#feeling silly. living in delusion thinking that things would be any other way than the way they are now. so stupid.

[hagravenholm]

.

[samsvenni]

𝐦𝐜 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐝𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐳

nightbringer!lucifer x gn!mc

prompt: mc is way too smooth with their words

wc: 0.9k || tags: a tad angsty || rated g || not proofread

✏️- idk if this will be a series, but this is a silly lighthearted prompt abt mc being too smooth for their own good :))

There had to be something wrong with you. Were his passive totally not aggressive comments not enough? No matter what came out of his mouth, you remained as you were: unbothered and still.

He didn’t like it at all.

He didn’t like that because of your excessively collected attitude, it made that he was behaving like an immature child in this situation. He called you to his room to discuss an important matter. It could’ve been anything really.

His brothers, Solomon, or issues that he found problems in; specifically your role as their attendant. The velvet cushioned chair felt extremely homey and this room had fond memories. You surveyed the room, noticing that some things were missing from the present.

The Eldest sat in his room and watched as your eyes didn’t loom over… anything?

How bizarre.

“So… What did you call me here for?” You kept your eyes on him steady and the smile on your face was comfy as ever.

He sighed and took out a golden paper out of a folder. You recognized the fancy sigil immediately. It belonged to the Royal Family, meaning whatever was inside was probably a royal request from Diavolo. “I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but there’s a wish that Diavolo wants both of us to fulfill.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, ‘oh’ indeed.” Lucifer was a lot more ‘playful’ today. That word had a lot of synonyms when it came to the Eldest such as being petty, the heaps of dry humor, and anything that could’ve passed over your head if you hadn’t known him before. But, thankfully, you did. “Diavolo wants us to ‘get along better’. Such a vague request, don’t you think?”

The Eldest waited for any signs of distress and dissatisfaction on your face from the smallest crinkle on your forehead or even the faintest jaw clench. Yet all he found was a big ole’ smile and a wholehearted chuckle that could put the Sun to shame.

“…What’s funny?” Lucifer resisted the urge to scratch his head. His gloved hands wouldn’t do him justice.

“I just can’t believe I now have an official excuse to hang out with you.” Secretly, you wiped a cold, invisible sweat off your forehead. Why? Because you thought that Diavolo found out about the time travel thingy.

You breathed easy, knowing that you and Solomon could live peacefully for another day though it wouldn’t last with the shannegians the brothers came up with.

The only one not breathing easy was Lucifer. You seriously wanted an excuse to spend more time with him? An unfamiliar pounding sensation swirled in his rib cage like a fish racing in a pond.

“…Hmph. I’m surprised. Why not Mammon and the others? They all would appreciate your company more.” He folded his arms in an attempt to mentally bury the peculiar feeling that hadn’t died down.

“Well, Diavolo did say to get along with you, not them. I wanna spend time with all of you equally,” But you have already. Or rather, you did in the present. “-but if I wanna be truthful, I wanna spend the time with you the most. I know you’re busy, which is why I value our time together more, no matter how limited it is.”

Holy lord, that sounded super cheesy.

Lucifer watched you wordlessly, hiding a smirk from forming on his face. The Avatar of Pride was having too much fun with whatever this was. He didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of seeing him smile, but hearing you admit that you found his company more valuable than his own brothers? The Eldest bit his inner cheek to compose himself. If Solomon were here, you could practically hear him whispering to you that Lucifer was no better than a teen gushing over their crush.

The mental image was adorabl- Oh my god, now you need to compose yourself or else you’d be the one manifesting Solomon’s delusions.

Lucifer eyed you strangely before crossing his arms over his pounding chest, “You’re getting quite bold, Attendant. Is this something new you’re trying out?”

“Is it really bold to say that I value you, Lucifer?”

“Sweet words, Attendant, sweet words. Flattery will get you nowhere, especially with me.” There was so much bite in his words. You were so used to how soft he could be, that you forgot that Lucifer’s words could be grating. It was pointless to dwell on it. Right now, you’re not in the present, you’re in the past. You weren’t Lucifer’s past, nor is he your present. Such a thought would only consume you whole.

This time, you weren’t alone. Instead of journeying the present alone, you had Solomon with you. A funny feeling in your heart rippled and bounced around in your chest - The feeling of hope and gratitude was enough to keep you going. “Alright, if you have nothing more to ask, I’m gonna head out now.”

You stood up and opened the door. Before leaving completely, through the small crack, you flashed a smile and waved goodbye to the eldest. “Take a breather from the paperwork once in a while.” Just like that, you were off to take another heavenly nap back in your dorm.

“…Take care of yourself too.” His words never reached through the dark wooden doors. Despite that, it was a step forward to the feelings that found home and rooted themselves in his heart.

[schizosupport]

Hey, I'm in a server with you, but was scrolling on here and like. I didn't realise that feeling watched by pictures etc counts as a hallucination? It's not an illusion if it just appears that their eyes move and there is a strong sense of being watched and judged by their presence? Just trying to work things out. I don't know when I'll next have access to a psychiatrist but I'm realising more and more they didn't take me seriously the first time because half of this stuff I just thought was totally normal. I wish I could see someone who would dig a bit deeper than what I display on the surface man. I just don't want to get sectioned so every time I go into the doctors I either cry and cry or am totally stiff upper lip + as well spoken as possible. I don't know where the middle ground is. Vulnerability is such a wierd thing to try and hit especially about stuff like that which I've been living with for years + years + years

Heya! The distinction between hallucination, illusion and delusion can be a tricky one, and I think it's partially bc it's an arbitrary man-made distinction. They are all experiences of your mind playing tricks on you, and in cases like this it's probably a bit of everything. The strong sense of being watched + feeling judged falls within the delusional range of experiences, and then it's common for illusions and/or hallucinations to play into that belief. In any case, it's an experience thatv falls into the psychotic spectrum.

With psychiatrists it can be difficult. Many fail to ask about experiences they aren't expecting the patient to relate to, and it's difficult as a patient to know what is relevant to bring up and what isn't, since "that's just how things are" for you.

I don't know a lot about the risk of being sectioned, because where I live, the risk is usually in the direction of not being able to go inpatient even when you need it. But that said, I imagine that it must involve you being perceived as a threat to yourself or others, so I think those are the types of things you wanna be careful when talking about.

Having psychotic experiences, especially when not actively displaying signs of psychosis at the evaluation, is more likely to get you dismissed than sectioned.

I think it's a struggle for many folks with these types of experiences, that unless you're actively in psychosis as-you-speak, many psychs struggle to believe than you ever are. Bc they see psychotic people as a group wholly lacking in insight and basically a "lost cause", so if you don't currently conform to that image, they are likely to think you're just being dramatic.

It's all really rather silly...

I think you should think about what you hope to accomplish from talking to a psych about your experiences - a diagnosis? Meds? Therapy? And then once you know what you are hoping for, you can start to strategize about the best way to go about accomplishing it.

Best of luck!

[atla-suki]

“and suki’s bc i love sukka and i am deciding that they stayed together forever bc it’s my blog and i make the rules” being completely honest do you think they stayed together? like deep down? Im always split not because i dont believe they could last but more because Bryke would be like ‘yeah no they went their separate ways’ or whatever. I dont know !

honestly… this is a really difficult question lol

do i WANT them to be together forever and ever? yes of course. do i think they DID stay together? well….

as much as i absolutely adore sokka and adore suki and am obsessed with their relationship, i feel like it’s too unrealistic if kataang AND maiko AND sukka end up together. (this is assuming izumi’s mother is mai. just go w it for the sake of the argument).

the fact that we didn’t see anything of sukka’s potential children (or of sokka or suki themselves except one flashback) in LoK makes me feel like bryke didn’t really think about whether sokka and suki would stay together. or whether they were relevant to the plot of LoK (DUMB. btw. all they had to do was have asami or someone be like “yeah i trained with suki, leader of the kyoshi warriors” or have a scene of sokka w tenzin & tonraq defending baby korra against the red lotus. like cmon now. anything is better than nothing).

anyway back onto what i was saying i think it’s unrealistic for ALL of the teen couples to have stayed together for so long. kataang, fine, i guess, because they’re the main characters and most often things work out Good and Happy for the main characters. but i honestly feel like there was too much working against sokka for him to have the same romcom type fate idk.

no suki in the yakone flashback. no mention of ANY children (and you know that if they were together into their adulthoods it’s likely they would’ve had kids). that one scene in the fortuneteller episode where sokka is told he’s gonna have a life of self-inflicted misery (i forget the actual quote but yk which one i’m talking about). the fact that he and suki are in a long distance relationship throughout the comics… i just don’t know.

of course i WANT them to be together. i think that of all the couples in the original series they deserve it the most (not bias this time, i genuinely think they had the best chance of something real), but i also think bryke doesn’t rly care about sukka as much as i do.

do i think they stayed together? yes. one of my favourite things about sukka is their ability to find each other over and over again, even through long distance.

do i think bryke actively kept them together? probably not.

HOWEVER, *i* live in a state of delusion. so yes, sukka are together to me.

(also suki didn’t die young idek where that came from and the fact it’s still circling around is silly)

[cannibal-nightmares]

sharing this with you all for perspective and also as a processing method for myself

being schizophrenic can be described by the time I bought a small air dehumidifier for my bathroom. the appliance in the box was fine and normal, it wasn't until I tried to take it out was something Wrong, something was Bad--the thing felt like it was living somehow and that was supremely Not Good; the logic part of my brain (and, truly, god bless I still have any semblance of logic still thriving and kicking) thought annoyedly, "Ugh, not this again, it's an inanimate object," but it will never ever be enough to override the inherent paranoid delusion completely. So they fought, the two sides, and when logic stands a fighting chance, the only way I can get through something is by shouting over the noise... and in this case, it was at a dehumidifier. I managed to get it out of the box all while yelling at it--which may sound like absolutely nothing, but this circumstance was actually huge for me--put it on the floor, and... Walked away. Backed away. I was too scared to plug it in, and this isn't telling the whole of the story: If remember correctly, I think I ended up crying because my hands felt "tainted" after touching the thing, and I was getting so worked up and annoyed because the only self-soothing that helps is your stereotyped incoherent rambling, and I often mitigate the shouting by forcing stressed out laughter which just makes it all seem worse, frankly. I left the dehumidifier on the floor until the next morning when I was able to plug it in and use it; I still to this day struggle to empty out the water carafe and I can't directly look at it, but at the very least I can use it for its functionality.

never thought I'd admit to this story, but I just woke up to my smoke detector beeping because the battery must be dying. the beeping bothers me way less than I would have othewise imagined, but instead of removing and replacing the battery myself, I have to call the landlord to do it for me. I have to. I set up a stool to do it myself, and my head just started swarming. And that shit is louder than any fire alarm chirping. it feels like a swarming, like pressure, like someone shouting at you to get out of the way of an oncoming car fifty times over. it's like standing next to a blaring firetruck at a parade. it feels like There Is No Worse Consequence Than This, like somehow my consciousness will be overridden if I touch the smoke detector, if I get too close to it, if I think about it at a specific angle for too long.

and I try to talk to people about my paranoia, but they don't understand there is no reason to be had. "You're right, the beeping is very loud and kind of scary," they might say. "You don't have to worry about electrocution," they might consider, "it's just a battery." It's like the instance I was having a hard time at work and asked my co-worker if a customer's service dog was real and I was replied to with, "I hope so! A robot dog would be spooky!" it has nothing to do with the physical logic at all, but absurdity like "if I fix the fire alarm myself, magically the next door neighbor will be able to read my mind" and etc beyond etc. And it may sound silly, but that's the point, that's the problem, and it's just as real as the sky is blue.

anyways im not telling this tale for pity, but, again, to offer perspective. This ish robs you of your autonomy in the most jarring and absurd ways and all I can do is laugh through it. What makes it such a monster to deal with--at least for me--is that working through the logic doesn't seem to do a damn thing. So I really do have to force myself to rely on others in times like this, and it's infinitely more difficult when your brain decides that others are the enemy, as well, even when they never had been before.

[monocaelia]

omg didi congrats on finishing the school yr!! i'm here to pop in for your summer fever event :D my fav trope is friends to lovers, i'm a sucker for slow romances with mutual pining and some misunderstandings along the way. i'm just a silly girl who loves the idea of being in love and lives in her delusions with fictional characters :D thank youuuu mwah <3

note : spirit !!! thank u for participating in my silly summer event hehe <3 ily, sorry this took ages to respond to!!

send me ur favorite trope or delusional song and i’ll write you something short !! [closed !!]

when it comes to valuing the friendship of one person and struggling with the slow creep of romantic feelings towards a close friends and the yearning that comes with it, the first person that comes to mind is al-haitham.

the young scribe is a tough nut to crack if you weren't already familiar with his actions and nature. most people assume he doesn't care about the frivolous things in life, and that he simply studies alone to keep his time interacting with others to the most minimum.

and, well, they would be correct for the most part. but it wasn't always exactly like that. even if people assume him to be rather stuck up for earning his title and not showing to all meetings in the akedemiya or assumed he was such a talented mind for just having his title of scribe, it didn't matter to him since he knew himself best and rumors have never bothered him anyways.

and, of course, you knew him, and why would he care about what anyone else thinks?

there's more than meets the eyes when it comes to your friend. others see a wonderful scholar that has so many opportunities handed to him to further pursue his researches and become one of the most highly respected alumni from the akedemiya that anyone has ever seen; he held the title of the scribe of sumeru akedemiya and he was so highly honored for being studious and hardworking.

a brilliant mind hidden away researching on the newest projects when people need him most.

and yet, al haitham is always where you decide to check first. though, it isn't hard to find him when he stays in two spots, either in his home or hidden in a crook in the house of daena. it's almost as if you had a sixth sense for wherever he decided to hide from others, or perhaps it was because you simply knew him all to well; he avoided crowds so anywhere where it wasn't too busy would be where he was.

to you, al haitham is your dear friend.

after being around the young scribe for so long, you've grown accustomed to how he acts. although quiet most times and hardly changing any facial expressions, you know he enjoys being around you. perhaps it could be because you never bothered him to the extent that other people have, but you like to think that he stays because he simply likes you.

others have brought up the idea of him having romantic feelings for you, hence why he prefers to stay by your side regardless of what either of you are doing, but you always shake their presumptions off. he was just friendly and you were one of the few people who didn't interrupt his alone time with a reason he didn't deem good enough.

it wasn't like the idea of perhaps sharing a deeper relationship with al haitham never crossed your mind; he's a handsome fellow and has been with you through your ugliest moments in life. you distinctly remember a night where you had attempted to stay up all night to cram for an exam the next afternoon only to wake up the next morning with a familiar cape draped over your shoulders, a bowl of peeled and sliced zaytun peaches beside you, and the familiar scent of your old friend surrounding you.

