#don't bully him

[yandereunsolved]

tw(s): yandere themes, reference to sa, murder, mention of possible suicide

yandere Tate Langdon who first saw you when you moved in with your family. He was sitting outside listening to Hayden rant about Ben for the umpteenth time. It was like that hole that had been ripped in his soul by Violet was repaired. No, you seemed so different from her. Violet's heart called out to him but your soul screams for his loving caress.

yandere Tate Langdon who is immediately blocked by Violet and her mother when he tries to see you better. Both are insistent that he stays away from you. They bother threaten him but he's only half listening. He's standing on his tiptoes looking through his your our window. He practically has hearts in his eyes.

yandere Tate Langdon who is consistently cockblocked by Violet's family and Moira. Violet immediately introduced you to the fact that ghosts are in this house. Violet warns you that Tate is crazy and not to be trusted.

yandere Tate Langdon who attacks Violet and drags her down to the basement so he can spend time with you.

yandere Tate Langdon who manipulates you into thinking Violet is lying. He says that the mass murder part is true, but not the murdering of the gay couple and the sexual assault of Viven. He cries his heart out to you. He begs and speaks of his mommy issues. He pulls out all of his manipulation tactics.

yandere Tate Langdon who infantilizes himself around you to make himself seem more innocent. He is more vulnerable and soft.

yandere Tate Langdon who asks your opinion on everything. If you like it, he likes you. You hate it, he hates it. He begs you to like his things. He begs for your validation and praise. He craves it more than anything else in the world.

yandere Tate Langdon who always goes through your stuff without your permission. He always puts it back and has a fit if you catch him. He cries and begs for you to forgive him. He then cuddles into you and peppers you with kisses telling you how much he loves you.

yandere Tate Langdon who takes your stuff sometimes, a lot of the time, for private use later.

yandere Tate Langdon who has a private journal of his murder and sexual fantasies. He writes down everything he knows about you. He writes down sappy little love poems that he slips into your pocket(s).

yandere Tate Langdon who has made a hit list of everyone you dislike. As well as people near you that he doesn't like. He's written in his private journal about the ways he is going to kill your family and get rid of their bodies— just incase. He doesn't want their spirits staying in this house and interrupting your precious time together.

yandere Tate Langdon who asks you to rent books from the library. He asks a lot of different genres. He begins to get more specific with spell books and literature about witchcraft.

yandere Tate Langdon who plans on getting rid of the rest of the spirits with spells. He adds it to his journal for later use.

yandere Tate Langdon who watches you even when you don't know. When you are sleeping, showering, studying, changing, anything.

yandere Tate Langdon who respects boundaries only when they are convenient for him. He is always pushing your boundaries gently. He frames it as 'getting you out of your comfort zone'. If you get too upset or confront him he gets violent. He throws a temper tantrum and disappears for perhaps weeks. You think he has disappeared but he is just watching from the shadows.

yandere Tate Langdon who makes you so dependent on him that you'll believe anything that comes out of his mouth.

yandere Tate Langdon who will starve you of his attention and presence if you get mad or even just look at him the wrong way. He says that he is just establishing his boundaries and cooling off. What he's really doing is making you suffer.

yandere Tate Langdon who feels bad in some way. He doesn't want to manipulate you and be toxic but he has to! You'll get in danger and could even die without his guidance! He would rather get broken up with Violet for all eternity as opposed to losing you at the hands of the world.

yandere Tate Langdon who spends all his time with you. Or waiting for you to come back from where ever. Or hiding in his invisible ghost mode when your family is around.

yandere Tate Langdon who wants nothing more than to stake his claim on you. He wants your family to hear every noise fall past your lips because of him. He wants you to make him whimper and make him squirm. He wants your family to think you have some secret boyfriend. Where did those hickeys come from? Tate gave them to you when you were sleeping... he couldn't help himself. You just looked so warm and inviting. He didn't mean it at first. He just started kissing your skin and he got a little aggressive, okay?

yandere Tate Langdon who doesn't want you to ever leave the house. He hangs off of you and loves on you until you don't leave. If you have school/friends/work/alone time... nooooooooooooooo. He pouts and sulks when you aren't there. He lays on your bed and cries sometimes. He plots murder. He draws little drawings for you. He harasses your family— harasses your family?

