#i described my mental state with the only way i know how which is writing a fictional scenario

[strange-ghoul]

im... unwell. read tags

blood dripped down my body from my mouth. I couldn't identify where the pain was coming from, but it was somewhere.

I've thrown up multiple times by now. My body wracked with chills as I laid naked on the bathroom floor. I felt exposed, horrible, disgusting, but there I was. Alive. Somehow.

I crawled my way back to the toilet, throwing up again. The bile got onto my hair and stained my teeth, but I couldn't bring myself to take care of it. I had to get this... bug, out of my system.

The bug being something I didn't understand. It was a feeling in my chest, sinking into my stomach. It was something that began to take over my entire body, all the way to my brain. It made me feel deplorable, it made me feel like my body wasn't mine anymore. The urge to rip aspects of my body off were becoming more and more apparent, where soon I knew impulse control would fail.

Would it be so bad to take a knife to my chest, forever securing the feeling of steel and blood to me? Would it be so bad to take off what has hurt me?

I thought back to the bridge nearby. Maybe it's easier there. Maybe if I fall, I'll be okay. Maybe the darkness would hold me and coddle me, love me until even my memories became dust.

Nobody would be there, and it was night already; does a tree really make sound when it falls, even if nobody was there to hear it?

I crawled back to the side of the bathtub, tears already falling down my face again. Everything on my body felt like it was aching and burning.

How hard was it to be cared for? How hard was it for somebody to reach out to you and hold you? Even if it was metaphorically, even if it was just a writing, why was it so hard to be loved?

I can't feel love the same as others. I don't understand romance, I don't feel it. Neither do I understand human touch.

Was it because I was scarred from it? Was the abuse I endured just enough for me to swear it off wholly?

Or was it just me. Am I aromantic? Asexual? I think so. I have no desire for either, even if I acted that I did.

But did this mean I didn't deserve love?

It sure felt like it.

I took a shaky breath in, coughing out a sob. every tear hurt my head more and more, but I couldn't stop. The cold tiles below me now didn't give me any comfort, only resentment.

I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be held in some type of way. I wanted someone to hold me by the face and tell me they loved me unconditionally, even if I was stuck in a body that wasn't mine.

I need somebody to tell me that everything isn't for nothing. That I am smart, that I am okay, that I am worth more than what teachers, parents, and peers thought of me.

The work I produce from my hands- it's all a lie. I've convinced myself every comment was just a pity party. Who'd look at my creations and genuinely think anything good of it? They all had so many flaws which were irredeemable in my eyes. These people- They were my friends, my family- they just had to be being respectful, there was no way they could feel this way towards anything I wrote. It was wrong.

I don't deserve what I get from those works. I don't deserve the support I get. I don't deserve anything. I feel horrible getting it too- wasn't I supposed to feel prideful when my worked was commented on and loved? So why did I feel a stab of pang, why did I feel like I was never good enough to deserve those words?

Could it all trail back to my self-loathing that had already manifested itself within me?

... i don't know.

I don't feel right in this body of mine. It feels broken and unsustained. I look myself in the mirror and I don't believe it's mine. I can't recognize that face- I don't know who that is. I'm told over and over again it's mine, but it's like I can't compute that.

Perhaps that's why I couldn't understand anyone caring about me beyond the thin layer. Perhaps that's why I couldn't accept compliments about literally anything I've ever done.

... but I'm unsure if this is right.

I just wished I was loved, but I fear even then I'll think it's all pity. As I think everything is. Because, in essence,

Who'd give a shit about me?

My eye lids are heavy; even through the glaring lights of the bathroom was sleep slowly over taking me. I'll wake up tomorrow and regret everything I've ever said and done in regard to my mental health. I'll convince myself all over again that I don't need help and I am simply over dramatic. Tomorrow morning, I'll convince myself I am fine, and nothing will be wrong. And then I'll continue on pushing these thoughts, doubts, and self-hatred aside for another night similar to this one.

I place bets on myself occasionally- will this be the night I'm found dead, or will I hate myself for ever thinking I was anything but a fraud and nuisance?

[sugarpasteltmnt]

First of all, I gotta say that I absolutely LOVE your fic. I read the first chapter and just... didn't stop reading lol. It was so compelling and the way you describe emotions and depict Leo's mental state is so good!!!! I can't get enough of it. I love how you write his manic thought process and the way that his thoughts jump around in a very 'word association' type way! (That's super accurate to manic episodes!) I also really like the way that his awareness ebbs and flows and how you are able to indicate that to the reader while also maintaining the narrative. For real, kudos to you, that's a super difficult thing to do and you've pulled it off so well! It's absolutely stunning!

Question (and feel free not to answer if this is a spoiler or if you aren't sure), did Leo age in the Prison Dimension? Cause obviously the five years was FIVE YEARS, he didn't just time skip or anything, and he's definitely five years older mentally (for better or for worse, poor guy) but if the Prison Dimension essentially 'stops' bodily functions like hunger, thirst, exhaustion and.. dying, was his aging paused as well?

I'm low-key dying over the idea of Leo still being a kid physically. Like, the mental image of his brothers coming face-to-face with a visibly teenaged Leo who is more scar tissue than skin, it's just, ugghhgg. It's one thing to know 'oh he was a kid, he shouldn't have had to deal with this. He shouldn't have had to have been in that position, this is all so fucked up' but it's another thing entirely to see it, y'know?

Anyway, again feel free to ignore the question if it's spoiler territory or completely off the mark or if you don't have the spoons to answer. I mainly just wanted to say that I'm obsessed with your fic and it has me completely unhinged (pos). Was literally sobbing at 3AM while reading it. 10/10. Would recommend.

(also how the fuck do you write Leo so scary and threatening and yet also so adorable and charming and 'wet meow-meow stuck in the rain'. I'm frothing at the mouth wtf. The whiplash of being all 'oh no he's gonna kill- oh he's purring now, he's baby' is so fantastic holy shit)

THANK YOU THAT'S SO NICE WAAAAAAH 😭😭😭 i'm so glad people seem to enjoy it because i can always go a little TOO in depth at times and i hope it's never like, too boring or repetitious

and yes, Leo did age!! while the idea of Leo being a time capsule of his teenage self but now so warped is DELICIOUS... I love the idea he aged for several reasons. It was one (or maybe the only) way Leo knew time was passing for him-- which adds to the mental strain of knowing he was stuck there. Forever. And the emotional damage it would inflict on his family because it makes it just more transparent and painful how much time had passed. How long they left Leo there. As well as prove the point that time in the Prison Dimension passed at the same rate as it did on Earth.

Plus, I feel like there's another, dark, angsty edge to it that I couldn't resist. I feel like when the Prison Dimension was made, the primary goal was to trap the Krang for eternity. Whether intentional or not, the Mystic Warriors had practically made a place you could age. Where you can get hungry. Where you can get thirsty. Where you have to face all those painful needs of the body you just can't satisfy... But you just couldn't escape it. Ever.

That might make it a bit TOO dark to think about, but ultimately I just loved the idea of the brothers seeing Leo older like them and knowing that they had left him behind for so long. (toot-toot all aboard the angst train)

but omg i'm so glad you like it 😭 thank you for the ask it was super sweet 🩵

also

My Brother in Christ Pizza Supreme I wish i knew

[jake-webber]

I am weak for vampire!Sam and demon!Colby if you want to write something 'bout that

the way my mind already knew who im associating this au with. @samandcolby-ownme my beloved thank you for introducing this au to me. i give all credits to you for vampsam and demcolby

content warning: kinda mean dom reader but very much sub SnC, Colby has a tail,,…, fem reader, near death experience (briefly mentioned), implied stripper!reader, BAD sex dialogue i think, if you’re more used to @samandcolby-ownme’s writing style for the boys, this one is very diff.

VERY MUCH UNEDITED

no smut, meaning no peen in vag but very sexual stuff under the cut. 18+ only!!

You were absolutely drained, both mentally and physically. Your whole body aches and you walk around the room as if you were anemic (which you could be at this point). As much as you loved your boyfriends, you’re high maintenance lovers, it’s taking a toll on you.

Other than the heavenly yet punishing sex they both give you, they keep forgetting to mention their other personal and unnatural needs as, well, not natural beings.

Consent and boundaries were set up before the three of yours’ relationships began. Their needs and your needs, as long as asked for permission, is given green light to the other. This applies for Sam’s request of sucking your blood which you don’t usually so no to and Colby’s demonic need of sucking the energy out of you by ‘absorbing your essence’ (you’re still not 100% sure how it works since he usually just closes his eyes as you stand there, feeling every bit of your serotonin slowly leaving your body).

Lately, for some reason, their needs doubled. Sam sucked your blood half to death if it weren’t for Colby snapping him out of his senses when you began losing color and consciousness. Colby was no better though. Unbeknownst to you, he’s been absorbing to much of your essence that it leaves you in such a worn out state.

You were angry and easily irritable, like a ticking time bomb. Just like right now.

As soon as you opened the door to your shared home, you were overwhelmed with the smell of their perfumes, telling you that they’ve been in the house the whole time while you were away, and the scent usually sends you into a calmer mood knowing your boys were here, but in your state right now?

“Sam? Colby! Sam!” You yelled from the living room, a striking headache already on its way as soon as the two appeared out of thin air.

“Baby, I’ve missed you.” Sam approached you with an arm reaching for you neck, rubbing the holes that showed his constant penetration on your poor skin. You could tell from the way he’s licking his lips, eyes not meeting yours, that Sam was going to ask for your blood. Again.

You scoffed, something you’ve never done towards them, swatted his hand away from. This caused for the blonde boy to flinch, red eyes flashing in the dim lighting. You could see Colby reacting to the unfamiliar reaction from your peripheral vision.

“Bad day at work?” He asked, arms crossed as he walked towards the both of you.

You ran a hand against your head, combing your already disheveled. “I don’t know, you tell me.” You didn’t know what came over to you, eyebrows arching in sarcasm. “Fucked up week would be a better way to describe it.”

Sam, unbeknownst to you, felt something crushing in his undead heart, like chains being harshly twisted and pulled at every bad energy you were sending out. Of course, you were unaware of that, continuing to do so. Colby, on the other hand, felt his eyes twitching, not from anger, but at his lack of breath as if he was being choked. His necklace hung low on his neck, there was nothing else that should be making him felt this way.

Despite all this, you began talking when they didn’t, oblivious to their pain. “I don’t know if you’ve been noticing but for whatever fucked up reason, the two of you have been taking too much from me.” Sam clenched the spot on his shirt where his heart would be residing, feeling it beat once again. He doesn’t remember it hurting like this.

Colby was fast on his feet to take your hands, releasing the grip of your unwelcoming crossed arms. “We didn’t know— We aren’t supposed to be here and we aren’t used to it.”

“As much as we hate it, it’s kind of— like, our way of having our powers work here.” Sam explained further, somehow compelled to telling you.