"what's on your mind?" al haitham's deep voice rumbles from beside you. a slender finger flips a page as he continues skimming the words printed. the skin of his arm grazes your own as he moves to turn the page, the brief touch sending your heart aflutter and you scold yourself internally to calm down.

"oh, it's nothing," you respond as nonchalantly as you could.

pining for your friend? don't be ridiculous.

he probably thought relationships were too much to handle; al haitham was always one to take the easiest way out and there wasn't any easy way through a romantic relationship. it was simply too emotionally taxing and the young scribe wouldn't ever be interested.

al haitham doesn't respond and you assume it's the end of the conversation.

"you don't have to hide anything from me, you know?" he speaks quietly, as if the words were only meant for you and you alone. your heart flutters against your chest at the thought but you shake it off. as your heart calms down, it soars again when a firm hand is placed on your thigh.

the vines and jungles of the apam woods are staring back at you; leaves that cut those who wander to close as a warning to keep their distance but beckon you sweetly closer to the heart of the foliage. although his face was usually unmoving and stoic, there's a gentle warmth in the way that he stares at you that calms your nerves while simultaneously making your heart hammer against your chest.

it's hard to keep your feelings at bay when the comforting rays of sun that cast through the verdure of his heart reach out to encase you in nothing but the warmth and safety of his love whether or not it was platonic.

it wouldn't hurt to wish for something more with him, would it?

[tomsawyee]

something in the last, like, year or so has completely killed any of my desire to ever interact with A Fandom ever again, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it--

I used to have a notion that, even if my personal ways of interacting with the media I enjoy on a deeper level never aligned with the “mainstream” of a given fandom, I could still carve out a place to enjoy myself. But the more time I’ve spent in these spaces, the more absolutely convinced I am that they are, despite what they would adamantly insist, generally repellent to critical thinking. And I always knew this, a great deal of us always knew this, but I’ve just. Lost the ability to politely ignore it while I do my own thing, because those people inevitably find the things I make, anyway. And I still have to fucking listen to them. Because they are the majority. And as audiences churn, the core base never learns anything.

As the internet centralizes, actively contributing to this hobby community gets you labeled a Content Creator, and with that comes the mob expectation that you create content. For free. On demand. This exacerbates the perceived social divide between Creators and Consumers. People who don’t actually contribute to the body of work get this idea that they are being forced into an Out Group, when in reality, the In Groups are generally just people who care about the thing more than you and end up making friends because of it. This is particularly obvious in big fandoms. Creators are at the same time perceived as Fandom Elite while also being your unpaid court jesters.

And fandom is racist! It’s so fucking racist, and it hides it in pseudo-progressive, frequently queer language while constantly looping the same shitty excuses for whitewashing and ooc stereotyping and bending over backwards to cut POC out of the picture as much as humanly possible, REGARDLESS of what the original text says. So, so often, I go back into the source material thinking “Am I the one who remembers this the wrong way??” only to find that, no, the fandom presence for a given series will always default to distilling the text down to only its white people, then only its lighter skinned people. Characters of color are props to fandom. There is zero interest in the internal lives and humanity of people of color. Fandom would rather make a white protagonist Ambiguously Tan than pay half a mind to an actual character of color. And if you point it out, you get dogpiled by white queers self-righteously crytyping in your notes. Fandom friends and friendly acquaintances of color I meet are always the first people to burn out and leave, because being here is so consistently hostile. Of course AO3 is 70%+ white. Why the fuck would you willingly put yourself through this?

Despite this, we fancy ourselves a ‘progressive’ subculture because we allegedly care about things like ‘representation,’ a concept that has lost all meaning in a dozen different, equally infuriating ways. The delusions of a Higher Purpose, of fandom as political statement or even activism, are all the more embarrassing under this lens. The pervasive idea that fandom exists to “““fix”““ the silly, dumb “““regressive”““ source material by sanding down every single corner until it is the same featureless sphere that can be effortlessly slibbered down like every other cookie cutter re-imagining that came before it. The idea that professional writers are generally outclassed by fandom writers. Pestering creatives on the bird app worked for Glee, so now every time something happens that we don’t like, it becomes a social media moral crusade that is honestly embarrassing to be even tangentially associated with. I’m not here to change the scope of entertainment, or to keyboard warrior for some fictional characters produced by a multi-billion dollar media company that will never see me as anything but a demographic with a wallet. I’m here because a work made me feel creative. It’s not that deep.

(the more expensive the art is to make, the less likely it is to ever target “risky” smaller demographics! this is why TV and film and AAA games suck so much! if you want more textual queerness, read books!) (or listen to them!) (look up some webcomics!) (enormous media companies will NEVER be beacons of creative progress!)

So yeah I’ve come to accept that me and this world are just. Fundamentally incompatible. I’m never going to like it here, despite really, really trying for half my lifetime. I need to stop trying to carve out spaces for myself, because the percentage of people who legitimately care about critical and creative analysis of art and fiction is exponentially smaller than this community would have you think.

[xxdungeon-stuckxx]

Hope

Opposite-

Rage

Neighboring:

Breath

Mind

Presides Over-

Belief, imagination, hope, confidence, ideals, positivity, construction, holiness, reality

Themes-

Religion, or general beliefs, are a common theme that follows hope players through their lives

Hope is the strongest aspect. This is due to the fact that “hope” can mean many different things for different people.

Personality-

Hope players like to maintain a persona of their “perfect self”. This persona consists of traits and other attributes that the hope player finds to be appealing. They like to mimic their role models in any way they can. Their goal is to embody this role model. The only problem with this mindset is that it hinders their true self. They base things on what their persona would want and how their personas would feel rather than how they may want or feel. This clouds the hope-bound’s mind and causes them to have a difficult time coming to terms with their needs.

Hope players are likely to hold a sort of personal belief or moral within themselves. Their lives revolve around this belief, it shapes who they are. It may seem silly or outlandish to others, especially when this belief may preside in the land of fantasy or myth, but hope players don’t see it the same. They feel a sense of happiness from this belief, and it brings them joy. Why would they stop believing in something that others find silly just to make others happy? Hope players believe that if everyone had the same beliefs that they do, everyone else may be happy too.

If a hope player loses hope in their belief, they can plummet mentally. They have relied on this belief their whole lives, and it can be hard for them to find something else to latch onto. They can become distant, overbearing, and even angry when they lose this belief. They will constantly seek to find a new belief, no matter the cost or how hard the task may seem. They do this with more than just their beliefs though, as anything that a hope player holds onto for dear life can be lost. They tend to revolve around certain people, duties, and even hobbies. When they lose these things, one way or another, they often fall into the same despair that happens when they lose their belief. When they are caught in this mindset, they can make mistakes easily. They make decisions on impulse, not logic when they lose what they care about most.

A hope player is someone open to new ideas, so long as it doesn’t contradict their stronger beliefs. They are generally open-minded about certain topics, especially when it comes to societal norms and gender roles. 

Hope players can be ignorant of certain topics, especially if said topics cause them to lose any sort of self-confidence or any sense of authority over others. It can be hard to knock a hope player off of their pedestal, as their ego is their biggest flaw. Being confident is not a bad thing, but too much confidence can make them appear arrogant.

The hope-bound are great at making a name for themselves and coming up with their identity. They know what makes them happy, and they are proud of who they are. They might use multiple different labels on themselves, but they simply like having words that can be used to define them as who they are. They enjoy using titles on themselves, it makes them feel more fleshed out as people. But because they typically use their persona as a way to express themselves, they can often confuse their traits for their persona’s. Labels can become meaningless for them if this happens, despite the hope player finding them to be important factors in their being.

Hope players, because of their strong bellies, can fall into delusions easily. When tied into their self-confident persona, they can often become disillusioned in a way that causes them to think that they are on top of the world. They don’t have much of a sense of mortality, as they may not believe that they are killable. They see all the positive aspects about themselves, and this causes them to not realize that they aren't as great and powerful as they perceive themselves to be.

Hope players do what they think is right. They never back down from a fight and they are honest individuals. When a hope player does something, it's according to their sense of “for the greater good”. They have strong morals and they want to be seen as good people. They blend in with the idea of “perfect” in their minds, and they stand out in a crowd. They may not always do what society thinks is the right thing to do though, as they aren’t tied back by the damaging systems that are in place within said society. What is ethical to them is based on many differing factors. They take inspiration from the citizens of their society and their peers. But above all else, they do what they want when they want to do it. They aren’t rebellious by any means, but they won’t hesitate to appear to be one if they think they need to do what is right.

Hope players have an idea of where they want to take their society. They have an image in their heads, and they seek to make it a reality. They certainly don’t mind if they are the driving force behind this image, and they also wouldn’t mind being praised for it either. They want to be seen as heroes by their people and they seek to be the cause behind the change in the society they seek.

Hope-bound players are typically caring individuals, even when their persona says otherwise. They value the well-being of others, despite their arrogance. They like having people they can depend on and they want to be there for those they love.

A hope player is an individual who needs to have room to vent about their problems. They can get worked up in their emotions, and they aren’t capable of bottling them up. They have to release them, and they need to tell people about their struggles. Without room to complain and vent, they often can become restless. It makes a negative impact on the hope player when they can’t vent their frustrations to others. It goes without saying that hope players are quite emotional beings, which isn’t necessarily a negative trait about them.

When a hope player is stuck in a rigid mindset, they can become selfish. They often think that their ways are always the best options. It can be hard to convince a hope player of the opposite when they are so sure of themselves.

Hope players struggle to change themselves for the greater good. They don’t see their flaws as much as they see their positive traits, and this can cause them to not understand when or if they need to change. A hope player wants to grow into a better person, but they don’t always know how. They can become overwhelmed when people bring up their mistakes or flawed logic, causing a hope player to draw back from the situation and dismiss what they have told them. It takes effort for a hope player to come to terms with their flaws, and it takes them time to learn to change themselves.

Hope players are social, they thrive off of other people. They typically welcome others with open arms and seek to befriend as many people as possible. They don’t particularly like it when other people don’t enjoy their company. They find it to be a bit rude that someone would dismiss their pursuits in friendship when all they’ve done is given them opportunities to expand their social circle.

In Canon-

Jake English (Page of Hope), Eridan Ampora (Prince of Hope), Cronus Ampora/Orphaner Dualscar (Bard of Hope), Daraya Jonjet (Player of Hope), Chahut Maenad (Player of Hope), Diemen Xicali (Player of Hope), Kuprum Maxlol (Player of Hope), Elwurd (Player of Hope), Cirava Hermod (Player of Hope)

[veronicasanders]

What’s something absolutely unhinged that you believed in childhood that you later learned was not in fact true? Bonus points if it's a funny lie a relative told you. Have you ever had to come up with any elaborate lie for a kid yourself?

Hello darling!!! Love this one!!! You might learn some things that make you a little scared…then again, you know me pretty well so this might not surprise you at all... 😂💖✨

I think the unhinged things I believed as a kid were mostly the product of my own unhinged mind, rather than things people told me:

For awhile (like, aged 4ish, I think? Maybe 5 a little too?), I was operating under the theory/paranoid delusion that I was the only human and everyone else was an alien or actor (basically a Truman Show scenario but more like a science experiment) and they all had ways to watch me at any given moment. So like, a powder compact or handheld mirror was actually a screen that showed what I was doing. The REALLY unhinged part was that since I was kind of a ham and an exhibitionist, this didn’t really bother me very much, and I just adjusted my behavior to kind of play to the cameras for awhile until the fantasy of it wore off and seemed less plausible. Also I was pretty sure that at least my Grandma was real so that kind of blew the lid off the whole thing.

Around the same age, like 5 or so…because of some random expressions that my family had, I made a strange leap of logic that both the word and the action of “tickling” was something my dad and his brothers made up to torture/amuse me and my cousins. I was very surprised to learn this was an Actual Thing that other people knew about and did outside our family. 

This wasn't a specific belief but more of a General Sense, but I had a feeling during a lot of my childhood, especially after we moved away from my extended family, that whenever I was with just my immediate family, things weren't Real. As in, I was just like, playing the role of Daughter/Sister in some TV show, and the only things that were real were when we were around a lot of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. Like any less than 10 family members felt like a very strange and foreign and made-up existence.

I should say, also, that I was usually the one TELLING the unhinged and elaborate lies rather than believing them. They often involved me trying to convince other kids my age that I was actually a robot or an alien or had powers of some kind. Usually under the context of 'pretend,' although sometimes forgot to warn the others that that’s what we were doing. When I was 6, my family moved cross-country, and I used my New Kid Clout to spin a very elaborate tale for my classmates, that I had psychic powers and could get visions of their lives by holding their hands. I would demonstrate these powers at recess, and usually they were cute and silly and kind of vague things like “You will have a pet chicken named Esmerelda” or “Your grandfather misses you, you should call him” or “pay attention to rainbows!” 

Anyway, half the fun was the drama; I would take their hands and roll my eyes back and really get into the performance of the ✨vision✨ and then open my eyes and tell them what I’d “seen.” And we’d all be having a great time. But then when this one kid was gonna take her turn - and I guess (I learned years later when this all came up again) she was already scared, because she was Catholic and kind of thought I was probably a bit Satanic to have or use these powers to begin with, lmao. 

So I take her hands, do my regular thing, only much shorter, and then I let go of her hands and gasp and go “Oh no!” And then look straight at her with a very serious expression and go, “You’re going to die. Soon.”

And then recess was over and this poor kid went back to her class shaking like a leaf and apparently couldn’t sleep for like 2 weeks and finally told her mother, who had to convince her 6-year-old that no, she was not going to die, and I was just playing a game and did not have psychic powers. (One of many exhausted phone calls my mother had to endure from parents being like, "Yes, V has a very active imagination, I'm so sorry. No, she doesn't remember saying that, I...Yeah, I'll talk to her. Sorry again. I'm sorry...I'm sorry." All while I blithely acted out Soap Opera storylines with my dolls.)

