#i fully acknowledge that it's not a her problem but a both of us problem

[nolivingdudeami]

in need of prayers (see tags)

[jakei95]

Regarding some false accusations and targeted harassment by HopelessPeaches TW: Harassment, mentions of gr**ming, d**th threats, s*icide idealization

For the past months, HopelessPeaches (also known as ThatRebelRosie on twitter) have kept harassing me and my husband Nyx with fake and exaggerated arguments. Every day she makes a post spreading rumors about how we are p*dophiles or that I hide groomers on my discord server/community which are completely false.

Even since I cutoff contact with the people from the GTC and their skype group, I tried to focus on growing up as a person and thanks to that we were able to keep our Discord server and community a safe space for people of all ages, claiming otherwise is just invalidating all the hard work people like Crystal or Pingu have done to keep our community safe.

We always tried to help our mod team and offered our support, we never forced them or exposed them to situations they didn't want to handle.  None of us were prepared for the sick people we have had to confront over the years, but together we were able to take actions against them.

HopelessPeaches is obsessed with us, claiming that every action we take is to hide something or that we are trying to silence her abuse (When it's the other way around, she completely ignores the abuse I had to endure). She has gone to the extent of saying I announced Underverse 0.7 Part 2 to hide something, when I had planned to announce the animation on my birthday months ago.

She has constantly made fun of my abuse and mental health, and has stayed completely silent about all the hate messages (Including death threats) that she and her community has sent my way over her false accusations.

As I already cleared with the people on my server, I am not ignoring what I might have done in the past, and I will always live with the remorse of not being a better person from the start, I will always live with that, but I have spent years trying to become a better person and fix my mistakes to never repeat them again, both with my close circles and my followers, but having someone that I don't know, exposing my mental health problems, making fun them, accuse me of suicide baiting (Everyone that knows me knows I have struggled with this since I was a teenager), and also accusing me of a crime that I have never committed, is affecting me physically and mentally.

She is doing the same thing to me that she suffered from years ago. This has to stop. I am not asking for the world to not hate me, I am asking for people to stop harassing us for things that we have already acknowledged and owned fully in the past. People can change for the better, we are not criminals.

We have no intentions to send hate to these people, but this has gone so public and we have gotten so many threats that I had to address it personally. HopelessPeaches , I don't know what exactly you want from me, or what do you expect is going to happen, but this is the last time I will ask you to stop harassing us. I don't care if you hate me or Nyx, if you want the Undertale community dies or whatever that's going on through your head. I am just asking you to leave us alone.

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

yooooo!!! you’re my favorite ethan winters artist i just wanna say that first and foremost, thank you for the wholesome content of my comfort character and father figure 🥹🫶

i’m really curious bc i feel like i see a lot of people against mithan (not me personally, i’m p neutral on them!) but i’m curious to know all your thoughts on them! thoughts on their canon relationship, their fanon portrayal, the backlash against them/mia accusations, and your headcanons? i’m just really interested!!! hopefully that’s not weird :”)

have a good day!! sparkle on!!! ✨💖

i heart mithan... i think that they can be so cute...

i personally hc them t4t and i like to think that the dated in highschool before they both had fully transitioned

mia likes to bake and ethan likes to scrap book and he always likes to take pictures of mias cakes/ baked goods and has a album for them 😭

i am a multishipper so i draw a lot of ethan ships so my girl is left out sometimes and im sorry mia 😔

i actually really like their relationship, its a really complex dynamic that i like to talk about with my friends

i think the issue is that when talking about mithan or mia in general, theres just SO MUCH misinformation that its honestly a pain the butt to talk about

people still think that she was responsible for the creation of eveline, people still think that she experimented on eveline, people still use examples of her attacking ethan as if she did it on her own will instead of being mind controlled

in reality she was just someone who oversaw the transportation of evie. im not excusing her or anything because obviously she knew what she was doing, but people really try to accuse her of doing something she didnt and it bothers me alot lol

the problem with the fandom is that people either try to water her down to girlboss who did nothing wrong and fail to acknowledge the complexity/ moral grayness of her character and the other side is misogynists 😭😭😭😭

its hard to talk about her without people either going "stop trying to villainize her and make her look bad!" or people ACTUALLY villainizing her and acting like heisenberg would have treated him better 😭😭

mithan is such a sad relationship because they loved each other so much and that ended up being the reason their relationship fell apart (sort of... its not like the broke up... ethan kinda just straight up died)

i get a lot a trouble for saying this, but mia is a selfish person.

its not a bad thing! well i mean it is but it doesnt make her some evil witch who is somehow worse than the guy how made a werewolf american ninja warrior. its just a major character flaw she has! which is good! mia being a flawed person who makes mistakes and morally gray decisions make her a more interesting person!

she is selfish in the way that she wants to keep her family with her no matter the cost. even if it means lying to ethan about her job so that he wont think different of her. here is a interrogation from the re7 DLC, which is easy to miss!

she isnt necessarily trying to apologize for the things she has done, she is more of a, "u wont need to forgive me in the first place if we just forget it all and move on"

she doesn't try to redeem herself for what she has done, she tries to move on and return to the normal life that she wants so bad. which is fine! everyone copes a different way and she has to right to move on from her trauma. the problem that lies in this is that she has a shared trauma with ethan who still has no idea what went on in dulvey and still effects him till the present (he is mold! this is a important thing to know! most people would want to know if they were a walking corpse)

she played a direct part in what happened in dulvey, and im not referring to the email, she did not send that. she never wanted ethan to come in the first place. she tried her best to send a video to him, begging him to forget about her because she wanted to protect him, BUT it didnt send.

he got involved because she was involved. its honestly a series of really really unfortunate events.

THOUGH! she did know what she was getting into. im tired of seeing the narrative that mia was innocent and didnt know what was going on or was simply a bystander. she knew what she was doing, she knew eveline was a bioweapon, she knew eveline was a child. she used a MACHINE GUN! she knows how to use weapons and was obviously trained for it.

she tried her best to keep everybody out of the mess, ex: warning the bakers not to take them in, warning ethan not to find her, sacrificing herself for ethan in the later half of re7

but again, those are the consequences of HER actions

her consequences just happen to get really big and end up hitting ethan on the head like a metal sheet 😭

their relationship is really so interesting, it makes me really sad to think about sometimes 😭they both went through something that nobody else would ever understand, in the end they really only have each other. they get moved to an entire different country and the dulvey incident gets covered up with a "gas leak"

its really tragic because their marriage definitely had some flaws and bumps. and i know im repeating myself but its because people always take this in the worst way possible but just because i say their relationship was rocky doesnt mean im saying they dont love each other!!! thats the entire basis of mias character!! saying she doesnt love ethan would destroy her entire character!