Their words didn’t seem to work to calm you down you rolled your eyes.

“Right, as if that’s any of my fault.” You replied, taking your hand back from Colby’s. His eyes widened at your action, feeling as though he’s made a grave mistake.

You’re disappointing her.

They both felt agonizing pain in their entire bodies at the same, especially on Colby’s neck and Sam’s chest. Colby held onto himself as he tried to catch his breath while Sam was clenching his fist to his chest.

“I mean, seriously, it’s been affecting me so much. I could barely do any of my choreographies without getting dizzy, I accidentally snapped at a costumer— not to mention, our highest paying.” You continued your tangent, eyes anywhere but on your boyfriends’ withering state. Your words struck them like lightning coursing through their body, making Sam the first to fall on his knees.

It was only when you heard a second thud when you turned back around. Your eyes widened at the sight of both Sam and Colby on their knees, their inhuman traits were out in the open.

“Sam? Colby? What the fuck is happening?” You knelt down to their level, trying to lift their heads up. Colby harshly grabbed your arm as soon you got closer, making you wince in pain as his sharp nails dug in your skin. Your reaction immediately made the boy struggle even further.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” The boy chanted to himself. “Fuck, I didn’t mean it, please.” Colby pleaded to you as if you were the one hurting him.

“Please, forgive us. We didn’t mean to anger you, make it stop.” Sam wheezed, his eyes having the brightest shade of red you’ve ever seen him have. The only time you’ve seen a glimpse of it was during sex.

Their words confused you as concern began washing over your anger. “Wait– guys–” Before you could even start talking to them, a voice in began to ring in the back of your head.

They deserve this.

The voice awfully sounded like you.

“You deserve this.” You said towards the both of them. Sam, despite his pain and being the rationale of your relationship, took notice of how your voice didn’t sound like you. It was you, you were speaking, but another voice, much darker and lower, was speaking for you.

The boys felt your fingers wrap around their chin, lifting them without much hardship. Colby’s watering eyes widened at your different eye color.

He wasn’t able to focus any further when he felt yet another sharp on his neck. “Focusing on useless things, you tend to do that, don’t you, Colby?” Instead of just the new voice, your real voice began overlapping with it. Somehow, it doubled the fear the boys were feeling for the first time again.

“As for you, Sam, you think you control this relationship, don’t you? Having made the first move on me, I can’t blame you if you did.” You chuckled. “Oh, how long I’ve been wanting to tell you this,” You inched closer to the boy, ghosting his sensitive sense of hearing on his now pointed ears. “You never were.”

You simultaneously let them both go and immediately grabbing a fistful of Sam’s hair. “You’re always one to talk. Better make that tongue to good use.” Without much warning, you placed two of your fingers inside him. “Suck.” You ordered.

Sam couldn’t do anything but comply, licking and sucking every inch of what you gave him. The pain in his heart was lessening by the second, making his actions more messy and desperate. Colby looked over at your lustful expression as you watched Sam, feeling his pants tightening at the sight.

“You never left me alone when I’m soaked,” Despite your distance from him, Colby heard your voice against his ear, making shivers run down his spine to his penis, pre cum staining his pants. He could feel your chuckles on his bare neck. “Don’t worry, baby, I won’t be doing the same thing you.”

With half lidded eyes, Sam watched as you reached over to Colby, his demon tail immediately wrapping itself around you, as if guiding you to where you should be. You clicked your tongue, making both of them wince in pain at your displeasure. “Still trying to take control?”

You could hear Colby mumbling ‘no’s under his labored breathes along with Sam’s muffled ones, knowing what’s coming. You retracted your fingers from the blonde boy’s mouth and stood up.

“Look at me, Colby.” Your voice was gone again, voice void of any emotion but command. As soon as he did, he groaned in pain and pleasure as your feet lands on his hard on. The heels you were still wearing from the club stabbed on every part of him, his whines of pain slowly turning to a mix of his moans.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He gasped as pushed your heels even further, “Please, it hurts so much. It hurts,” Tears, which was something you’ve never seen come out of the both of them, began falling down on his scaled cheeks.

You remained unfazed, eyes glistening in excitement. Was it even you?

“Hurts more than getting choked?” You taunted and Colby immediately shakes his head. “If anything, you’re luckier than Sam. I like it when I’m being fucked and losing my breath.” Which both Sam and Colby knew all too well.

Speaking of, your eyes moved towards to Sam who was pathetically palm himself beside Colby. It almost made you wanted to laugh that this was the same man that stalked you, hunted you, and claimed you.

“God, you look good like this.” You smirked, grabbing his chin once again and pulling his head towards yours. Your lips move in a familiar rhythm, only this time you were taking the lead of exploring every inches of the boy’s mouth. Your tongue grazed his sharp canines, purposely piercing yourself to let blood run. Sam’s eyes widened, eyes glistening.

“You’re so spoiled.” You said as soon your lips parted ways with his, wiping the blood residue on your mouth and watched as Sam immediately started to lick it if off of your thumb.

“I’m gonna– fuck, fuck, I’m–“ Colby moaned as his hips grinds against your stilettos. He tried to chase his high but you removed your legs before he could, making him groan in pain. “No, no, please.” He cried, more tears spilling down from his darkened pupils.

You had to step back to look at the mess you’ve created. Sam was in his own high as the smallest amount of your blood intoxicated his entire being, leaving his pants severely damped while Colby couldn’t even move in inch from how painful you left him, something in him refusing to cum if it wasn’t against you.

You ran your fingers in your hair. “Ah, fuck— this definitely gave my energy back.”

Their eyes made contact with yours and they could see your natural eye color mixing with your new one. Colby, being a demon himself, knew what’s happening.

Because of your lack of blood, your own blood, and your humanly essence he’s been selfishly taking, a demonic spirit strong enough to conquer one and an ancient vampire made its way to your weakened self and made itself feel at home inside you.

That also meant this dynamic, these invisible chains you’ve placed on them, wouldn’t disappear any time soon.

[joesalw]

You really can't write this shit lmao...

TS's friend group consists of Miss 'idc about genocide and continue to employ a bloodthirsty zionist CEO for my makeup brand' and Cara D who's great grandfather created the Black and Tans which is a terrorist organisation that killed Irish people during the Irish War of Independence. A group that also sent their people to kill Palestinians in favor of establishing the state of Israel. Last night these 3 went to Ramy Youssef's (who Taylor probably met at the "Poor Things" premiere) comedy show in NYC and 100% of the proceeds would go to the Gaza relief fund. The thing is, Selena and Taylor are getting all the credit and praise for Ramy's activism. I've been a fan of her work for the past 10 years and her recent activities have turned me off of her completely. The turning point was that pathetic TIME interview.

I've always thought of her as this well-read individual who can masterfully express herself whether it would be public speaking or writing but I couldn't help but cringe while reading that article. She tries too hard to appeal to gen z and younger millennial crowd when she herself is practically pushing 40 atp. I feel like all of her 'intelligence' came from being around Joe Alwyn who's a notorious bookworm. The fact that she describes her Rep era as 'goth-punk' was the first strike, the 2016 hate train as a ' career death' was the 2nd and the whole patriarchy delusion she went into just hit the final nail in the coffin and I was like 'nope, not doing this shit anymore'.

I know that swifties have been comparing her to Beyonce lately saying things like 'well, Taylor writes her songs' or 'Beyonce can't read' and talking about how she doesn't give interviews so people don't know that she's dumb. And as a comparison I've found her Harper's Bazaar interview that she gave when she turned 40. And good God, I've slept on this woman for way too long. In the interview she talks about building her work ethic from an early age. The dedication of her life's decades (First decade was dedicated to dreaming, the teens were about the grind, the 20s were about building a strong foundation for her career and establishing her legacy, the 30s were about starting her family and prioritizing her own life over her career). She started her own management company at 27, in 2013 she started her charity foundation in which she helps hurricane relief, education, supporting minorities businesses, families with housing needs, water crises, pediatric health care and pandemic relief. She talks about expanding her business ventures beyond music industry, talks about setting boundaries in the world of celebrity culture, about her friends being a group of strong independent women, about the importance of mental health. She also says that she's most inspired by her parents ("My mother has always been my Queen and still is. She has always been so strong and is filled with humanity", "No matter how tired she was, she was always professional, loving, and nurturing."; "My father constantly encouraged me to write my own songs and create my own vision. He is the reason I wrote and produced at such a young age."). That woman is so well-spoken and genuine you can't help but feel warm while reading it and she doesn't feel the need of throwing unnecessary 'smart people' words to seem that way.

Reading Taylor's "Person of the Year" profile and Beyonce's 'Entering 40s' interview were completely different experiences. And as a result, one of them lost a fan and the other gained one. I wish Tree Paine would stop Taylor from giving these interviews because everytime she does, she comes across as tone-deaf, out of touch, mentally stuck overgrown teenager, try-hard bratty diva who can't stand being not the only one praised.

Anyway, I'd recommend to read the full interview and watching her new film. I've watched it yesterday and got the urge of turning my life around. That lady is truly such a light.

Taylor's friend list also includes 'Mr. and Mrs. plantation with slave cabins on the property wedding', 'a sex offender and a SA apologist as the newest addition', 'Ms. "I assaulted my own sister", ' an insecure and whiny music producer who likes to stir drama on Taylor's behalf'. And not to mention that she's dated a nazi this year and her newest flavour of the month is a fatphobic jock with a double digit iq, her father is also an avid republican voter. I think the people she surrounds herself with tell about her more than she does herself.

And concluding with two cents about Joe Alwyn. I'm glad she's out of his life. While I was a swiftie I've watched his interviews and he always came across as a very gentle, calm, well-spoken and a bit introverted man. And she's... well, her. I also think that she'd held him back in her job in regards of producers and directors not wanting their work to be overshadowed by 'Taylor's BF is in this' articles. I'm hoping he does more projects in the future or maybe dips his toes in writing and directing something because clearly he's a talented writer.

Sorry for the long rant, had to get it out of my system <3

I love reading your rants, keep it coming. they are so on point.

[rosesnbooks]

Astrology observations #3

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-i think it is not difficult to spot someone with scorpio placements/8th house in the big 6 (not that much in the sun tho). their energy appears darker, even when they have more "light-hearted" placements in the chart.

-pisces and leo can get along pretty well, the leo can get pisces out of their shell, and pisces can help them to relax and embrace their strong emotions

-people with scorpio+libra placements are irrestistible to others. they are charming, beautiful and mysterious.

-virgos have a way with words, they are very gifted and super smart. writing down their thoughts and feelings (bonus points if they use other creative outlets to do so) is so helpful for their mental health

-gemini placements can notice someone fake really quickly. i've noticed the same for pisces. geminis tend to really analyze these people, while pisces listen to their gut that is rarely wrong. i know it may sound ironic since many people state geminis are fake, but i disagree with them

-as they get older, sagittarius moons become more interested in spirituality and learning about other cultures; even when these themes are irrelevant to them when they're very young

-virgo stelliums love the color green, a lot!