(Also - we stayed friends, and when she recounted her side of the story to me in high school and how much distress it had caused, of course I felt fucking TERRIBLE, because I really didn’t remember telling anyone things that weren’t silly during that game, and I also didn’t remember it as anything but a game of pretend that everyone knew was pretend. #oops) 

So yeah, I try not to lie to kids as an adult because I lied enough to kids as a kid and it caused them a lot of unintentional trauma. 😂

Another time, I sarcastically told a kid in my class that the boots I was wearing were $200 when he asked how much they were. (They were actually $7 on sale at a discount place and btw the kid was way richer than me and was wearing Air Jordans that were over $100 at the time, therefore he believed me.) Anyway this led to him telling all the other boys in my grade that I was “rich,” which is hilarious since like, there were a bunch of Actually Rich kids at my school, like Parents Had Trust Funds in the $10-500 million range rich. Meanwhile my mother was literally earning minimum wage as a yard supervisor while she got her teaching credential. These kids were morons. But I didn’t know that he’d taken me seriously until I got into a fight with another boy and he called me a “rich bitch” and I was like “wait, what?” Like fine, bitch I accept, but where did you get rich from? I was wearing hand-me-down jeans and a $3 T-shirt with puff paint I’d decorated in Girl Scout day camp on that day. And a side half-ponytail. This is just not rich person behavior. 

But maybe the worst Unhinged Lie, which could have been a disaster, was the time my brother and I were pretending to be abused children to cope with the indignity of having to go lamp shopping with our parents for like 6 hours, and it nearly led to us getting sent to foster care for real. Because in one of the stores, we were huddled together under an end table in the lighting store, deep in our game (I was like 9-10 and he was 4 or 5), and one of the saleswomen heard me say something to him like “Don’t worry, I’ll never let them beat you again.” And basically it’s only due to my mother staying very VERY calm (and being smart enough to send my father to the car while she spoke to them) that we didn’t end up in a police station. (There's so much more to this story but this answer is already insanely long so let's just say...it was a very fucking crazy situation and the context of when and where it happened made it a super thin ice sliding doors moment for all of us.)

I do play pretend with kids all the time, but I make sure they know that we are pretending. To clarify, these are not like, random kids off the street, they are my cousins or my cousins’ kids or my friends’ kids. 

(Although today, a 7 year old that I tutor told me that he had kicked a tortoise outside his building, and I told him that he shouldn’t do that because that hurts the tortoise. When he was unmoved by that argument, I told him that also, the tortoise could tell all his tortoise friends and then what if 100 tortoises show up to fight him holding tiny little tortoise knives. He still didn’t seem too bothered but that either so I was like, “Okay, what if the tortoises join forces with a thousand tigers and then they all come after you?” He was like, “I’d call the police to shoot the tigers.” And I was like, “Good luck calling the police when a thousand tigers have you pinned to the ground and are tearing you apart. You’d be tiger food before you could even get out your phone!” But I’m pretty certain this kid knew we were speaking in fantasy because he was laughing the whole time. Also I hope he stops kicking tortoises which is how I ended. “Okay, just stop kicking tortoises. Let’s move on to page 45…”) 

Also, I find that telling More Truth Than Necessary is a better technique for dealing with uncomfortable questions from kids than elaborate lies. Like if they ask something that might be difficult to explain, just like, give them a massive amount of information and I promise they'll get bored before you run out of material.

Another thing that might be relevant here. I worked for awhile as a concierge for a company that did like, educational/recreational vacations for seniors. The gimmick was that they would stay in college dorms and have very low-key classes in things like local architecture and flower arranging and yoga and also go on day trips and to see shows and shit like that. Anyway, one of the first days, I had to replace one of the people who was supposed to be a bus tour guide and I had only a very LOOSE script and they kept asking me the names of every plant we passed and I was like “look, guys, Imma level with you…I don’t really know the names of plants. But if you want, I will make up names for you.” And I’m not sure if they fully grasped that or what but they kept asking me and I kept making up names for the entire 3-hour bus tour. (I guess that’s not really unhinged but I’m keeping it anyway because it’s so dumb.) 

Hope you enjoyed this Dickensian-length answer. XOXO!!!! 💖✨

[incarnateirony]

Wow, wild. I knew I kinda knew she didn't entirely knew how much she knew, but today's conversation really landed it. I think she finally had her own Colin Bridgerton moment she's been tweeting out lately.

Still has a bit of local ego reflex, which I don't disencourage entirely, but it did cause miscommunication where she was reading things about Local Me as about Her, and took offense. Eg, she thought I was calling her a clownhat, until she realized I was only talking of myself, for I am but a cosmic bard, who often changes hats, and am stuck in this very silly dance.

I do think she isn't used to having other genuinely awake people around which has her guarded, which is relatable, and generally how we mess ourselves up. But once we got into Reality Becoming Fake Once You Die A Lot, she realized what was happening, I think. Like oh this is literally a time traveling Magi that got stripped of his resources near his death that just needed some goddamn eyes to ground himself on what Is and Was here in this time, and this place, and this remix we have created. He has absolutely lost his linear mind, but that's fine, pray mercy for us Fools. Time is fake and it's a carnival. Such is the cost of consciously changing the world itself, while seeing past time from Death.

Either way, Herma JeStar understood, actually, that her name needed not the explanation she tried to give, and fell into quiet likes when I said, why do you think the day we met over the lady who drives backwards I said it was nice to have a true queen, hello Starlight? He always called her Starlight. Or Celestia. I called for Nuit, and you came. I see who you are, Starlight. Thank you. Something about unknown friends and cut fingers on alchemists.

No for real guys, I'm not playing about the level of bullshit I manifest throughout this. The reason I utterly went bonkers bananas in January and February was I literally and consciously reshattered my psyche to try to make a new moment that I could be free of her in, and maybe she could even free herself in. Then again in March and April on a different energy and mood, split again through and across the eclipse itself into infinite retroactive updating fractals. I continued to reassemble myself and my world through. You know how I talk about root access, peeling down the parts, god in the back of the game lobby, et al? Yeah, I split myself and erased myself for a moment as an individual to make use of that. And now it's time for all the parts to assemble. But I never left the world, ironically because of her nonconsensual enshrinement of my parts, so she became the anchor to her own long term end by her refusal to release me, and so I returned. Screaming a lot. Because the shadows she's trying to pin down were all there was for a hot minute there.

But when time and mass perception gets bendy around you and everyone's mandela'ed through, it is VERY EASY for everything to feel extremely slippery especially when you're consciously aware of future quantum potentials that are retroacting to you. Having another half like this, who has linear partnered logs with matching signs, even helps remind me whenwhere to look to re-evoke certain things, and it has been a flawless circuit that I have actively felt ripping crackbear's flappy tentacles off of me while reduced under the light of a higher self she has always run from.

Heather is everything She could have been.

Instead, now, I've had to subsume a shadow of a monster as part of myself again under 200M+ eyes and millions of working hands, and will unfortunately have to continue to reduce her, because it is the only way I can live free without being chased across the decades. She will never face this, she will never confess, let go or apologize. She would literally rather expire than release my shadow works and her delusions. A woman without any control of herself, desperate to feel like she has control or leverage to still cage her songbird. She is LOST. I am sorry to the woman that used to exist beneath that skin. I failed her. But I did promise her long ago I would Get Her Out. And I am very good at keeping my promises. Even if that means ending one miserable dream his old goddess trapped herself in, and him with her.

Athena has fallen.

Let man know that he himself is Deathless, for the cause of Death is Love, and Love is All, but I will absolutely cuss a motherfucker out on our way through the door. Out of frustrated love. Clearly.

I deadass told her if she didn't fucking behave and move on and let go, she'd end up in Changing Channels/Cartridges.

Nobody ever fucking takes me seriously.

"Lel he thought he changed the timeline March 7th last year" huh wonder what happened here. Some TV show? Talking about a big alignment of planets that only existed in our modern time and not the actual show timeline? Weird.

Burn my dread, bitch.

She knows. She knows what's real. She knows what is happening.

What she can't process is that she is, in fact, a corrupted fiend that has, in fact, driven me to take these lengths to be free of her. That she is not nor has she ever been the motherfucking victim in this relationship, last solar cycle saying hello while I try to bowl her off a mountain that far back in my shadow rage and she picks her nose wondering what would ever make Ash sound so in pain back then and refuses to connect it to the now.

Higher self and all. The one she confused me with to start this mess even. It's over, girl. Can't stop me now, won't stop, won't ever stop, you can take it to the top as I catch the fallen between us. Fix thou the soul of the world.

Christus de Christi, Mercury de Mercurio, Per viam crucis, Per vitam Lucis Deus te Adjutabitur

[sirenemale]

omg hey donny,please give us some higurashi thoughts? i saw your post about he/she mion

I like higurashi sooooo much....such a normal amount. I've been trying to play chunks of the vns and I'm up to Chapter 4 now. General thoughts are this is such a unique way to present a complex multifaceted story. I'm aslo deeply seen and gripped by the way things like silly banter, paranoia and delusion is written it feels very very cared for and natural, esp as someone who's also super scattered and prone to that kinda thinking. music owns. I love playing iwth the old sprites because I think they're so deeply charming. um. I don't know I just really like it, I definitely want to replay prior chapters to build up my own idea on the mystery. I'd also love to see if I can get the og voice acting to go with the steam chapters because I know the performances add a lot to it.

anyway Mion is so transgendery to me but in a complicated way and also like. Accounting for me not having absorbed the full range of chapters yet & also acknowledging any reading of her gender is gonna be skewed bc I don't have the personal insight on rural japanese kids and gender expectations lmao, also especially for Higurashi bc the specific culture of it would probably cultivate its own views on gender and obviously being a girl in each of the main families, since there are specific roles associated with them. I think what I really like about it on a personal level is that it feels like she jokes about being less feminine, or being an old man or wishing she was born a boy as some kind of defense mechanism more than something people actually ascribed to her. Cause she is definitely feminine and cares about femininity, it's just that she's also really assertive, has a lot of responsibility on her to take up leader positions both in her family and socially (Which is an extension of the family position). Yknow, hard not to compare her with Shion but obviously Shion is super feminine and is kinda taken as the ideal girl apart from the fact she's like hilariously cruel LMAO. Shion didn't have that kind of responsibility and has gotten to be more frivolous and a bit less rural living bc she gets to be in the bigger city/town.

I'm a big fan of trans readings that are messy where it is like, oh socialization and trauma and maybe my own seperate feelings on transness are all merging together and I can't really tell where one starts and where one ends. Very much how I am, she's not necessarily associated with being a boy because she's responsible, bc her family is matriarchal, she's totally inline for behavior there. So then she's boyish for being a joker but not enough for other characters to regularly drag her for it, she's still insanely competent and driven for a kid, and we know that her being jovial is also a front of a sort. But I think what makes it feel transgendery is that it feels her joking about being a boy is a purposeful thing she's clinging to because it makes her happy, the same way being rowdy and fun with the club is. Equal parts something she does think about, equal parts a bit defensive because she doesn't feel like she can be seen as a regular girl with no burdens. Ultimately she's just doing her best within a box like all the other characters are. So basically I think she's a little transmasc but I don't think she'd have the space to unpack it within the main like. Loops, I've seen so far. It'd be very like in another time and place if things worked out and she had the weight taken off her back. Literally <3

[insomniac-dot-ink]

Is it wrong to lie to children?

A personal essay on reconciling with a shitty childhood and the question: is it wrong to lie to children?

It’s perplexing to have a shitty “unorthodox” childhood because initially I tried to throw out everything about It. Toss out the plumping and the rafters and the roofing, dispense of every single part of my upbringing I could get my hands on and not look back. Naturally, this approach didn’t work. It wasn’t even a real possibility. You’re still haunted by it, a ghost in the bones of a house, a foundation that remains long after the builders have left. That’s part of recovery too, to look at that ghost, to look at those bones, and keep saying: I see you, I see. I let you in. You sit with it and accept, accept, accept.

The really terrible part of this, the part where I don’t throw away the baby with the bathwater, is that you then have to raise the thing, deal with it. You have to do the hard work of parsing through the endless bits of self and placing them in “keep” piles and “discard” piles. I want to keep my mother’s kindness. I want to keep my father’s sense of humor. I want to discard the isolation. I want to discard the delusions.

But then there are these weird . . . “I don’t know” things. The things I am unsure if they helped me or hurt me. As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten more and more of those “I don’t know” categories piling up. I’ve worked my way through most of the more obvious ones and now it’s all grey and mushy and as cloudy as a London winter. Recently, more than anything, I’ve been grappling with the fact my mother believed it was wrong to lie to children. She believed, in her flower-child way, that it was unethical in all forms.

I never believed in Santa Claus. I’m sorry to say I was a pretty obnoxious kid too because I would preach on the playground about how there was no Santa and there had never been any Santa. Which was a bit harsh, but in my defense I was under the impression these people were suffering from some sort of collective mass delusion. They were being lied to. And lying was wrong.

Is it wrong to lie to children?

I’ve known about sex since I was around 5 years old. I don’t remember why I asked, but it was something about where babies come from and so on. Most parents talk about a stork or love or some other abstract side-step. My mother described the anatomy to me and showed me a scientific diagram of the process. She told me that a sperm meets an egg and fertilizes it so the baby can grow. I learned most of this in scientific terms and was surprised when none of my middle school friends knew how a penis worked.

Is it wrong to lie to children?

When I was 9 or so our cat was eaten by a coyote. I asked my mom where he went and she said that he accidently got out the night before. She said they looked for him all morning, but it was too late. She didn’t use the word “gone” or “passed on” or “he’s in a better place now.”

She said he was dead. I said oh. She asked if I wanted to see him. I said yes. For the record, I am not actually sure if 9 year-olds should see corpses. That is neither here nor there. It was something that stuck with me though, the body of my cat with his tummy ripped out. I had never seen intestines before. His eyes were open.

But there was something cathartic about digging the grave. About helping pick up his little stiff body by the feet and placing him inside. There was something about piling on the red dirt as the sun set and letting the tears fall.

People on sitcoms hate talking about death. It’s understandable, it’s not funny, it makes for good dramatic irony when the kid asks “Where’s Socks?” and the parents go “Uuuuuh. He ran away.” I’ve never felt more alienated at those points. My cat died. He was eaten. I saw his body, and I buried it. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t want to be told he ran away-- that he had a choice in whether or not he left me.

Is it wrong to lie to children?

