#i am absolutely not projecting me and my friends onto these children absolutely not

[ghostlyapivorous]

Like, ok I get it's a kid show but I really feel like Shope and Kevin are the kinda middle schoolers to either tell each other to kys over the most mundane of things, or CONSTANTLY making their little white friends uncomfortable by accusing them of racism at every possible opportunity. Maybe both who knows

[lamarkeu]

Episode Summary: Myungho is left home alone with his kids for the first time since their youngest was born allowing his wife to go on a much needed break.

Genre: Fluff (and minor angst)

Masterlist for SVTTROS Series

a/n: Mentions of divorce and child custody (TW)

Italics: Narrators Boo Seungkwan (BS) and Lee Minhyuk (LM)

Bold: Staff

Regular: What family member says / what camera films during the show

Listen To: Wonder by Standing Egg

BS: The Return of Superman, Episode 3 “I Think I Love You ” Part 2.

LM: This condo is absolutely breathtaking. The simple black and whites give off the vibe of modern minimalist layout. Once we pull back the floor to ceiling curtains the high ceilings warm up the space by revealing various artwork once hidden in shadow.

The living room is impeccably clean, for a second your daughter, Luna, is shown laying on her stomach adjacent to her younger brother Minho. The two take turns patting away at the foot of a massive teddy bear they received from their uncle Seungkwan.

BM: Ahh! I know who this is.

LM: Really? I haven’t been able to guess because I’ve been so busy admiring the artwork, it looks like Superman is either an art collector or a painter.

The camera captures how the kitchen perfectly overlooks the living room. Such a small detail can make a world of difference when you’re taking care of children. Zooming in closer towards the opened kitchen the audience sees a pair of hands chopping away on the counter top not going past the wrist level.

“What gift should we give Jeongwoo?” a voice asked before transferring the chopped carrots and onions into a bowl.

“Traditionally speaking clothes and Money should be fine. We’re not part of the intermediate family so we can avoid things like gold.” A second lower voice could be heard off screen, the camera capturing him boiling a pot of water.

“Sounds perfect,”she agrees before placing her used knife and cutting board into the sink as she adds, “I’ll stop by the bank on the way home.” She places her apron on a hook inside their pantry door. Dusting off herself from the ingredients she prepared for her husband to cook while she’s gone. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with them?”

“I promise, now go enjoy spending time with your friends. It’s about time you get a break.” A smile of adoration appears on his face before he leans down to give him a kiss just as the cameras pull up to show their face.

BS: Welcome Seventeen’s kind lead dancer and renowned painter Xu Minghao and renowned makeup artist Y/L/N Y/N. Hyung and Noona I missed seeing you!

LM: Myungho! What a sweet husband.

“Hyungsik might stop by, he said Luna left her project that’s due tomorrow at his house.” Y/N continued as she puts on her shoes in the foyer.

“Okay, I’ll keep an eye on the door camera.”

“See you later babies, I love you.” She calls to her kids with warmth in her voice after kissing her husband on the cheek.

Luna is heard yelling from the living room, “Bye mom, I’ll take care of bàba and didi while you’re gone.”

“That’s my girl. I’m so lucky to have you as my daughter.”

“Hello I’m Seo Myungho better known as Xu Minghao. I am one of Seventeen’s artists. I’m also more proudly known as Luna and Mingyue father.”

“Hi. I’m Y/L/N-Park Luna. I’m five years old. I have a baby brother name Ming Yue. I want to become a artist like my bàba.

“My name is Y/N Y/L/N, I’m a professional make up artist by trade and a passionate skincare business owner. Im also the mother of these beautiful babies. Thank you for inviting our family onto this show I’m a huge fan so this is a dream come true.”

How did you meet?

“I was doing some solo promotions while our Korean members were in the military. Originally I had a makeup artist through PLEDIS but she was about to go on maternity leave. I asked around my friends if they knew anyone that would be willing to take a temporary position. Dokyeom’s wife got in contact with me and relayed how great Y/N was.”

“I worked with Dokyeom doing stage makeup for musical theater since he played King Arthur. I got a message from Lee Y/N asking about Myungho and I immediately said yes. We’ve met before in passing and with other people so I took it as an opportunity for a better introduction.”

“She did quite the job helping with my appearance but also helped calm my nerves when I performed on different stages. Without that introduction I don’t think we would’ve found love the way we did.”

When did you realize you wanted to introduce Myungho to Luna?

“It was pretty early on. I was very upfront about having recently gone through a divorce. Being the amazing man he is, Myungho knew Luna was first priority and wasn’t scared of that.”

“If it were up to me I would’ve met her as soon as we started going out together but, I knew how delicate their situation was, especially because they were figuring out the custody arrangements.”

“Ultimately they did meet in person after 2 years. He was amazing at soothing my concerns and ultimately made me realize that he was in this relationship for the long haul.”

“We officially dated after that, got married and had Mingyue this year.”

What has co-parenting been like for you?

“It’s the best thing I could’ve asked for. I’ve always loved the idea of having a kid and Luna really made me enjoy that even more. I love seeing her grow and figure out who she is. At the end of the day on paper she may not be my biological daughter but in my eyes she will always be my little girl. I have Hyungsik Hyung and Y/N to thank for that.”

“Hyungsik and I much to people’s disbelief ended things on good terms. Now that we’re both remarried I hope that people show us respect for our blended family. I can’t speak for him but I know he’s really thankful for Myungho being another amazing father figure in Luna’s life. I’m so thankful that even when disagreements occur that they look past that because of their love for Luna.”

Do you have any messages for our viewers?

“I know netizens have had their misconceptions of who I am and the relationships I’ve had. I don’t blame them I hope through this show however, they’re able to rewrite their perceptions of myself and my family.”

“Y/N is an amazing mother and partner. To see how the media has manipulated this to benefit their own interests has been something we’ve been trying to fight against. I’m so grateful for the support given to us from my members, carats, Y/N’s fans, and our families for being so supportive during this time. Without you guys I don’t think we would’ve had the courage to share our love story to the public. My goal for our time on this show is to heal from the damages inflicted onto us in the past and expose our viewers to our family dynamic. Ultimately if we help even a single person to become open to blended families like ours I can proudly say that we’ve done our job.”

[lurkingshan]

Intergenerational Trauma Challenge - 10 Years Ticket

Hello friends, it is time again for me to go deep on another entry on the intergenerational family trauma challenge list. When I first suggested the idea of this challenge and asked a few folks what shows we might consider for it, @wen-kexing-apologist and @waitmyturtles both immediately shouted “10 Years Ticket!” I hadn’t seen it yet, but I trusted their judgment that it belonged on the list, and moved it near the top of my watch priorities. And phew lord, does it belong on this list. The drama explores intergenerational trauma extensively via a story of multiple families living in a small town community. 

So what is the deal with this drama? 10 Years Ticket is a Thai lakorn about four children and their families, all of whom are dear friends and neighbors, who are torn apart by the murder of one of their family members, by another of their family members. The two families whose blood ties were involved in the crime become bitter enemies, dragging the whole community into the fight, and crucially for this project, the adults push that trauma down onto their young children. As wka says, this show is about the harm that is done when a community breaks down rather than coming together in the wake of tragedy. 

Before I start digging into the trauma themes in this one, a note on my overall experience with the drama: I was extremely engaged even as my emotions about different aspects of the drama were mixed. The cast is fantastic and the drama is gorgeous, but the writing has some significant weak spots (some of which I suspect may be based in lakorn genre conventions, which I am admittedly not yet well-versed enough to parse). I wouldn't unreservedly recommend this to everyone, but depending on which aspects of the story you are most interested in, there’s a lot to get out of it. If you love a great mystery with excellent judgment about what information to withhold and when and where to place its reveals? Fairly strong with some minor missteps. If you are here for romance? Nah–there are romance subplots but they’re not particularly well-executed and they are pretty extraneous to the main narrative. If you want a gritty crime story with realistic villains and a satisfying conclusion? You will be laughing your ass off and not because the show wants you to. But if you’re here for the family stories and deep examination of a community in crisis? 10/10, absolutely recommend. (cc @chickenstrangers and @neuroticbookworm for my overall review—stop reading after this friends, spoilers ahead!) @dribs-and-drabbles also tagging you as a fellow 10YT enjoyer and one of the like five people on this website who may have an interest in reading a ridiculously long essay about it. :)

So, let’s get into it! 10YT is an ensemble show with many characters with endless complex connections, so I am going to do this breakdown family by family for your sanity and mine. Right off the top, some themes you’ll see running throughout that are particularly relevant to an Asian context: taboo, saving face, filial piety, devotion to the nuclear family unit, conditional parental love, community ostracization, and denial of queer identity. And some content warnings for discussion of: child abuse, physical violence, gun violence, Alzheimer’s disease, substance abuse, and drug trafficking. From this point forward, I am assuming anyone still reading has seen the show, because lord would all of this be impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t. Shoutout to turtles and wka for reviewing to make sure I didn’t miss anything major and helping me with the screenshots for this post, and a general heads up that this is long long.

Our Star-Crossed Lovers

Before digging into the family relationships, a word about our star-crossed lovers at the center of this tragedy, because it’s important to understand it as we get into the families. The drama really did take its sweet time with this reveal, but in the end we understood why this relationship was such a big damn dramatic secret—Luk is about five years older than Mai and already a teacher, and Mai is still a student. Their relationship is rooted in taboo, which is why they are sneaking around and likely why Luk carries so much guilt and shame that she makes the incredibly stupid and selfish decision to punish herself and tear apart their families by lying that she murdered Mai. There are other reasons given—namely, that she wanted to save face for Mai and his loved ones and prevent people from finding out he was a drug runner—but they don’t really hold up to any scrutiny. Luk told this lie to punish herself and didn’t really ever give a thought to how in doing so, she was punishing and harming everyone else, too, not to mention utterly failing to save face for her own family, whose lives are destroyed by her lie (apologies for not mincing words here, I have zero respect for Luk’s decision and one of my biggest criticisms of the drama is that it tries to paint this as a noble sacrifice and act of love and position her as some kind of voice of wisdom, which, *blows raspberry*).

The Siraphuchaya Family

So let’s begin with the family at the center of our plot and the heart of our story. Their relationships with each other are quite varied and the lines of generational trauma between them complex, so I’m breaking them down into subsections. The key people in this family unit are Santi, the patriarch; Sai, Phukao’s mother and Santi’s current wife; Mai, Santi’s first son; Phukao, Santi and Sai’s son; and the woman haunting them all, Mai’s mother Ranya. 

Mai and Phukao

The most wholesome relationship in this show by a mile, Mai and Phukao are half brothers who share a deep bond. They have different mothers and about a ten year age gap between them, which results in Mai taking on a role akin to a third parent and protector for Phukao in their abusive household. In turn, Phukao idolizes his brother and loves him unreservedly, and expresses sorrow and confusion about why their parents don’t seem to love Mai the same way they love him. Mai grows up in a household where his presence is clearly unwanted and resented, and Phukao grows up keenly aware that despite all the good he sees in Mai, others, including his parents, don’t feel the same way. And despite Phukao’s own experience of unconditional parental love, he bears witness to the conditional love his parents express for Mai and the violence that occurs whenever those conditions are not met.

Mai and Santi

Which brings me to Santi. From the beginning, we see that Santi treats his sons very differently. He is protective and loving toward Phukao, but antagonistic and quick to anger with Mai. We eventually come to understand that Santi is holding a burning resentment and hatred for Mai’s mother, Ranya, which manifests in his verbal, emotional, and physical abuse of their son. Santi is also a serious alcoholic and his substance abuse exacerbates the issue. 