you can see in the re8 DLC how fondly ethan talks about mia! he loves her so much, though im not sure if his comments in the DLC are him narrating current (post re8) or his thoughts before everything went down and he died (pre re8)

everything mia did was because she LOVED ethan. she would never do anything to intentionally hurt him, she is not a cruel person. she hides the truth of her job from ethan pre re7 because she loves him and doesnt want her job to drive them apart. she CONTINUES to refuse to tell ethan the truth post re7 because she wants to move on a live a happy normal life with him and knows something like her being directly associated with the connections would probably cause (more) problems. she refuses to tell ethan that he is mold because again, hard to live a happy marriage with your husband after you tell him hes a bioweapon.

obviously i dont think it was right that she did this, thats what makes her selfish! she did it for herself! she did it for her family! she thought it would work out, she thought that they could move on and be happy together.

the issue is that ethan didnt want to forget. he wanted to know what happened, he wanted to know the part mia played, he wanted answers! which is reasonable! he knows to some extent that mia was partially responsible for his involvement and he was always suspcious that mia was lying to him about her job which is implied when mia says "you were right, i did lie to you"

she doesnt learn, she doesnt stop lying, her lies get bigger and worse and it sucks yeah but it makes her so interesting!!! she keeps doing stupid things under the idea that this is whats best for her and her family, that if she hides this everything will work out and it will be for the better but its not!

just because telling your husband hes dead and a bioweapon is a hard subject to bring up doesnt mean you DONT bring it up. people shouldnt use that as a reason to excuse mia 😭, its a very bad excuse and honestly highlights how horrible their communication skills were. you cant just not tell your husband that he is actually infected with the mold and not tell him for the tree years between post re7 and pre re8.

im not saying these things to put mia down, or try and villanize her. these are all just actual things her character does! she isnt evil, but she isnt a knight in shining armor either. we need to be able to have talks about complex characters without crying everytime someone points out a flaw. characters have flaws! and mia just happens to have a lot of them!

im not mad at her, i dont dislike her because i think this way of her. shes a fictional character! you can like characters that are morally gray, or villains that drink blood and make corpse soldiers. they are fictional! pointing out the flaws of a character does not mean i dont like them.

i wouldnt call her "the real villain of re8" but i wouldnt treat her like a damsel in distress either. she is a competent person, she knows what shes doing, she has her reasons for doing them. she made bad descions with good intentions behind them! they can coexist and we should let them!

i like mithan! its a complex relationship because they both love each other so much but hurt each other in the process

talking about them is just a pain in the butt because talking about mia is a pain in the butt lol

i really hate how she keeps getting sidelined, its super frustrating to see mia get put in a cage in every game 😭

its even more frustrating that mia straight up just disappears???? in the shadows of rose DLC... like she just stops taking care of rose and theres nothing said about it. no reason or explanation. i dont think mia would ever ditch rosemary because she didnt care about her, but we probably will never know because capcom sucks at writing and they probably forgot the mia ever even existed.

all in all, i think the fandom is really just full of misinformation which make people either think mia is some horrible evil person, or its full of people who think that saying mia messed up is the equivalent of comparing her to wesker lol.

i really love mia, shes a incredibly fun and complex character, its just hard to enjoy her sometimes with the people in the fandom haha.

also ive got no idea what u meant by "the backlash against them/mia accusations" so sorry if i didnt answer that!

thank u for the ask! sorry for the long response!

[tumblingxelian]

Yang & Ruby's Childhood

Oh how I wish, I wish that people would stop ignoring canon and pretending Yang & Ruby had functional adults who were good parents in their lives after Summer died. 

Because the fact of the matter is that they did not and canon has spelled this out again and again for the audience with increasing clarity every single time.

In Volume 2, Yang overtly states that Tai shut down following Summer’s to the point where his neglect became so pronounced a 5 and 3 year old who were grieving were left alone for hours and could disappear into a Grimm inhabited island looking for a different parental figure. 

Its re-established again in volume Five when Yang spells out to Weiss in no uncertain terms that after Summer disappeared, Yang, a five year old, was the one who needed to keep the family together and the trauma this inflicted on her alone is obvious. Let alone Ruby, because she was both being neglected and being raised by someone only two years her senior. Something Ruby fully acknowledges was the cast. 

There’s a multitude of other things I feel Tai has done wrong as both a teacher and a parent, but these one’s are undeniable, openly stated facets of the household. 

And Qrow doesn’t get an out by being the uncle either, oh no. 

Ruby makes it expressly clearly despite how much she loves and admires her Uncle she is very much used to him dropping back into her life shit faced drunk and being carted home by a stranger and needing to be taken care of. 

Again, by children! 

He has his reasons and his problems, but amazingly that doesn’t stop this from being a shitty way to grow up. No matter how much Tai & Qrow might love these two, they were not ‘great parents’, I wouldn’t even call them good. 

These two adults were negligent and damaging to the children under their care despite how much they may have loved them, and the fact that is ignored really burns me up inside. 

[makanidotdot]

How I would have done Teldrassil

There was some Sylv discourse today on twitter, which I totally missed and Nobbel deleted whatever tweet he made so idek what it was about lol, BUT I read some "how it should have been" tweets and I wanted to write down how I would have done Teldrassil:

So, Azeroth just got stabbed and everyone is trying crazy experiments with the newly discovered Azerite. Kaldorei druids end up making some azerite infused super-life substance that has pretty great healing properties, but by accident, they discover it has the opposite effect on undead. It vaporizes undeath. Maybe someone had an undead battle pet out and it touched the goo and it died like a cartoon in roger rabbit.

Anyway, the worst thing to happen to Azeroth in recent history WAS undead and having a potential weapon against that is super good, but there's the whole political problem of ~oops~ we have something that can instantly vaporize a particular enemy race… a race that's not insanely well liked even by their allies... a race that can only keep 'living' by preying on the dead of everybody else, and makes anywhere they live spooky and rotting and gross to everyone but them… anyway we won't keep this secret forever, but, in the middle of this whole azerite-rush, we'll just wait until tensions are not QUITE so high, then bring this all to light in a peaceful and honest way and both factions will have control of supply and security etc., and use it only for the good healing properties, or against any new undead threats, and definitely not against Forsaken.

But ofc, Horde spies end up discovering the existence of this Undead-Away and tell the Warchief.

A good Warchief would handle this by demanding it all fully be turned over to both factions, they would acknowledge the benefit of having that kind of power, studying the tech, but also acknowledge the extreme danger to an integral part of the Horde, and take extra steps to ensure their safety and reiterate the Forsaken's value to the Horde.

Warchief Sylvanas, however, would need to ensure Undead-Away was destroyed, and kill anyone who knew how to make it, at any cost. That type of unique threat to the Forsaken could not be allowed to exist. She would claim the Night Elves had been creating a weapon unbeknownst even to their allies (technically true), and were therefore preparing to be aggressive (a lie). She would omit the fact this weapon only affects undead, maybe even orchestrate an incident that made it seem like it affected the living too, with the help of her alchemists. Even if it came to light that this weapon only really affected undead, the idea of deceitful Night Elf weaponry would still have been planted, that particular knowledge would come too late to really matter.