-i have noticed that some people tend to hate a zodiac sign that is their own moon sign (they're often not aware of this, and not familiar with astrology)for example, i know a scorpio sun with leo moon that dislikes leos, and a virgo sun with taurus moon that dislikes taurus people. this might be a stretch tho

-as a gemini rising, i do sometimes feel like there's so many different sides of me i present to the public, but that's mostly because i can only be my true self around the people i like, and i also absorb some behavior from the people i adore (even speech, unintentionally)

-taurus/2nd house mercuries have strong opinions on things, especially those that are very important to them. they also dislike people who are not trustworthy and direct

-taurus and cancer placements love food and cooking. when they cook, they put love into it and they like to prepare meals for people they love. they want to give others the comfort they seek themselves. they dislike cooking for people who don't appreciate their effort

-mars in leo can be really good with kids. especially if they also have earth placements, they are nurturing, creative and responsible which is the best combo

-venus in virgo/6th house won't enter a relationship with just anyone, they have their standards

-venus in the 11th really do dream about falling in love with their best friend, they wouldn't have it any other way

-a lot of sister signs can get along, but there is something about pisces and virgo that cannot be described (yet i will proceed to try) they have so much understanding for each other and it feels like they complete each other. pisces help them to dream big and accept their emotions (and to be less harsh on themselves), and virgos help pisces to stay firmly on the ground and achieve their goals

-saturn in the 4th house can have very dramatic and difficult experiences with their family. their parents weren't easy to get along with, and they never taught them how to be emotionally vulnerable and mature. they have the pressure to build a family of their own as well, but they struggle with this. however, this doesn't mean that they are doomed, many people can work on themselves and not make their parents' mistakes.

-saturn in the 6th need to be careful not to work too much. especially if they love what they do, they shouldn't spend 24/7 thinking about work, and should start taking care of themselves and nourish their interests/hobbies

-leo moons are said to be creative for a reason. they want to explore so many things and master all of them, or at least reach a level they can be proud of. art can be in their little finger, but they shouldn't be too hard on themselves when they don't reach their own expectations

-capricorn risings have conventionally beautiful characteristics. some also seem authoritative, so people don't want to mess with them and assume they're very serious. also, people often mistake them for scorpios

-uranus in the 1st in one's chart may indicate that this person needs a lot of freedom and they want to have control over everything in their life. they want to be in the spotlight, but they are sometimes scared that people would judge them. they feel different than others and they want to fit in, so that they can achieve their goals. they need to accept their eccentric side and surround themselves with people who appreciate them.

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

[aihoshiino]

After reading the latest chapter, I found it intriguing that right after the panel where Ayumi says that "Back then, Ai was 8 or 9", the next panel has her state that "Ai had grown up to be a woman", despite her being still just a child. No one would call someone that age a grown woman. It's seems like she didn't view her daughter as a child at all (and neither did her creep of a boyfriend) and only saw her as some sort of love rival who's an adult like her even when she wasn't. Ai's mom clearly wasn't fit to be a mother at all since a good mother would've broke up with her boyfriend instead. And even in the way she speaks of herself in this chapter, it's as if she wants Aqua (and the readers) to feel sympathetic. Ayumi truly is an awfully selfish woman and unfortunately she had to be Ai's mother.

anon i literally woke up this morning cooking ayumi meta on exactly this topic in my head and then logged on to see this ask....... you and i shall have a spring wedding

That said, you're right on the money. What I loved so much about the writing of this scene is how intensely real Ayumi feels as a toxic mother. I feel like a lot of people were kind of expecting her to be this over the top cackling Mother Gothel type but like I said in my ch 131 initial writeup, the unfortunate reality is that this is how a lot of abusers look. Like normal ass, regular, pathetic people.

In particular, I really love how deep of an understanding we get of Ayumi's messed up, contradictory headspace just over the course of the four pages we spend with her. She recognizes that she did something terrible and hates herself, but she has surrendered to this sort of self-enforced helplessness with regard to her own issues and fucked up behaviours. She knows that she needs to improve but is self-defeating about her ability to do so and the whole thing turns into a self fulfilling prophecy where she refuses to put in the work because she believes she can't change to begin with but BECAUSE she doesn't put in the work, nothing changes, which reinforces her belief that she can't fix anything so she doesn't try and... you see how the snake starts eating its own tail?

At the same time, though, this surrendering to helplessness is a safety net for her as much as it is a mental trap. By framing her behaviour as something she is powerless to resist or to stop, she essentially frees herself of agency in Ai's abuse and neglect. Being violent towards her daughter is not something she frames as an active choice, but as something she would "wind up" doing, as if by accident or compelled by forces completely out of her control. Not only that, but it allows her to rewrite the narrative for herself with regards to her abandonment of Ai – since she is so helpless to stop her abuse of Ai, the daughter she loves so much, she just had no choice but to stay away. But she was totally going to go pick her up someday, definitely! Never fucking mind that Ai was left there for so long that she aged out of the system before Ayumi ever came back.

It's once Aqua challenges this assertion, though, that the cracks start to form. Though even before that, an attentive reader will obviously have some red flags up – after all, if Ayumi loves her daughter as much as she says she did, then why does Ai describe herself as a person who has never been loved by anyone? At age twelve, no less? That is not even REMOTELY close to a thought a well adjusted and cared for kid should be able to express, let alone sincerely think.

There's always been a theme in Oshi no Ko of Ai being pulled in all directions, in trying to be everything that everybody asked her to be, succeeding and being punished for it anyway. In my CH131 thoughts, I coined the phrase 'adultification' to describe the way adult agency and expectations are enforced on children who are too young as a method of abuse, a direct inverse of the way infantilization happens to adults. Part of the impossible expectations enforced on Ai were having these twin opposing forces of adultification and infantalization inflicted on her in a truly maddening way.

Specific to adultification, though, we over and over see other characters inflict adult agency and sexuality on Ai way before the point that any reasonable person would rationally think to do so. When describing her falling in love, Kaburagi says that her face, which had been that of a child, "turned into a woman's" at a time that we know she can only have been fifteen at the oldest.

45510 seconds this, with the narrator describing how this adultification is inflicted on many young girls in the industry;

"At the time, younger age groups were all the rage, but girls in their formative years could undergo rapid changes as they matured. Once they outgrew that youthful phase, they were evaluated the same way as "ordinary" women."

... only to turn around and do the same thing to Ai:

"Right from the beginning, she exuded a maturity beyond her years, and in the end, she retained a fresh-faced, youthful allure."

With all that in mind, it's not at all a shock that this echoes all the way back in time to the starting point of Ayumi's abuse of Ai. It's reprehensible, but it's also unfortunately deeply real – it is heartbreakingly common for victims of CSA to be blamed for their abuse, as if being victimized by adults is something they have any agency in.

In this instance too, Ayumi distances herself from her own agency and culpability in Ai's abuse. Look at how she frames things and the issues that she centers; it isn't her own insecurity, toxicity and violence that ruined things. It was Ai's beauty. Ai growing into a woman. That she can say such a thing without blinking betrays so clearly that for all she insists she loved her daughter, Ai was never really a child to her. And the moment she realized Ai was attracting the attention of a man, Ayumi didn't see her as a child being victimized but as a woman posing a threat, a romantic and sexual rival who needed to be beaten back into line and shown her place. Even her anger at Ai's stepfather is so, so telling – the framing makes it clear that her anger is not that of a woman raging against someone who posed a threat to their child, but as a woman resenting a man who was unfaithful to her.

For all that she cries and self flagellates, Ayumi basically lays it all out in her own words without even meaning to. She doesn't take responsibility for her own actions, nor does she even really frame them as being central to the chain of abuse that destroyed not just her family but robbed Ai of her life. Even through her tears, she pushes Ai to the forefront while framing her abuse as a thing that just "ended up" happening, that she was powerless to stop. When talking to Aqua about how she can't make amends, the word she uses in the Japanese text is actually 贖罪 – Atonement, the same character used as the chapter's title.

But the thing about atonement is that you can't atone for a sin you don't take responsibility for. And Ayumi makes it heartbreakingly clear that for all her regrets and her pain, she has not come close to taking responsibility for the harm she inflicted on her daughter. And even if she did? It's too late. Ai is gone.

It's just as Akane says. There's nothing here anymore.

[theminecraftbee]

ok so idk if you’ve answered this before but anyways,, i really love the way you write horror!

i read stuffed bird for the first time over a year ago now but i still think about the world you created on a regular basis. i rarely read au fics and it’s even more rare for me to remember them for an extended period but seriously, no joke, this is about a stuffed bird might genuinely be one of my favorite fanfictions of all time.

anyways, shameless fanboying aside, i actually wanted to ask if you had any good tips with writing horror? im a huge fan of the genre and have always wanted to create something myself but i have no clue where to even start. i feel like every idea i have is either weirdly cheesy or just unauthentic. so yeah, do you maybe have some pointers on how to get over that first threshold of not being “good enough”? or maybe just sharing what goes into your creative process when you write your stuff?

anyways i’m sorry for rambling, you’re really cool and i hope you have a good day. happy halloween!

oh goodness, thank you! i'm so glad you liked stuffed bird, and read it despite not normally liking aus! that's a big compliment!

as for the "how to write horror" tips. okay so first: it's gonna feel a little cheesy. the thing is that when you're writing it, it's gonna be less scary to you. you're going to go "well this is just silly/inauthentic/absurd" and you're going to feel like "well surely this can't scare people" and you've gotta push past that. you've gotta push past that to "well what about someone who DOESN'T know i'm trying really hard, what will they think of it?" and that can help you out a lot.

my second tip is... you've gotta know when to show the monster and not show the monster. like okay you're going to hear that things you don't show the audience can be scarier than those you do. and that's TRUE, but sometimes also you do really want to show the audience the thing. it's all about "what will cause the correct kind of impact in this moment". so, uh, example, most of the stuffed bird monsters i only describe a few aspects of, not the whole monster, and that's because the audience can fill in a scarier description than what i can come up with. however, i still describe what i personally think are the scariest/most impactful parts of the monster! because in order for it to do the thing i wanted i still NEEDED some of the gorey/horror description, i just couldn't try to perfectly describe every inch. this goes especially for horror that relies on physical description/gore actually; if you know when to show the gore, you can make it have impact. if there are certain things you describe in detail and certain things you don't, it will tell you stuff about your characters, AND it will make both of those things have more impact for the audience! so i guess that's one of my big horror tips.

my other big horror tip is that a lot of horror is emotional. doing things that reflect your character's mental state can really help sell whatever you're trying to make scary! this can both work in the "if your character is scared" sense and in the "if your character is NOT scared" sense--for example, if you are describing something scary is happening, but your character has a very happy/lighthearted emotional tone, that's one kind of scary, but if you're describing something scary and your characters are terrified, that's another! and it's useful to know when to use which.

okay and the last tip: don't worry about being "not good enough" just write what you write and post it! you will never get better without practice. the main way my horror ends up working is that i keep writing it, i think; if i never wrote horror, i'd never get used to writing horror, and it would never get scary. plus, you will be your own worst critic. get yourself some friends to help cheer you on, and then just go for it!

this is a lot of paragraphs ;-; but i HOPE IT HELPS!