Even from the first episode before Mai’s parentage was made clear, the signs were there that Mai’s family resents his presence. Mai sleeps on a mattress on the floor in a tiny room off the main floor hallway while his baby brother has a big bedroom with a giant bed on the second floor of the house. His parents never seemed happy to see him; he is nearly always greeted with suspicion, distrust, or at best, indifference. They hold him up to Phukao as an example of how he can be treated if he doesn’t behave—in one early scene, Santi explicitly tells Phukao that if he misbehaves he will have to start treating him like Mai. In gatherings with the neighbors, they talk proudly about Phukao but ignore Mai’s presence. And Santi nearly always finds a reason to discipline Mai with physical violence upon his return home, which makes it easy to understand why Mai was spending as much time away as possible and looking for ways out. 

We see Santi abusing Mai throughout the drama, often while Phukao and his mother Sai look on—Phukao in anguish, Sai in indifference (more about her soon). But the scene that best captures their dynamic and gets to the heart of the trauma that lays between them is in episode 7. Mai comes home from surreptitiously spending time with his mother, Santi sniffs out his secret, and the worst episode of abuse depicted in the show unfolds as Santi strings Mai up by a rope on a rafter in the garage and proceeds to beat him with a leather belt in full view of Sai, Phukao, and any onlooker that just happens to be passing by. Throughout the beating, Santi berates Mai for seeing his mother, insisting that she is evil and Mai needs to stay away from her. Watching it unfold, one gets the feeling that Santi is trying to literally beat any trace of Mai’s mother out of him.

What’s most interesting about this scene is the implication that Santi is deeply concerned for Mai’s welfare and genuinely trying to protect him from something, even as he himself is Mai’s greatest source of pain. Somewhere along the way, Santi’s emotions have become hopelessly tangled and warped to the point where this abuse “for Mai’s own good” is the only expression of love he can manage toward his eldest son. It’s horrific, it’s tragic, and it really makes you wonder what the hell happened between Santi and Mai’s mother to poison this father-son relationship so deeply.

The Ranya of it All

Ranya. What a character. What a piece of work. And yet somehow, what a deeply sympathetic portrayal of a woman forced into a life she didn’t want and rebelling against it to the point of cruelty. I did not like this woman, and yet I was unexpectedly moved by her story.

So what the hell happened between Ranya and Santi? They fell in love. They got married. And then Santi pressured her to have a child she didn’t want, because he was fixated on the idea of having a traditional nuclear family (for reasons the show never fully elucidated, but I extrapolate are related to some generational trauma he himself is carrying and a desire to be head of a new family to make up for whatever his childhood lacked). She went along with it despite knowing she did not want to be a mother because she was in love. And sure enough, once she had made it through the pregnancy and began her life as a mother, she was miserable. So she rejected motherhood and abandoned her family when Mai was only an infant, one of the greatest sins a woman can commit in any culture, and certainly in the Asian context where family values and collectivist mindset demands sacrifice for the good of the family unit over personal satisfaction. 

And Santi hated her for it. Hated her because he loved her and she left him. Hated her because she didn’t give him the dream vision he had of a beautiful family. Hated her because he still wanted her. And ultimately, transmitted his impotent rage and twisted love from her onto their son. She, in turn, hated Santi for not being happy with just the two of them, and for destroying their relationship by forcing her into motherhood. And while she doesn’t hate Mai, she certainly doesn’t love him or care for his well-being. 

When Ranya sails back into town many years after abandoning him, she is bitter and hardened and she sees Mai as a means to an end and an easy target. She appears to have similar substance abuse issues to Santi, and she is in deep debt. She needs money, Mai is desperate for parental love and affection, and she sees an opportunity to take advantage. And so she pushes Mai into working with one of the local drug running operations, tells him pretty lies about using the money he is making to buy them a house to live in together, manipulates him into further provoking Santi in her honor, and then skips town with all his money just as the shit hits the fan. It’s one of the last things Mai experiences before his death, a confirmation that neither his father nor his mother really loves him or wants to care for him, exponentially compounding his emotional devastation and leaving him utterly certain that no one will help him. After he is murdered in cold blood by the very people she pushed him to work for, she uses the opportunity to extort money from Luk’s family for years, only coming around when she needs cash. 

Phukao, Santi, and Sai

In the aftermath of Mai’s death, Phukao’s family as he knows it falls apart. He has lost his beloved brother under shocking circumstances, he has been torn apart from one of his best friends as his family bitterly feuds with hers, his father has descended even further into addiction and depression, his parents fight violently until they eventually split up and his father leaves the family home, and through it all he does not feel the unconditional support he expects from his friends and neighbors. Oh sure, they support him, but they also support Kongkwan and her family, a fact which eventually comes to enrage and embitter him. 

Because that’s not how this is supposed to work. If you’ve watched other Asian dramas, you are probably very familiar with the “bad seed” and community ostracization tropes, aka the belief that any blood relative of a person who has committed a heinous crime should be shunned and shamed by the collective community. According to that cultural norm, Luk’s family should be abandoned and ostracized by the community following her murder confession, and while that does happen to some extent, their circle of close friends and neighbors remain sympathetic to them, in particular caring for and protecting Kongkwan, everyone’s favorite fragile sweetheart. 

As Phukao grows and becomes more and more mired in despair and desperation and (justifiable) anger at the injustice of it all, the community begins to view him as difficult, backing away from him, dismissing his feelings, and demanding that he stop making them think about it. Some of his closest friends and loved ones essentially withdraw their explicit emotional support and care for him, and in some cases condemn him and respond to his emotional outbursts with violence. And remember, for the entirety of this story, Phukao is a child. Yet the adults around him seem afraid of his emotion and utterly incapable of extending to him the same level of empathy they easily give Kongkwan and even Luk, our supposed murderess. Feels kinda gendered, doesn’t it? I can’t help but think that Phukao is being punished largely for failing to maintain the stoic model of masculinity that is so often modeled in Asian cultures. 

And what are Santi and Sai doing while their son is emotionally falling apart? They are wrapped up in their own nonsense and sparing very little attention to his actual needs even as they try to control him and loudly proclaim their love for him. Santi is wallowing in his depression and isolation and drinking himself half to death, with noose imagery hovering around him so that we can’t miss how low he is driving himself. Though interestingly, he never turns to violence against Phukao to vent his feelings in the manner he did with Mai. Phukao is clearly a manifestation of the son and family Santi always dreamed of; he loves him in a much more pure way than he ever managed with Mai. And so while he can’t get his shit together to be a good dad to him, he is also not an abusive and terrifying figure to Phukao, to the point where Phukao becomes fixated on getting him to come home. Because for Phukao, despite every monstrous aspect of Santi he’s borne witness to, the only thing that will give him any comfort and feeling of security is having what remains of his family together and intact, as they are supposed to be.

While Phukao desperately tries to get his dad to come home, Sai is caught up in navel gazing over her regrets, as we come to learn that she had a great love before Santi. But Pin was a woman and Sai did not feel free to pursue their relationship, and so when she got pregnant she agreed to marry Santi and raise Mai, as well. But as we saw, she didn’t keep that commitment. Sai came into the marriage regretful and wistful over her lost love and her inability to pursue a life more aligned with her authentic queer self, and that manifested in both indifference to Mai and her husband’s violence toward him, and an unhealthy attachment to and pressure on Phukao to be “worth it.” Worth giving up the life she wanted, worth living with this man she clearly didn’t love, and worth never being with Pin. 

Mai eventually turned her own anger and self-loathing about her choices on Luk and Mai, trying to tear them apart when she learned of their relationship because if she didn’t get to keep her “taboo” love, why should they? When Phukao begins to figure some shit out, lets go of his anger, and starts developing feelings for Kongkwan, Sai freaks the fuck out and tries to repeat the pattern, which feels rooted in her need to keep Phukao under her control and devoted to her to give her life meaning. She finds his interest in Kongkwan threatening and attempts to stamp it out. Unlike Luk, though, Phukao is not having it. 

Kongkwan, Luk, Veena, and Somkiat

Over to the family on the other side of the tear in the fabric of this community. Luk, our star-crossed lover and faux murderer, is the eldest daughter of a seemingly pleasant family with no big stressors or clear markers of their own generational trauma. Veena and Kiat appear to have a decent marriage, stable financial status, and good relationships with their daughters, Kongkwan is thriving while Luk has finished college and become a teacher, and before Luk confesses to killing Mai, all seems well. There is a large age gap between Luk and Kongkwan that the show never explains—I expected to learn something deeper about their family, but we never really got there. As far as we know, they were a solid and functional family unit.

The intergenerational trauma for this family is instead depicted in the aftermath of Mai’s murder and Luk’s false confession. As I mentioned above, Luk’s choice to cover for Mai destroyed her family’s lives. They lost jobs, financial security, several homes, and many relationships, not least of which is the deep bond they once had with the Sirapuchaya family. And when a devastated Santi refuses to forgive Luk and hurls vitriol at her parents (justifiably IMO, what on earth were Kiat and Veena thinking showing up to Mai’s funeral to demand forgiveness for their daughter who had explained nothing), Kiat and Veena become angry and bitter and decide to hate him, and his child, right back.

This is of course a toxic dynamic, and Kongkwan and Phukao are the ones who suffer most for it. On the heels of losing her older sister, Kongkwan is also forced to give up her friendship with Phukao and told to hate him. Her parents start with small things like not inviting him to her birthday party (leaving poor baby Phukao out in the cold and all alone while his family falls apart) and eventually escalate to getting violent with him (both striking him in anger) and explicitly telling Kongkwan that Phukao is a bad person that she must avoid (ironically, giving him the “bad seed” treatment that Kongkwan should be receiving under cultural norms). Over time, Veena and Somkiat develop a seething hatred for Phukao that is actually quite visceral and difficult to comprehend; they seem to find him a symbol for all the unfairness they have endured and the easiest target for their rage and cannot get ahold of themselves enough to temper their reactions to him. 

Kongkwan, a gentle soul, is torn between being a filial and obedient child and going along with an attitude and treatment toward Phukao that she knows is wrong, and it is plainly tearing her apart. Throughout the story, she is emotionally overwhelmed, swinging between deep sadness and bursts of defiant anger, and she often looks like she is one more provocation away from shattering. And as the community tears itself apart around her, Kongkwan is also mired in anguish and confusion about her sister’s choices. As Kongkwan mentions at one point late in our story, no one, including her parents, has ever bothered to question whether Luk actually committed this murder, but she has never believed the lie. She knows her sister well enough, or perhaps is just too gentle a person, to imagine that Luk could have actually done that to Mai. 

And it’s important not to lose in all of this that Kongkwan loved Mai, too. His death was a loss for her as well as for Phukao, and no one really tended to her grief in the aftermath, which clearly runs deep based on the way she clings to objects that remind her of him (the film strip necklace, the Brother Uncle doll). She is just as broken by all of this as Phukao, they just express it very differently.

And before our story ends, Kongkwan will endure yet another devastating loss, when Veena is killed by the drug runners for witnessing their crimes and collaboration with dirty cops. This is compounded by the fact that Veena and Kongkwan’s relationship is in tatters when Veena is killed. Veena has just struck her in anger after Kongkwan demanded an explanation for why her parents were ripping her away from her friends and fought back when they once again tried to force her to carry their hatred for Phukao (her first real stand against her parents after being a dutiful and filial daughter through all their years of bullshit). Kongkwan takes off for the night with her friends to say goodbye before she is forced to leave, and in that short delay her mother is killed—another trauma that Kongkwan will have to bear forever. 