For a long time I thought the entirety of my childhood was wrong and bad, because I was miserable and broken at the end of it. I will assure you, my parents fucked up time and time again. But sometimes I have to stop and keep asking: Was this the wrong part? Was this the part where they fucked up? Was any part of this valuable? It’s a hard process to comb through an entire life and decide which bits are worth keeping, and if there are any silver linings.

So here is one: I am an honest person. I am a crooked person too, unsure of where to place my feet in social situations, picking my way through others normalcy. I do not readily share information, I am not forthcoming, and it’s a slow burn for me to open up about anything.

However, I notice time and time again that strangers will share personal things with me. I don’t mean for it to happen, but there’s just this pattern in my life. I once went on a car ride with a girl I barely know from my debate team. She described how she wanted to lose her virginity, she wanted it, but was scared God would be angry. That she’d be dirty afterwards. I told her that that was impossible, sex was just an act, it had no eyes, it had no priestly robes, or bearing on her soul. She cried. She said she hadn’t told me anyone this before.

I had a friend in high school who was struggling with an eating disorder, people had tried to get her to talk about it before, but I was the first person she admitted it to. In the hallway, sitting, just discussing nothing, and out it comes: I’m scared to eat sometimes. I was on a city bus and an old woman struck up a conversation with me. Over an hour or so, and she ended up telling me her fears for her own daughter going away to college. Her fear of growing old and passing on. Her problems with sleeping as she lay awake and dreaded it.

People have told me about their problems with substance abuse, their struggles with sexuality, and childhood trauma. People spill to me and I sit there thinking: Why? Sometimes I think it’s my gender or just how people are, but it always feels like I’m missing some part of the picture. Why do people open up to me, unprompted, all at once? Why me?

Is it wrong to lie to children?

Recently, I was reading a memoir set in 2001 where two young kids ask the narrator, their mother, about 9/11. They asked what happened to the people on television who were jumping off the building. Where did they go? The mother says this: They were caught. There are people-catchers that flew and saved them. Everyone is okay.

This story was meant to be heartfelt and lyrical, relatable. It ended like this: It is the job of mothers to offer gentle lies.

I had to stop reading because I was suddenly lost in a white-hot rage, unexpected, knee-jerk. How could she do that? I found myself frothing. They trusted her with answers and she lied. How could she? I knew it was irrational. It was silly even. This was a sweet story. It was meant to be heart-warming and framed in a way that suggested this is what all mothers do. This was what they needed to do. 

I felt my own mother, pumping through my veins, furious that these elementary school students were being betrayed. I stopped myself of course, I knew it wasn’t reasonable. I wasn’t raised “correctly.” I had no legs to stand on.

But still, is it alright to lie to children?

I am once again faced with that unending dilemma: how to throw-out those parts of myself that don’t work and keep the ones that do. It’s difficult to say, because in some ways I agree with my mom. How can I not? But death is cruel. Sex is weird. Santa Claus is a beautiful lie.

And what’s wrong with lying? I still don’t know. What’s wrong with letting them never hurt? Never knowing the pain or gross parts of the world? What’s the harm in letting them make-believe?

But sometimes I think about all those people who have cried to me. All these unprompted confessions come with an unspoken plea: I hurt. I am afraid. I am so scared. It’s all so heavy, these painful truths.

And some part of me stands there, the part my mother raised and says: there is nothing in this life that is too shameful. There is nothing in this world that is unnatural. There is nothing in this life to lie about, even to children.

Is death too painful? Is sex too gross? Would you tell an adult that a man lives in the North Pole and watches them?

I asked my mom, years later, when I was less furious and able to talk with her again without screaming, about why she believed all this. She had told me about it since I was very young, but I never asked why. She shrugged. She said: children are people, aren’t they?

I still don’t know what to do with this.

Children are people, but they are not adults. They shouldn’t be exposed to “adult” things, right? But is that line so concrete? Is the word “adult” just a mask for the greater word, the one we really mean? We all agree: honesty is good. Lying hurts. But it’s alright to lie to kids, because in many ways they aren’t people yet, they aren’t people yet, they don’t count.

I am admittedly an argumentative person. I was on the debate team, mock trial, United Nations, I studied political science in college and fought with every single one of my professors I thought was wrong. And I stood in that playground, age 6, and told every single one of my classmates Santa wasn’t real and I wouldn’t stop. The truth was important. And my mother, no matter what, thought I disserved it.

I often felt tiny and powerless as a kid. Terrified and holding myself together by shoestrings. I often felt there would be nothing better in the world than to be grown up. Not for the money or the dating or the job, I just wanted to feel like the hurricane would end. That one day I could stand on solid ground again. My friend often says: I wish I could be a kid again, ya know? No responsibilities. Just bliss. I want to be a kid again.

I can’t relate. I never have. I’ve been busy weeding through the pipes and lighting and the carpentry of my upbringing and asking myself: is any of this worth keeping? Is any part of me built correctly? There are no right answers.

But still, I am haunted. I sit and ask myself in circles: is it alright to lie to children?

------------

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[captnjacksparrow]

What are your full thoughts on Sakura's confession to Naruto? I've seen some fans blame it on Sai as he "emotionally manipulated" Sakura into doing all she can to stop Naruto which led to the fake confession.

Thanks for this ask @dinainwater 👍🏼 I always wanted to talk about that arc where all the characters' motivations were clearly set up. Sorry for the late response, Sakura’s prompts always makes my skin crawl.

I never knew that Sakura wankers would retort to such tactics by shifting the blame on Sai. I've said this in many posts and I don't mind repeating it here. Sakura was always written as a narrative tool to propagate the main characters, Naruto and Sasuke. This was always the case right from chapter 3.

This is also the arc where Team 7′s loyalty was put under the microscope for us viewers to observe. What will Team 7 do, when they hear about Sasuke who turned into a wanted Criminal??

SAKURA’S FAKE CONFESSION 

Let’s start with Sai. He is also a member of Team 7. Sai doesn’t give a damn about Sasuke and he doesn’t have to. Because he never knew anything about him. But Sai really cared about Naruto more than Sakura ever did anything for Naruto combining Part 1 and Part 2. Unlike others, Sai started to care about Naruto because he saw something in him that reminded him of his brother Shin. Naruto didn’t have to prove anything to him to win his friendship like he did with Neji and others. In fact, Naruto hated him in the beginning.

Sai, a guy who couldn’t understand any feelings, has slowly started to understand something and he started to help/save Naruto without any motivations or expectations.

Well, I feel Kishi meant to parallel Sai with Sasuke not only in terms of looks but also when it comes to protecting him. 

That’s why Sai went to Sakura to call her out for being a lazy donkey by dumping all the works on Naruto whereas she was sitting on her cool Ass without doing anything.

Well, I want everyone to put yourself in Sai’s place. What would you have done?While Naruto is getting beaten up for Sasuke’s sake and Sakura is sitting there leaving everything with Naruto to deal with the rough parts.

Now the wankers may make silly excuses like, ‘Naruto asked her to leave it to him’.

I am asking them, ‘Well, That didn’t stop Sai from not following what Naruto was about to do. He was worried about Naruto and followed him to see what he was going to do. And defended him from Karui’s attacks. Why couldn’t Sakura do this?’.

All these panels proves,

Sakura doesn’t give 2 shits about Naruto. But Sai genuinely cares about him a lot.

[[No wonder, Sai is one of the people with whom Naruto contacts a lot in Borutoverse also]]

Emotional manipulation is when someone uses their own feelings to make the other person feel guilty. I am pretty sure you all know who manipulated whom emotionally throughout the series. 

Sai was simply acting here as the viewers’ voice. I don’t know about how viewers felt about the confrontation scene. I felt that Sai was asking what I was feeling about Sakura, the whole time!!! 

Simply put,

“Just now, Karui beat Naruto into a pulp. He just doesn’t want to worry you by telling this. But why are you sitting simply without worrying about what’s happening to others? Do you really care about Naruto, a bit? You made some shitty promise with him some time ago and I don’t even know what it was. But he means to carry on that promise for the rest of his life because he likes you. Don’t you think you should take responsibility for putting such a burden on him?”

Now, This is where things get really interesting. Sai just observed Naruto’s behaviour around Sakura and concludes that Naruto is bearing all this pain for Sakura and to an extent for Sasuke but mostly for Sakura.

Sai comes to this conclusion because he never knew what happened between Naruto and Sasuke in part 1. He never saw their interaction or what’s going on between them. But Sakura does. 

Sai feels deeply empathetic towards Naruto’s sadness and doesn’t want him to get hurt anymore. Hence he is calling her out for her insensitiveness when asking Naruto to make a Life Time Promise. Sai went one step ahead and added that everyone relies on Naruto too much. As a friend, Sai thinks that they all should shoulder Naruto’s burden. 

There’s nothing wrong with Sai and his perspective.

Also, if he really intended to manipulate her, Sai shouldn’t have to tell Naruto about everything that had happened with Sakura and his Academy friends when he met him in the Land of Iron.

Even the most sensible Shikamaru thinks Sai was right.

For me, All of her Academy Classmates were speaking sense. Because, they were just observers. 

Simply put, Sai and Everyone thinks that Sasuke has joined Akatsuki, the organization which destroyed their Village to the ground and was also hunting Naruto. But Sakura’s promise is putting Naruto’s life at danger because they feel Naruto is doing these for the Life Time promise he made 3 years ago before all of her Academy Classmates because everyone knows that Naruto never go back on his words.

Where is the emotional manipulation here?

The only problem from their opinion is that they never factored the extent of Naruto’s and Sasuke’s relationship into the equation and it’s not their fault. Because no one knows. But Sakura knows, atleast a bit if not entirely. We, the audience knew what happened in the VoTE1.

Sakura openly acknowledged to Sai that Naruto considers Sasuke as his brother. She even saw Naruto fall into the ground and bawling like a baby when Sasuke left with Orochimaru.

Can’t she put 2+2 to know that, Naruto is not just doing this for her??

Well, Since when has she ever been emotionally perceptive of others’ feelings? She always thought everything revolved around her. So, it’s not really surprising. 

Well, in this scene I genuinely thought, She was going to do something good once and for all. 

What Sakura could have done?

She should’ve confronted to them like a strong woman (as much as her wankers portrays her to be), ‘Naruto is not doing this for me. He may love me. But He is doing this not just for me. I knew about Naruto better than anyone. He truly wanted to save Sasuke for himself as well. We all should talk about this to Naruto and decide later.”

But she didn’t!!!

Later Sakura went on and proposed to Naruto pathetically and got rebuffed. She really thought Naruto would believe her proposal. She still thinks ‘Naruto is an idiot’. Even Kiba couldn’t believe this bullshit. 

‘Sakura, You Dumb Biashhhh’, This is what Kiba must be thinking inside.

This is just another way for Kishi by dissing her and telling us that ‘Sakura never reached any emotional maturity. She is a self-absorbed girl who thinks that she is the center of everyone’s life. Sai, who spent very little time could understood Naruto better than Sakura, who was with him for a long time’.

From Writing point of View, 

Up until that point, Kishi tried to build some platonic crush between Naruto and Sakura. But he decided to break that crush by making Naruto reject her Fake Confession and prefer Sasuke over Sakura.

Furthermore, He used her as a tool to make Naruto and Sasuke meet under the bridge, which was the iconic scene of the entire Series and that’s the moment, that particular Arc was leading upto. The writer is telling us that, 

Even though Sakura wholeheartedly love Sasuke, when things don’t go well, she is not a person who will try to understand why Sasuke is doing whatever he did so far. Instead, she plunged right at him.

Even though Naruto likes Sakura, Sasuke trying to kill her will not evoke any kind of rage as one would display for their loved one when they gets hurt. Which means Naruto places Sasuke higher than Sakura.

Even though Sasuke plunged into the depth of darkness, seeing Sakura would not evoke any kind of positive feelings in him. But Naruto can. 

Even though Sasuke turned into a killing machine, and the entire world turned upon him including his former Team, the only person who will stand with him will be Naruto, no matter what.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Sai has nothing to do with her delusion. Sai simply spoke his perspective about Naruto and his pain, excluding Sasuke (because he didn’t know about him). As someone who knew both Sasuke and Naruto, Sakura should have a better judgement in this matter. But she didn’t. She made a fool out of herself by taking a worst decision to confess dishonestly before Naruto and tried to kill Sasuke without understanding what both of them are going through. 

Even if you live with this woman for 100 years, she is incapable of understanding anyone.

[yanderart]

   Took me longer since the “drabble” that was supposed to accompany this turned into a kind of extensive one-shot, but here’s the next installment in the Yandere POV series. Inspired by a juicy request from some thoughtful anons!

   Below the cut is, as customary, a fic I wrote exploring the underlying themes of the portrait (creepy best friend tamaki x reader, nsfw, dark themes, 8k).

TWs: usual yandere content (delusion, obsession, deceit, etc), explicit noncon, violence, Tamaki making the frienzone his bitch. Generous implementations of the pet name “bunny”.

 .                  

 If you had known the chain of events that would spiral from telling Tamaki about your new relationship… well, perhaps you would’ve stayed quiet. It wasn’t like it was that serious yet either, but you had an inkling (“I really like this one, Tamaki”) that made it worthwhile enough to mention in your book. Remarkable enough to share with your very best friend.  

  Besides, in your defence, you really had no way of knowing just what hid behind his agitated reaction. Nerves stretched thin, voice terse as he congratulated you with a smile that appeared a little too bright, a little too strained. With someone like Tamaki, it was easy to go chalk it all up to his anxiety, stress or an unfortunate mix of both.

  So easy to underestimate him, wasn’t it?

  Nevertheless, there were no uses for any what ifs in your future, speculations and paranoia not even close to creeping up on you yet. So almost a week after your reveal, when you got a call from Tamaki himself, you didn’t even hesitate as you picked it up in the last few dredges of your work shift.

  “Need something?” you answered distractedly as your fingers continued typing on your keyboard, sorting out the last few remnants of some menial task.  

  The prolonged silence however, only brokered by a subtle sound you identified as actual sniffling, was your only response. Your hands stopped mid movements then, brows furrowed with worry.  

  “What’s happening, dear?”

  This time your voice was as calming as you could compel it to be, your tone trying to imbed reassurance into every syllable, “Tamaki?”

  You heard what sounded like a whine, a strangled sound that conjured up an image of tears trailing down his cheeks, bottom lip quivering in a sorrowful grimace.  

  Calling him dear despite having a boyfriend now, it was like you were taunting him.  