yandere Tate Langdon who harasses your family and mentally tortures them. He uses the other ghosts to do. He'll purposefully cause arguments in your family. Put things where they don't belong. Make it seem like someone is cheating on someone else. Maybe your family member is just having a shitty day... Tate is gonna make it the shittiest day they have ever had.

yandere Tate Langdon who gets taught about the intricacies of technology by you. He hacks into your electronic and looks at your search history. By hacks I mean learns your password. He accidentally got a virus on your computer once. Any social media you have is immediately monitored by Tate. He creates his own account and boosts every one of your comment. Wants to commit another mass murder whenever someone gives you a negative comment.

yandere Tate Langdon who crawls into your lap at night.

yandere Tate Langdon who tells you his deepest and darkest secrets. Besides the entire stalking, manipulating, and murder fantasy stuff.

yandere Tate Langdon who has very special things planned for your first Halloween with him. A romantic picnic on the beach at night. A bubble bath with rose petals afterwards. Laying in your bed and listening to Niravna. Your enemies disappearing. Violet, Vivien, and Ben suddenly disappearing. Thanks magic! Now there are fewer obstacles in the way of your eternal and ever lasting love.

yandere Tate Langdon who helps your low mental health and constantly praises you. He love bombs you so very much.

yandere Tate Langdon who plans on having you commit suicide after the rest of the ghosts are gone, and your family. He'll convince you and won't let you leave the house until you do.

yandere Tate Langdon who is wrapped around your finger so tight. All he does is for you. You could even manipulate him if you are skilled enough— be careful though. He's an unstable mass murder with mommy issues.

yandere Tate Langdon who is ready to burn down the world for you.

[cheesysocsandart]

Todd my beloved

[dudeimnotafurry]

Echo is an amazing novel but I’ve never gone back to re-read its routes.

A lot of the time when I really enjoy a piece of fiction I’ll read it over and over again to ferret out all the little details or just enjoy the story that it depicts but for this game I can’t bring myself to read it again in its entirety. Its an expertly crafted narrative with such fully fleshed multidimensional characters and it even utilizes the medium its written in to contribute to its themes but despite all that I haven’t gone back to read it again despite the fact it lives rent free in my head.

And I think its because the entire story is just so damn bleak. Once you go through all the routes you just know that nothing good can come from here so why would I ever re-visit it in its entirety. Sure there are some nice moments here and there but they are all tainted by the knowledge that you the player has about how totally fucked each and every character is. Sure there is a veneer of polite friendless at times but in a different timeline, if you made a few different choices, these characters might hate each other, they might even kill each other. This ‘friend group, has so much history and so many unresolved issues that seeing them interact normally feels almost more weird then seeing them at each others throats.

Echo is an stunning game with a thrilling narrative, but I don’t know if I’m ever going to read it again myself.

[the-delightful-temptation]

You’re a million years old. You a gilf. 👀👀👀 XD

"I'm not that old... I mean I am but."

"I'm timeless."

[vimbry]

[mecachrome]

Lando and Oscar on Capital Breakfast

[electoons]

I love the college of winterhold. everyone there is casually deranged and there's like an alarming number of students and staff who threaten you immediately when they meet you. it's always one of the first questlines I do. which makes it even funnier when you get made the arch-mage of the college. I'm level 12 and got through this questline knowing exactly 3 spells. what do you mean you want me to lead the college. this school CANNOT be an accredited institution

[zoe-oneesama]

You fool, you had plausible deniability until you said “Scarlet LADY!”

Episode 45 Part 6

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Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5

Ep 41, Ep 42, Ep 43, Ep 44, Ep 46, Ep 47

Ko-fi | Patreon

[ryllen]

[ro5ani]

Some thoughts I've been having since round 6 but it's mostly me ranting about Ivan

So first of all, this whole thing where Till goes looking for Mizi's flower crown and they get attacked by the alien, it was all staged by Ivan. He was waiting for Till outside of the entrance and followed him as he went there

He didn't do anything to help them get away he was just watching how things played out, his goal was to get Till locked up so he could free him when no one was watching and they could escape (it would also show him as a savior thus making Till like him more)

You can see marks in the wall while he watches, my boy was stressed (maybe even worried that something would go terribly wrong). And before this scene, he is shown hugging the alien and there's an official art of him inside the aliens mouth (not sure what that means maybe that was the way of convincing it, it's known Ivan always does whatever the aliens want so he can use that later to his favor) ANYWAYS there are no scenes where he intervenes, so I'm pretty sure he planned the whole thing.