[ii-yinyang]

yinyang rant I've had in the discord for a while and now have the courage to post

so yinyang is a funny character right? a little silly even. a goofy little guy. but what if i told you that all that sillyness is hiding so much insecurities you wouldn't even KNOW.

ok so first why would he be insecure? well this is kinda obvious but in episode 4 his team kinda. you know. tried voting him off the game. this hurts him, obviously. we can see this in ep 6 when nickel mentions it, yinyang looks shocked and everyone goes silent. in episodes 11 and 14, even more is added into the burning pile, though as of the time of writing this i can't really factor in ep 14 besides speculating about the next episode.

ok so how is this insecurity expressed, well first we have what i mentioned in ep 6, he freezes up, not wanting to think about it. in episode 10 when he's describing his alliance idea to paintbrush, he turns away from them. Not wanting them to see he's crying, now why wouldn't yinyang want paintbrush to see him crying?

in ep 4, yinyang looks at paintbrush whilst mephone is counting the votes, which implies that yinyang looks up to paintbrush in some sort of way, and when paintbrush looks back that implies they voted for him too. but that's besides the point.

in ep 12, yinyang intentionally hurts the floor in order to win, now before this point yinyang and the floor had a pretty neutral relationship, so it's not like they hated eachother or something. so he obviously did this to win, but why would he do this in order to win? wouldn't it be too far? why didn't yin interfere?

it was in order to prove them wrong. to prove silver wrong, to prove candle wrong, (who betrayed him last episode at the time). to show them that they both were capable of getting immunity by earning it. to prove their worth. which didn't work. like at all.

this is also proven by this line in ep 13, where the implication is that without the viewers interference, yin believes they are nothing. which after the failure of the last episode is about as reasonable as a self depreciating statement can get, which isn't very much.

this is also why he even bothers listening to a single thing silver has too say in ep 14. silver was telling yang everything he wanted to hear, that the reason everyone seems to betray him, being his chaoticness, is actually a good trait and only HE (and conveniently silver) have seemed to realize it. that what candle taught him was just useless fluff to make him weaker (silver literally called yang soft). telling him that he was smart, clever even, that candle was just too stupid to realize what chaos could do. that for once, his worst trait can get him what he truly wants, an immunity not earned via viewer vote. acknowledging his insecurities and twisting him to his advantage.

so what's next for yinyang? obviously ep 14 was a huge blow to yinyangs self esteem, like all of yangs character development got thrown in the rubbish, like if ep 4 was yinyang getting kicked in the nuts, ep 14 was him getting blown to smithereens. this has basically blown yinyangs insecurities wide open, but it's not like they were all that secret before. he's a fan favorite so obviously animation epic isn't gonna send him hurdling to indefinite island without at least some of that being addressed (at least i hope). so how in gods name is yinyang gonna recover his mental state completely in 5 episode or less? well, the quick answer is he isn't. the long answer is this.

we already had an arc where someone tried to "fix" yinyang, and that ended up with candle seeing the friendship as completely transactional and cutting it off as soon as yinyang didn't need her. (which i could talk about forever but i digress) so how would yinyangs hypothetical "oh my god he has so many insecurities we need to fix this oh god oh fuck" arc go? well imo, i feel like it would involve the people silver has been trying to get yinyang to push away the most, his friends. any one of them could do this, balloon is kinda going through his own thing rn so probably either cabby or the floor (i may or may not be biased towards one of these outcomes but nonetheless) helping him regain his self worth in increments, the main point of the arc being that you really cant fix everything in one conversation, and that things like undoing an entire seasons worth of people kicking you in the metaphorical nuts repeatedly take time and effort. we can already see the buds of this arc by cabby and balloon taking extra care to listen to yinyang after what he went through. which is nice. he deserves something nice that isn't immediately ripped away from him 5 episodes later.

so yeah rant over um yinyang deserves to win iii i rest my case

[venelona]

Hey! Big fan of your art!

I have a question:

You’re a big shipper of frans which gets a lot of hate online from people who claim it to be “problematic” or “pedophilia” and I’m curious: How do you deal with these people?

A lot of the time these people have the intelligence of a paint can, and the personality of a rusty pipe. They come in many forms: sometimes they just follow mob mentality, sometimes they think they’re the “good guys” and are fighting against “problematic” stuff, sometimes they’re just uninformed and too stubborn to listen, and sometimes they just hate to hate. These things all mean that they can’t really be reasoned with.

So I’m curious as to how you deal with them and what the best strategy is (I’m planning on getting into ut writing, so I wanna be prepared).

(Thank you!)

Hello, thank you!

Your observations are very on point - a lot of people who send frans hate (honestly, its not even just frans issue - it can apply to any not-canon ship) are quite narrow minded, stubborn, like to play a morally superior 'hero' and do not like to listen to any reasoning

I deal with it by simply not being that person. I keep open mind and respect even ships that I dislike with all my soul, because at the end of the day this is fiction, hobby, for fun. And that's what I tell people who try and sling hate at me - you really have a problem with a person's choice of fictional character romance? Even if its problematic (when it comes to frans, as long as Frisk is an adult I do not even consider it problematic), exploring a problematic ship does not make a person awful, as long as they are and the audience is aware that it's supposed to be problematic. Like, yunno, people who write murder stories are not killers

When engaging with the hate comments (which I usually do when I receive any - when I was still in the toxic pit that is Instagram when I wasn't in the best mental space I'd just delete hateful comments, only for those people to come back and point fingers at me for it, which means they were monitoring a post they actively dislike... honestly, those kinds of people just have too much time in their life) I usually try to respectively describe my point of view, and sometimes even engage in conversation when I try to talk with them through their points in an effort to show them that there doesn't need to be hate like this, and how usually it's hypocritical in comparison to other ships, maybe world in general, or just that it's kind of a waste of time to talk about this because this is for entertainment purposes of a person you do not know but choose to hurt and can hurt

I do not owe this to those people - I probably don't even owe them politeness I try to extend, but I choose to act this way because usually those people are young, and if my words have even a slight chance to change how they choose to act and view things, it's worth it in my eyes to try. Though, I do this if I'm in a good mental space, which I usually am, but I get wore down also. If I'm too tired, I just ignore it, or leave a shorter comment

Honestly I've been very fortunate not to receive a lot of hate over the years - I was too unpopular/not worth it at first and later too big and intimidating to attack later lol I'd never want for people to attack someone on my behalf, even if they attacked me, but having friends you can vent to if something did get to you is very nice.

Most of the time people don't really change their point of view, but sometimes they do. I got a couple call out posts on twitter last months, and commenting on them and talking to people who made them made them delete them, because they were made by teens who got scared that the person they ragged on saw this, asked them why they were gossiping, and explaining how their 'heroic unmasking' posts could lead to a person receiving threats and having their mental state crumbling (I was in good enough mental space so I didn't think of it much, but I worry for those who may receive same type of treatment and handle it worse). Those teens said they won't make posts like this again, which doesn't mean they changed as people or changed their perspective, but hopefully means in the future there will be less people hated, and less people will embarrass themselves by targeting people in hopes of being a 'hero who brought awareness to this person being bad' when the person didn't do anything to deserve this

In conclusion... Do not listen to hateful comments - there's no shame in deleting them or blocking the people outright. I always leave blocking as last resort, but it's a personal choice. Sometimes for your mental health and mood it's really better just to yeet that out of your sight tho, complain to your friends and move on to have a nice day

Good luck with writing! If you start getting any ship hate you're always welcome to dm/tag me, and I'll try to help you ✨From personal experience, Tumblr doesn't have much haters though - even if you catch their attention, you can always turn off anon asks

[filledtothebrimothy]

Idk if this is ever talked about in the fandom but I think some really interesting parallels between Atsushi and Akutagawa are actually the people who took them in- the orphanage headmaster and Dazai respectively- and how they were pretty damn similar (at least at the time)

First of all, both Atsushi and Akutagawa both had little to no connection with their parents. They’re never mentioned because neither of them really knew them in the first place.

And then, both the headmaster and Dazai “saved” them from their shitty living situations (the word “saved” being in quotes because Atsushi and Akutagawa were simply moved from one shitty situation to another). The headmaster said things like “Compared to what your parents did, this hardly even counts as abuse,” maybe trying to justify his actions, and Dazai promised to give Akutagawa a reason to live, which made Akutagawa’s mental state pretty much dependent on Dazai.

Dazai physically and mentally abused the hell out of Akutagawa, as did the headmaster to Atsushi, while both simultaneously taking up this role of “caretaker” for them. The one main difference between them was that Atsushi actively hated the headmaster. And then there’s Akutagawa, who, as we all know, practically revered Dazai and did everything to get his acknowledgment, his approval.

And an impact I think these different outlooks had on the two boys was how they each treated Kyouka.

Atsushi knew how awful abuse was and viewed the way he was treated in a negative light, so he wanted to save Kyouka from the abuse she was facing. But with Akutagawa, he viewed the way he was treated in a positive light (for the most part, anyway), and so of course he’s going to try to treat Kyouka the way Dazai treated him. Most importantly, Akutagawa tried to give Kyouka a reason to live. Moreover, he thought her reason to live was simply to be an assassin as her ability was perfect for bloodshed, which is what he thought was his own reason to live given to him by Dazai (even if Dazai had tried to tell him it’s stupid to only use his ability offensively).

Something I also think about is how Dazai joined the mafia for his own reason to live, promised one to Akutagawa which became why he joined the mafia, and then Akutagawa tried to push that trend onto Kyouka

While Dazai gave Akutagawa a reason to live, the headmaster made Atsushi want to prove he’s worthy of living. Obviously, the Guild arc points out the rift this creates between Atsushi and Akutagawa and their motivations (even if this was from before Akutagawa’s past was shown).

Now, back to the actual topic at hand after going off on a sort of side tangent, there’s one more thing that makes the headmaster and PM Dazai parallels is their own backgrounds and how they affect how they treat Atsushi and Akutagawa.

Now, if I’m being completely honest, I don’t feel like rereading the chapter that described the headmaster’s past nor do I have the energy right now to look at his wiki (it is currently 3:22 AM as of writing this sentence), so I’m just gonna be going off my memory. BUT.

If I remember correctly, the headmaster was raised in an orphanage himself, and one that was in WAY worse conditions than the one he ran. Imagine the abuse the kids at Atsushi’s orphanage felt but worse. Then there’s Dazai, who was taken in by Mori of all people after a failed suicide tempt as a young teenager. Mori abused Dazai (more mentally than physically), and kinda… yknow, corrupted him.