  “Bunny,” Tamaki’s voice was shaking as he called you by your old nickname, sobs making it hard to understand anything but how panicked his intonation was. “I-I need you.”

  Thinking your pro-hero friend was having another budding panic attack, or perhaps on the brink of a new stress induced mental breakdown, you were on your feet before he even stopped speaking. The protective side of your brain had overridden any apprehension to leave your post, your hands already reaching to turn off your work computer before you wordlessly left your desk.

  You were working overtime, anyways, and any consequences that came out of going to your friend’s aid were well worth facing in your book. And by that point too, you knew enough of all of their schedules to know yours would be the easiest to clear. Mirio and Nejire had their own heroics to worry about, while you only had an unremarkable office job to account for.  

   Not like he’d want Mirio or Nejire there, though. Not like he would ever call for them when he had you.  

   “I’ll be right there, Tamaki. Please stay put,” was the last thing you told him before hanging up and rushing to get your coat.  

   The urgency in his timbre, the utter need, was all you could think of as you left your building in quickened strides.  

  And by the way you were rushing, it was clear that you actually cared for him, your very best friend. All you needed was a gentle reminder of just how much.

.

  You got to Tamaki’s apartment in a matter of minutes, letting your cab driver keep the change as you stumbled up the stairs in urgent skips. It wasn’t the first time he asked you to be there for him (asked you without actually saying it, because he would never dare utter the words), yet you knew enough of the turmoil he went through on a daily basis. A pro-hero he might be, but his anxiety was his eternally undefeated foe.

  Although was it really that bad if it kept bringing you two together?

  Opening the door into a room enveloped by shadows, you dropped your things without a care before attempting to make your way into the living room.

   Barely a heartbeat later, an audible hitch in someone’s breathing alerted you quickly of your friend’s location.

   “Y/N?” his voice sounded hoarse and choked up as he called for you. And it felt like a fist was squeezing your heart, the same that had been consistently gripping your chest ever since you first picked up the phone in your office.

  “I’m here, dear.“ You comforted him while redirecting your steps to the sound of his trembling voice.  

   Despite the darkness, your eyes were acclimatized enough to distinguish the silhouette of his body hunched over the only sofa in the room. Even without getting a glimpse at his face, you could sense defeat and pessimism oozing off of him in waves. As you got closer, however, he made no movements of retreat, nor flinched away when you sat beside him.  

   Instead, it was like his body started to release all of his pent-up tension as a response to your proximity.

  You were there and it was like he could finally breathe. You were there for him, right where you were meant to be.

  One of your palms was reaching out and drawing quick circles across his back, the thin fabric of his t-shirt bunching up while your voice hummed what you hoped was a tranquilizing melody. With the other one, you clasped one of Tamaki’s own vacant hands and gave it a gentle squeeze, almost as if you were willing the worries to leave his body, a piper’s songs coaxing them out in the form of your enticing presence.  

  By that point, you knew enough about his episodes to know physical contact and reassurance were the fastest ways to get him to come back up from his lowest of lows. So it was no wonder, then, when your reward came quickly in the form of a content sigh leaving his lips, anguish still visible in his posture but his body clearly leaning into the solace you offered.

  The balm you provided had always been intoxicating for him.  

  “I… I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he stuttered through distressed hiccups. He looked so fragile like that, so much like a kicked puppy, that you instinctually wrapped your arm around his waist and hugged him closer to your side.  

  “Oh, Tamaki…,” you shushed with a note of guilt, preoccupied with the fact that he would ever think you’d leave him hanging, “why would you even say that?”

  You could feel his shoulders stiffen in your embrace, his hand tightening around yours for a moment before going limp in your grip. His lack of an answer stung even more.  

  It was ridiculous truly, to feel so protective over a man who was a pro-hero and clearly several times your strength. Even hugging him like you were, his lanky silhouette overshadowed yours in an almost comical portrayal of your height difference.  

  But he was your dearest friend —taking care of him came as second nature.  

  He adored you for it.  

   “You know I could never ignore you when you need me,” you whispered as your thumb drew patterns on the hand you were holding, soft insignificant drawings that to him felt like ancient secrets being exchanged. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

   It was always like this with you two. Tamaki stayed quiet while you rambled on in his ear, trying to scatter any doubts or anxious thoughts still clouding his mind. At first you had thought it’d be annoying for him, overbearing in the worst of senses, but he had quickly insisted that you always knew just what to do to calm him down. You were his best friend, the one person besides Mirio and Nejire who just got him, who truly understood…

   So it only made you feel guiltier, to think that you wouldn’t be able to help him this one time. He was a hero who saved countless lives, someone whose time was worth more than you could ever hope to achieve as a meager civilian. And yet you couldn’t even comfort him as a friend?

  But it wasn’t your fault. You just needed to unlearn your behaviour. And if he truly was your best friend, didn’t you want him to feel loved too?  

   Which was precisely when an idea came to you, an epiphany from above in the form of a vivid memory of the last time you two met up, of the news that had seemingly left Tamaki acting oddly sour.  

   “You didn’t think I’d just forget about you because I have a boyfriend now, did you?,” you joked good-naturedly.  

   Only instead of having the comforting effect you’d hoped, your comment resulted in your friend stiffening even more, his face finally snapping to look at you with hurt written all across his features. The strength was back in the manner in which he was now seizing your hand, clasping it until you started to feel the blood circulation being slowly cut off.  

   “Isn’t that how it works, though?” His question was fretful on his tongue, barely above a whisper and with the slightest hint of resentment. His eyes were impossibly wide, impossibly alert as he studied your reaction, “Isn’t your boyfriend supposed to be your priority? The person you care for the most?”

  But even with the switch in his behaviour and the worrisome path his words were taking, you were still too preoccupied by him to heed any of it. It was just Tamaki over analyzing things, as always, and his anxiety popping in to get the better of him.  

  “Human relationships don’t work like that, dear.” And there the fucking nickname was again, that jest of a loving pet name on your lips. “It’s not a hierarchical structure. I care about both of you in different ways.”

   It felt silly to explain it out loud, to say such an obvious thing, but you couldn’t help wanting to appease some of the conflict eating away at your friend. Did he really think you’d ever drop him for anyone else? You had known Tamaki for years now, cared for him for what felt like a lifetime. The thought alone seemed completely ludicrous to you…

   Even as his touch started hurting, as you felt a stern pressure that would surely become a bruise on your wrist, all you could think of was that this was just Tamaki being Tamaki, right? And you just needed to calm him down, like you always did.  

  He saw the misery on your gorgeous face, the blossoming pain colouring your expression despite your attempts at hiding it. For once, he wasn’t the only one hurting anymore, and he oddly enjoyed that.

“You’re saying that, but why… why can’t I believe you?” It sounded like he was conflicted, tone frantic as he attempted to wrestle down whatever doubts were increasingly plaguing his mind. He tugged at your wrist with a clenched fist, stealing a whimper out of you while his face got closer and closer, “Uh, I bet he doesn’t give you as much trouble either. Bet he takes care of you.”

  I bet you love him was left unsaid. I bet you love him like I wish you loved me.  

  You attempted to push him off with your free hand at that point, discomfort quickly growing into annoyance despite your best intentions of being understanding. You were still under the impression that this was just a moment of clouded thoughts on his part, something bound to pass as he regained a grip of his senses. But the nerves flaring from the strength of his hold were impossible to ignore.

  “Tamaki, let me go first,” you commanded in a carefully composed manner, still attempting not to sound as harsh as you would’ve if this was anyone but your anxiety ridden best friend, “and then we can talk about why you’re feeling like that.”  

  Yet his reaction was abrasive once more, twisting your arm by the wrist harshly until your entire body was collapsing into his.

   “Don’t be like that. Don’t lie to me and tell me everything will be okay,” he was agitated, jittery and unstable in the way his eyes kept darting around. “All of this time I’ve been waiting… waiting to gather the courage…” He was making little sense now, just mumbling while he kept cradled your pained hand between his, a darkened gaze fluttering from your own eyes, to your lips and lastly some obscure point in the wall behind you. “And then you couldn’t wait for me anymore. And now you don’t need me.”

  It was hard to think through the mist of your budding worry and the agony still emanating from your wrist. Somehow, your other arm had stopped fruitlessly hitting him and was instead just trying to keep him at a distance, your neck cramping from how far back you were trying to get yourself.  

   He was impossibly close, intense and expectant as his stare once again found its way to yours. You could still see the doubts twisting there, but it was rapidly becoming eclipsed by a new creeping resolution. Even while you continued silently fighting to escape his grip, as terror encased you and you tried to understand why your best friend was acting like that all of a sudden.  

  After that night, would you perhaps think a villain’s quirk was to blame? Or maybe you’d think one of his enemies had decided to impersonate him in a twisted bid for revenge? Surely you couldn’t accept what the reality was, the fact that his love for you was just that blinding.  

   Don’t worry, though, he’d make you understand.

  Tamaki’s voice was feverish once he broke through the silence again, a new type of determination steadying his usual stutter in a way you’d never heard before.  

  “But I’ll fix that,” and then he was cupping your face with his free hand, your numb one still clutched tightly in his lap while his attention was diverted to your worried expression. “And then you will need me just as much as I need you. Then…“

  And there was a pregnant pause before he continued, a space of time where his stare bore into yours full of hidden meaning, “We can go back to being best friends again.”

Somehow though, on his tongue the term best friends sounded suspiciously like something else entirely.

 “Tamaki, listen…,” you tried again, refusing to quit still, before being interrupted by a terrifying sequence of actions unravelling.

  Because he was tugging your wrist down again after that, but this time twisting and twisting until your entire field of vision filled with the aftermath of an unbearable pain. A snapping sound echoed in your ears, a scream clawing its way out of your throat before you had a notion of what was even happening —Tearing through the rest of your composure, probably hurting his ears just as much as it left your vocal cords feeling raw. By that point, the hand that was previously pushing at his chest with firmness had turned frenzied, clamped fists now carrying the weight of urgency.  

  Tamaki looked halfway surprised at his own actions, halfway scared. Halfway excited, too.  

  Following a pattern of behaviour which did little to deter the horror rapidly embracing you, your so-called friend inhaled thickly before, suddenly and without warning, capturing your lips in a kiss. Your eyes were opened wide as you felt the pressure of his mouth claiming yours, taking advantage of your numb state to persuade you into opening up and allowing an even more intimate intrusion.  

  It has to be a nightmare, you thought in shock as his hands fluttered against your cheeks, sliding down to your neck and massaging your shoulders. It was like he couldn’t decide whether to stay still, where to touch or caress as his lips openly devoured you.  

  He waited so long for this, an eternity of yearning for someone right at his side.

   “T-Tamaki,”i, you willed yourself into speaking up once he broke away from you, gasping for air and with his hair looking as wild as his gaze, “I don’t know what happened but… you’re not being yourself.”

  Were you seriously still trying to deny his feelings? Trying to pretend like it hadn’t taken everything in him to finally gather his courage and just act. What a fucking friend you were.

  If he didn’t love you so much, he’d hate you for that.

  “You need help. Something happened”, you were rambling, too intimidated by the intent with which your friend was now listening to your words. “Once you’re feeling better, we can talk. I… I’ll promise to be understanding.”

  And despite the throbbing sensation in your injured hand, despite the disgust at his actions and unadulterated horror, the worst part was that you really meant it…

  But who were you really trying to convince at that point?

   His hands were still on your shoulders, but the way they squeezed around your flesh reminded you of the talons you had seen him grow with his quirk, sharp nails sinking without a warning and driving more half-hearted cries out of your throat. You looked like a mess now, lips still plump from the force of his kiss, mixed spit clinging to your face from it, fat tears freely cascading down your cheeks.

   “But… Y/N,” his voice was oddly soft when he addressed you again. There was a timid smile back on his face, one that reminded you of the friend you refused to believe no longer existed, and you briefly wondered if you had finally gotten through to him despite the unflinching strength of his grip, “I’ve never felt better.”

   He genuinely sounded so relieved too, so content with the dark implications behind his words, that you felt the blood become icy currents in your veins, liquid fear being pumped instead in its place. Before you even realized your course of actions, you were leaning your head to the side and biting down on one of his arms with everything you had.

   Tamaki was the one groaning then, retreating his hands instinctively and giving you the spare second you needed before you were jumping from the sofa and diving for the door.

  It’s unlocked, was all you could think about as you leapt to the exit. You could get away if you just managed to cross it, run until your legs gave up on you. You could go to your boyfriend’s place and wait there until you had enough courage to reach out to the police, to a hero —to anyone who could help you. Things could still be fixed.  

  And maybe, just maybe, the silliest part of you added, whatever was clouding your best friend’s senses would magically be gone once you had gotten away from his grasp.

  You never knew how to quit, truly. But it was okay, he liked that about you too.  

  A suffocated cry was all the sound you could make as you were fiercely shoved to the floor, your face smashing against the carpet and your nose making a horrifying sound before your entire head felt like it was on fire. The white-hot pain was all you could think of, the dam lifting entirely from your eyes as tears trickled down your cheeks in copious amounts.

  “D-don’t make me hurt y-you,” Tamaki didn’t sound at all winded, but anxious, pained himself from the wounds he had to inflict on you, “I want to make you feel good, not like… like this.”

  Which only made it more fucked up when, once you started fighting again, you felt the unmistakable pressure of a growing erection pushing against your lower back. As pained as you were, you willed yourself to keep struggling after that, trying fruitlessly to get away or somehow kick him, bite him, do anything in your power.  

  In all honesty, it only made him get more excited. He really was a sick, sick man. But only for you.

  “Stop, Y/N,” Tamaki pleaded in hushed whispers, his hands shaking as he tried to comb your hair out of the way. There was blood pooling around your face, flowing freely from the place your nose had smashed into the floor. You could barely breathe through it, your mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water as you attempted to otherwise fill your lungs through panicked gasps, "If you… if you stop, I’ll stop too.”  

  It was easy to recognize the lie as soon as it was uttered, a poor excuse for deceit as his hips stuttered into yours almost of their own volition. You heard him curse then, right as you both noticed that all your wrestling did was just press yourself harder against his arousal.

   However, before you could voice your growing terror, one of his hands was suddenly on your back, drawing circles in a mocking imitation of how you had tried comforting him earlier. The sickness in the pit of your stomach at that gesture, that feeble attempt at consolation, was all you could think about as the tears of impotence continued furiously trickling down your cheek.  

