her looks, simpering, or flattery.

Fortunately, Fubuki is nothing if not astute. She's worked out that she needs to develop complementary skills if she's to make herself useful to the S-Class heroes she wants to hang with. How to talk to them to get the help and cooperation she desires? Ah, that's a work in progress.

B: ...Unless it's not

Let's move onto another miscommunication.

Something that I hadn't before was that, unlike the webcomic version where Saitama only thinks to himself that Genos seems depressed, in the manga, Saitama out and out asks him if this is the case. He wants to know.

It mirrors King asking Saitama that very same question and getting Saitama to open up and be vulnerable for the first time (ever, in any version of the story). So it is very appropriate to see Saitama trying to do the same for Genos, particularly as he is openly fond of the guy.

However, it goes wrong. Saitama feels himself under pressure to say something wise to make it better. So he puts on his best 'confident' face and inadvertently makes everything much worse. Oh dear. What makes this particularly painful in the manga is that Saitama is much more invested in trying to reach Genos, and it's made Genos think that Saitama saying that he doesn't see what he's doing must mean that earlier times when he's praised him must have been just Saitama being nice. For sure, Genos could have pushed back and made Saitama clarify what he meant, but he's even worse at communicating: and Saitama's glib remark about being bright struck him square in the insecurities.

I'm going to come to something that I only realised once I started typing this up. Even though I've pointed out their abilities to communicate, neither King nor Kuseno have the perfect words to say. Kuseno started out by first committing a faux pas in bringing his great big outside boots into Saitama's flat, then nearly boring Saitama to death with a long-winded explanation. King started out by trying to guess what was bothering Saitama. Both, however, did the most important thing about effective communication: they picked up on their going wrong and changed tack.

It's not about saying the right thing: it's about responding to the person you're talking to.

The thing that King did that Saitama was trying to do for Genos was to ask Saitama open questions, and shut up in the interim, letting Saitama talk to fill in the silence. He'd only speak to ask more open questions when Saitama ran out of things to say, and through that, gently started to challenge Saitama's thinking.

But doing so means being comfortable with several seconds of silence. And that is excruciating. It is almost irresistible to jump in and say something, anything. And it would have been a longish wait, for Genos to slowly sit down and decide to start speaking, which might well have started being about something only tangentially related to his worry. King did that for Saitama: Saitama started out talking about what was bothering him on the surface -- being too strong -- before eventually coming to what was really bothering him, feeling lonely and profoundly isolated from everyone around him. Saitama does not yet know how to wait a person out.

It's a problem in this case because it's introduced a big barrier between those two, not an insurmountable one for sure, but one that could easily compound later.

Ah well, no one is born a communicator. We just have to wait and see if they work out a way to open up and be honest with each other. So it goes! There's more ways to introduce conflicts than to have a monster trample Tokyo, after all!

And so help me, the struggle to learn how to communicate is 1000% worthwhile.

[saltpepperbeard]

Angry Support Blankie

ANGRY SUPPORT BLANKIE!!!!!!!!!

[johannestevans]

idk i told my partner i didnt want to discuss a particular tv show if they watched it and it made me realise how much the fandom's treatment of it and the attitude around it has completely soured my ability to engage in discussion about if even tho it does a lot of things well that i honestly enjoyed on top of what i think it did terribly and really alienated me as a viewer

and that just. makes me sad

its bc so much fandom is so concentrated and online but its so miserable when you enjoy or appreciate a piece of media but have a different take on it / enjoy it despite its flaws etc and like

you're in a position of just not being able to discuss it w its nuances or flaws taken into account bc of nitpicky language and unnecessarily aggressive response