This family is an utter tragedy, to go from stable and loving to this, and all because of their own bad choices. Veena and Somkiat both utterly collapsed under the weight of Luk’s choices and their fallout, compounding them exponentially with their own inability to regulate themselves, and pushed all their trauma down onto Kongkwan, who must now do the hard work of living on amidst the destruction her family has wrought. 

Plu, Pum, and Yo

Phew, let’s take a break and look at this smiling family, shall we? I can’t believe I have already written this many words with nary a mention of my beloved best boy Plu, but that should tell you how much is going on in this show! While Plu gets caught up in the traumatic events that are deeply affecting his best friends and has some of his own family problems to deal with, he is not suffering from intergenerational trauma to the same degree as Phukao and Kongkwan. Plu lost his parents at a very young age (we do not find out the specifics of how), but is raised with attention and care by his wonderful grandparents who clearly love him dearly. He spends his childhood with close neighbors and friends and shares a deep bond with and protective instincts for his slightly younger friends Phukao, Kongkwan, and Lookzo.

So how is all this community trauma affecting Plu? He is a classic people pleaser and caretaker who just wants everyone to be okay. He also wants to support all parties in this situation without taking sides or hurting anyone’s feelings, which is of course impossible, but I do love him for trying. He took it upon himself to care for Phukao and be the big brother he needed in the aftermath of Mai’s death, but he always maintained his friendship with Kongkwan, as well, a fact that Phukao finds hard to accept. Plu is torn between his love for Phukao and Kongkwan, which becomes extra complicated when they get older and he develops (ill-advised and doomed) romantic feelings for Kongkwan that cloud his judgment and create a rift with Phukao. He is yet another person who hits Phukao without real justification, but unlike the adults he at least has the grace to feel ashamed (can you tell I am in my feelings about this??).

As all of this is unfolding, he is also dealing with his own family struggles, as Pom develops Alzheimer’s disease and her medical needs take a financial toll on the family, leading Plu to become involved with the same drug running crew that killed Mai, because apparently a legal job wouldn’t cut it to pay for Grandma’s prescriptions. (I should also mention here that via Plu’s involvement with the drug running crews we get a glimpse into some intergenerational trauma being passed down in those families, as the heads of each organization force a very hard life onto their children, but we’re not going to get into that because I have to stop somewhere or I’ll be writing this post from my grave). 

In any event, Yo can clearly see that his grandson is lying and doing something dangerous to bring home money, but he doesn’t stop him, presumably because they desperately need it. And Pom’s deteriorating memory and mental health take a real toll on both Plu and Yo, who just have sorrow wafting off them in waves in every scene where she doesn’t recognize them. This is a family in struggle together, not causing struggle for each other, unlike Phukao and Kongkwan’s situations.  

Lookzo and Oh

This section is going to be short because Zo and Oh have never done anything wrong in their lives and I know this. They are a perfect little father/daughter duo with an easy relationship, despite some sadness they must have endured around whatever happened to Zo’s mother (the show never gives us this information). Oh is a single father doing his best and he supports Zo through all her milestones and moods, creating a safe home where she can be herself and express her feelings to him without fear. He is also a sweetheart to her friends and welcoming to both Kongkwan and Phukao while maintaining his own friendships and acting as a mediator between their parents. 

Zo’s main worries throughout the drama are twofold: she has a crush on an utterly clueless Plu (despite his silly little hats), and she is similarly torn between her love for Kongkwan and Phukao and resentful of all the adults around them trying to destroy their bonds with each other. She is honest and forthright and though she sometimes runs off at the mouth in ill-advised ways, she always owns it and if she was wrong she will immediately admit it and apologize. In one of my favorite scenes of the entire drama, she lights into Kiat and Santi for tearing the community apart and destroying her friends, and then collapses on Oh to sob about how exhausted she is by all this bullshit and how she just wants to live her life with her friends in peace. She is all of us, easily the most relatable character in this show, and I love her. 

The Core Four

So after that exhaustive summation of all the trauma they are enduring throughout our story, I turn to the final question on all of our minds: are these babies going to be okay? I think the answer is a bit of a mixed bag with a tilt toward hope. 

Throughout the drama, I kept wanting these kids to just get in the car, drive far away from their parents, and never come back. But this is an Asian drama and filial piety reigns supreme, so of course they were never going to abandon their parents. And if they can’t be free, at least Phukao and Kongkwan found some measure of peace in the end. Kongkwan still has her father and a newly released Luk to cling to in the aftermath of Veena’s murder and they seem committed to being better to each other and finally letting go of all the bitterness now that Luk has come clean about what really happened (I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Kiat explicitly says he is grateful for Veena’s death because it gives him the opportunity to be a better dad, a fridging for the ages!). Phukao has made his peace with his parents’ split and given Sai his blessing to pursue her best lesbian life, and Santi has done a (wildly unrealistic IMO) heel turn upon learning Luk did not kill Mai, let go of all of his anger, and pledged to do better as Phukao’s father. These families will never be free of the decade of trauma they all endured and the scars it left on them, but they can at least finally move forward from it. 

And of course, our core four kiddos stuck together and refused to let the adults succeed in destroying their relationships, though it was certainly a near thing. Even if things get better from here on out, they must live with the pain of all that they endured, and Phukao and Kongkwan in particular have suffered losses they will likely never fully recover from. It isn’t lost on me either that these traumatic events all occurred in the most formative years of their lives, when your experiences shape who you will become. They will carry these traumas through their lives and likely pass them down to the next generation, even if they manage to mitigate the damage better than their own parents did. If nothing else, we can say that at least if their bonds with each other are tattered, torn, and bruised, they are still intact. In the end, despite incredible pressure, ample doubt, and deep turmoil, they chose each other, and they will continue to care for each other through whatever life throws at them next. 

[elmaxlys]

Hii! For the favs ask game,

31 for juo, 18 for rika and 50, 48 and 1 for both!! :3

Ooooh thank you so much!! :DD

Juo:

1- Do you project onto this character?

In regards to gender and loving Rika, but otherwise no

31- Are you ashamed of liking this character?

Absolutely not. I used to be sorta ashamed (more like scared to share) of liking Juoka, which is why I didn't talk about them before I became friends with Choco and she encouraged me in preaching my truth lol but Juo alone? Nah.

Maybe because I had prior experience in stanning villains with no redeeming qualities (Donato) 🤔 (and Juo has the redeeming quality of being insanely hot)

48- What’s your favorite physical/design feature for this character?

I COULD GO ON FOR HOURS ABOUT HIS DESIGN

He's soooo!!!! He's everything!!! i fell in love at first sight in the first panel we saw of him!!! It's all good elements put together to create God's (Oba's) perfect creature.. The long hair, the muscles, the jumpsuit, the long-ass eyelashes, the missing eye, the tattoos hhhhhhhh I can't choose only one element!

If I do have to choose, I'm gonna go with the black lightning. It's so Juo, it summarizes his character so well.. Amazing decision 🥰

50- Your fav song, playlist, aesthetic board, fan-fiction, reference pile, personal artwork, analysis post, meme, headcanon, or quote for this character

Ooooh

This playlist - as for One Song in particular, right now I'm going with 18 by Anarbor IF YOU WANNA PISS OFF YOUR PARENTS DATE ME TO SCARE THEM SHOW THEM YOU'RE ALL GROWN UP. IF LONG HAIR AND TATTOOS ARE WHAT ATTRACT YOU BABY THEN YOU'RE IN LUCK

This post <- one day I'll complete it with the Seven Seas TL

Quote + panel:

adding more panels because I can:

Meme:

As for my artwork, right now it's the most recent one

Rika:

1- Do you project onto this character?

Oh yeah. I totally do. Middle children unite. I project so much it sometimes makes me lose sight of canon so it's not ideal and I wish I could put some more distance (I say while using him as my icon) but at the same time he's too much of a part of me and there's too much of me I see in him for me to really try...

As an aside: every time you see me talk about Rika having some grudge against Sniper? It's personal.

18. Do you prefer to see this character suffer or know peace? Angst or comfort? Both?

Both, definitely. Hurt/comfort all the way. It's definitely something he goes through a lot (if not every time) in my fics: I break him down and then make him all better via Juo Love lmao

He needs some rest and I am delighted to provide that for him but boy do I love seeing him break down 🥰

48- What’s your favorite physical/design feature for this character?

Call me Floor 9 because it's THE HAMMER. Dude is out there incorporating any sport he can to fighting with a hammer, he's killing people with Hammer-Kendo and he tried to play Hammer-Baseball, like he's So Real for that, also it's so good like yesss he'll get in your face and get covered in your blood when he kills you, unlike his siblings who fight with guns, he's close and personal with death.

Like it's such a heavy tool and it requires so much control if you don't want to fuck up your entire body trying to swing it and he just. he does it. repeatedly. He does kendo moves with a tool with a complete different balance and a wayyy more important weight than a shinai. Did he use a sledgehammer before? Did he recreationally watch sledgehammer videos like I do? Did he just do the whole calculation in his head the second his hand touched it? Did the "Rika Knows The Future" crack theory strike again? I am In Love with the fact Rika uses a sledgehammer. I used to joke that "Rika x Hammer-chan is OTP" but was I wrong??

50- Your fav song, playlist, aesthetic board, fan-fiction, reference pile, personal artwork, analysis post, meme, headcanon, or quote for this character

Song: I'm gonna go with Second Guessing by Get Scared and Daylight by Shinedown

Quote: rn i gotta go with this

My artwork (I kinda want to redraw it)

I'm also gonna put this here

meme because it's always Loving Rika Hours

as well as the Crack Theory

-----

Favorite characters asks

[mieowkoid09]

Take my Ramblings on how I think relationships work between the Lustrous because 2/3 of my personality is made up of these gems' dynamics

So before I get into the main meat of what I think, I should probably talk about the families. first of all. I think that the families can have romantic relations between each other. Insert booing and rocks being thrown. Okay wait! let me explain myself before ya'll start abusing your rocks you heathens. basically, this is gonna get into territory that i'm not fully equipped to explain, so you know how the "Uchihas" from naruto are? they basically inbreed with eachother ya know but they still aren't fully related at all so they can have healthy kids but they still share the same dna, you could even say they share the same "structure"? yeah, thats basically how I think the gem family relationships are. they do share the same structure and name and call themselves family but they don't have to restrict themselves to JUST being siblings, they can be lovers too. they can call themselves "brothers" while being romantically involved. they aren't like us and they don't share the factor that we could produce unhealthy offspring if they are involved with their sibling, since they can't have children nor do they have blood!!(thankfully, since that would be insanely gorey) and I may be wrong but I don't think that the term for "Brother" in japan is only limited to siblings. fact check me if i am in fact wrong please.(Btw i'm not in the naruto fandom at all, I've just watched some theory videos and watched some video essays, also i watched a few episodes of naruto when I was younger)

Now, before I get myself hit with more rocks. time to talk about how I believe the gems' relationships are. mainly the romantic ones since tbr, romantic relations are some of the most complicated things ever and that's probably why we're so drawn to them (sorry romance nonfavorable/romance repulsed aromantics, you will be missed)

I personally think that romance in the lustrous world, is actually incredibly discouraged. these gems can still enter romantic relations but it is incredibly discouraged because, we have seen what happens when these gems lose that person that they love.