   You were disgusted, not only at the monster humping you as he continued mumbling poor excuses and null reassurances, but also sick at yourself for willingly going there to attempt to help him in the first place. You couldn’t believe part of you still stuttered to call him your friend moments ago, yet, even through your disgust, you’d also be lying if you didn’t admit how hard it was reconciling your aggressor with the soft spoken boy you had grown to foolishly treasure.

   “I’ve wanted you for so long,” his voice tickled one of your ears as he allowed himself to continue resting more and more of his weight on you, almost suffocating you under the pressure. He wasn’t even pretending like his hands weren’t wandering now, palms still mockingly gentle in their nervousness, but stopping his poor attempts at consolation long enough to grip your shirt and lift it up. “I don’t even remember what it felt like not to want you.”

   You wished you could scream again, but breathing was already such a laborious task between your fractured nose and Tamaki’s hold. When you refused to turn on your back after he gently nudged you, his hands just closed tighter around your top and tore it apart from your body, leaving you shivering —not due to the cold but due to a fear and impotence that trumped any temperature.  

   Then, because he couldn’t even leave you to suffer in peace, you felt the torn fabric of your shirt being pressed against the side of your face, prodding you with a meekness that felt completely out of place as the cloth started to soak in the blood gathering around you.

   “Press it against your nose, so it stops the bleeding.” He continued softly tapping it against your cheek until your unharmed hand went to roughly retrieve it out of his and do as he preached.

  You could’ve told him nosebleeds didn’t exactly work like that when you had a busted nose, that just pressing a piece of cloth wasn’t going to help your case much (or that his kindness was void, when he was the reason you why were bleeding in the first place), but all of that implied talking, and right now all you wanted to do was shut up, pass out, dissociate. Whatever it took to ignore his fingers now drifting to the hem of your pants.

  Yet he just wanted to take care of you. So why wouldn’t you let him? You were making it so difficult, when all Tamaki only ever wanted was to make you feel loved. Loved by him.  

  “You… hmm, you aren’t going to trust me right now,” it appeared like he was fidgeting with the waistband of your work pants as he drew out the admission, the thrumming in his voice sheepish and uncertain. It reminded you of how he would sound like when he attempted to talk to strangers, forcing himself into being pro-hero levels of courageous just so he could exchange a few words, “But that’s okay, Y/N, because you’ll understand.” One of his hands ghosted the plush curve of your ass, so lightly that you could’ve thought you imagined it in any other situation, “And when you do, you… you can break up with your boyfriend then. Things can go back to how they were. To just us.”

  The image of your partner crowded your thoughts then, his kind smile being conjured up in your mind as you heard your pants being torn apart next. It was enough to have you openly sobbing, biting down on the fabric of your ruined shirt as you tried to quiet down the sound of your own grief.

  But you’d thank him soon, once you understood. You already loved him before…so how hard could it be to love him again, but properly this time? To show him how much he knew you cared.  

  Once the remnants of your pants were thrown aside as well, you didn’t even get the luxury to cross your legs and put any kind of further struggle. Tamaki sat up on top of you, relenting the pressure in your chest and waist but comfortably setting himself on your hips, his legs encasing your thighs in an inescapable prison.  

  You could almost sense his eyes scanning your exposed flesh, hear his delirious muttering as his fingers got greedier and greedier in the paths they weaved across your body, the quick circles from before being exchanged by longer, drawn out movements. It felt like he was memorizing a map, with every little scar and indent in your complexion being the marks leading down to a hidden treasure, wonders to marvel at and inspect.  

 “I’m sorry, but I’ve dreamed of this for so long…” His tone was barely above a reverent whisper as you felt him finally reach your bra, unclasping it with a shaking that could only be attributed to unrestrained excitement, “dreamt of you even while awake.” He parted the fabric and left it precariously hanging off your sides on the carpeted floor, hands ceremoniously splaying across your shoulder blades next, “But you feel so different from anything I could’ve come up with. So much softer.”

  His lips were on your back in an instant, almost as if he just couldn’t help himself, and he was sucking and licking while trying to cover up the sounds of his own elation. The slow grinding against your backside had stopped, though, and the weight of his heated groin lifted from your back for the first time since you had been crushed to the floor. It was such a relief, to be able to move again (even if you weren’t foolish enough to try and get away by that point), that you didn’t even realize the alleviated sigh managing to escape your mouth until it was too late.  

  You felt Tamaki’s lips curling against your spine, the satisfaction in his gesture crystal clear.  

  “Does this feel good, bunny?,” he asked you in a pleased little rumble, mistaking your sounds of relief for something else altogether. “Does it feel good when I kiss you like this?” He pointed his question by leaving another sloppy flutter of his lips against the nape of your neck.  

   But then his presence disappeared from your back altogether, a moment so brief that hopefulness could not even begin to be reborn before it was crushed at your feet. Because before you could savour the retreat,Tamaki was now grasping and lifting your hips with his arms, deft hands sliding the lone piece of underwear still hiding your modesty from his prying eyes.  

 You briefly wondered why he hadn’t just ripped it apart like he’d done with the rest of the items that got in the way, but the distinct sound of someone sniffing gave you all the answers you needed. Deep, earnest inhales followed by a purr of satisfaction. Goosebumps blossomed across your body from disgust.  

  But to him, that was just another sign of you being into it. You were just too stubborn to admit it, weren’t you, bunny?

  “I’ll make sure to kiss you all over.” Your eyes were closed with such force, your intact hand losing colour from the strength you were using to grip the torn piece of fabric against your mouth. “If… if I’m honest”, and he was back to sounding sheepish, contradictorily embarrassed as if he wasn’t the one carrying out the assault, “Bunny, I’ve been wondering how your moans sound for the longest time, too.”

  If you weren’t as determined not to let a single sound slip out, you would’ve gagged. But all thoughts of Tamaki’s words were soon replaced by his actions, cold calloused hands snaking between your legs as the pro-hero’s arms kept a secured grip that made sure you could not wiggle out of his grasp. He was hunching over you again, dark purple hair tickling your thighs, and your exposed entrance twitched as a gust of air was blown directly into it.  

  You wanted so badly to cry out, to protest again, but you were afraid of ever loosening your grip on the fabric that covered your mouth. So instead you tried to steer your body, not to get away but to move your damaged hand until it was being crushed by your own chest, new waves of pain radiating off of it in order to distract you.

 Were you that afraid of liking it, that you’d take your own pain over the pleasure he’d deliver?

  “Bunny,” he groaned that nickname again, laying a bed of kisses across your inner thighs, slobbering and disorganized while his hands kneaded your flesh with acute urgency. “Y/N…”, your name was chanted like prayer, the holiest of incantations being whispered into the flourishing goosebumps of your inner legs.

  It was hard not to squirm when you physically felt his voice reverberating through your body, when the hands holding you up were so excruciatingly close to your now quivering hole. Even while fear coursed through your veins, what you dreaded the most was the way heat was starting to pool in your stomach.  

  You tried pressing harder against the limp hand below you, but Tamaki’s arms steadied you from their place around your legs before you had the chance to properly act.  

  “Stop trying to hurt yourself, please,” and to his credit, he actually sounded anguished himself, although you doubted it was due to the same reasons you were currently suffering. “I want to make you feel good, bunny. Please… please let me.”

  He was kissing the skin of your thighs again before you had the opportunity to argue (not that you’d consider willingly opening your mouth again by that point). Your assailant trailed a path of shivers until he was hovering over your mound, tickling you with his quickened breathing as a wanton groan reached your ears.  

  “So beautiful,“ and his nose was pressing against you, face nuzzling your cunt with such an affection that only helped to make you feel infinitely dirtier, his voice dripping with reverence. “My bunny’s beautiful little pussy.”

  You were wriggling again before you could attempt to calm yourself down, the alarms that had never stopped blaring now drowning any other thoughts circling your mind. But you had nowhere to go, nowhere to escape, and before another moment passed your entire body was tensing up again when you felt a wet appendage slowly licking up your folds.

  He explored you through the movements of his tongue, guttural sounds of appraisal being smothered as he tasted your plush folds for the very first time. Even without the aid of his arms, still holding you up as they were, it was becoming increasingly obvious that he did not need them in order to thoroughly savour you.

  So long he had been deprived of all sustenance, teased by your hugs and touches and left to starve while you went to seek affection elsewhere. Maybe he was undeserving, but could anyone blame him for finally snapping after so long? For finally, for once, daring to be selfish enough to demand.

  “Delicious,” his trembling compliment was proclaimed between licks, lips slowly journeying their way to your clit before he was audibly sucking it in, his own whines echoing through your entire body once more and making you bite down harder on the bloodstained cloth. “And… you’re getting wet for me too,“ which was only accentuated by the lascivious sounds he made as he started lapping at your rapidly gathering juices. “Am I making you feel good, bunny?”

  Shut up, you wanted to scream, shut up and just be done with it. But it was getting so hard to concentrate, your fingers cramping from the force you were using to keep the piece of your torn up shirt tightly in place. He kept gingerly savouring your unwilling excitement, relentless in the way his tongue continued teasing and prodding, even dipping into your heat as his gluttony for you became an unbearable constant.  

  When you felt one of his hands descend from your thighs, the sound of a belt being unbuckled, your eyes opened up again in fear. You almost stopped biting down on your shirt in order to voice one last protest, but then his mouth was wrapping itself harder still around your bundle of nerves —shoots of a pleasure you tried to ignore warming their way further up your stomach as the unwanted thrills in your gut built up to a crescendo.

  “Fu… fuck, Bunny,” he sounded so needy between the squelching sounds filling the darkened room. “Are you gonna cum for me?”

  You shook your head as the pressure kept building up, muscles cramping and your one free leg attempting to kick him out fruitlessly. Your head was filled with the cries you could not voice, heavy with an agony that far exceeded any physical turmoil. You wished the pain was enough to pass out, to mute the heat coiling up further and further, but such was your plight that not even the faintest mercy was granted.  

  Although even your silent rejection only served as encouragement in Tamaki’s mind. It was the first time you were acknowledging him, the first time you were responding to any of his comments after he had tackled you to the floor. Even with your mouth covered, the tears now dried against your mascara stricken cheeks, it felt to him like the sign he had been waiting for.  

  It only drove him madder.

  You heard clothing being tugged down while he kept the eager rhythm of his tongue on you, pants and boxers being discarded in one go to free a surely painfully aching erection. Not long after that, his breathing became even more ragged against your core, one of his shoulders moving against your thighs rhythmically while his previously free hand stroked himself for some much needed relief.

  The sounds he started to make, accompanied by the slow pace he was setting as he tugged at his own cock against your dangling legs, were ones of desperation and debauchery—whines that filled you up right alongside his intruding tongue. It made you curl your toes, close your eyes again as you tried and failed to will the sensations away.  

  You thought your teeth would snap at any moment too, just from how furiously you were biting down. Yet your cunt kept pulsating against his flushed face, answering to his relentless teasing by coating his mouth in more your juices, strings of saliva mingling with them as you felt the wetness gathering around his chin too.  

  “You… you don’t need to fight it,“ he was whispering right into you, humming the sounds until they were forcing themselves inside right alongside his tongue. “You can cum, Y/N,” and with the hand he wasn’t touching himself with, he finally freed your other thigh as well, opting instead to trail a path with his extended palm until he was reaching out for your face.

  You were so tired, so preoccupied with the unwanted pleasure clouding your vision, that the thought of attempting to escape again didn’t even cross your mind. Both of your legs were now limp, supported only by his shoulders positioned below them, and the sounds filling the air were wet, squelching and downright sinful.  

  Which was why, when his palm started caressing your cheek, you were too far gone to run from the new coercive intimacy of his touch. His tongue was pulsating in and out of you, and yet your insides felt impossibly warm, impossibly empty.  

  “Bunny,“ that damned pet name again. It was something you remembered him calling you first after a particularly bad panic attack, sheepishly whispered as you held him and rocked the both of you in a calming motion. Only now it sounded absolutely depraved, filled with a lust that terrified you, and the word sullied as it was now half-moaned while Tamaki jerked himself off to your torment.  

  Or was it pleasure at that point? You kept wriggling, but he didnt think you wanted to get away anymore.  

  Some part of you noticed his rough fingers drawing circles again into the covered side of your face, another cruel joke that mimicked the way in which you had always thought appropriate to soothe him.  

  “Please,” he begged you and kept repeating it, mixing in the pleads with the insistent licks of his tongue, the shaking in his own face warning you of the furious pace his other hand was now setting for himself.

  Please, please, please. Bunny, please.

  Your orgasm hit you with a force that left you breathless, gasping for air and with a new current of despair trailing down from your dazed eyes, mimicking the arousal surely dripping down his lips.  

  You had never felt something like what you were experiencing, an orgasm so potent that it transformed your body into such a limp and pliant thing, enticing your mind into a forceful lull as Tamaki dedicated himself to drinking every last drop you unwillingly offered.

  To your subsequent shame, the hand tenderly holding you pried the crumpled shirt away from your mouth. He was finally freeing the sounds you so selfishly kept from him, and by that point you were too far gone to think of stopping him, your cries and wails filling up the shadows of the room until they were bursting at the seams.  

  It felt like forever as you kept cumming and cumming, feeling like you were forcefully plunged from one climax straight into the next. Tamaki refused to separate from your heat, instead opting for continuing to mouth his appreciation right into your tender flesh.  

  “So gorgeous for me. So good. My sweet little bunny,” he wasn’t even trying to be coherent at that point, rapidly reaching his own peak now that he had you breaking down underneath him, now that he could finally witness your undoing at his hands.

  While your orgasm reached its shaking end, however, your cunt clenching against nothing as Tamaki’s face finally left it alone and pulled back, you were again too preoccupied with the aftermath of your own pleasure to sense anything amiss. You failed to acknowledge the pause in his own movements, how his hand had stopped his own ministrations in order to reach out for your glistening folds instead, nervous digits twitching as they gathered your juices between them.  

  It almost hurt when he trailed your sex, your flesh sensitive still from the force of the after shakes still coursing through your body. A new unfiltered whine left your throat, jaw starting to ache from all the strength you had previously used in your bid to keep those very same sounds securely muted.  

  “Tamaki, please…” You sobbed, intending on pleading with him to stop, to grant you the mercy of wallowing in your shame all by yourself.  

  But all he could hear was the intoxicating sound of his name on your lips, your tone heavy from exhaustion and being utterly spent. It was the greatest melody you could’ve provided him with.