So, both the orphanage headmaster and Dazai came from places where they were victims of the own abuse they committed.

[shellsinadune]

ok so i'm back, i've slept on it, here are some things i loved about the darlinghurst great comet (in no particular order - spoilers if you want to be surprised by the creative decisions):

the drinks were great, i don't drink so i had the war and peach at the intermission and it had glitter in it!! btw just in general love when theatres change the name of a drink for the show ('anatole spritz' (aperol spritz) tickled me)

everyone was so kind, i got complimented on my outfit and the person (usher? idk the word) was really helpful

the building was accessible in a way i wasn't used to. the accessible bathroom had those buttons to open and lock the door, idk whether the changing place was adequate for adults but it was there. there was a lift between the upper and lower ground floor so i could actually go down those half floor stairs that i usually just have to sit at the top of

the use of the (massive) disco ball was beautiful, i started crying during no one else and the little specks of light spinning like snow were a contributing factor in that

the costumes!!!! they definitely did their own thing with them. natasha's opening dress with the sleeves and anatole's crop top were highlights but the whole thing was cool. most of the fem clothes had a sort of babydoll vibe to them?? idk how to describe it.

sonya alone was beautiful, many of the solos (notably also pierre and dust and ashes) were performed as if the character was writing/singing a song rather than the actor performing the characters' thoughts, if that makes sense?? but just the spotlight on her, her playing the piano and singing..... it wasn't what i was expecting, but it allowed a nice little rest between bigger numbers and let me focus on the singing

the whole cast was so talented though, i think every actor played an instrument at some point which is super impressive. some of them had cellos strapped to them half the time and were still dancing.

the theatre was so small that i'm pretty sure the cast could fully see me sobbing in the back row at the end. that is how great comet should be.

the jumping skills were impressive. not just during the abduction but also when people were getting off the stage.

i like how opb's movements were mostly controlled by other actors dragging his clothes around. my dad and i had a conversation about whether it's symbolic of his privilege (having a bunch of yes man servants) or of his declining mental state (being controlled by his dementia (?) instead of what he used to be)

danatole rights in the duel and preparations (they are so dysfunctional <3). anatole grabbing at dolokhov's chest and kissing his neck when 'a fact known only to his intimates' *chefs kiss*

marya's actor wasn't performing and the swing was playing helene so the production manager (?) was playing marya. given that she didn't know the role perfectly (she had the script in hand) she did really well!!!!

the 2 little balconies were great, they added a lot of dimension to the stage. (for those wondering, to my memory the songs performed in the balconies were: pierre, natasha and sonya in the opera, natasha & anatole, dust and ashes, pierre in letters, preparations, anatole in find anatole, and pierre & anatole)

GENDERQUEER ANATOLE!!!!! the way they would switch octaves mid line <3333

actually multiple of these actors are trans/gnc!!!!!!!

there was no/very little ensemble so you could hear every individual voice during the harmonies

the program is gorgeous, there are little glossy constellations all over it which makes a nice texture

the choreography in charming was so neat. love those little shoulder wiggles.

no strobing in the duel (but yes strobing in the opera when anatole comes in)

they did something with the lighting during the ball kiss that sort of made it look like a veil of light and a little strip of darkness spinning around them. if i'm going to analyse it conveys natasha's confusion while giving her privacy. or something i can't figure out the words to explain it.

not really intentional but right before the bit of the opera with the show, they stopped the performance for a bit. idk why. but it was charming and helpful for me because i had to ground a bit.

i cried 7 times. my head hurt by the end of it.

the use of silence was so good. like pauses between songs, in the middle of them, idk just. you know that post about how live theatre conveys loneliness better than anything else? yeah.

i know i already said this but i kept putting these as separate points so i'll just say all the actors' performances are SO GOOD. natasha and sonya were like..... scarily well cast btw

the 'no, i am enjoying myself at home this evening' line was performed so well

i didn't get an on stage seat but they were sitting at a long table type thing that was actually part of the stage and the cast were literally dancing directly in front of them

i like the fact they didn't try to find gender conforming audience members to bring up (in this performance, mary's suitor was fem presenting and opb's 'cheap french thing' was masc presenting). they didn't change pronouns to try and match the gender presentation of whoever they called up. same with the actors during the abduction (matryoshka etc).

finally managed to id the woodwind instrument in the 'he'll come home one day and take me away, i want nothing more' bit ('twas a clarinet). that was bugging me for years.

the comet was depicted by natasha's actor holding a big lit up ball and slowly walking through the mid-audience bit of the stage. when the song ends she gives it to pierre and he holds it until it's the only light in the room. something something hope.

they didn't directly copy the recording, there were variations in the tune that caught me off guard (in a good way) and they pronounced things the way that was most natural for an australian performance instead of trying to americanise.

overall, the only thing i would want for is to have a recording for sale, because my memory is so shit that i remember something that happened yesterday about as well as i can remember being 4 years old (not an exaggeration). i'm sort of sad that i can't see it again and again, which is just part of ~the magic of theatre~ but also a sign that it's really that good.

(anyway i highly recommend it if you're in sydney before the 20th of august)

[moons-cozy-corner]

Hello Humanity

Trigger Warnings: Child death. Death. Blood. Mourning. Gore.

This is real life.

Hello humanity. My name is Moon. I am 18 years old. I am a gender-nonconforming individual. I am mentally ill. I am disabled. I am a sister. A friend. A savior. A failure. I suppose I am a lot of things.

I am also a writer. And as such it is my job to use symbols on a page to make you feel something. An emotion.

Emotion. A natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. Instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.

That is what emotion is. The literal dictionary definition, at least. But as a writer, I see emotion as this. Imagine laying on a field of grass. There is an endless sky above you. With so little description, your brain fills in the rest. Those extra details--those are derived from your emotions.

Whether you saw a purple-pink sky with cotton clouds, on tall, soft grass filled with fireflies. Or perhaps sharp blades sticking into your stiff back as you grimace up at smokey skies, tinged red? Or perhaps you saw exactly as I described, a canvas unpainted by the words of an artist, a numb emptiness. All of which are valid. All of which are emotional.

Now I will paint you a picture. Follow along if you can.

A child opens their eyes, grubby hand grasping their chest as they breathe heavily, tears pricking their eyes. They are met by silence, only accompanied by their own heavy breathing. The world around them is soft. Soft in all the ways the world can be. Dirt white and smooth as clouds, sprouting flowers of soft pastels, the sky a kind blue. Their jaw unclenches, their eyes rush around not in fear, but in curiosity. How did they get here? Where were they? Where was everyone else?

And they turned around, and children are laughing. Running in all directions chasing after butterflies, pointing at birds, smiling. Happy in the simplest of ways. When the group of children spots the child, they stop, all staring. But they realize-its another friend! They greet them with open arms, an older child picking them up and holding them close, carrying them over to the rest of the group.

The child goes with giddiness and a newfound peace in their heart, something they know they have missed, but they cannot seem to remember why.

Little does the child know that the warmth they feel is not of an older child carrying them over to play, but their mothers arms surrounding them, or what is left of them, in the white sheet they are covered in. A mother kissing blossoms of warmth into an ever-cold body. A child that used to smile and laugh and play while their home lie miles away in rubble.

A woman places shaking crimson fingertips onto crumbled stone. Stone under which she knows some of her child's organs are buried. Rubble that crushed her baby into piece's that can never be reassembled again.

A father stares into the once kind blue sky, now gray, holding plastic shopping bags in each hand by his side. He imagines his child playing in the sky with all the others, their organs in their bodies as they reside with Allah, not in plastic baggies covered in dirt.

Do you like the picture? Do you like the progression of words that I drew out for you to see? The content I placed in front of you?

Oh. You don't? I see.

You see, I don't much like it either. Because I didn't make this story. I wrote it out for you, yes. But this story is far from fictional.

We sit on the other side of the screen, holding the proof of genocide in our hands. We sit and cry in our warm beds, warm showers, warm food and clothes, and hope that these people are saved.

Some of us don't.

So I am calling Humanity. Can she hear me?

I am a writer. I am really still only a child I can only do so much but I sit here, doing more than people twice my age.

Can you fucking hear me?

I am a writer. I cry over the words I write because they convey the truth of the world. My fingertips see my emotion into each little symbol I type. If this screen were paper you would see my tears.

You will hear me.

No. You will hear THEM.

The people of Gaza. The Palestinians who have died, the ones screaming for your help. The ones missing limbs, losing their eyesight, becoming orphaned, widowed, childless, homeless, lifeless.

The people of Congo. Those who are being enslaved so you can have the device you are using to read this right now, including children.

The people of the world who are dying at the brutal, unrelenting hands of those in charge of us.

2023 was not the start of any of this. And it will not be the end.

Hello Humanity. Their names are multiplying. Their ages are too young to justify. They are queer, religious, disabled, mentally ill, kind, creative, just. They are scared. I suppose they are a lot of things.

But are you Humane enough to speak up?

I will be using the tags I would use on a normal whump story to reach my writing community and those who would normally find my blog. My target audience is not those who would be looking under the Palestine tags. That is the reason for the unrelated tags. Thank you for reading. Free Palestine. Free Congo. Free Sudan. Free humanity.

[imagonista]

MOTH finale rambling: warning, this is long, and basically a brain dump. Proceed with caution

Oh gosh. I'm may not be physically crying, but mentally, I'm kind of numb. Not in a bad way, I want to be clear, this is just how I process certain types of emotional stories, and it may take some time for me to recover from the finale. Also the fact this is probably the first time my emotions have made me feel like I'm going to throw up, which is good in the sense that it means the storytelling was effective, but bad in the sense that I have emetophobia, the fear of vomiting, sooooo XP

If there was a word to describe the ending, it would be catharsis. Every character, both the speakers and the listeners, experience some form of catharsis, and get closure after all their trauma. Amazing storytelling.

I have so many thoughts, so many emotions, but I don't have the words to describe them (and I don't think *unholy bird screeches* count). There's so much to talk about...

The realization, adding from the previous episode, that Makkaro and Zed aren't that different. Both of their arcs revolve around them putting their respective listener on a pedestal, and all the harm that caused.

That the Guardian is GONE gone, and the effects that will have on the world. On one hand, the Guardian didn't do their job in the first place, mostly just staying alone in their arch angel until Zed showed up. But in the AU where the Guardian dies, it was stated how while magic doesn't go away, things start to feel less...magical, if the Guardian were to die. Does the Guardian leaving from the world in general mean the same thing? I'll guess we'll find out with Nosferatu (which took until actually spelling out the name to realize the importance of that name and its association with the original Dracula book. And since he was turned into a vampire... very clever!)