They go absolutely crazy. they even break themselves. and this is off topic but now that I think about it, Diamond and Bortz's relationship is like how trans people see other trans people who look more like what they want to look like, at least from what I've heard from some videos on youtube. and ngl, its kinda scary- anyways, back mostly on topic with Rutile. I've recently watched RGU(Revolutionary Girl Utena) and tbh, how Rutile treats Padparadscha kinda reminds of how Utena treats Anthy. Utena practically puts Anthy on a pedestal and wants to help Anthy end her job as the Rose Bride even though, Utena practically knows nothing about Anthy because Utena projects what she thinks is right onto Anthy, although it isn't entirely off, Utena doesn't even try to understand Anthy. JUST LIKE FREAKING RUTILE AND PADPARADSCHA- Rutile and Utena practically lose their identity when they lose Padparadscha and Anthy. just- UGH it's so good. Now time to stop talking about Rutile, and go to our very shiny friend and my Autoromantic/Panromantic/Polyamorous headcanon, being Diamond, since they were the one to bring up the fact that Cinnabar may have Romantic feelings for our beloved Phosphophyllite.

Dang both Ventricosus and Diamond ship CinnaPhos. they can't get a break lol. especially with most of the fandom practically shipping them lmaooo. And this is just a little headcanon but I think Diamond used that "Are you gay?" card on Cinnabar when Cinnabar was rambling about how much they "despise" Phos because that's practically what happens when these gems lose the ones they love. They probably start blaming the ones that got taken before they start blaming themselves because it practically starts becoming a pattern in Yellow's case. omg now I can imagine Yellow just talking about their romances with their former partners lol. and now that I think about it, Yellow did blame Zircon for being an idiot for trying to save Yellow, more toned down than Cinnabar's rant and how much of an idiot Phos was but still, that stings. and now this has become not just a little headcanon and more of a parallel it seems. wow, how we can change during writing.

ALSO DID ANYONE ELSE FEEL INCREDIBLY SAD WHEN THE GEMLUNARIAN THING THAT WAS KISSING DIAMOND IN THE PARTY AT THE END ARTBOOK WASN'T ACTUALLY NAMED!?

WE WANNA KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!

Also- possible romance between Aqua and Emerald???

Eh probably. anyways ima end this tangent even tho ima probably gonna get a lot of backlash from the people in this fandom for my controversial opinions but that's fine, hopefully. yeah no i'm probably gonna get murdered.

[dracotheocracy]

CONGRATULATIONS DIPSHIT! YOU HAVE WON ONE FREE PASS TO TALK ABOUT A BLORBO FOR BEING MY FRIEND!

oh yeah let me just pause that ska cover of no children. engage's release reawakened (<- intentional wording) an old demon you are in for a treat

once upon a time in 2018 or 2017 idk time is fake i played a game called fire emblem awakening and my brain chemistry was altered forever. i got particularly attached to the avatar protagonist (read: character you're supposed to project onto despite being a more or less fully realized character) who's some person named robin. yes, i have had category 7 adhd moments about two characters named robin and you can make the argument that it happened back to back. sue me etc

fun fact i did the math, i've watched every single support conversation with robin in it multiple times. there's 43 characters in awakening according to my notes and because robin is an avatar they get a support chain (4 conversations but we're calling it 3 because i never watched most of the S supports) with every character in the game. across two genders and assuming that i included spotpass characters which i in all likelihood actually didn't, that's 252 conversations that each take 1 or 2 minutes to get through, or about 4 hours of content for one session of watching every single robin support.

point is i know a lot about the character and am so normal. so so normal i promise

now i can tell when i've taken a couple facets of a canon character and sprinted off into the sunset with them. absolutely, without question, i did that here. so robin's story potential in a setting where awakening could be better written contributes a normal amount to why i like the character so much. i'm just gonna talk about why

in short, the deal with robin fire emblem is that they woke up in a field with no memories and as it turns out that's probably for the best because they're the child of the high priest of the religion centered around reviving the BBEG, and also they carry the blood of the BBEG in them and can get possessed by it. and the BBEG wants to bring about the apocalypse also important note. in the original awakening timeline robin befriends chrom (mortal enemy by blood) and later betrays and murders him before being possessed by grima BBEG and bringing about the end of the world. it's also worth noting that chrom and robin have chemistry they're not just a popular ship because they're both major characters i really love chrobin and i do also fluctuate between reading robin as aro/ace and bi because like, look. maybe i'm projecting a little but disregarding the S supports because they have to write the C-B-A supports as almost entirely nonromantic due to how awakening's matchmaking mechanics function they really do strike me as married to the grind in a way that's pretty aro of them tbh

there's a part of my brain that sincerely believes they would not have gone the amnesia route if robin wasn't meant to be an avatar protagonist (they're a deuteragonist until act 3 but who's keeping track really (me. i am)), and if they had not gone the amnesia route awakening would have been a lot cooler, because the mortal enemies by blood thing would've been on the table way before halfway through act 2. it's a very good source of emotional conflict for both robin and chrom though i imagine chrom wouldn't really discover this information until the middle part of act 2 or potentially act 3. there's a lot of different ways to write robin in this scenario that are SO COOL AND INTERESTING also like on the one hand robin could be completely on board with the infiltrate the shepherds and kill chrom before ascending to satanhood bit but gradually become genuine friends with a lot of the shepherds and realize "oh what if... what if this is all really fucked up actually and i don't want to bring about the end of the world" there is so much potential in that, alternatively robin starts already wanting out of everything the grimleal stand for and has to grapple with knowing their time with the shepherds is not built to last, or at least thinking that, because you know they're the child of the high priest of a cult that is extremely influential in their home country, they would've grown up entrenched in certain rhetoric about the state of the world and their place in it. if robin's character arc was about cult indoctrination and escaping that it would FUCKING BANG! IT WOULD GO HARD AS HELL! and you don't have to ditch the wider story theme about defying destiny and how people are made strong by their relationships even a little bit to pursue that because adding that element in would synergize perfectly with the broader theme already

either way if robin wasn't an amnesiac it would create some fantastic points of tension in the story if handled properly because a) ylisse (good guy country) and plegia (grimleal bad guy country) have a very poor relationship politically for a good though severely underexplained reason, which either gives the shepherds a reason to be very wary of robin at first or gives robin a reason to be very wary of the shepherds at first depending on how you're playing out the prologue. as an aside frederick should have recognized robin's outift as that of a grimleal worshipper it's a stupidly minor detail that i will die mad about. b) idk i feel like the stuff that happens with robin in act 3 where they for real get possessed and forced to betray the shepherds a few times would hit more like a freight train if there was more context, mostly because i think it would affect robin a lot more knowing the amount of effort they had to put into to getting this far and distancing themself so much from grima only to succumb to something outside their control just by getting within like 20 feet of their dad or something idk c) if you go the covert enemies to found family route i don't think robin can be normal about that and it sets up for a potentially really fun confrontation about robin's motives that would have to happen in the late game after the character has progressed in the optimal direction for it

also they fit the bill for a [mars] character very well like i would play a character with that sort of personality and that sort of backstory in a TTRPG campaign and that's the condensed way to describe my blorbo formula. i've said this before but i like playing characters that are just some guy personality-wise, both robins fit the bill for that but m!robin a little more cause yeah i don't play a lot of women in TTRPGs and the [mars] character formula for women is a little bit different. not by a lot mind you but eh. generally though yeah sure they're a very shrewd tactician and pretty good at reading people from what i remember, their accomplishments and backstory in-game might make them seem larger than life but you know in reality they're a generally pleasant person albeit a bit sarcastic and prone to social blunders that are mostly benign. like as a character both robins are more grounded than a decent portion of the cast and my gimmick as a player and as an enjoyer of characters in silly media is going for the most grounded characters. you know like you could very believably meet someone like that in real life. anyway i'm a fan of characters that are hypercompetent in a specific field and at least a little dorky outside of that. robin is a hypercompetent dork so it's perfect

[theduchessofconnaught]

there is something so cringy and unsettling to me about how so many people in this fandom talk about other people in terms of “our“ and “my“. joking contexts aside, these are entire human beings, and you shouldn’t be projecting yourself and your interests onto them, and you absolutely should not pretend like you speak for them.

i honestly think that’s what i hate the most about royal fans, just the extremes people will go. i was listening to the celebrity memoir book club on spare, and one of the hosts was saying how she wished people didn’t hate meghan with such vitriol, because any innocent comment would be taken as positive criteria that meg is the anti-christ. i read the book, and meg did come off as a bit cooky/dorky, but that’s not a bad thing (i still like her! i just don’t know if we’d be friends which honestly would be mutual because i am also a flawed person), and i’d love to feel i can say that without people starting to pile on about how she’s manipulative/fake/narcissistic because that’s not what i’m saying and that kind of hatred towards a stranger is so bizarre and unhealthy.

even people, always on twitter and often with photos of royals as their icons, will say things like “meghan bullied charlotte“ and not only is that unfounded (the article referenced charlotte crying because her dress did not fit; i have worked with children, one child started crying because i told her that her friend got to go to the bathroom first and they couldn’t go together, and yeah, a lot of them will because they don’t like the fit of their clothes, 99% of the time children crying means nothing), but is also such a stretch to go from an incident like that to determining meg is this evil person. these are the same people who go all “how dare x do that to y“, projecting their own dislike about someone on another person, like “how dare they name their daughter lilibet, and do that to the poor queen“, as if they have forgotten that these people are not extensions of your own ego. you don’t know what the queen thought, so manufacturing your own outrage on her behalf is all kinds of messed up.

this kinda got off topic and i am procrastinating finishing my paper, but it’s just something i had to say.

[mousieta]

Big Dragon rambling

Caveat: I am absolutely obsessed loving Big Dragon. My feral brain has latched onto it and will. Not. Let go. I am starting my 3rd rewatch in anticipation of the final ep. It is fantastic fun and its giving me everything I want in spades.

However-

My writer brain is gonna writerbrain. So if you don’t want critical thoughts go ahead and scroll on by.

IMO one of the biggest writing flaws is Mangkorn’s characterization and its inconsistency. There are a few changes, that I think could have relatively reconciled it within the show. (I am perfectly fine projecting all of this *into* the show, I just think it would feel better written if the show visually rendered some of this)  Also, warning for SPOILERS thru ep 7

Early on there needs to be a larger sense of history between Mangkorn and Yai. Yai is shown to throw a dart at Mangkorn’s face which is great but we need more of that layered in, more acknowledgment that they know one another. Perhaps a montage of them poaching each other’s sexual prospects in various clubs layered with the scene of them hooking up with various people. To further establish them as rivals as well as playboys.

This would make the escalation in the fight over Ajo have a better sense of scale.

Mangkorn’s revelation that he’s had a crush on Yai since he was a freshman and that he’s actually known who Yai is since they were children seems to come out of left field, which isn't necessarily bad if one could go back and see subtle clues that were missed. However, these don’t really exist outside of Mangkorn’s insistence that they try to be friends - which circularly only makes sense in the context of his long term crush.

Again, a fairly straightforward fix would be to more firmly root the first two-ish episodes in Yai’s POV. We shouldn’t ever actually see Mangkorn’s POV and we should always look at Mangkorn from where Yai sits. Establish that we only see Yai’s version of Mangkorn and establish that Yai is unreliable as a narrator when it comes to Mangkorn.