WHAT I'M TRYING TO GET AT IS, the meteor shower scene when they escaped.

If Ivan staged the whole thing he must've picked a specific day and time, so them escaping while there was a meteor shower is not a coincidence. Ivan did everything he could to convince Till, in the best way he could come up with.

Just like Till, Ivan suffered a lot of abuse even though it's not shown as much. At the beginning of round 3 we can see an alien threatening to throw him from the top of a building. He was scared and crying yet he saw, what probably was the most beautiful thing in his whole life, a meteor shower.

There's a lot of focus on Ivan's eyes throughout the series, he's very observant and it's also a way to emphasize how he is always looking at Till. But before he actually met Till, the meteor shower was the thing that caught his attention, and you can tell by the way his eyes fill with meteors when he looks at Till. Till to him is as shiny and sparkling as a meteor shower.

Ivan might be smart and very observant and mature for his age, but he's still a kid! He not only tried to save Till he also tried to impress him so they could get closer. So what did he do, like a kid showing off his toys to make an impression, he showed Till the most beautiful and impressive thing he knew.

And Till was impressed! But it was not enough, so it happened what happened.

The point of this whole thing is that I've seen a lot of people say Ivan's only way of catching Till's attention is by bothering/being mean to him, and while he did that a lot, he also risked his life and staged this whole thing so Till could be happy.

And even after that didn't work out, he kept looking out for Till in the only way he knew or was able to.

So my boy Ivan is not just a bully give him some credit😭 He could've been a little more honest but u don't expect the aliens to teach them proper communication.

SO THAT'S WHAT I WANTED TO GET OUT OF MY SYSTEM

If u read all of this thank you 😭 and feel free to share thoughts too!

And excuse any weird wording, i literally never write long stuff

[hakusins]

cw // suggestive

worshipped route for whitney the faithful (or fallen?) where he's preparing the sacrifice pc for weekly prayers~

whitney the faithful/swap au idea belongs to @just-dol-headshots

[saphushia]

i read a wonderful little sickfic that had phantom!etho in it, and despite never even considering the concept before i now can't stop abt etho phantom mechanics and him just being silly with it <3

[aestyrn]

i needed this redraw with lif and alfonse

[vulpixhoney]

of course Sklonda doesn't like the nickname "the ball". of course she doesn't. because, while now is is an affectionate name from friends who love and respect him, it was a belittling nickname while he was being bullied. like. we know how much Fabian cares for Riz, they're best friends and Fab trusts him implicitly, if Riz asked him to stop he absolutely would immediately

but all Sklonda sees is them using a mean nickname that was used when he was getting racially targeted for being a small creature and thrown in a trashcan

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[flying-cat]

people who undermine the importance of izuku and katsuki's relationship throughout bnha because of "annoying shippers" or because they just don't like katsuki are insane because their relationship is literally so? important??? to the entire story???? katsuki is the deuteragonist of bnha. he was one of the first characters to show up. he was the first other person to know about OFA. so much of the manga is spent showing his development. if you deny his character development and relationship development ("relationship" does not always mean romantic relationship) with izuku, you are quite literally denying a massive part of the series. the manga starts with them and ends with them. you're allowed to dislike him but if you dislike him so much that you, in turn, start hating how izuku is a "punching bag" or a "doormat" for the entire series because he doesn't stay angry and vengeful at people even though a massive part of his character is that he's compassionate and kind even to people who aren't to him or used to not be, and you seriously think that that makes him weak, and you just start to dislike the main two characters of the series, i think you should. idk. stop reading, probably. read the revenge fantasy shit that you obviously want to read. there are like seven million manhwa available to you where the character gets the revenge you so desperately want to see.