As much as I was hoping for Zed and the Guardian to end up together, it wasn't much of a shock when they didn't. Neither of them were ready for a relationship, and the Guardian just has too much emotional baggage to ever love again. And I'm glad it was Zed who did it; it really shows his character growth, his realization that it wouldn't be a fair or healthy relationship.

But my emotional juxtaposition:

*Darlings POV switching to Guardians POV*

Me: YES!!!!!

*Section titled "Shy Wizard let's you go")

Me: NO!!!!!!!

The title of the series being the title of (probably) Y'narri's favorite romance novel?!?! Genius! I'm also honestly glad that the meaning of Magic of the Heart wasn't the whole "you had the power inside yourself all along" type of story. Basically, that Zed would find the magic inside himself and then not be weak anymore, yada yada. I think it was only recently (probably within the last few years) I discovered how ableist that narrative can be. So having "Magic of the Heart" be about love, not "magic" magic, works a lot better.

Makkaro and Darlings ending was just beautiful! On one hand, it does kind of feel like Makkaro is getting off a bit too easily for murdering thousands (or had it gotten to millions?) of innocents. On the other hand, he did lose his necromancy, and had severe emotional trauma from the entire experience. But either way, I love how he and Darling are just gonna live happily together, and while they may be secluded/hidden from society, they finally get the peace they deserve.

Mini musical theater thoughts because of course my brain thinks about musicals; "That Would Be Enough" from Hamilton, Eliza's lines are so Darling coded

"I don't pretend to know, the challenges your facing,

The world's you keep erasing and creating in your mind.

But I'm not afraid,

I know who I married,

So long as you come home at the end of the day,

That would be enough."

And

"If I could grant you peace of mind,

If you could let me inside your heart.

...

Let this be the first chapter,

Where you decide to stay,

And I could be enough,

And we could be enough,

That would be enough."

I could probably write an essay about how Makkaro is both Hamilton and Burr, but nobody needs that.

The animation walk cycle at the end with the fanart?! It's basically an anime ending credits sequence, and I loved it! Magic of the Heart anime when?

On a lighter note, Zed calming himself down after going off about how the heck he was still alive, I couldn't relate more to him. That shock, the surprise, then mini celebration (and then realizing he was celebrating a bit too much); so relatable.

Now thoughts on the future: I am both nervous and excited to see what happens to Zed. I know if that he's gonna be more grown up in the future, he may lose being "shy," and "smol," which I selfishly don't want him to lose. To sum things up, my favorite male archetype is the nervous, shy, bumbling type; ever since my brain was able to accept that even as a female, I was allowed to have male favorite characters, that's always what I drifted to. Why? I don't know; probably something about vulnerability and having men not being jerks. It seems silly, but I struggle with characters changing (which is probably why my two favorite shows, The 7D and The Cuphead Show are my favorites; since they aren't crazy plot heavy and focus more on comedy, the characters are consistent). That's not to say I'm against character growth; I love character growth! And I want Zed to realize his own personal strengths and worth (which as we can see, the process has at the very least started). I don't know. While I hope Zed grows, I hope he's still, himself, for lack of a better term.

All in all, congrats GBA for an amazing series finale!!!!! And Im very excited for Gen 3!!!Apologies for this long ramble, for those who lasted this long

[thepartyishere]

This is long winded rant about Cogwheels by Akutagawa

I wrote this a while back in a fit of obsession over the irl Akutagawa (that will never go away). I'd consider it vague analysis/ summary and not 100% focused on the BSD character if that's what you're looking for. Tbh I'm practicing my analysis/ writing skills and I'm not very confident in them yet. All this warning, it's not actually that bad I think (hope), I just have high standards for myself.

Anyways this is for @twinksintrees who asked about it

PDF of Cogwheels by Akutagawa Ryunosuke that I used:

https://documents.pub/document/ryunosuke-akutagawa-cogwheels.html?page=1

Cogwheels is a fictional work by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, but it’s widely acknowledged to be a thinly veiled autobiography. It was written in 1927, the same year the author commits suicide. 

 The story follows the main character’s thought processes in his day to day life. The events that occur aren’t what captivates me, but the emotions and thought patterns described. The mood is consistently very alone, different, and other from the population. This feeling of otherness is furthered by the paranoia the main character is experiencing, which drives him away from the few people he knows and the various physical illnesses he struggles with. His thought patterns feel disjointed to the reader, containing lots of logical leaps. He'll notice a recurring theme or object, like seeing an airplane several times in different situations and become paranoid and obsessive over the meaning of it. Throughout the work these varying recurring themes seem random and unimportant to the reader until the climax in which the character goes on a walk and encounters each of the subjects of those recurring themes, which he had been perceiving as premonitions of insanity and death. The culmination of all the foreshadowed repetition and the subsequent breakdown he has as he believes he is dying breaks down the distance the reader feels to the illogical fears and thoughts. The paranoia becomes justified to an outside observer when it all comes together.

Cogwheels reflects Akutagawa’s deteriorating mental state, as he successfully committed suicide the same year it was written. According to his Wikipedia page, he had intensifying and persistent visual hallucinations throughout his life as well as anxiety. We’ll never know the specifics of his mental illness, but I believe liberties can be taken to apply the experiences of the main character in Cogwheels to its author as the story is mostly autobiographical. The main character’s thought patterns revealed what I interpreted as compulsions and possibly OCD (but I am not particularly knowledgeable on the subject), depression, paranoia and other symptoms I may not be able to diagnose. The way in which these experiences are written and the feelings the descriptions invoke could not have been done by someone who wasn’t experiencing those exact things. 

The story feels like a very honest look into how Akutagawa thought and his worldview. This was written as his struggles and illnesses (mental and physical) were coming to climax. Another detail that may be Akutagawa’s thoughts projected is that multiple times in the story the character wants to admit himself to a mental hospital, but, "to go there meant death to me." Akutagawa’s life was plagued by fear of inheriting his mother’s madness. She was admitted to a mental institution when he was very young. Toward the end of his life that fear only grew as well as, "a vague sense of anxiety about my own future," which is one main reason for his suicide, given in his suicide note.

Regarding suicide, I can't help but think of how Dazai and Akutagawa's roles are reversed in BSD as they are in real life. The author Dazai greatly looked up to Akutagawa and I wonder what he may have thought and felt reading the works of a similarly depressed author. He was very affected by Akutagawa's death, being around 18 when it happened (Akutagawa was 35). The authors really are very similar, their works known for being bleak. It’s as if everyone else can't see how horrible things are and they are uniquely miserable in the world. As I continue to learn about the two authors I hope to compare their similarities in writing style and lifestyle in more depth. 

Akutagawa also had connections to Junichiro, with whom he publicly disagreed over whether the content or the structure of a story is more important in writing. Akutagawa argued that structure, or how the story is told, is more important. Any relationships between the real life inspirations for the Bungou Stray Dogs characters interests me, and I find this opinion held by Akutagawa relevant to Cogwheels. The content of the story is the quite mundane and sad life of the character, while the descriptions of declining sanity and the emotions conveyed are what I believe make the work so compelling. I’d be interested in reading Junichiro’s work to compare how his preference for the content and plot of a story impacts his writing.

In Cogwheels, the character’s emotions are constantly being influenced by anything he may perceive as or relate to something negative. His “normal” thought patterns or casual day will be interrupted once he makes any sort of negative connection or suspicious observation. He will obsess over the meaning of it, spiraling into distress and anxiety. 

This is my favorite example of that:

""Asylum" was precisely what it was. I somehow felt something soothing in the rosy tint of the wall and relaxed at a table. Fortunately there were only a few other customers there. I sipped a cup of cocoa and started to drag on a cigarette, as usual. The smoke rose in a faint blue stream up the rosy wall. The harmonious mingling of the soft colors was agreeable to me. But after a time I discovered a portrait of Napoleon on the wall to my left and began to feel uneasy again. When Napoleon was only a student, he had written on the last page of his geography notebook: "Saint Akutagawa Helena, a small island." lt might have been, as we say, only a coincidence. But it must have made even Napoleon shiver eventually . . . Gazing at Napoleon, I thought about my own work. And there burst upon me certain phrases in A Fool's Life. (Especially the words, "Life is more hellish than hell itself.") And also the hero's fate in my Hell Screen-a painter called Yoshihide. Then.. smoking I looked around the cafe trying to escape such memories. I had taken shelter here no more than five minutes earlier. Already the place had undergone a complete change. What made me most uncomfortable was the fact that the chairs and tables of imitation mahogany did not go with the rosy walls. Afraid I should fall into an agony imperceptible to others, I tried to get out of the cafe by quickly tossing down a silver coin."

This passage shows how one thing (a painting of Napoleon) will remind him of something negative and cause a downward spiral that seems to contain leaps between subjects, and he becomes distressed. As a fan of the writing style, I especially notice and admire the way Akutagawa describes the color of the wall as soothing in the beginning, with pleasant imagery, then cites the colors of the furniture and walls as his greatest source of discomfort in the end of the passage. The character feels as though the very environment around him has turned against him, changing with his shifting moods. What was pleasant has become hostile, the outside mirroring his inner state.

The last paragraph of Cogwheels is something that has struck me since the first time I read it. It’s the character’s reaction to the climax of the story, in which he went on a walk and had a breakdown over the culmination of the recurring premonitions:

“It was the most frightening experience in my life- l haven't the strength to go on writing. lt is inexpressibly painful to live in such a frame of mind. lsn't there anyone to come and strangle me quietly in my sleep?”

I am reminded of what Asagiri said in an interview: “This story (Bungou Stray Dogs) is not for people who are good at living.” Akutagawa was also arguably not good at living, which creates a connection between the inspiration for the manga character and its reader that fascinates me. 

As much as I describe the thought patterns and paranoia in Cogwheels as something somewhat foreign, something experienced by someone who was nearing the end and reaching the height of their lifelong mental illness, I find some familiarity in it. Akutagawa was far from good at living and the lack of control and fear I sense in his life and in this story resonate with me. I’m drawn to the hopeless tone of his works and the tragedies of his life. 

Sources and Further Info:

Akutagawa’s Wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%ABnosuke_Akutagawa

Some of his childhood and analysis/ comparison to Edgar Allen Poe

https://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Akutagawa.html

BSD Wiki for some of the relationship between author Dazai and Akutagawa

https://bungostraydogs.fandom.com/wiki/Real-life_References

A partial translation of the Asagiri interview  (@Popopretty1 on Twitter)

https://twitter.com/Popopretty1/status/16634469970163916

[bye-bye-firefly]

Goood evening!! What’re your thoughts on dream sequences?