  “F-fuck,” his exclamation was equal parts devotion and raw need.  

  After his fingers were retreating, it wasn’t long before you felt him lowering your hips gently. The warm pressure of his cock prodded at your entrance, already coated with your fluids and only getting messier as Tamaki trailed it up and down your slit.

  “No, wait. Tamaki, wait,“ your voice was distraught and still feeble, what little struggle that still managed to cling to you coming back with a reckoning as a new kind of panic started setting in.  

  Of course he wasn’t wearing a condom, and of course your pleas did little to stop him now. A heartfelt sound of protest shook your vocal cords as he slowly breached your cunt, his cock sliding in inch by inch while drawing long, wet sounds out of you.

  In reality, all he could hear was the sound of his name on your lips. You could’ve been insulting him with all of your might, Tamaki didn’t think he’d be able to stop himself even if he wanted to.

  “Fuck, Bunny,” his hands fluttered between your thighs in hiccuped movements, fingers stretching your nether lips in order to give himself a better view of the place where your bodies joined, the sacrilegious union he had oh so desired for years now. “So,, he kept breaking into you inch by inch, “fucking,“ the length of him feeling eternal as he sheathed himself, “perfect.”

  You had barely any time to adjust to being stuffed before apologies were scattering out of his mouth, actions contradicting as his hips rut into you, hands making sure to keep you on display for his gluttonous eyes. It was your new brand of torment— how snug he fitted inside, how full you felt and the way his shaft curved just enough to quickly turn any discomfort you were first experiencing on its head. You wanted to feel pain, but even that was out of your reach too.

  You were chasing after a distraction, but why did you need to be running in the first place? You needed only to keep still, lay back and let your best friend take care of you for once.

  The pace he set was slow, excruciatingly so as he savoured the way in which your cunt clenched around him, the way your walls spasmed with the memory of the orgasms he gifted you with earlier. He kept hitting that spot every few shallow thrusts too, the patch of skin on your insides that made you grind your teeth while whines still somehow managed to leak out. It was with maddening guilt, then, that your mind realized the extent with which your body truly welcomed him.  

  You felt dirty, violated by a man you had trusted for years, someone you had considered family beyond reproach. And while he kept drilling into you in that leisure way of his, you couldn’t help but wonder what exactly you had done to get him to obsess over you like that. What exactly you could’ve changed to stop your life from being utterly ruined.  

  But with all honesty, the answer to that was nothing. Because even without the pressure of your new boyfriend to pull him into motion, Tamaki doubted he would’ve been able to keep himself from you for much longer.

 He had loved you for so long and for so many different reasons; Your laughter which was the greatest symphony to his ears, the kindness you had always embraced him with, free of judgement and ulterior motives. Your caring soul, too, and the way in which he just knew you understood.

  “Please, please,“ and you didn’t know why you kept begging, your mouth running off on its own accord as your body tried to squirm against your intruder’s, unclear whether it wanted to escape or get even closer. “T-Tamaki.”

  But most of all, he thought he loved the way you cried out while he fucked you now, a wrecked mess for his eyes alone.  

  “Do you think you can come again for me?” he asked you between frayed exhales, still oddly meek as the shallow thrusts into your hole made sweat drip down his skin and bathe you in its shine. “I know you must be tired but… I wanna… wanna hear it properly.” And there was an underlying greed just below his apologetic tone, a craving you wondered just how long had been there waiting to be let out, “Wanna feel it, too.”

  It appeared like his own words excited him to a notorious degree, because he was rutting into you with quicker motions now, the sound of skin slapping against skin driving the despair even further into your heart. Your afflicted hand didn’t even throb anymore, your nose barely a faint nuisance either, for all you could think about was the way you contracted around him, the way the coil in your gut was once more beginning to tighten to a feverish degree.  

  And the palm against your clit too, which had stopped pressing against it in order to extend its fingers and circle them around, prodding and pushing until you were being overwhelmed by him, devoured on the carpeted floor with a face caked in blood and a body sore and resentful yet so damned inviting.  

  Your cunt was holding him so tight, it felt like you didn’t want to let go, like you needed him there… it made Tamaki, someone who had spent his entire life feeling different degrees of inadequate, think he had finally found a place to belong to.

  “Shit, Y/N, you’re… really gonna cum again? For me?” You didn’t want to hear him, didn’t want to feel him, but when he pulled out almost entirely you found your hips shamefully pushing back until his length was being swallowed whole again. “Fuck,” you heard him curse as his hands left your sopping folds in order to grip the meat of your backside, barely contained strength nailing you to the spot as he set a new frantic rhythm, “so… needy for me. So tight and beautiful, does my bunny want it harder now?”

  He was hitting your spot in relentless movements, his own hips stuttering as he strived to hold back his own impending end, and the groans coming out of you felt like they belonged to a different person. The tears in your eyes were still free falling, the taste of dried blood still covering your tongue as you continued audibly panting, and the tension in your muscles resembled a taut bowstring about to snap from the pressure.  

 Of course you didn’t answer, but you didn’t have to when your body spoke for you.

  His pace was bruising, his hands kneading your flesh as he angled you just enough to get even deeper inside you. Yet not deep enough.  

  “I love you so goddamn much,“ one of his palms left your rear so he could grab one of your shoulders, forcing you to arch back just as he demanded. “Let me show you just how much, baby.”

  By that point you were so tired, so drained from holding back, that you allowed him to manhandle you until your back was pressed flush against his stomach.  His palm snaked their way from your shoulders to your chest, quickly pushing what little of your unhooked bra still clung to your frame so he could fully expose your breasts to his zealous treatment.  

  Your nipples were hard already, you really were loving this, weren’t you?

  In this new position, it somehow felt like he was pushing against places you had never felt anyone reach before. Like, in a way, he was bruising your cervix with every one of his overeager thrusts, testing himself in order to go as far as your body would allow him. So fucking greedy for you.

  Tamaki kept massaging your breasts while he fucked you, sensitive nipples being lightly toyed with while he buried his face in your neck from behind for an instant. Because unable to stay still as he was, soon enough his lips had started to kiss a slobbering path of adoration upwards into the shell of one of your ears.  

  “I know you… fuck, know you don’t love me like that yet,” he sounded feverish while he continued to thrust into you, voice faltering to the weight of his own lust, “but it’s okay. Right now…” He pulled out almost entirely again, only to dive in with all the more resolve before you had the chance to buck into him a second time, “I can love you enough for the both of us.”

  And just like that, with the man you had previously considered your best friend whispering delirious nonsense behind you, his breath tickling your nape with each aggravating declaration, was when the overwhelming wave of your new orgasm hit you, shaking your entire body.

  So fucking tight and needy for him. With your body clamoring for him like it did, who could blame him for foolishly thinking you felt the same way? Even if you tried refuting it afterwards, the way your walls clenched around him so delectably was all the honesty he needed.

  Your body went limp in his hands a second time, for him to hold up and embrace as he saw fit, and you sensed the cadence of his motions grow even frenzier before finally slowing down into a sporadic rythm, his sex twitching inside you in a most telling way.  

  He was calling out your name in a litany of prayers, biting down on the skin he had gently been nursing before, teeth piercing you and joining the rest of the sensations overwhelming your spoiled body. And that was really all the warning you got before his release was spilled deep inside you, painting your walls in thick ropes of white while the remnants of your powerful orgasm proceeded to milk his cock for all it’s worth.

  Through the mess of pleasure and shame clouding your vision, your sobbing became even louder.

  “See, Y/N,” Tamaki whispered a few instants later, back to his nervous ways despite grinning timidly while his arms circled around you, “even if you tell me you care about someone else now, I’ll know you’ll never share with them what you shared with me.”

  And it was such a ridiculous thing to say, preposterous words to proclaim as he refused to pull out and let any drop of his cum leak out of your bruised hole, as the heated hands on your skin replicated the same old patterns you had taught him inadvertently, the same motions supposed to bring comfort and which in reality only made you feel fouler.

  “If you’d like, we can be an even more special type of best friends now,” he added after barely a beat, almost self-conscious when confronted with your somber silence, yet still bashfully content about the whole ordeal.

  Best friends, you repeated inwardly while his hands kept stroking you without pause, perhaps truly trying to console you, or perhaps just wanting an excuse not to leave you alone. But you were so tired, so devastated, that it wasn’t like you had the strength to refute him verbally.  

 In Tamaki’s delusional mind, however, that was as good as agreeing. You two were really meant to be. Even if you refused to be the special kind of best friends he had in mind, he could always become your boyfriend instead.  

  Not like you were ever going to see your previous one, anyways.

  …

   Probably the longest piece of writing I’ve posted so far… and the filthiest. If people like it, I might start extending the lenght of my fics! Otherwise I’ll try to keep it on the shorter side for my next portrait/fic convo (a yan!aizawa one hehe).

   And special thanks to my dearest pals @reinawritesbnha, @drxwsyni, @snappysnapo, @thermaflute​ and @coyambition​. They helped me proof read, gave me precious feedback on both my writings and my art and were just overall sweethearts hyping me up!! love y’all fr fr 🖤

🥀 Requests/Suggestions OPEN btw 🥀

[the-ghost-king]

Schizophrenic Nico, here's why I think it's possible:

I want to start off by saying these are just my thoughts, there is no one way to be schizophrenic or to have schizophrenia. It's also important to note that many of the schizophrenic symptoms overlap with other mental illnesses/nuerodivergences like ADHD, Autism, Depression, and OCD which I know many people who head canon Nico as having. I'm not arguing schizophrenic Nico is more correct, more canon, or more right, but to explain some thoughts on why I think it's possible/very likely he does so I can use this for future reference in various thing.

I am using the term schizophrenia as a catchall for all "types" of schizophrenia, but not for schizoaffective disorder which I would say Nico probably doesn't have.

Children born in the winter/those who were "sickly" as babies are more likely to develop schizophrenia. It may also be possible if your mother was sick while pregnant with you, or having a father who was significantly older when he had you.

A stressful life, especially trauma, are more likely to develop schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. It likely has something to do with excessive dopamine production, but it may also have something to do with the same genes that control the sleep-wake cycle. Schizophrenia is more common with other mental illnesses or with other nuerodivergences or developmental delays.

Common symptoms include:

Hallucinations

Delusions

Disorganized thinking

lack of motivation

slow movement

change in sleep patterns

poor grooming or hygiene

changes in body language and emotions

less interest in social activities

Now what does this mean for Nico, and why do I think it's likely he has Schizophrenia?

Let's start with Nico's childhood, "children born in the winter/those who were "sickly" as babies are more likely to develop schizophrenia". Although Rick proposed two birthdays for Nico, the fandom generally accepted the January date more fully. We also know that Nico is described as small when he was younger, smallness is common in children who grow up sickly, but it is also common in children who's mother was ill while pregnant with them. We obviously don't know if Nico was sick as a kid, or if Maria was sick while pregnant with him, but again being born in the winter makes these things more likely, as well as consideration for the time period Nico grew up in and the larger variety of illnesses going around at the time. (He is vaccinated against some things though).

Trauma and Nico... do I really have to go into super detail on this one? He spent his childhood growing up in a fascist country that was extremely racist/anti-Semitic/homophobic/etc, his mom died when he was a child- in front of him, his father intentionally gave him amnesia, his sister died when he was a child, he then proceeded to become homeless living/spending lots of time with Minos who verbally (and possibly physically) abused him, becoming aware of his past memories, becoming aware of the fact that many people hated him because of his father and because they thought he was joining the other side (therefore, he was "bad"), he fought in many battles as a child, fought monsters alone, was often faced with life or death situations, went to Tartarus alone (where the goddess of misery told him he was "perfect"), was trapped in a hostage situation with little/no air for a long time while people debated whether or not to save him, was outed against his will, was freed only to travel again fighting monsters and then win a battle, was eventually made to quest with Apollo despite still having lots of healing to do in ToN. So stressful life? Fuck yeah, that doesn't being to cover it.

Genetic factors, obviously nothing here is confirmed so I'm speculating a little bit again, but the common idea in regards to Hades children through the series is that they are "bad". Mental illnesses have been stigmatized for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and often mentally ill people were made out to be weird/bad/etc. It's more than possible there is some sort of genetic factor taking place, also "having a father who was significantly older when he had you". Although I doubt godly genes work the same as mortal ones (trust me I have lots of thoughts on how god genetics/DNA work, but that's not the point right now), I think Hades being the oldest out of all his brothers and having a reputation for having "questionable" children says something... We have no information on Maria's family history at all.

As for schizophrenia often occurring with other mental illnesses and/or neurodivergences: Nico canonically is implied to have either ADHD and/or Autism, and is canonically stated to have PTSD. I think most people would agree that saying Nico has or has had depression isn't a stretch in the slightest.

So canonically we can all agree Nico has severe trauma and coinciding mental health issues/neurodivergences, so out of 4 possible issues I’ve first presented we guaranteeably have two. If I wanted to stretch this a little I would give myself a half point for him being born in the winter and a half point for the aspect of Hades genetics but I won’t do that.

On top of that schizophrenia usually appears during teenage and young adult years in people who receive diagnosis; most people live with mental illness for a few months or a few years in some cases before they're able to receive a diagnosis. Nico being 15 (16 by the end of ToN/shortly following the end of ToN) is about the age that schizophrenia would start to make an appearance. It's also more likely to be found in men, with men also noticing the appearance of schizophrenia appearing early in their lives, and experiencing more negative symptoms in comparison to the higher commonality of affective symptoms in women. That's a really complicated explanation to basically say there's 3 more things that would make Nico having schizophrenia make more sense.

Alright, let’s go back to the list of symptoms I provided:

Hallucinations

Delusions

Disorganized thinking

lack of motivation

slow movement

change in sleep patterns

poor grooming or hygiene

changes in body language and emotions/behavior

less interest in social activities

Once again, some of these are not solely related to schizophrenia and can be the result of other mental health issues, I’m just going to go down the list and add in some moments from the books in which Nico shows some of these traits/behaviors.

Delusions/Hallucinations (more later)

Our best chances for understanding Nico's thought process is in Blood of Olympus where he has a P.O.V... Sometimes Nico's thoughts do derail, or sometimes they get a little confusing, but not always, and when talking to others he is consistent and aware of what he's saying, as well as blunt. Anything "off" about his thought patterns to me just seems like ADHD..