Teldrassil must be attacked and temporarily controlled in order to purge this substance too dangerous for either faction to control. "USE IT ON THE ALLIANCE" some more bloosthirsty members of the Horde would say. No, no, Sylvanas would say, that would be dishonorable :). For the good of Azeroth, such a weapon must be destroyed. Sylvanas has turned a new leaf after all, she's not blighting anymore, she's interested in stability as Warchief. Both factions should be kept in check.

So, the plan would be to surprise attack Teldrassil, occupy it, purge the city of all the Undead-Away, and then... leave. They would make their intentions clear to the Alliance (after they had started the attack, of course) and actually, pretty true to their word, they would let anyone who wanted to leave the tree go peacefully. Obvs any nobody-druid who knew how to recreate the weapon would wind up dead, and any too-important druid would have to risk escalating the conflict by calling out Sylvanas's lies. But for the most part, there would be no excessive death caused by the Horde forces, Sylvanas would even make a point of publicly punishing any Horde for unapproved violence.

Sylvanas wouldn't need or want a greater conflict than necessary, so there would be none, unless the Alliance wanted to return to all out war against the Horde over what would ultimately amount to just be humiliation.

Because a pre-BFA, pre-Jailer, pre-shit Sylvanas's end goal was this: Don't die. She tried dying before, and she went to Hell, so her goal now is Never Die Again. Never Dying would be achieved by ensuring the Forsaken are a strong race with a secure future. For that, she needs a balance of Forsaken power, but also healthy and happy living races that keep reproducing, so that they keep dying, so that Forsaken can keep reproducing.

But, at some point during the occupation, Teldrassil burns. And we don't know why. Maybe some Horde did it to be mean. Maybe it was an accident as some Night Elves fought back righteously against the occupying Horde. Maybe some kind of magic + Undead-Away is insanely flammable. We never learn the truth, and if we did, it doesn't matter. The Alliance blames the Horde, and the Horde blames the Alliance.

The leaders of the Alliance heroically and epically rescue most of the citizens still in the city, with Tyrande and Malfurion leading the effort. The Horde occupying the city are not quite as lucky, but they're soldiers. So a lot of them are tryhards and have gliders so they can just jump off the tree :). And some Alliance and Horde still die horribly in flames.

Night Elves lose their home, and Sylvanas prepares for the Alliance's retaliation. It wasn't her goal, but it's something she can work with. The Horde and the Forsaken will not fall, and the banger ass BFA trailer actually makes sense and isn't false advertising.

[ofbreathandflame]

Not to come off as nitpicking but why can’t Feyre be a high lady? It’s not as if tamlim or Beron are any better and theyre centuries older than feyre. I get everything but I love feyre

Hi anon!!

You don’t come off nitpicky at all! Thanks for the comment!****

[long post - more under the cut - disclaimer at the bottom]

First — I agree with you. There’s no moral reason I can think of that rules out why Feyre can’t be High Lady; so, I agree with it. I’m going to go a step further and say it’s fine that Rhysand makes Feyre High Lady of the Night Court. Obviously, Feyre will learn and ease herself into the role.

Do I think Feyre should be a High Lady? No — but I think that’s because, as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve always felt that Feyre chafes in structured, heavily-ruled settings and has been characterized heavily as a character whose strength comes from an admonishment of rules and expectations (In my opinion, based in the text ofc).

I also think that the story doesn’t lead with reasons why Feyre specifically should be High Lady. If we go with the logic that Feyre is an inexperienced young-girl who needs to learn how to lead then we acknowledge two things: (1) that Feyre has to learn and (2) Rhysand made Feyre High Lady. That way, the expectation is that Feyre does not know anything but will learn. Traditionally, women have consolidated power by marrying into it; its quite normal for women to be “the queen” because they married into power. If anything – I think it simply makes no sense that there hasn’t been a High Lady in almost 15,000 years; it seems like an obvious choice. There’s also genuinely no difference between Lady of the Court and being High Lady.

The problem with the story is that it does not want to acknowledge -- or at least fully acknowledge many things. The first is that Feyre wants to be made High Lady (or - to push back against that - the story wants her to be High Lady). If Feyre wants power, she's acknowledging she has some skills to be president. But like...she simply doesn't. She has many skills - none that really align, though. I also feel comfortable saying that Feyre doesn’t even really want to be a leader, and her narration often opposes the idea that she wants to be in positions of power; I think we can argue that Feyre wants power over her own life – but that is not the same as wanting power over an entire group of people. I often feel insane because I think its actually kind of weird that the story never spends time developing Feyre as a person with skills that translate to leadership – or even ambition. Let’s think about similar characters like Jude or Dany, the story goes out of its way to establish why they want power, and the skills they have.

Dany is a strategic genius at literally fourteen years; she has to grapple with her kindness and how it can be to her detriment. She has to establish boundaries between the members of her Queensguard. She uses her wits, sensuality (though – I have words for Grrm), strategy to cement her claim to the throne; she is advised to practice her rule in Essos. It’s not just the fact that Dany has a claim to the Iron Throne – she’s proven she’s got the skills to be both kind and harsh; political and strategic, wrathful and powerful. Dany is not a fighter – she is a queen. She’s calling the shots and she’s still kind. Jude is shown the horrors of Faerie very early on in the story – and that anecdote at the beginning of the story essentially informs the story.

And like Dany, Jude has to learn to balance kindness with politics; she learns early on that her kindness, while altruistic, can operate as (1) selfishness and (2) can ultimately amount to nothing. It’s not saying that these characters aren’t kind, or evil, but that they learn, to some extent, how to navigate these worlds by themselves. The story is not arguing that these girls are good and kind and therefore “worthy” to be made the leader; these stories are also not concerned with needing to moralize why the female leads are more deserving – we can just see that they have qualities that will translate well into leadership. So (at least in Dany’s case), when they make a mistake, we can actually think and discuss the validity of what makes it a good / bad action. We’re not just running with the fact that “well Dany is a girl and abused!” but rather “what can Dany do to improve and not make these mistakes again” – Dany herself literally always weighs her past experiences with new ones to avoid mistakes that can detrimental to her campaign. We know Dany has the skills.