Welllllll you know meeee.........i write a lot of dream sequences. if im not writing dream sequences the character is falling in and out of sleep. BUT i do understand how that can get annoying. overall dream sequences should be able to convey something to the reader, that there is something going on in this character's psyche that they cannot face in the narrative right now or ever. what can you gather from a dream? and at this point i fall off the deep end soooo. more under the cut

they can be very important to the story Ya Know. most of the time im having a character confront some kind of mental block or real life issue in a dream. dreams communicate fears. dreams communicate mounting pressure- dreams can BE that mounting pressure. dreams can also communicate acceptance. dreams can be characters in and of themselves!! but dreams have to consistently represent something. i would suggest like. maintaining one or two different meanings for dreams but this generally goes for ALL symbols. telling a story is inherently enforcing some kind of narrative. joan didion's belief was that writing was a hostile act, describing it almost as if it was violating the reader. to be specific, she said:

In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions —with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating—but there's no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space.

do i necessarily completely agree with joan didion? No. but i do think she was getting at something and it was something very important about writing. when you are telling a story, whether it be fiction or non-fiction, there is some underlying narrative going on there. there will always be some hidden meaning because people dont walk around without them. even the nihilists have a hidden meaning they want to share with you: there is NO meaning. writing is a philosophical experience and a deeply self-analytical one, which didion also believed was part of the reason why she wrote if not the sole reason she was a writer. she described it like she didn't know what she was thinking until she wrote it down. she didn't know what was happening with her mental state until she wrote it down. i dont believe she did that expressly to impose a narrative upon a reader, to persuade them necessarily, but YES there is a part of every writer that wants to make you see it OUR way.

but this feeling is not specific to authors. other forms of art find themselves trying to make you see what they see, whether it be simply through their own memories of an event or a scene, or quite literally an artists interpretation of politics and history. an artist trying to convey to you what an event did to them through their medium of choice. a piece i love so much is félix gonzález-torres' 175 pound piles of candy that guests are encouraged to take from, forcing them to participate in the art piece. not only do you get to view it, but to get the full experience, you must participate and pick up a candy and eat from it, the representation of félix's and his lover's body, both taken away by aids. the horror of it is forced on you and that visceral emotional reaction feels like an invader suddenly entering your body. everything about it hits you like a freight train while you're eating a cellophane-wrapped candy. what can you get from that? what exactly can you interpret from it? what thought does the author have? can you feel it being forced on you?

i mentioned this before in a note but i said that at the time, i was following the oscar wilde method of writing, which was to write without communicating a moral to the audience. while i still identify with this- in no way am i trying to teach you some kind of lesson when you read nameless- there is a mix here that i think is important when talking about what you choose to write and what you choose to symbolise. dreams are not just a gateway into a character's mind but YOUR mind and what you associate with certain things. writing is displaying art and because of that, people can interpret your art in any way they want and there is no wrong way to view it in my personal opinion. even if you put it out there with a vision and a goal, people can choose to make it personal to themselves and there is NOTHING you can do about that. this is part of the medium. you dont control how people interpret it if they feel deeply about it.

a good example of that is sun yuan and peng yu's "can't help myself." you probably already know about it: a machine that sweeps up liquid that looks like blood. sun yuan and peng yu intended for this to be a more political piece, trying to evoke imagery of war, surveillance, and land disputes. these concepts were not just randomly chosen for a random exhibition; the guggenheim museum specifically sought out yuan and yu for the "tales of our time" exhibition, which had a focus on locations and geography. where the artists lived, their idea of utopia, an interpretation of modern borders. even the title was a play on lu xun's book "old tales retold," which, as it says on the tin, retold old tales but in a way that critiqued society and highlighted issues specific to the era. so, when "can't help myself" was created, it was an interpretation of the state of border politics.

looking at it with this perspective, the "blood" the machine cleans up leaves red streaks across the floor as the only evidence it was ever there. the machine gets little breaks and dances and interacts with the audience like a nation's figurehead on tour, waving to citizens in the audience before immediately returning to the bloodshed. and when the blood gets too much, they dont have as much time to appease the crowd or to do a little dance or wave. theres too much to mop up, and then the blood becomes the centrepiece. no matter how much the robot sweeps up, there is always more. and the machine sweeps up blood until it cant anymore, and then the blood is left to sit for everyone to see. its the inevitable end of empires. it is what war will do to a nation. when the power struggle that leads to wars that leads to death en masse become too much, people will be unable to ignore the bloodshed and there is no amount of dancing or waving a nation can do to save them from their demise. the machine lays down and dies. the empire falls.

or...or its exemplary of a country trying to control immigration. it pulls the blood back in, but there are streaks left of it on the floor- people still get out and they never come back. blood gets spattered on the walls and is, therefore, unable to be swept back up. what is a nation without its people? and that is why borders and the inherent function of the machine is important. the machine is not leaking the fluid; the fluid has been poured into the space and the machine sweeps it into an arbitrary border. when it flows outside that border, its sensors go off and drag the fluid back in. that brings in the idea of mass surveillance. bringing those who step out of line back in. its an orwellian image of a machine dancing and waving to the audience, putting on a jovial performance, before punishing its subject for stepping out of its contrived boundary in front of its company.

the art piece briefly fell out of public knowledge before being discovered again through what little video we have of it while it was being shown. and some of the people who found it were not given the context of the guggenheim exhibit, nor did they get to view it during the time it was in action. some were not residents of china, yuan and yu's home country and the area-specific politics "can't help myself" was reflecting on. because of these holes in knowledge, people began to interpret it as a rat race sort of commentary. the fluid representing money, or the machine's life force, or joy flowing out of the machine and trying to be gathered back up by this anthropromorphised version that was created. it dances and waves and puts on a brave face, all while fighting to maintain these important things. some people interpretted it as people pleasing, where the machine would dance and then go right back to struggling to stay alive, perhaps struggling with depression or other kinds of mental illness. it would wave to make people happy and interact with the audience, all while bleeding out on the floor. people felt for it and identified with it.

and while you could argue these interpretations are "tainted" because they don't know what the piece is actually about, it doesn't make any other interpretation any better. in fact, my interpretations of "can't help myself"- even with the assistance of context from the guggenheim website or my limited knowledge on chinese policy and history or the assistance of the artists themselves, articles from people that saw it in person, what few translated articles i could stumble across in my early search- is tainted by the fact that i have only ever lived in the west. i don't truly know what chinese immigration policy looks like or what the chinese government is telling its citizens, what narrative is trying to be pushed. i only know what narrative my country is pushing. i am assuming that, maybe, the chinese government is saying the same things as the west, but i don't truly know and i won't know until i meet someone who lives or lived there, but i haven't. as logical as my interpretation is, there are likely holes because of my view on the government which has been shaped by living where i do, just as this piece is shaped by sun yuan and peng yu living in china.

and even if they don't know the context, that doesn't make their interpretations any less evocative. there is something to be said about the performance the machine puts on because its an important part of the piece. there's something to be said about how you are an observer peering into a glass box at the spectacle that is happening. you can stand there and have blood flung at you because of the work the machine is putting into maintaining its borders. there is something to be said about the way the machine appears to be bleeding, even if that's not what's actually happening. these are amazing things to think about and the fact that people think about it at all is amazing! i think thats fucking beautiful!!

and you want to know why that's so amazing? because art like this is MEANT to be provacative. it's MEANT to spark a reaction. it could be reactions in the political sense, like inspiring people to be activists or to question their governments and representatives, or reactions in the emotional sense, like fear or intrigue or sadness. "can't help myself" is poking at you and begging for a reaction. the machine dances and waves and tries to entertain you between sweeps as if it's begging for you to look at it, to analyse it, to figure out what it's doing and why it's doing it, and why you are trapped behind the glass, stuck watching it. regarding "can't help myself," sun yuan told artsy, "we see how the robot and the liquid finish by torturing each other."

with this, we return to didion and her belief that writing was a hostile act. sun yuan and peng yu went into this project hoping to communicate a strong political message that was essential to the museum that commissioned them. the museum wanted the view they could provide. from the start, this is about politics and geography and borders and immigration- so how did people end up seeing themselves in that machine? its a matter of the artists releasing the ability to maintain context. even with people learning the context of the piece, there are still those that identify with it because their interpretation means so much to them. this piece has a life of its own outside of what the artists intended for it and this inevitably happens to every piece of art. those who care about it will interpret it in a way that relates to them. if they are politically minded, they might interpret it in a political way, and for those who aren't, the piece becomes deeply emotional.

i might try to insert a piece of myself into every piece of writing i do, but there is nothing i can do to stop people from interpretting my art however they please. i find IMMENSE joy in this because its so interesting to see what i wrote and finding different versions of it inside the people it touches. dream sequences can be deeply personal for the character, but you will never know because you will never be them. for the simplest of dream sequences, the most straightforward, the most complicated, the strangest, there is an interpretation out there that blows my expectations out of the water. im constantly searching for different interpretations of stories ive read in the hopes i will find a deeper understanding of it, which is really all this post is about. dream sequences are good and people's interpretations of them make them even better and IN FACT every single piece of writing is made better by being able to turn to other people and ask them what they thought of it. understanding a piece is understanding the people around you and how the art affects them, not what the artist specifically intended by making the work.

[h-worksrambles]

Leo Alvarez for the ask game 🥺🥺

First off, you have no idea how badly I have wanted to do any kind of ask game for Echo, so thank you.

Oh Leo, the wolf with flags as red as his fur...and yet...

An incredibly complex and tragic character like Leo naturally has a lot to dissect in terms of his relationships with other characters. With that in mind, here are my five favourite Leo dynamics.

1. The most obvious pick by far is Chase. And I've already touched on some of my thoughts on these two already. Leo's best friend, his ex boyfriend, one of the most important people in Leo's life...and we watch that relationship go to hell in the most painful way possible. It's an incredibly layered relationship between two deeply flawed, troubled people. You could write an entire essay on this relationship and how much it drives a freaking dagger through my heart, but I'll just give the cliff notes version. At the end of the day you have two dumb, kinda shitty teens who have become two dumb, kinda shitty twenty somethings, both carrying a shedload of mental health issues that neither knows how to handle. Their relationship falls apart because they each have a very false, idealised notion of how relationships work. In part because they’re both young and inexperienced in that respect.

They bond in part due to their shared trauma, both the horrible loss of Sydney and the more mundane but still very painful process of trying to figure out their identities in a deeply homophobic, backwater town with no real queer community or role model to look towards. They clung to each other as an ideal they could use to hide from their problems. Leo's guilt over failing to protect Sydney manifests as controlling overprotectiveness, magnified by his unresolved anger problems. Chase's state of stress and dissasociation after that same event leads him to take a very passive attitude to the relationship, happy to let Leo make all the decisions and thus enabling his controlling behaviour, but also tending to be indecisive, self-centred and uncommunicative about what he wants because he hates conflict. There's also the interesting subtext that their relationship has a pattern of toxic heteronormative behaviour (a result of their own inexperience with even being queer). Leo wants to be the provider and breadwinner, he calls Chase a feminised petname, 'chula', he dotes on Chase, but also tries to control him. Chase's passivity and the harm that comes from that, demonstrates just how damaging trying to cram queer relationships into those kinds of heteronormative boxes actuallly is.