So with these two elements established, we can then have the big reveal when Mangkorn tells his mom that he’s had a crush on Yai for years. A small montage revisiting a few key moments in the first couple eps but establishing that Yai is mis-perceiving Mangkorn. This renders Mangkorn more understandable and then allows us perspective into both of their POVs.

Couple this with not spending so much time with them as kids. We could have that scene but more relevant would be a scene of Mangkorn realizing who Yai is his freshman year, and his initial crush blooming followed by a series of scenes (could be relatively short) showing him trying to get to know Yai but constantly misstepping/fumbling in ways that makes him come off as an asshole. Then, him learning/realizing that Yai is a player and Mangkorn thinking/trying to be a player, too, as a way of connecting with him only to wind up becoming a rival instead of a like-minded peer. Perhaps even layer in some judgey comments from Yai’s friends, to explain his animosity over rich kids that seems directed at Yai but isn’t (in ep 1).

So it becomes clear that Mangkorn being a player is mostly an accident but one that he rolls with because he doesn’t *mind* women throwing themselves at him but he is largely romantically inept (and exclusively homo-romantic; show this rather than just have him allude to it ambiguously). So, this is why, when presented with the chance to get drunk off his ass with his crush and winds up in his bed, he leaps for it and, also why he uses the only leverage he’s been able to find in 4 years to try to get his crush to spend time with him.

Like, I think all of this characterization is potentially there, it is just not realized well with either the directing or writing. I think it is important to see why Mangkorn is so taken with Yai, why he’s held this candle for years despite ostensibly rivaling and seemingly resenting Yai. Where, for Yai, it is understandable that his attraction stems from constant frustration, lust and a truly spectacular one night stand that, coupled with just having to spend so much time together helps him realize he actually likes and cares about Mangkorn, it needs to be clearer why and how Mangkorn’s affection grew as opposed to vague references and hand-waving.

Instead of telling us: Mangkorn has had a crush and found Yai cute for years, Mangkorn has only ever fallen in love with Yai (a man), Mangkorn is terrible at romance and hitting on people, etc etc; it would be nice to see this fleshed out.

[royaletiquette]

❛ you’re avoiding the subject and you know it. what are you hiding from me? ❜ 

angsty bullshit prompts

"Because I obviously don't want to talk about it." Speaking over her shoulder, a tone one would have with a pestering child. "I'm not hiding anything." An eye roll in her voice, dismissing Antoinette's loaded and accusatory question. "I have nothing to hide so stop projecting onto me." She snapped impatiently at the silence, only trying to encourage the other to react the same. 

Too easily did Ann ignore the demand, her ability to manipulate Hibiko not seeming the wane in the slightest over the years. While her back may have been to the other, Hibiko could feel the stare she earned from talking down to the vampire burn a hole through her. Despite her best efforts with pretending she was perfectly happy with moving on from what she so adamantly rejected, she was able to read Ann just as well: there wasn’t going to be another word spoken until Hibiko either gave in or apologized. Unfortunately for the queen, this was a stubbornness contest she always lost. 

"Fine." Threw her hands up in defeat, turning to face Antoinette. "Fine, you were right Annie, is that what you want to hear?" Distain in her voice, may be directed at her friend, but hardly the cause of. She hated this I told you so position she was put in. Not that Hibiko believed the woman would dare voice as much or even thought of the need to hit her over the head with it, but of course, she deserved it after what it put Ann through. “You were right that I’m not happy with him.”

"I don't regret my marriage, I'm smart enough to know that wouldn't change anything. And I love my children so dearly, I wish to possibly have more someday and they're my whole world, but." Her frantic movements in the attempt to justify her own mistakes came to a stop as her words did. Distress moved to her face, Hibiko's meandering stare landing back to Antoinette on the couch in front of her. "I hate everything so much. I mean honestly, it... it sucks and I’m so bored with absolutely anything. I'm an embarrassment among everyone else thanks to my parents, how am I ever going to live that down? Or my kids for that matter. Rohdri thinks it’s fine, he says it was a fire he was happy to quench, but I know they look at me differently than before. I’m forced to carry that shame now, that I knew nothing about."

“And now I mean, I want for nothing.” Moving to sit next to her, an honest vomit of words that had been festering in her for who knew how long. "At least when I was younger, I was fighting for something. Whether it was right or wrong, I had a compass. Now, what the hell could I want that I wouldn't be immediately handed over? I mean god, what's the point? There is no story to have when there is nothing to work for." Resting her head on Antoinette, not at all any less tense than she was before. It was off her chest, but it changed nothing. "Every day and night, the same shit for the rest of my life and it's just starting. And I so gleefully walked into it."

[invisibleventer420]

Not Gonna Happen

What's not gonna happen? My life following traditional norms. I know I never want kids but I feel as though I'll never have a husband, never have a good-paying career, never have any friends, never have a good relationship with my sister, never be able to travel, never be respected or taken seriously by my mother or sister, never have the confidence to stand up for myself.

But what is stopping me from finding a partner, getting a better job, making friends, and gaining self confidence?

Is it me?

I am stopping myself from all of these things. But I ask myself, "is that really true, or are you looking for someone/something to blame?". To that, I do not have an answer.

I don't have a partner because I don't like men. I'm not a lesbian by any means but misogyny is real, it is ingrained in men since childhood. Boys are taught crying is weak, sharing feelings is weak, all women are sensitive emotional messes, all women are supposed to have their children and they're supposed to take care of the shopping, cleaning, and raising kids all alone, they need their woman to make appointments for them, etc. etc. None of that sounds like a good time to me. And on top of that, when men experience severe trauma through parenting or previous romantic relationships, since they are raised to not cry or show emotion, the trauma they have gets more, and more, and more intense over time because it is never dealt with professionally or healthily. Hurt people, hurt people. They will project their trauma onto you and cause you to also have severe trauma (for nothing that is your fault) I'm willing to argue MOST men are hurt and spread their trauma onto others whether they realize it or not.

I will never have a good paying career because all I have is an associates degree, I'm a POC woman, and this economy is really fucked up.

I'll never have friends because, I never have. Any friendships I had where I was in a friend group, was because of a guy I was dating. They were his friends, not mine. And while in these friend groups, I got along with most everyone. But I've never had a friend group of my own. And at the age of 27, it's damn near impossible to create one. I have a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for me to behave in a non-awkward manner. While I don't want to use it as a crutch.. would you judge someone with down syndrome who said "I can't understand math because of the way my brain works"? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But, I will be blamed for explaining why I cannot do certain things BECAUSE of my disorder. Since I do not look retarded, everyone assumes I am faking it, not putting myself out there enough, etc. Neurological disorders do NOT work like that. It is a piece of my brain that literally cannot be fixed. It isn't anxiety, it isn't depression, it isn't anything except the fact: I have an incurable neurological disorder. The neurological disorder causes me to suffer from depression and anxiety because that is what I experience when I come to the realization, I cannot function socially. I don't think anyone will ever read this but I feel as though I need to continue my explanation as to how my neurological disorder affects me. And why is that? Why do I ALWAYS feel like people think I am lying unless I have cold, hard, facts and receipts? Oh yeah, because I lied relentlessly 10+ years ago and my mother still refuses to believe a single word out of my mouth even though I haven't lied to her once, in FUCKING YEARS.

I doubt I'll ever have a good relationship with my sister because really, at the end of the day, I don't like her and I don't think she likes me. The only time I get along with her is when we are at functions with a lot of people. Why is that? Because she is too embarrassed to relentlessly insult me in front of so many people. I cannot even begin to count how many insults I received from her in Georgia. Cannot fucking begin. I was with her today and yesterday and did not receive a single verbal insult (even though I knew what I was wearing, my eyebrows, my body modifications, etc. were being judged by her and it was really hard for her to keep her mouth shut). Was I stared at in a way that told me she deserves to get a reality check by being punched in the face by a stranger? Yes. I will likely always feel that way about her. I don't like her, but I can't even think of the last time I insulted or questioned her appearance. Yet she does it to me 9 times out of 10. Why does she do this? I'll never be able to travel because I will never have friends or a partner and Lord knows women cannot travel alone, especially out of the country. I am way too fucking awkward to do one of those "let's meet each other online and get a group of 5 girls to meet somewhere for a vacation!" I would much, much, much prefer to stay home alone if that is the case. I do not see many positives coming out of that. Only stressors because of how particular I am about my habits, routines, and sleeping quarters.

I don't think I need to get into why my sister and mother will never respect me. They see me as an unstable drug addict with no education that's only dated losers and will never be a normal person. They tell me this through their actions every time I see them.

As far as gaining self confidence, I guess maybe that is one thing that i can learn. And I would like to think I'm trying (slowly). But I know I will NEVER be the type of person that is described as "she's the best but you don't want to fuck with her". And I wish so much to be described like that, but I'm a pussy. And speaking of being a pussy, really, If I wasn't, I would have done it right and kill3d myself 10+ years ago.

[mightyaphrodytee]

Lol, that was season 5, but…

Holy shit so much information has poured all over us for the last two months, it’s hard to keep everything straight in your head. I broke my shoulder during Scandoval, I had endless time in bed, in pain, so I did a rewatch (I’m currently mid-season 7, and I’m not committed to seasons 8 or 9). Every episode. Every blowup, every fight, every meltdown, all the drunkenness and drug abuse, all the infidelity and accusations and denials and tears. And I have thoughts. For posterity, darlings.

I’ve learned (and seen with my own eyes—Florida Girl) that BOTH Tom AND Ariana had some kind of pact, and I think they both took it seriously until Tom abandoned it for Rachel, that they would keep their private struggles, whatever they might be, OFF the show and hidden from their castmates and “friends.” I believe with all my heart that nobody on the show or in production really ever questioned it. No one ever leveled an accusation at their relationship. Tom and Ariana were like the closest thing to an audience pov on the show. The DRAAAAMA was Jax, Jax, Jax, Jax, Stassi, Stassi, Stassi, Stassi, fistfights and party crashing and cheating and a breakup…! We were barely shown Tom and Ariana’s conflict over having children, which seemed significant when Tom said it was a dealbreaker, then immediately retracted it when confronted by Ariana. That, plus their difficulties with intimacy and Ariana’s body image issues, was all we knew. They had each other’s back to an insane degree for YEARS, because of this pact, and now the floodgates are open, And we know that when Lala tells Ariana about what really happened at that party the day Ariana’s grandmother dies, Ariana had a meltdown and refused to film with Lala, who had to sit at a table and wait while production talked Ariana down and got consent to film. That’s why she abruptly turns and yells for Tom to come join the Lala info dump, saying I’m not gonna do this, so…let’s get him. And he was absolutely stone cold caught in a lie right then and there.

How could Ariana so easily dismiss the certain knowledge, via Lala, who was there at the party with Sandoval (and Raquel), that TOM LIED TO HER ABOUT NOT FINDING AN UBER SO HE COULD STAY WITH RAQUEL. So, like, I feel like that should’ve been the red flag to end all red flags.

And she definitely had her doubts, no matter how hard she rode for him publicly, because her INTUITION told her to see what she could see when she had the perfect opportunity to look at his phone. The photos app I guess, which is the iOS camera roll. What a shock it must have been. It’s like you’re flying off the edge of the earth, right up into outer space, no tether to humanity because everything is a lie. UGH I RELATE and probably am projecting my shit onto Ariana, which I’m not trying to do fr fr.