Every time we question the validity of Feyre’s actions were often met with that initial argument, which is, that Feyre is essentially “just a girl” and “under duress” and “traumatized.” But they also don’t want to admit that Feyre doesn’t have a lot of the skills necessary to be leading the court, which is true (and not even a criticism, but literally a fact). It’s a fact that Rhysand made Feyre High Lady because she was his mate – which isn’t a negative and literally how nobility has kind of traditionally operated under in the past. Even Feyre going UTM says nothing about her skills as a leader. It's always bothered me that people use the fact that Feyre goes UTM to prove that she deserves be High Lady. It's just...she didn't go down there to save Prythian; as a matter a fact, Feyre only goes UTM because she realizes she royally fucked Clare Beddor - she goes there out of guilt. Once she gets down there, she has no choice but to complete those tasks because of the bargain. That matters. It really does. I also think this logic – someone like Nesta would also be qualified to lead the NC. It's why I think people get testy with the whole 'who would be a better high lady' or whatever. Because the way the book sets it up, everyone, including Feyre sisters are all equally if not more qualified for the role. I'd argue, Nesta has even stronger claim to a leadership. To be clear I am not arguing that Nesta should be HL or would make a good; only that the story provides more concrete examples of why she could be HL than it does its own main character, and by the end of Nesta's book she's clearly the stronger character (*cough* which is why I argue SJM obsession with Rhys comes at the detriment of feyre's character!) - and there are more concrete, intentional moments where Nesta shows skills that are actually relevant.

Again it proves that Feyre can be brave, but naught else. I really thought MAF was going to actually delve into the idea that Feyre feels like a fraud because of she really only went down there for Tamlin and to try to rectify her mistakes – and she ends up in this position of power that she seems super uncomfortable with. Similar to Katniss’s ordeal in The Hunger Games. Like – we don’t even kno the names of the two Fae she killed. The story decides that not deal with it. Feyre literally says something along the lines of “its not so bad I killed those not bad because at least everyone else was freed” – but the whole point should have been that she realizes that she’s not just sacrificing her own body for Tamlin, she’s taking someone’s life for the chance to be with Tamlin. Because she loves him. That should have challenged Feyre’s morals, earnestly. There should be a deep dive to what that means. We know that Prythian becomes free – but y’all that was the afterthought. Feyre deadass only asked for Tamlin’s curse to be lifted. She didn’t even consider the people when she made the bargain and if SJM (or Amarantha) were smart enough she would’ve picked up on it all.

The story essentially bastardizes why Feyre decides to go UTM. Feyre doesn’t learn anything; she doesn’t learn how to read because she realizes It almost kills her, she doesn’t stop making weird, impulsive bargains, she doesn’t learn how to navigate politics, or listen for hints of information when Tamlin says no to her – nothing informs her actions, she doesn’t learn new skills in her arsenal – things just always go well for her. Feyre isn’t diplomatic – at the High Lord meeting she literally attacks another High Lord, she doesn’t show any prowess with Keir, doesn’t do things her own way and decides to defer to “the way its always been”

I’m not talking about how moral it is for Feyre to be able to do something.  I’m saying that Feyre never has to learn skills to handle adversity; when she doesn’t get her way the story throws temper tantrum for her. Beron said something mean so Feyre had to attack him – what does that prove? She essentially insults all of the High Lords, doesn’t make amends with Summer or Spring – and the story just expects them to follow her because….shes just a girl. And they do – for no other reason then the fact that Feyre is Feyre. And because there’s no emphasis on her actual skills, when we ask “what makes Feyre deserve to be High Lady’ – we get a frustrated response that says “well – she’s new at the job! She’ll learn!” but like…she never does. And again, what qualified her to be there in the first place If she supposedly still doesn’t have the skills. What moment informs this idea?

So, to stop my rambling, I agree that Feyre should be HL, but I also believe the story should develop her character's actual skillset instead always relying on bastardized generalizations of plot points that the story uses to basically argue that Feyre "deserves" the title without ever giving any skills to actually fall back on. the difference between , then Tamlin and Beron (maybe - we don't know) is that they inherited power, Feyre wants to lead. She wants to be High Lady. She isn't burdened with the responsibility she wants in (or story wants in). That means she should have skills to reflect that want.

***[two things I should note: (1) I was already writing a post that touches on some of the things I've discussed - so there's a lot of universal 'y'all/they/them thrown around - but I am not talking about you nonny; its toward the middle and end (2) this is a longer post bc I combined some of things I already wrote a couple months back! I really appreciate your comment and kindness]

[mutfruit-salad]

i find the way fans are already shipping cooper with lucy over her black love interest very telling of the clueless white supremacy and media illiteracy in the fandom. coop and lucy are obviously being setup as a father-daughter duo who need to learn caution/kindness from each other to survive, but these weirdos can’t have their white-man fave without a self-insert stand-in for 1 season. and the way people are glorifying cooper’s character is a load of bs - a morally greg white guy who realises he endorsed and was sympathetic to a massive war crime/political injustice… so he goes on to indiscriminately kill/hurt more people who have no idea of, nor say in the bigger picture that he was complicit in… is sooo boring and nothing new. also, giving him a biracial daughter as an accessory to show he’s Not Racist isn’t something we’ve seen half of a million fuckin times before 🤪 the way the show back-tracked on fallout’s message of blind american nationalism and militarism being a problem to It’s All Capitalism’s Fault, seemingly in reaction to the US currently endorsing and aiding in foreign war crimes, and past ones becoming common-knowledge, is horseshit on a platter.

I find the complete lack of a character for his daughter really horrifying- how she only exists to die dramatically for the sake of his sadness. It's odd because his wife is a well-established important character, yet their daughter is not allowed to be a person.

Fallout, in general, has had a habit of completely ignoring racism- presenting the prewar world as some fully integrated post racism utopia. Which is weird when the games regularly display overt anti Chinese (and broader anti Asian) sentiments in prewar logs and ads. This is a problem both the classic games AND the bethesda games have- racism has always been a touchy subject to the devs of the series and it seems like every game they've been content to ignore it, occasionally invoking it for horror or stumbling headlong into depicting it without realizing.

The way Ghoulgins regrets his past and just takes it out on everyone around him is absurd and plays into a lot of very hostile ideas the character peddles.

People shipping Ghoulgins with Lucy is baffling to me also considering he spends the entire series physically abusing her. People just don't want to acknowledge Max's existence, I have noticed. I know her and Ghoulgins get closer by the end, but it's after he's done just unspeakably cruel things to her- and you're right that it is absolutely framed as a father/daughter relationship.

I would also like to point out that the series has always criticized capitalism as well- but would generally frame it as sort of tangled up in American imperial ambition- with one feeding into the other. They were two halves of the same coin.

Vault Tec's entire existence in the classic games was selling smoke- profiting off of the extreme tension and stress of US military buildup- a process which would always inevitably end in disaster: either with Vault Tec going under or brinksmanship coming to its inevitable end.

Vault Tec (and the entire idea of luxury bunkers as a whole) WAS a critique of capitalism, and how it goes hand-in-hand with the American military industrial complex. It was selling the fear of annihilation to the populace. They didn't need to be some secretive controlling force to achieve any of this.

Making Vault Tec the sole antagonist, and the driving force of the apocalypse, is both deeply conspiratorial AND undermines the Cold War roots the series has always had- replacing the fear of American military buildup with a sort of hateful simplicity.