Dietary changes (whether or not you think he has an eating disorder) are behavioral changes (I personally think Nico has AFRID)

Within House of Hades Nico's poor sleep patterns are constantly referenced, and I'll give him a pass on poor hygiene because he's in the middle of a quest but still..

I have extremely complicated feelings on what Will says here, it's possible Nico is an extremely unreliable narrator (unlikely, it seems many people are bothered by him and only maybe a handful aren't), I've also thought at many points this was Rick trying to backtrack some stuff with Nico because he realized he'd made his story a little too harsh for a kids book, it could also be Will's trauma kicking in and that happening... I'm not counting it as full proof about Nico disliking social interactions, but Nico does try to leave even after this conversation and isn't convinced to stay until the last chapter, so maybe there's something to be said about people's dislike of him for being a Hades kid- but I think it's fair to say Nico also dislikes people at least some because he doesn't have interest in trying to befriend anyone either, and is quick to assume all people dislike him (paranoia/low self esteem/and some other possible stuff). There's lots of discussions to be had about this quote and other similar ones, and I don't think a broad brush approach of "Nico good everyone else bad" is accurate it's more, "Nico is good but he fails to try and you have to work on your own mental health everyone won just go to you, and also people dislike Nico for silly reasons and need to get over themselves and make an effort too". (I'm extremely oversimplifying my thoughts and feelings to keep it brief.)

More on delusions and hallucinations:

Now I want to state that lots of schizophrenia symptoms share a lot of commonalities with ADHD and with depression, so although I might include some moments you think are just ADHD/depression I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with you but they could also be schizophrenia or coexisting mental health issues/divergences. I also went through the DSM-5 for schizophrenia (the DSM-5 is just this big book with lists and it’s how doctors diagnose any mental health issue/divergence), I also looked through the DSM-IV (an older book from before DSM-5 which is no longer really used) and the differences between the diagnosis was fairly minimal but they quit categorizing types of schizophrenia and instead rely more on a couple of word descriptions that seem more in line with a spectrum rather than a checkable box.

In order to receive a schizophrenia diagnosis, two (or more) of the following, each present for a significant portion of time during a 1-month period (or less if successfully treated), and at least one of these symptoms must be (1), (2), or (3):

Delusions

Hallucinations

Disorganized speech (frequent derailment or incoherence)

Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior

Negative symptoms (i.e., diminished emotional expression or avolition).

It’s important to note that only one of these need to be checked off/true if the patient has voices which narrate their actions/behaviors/thoughts or if the person has more than one voice conversing with each other.

Nico deals with auditory hallucinations (2), he believes the voice belongs to Bob, his titan friend he left in Tartarus:

However this isn’t and immediate diagnosis because Bob’s voice doesn’t talk to another voice(s) in Nico’s head, and we don’t know if Nico has voices running commentary on his behaviors/thoughts.

The reason I state we are unaware if Nico has commentary isn’t because Nico hasn’t said anything, but because many people with schizophrenia before their diagnosis believe the narrative voices are just their thoughts and are a normal internal monologue- usually patients don’t realize anything is wrong until the voices start providing commentary on their actions so instead of “washing the dishes now” the voice(s) might say “wash the dishes now, you’re so lazy you can’t do anything, idiot” during a period of psychosis which may help them acknowledge that the voice(s) isn’t the way most people experience internal voice(s). It is very possible Nico is unaware he is experiencing narrative thoughts and simply assumes that his experience is something most people have, but I won’t use this to argue my point because it’s not confirmation of anything.

Returning now to Bob, Nico knows he is hearing Bob’s voice but he believes Bob is calling to him from Tartarus. Now, Nico says the voices are calling to him from Tartarus but there’s no confirmation of this anywhere… What I think is happening is Nico has a guilty conscience. He feels bad for “using” Bob to get out of Tartarus and various other things, so he feels bad that he is still down there. However, we don’t really know if Bob is calling to him or if Bob is able to do that- what I personally think is happening here is Nico’s brain is convincing Nico that Bob needs him because Nico is upset with himself for not helping Bob more, but also because Nico has never “sat still” before without a quest. Nico has also always felt the want to be needed/important...

It very well could be a delusion.

Schizophrenic patients often experience delusions which make them think they are destined for greatness, or that they have some divine/high force calling out to them for help that only they can provide. It’s an extremely common thing in individuals who experience delusions, and is in fact one of the most common delusions experienced. So although Bob could really be calling out to Nico, I don’t think he is, it doesn’t entirely make sense and there’s lots of little things which point to it being not entirely real- like the fact that nobody else knows about it? Or how absolutely sure Nico is that he need to return to Tartarus? It seems like a mixture of PTSD, delusions, and trauma response (returning to the trauma), working against him. I’ll say delusion is very likely (1).

Using these two factors alone there’s sufficient evidence for diagnosis, but let’s keep going just to see.

For disorganized speech (3) this isn’t something Nico seems to struggle with, and even if he did “derailing” could be ADHD or Autism, so I don’t think this symptom pertains to him.

Changes in behavior (4), seem to all be explainable via depression and/or PTSD- he has begun to express emotion again in Tower of Nero upon learning of Jason’s death he is said to be upset by Will and he walks off to be alone, seems like depression to me. Emotional/Behavior changes from schizophrenia tend to relate more to bipolar disorder rather than a depressive disorder, so I would say if Nico has schizophrenia he probably doesn’t have emotional or behavioral changes from it. If he did he might have some catatonic behavior, but this seems to be clearing up some in Tower of Nero so I’m not super sure on that, maybe during bad periods of psychosis behavioral changes occur, but I would lean more towards this isn’t a symptom Nico personally deals with. Negative symptoms (5) tie into this same idea, it’s possible it’s schizophrenia, but it’s more likely PTSD or depression at work.

So why do I care so much about the possibility of Nico being schizophrenic?

I feel like canonically/fanonically making Nico schizophrenic does a few things, firstly schizophrenic rep in media is extremely extremely awful- can you think off the top of your head of a schizophrenic character who isn't from a horror film/a murder/a villain in their own story? Maybe, but personally I can only think of one which is Charlie from Perks of Being a Wallflower- and even then? That's not canon, it's only implied- and it might not even be true

Schizophrenic media representation always paints schizophrenic people as bad, scary, and evil, and although the horror genre is extremely well known for being super ableist, transphobic, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic (just the final cherry on top) having one of the first- if not the first openly confirmed schizophrenic characters in children's media not only be someone who has lots of character development, and isn't a stereotype, but also be someone people have grown up with, cared for, and sympathized with- would be extremely monumental.

People with schizophrenia and other related disorders aren't something to be scared of or to think of as bad, and often times they're more bothered by whatever they're experiencing than you are.

I don't have schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or anything like that, but I have various undiagnosed mental health issues which often lead to me questioning reality, or having to set aside time to convince myself that no there isn't a man living in my wall... Having a character have to question those things, work through those feelings, and learn to trust themselves and care for themselves even with those difficulties would be really great to see in media, not just for people with schizophrenia but also for people with similar/related disorders who might share symptoms see parts of their own struggles in a good, educative way.

I have to finish this in two parts because tumblr keeps breaking because there's too many words in my post lmao (2nd part here)

[androgynousblackbox]

have you seen the latest RaM episode? I was hoping to see if you had any thoughts about it! I really liked the exploration and the going off the gotdamb rails with the decoys. Also that scene with rick just. dick out and making morty peek at his ass for No actual reason sndhs

Don't forget the fact that his family didn't questioned for a single second that it should be MORTY the one to look into Rick's ass, like there was never anyone else but Morty who should be do it. It was gross, sure, but also such a... "guys would be guys" moment but not in the violent/toxic way but on the silly and unnecesary way, you know? Like Morty called it "punishment" and, sure, nobody wants to be farted into their face, but I can see Rick pulling a similar move on just any friend he feels like pranking to and, on a way, that was kinda wholesome. Okay, so I am going to pour my thoughts about this and the other episode as I usually do here so bear with me: -The fact that Summer IMMEDIATELY picked on what could go wrong about the whole decoy thing, and Rick has to aknowledge that Summer was smarter than this on this regard. This to me is talking again about how Summer IS actually smarter, emotional and socially wise (meaning with interelationships at least), that she could tell that if one Rick thinking he is not a decoy was going to make decoys then of course other Ricks would have the same idea. But Rick never saw this coming because he was only thinking of the decoys as instruments to be used and disposed, even as he was giving them actual personalities and filled their memories with real ones. He never considered they could go on to make their own because, well, they are not This Rick and this Rick is the smartest man in the universe, the guy that unironically think himself to be god, so OBVOUSLY think only HE would be capable of pulling that off. -The fact the immediately after a Rick wins while proclaiming himself "not a man, I am god!" only to be killed by what is essentially JUST A TOY, some little creature that was MEANT to be killed but got pissed when nobody did it. A literal "god" got eliminated for something fucking mundane that didn't even had to do with the main conflict. He doesn't even understand WHY this little dude just killed him, he died with uncertainty, and if that isn't the most human experience ever then I don't know. -With this episode and the first one, I HOPE this season is going to be about desconstructing Rick thinking himself above anything else. I said this before, but I don't trust fans who truly believe Rick is entitled to do anything he wants and be shitty with everyone because he is smart. It seems to be like these two episode literally adressed that kind of attitude by putting Rick on situations where not even he can get out of and revealing he is, in fact, still just a flawed human being. A major criticism that many people have levered against the show is that yes, we know Rick is sad and miserable, but the show still goes out of it's way to keep making him win on anything he wants (most of the time at least) and thus is signaling to the audience the idea that he is always right, that he should be always right, because he has the power to do anything he wants. The very first episode start with Rick about to fucking die with all his regrets ("I am a silly man, a silly old man") and then he is saved BY MORTY. If it wasn't because of Morty being there that would be it, they both would be gone. -The previous season was already descontructing Rick as the patriarch of the house and show how nobody "needs him" on the same way they needed him on the first season. The only character you could argue still gives a fuck about Rick's approval/recognition is Summer, but even then Summer was never submissive and passive like Season One Morty was to Rick, instantly believing anything he said. Plus, we all know that Rick COULD take Summer on all his adventures and she would never complain about it because she doesn't give a fuck about school anyway. But he still insist on taking Morty instead, despite his protests, because he just likes Morty better than Summer and he does not take well with Morty not relying on him. I don't fucking buy the whole "cancelling brain waves" excuse anymore because, come on, there is a million ways in which Rick could circunvent that problem if he wanted to

but he just prefers keep Morty around. -On the first episode Rick literally says "let me deus ex machina out of here". Deus ex machina literally means the hand of god because in ancient greek mythology many plays would have an element of a literal hand coming from the sky to take the characters out of any problem they are in. And it didn't worked! He needed Mr Nimbus to save them. Because he is not fucking god, and the show is finally showing us concrete evidence of this, while Rick is still the only one with this delusion on his head and this delusion is part of his downfall. The whole second episode is nothing else but Rick's ego fucking him in the ass, literally killing him over and over again. -Beth was GREAT rejoicing on Rick's existential crisis and she fucking deserved that moment, I am glad they gave it to her. -The way so many of the decoys decided to react to knowing they were decoys was so amazing. Like yeah, a majority of them decided to be all "oh no, there can only be one", but many other just off themselves because they couldn't handle not being The Original, insisting to the last moment that they MUST be the original because, well, that is what they think, and then other decoys were just ready to accept death because they had accepted there was no other way. -The only wish of Summer to be on the ocean was... so wholesome? Like it made for a beautiful scene in general, but then they dying hand by hand and just happy to be together, Rick apoligizing to Morty because they couldn't make his wish come true, such a good moment. -The fact that all those Ricks made decoys purely out of a sincere desire to protect his family, it's just great. It was still selfish to basically create life with the only purpose of it being destroyed, but it was motivated as another security measure to protect others, not just himself. -The skin wearing Rick on the swamps talking about "a Rick must provide for his family". Ricks CARE about their family so much. -The puppet Smits were so cute, I loved their voices. -THE MUPPET SMITHS. Even if it was nothing but a costume, it was cute and I want them on Pocket Mortys. -This scene is a Call Me By Your Name reference and nobody tells me otherwise:

As I explained on a server: 1. Italian. The movie happens on Italy. 2. Pool. Many crucial scenes include a pool. 3. Age difference. If they just wanted to imply Morty was flirting they could have used just an older teenager, they didn't need a literal hunk that kinda looks like the older character on the movie. 4. THERE IS FUCKING PEACHES ON THE FOREFRONT. If anyone saw Call me by your name, they know they literally fucked a peach at some point and then the love interest EATS IT ANYWAY. And what does it look like the guy Morty is with is eating? PEACHES. 5. Parents are watching and don't give a fuck. 6. I have decided. -Regardless if it's a reference or not, though, is still pretty fucking gay. -I have seen some fans theorizing that the Smith family we see in the end with Space Beth was our own, and at first I thought so too because they are with Space Beth but then I was... wait a minute, ALL Beth decoys knew there was a Space Beth. They went out of their way to show us this by always having Beth being the one who insisted that no decoy had to die, because she knew what was to feel like a copy. When Rick decided to make another family exactly as his own, he also made HIMSELF expendable and interchangeable. We don't need thirty Smith families, the show only needs one and it doesn't matter which one is it as long is one we can recognize. Why couldn't that have been another decoy family that just so happened to want to do a space trip while all the bullshit was happening? I don't think they are ever going to confirm if this was our original Smith family or don't, just like they won't confirm which Beth is the clone, but I personally think it would be fucking hilarious if they were a decoy and Our Rick just died thinking he was a decoy. -Also the way that Space Beth was just casually putting an arm around Morty made me so happy. Considering that Beth is also the mother who prefered to save Summer over Morty when their lives were in danger, I really like the idea that Space Beth sees how much Morty has grown and is proud of him for becoming a badass himself without Rick's help. That is just my headcanon though, but wouldn't be nice to have SOMEONE appreciate Morty? -Finally, but not less important... Rick knew Morty uses a yosemite shirt in order to cum. This man literally knew about the masturbatory habits of his grandson. Rick went as far on his desire to protect his family he used that knowledge for the decoys. He also told Morty to not fuck his double, which is a nice little reference to Morty literally doing that on the comics but also a subtle way to tell us that Morty is definitely Not Straight because, yeah, I am fucking counting selfcest as a form of queerness because regardless of everything else, that is still two identifying male characters fucking. We only need Beth showing attraction to some female character and the entire Smith family would be officially pan/bi.