Dude, if she had followed me she would have known I wasn’t at Schwartz’s WORST STATEMENT OF THE EPISODE CONGRATS SCUMBAG

But every time you stayed out late or overnight, Ariana checked your location, which was always at the complicit Schwartz’s house

So you left your phone there while you went off to Rachel’s?

Because OBVIOUSLY you’re no fucking stranger to her apartment (!!!)

There is no way in hell I would ever believe that Sandoval wouldn’t run to his work wife, in whom he has confided everything, and confess every detail, with a TON of drama because it’s Sandoval, to expunge his guilty conscience alllllll over Schwartz. Please. He knew everything from the jump, but of course he took no action beyond urging Sandoval to confess. For seven months. He knew. These people are such great liars.

Every line out of Ariana’s mouth, in her confrontation conversation with Tom, was poetry. Eloquent, blunt, sincere, honest, brutal, true. That woman! I admire her dignified reaction in this episode while also side-eyeing her own complicity in not wanting any breaches of the wall of positivity that she helped create. But everyone on this show has their good and their bad, and we’ve seen it all. Ariana’s very first episode! Disaster. She was playing a tough girl character, not herself.

Brittany is the exception to that and has never done anything wrong or shady or hurtful or mean girl-ish.

[lorelarc]

i hated milk as a child. so much so that i bit the rubber nozzle off of every single one of my bottles. the taste of milk made me want to cry.

i used to sit outside at recess and dig in the ground for snails. they were all over the place in the small key west schoolyard. i took them home in the bottom compartment of my lunchbox and tried to keep them alive in tupperware with holes poked in the lid and random plants from my yard.

i read obsessively when i was young, still do. books are comfort and they provide an imaginative outlet. i would fall asleep with a book next to me or resting on my chest. i read the harry potter series eight times in three years while still reading everything else i possibly could. i staunchly refused to put my book down unless i absolutely had to.

i have loved greek mythology for as long as i can remember. at times i feel almost as if i was born with the stories pre-downloaded into my brain. it was my favorite thing to learn about and remains something i am passionate about to this day. it fascinates me to think about the wonderful stories people used to come up with to explain the things they didn’t have the resources to explain.

certain fabrics make my entire body seize up. crushed velvet, certain types of lace, overly starched papery linens, and anything scratchy or itchy. they’re horrible. with just one touch i can feel the irritation blooming into what can only be described as an unbearable need to rip the fabric from my body and toss it far, far away before i burst into tears. my adverse reactions to things were always over the top and sometimes it’s still hard to keep things under control.

i remember having exactly three close friends when i lived in key west, at least three that i saw often and remember well. emilia, grace, and nico. there were plenty of other friends and classmates that i could spend time with but I always preferred being with one of those three. with everyone else i felt subtly uncomfortable in a way i never quite understood and still don’t. there’s a chance that i will never fully grasp the intricate roadmap of emotional connections between childhood friends.

Marguerite.

when i was young i spent any time not with my parents or friends with Marguerite. she was like my third grandmother. she was my best friend in the world and i wanted nothing more than to be with her all the time. i had so much fun playing carts games and feeding manatees from the garden hose at her houseboat. and then she died, 13 days before my sixth birthday. i remember nothing. allowing myself to remember anything would’ve stirred up the silt at the bottom of my own personal acheron river. the memory of Marguerite settled deep into the bed of that river. everything negative that i have felt since then flows through that river and stirs up the silt. the force of the current varies but it always stirs up a piece of that lifetime of pain that i was given at age six. that i couldn’t hold onto at age six. and, so, i remember nothing.

i was viewed as a strange child by many of my peers’ parents. i never greatly enjoyed the activities that most children adore. i loved broccoli. i hated group projects. my mother sang opera to me and i stopped crying. i read every single book i could get my hands on, every chance i got. i knew every song from the sound of music before i was capable of forming the words to properly sing. my life has become a rich tapestry of inconsistencies and rarities of character. my young self would never have imagined what her life looks like now. it was all so different back then. the dreams, the hopes, the goals, they were all so different before the darker fibers were woven in. i wanted to be a happy shiny person when i was little but we are not shiny happy people. we are darkness and light and all the shades in between, colors and greyscales, blending and harsh lines, sharp corners and fluid, soft edges. a tapestry filled with those we love and those we hate. our favorites and our least favorites. everything that contributed to anyone’s current state of being can be found within their tapestry. and it is beautiful. we are beautiful. and we are worthy of the light that we deserve.

[allsassnoclass]

hi hazel! can i ask 6, 20 and 28? -taylor

@jbhmalumm hi taylor! thank you so much for sending these you are the only reason i started my nano project today!

6. Describe your dream home. ooooo i've been thinking about this a lot because i'm trying my best to save for one but i fear it will never ever happen. anyway my friend and i are going to buy a house together when she moves here and we've been talking a bit but a big thing is that we need at least three bedrooms (one for me, one for her, one for a possible future foster child). we would also like a guest bedroom or a finished basement so we can host friends!!! in an ideal world, i would want a sun room, and i want either a large front room or a specific music room so i can have a grand piano!!!! yknow. if i ever win the lottery or get stupid rich and can afford one. the main bathroom should be blue. the kitchen should be yellow. in general, i don't want white walls anywhere. actually if my friend lets me paint the kitchen cabinets i'm considering copying a different van gogh painting onto each of them because my friend also loves van gogh and that would make the kitchen very fun and unique. i am fully willing to go wild with the paint and some basic carpentry to make this house personalized to the both of us. i would also like a fenced-in back yard so that we can have a dog, and i would like a piece of stained glass somewhere (doesn't need to be a full window, i know lots of houses do little stained glass pieces above the front door or something like that). mostly though i want the house to be full of love <3

20. What is something you’re obsessed with? i am so into cobra kai right now it's kind of ridiculous. like. check-the-tumblr-and-ao3-tags-daily into it. i don't know why. i haven't watched the original karate kid movies. i missed the first two seasons because my family watched it while i was at college. i didn't particularly enjoy seasons 3 and 4 when i caught episodes while my sister and dad were watching, but for some reason i got really into season 5 and now i'm watching from the beginning and have made it into season 3 again. it's a karate soap opera but it's my karate soap opera and all of the teen characters are my children and i absolutely love it despite it's shortcomings and i think that there are so many fascinating things you could say about cycles of violence/abuse and trauma and collateral damage and gang indoctrination and some of the dynamics between the characters make me absolutely crazy. i have started writing 4 fics for it within the past few weeks with many more ideas written down. i want to be a fight choreographer so bad

28. Who is the funniest person you know? ooooo this is actually a really difficult question! possibly the friend who i'm getting a house with lol. she cracks me up because she has a really subtle, dry humor, so her jokes and jabs always catch me off guard a little. also i am delighted by her presence :)

[promiseiwillwrite]

Quiet Cruelty

Something in me is very angry.

It's jaw is set. It's breathing controlled.

It's focus narrowed to the point where I am not fully processing auditory inputs.

I am on my best behavior.

But my anger is building.

I know what it is. My father is a chronic over-explainer. I have been given the parameters of high speed injection molding six or seven times on this visit, each time with greater complexity than the last.

He exists in a series of obsessive loops, which he is scrabbling to use to create security for himself, by taking refuge in his extensive knowledge, and is at the same time terrified of losing his mind like his mother.

But there is something adversarial in his presentations. Like he knows the knowledge he has is useless outside the settings of the factories he lived and worked in all his life, and that is someone else's fault. There is a need in him to push blame for that onto bad bosses and indifferent corporations.

But that is not my fault.

Except that I suspect that it Is, a bit. I did not ask to be born, but I absolutely changed the chaotic equations of his life. He had to try to create his June Cleaver fantasy life in his marriage, and nothing about what came after first that mold.

He has dedicated rumination loops for each of his ex wives and their associated drama. I am a part of those, and it will take him a lot of work to see me any other way.

He is lost inside his past, like I have been.

When I have gotten a word in edgewise, I have talked about the things I have done to get out of my mental illness. He is so trapped in honor culture, and devaluing himself for needing help that it is not even an option for him to get therapy.

And he has already rejected medication, after three doses.

I told him several times that just because he thinks judgy thoughts about himself doesn't mean I have to.

But I see it. And I feel my judgment of him. Because I have the same judgment of my own paradigm blindness. But you can't know what you don't know.

I see in myself a pervasive ability to re-write memory and history. And I don't want to re-write what went on. I want to know what is true.

Everyone in my family has clearly done this. He has told me about all the traveling and work he has done in one story, but then told me he was always there when he was supposed to pick us up for custody visits.

And sure. I am positive my mother sat in our car in the parking lot for hours waiting for him to get there on the wrong day on purpose at least once.

My dad has painted himself as a sober custodian of my drug addicted mother, and all his friends.

And he has never mentioned the beating.

That part of the divorce never happened for him.

And that is why I am angry. He has painted over it and made himself a victim whose only crime was that he loved my mother too much.

I will never be sure of everything I remember from my childhood. Memories of children in trauma are highly suggestible.

But some of my memories are definitely my memories.

Some things I was definitely not "told about" in some effort to poison me against him.

Though my mother did that too.

He seems so urgent to convince me that I was always loved and wanted.

But that simply was not my lived experience.

And it doesn't square with the beating. Or the terror.

But then, I look at my memories, and I question. What if the things I think I remember simply aren't real, when they have been real for me for 35 years?

This anger that is a part of me would just be projection.

And these things that happened 35 years ago have nothing to do with my reality now. Except everything.

And it all boils down to what I want.

I am at home in this anger. It is close in my heart, and comfortable there.

Because it was protecting me. It was an internalized experience of self love.

It was, and has been a relic of my soul, through all the hell I lived in, that held onto the fact that I was worth treating well. That I was worth protecting. That there was always something brave and unbroken in my soul.

It is my inch.

That one thing.

Self love presenting as anger is my first real, direct experience of it, and what I have always used to break through my mental problems.

I am worth more than his insecurity. I will not give him validation or worth.

And it is not my job to be brave for him, or rescue him from the hell he has made for himself.

My refusal to open the discussion of the abuse is as kind as I can be, and at once as cruel.

[prettyboypucey]

Weird ~ G.W.

Summary: George is gorgeous. Charlie is a meddler. The snow is cold. (this summary sucks...just read it) 

Pairing: George Weasley x Y/N 

Word Count: 2,404 (who do I think I am?) 

Warnings: mentions of bullying. mentions of food/eating. george is unknowingly triggering? reader cries. idk? let me know if i missed something. 

A/N: part 2? maybe? translations are for romanian via google translate. do not come for me if they are hella wrong. 

Translations: draga - darling; dragoste - love; tampit - stupid 

     I had never been normal. From the time I was a toddler I had stars in my eyes and dirt on my knees. While the other kids in my grade were playing with dolls and dressing respectably, I was riding imaginary dragons and wearing mismatched socks with dungarees and a butterfly headband. Normalcy evaded me even further when at 11 years old, I got a letter declaring me a witch.

     When I first came to Hogwarts I spent the majority of my time alone. It appeared that even children who could wave a stick around and makes things fly wanted nothing to do with the colorful little girl. Meeting Luna Lovegood in my second year was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Here was a girl who allowed me to be exactly who I was with no judgments. And then she introduced me to Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley, and suddenly that little girl who thought her only friends would always be the rocks she painted faces on, had found her people.

     Of course, being friends with Ginny Weasley meant knowing her many brothers. So after graduation when I went off to Romania to work with dragons it made me feel slightly better knowing Charlie Weasley would be there. He quickly took me under his wing and became the older brother figure I had never had. After working together for three years, and electing to stay at the sanctuary for the last two over the holidays, he had finally convinced me to come home with him. I was reluctant to leave the sanctuary - the one place I truly feel safe (despite the massive fire breathing creatures).