[aplaceforyourhearttorest]

I don't know how to explain it to you, but I've been thinking a lot lately about 80s!James dating the most naive and sensitive girl to ever walk this earth. Like, sensitive in every way. Specifically with loud music (loud sounds in general) and very crowded places. She loves making colorful bead bracelets and giving them as gifts, and James loves teasing her, teasing her in any way. So much so that at the beginning of the relationship, this was a problem 'cuz she always cried when he got the name of a stuffed animal she had wrong... y'know what i'm saying? (I would love to read something like this written by you, something that follows this line i hope it doesn't sound so stupid)

80s!James and hypersensitive!girlfriend headcanon

⭒ James was initially hesitant to introduce himself and talk to you when he first saw you, after seeing how sensitive, shy and naive you appeared to be around your guys' mutual group of friends. He only made his way over once he saw you were being bothered by someone who was an obvious plus one, his earlier doubt and delay dissipating once he acknowledged how uncomfortable you looked.

⭒ What started off as a mindless and minor threat being thrown at an already fully drunk and nearly close to blacking out stranger for you, slowly turned and evolved into a mutual agreement, a friendship, and then eventually, a relationship. You would subliminally intercept any girls James didn't seem like he'd be interested in talking to on his own, and in return, he'd make sure you were left alone and as far away from the party's speakers as physically possible- him purposefully keeping the flinches you made whenever the cacophony of beats would accelerate and blare from them, and when too many people brushed against and bumped into you, in mind.

⭒ One night, the mansion was too overcrowded, and you were almost shaking in fright. Your breathing became labored once you realized James was no longer in sight, and you didn't see it possible for you to be able to escape the situation by using the front or back doors of the house. So, you did what you thought would be the second-best option. You fled upstairs. Your legs nearly collapsed beneath you, and the friends that had dragged you back here once again, slowly disappeared and became smaller in the ever-growing pit with every uncertain step you took further upstairs. Before you could have searched for a bathroom or an abandoned bedroom, James came turning towards the staircase you were ascending on. You quickly loosened your death grip from around the wooden railing and instinctively pushed yourself forward, directing yourself into the taller man's chest.

⭒ James took you in his arms for the first time with careful hands and ease, already knowing from your trembling frame that you were on the verge of having a panic attack. The ringing in your ears dwindled down to a constant back burner of a buzz as he guided you up the last few stairs, and toward his bedroom. Before your impending embarrassment could overwhelm you, or you could attempt to apologize, James guided you to sit down on the edge of his bed and took your unsteady fingers and intertwined them with his. That was the first night and time James proved to you he could be there for you, as long as you would allow him to be. "I'm right here, and you'll be alright," he whispered to you, his tone confident, yet gentle. A warm pad of a thumb traced the ridge of a line on the inside of your sweat clad palm, light blue irises grounding you as you fought to control your erratic and painful heaves of aborted exhalations. "Take a deep breath for me, come back to me. That's it."

⭒ But you were there for him as well. Your hypersensitivity allowed him to feel comfortable enough around you to be vulnerable. On the occasional nights you were invited back to the mansion or coerced back by your friends, you both found solace in each other's company. You'd lie in bed with him as music and drunken cheers continuously barreled on downstairs, listening intently as he confided in you about his own anxieties. About his fears of the band growing too big too fast, his fear of the band falling apart, and him losing his best friends and members because of it. His anxieties that came with him not being able to control what was happening around him, and to himself. You'd steadily hold onto his hand and run your fingers through his disheveled mane, while he'd lie his head on your shoulder and grip the fabric of your shirt, like it was his one and only anchor. And on certain overwhelming and exhausted days for him, it was. Other and often times, conversation would be lighthearted, hysterical laughter lifting the weight from both of your guys' shoulders as you each took turns exposing small parts of your opposite personalities through embarrassing stories from the past. You both would share books and overly folded and torn pages from magazines, you being teased every time you realized you were tricked into looking at a Playboy, your cheeks a blazing bright red, and James' smile wide and boyish and youthful. Handsome, even.

⭒ The first time James invited you over during the day, he surprised you by instead taking you out to the carnival. Your usual fear of large crowds and loud sounds was mostly taken care of, as James made sure to have you both arrive early and be the first in line before they even opened up that morning. Every time someone ran too close by you or screamed a little too loud, he'd wrap an arm around your shoulders and distract you with a new game, or gently guide you away to someplace quieter. Your heart fluttered in your chest for the first time after he won you the first of many stuffed animals that day, the proud and soft look on his face as he handed it over to you was forever imprinted in your mind. A branded memory that you held close to you.

⭒ "Please don't cry, sweetheart, you know I was just fucking around. Of course, I remember the name of your favorite, childhood stuffed tiger. His name was Lucky!" He tried to reassure you, after you began to cry at the idea of him forgetting something so monumental and important to you. Translucent tears cascaded themselves down your flushed facial features, as James absentmindedly bent down to place a consoling kiss on the precipice of your forehead. You both froze in place, before stuttering out twinned, awkward bouts of shy laughter. You gripped the hind legs of your pig stuffed animal and averted your eyes, hoping your erratic heartbeat and the butterflies clashing in your midsection weren't audible enough to make it up to his ears. Insurmountable relief flooded through you, as a calloused and ringed finger delicately tapped itself on one of the many beaded friendship bracelets covering the entirety of your left wrist. "How about you make me one of these, and we'll call it even after I win you a few more of these little guys?" James let out an amused sounding guffaw once he expertly ducked away from one of your usually soft and painless punches, after his next words playfully aggravated you. "I'll even let you name one of them Lucky Jr."

⭒ The sun was lowering itself in the sky, by the time James braked and parked in front of your family's dimly lit home. You wrung your hands together in your lap, undecided and contemplating on whether or not you should be the one to speak up first. You nearly jumped in your seat, after his voice lightly reverberated in the small confines of the car. "I had a good time." James announced, as his stomach muscles tightened, and his fingertips whitened underneath the pressure he exuded around the steering wheel. You squeezed your knees together and nodded, hoping none of your new gifts would slide away and make contact with the floor. "I did too, thank you for taking me." You murmured in response, warmth filling your chest as you watched James grin, despite his body language being a juxtaposition to the action. You sucked in a shuttering breath as he leaned over you to push your door open, the ends of his dirty blonde hair coming down in waves to caress the side of your bare forearm, as he fully made his way back into the driver's seat once again. "Since you don't feel comfortable with men walking you up to your front door." He joked, his smile slowly falling as he watched your eyes rake all over his face, as if they were now only taking him in for the very first time. The words you spoke next, stole all of the oxygen that resided in his being. "You're not just a man, James. To me, you are so much more than that." James sat still in place for a long moment after you whispered a goodnight and took action to make your way outside of the vehicle, dazedly waving back at you after you tossed a halfhearted one behind your back, before clumsily footing your home's front door open- with your hands fully occupied with his prizes, your gifts. He lowered his head down with a resounding groan, not even flinching as his forehead made contact with the cool to the touch, worn-out leather covering and stretched around the steering wheel. God, he was so fucked. He was falling in love with his best friend. Little did he know, so were you.