Over the game, across the different routes, we see them unpack the factors that caused their relationship to fail. Leo's inability to move on from Chase is part of a wider desire to cling to the past, because he feels like he peaked in his teenage years and now feels adrift. The town torments him with those feelings and creates a phantom of Chase that embodies every unhealthy emotion Leo's projected onto him, and is slowly driving him to madness. Leo's 'so I just pretend' monologue which describes how this influence took route is painful to see unfold. And god, the amount of symbolism I could talk about that feeds into this! The anchor bracelet that embodies the conflicting imagery of safety and familiarity, but also that of beng trapped and bound to each other and to their past. The horrifying scene in Jenna's route where they are literally almost nightmarishly bound to each other. The fact that Leo's bad ending has Chase's inability to resolve his conflicted emotions end with him going from being torn emotionally to being torn physically (please Howly, McSkinny! I can only take so much symbolic body horror!)

One of my favourite moments between them is seeeing how they first got together in Route 65. You can see the connnection between these two old friends, slowly figuring out their identities and bonding over it as a result. There's a real tenderness to it. But you can also see all the warning signs. The fact that Leo is already hiding things from Chase. The fact that Chase will go along with whatever Leo says and overlook those signs despite his better judgement. The fact that they'll ignore people around them, often hurting their friends as a result, to be together. It's equal parts heartwarming and agonising when you know how it'll end.

Watching this deeply toxic relationship fall apart is agonising, but seeing the endings where they mutually grow is so worth it. Chase putting his foot down, firmly making his own decision and ending things with Leo is what allows them both to escape the town's influence. Meanwhile, with his delusions shattered, Leo is able to start healing, not just letting go of the past and growing past his own worst traits, but making amends to people he previously hurt (we'll get to that). That final goodbye between the two at the end of his route is the closest I've come to crying at a videogame in a very long time. I cannot stress how much it affected me emotionally.

I could go on, but I need to move onto other relationships so to sum up, Leo and Chase's relationship is dark, tragic and yet strangely beautiful to watch unfold.

2. Micha's relationship with Leo only really comes up in Jenna's route, but nonetheless is very interesting. Micha was already one of my favourite side characters. A lonely, angry young man but one who's also very clearly been dealt a hard lot in life. If Heather represents what Jenna could have been if she didn't have a support network of friends who could help pull her out of her shitty abusive upbringing, Micha represents what Chase or Leo could have been if they'd been in similar circumstances, as well as being ostracised for their sexualities by their loved ones rather than accepted. And since Jenna's route is about the importance of healthy connections with others and how crucial they are to self improvement, this is very pertinent.

Micha was one of the first people who Leo really related to in the process of figuring out his sexuality as a teenager. Their experimenting leads to them doing something very, very stupid and reckless that still makes me uncomfortable to think about. But immediately after that of course, Leo gets together with his longtime crush and, as he and Chase did to pretty much all their friends, basically left Micha out to dry. This left Micha to deal with getting kicked out of home for being gay alone. For as much as Leo romanticises his past, there are darker elements he needs to come to terms with, wrongs of his own that he needs to right.

Micha is understandably terrified of even seeing Leo again after how badly this 'relationship' fell apart. But slowly, the walls come down, and that more protective side of Leo starts to come out, but in a good way this time. Leo recognises that he hurt Micha and does his best to keep him safe during the mass hysteria, to atone for the harm he did, to make things right. And by the end of the route, Micha's still there, accepted by Leo and the rest of the group.

There are those who want to ship them because of this, and there's certainly grounds to read it that way, but I personally don't. Partly because knowing what we do of their history makes me a little personally uncomfortable at the prospect, but also because I think a big part of Leo's arc is to let go of his very idealised, somewhat toxic idea of romantic relationships. I think him learning to be happily single, and valuing the friendships he has, is much more appropriate. He has all the time in the world to meet someone new. For now, just let him have some good friends. Ones who he can help just as much as they do for him.

3. Next up, TJ and Leo. Because of the direction Leo's character takes, he basically torpedoes his relationships with most of the rest of the main group. His disastrous fling with Flynn shoots that friendship dead, (we'll get to that). He and Jenna used to be incredibly close childhood friends but that gets complicated fast. Their mutual feelings for Chase fuels Leo's jealousy in Jenna's route, and as she learns more about just how much Leo has been hiding about himself as a person from his friends, she struggles to see him the same way she used to. And Carl was especially affected by how much Chase and Leo neglected the others after becoming a couple and I don't think he ever quite forgave Leo for that. They care about each other a lot and do come through for each other when the worst happens, but their stories seem to end with the group learning to value the time they had together and then moving on in most routes.

The only exception who Leo seems to maintain a positive dynamic with and seems to genuinely get on well with, is TJ. And it makes sense why. TJ is the most patient, gentle and accepting of the group. He still cares a lot about his childhood friends and isn't shy to let them know that. Leo, like I've said, thinks of himself as a protector, and tries to be everyone's 'big brother' figure. So it figures he takes great care to watch out for the youngest of the group. It's a dynamic that demonstrates the best aspects of Leo's protectiveness. When his unresolved trauma isn't twisting that protective instinct into hyper controlling, obessissive behaviour, he can be a really great friend. I always think of that one scene in Leo's route where he and Chase go to join TJ at the park. At this point, we've seen many of Leo's red flags. How he's still obssessing over his ex. How his anger problems are getting worse. How he's manipulating not only Chase, but also all the rest of his friends just to contrive a scenario where he and Chase can work things out (that phone scene is a gutpunch, dear god)...and yet. Even though Leo's entire plan is dependent on staying alone with Chase to patch things up, he's willing to compromise that because TJ is his friend and he's hurting, and Leo wants to make him happy. Leo is a walking hot mess of a person, but it's that conflict between his selfless and selfish urges, his best and worst instincts, that make him so compelling to watch.

And still there's more to dig into. Because a big part of TJ's character is about how he's often talked down to and talked over even by his closest friends. How TJ is a repressed, curled up ball of insecurities and anxieties who can't express himself because everyone around him treats him like a precious innocent uwu smol bean. Well meaning though he may be, Leo's over protectiveness means he is unintentionally coddling TJ just as much as Jenna is, preventing him from healthily unpacking his pain, a dam that finally bursts in Flynn's route.

Even so, TJ and Leo's relationship provides an insight into Leo's better qualities, and a glimpse of how this friendship dynamic may once have worked in the past.

4. Oh, Flynn and Leo. You know what I'm gonna say. Metaphor. Freaking Metaphor. Flynn is my favourite character in Echo and his history with Leo provides fresh insight into both characters. Based on when you meet them in the prologue, Flynn and Leo could not appear more different. Leo seems earnest, affectionate, protective and reverent of the past the group shares. Flynn is cold and distant, it's unclear how much his attitude is banter and how much is actual spite towards his old friends. And the argument scene at the river is in large part a blowup between these two: Leo wanting to return to the past, and Flynn wanting to discard it to get answers. But once you dig more into these characters, you quickly see the similarities run deceptively deep. Flynn is, in his own way, just as trapped in the past as Leo. Leo can be just as cruel towards his friends as Flynn, while Flynn can be just as protective of them as Leo. Two characters both so alike, and yet so different.

And then you're thrown the bombshell that these two banged.

In Flynn's route we learn that Flynn and Leo briefly became an item after Chase broke up with Leo and went to college. Flynn even took him to the Smoke Room, a part of his life Flynn tells barely anyone about. In Metaphor, we see them together briefly, and it's probably the most comfortable and happy we see them around each other in the entire game. Of, course, as we immediately find out, it ended badly. Leo broke things off with Flynn shortly before Chase came back to visit Echo, hoping to rekindle that relationship. And Flynn's reaction to this: "I guess that's okay...if that's all you want..." is a painful reminder of Flynn's own struggle, desperate for intimacy, but also deathly afraid of it, terrified of losing a real connection like the one he lost with his best friend so many years ago. It's genuinely heartbreaking to see. Especially when Flynn talks about this with Chase in his route: How coming to terms with his sexuality was especially painful because, while he was dealing with awful homophobic treatment by his parents before he finally got away from them, his other two friends who could have helped him become more comfortable with his queerness, were too wrapped up in each other to notice.

Do I think they could have worked out? Hard to say. I think Leo did desperately need to date anyone other than Chase to get over him. But I also stand by my earlier point, that Leo needs to learn to be comfortably single. Meanwhile, while I think allowing himself to be emotionally open in a relationship would do him a world of good, I wonder if hooking up with his few remaining friends, potentially ruining those friendships, is actually all that productive a solution for Flynn (although I am a shameless Flynn and Carl shipper so what do I know?). Still, maybe they could have had something. But that ship sailed a long time ago. Even so, Flynn will still come through for Leo, and the rest of his friends, in Jenna's route, because, whatever he says, he still loves them dearly. They're basically all he has.

(Also, one minor detail. In Route 65, Flynn is the one who let Chase know about the party because he knew about Leo's feelings for Chase, and, now that Chase had come out, decided to play matchmaker and get Leo to finally spit it out. A nice reminder that Flynn looks out for his friends, even if he'll never admit it).

5. Clint and Leo's dynamic is understated, but surprisingly tragic when you think about it. Clint bullied Leo and the others plenty as a kid, and was generally a berligerent, homophobic ass to them. But it's very strongly implied that both Clint, and his sister, were suffering some pretty awful abuse at home. That doesn't excuse his behaviour, but there's more going on with Clint than we fully see.

In the present day, the tables have turned, and if anything, Leo is the one antagonising Clint. Leo's anger isssues have only gotten worse, and he'll happily take any excuse to give Clint a sock in the jaw after eveything that happened between them as kids. Never mind that Clint is a meth addict in no condition to fight a huge maned wolf, and is currently being exortorted by a predatory serial killer.

In many ways, their dynamic feels like a foil to Jenna and Heather. Heather was someone who hurt Jenna when they were young. But Jenna is able to recognise that Heather was suffering in a way not too different to herself. She doesn't entirely forget the pain Heather caused her, but she empathises with her, is willing to help her deal with her own hardships and move on in her life. Leo and Clint meanwhile, are repeating their childhood fights, stuck in the same old routine, with no such empathy between them. If Leo wants to go back to the old days when he was younger, I guess it figures that he still relishes getting one over on his high school bully.

Truth be told, Clint is a character I would have liked to see get a little more screentime. To see his struggles explored a little deeper the way Micha and Heather's were. But there's still a lot to interpret about his enmity with Leo and how it ties into Echo's themes of dealing with trauma and letting go with the past.

Anyway, that's all five of my favourite relationships involving Leo. Leo is one of my favourite characters in Echo and his story affected me so deeply. I still struggle to listen to Blurry or Theme For A Lonely Wolf without choking up. So it was very hard not to just word vomit when given the chance to talk about him as a character. I hope it morphed into a good answer to your ask. Thanks again for sending it to me!