     Charlie had warned me that being with one or two of the Weasleys was very different from being with the entire Weasley clan. Obviously I knew Charlie and Ginny, Ron had always been nice to me, and I had met Molly a handful of times in passing. However, Bill was known to be quite intimidating, Percy was supposedly very no-nonsense, and the twins (albeit never cruel) had a reputation of being hell-raisers.

     Apparating to the edge of a marsh with Charlie by my side I could see the rising structure haphazardly balanced slightly ahead.

     Pausing, I glanced at the back of the familiar red covered head, “I don’t know Charles, maybe I should just go back. I really don’t want to be a burden.”

     Charlie very quickly rounded behind me to continue guiding me towards his home, “No, no, no, no, no. No. You’re not a burden to anyone draga. Keep your head up and if any of them give you grief - remind them of the giant, winged beasts you can feed them to.”

     Quickly placing a kiss to the side of my head Charlie bounded ahead again to open the door and announce your arrival. Before I could toe off the first boot to leave next to the dozen other pairs in the entryway, a pair of arms had flung around my neck.

     “Y/N! I missed you so much!”, Ginny pulled back, keeping her grip on my shoulders, to inspect for any major injuries.

     I held onto her elbows, keeping her close, “Hi Gin, I missed you too. A lot. I’m loving this new look by the way.”

     She reached up to brush the now short locks behind her ears. A grin on her face as the two of us looked the other over for the first time in months. Ginny was wrapped in a pretty baby pink sweater with shades of red and white running through it. The material was soft against my palm as I hooked it around her crooked elbow to follow her into the living area.

     “You know”, she started, “I was starting to think maybe Charlie had let you get eaten or burnt to a crisp in the land of dragons. It’s been so long since you’ve come to see me or left the sanctuary.”

     “I’m sorry Ginny. It’s just that after everything, I had to keep myself busy.”

     Ginny’s smile softened into one of understanding. The war had taken a part of all of us. Although Fred had recovered after many months, that fear of almost losing such a vital part of their family had rocked the entire Weasley family to its core.

     “I get it, I do, but I worry about you. I just want you to know you’re not alone Y/N.”

     I pulled the girl into another tight hug, “I know.”

     Ginny pulled away first, clearing her throat, “Okay! Now that’s out of the way - it’s time to introduce the one and only Y/N L/N to the Weasley’s.”

     I hummed, “Hmmm and which of us should be more scared?”

     “Oh definitely the Weasleys.”

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

     Meeting the Weasley family had gone much better than expected.

     Molly had opened her arms and home to me as if I was one of her own children. By the time the night was over she had me stuffed full of warm food and drink and donning my very own coveted Weasley sweater, the lavender initial in the middle marking it as my own. Arthur had been very interested in my muggle parents and upbringing, questioning me about the functions of a rubber duck. Bill and his wife Fleur were the most stunning couple I have ever seen, and not nearly as intimidating as people portrayed them. Fleur was pleased when she found out I spoke a bit of conversational French and promised to have me over to Shell Cottage (apparently they have an amazing collection of wind chimes that I am dying to see). Percy was a bit more refined. Completely polite and friendly but he seemed reserved. Ginny had explained in one of her letters how much guilt Percy carried after the Battle of Hogwarts over how he had behaved in the years leading up to that day.

     The twins were much different than I remembered them being from the few times we were around each other in school. The physical differences were clear - George’s missing ear and Fred’s dragging limp were both signs of the prices they paid in the war. More than that however, they had matured greatly. They were still happy and made sure to pull at least two pranks over the night, poor Molly nearly lost her voice after they blew up the turkey. However, there was something in their eyes that had been dimmed. Especially in George.

     His twin almost died that night, and it reflected in George’s eyes each time he looked at his older brother. It was clear that he was still afraid because whenever Fred left a room George followed, never letting his brother out of his sight, and if he happened to lose track of him a panic began to swirl in his brown orbs.

     I was in the middle of watching as George yet again made his way to Fred’s side, clapping a large hand on his twins shoulder and throwing his head back in laughter.

     “So which one are you staring at dragoste?”, Charlie whispered as he appeared out of nowhere.

     I ignored the burning in my cheeks as I looked away from the scene in front of me.

     “I am not staring at either of them tampit.”

     “Mhmm, sure, absolutely, I believe you.”, after a quick pause he said, “It’s George isn’t it?”

     I turned and scoffed at him, “No!… How did you know?”

     Charlie let out a chuckle, “Because I know you my little dragon. I also know my brother, and just between us, he definitely likes you as well.”

     At this I let out an incredulous laugh and glanced back to where George was now telling a story, his hands moving animatedly. There was no way that George Weasley had even a remote attraction to me. He was kind, strong, clever, and so bloody gorgeous it truly was a privilege to look at him. And I am…me. Nothing special. Just a girl who had more dragon friends than human ones and whose hands were covered in scars and callouses and whose socks never matched and had never even kissed a man before. So no, there was no way that George Weasley would ever like me.

     “Hey. I know that look Y/N. Stop those thoughts right this bloody second.”

     “Charles it really is annoying when you read me like that.”

     Throwing his arm over my shoulder he began to lead me towards the twins, “Yes I know and I am sorry in advance but this needs to be done. Fred!”

     Charlie’s voice had gone from a rushed whisper to a jovial shout when we reached George, Fred, and Ron by the fireplace. George’s smile as he turned to look at us sent a million butterflies off in my tummy.

     “So Freddy, I was hoping you could help me out with a top secret project tomorrow for mum and maybe show me around the joke shop. I heard you added some new displays that I want to check out.”

     “Sure Charlie”, Fred glanced at George as he spoke, “I’m sure we can make some time for our favorite brother.”

     Ignoring Rons protest, Charlie gripped my shoulders and pushed me in front of him, “Actually George I was thinking you could stay here and show Y/N around the area. She mentioned wanting to talk a walk tomorrow and I would hate to disappoint her on her first Christmas out of the sanctuary.”

     “Um-”

     I interrupted the rejection coming from George, “No please, I would hate to be a bother and make you be stuck with me all day. I’m sure Ginny can take me.”

     George smiled and shook his head, “No it’s completely fine Y/N. I would be happy to show you around.”