⭒⭒ "Did you run out of beads, or something?" He asks you, a seemingly permanent upward quirk on his lips as he leans forward and over the center console separating the two of you in his car, helpfully twisting his limb as you triple knot the braided fabric around his much larger wrist. You absentmindedly shake your head no, biting back a smile of your own as you hear him let out a confused, yet content sound. "Everyone else has beads, I wanted this one to be different." You admit, inwardly shying away after you raise your eyes, and they meet his own. James keeps his eyes set on you for a second too long, before looking down at the bracelets you made once again. Yours is a sage green, interconnected and intertwined with small, yellow flowers. His, a light blue, with a deeper shade of flowers making their way around the entirety of the fabric, yellow dots of color embracing the inside of each one, causing them to stand out even more against his healthily tanned, soft skin.

"You wore a sage green and yellow dress on the night we met for the first time." James verbalizes and realizes, as the image of you pops in his head. Your shaky smile and wide eyes, as he watched you try to get away from the man harassing you near the sound system. Your smile turning genuine and soft, as he asked if you were alright, and when he playfully came up with a way for you to help him back for the rest of the night. Your light titter of amusement, and finally, your nod of agreeance. The soft looks you two shared throughout the rest of the duration of the party, and the murmured goodnights you two parted with, you both being reluctant to separate and walk away.

Your bitten back smile turns into a wide grin as he vividly remembers your first meeting from all those months ago, your left hand resting on top of his wrist. Your fingertips absentmindedly shift the backing to the side so that the front would be fully visible, as James tentatively flickers his eyes back up to yours. "I wasn't wearing light blue that night, was I?" He asks you. You slowly inhale and straighten up in the passenger side seat, your free hand anxiously beginning to tug at the bottom hem of your t-shirt. You nervously lick your lips and shake your head no, missing your best friend's eyes as they helplessly follow after the movement.

"The light blue represents your eyes," you begin and confess, a small flicker of hope lighting anew in your gut, as James sucks in a deep breath and shifts closer. "I was making mine over the past few days, and what you wore didn't matter to me, not as much at the color of your eyes did," your hair falls free as you lift your head from against the headrest, lowering your hand from your shirt to use it as leverage to push yourself flat against the console. "Your eyes were the first thing I noticed about you when we first met, and you calmed me down. And now they're the first thing I search for whenever I know you'll be around."

A warm and large hand reaches forward to cup your nape as James whispers out your name, the softness in his tone enough to bring tears to your eyes. You blurrily blink as silver rings etch themselves in the tendrils of your locks, and as he slowly guides your head forward. The wake of goosebumps gather and multiply on your wrist as it makes contact with the divider, as James brings his other open palm up to delicately caress your cheekbone. Light and royal blue and yellow make safe haven in your right eye's peripheral as you're held in the most gentle way, and as your best friend looks down at you with his own set of blown, wide open eyes.

"If I'm reading into this wrong," James trails off, his expression turning into a grimace at the thought alone. You look back at him with longing, before lifting your hand from the console and encircling it around his wrist nearest to your face. He expels a sigh of relief at the familiar warmth in the smile you send his way, ignoring the pressure against his ribs as he leans forward to rest his forehead against yours. A light breath of a laugh is breathed out in the small space between you two, and you squeeze his wrist in reassurance, feeling alive and understood at the feeling of his incessant and abnormal heartrate pulsing beneath your fingertips. "How are you the one confessing first? I thought you were the shy and oversensitive one."

Your smile is overabundantly large as James kisses you before you can answer, the fabric of your guys' bracelets rubbing against each other as you press your lips on his and savor the feeling and taste. You both don't pull back until you're gasping for air, and as soon as you both reopen your eyes and look at each other once again, laughter ensues. You rest the weight of your head in his palm connected to your nape and look up at him gently, a sigh of contentment making its way out of your plush and kissed red set. Those same light blue irises from that first night, peer back down at you, filled with adoration and devoted conviction. "I think you confessed to me a long time ago, I was just too nervous to acknowledge it," you speak into the charged and electrified air surrounding you two. You unlatch your hand from around his wrist to raise it and graze the pads of your fingertips against his smile doted skin, and his lifted, already swollen lips. "You once told me to come back to you when I was having a panic attack, but I don't think I ever left. I think I'm always present when you're around. You bring it out of me."

James damply and disbelievingly chuckles, before placing a trembling kiss to your fingertips. You gently detach and wipe away a stray tear from the corner of his right eye, a few of your own already making their way down your jawline. "I love you; you know." You confess through a mused grin, the tone in your voice easy, because admitting it now was the easiest thing in the world. James beckons you forward once again, kissing you breathless before admitting his love back to you, although you already know what his next words will be.

"And God, do I love you."

⭒⭒⭒ Bright lights, heavy bass and thousands of screaming fans erupt from around you, yet all of your prior anxieties and worries are gone as you watch James and the rest of Metallica perform on stage, the partial noise cancelling headphones you're wearing giving you enough balance and security to be able to fully enjoy yourself. You lean back against the barricade and smile widely, the pride and joy you have for them nearly beaming out of your chest, as you look at the fruition and proof of all of their hard work over the past few years.

James' voice bellows out the next few lines of the song, before he makes his way over to the edge of the center stage, and squats down in front of you, his mouth outstretched in a euphoric and blissful smile. Something he always deserves to wear. He cheekily raises his left hand, and you do the same, the light and royal blue gemstones in his engagement ring shining just as brightly as your sage green and yellow ones. You both share muted I love you's, the sounds of cheers and sung back lyrics too loud for your guys' indescribable joy to be audible. But you both know how true the words you mouth back to each other are.

You twist the gold-plated jewelry around your ring finger as you sing along with the crowd, fully embracing the experience, and all that is yet to come.

As long as you had James by your side, and James had you, you two were prepared for anything.

(note: your request was so much fun to write, and it wasn't stupid at all. don't doubt yourself, babe! i hope i did it justice and you enjoy it ♡)

[theflyindutchwoman]

Omg bestie your tags on this post

SPOT ON

let’s discuss.

They really need to talk about it 😂 some reassurance would be good for both

They both really do! But at the present, I'm not even sure they know how to address this elephant in the room. It seems like they're currently stuck in this neverending loop because they don't know what the other wants.

Lucy said that she was afraid of ruining the most important relationship in her life… and I don't think that Tim fully comprehends how every time he walks away from her and the hard conversation, it's hurting her. How she is wondering if this time will be for good. Her face at the end was heartbreaking… If her own parents could walk away from her because she refused to conform to their idea of who she should be, then why not Tim? If he was shaped by his trauma with Isabel, Lucy also bears the scars from her parents teachings.

And that's the terrible irony here : he is trying to be supportive, not realising that what she wants from him is honesty about his feelings. And until she tells him that, I'm not sure he will get it. He usually walks away right before his mask can slip. Don't get me wrong, he is genuinely supportive of her and her career. He's not lying about that. I just mean that he is trying to hide his fears in the process. And she can see it. I wonder if part of the reason why Tim is still hiding his feelings has to do with what Isabel told him in 1.12 and how much he probably blames himself.

As for Tim's biggest fear, he basically admitted it in their fight in 5.21. I don't know if he thought that their discussion back then was enough to reassure her or if he was just caught completely off-guard by Lucy's accusations but it clearly struck a nerve. Understandably so. And I'm not sure Lucy realised that either. Not in the state of mind she was at the time.

That's why I'm hoping we'll see a bit more of that in the next episode. I don't expect a full resolution. Just something to show us that they've acknowledged the problem and that they're trying to work this through. Even a simple conversation where Tim asks her if she really believed he was undermining her would do. Or Lucy asking him to stop walking away (even though in that case, that was probably for the best).

[prettyrealm]

nmixx lily mini personality reading

positives + negatives edition

this reading is part of a paid commision, thank you so much for trusting in me! <3 celebrity commissions • personal commissions

+ positives

a very hard working person, she will do a lot to move forward (suffer in silence, compromise, take on extra tasks). good at keeping the peace (if she’s about to shower and someone’s like “oh I was about to do that” she won’t mind letting them go first). she’s good at being optimistic, looking towards the future and being appreciative (appreciates good times because she knows they don’t last, doesn’t fret over bad times because she knows they don’t last). she’s a good talker and communicator, she’s a good conversationalist but also a good listener, she’s also not confusing with her communication (for the most part she’s easy to understand and aims to be pretty straight forward). she’s original (in the sense it’s important for her to feel like she’s being herself) and it’s important to her to stay grounded. she’s spiritual - whether she’s religious or not, she has an innate moral code that she follows because she thinks life/there is something bigger than herself (so she tries to be a good person). she’s super resilient and will stand up for herself (people can take her compromising nature to think she’s also a pushover but she fights when she needs to). she’s pretty stable and uncomplicated - she wants simple things and doesn’t have “complex” emotions (for example: she doesn’t have deep trust issues that interfere with how she communicates or interacts with people, she doesn’t get upset over “weird” things, she doesn’t feel the need to watch out for people close to her betraying her).

- negatives

while she works hard, she has had more help to get to where she is today than she sees or acknowledges, she’s on a pedestal in this sense and can be arrogant. she’s very easily bored due to her lack of imagination (she isn’t imaginative enough to know how bring a spark to her life, other people have to do it for her), it’s like she only really knows what her goals are because she’s been told what they should be, she struggles to come up with ideas and is overall uninspired. due to her being so positive, she doesn’t take bad times seriously enough (this can hold her back from truly sorting out problems or learning from her experiences). but at the same time, she can also have problem not knowing when to give up and let certain situations or projects go (she struggles with balance here, essentially she either cares not enough or too much). she relies too much on the people around her for her sense of identity (very much an extraverted person and not as self-aware or individualistic as she thinks she is). since she isn’t a suspicious person, people tend to get one over on her pretty easily (she doesn’t look for or sometimes doesn’t even understand red flags). she doesn’t get that just because certain things are okay with her (compromising, letting other people choose) doesn’t mean she SHOULD be okay with it, there’s a lot of people around her that don’t respect her and only use her. she feels like a bit of an outsider due to being mixed, she doesn’t feel like she has an identity (especially since she relies so much on her community for her sense of identity, she feels more lonely than she’s willing to acknowledge that there’s not many people like her around her), she feels Australian, but she also feels Korean, but she doesn’t feel like she’s both if that makes sense. she’s too “innocent” and has too much faith in the world (I think she’s been very fortunate in the industry not to have seen or gone through what many of the things her peers have, it’s like a kid with no stranger danger). she can lack empathy purely because she lacks experiences and can’t fully understand things (if someone with a hard 9-5 job says they’re at a breaking point and can’t take it anymore she may try to comfort them in a way that feels sympathetic, but not totally understanding).

[yuissamidare]

I saw a lot of people questioning the appeal of lukahyuna/hyuluka, and I think that’s quite understandable. here are my two cents no one asked for! for me, other than the fact that they’re the perfect example of interpersonal horror, at least a big part of the attraction comes from my interpretation of the characters—both being people who struggle with control and autonomy.

Luka is someone who is controlled in every aspect of his life, from his daily training, to his health (canonly having heart problems and other congenital issues), and he was paraded around since he was young for his appearance and constantly made to be a spectacle — there is nothing that is fully his expect his emotions, to which he hangs onto hyuna with his love; then there is hyuna, who was completely aware of the encasement she was in and could still live freely, happily chaining herself to the parental role she placed herself in for her younger brother and later on, refuses to live anything but freely but except for being trapped by her feelings and memories of luka and her brother.

It’s a case of someone who has no independence finding a sense of sovereignty and control in regards to the feelings he has with another person versus someone who will carve a path of freedom and control for herself but constantly losing her footing as the only thing she has no control over are her feelings, and that contrast makes it very appealing for me.

Luka and hyuna were made with each other in mind, hyuna being stated to be a ‘YOLO!’ kind of girl while luka is the opposite and is careful—this is shown in their official merch stands as well, hyuna being a lunar eclipse that interferes with the path of the moon (luka) and luka being a solar eclipse that blocks the path of the sun (hyuna). They are complimentary opposed forces, however that does not mean that at one point they were not mutually attracted to each other, regardless of the intent of the attraction—in the prologue and old supplemental art, Hyuna and Luka are seen side by side while rehearsing and also spending their free time together (though Luka is glaring at Hyunwoo who is offscreen), and in all in as well, they’re shown to spend time together while Hyunwoo is not around, and Hyuna also allows him to encroach on time spent with her brother. (In this particular part of All-In, luka shows traits such as sucking on his sleeves which are associated with poorly socialized or developed children, which is something he seems to stop when Hyuna touches him for a sufficient amount of time)

— Anakt Garden Initially, i had thought what luka felt for Hyuna was not traditional ‘love’ or a properly developed crush but possession and desire to have hyuna act as a readily available and constant companion in a convenient social tie—something to have which a special relationship no one else can touch, having something that is truly his regardless of what he felt being considered as ‘love’—, which, while not completely untrue, had shifted when their supplemental comic came out and showed that he had genuine value in her thoughts and opinions (while making sure she had stopped looking at hyunwoo), and in a recent doodle, showed that he had genuinely sought her affection and validation (via picking fights with Hyunwoo and using that as a way to see her take his side over his, which is the second time she is shown to prioritize him over her brother, who calls for her and only her attention in the supplemental comic who she seems to put off for a moment in favor of acknowledging luka’s clinginess towards her and calling him cute).