     “Okay great! It’s settled then!”, Charlie looked rather too pleased with himself and obviously missed the look exchanged by his identical younger brothers.

~~~~~~~~~~

     The next morning the Burrow was a flurry of movement as everyone began their day. Apparently Charlie and Fred weren’t the only ones on their way out. The others still had some last minute gift shopping to do and Ron was spending the day with Hermione’s muggle family. After breakfast, a quick wink from Charlie, and a slam of the front door - George and I were alone in the house.

     The two of us stood facing one another in the living room for a few awkward moments before George spoke, “Well, um, did you want to head out as well?”

     “Oh sure! Yes, let me just grab my boots really quickly.”

     George led me out the door and onto the snow covered path towards the small, iced over river. Nothing was said for a while, the only sound was the crunch of snow under our boots and the occasional sniffle from one of our red noses. I was mentally imagining all the ways I was going to kick Charlie’s ass when he got back for suggesting a walk in the middle of winter when we came to the top of a hill and stopped.

     Everything as far as the eye could see was blanketed in sheets of white. Stomping my boots down into the fresh snow, I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped as the snow gave way underfoot. Feeling a pair of eyes on me I remembered that I wasn’t alone and turned to see George watching me with an unidentifiable look on his face.

     “Sorry, sorry. That was - I don’t know why I did that. I liked the feeling of the crunch of the snow I guess. Sorry.”

     George grinned, “You don’t have to apologize. It was cute.”

     I could feel my face flush at his words. His smile grew even wider at the sight of my heated face. My gaze dropped from his pretty face down to my boots. I could feel the thick socks I had on beginning to grow cold and wet from how long we’d been outside. Looking back up I could see George’s deep eyes glaze over. Assuming it was because he had been apart from Fred so long I glanced out at the view one last time before turning back the way we came.

     “We should probably get back. We’ve been gone a while and my toes are getting wet. I feel bad enough that Charlie forced you to do this anyways without you getting frostbite or something. I’ve had frostbite, it’s not fun. And now I’m rambling. I’m sorry. Sorry”

     George was shaking his head at me and said, “You are so weird.”

     Ouch. My chest tightened and the small smile I had been wearing dropped from my face. If I had been able to see past the tears forming in my eyes that were making my sight blurry, I would have seen George’s face do the same. Unfortunately, all I could focus on was that word. Weird. Strange. Abnormal. Freak. 

     Weird weird weird.

     The walk back was silent. A thick tension surrounded you both as thick snow flurries began to swirl down in the midmorning air. Just as thick was the lump forming in my throat as I fought back tears. I know I shouldn’t let his words affect me. He’s just some guy. But deep down I also know that he’s not just some guy. This is George fricking Weasley. With his stupid perfect face and gorgeous eyes and his loyalty to his family. I couldn’t help but be enamored with him from the moment I walked in the Weasley’s front door. So it hurt to hear the man I liked call me that nasty word that has haunted me my entire life.

     When we finally reached the Burrow, George tried to reach for my arm but I pulled away and ran into the house. I could hear that some of the others had returned and really wanted to avoid a confrontation. Once again, luck wasn’t on my side. Charlie came walking out of the kitchen and saw me in the entryway. His face immediately became concerned at the sight of me and he lowered the sandwich he had from his mouth.

     “Draga?”, Charlie’s voice followed me as I finally reached the stairs and launched upstairs.

     As I reached the first landing I heard him speak again, his voice rough and hard.

     “What did you do?”  

[furiousgoldfish]

Tactics of narcissistic abuse

Love Bombing & Mirroring are tactics to gain your favour. These will come from a narcissist you’re just getting to know and they’re trying to convince you they’re your perfect partner, soulmate, best friend, ideal lover. Love bombing is showering you with over-the-top affection and support, they’re likely to see what works best on you, then give you just that. They’ll convince you that you’re special and make you feel special, whether it’s with attention, gifts, promises, love phrases, or making you look and feel very good in front of other people. If they can spin this as fate or destiny, they will. You have one lucky coincidence? It’s destiny that you met. They’ll create the image of ‘it’s us against the world’ and convince you that they’re all you need to never be alone, unappreciated or unhappy again. They will say phrases like 'We were born to be together’ or 'You’re the only one who understands’ and make you feel like you’re in a romance film.  Mirroring is the way to convince you that they are just like you, your perfect match. They do this by pretending they want the same things as you. All of your opinions will be shared, your desires will be their desires too, however you want to live, that’s now their ideal life too. If you want children, so do they, if you want to live in a cottage, so do they.

These will be repeated until you feel like you finally got something perfect from life, you commit to them and trust them completely. You will become lenient with your boundaries and disregard minor red flags, because hey, you finally found love, or someone like yourself who makes your life better. These are crucial to keep you around for a long time; the illusion of happiness and perfect companionship you always wanted will keep you holding onto them in hope that things could once again, be this perfect for you. You will not want to let go of them even after the love bombing and mirroring is long gone. Love bombing and mirroring are not indicative of how they’re planning to treat you once you’re committed to them; as soon as they feel you are ready to fight for a life with them, roles will change and you will have to endure escalating abuse from this person, endlessly.

Scapegoats and people badly damaged by trauma will often not get the full love bombing or mirroring, narcissists will be able to win our devotion by acts of basic decency, small thoughtfulness and acting tolerant of our trauma symptoms, this will feel like everything to us, and once we decide this is a good, special person who makes us feel safe and we’d do anything for them, they’ll turn and exploit us endlessly.

Only way to spot this on time is: there will be a little voice of suspicion in your head going ’Isn’t this actually a little too perfect to be real? A little too convenient and ideal?’ and you will not want to listen to that voice. You should listen to it. It’s your instinct, trying to tell you something is off. I won’t blame you if you don’t. Most people won’t just walk away from their ideal partner because things seem 'too perfect’. But, get suspicious at least. Alert to red flags.

Enablers and Flying Monkeys

Narcissists can’t abuse if they’re on their own; they will work hard to build a reputation and charm people who they can later use for purposes of enabling, triangulating, controlling, scapegoating and smear campaigns. Enablers, or Flying Monkeys, are people who are either admiring the narcissists, want to be in narcissists good favour, are trauma bond and scared of the narcissists, are emotionally manipulated or simply too cowardly to point out that the narcissists is wrong and cruel. Most people will fall under the influence and want to be on narcissists side because it’s easier, tempting, feels safer, and doesn’t require much thinking. Narcissist will sometimes emotionally manipulate people to go do their dirty work; they will cry about how they miss their runaway children so flying monkeys would harass and judge children for running away, they will invent stories of abuse and insanity of their spouse so people would shame and judge the spouse who the narcissist is abusing. They create environment in which they can keep abusing and other people will jump to defend, justify, victim-blame and further confuse the victim. “They had a hard life”, “They’re your mother/father/uncle, you have to forgive them” or “He’s not that bad” are the phrases you’ll hear from enablers and flying monkeys. The term “Flying Monkey” is taken from the Wizard of Oz, because the Wicked Witch owned an army of brainless flying monkeys who would do her bidding – much how narcissists do with their enablers.

What enablers are doing is absolutely wrong. They should not be ready to defend abuse, or excuse and justify it, or believe and act on smear campaigns, not for any reason. They are hurting and isolating the victim, and regardless of how much they suck up to the narcissist, they will eventually become the targets too. Victims are right to cut out enablers just how they’re right to cut out abusers. You do not have to suffer for their cowardice or stupidity.

Triangulation is a form of abuse where narcissist brings another person into the relationship in order to bypass your boundary. For instance, you refuse to speak to the narcissist, so they send your family members, friends, or their friends, to talk to you about how much you’re hurting the narcissist and how cruel and unfair you’re being. Or, you’re trying to set a boundary in your marriage, and suddenly a friend or a relative comes talking to you about how unreasonable it is to set such awful boundary and to think of your spouse’s feelings and how bad they have it. Narcissist may try to use you for triangulation too, for example, they might tell you 'Go tell your sister she should do xyz and she’s making a mistake, she’ll listen to you’. It’s implied you agree with the narcissist, and that both of you are doing it for the sister’s good, when it’s more likely the narcissist is trying to force this person to do something they’re deeply set against and would only serve the narcissist. Narcissists will use their children to triangulate a marriage, they will often 'gang up’ other family members on their spouse, or one of the children. If you’re the victim, you’ll find yourself cornered, isolated, and in doubt whether you’re doing the right thing, trying to establish a boundary. Narcissists will also often show affection, compassion or even love to a third person simply to make you jealous and worried that something is wrong with you since you don’t get the same treatment. It’s what creates an illusion that the entire world is agreeing with the narcissist and no matter what you do, you look unreasonable for fighting them.

Narcissists will sometimes invent completely boogus scenarios and try to terrify people into doing their bidding and believing they’re right. As if the world will fall if narcissists don’t get what they want.

Society at large will often enable abusers; you can call out abuse and be rendered a 'killjoy’ because people prefer to enjoy cruelty together with the narcissist than to oppose them. Narcissists are capable of rousing a whole gang of people to turn against the victim and to aid in their abuse; this is scapegoating.

Gaslighting is a form of abuse where the abuser attacks your sense of reality. They will usually do this to obscure and deny acts of abuse. “I never said that” “That didn’t happen” “That’s not how I remember it” “You imagined it” or “You’re crazy, I would never do that!” are common gaslighting phrases abusers use for events that absolutely happened, and they absolutely remember. It’s even more powerful if they get other people to agree that you’re insane for remembering a past event of abuse. They can sometimes try to convince you that something didn’t occur while it’s still happening. This renders your intention of calling out abuse impossible; you’re now debating whether the event even happened and your sanity is questioned.

The point of this is to drive you into insanity; prolonged gaslighting will make you doubt your own memories and senses, and you will no longer be secure in your own point of view or version of reality. You will not be able to fight abuse, because you will get stuck on wondering if it’s even real, or if you’re making it up. Narcissist wants not only to abuse you, but to control your perception of it, reaction of it, and to disable you from telling anyone and being taken seriously. Smear campaign and gaslighting ensures that everyone thinks you’re lying to make problems, even you.

You can attempt to block gaslighting with phrases like 'That was not my experience’ 'I know the truth and I am not debating it with you’ ’ Don’t tell me what happened, I was there’ or ridiculing them for thinking it would work, but sometimes abuse will escalate if you refuse to play along, so be very careful with them.

Baiting, Projection and Scapegoating

Baiting is the way narcissist finds out which triggers will work on you. Types of baits are: Scaremongering, Accusations, False Claims, Guilt-tripping, Victim-playing, False Hope, or Intrigue. They will use these to elicit either fear&anxiety, or guilt&responsibility. You are likely to get pulled in and respond emotionally to these, and thus the narcissist will discover which one of these is most triggering and they can use it to either control you, or to affirm that they can still get you riled up, scared, guilty – they feed on being able to provoke these, it makes them feel powerful. They can later use the same trigger to push you into guilt and fear if you try to resist their control. If they continue doing this to you for a long time, you are likely to develop self-doubt and anxiety about your own persona. Way to counter this is to grey rock them.

Projection is a primitive defense-mechanism, where a person feels uncomfortable with their behaviour or thinking, so they accuse someone else of it to deflect the bad feelings from themselves. This can feel the same as baiting, but narcissists do it without realizing they’re giving you the information about what they’re actually feeling and doing. For instance, a narcissist will accuse you of being self-absorbed after they start feeling uncomfortable with how self-absorbed they are, they will start to call you selfish when it comes to their mind how selfish they are. They will accuse you of the exact shit they’ve been doing whether it’s lying, manipulating, faking for attention, cheating, exploiting, lacking compassion, stealing. These claims will feel like they’re coming out of nowhere at first, but eventually you will wonder if you’re really like that, and accept their projection on yourself, believing to really be as bad, or worse than they are. Even though they’ve done 100% of these things, while you have done none of it. This can also be countered by being aware what is going on and grey-rocking them. Deflecting the blame back to them will not work because they’ll either deflect it back, or throw a tantrum and insult you.

Scapegoating is the most vicious abuse narcissist can inflict on their victims and is designed to completely break a person’s spirit while creating power out of terror. Scapegoating doesn’t only serve to terrify and control the victim; it shows everyone what the narcissist is capable of, causing them to go very far to avoid becoming the next scapegoat. This creates enablers, flying monkeys and other benefits for narcissist to enjoy, while the scapegoat is isolated, not believed, and often shunned by the community to show loyalty to the narcissist.

Scapegoat will be blamed for every narcissists flaw, accused of provocation and creating trouble, shamed for their likes and interests, humiliated for their appearance or needs, their work will be rendered worthless and any pain and injury will be treated as if the scapegoat deserved it, or wanted it. Nothing is out of bounds to criticize or belittle in the scapegoat; flying monkeys will do it too, to either affirm themselves with the narcissist, or because they too crave power by stepping on someone defenseless. If a narcissistic parent decides to scapegoat a child, the other parent might stop caring for the child, and agree that the child deserves only to be neglected and shunned. The illusion narcissists create, of entire society agreeing that a person is irredeemable, deserving only of pain and ridicule, has turned people to suicide.

Scapegoat absorbs all of the narcissist’s malice, cruelty, sadism, baiting, projection, guilt and tantrums, so other people in the environment can get some relief and can use the scapegoat as their shield. You can be chosen to be a scapegoat for challenging the narcissist and standing up to them, for refusing to scapegoat someone else, for seeing thru them and showing any potential for undermining their authority, if narcissist is jealous of you, if narcissist feels threatened by your intellect, compassion and emotional depth they lack. And often, you’ll just be chosen because they’re in position of power and you’re unprotected. If you’re their child, a lonely classmate, employee with no high reputation or lots of friends, a minority, different in the way of sexuality or behaviour, anything that is easily used to sway a group of people against you. Narcissists will make sure to spread a smear campaign filled with lies against you, so that nobody would align with you, or believe you if you try to counter their word.

This type of treatment is beyond anything a human being could deserve, and devastating for the victim’s self esteem and sense of reality. After surviving a scapegoating situation, people might not want to find themselves in any social setting anymore. They might start believing themselves to be unlovable and defective. There is usually no way to counter it or fight your way out, unless there’s a higher authority who could side with you, or there’s a way to physically remove yourself from this environment.

Grey Rock, Hoovering and No Contact

Grey rock is a way to counter baiting and projection; narcissists learn and thrive on our emotional responses, it gives them a thrill to be able to send us into rage, terror, disbelief, shock or panic. Grey rocking means you give zero emotional response, and thus prove yourself very boring and a bad source of narcissistic supply. So, regardless of what egregious threat, accusation, claim or insult they make, you just reply with 'mhmm’ and look completely disinterested. You reply with one-word sentences, say 'sure’ or 'yup’ if they accuse you of something or try to fearmonger, answer questions with 'maybe’ or 'I don’t know’, agree with whatever bs they’re pulling out of their ass without caring, refuse to get pulled in or baited, give them no significance in the conversation until they leave. It is very hard to do, because they will up their game and even fly into rage to get a response, if they feel entitled to it. In some cases they might resort to violence. Often, they’ll keep changing the tactics until something works, and if nothing does, they’ll feel dejected and go find another source of supply. If they feel like they can’t get to you, this undermines their imagined power over you.

No contact is the only way to truly win against a narcissist; if they can’t reach you, they can’t manipulate or hurt you. This means no responding to messages, no letting them know where you live, blocking them on every service, and in most situations, even the enablers have to be no contact, because the narcissist is likely to send them into triangulation and use them to get to you. If you’re unable to go no-contact with a narcissist, a lot of people opt for 'low contact’, which means you only hear from them once a year, or once every 6 months, insufficient for them to gain control over you, and you grey-rock them all the way, and never share any personal info that might be used against you. Hoovering is something a narcissist will do to you after you’ve left them. They might leave you alone for a long time, then suddenly send a message saying they miss you, or they’re thinking about you and wishing you could do xyz together. They might also influence another person to tell you 'x misses you, they wish to see you again, they’re doing bad without you’. This is done to remind you of the 'good times’ and an attempt to draw you back in, as you’re supposed to have forgotten all the abuse already and be ready to take them back. It might come as outrageous expectation or denial of everything bad that happened – that’s because it is. All you have to do is grey-rock this, not respond, and enjoy in knowledge that even if you can’t ensure revenge, you can take yourself away from them, and they will never have you back.

Sources: Baiting, Scapegoating, LoveBombing, Gaslighting(video), Projection(video), Triangulation, Mirroring(video),  FlyingMonkeys (video), Hoovering, Grey Rock