While the form changed, the one constant of luka —> hyuna has always been: ‘this is mine, I want a relationship with her that gives me a level of exclusivity and control over her that others can’t have, one that includes priority over hyunwoo’

Luka is shown to value her opinions and use it as a basis for his own, as seen in a supplemental comic. he finds worth in her viewpoints considering and there’s a sense of mutuality there that makes him comfortable enough to share and talk about opinions with her and to use her as either a building block for his own ideals due to not having any strong feelings of his own, or to compare and contrast their ways of thinking and finding worth in the perspective that she has brought.

this comic is my second favorite piece of media involving them, with my first being the in the storyboards for all in…! (which i can’t talk about since it’s patreon content, but, you know) and it directly correlates to his character inspiration in which he finds value and a reason to be on stage due to the experiences he spent with hyuna, just like how his character inspiration finds value in their story of origin through experiences spent with others.

Singing makes Hyuna feel free, and through Hyuna, Luka attempts to find freedom and independence through singing as well, though the results are debatable as it seems he doesn’t inherently enjoy singing, but the feeling of closeness it allows him to feel for Hyuna and the privilege it brings him.

hyuna’s feelings for him at this point is hard to succinctly place on tenterhooks, as she was a character kept private and secret for much of the run, but i do think that she had fledging affection for him for several of the reasons i mentioned (re: the purposeful and conscious spent with him over others; the decision to spend time with both luka and hyunwoo and seemingly split her attention between them as they seem to fight when she’s not around, as in the supplementary comic hyunwoo only calls for Hyuna’s attention rather than calling for them both; once again taking Luka’s side when luka provokes others; the memory that sparks her panic is one of them being close—her playing with his hair while he looks at her.)

It is difficult for me to talk about hyuna’s feelings when there is so little about her known, I do feel like much of it will be my interpretation so please forgive the conjecture.

Personally, I believe that Hyuna viewed her love of others through her love for hyunwoo. She took on a maternal role for her brother which spreads through her interactions with others even if she acts like a wild auntie nowadays. I believe she took Luka’s side over Hyunwoo’s because she thought Hyunwoo should treat Luka more carefully since she had expected him to be more responsible to a child that seemed weak and delicate in comparison to Hyunwoo. I believed she split her attention between them both as Hyunwoo seemed to rely on her for her attention as much as luka did (re: only calling for her when he wanted to show off the space beetle.) and had acted as a bridge between them, despite them seemingly not having the best relationship—she could have always cut luka off when hyunwoo had grown frustrated with him, but again, she divided her time between them and had spend moments with them both apart and together because she had cared deeply for them both.

Since she viewed her relationships through her love of hyunwoo, she could not differentiate her feelings for luka being different or starting to develop as something different because she did not treat that as a possibility with her stubbornly placing herself in that motherly role—which is why things like Luka’s possessive statements had the red flags ignored then seemingly encouraged with petting and praise due to being flattered by his close attention.

And since luka is implied to have been artificially created, hyunas nature was something he found soothing and comforting (see: no longer self soothing after she had touched him) before the nature of his feelings changed as well, though his feelings changed sooner than hers did.

— Season 49 and present day: regardless of how hyunwoo died*, it is possible hyuna’s misery and potential feelings of guilt and regret give him a modicum of control over her—even after hyunwoo is dead, she’s going to need to live with luka all the way until season 49 starts and she escapes. she’s still going to have years and years of staying with him and having him cling to her or remind her what happened and she has been affected as a result (her looking so muted and sad when depicted prior to her escape, or having less vibrant expressions compared to all in; her potentially starting to smoke to deal with stress). he has, essentially, ruined her so thoroughly they’ll find his face carved into the darkest part of her heart and that’s sign of her thinking of him, and there’s ownership in that as well. i think the part in sweet dream where they show up and she’s hovering a knife over him while he’s holding her hip implies that he’d genuinely be delighted if she tried to kill or hurt him back, because that’s more proof that she’s still under his control. *While it is normally agreed that Luka’s actions caused Hyunwoos death, there is still contention as to what happen or led up to it, as some people from the start believe when Hyuna had pulled them apart, Hyunwoo hit his head (while originally theorized on the all in YT comments, it gained traction with the doodle comic as additional evidence for later on, but it’s been theorized since all in came out [while I have screenshots, I do not have the source for the original YT comment, magratbastard on Twitter has a great thread on it) or that Hyunwoo had just landed badly when luka pushed him off. Therefore I am using vague phrasing here as what happened is not agreed on in a unified manner as we lack context.

At this point in time hyuna is actively haunted by thoughts of hyunwoo, but seems that she’s conflicted about luka and battles her unhappiness, disgust, and past positive feelings under a vein of apathy, but seemingly falters (sweet dream) due to lingering attachment or being unable to truly know what happened that day, which leads to her passively allowing him near her despite her distaste. she needs to live with him and remember that he was involved in her brothers death, and that he is attached to her for some reason, and that displays itself in a way that could be taken as romantic.

In supplemental art where he is giving her a massage, unlike fighting or squirming away like till does with ivan, hyuna seems to reluctantly acquiesce to his touch despite seeming awkward about it (for many reasons). it seems to resemble parts of all in, and sweet dream—haunted by him, but is determined to shut out her feelings and move past him in order to benefit others (re: singing at the club; her surrounded by robots and his image, only moving forward and away from them in awe when mizi fights for her) seems to have settled into a more uncharitable view of him but still trips up when confronted with thoughts of him and actively fights his memory and positive association with him because she still can’t truly push him and thoughts of him away.

Note: as children in the garden are indoctrinated to think that singing while dying allows you to go to the in universe equivalent of a heaven, her feelings of being haunted by hyunwoo may be exacerbated by that indoctrination, even if she doesn’t believe in it anymore. May possibly be reluctant to kill luka due to three things: this, past affection for him, or feeling the value of other humans for the sake that they are human, despite not wanting him in her life. — present day: Romh, all in, love and peace, sweet dream cover:

ROMH: ruler of my heart is a song that was created prior to season 50 and is implied to have been written about Hyuna. I wrote my thoughts on it here: https://x.com/8bitdetective/status/1745091500789076201

SWEET DREAM: sweet dream generally parallels the luka and Hyuna’s story lyric wise, as luka and sua are diametrically opposed contrasts in their approaches to love and ‘self(ish/ness)’.

I made a rough comparison here: https://x.com/8bitdetective/status/1745110121108168870

hyuna and mizi are mirrors in how they live their lives, similar, I believe sua and luka mirror each other as well.

hyuna and mizi are both people who have experienced love prior to meeting their respective others and having happy experiences with their family—mizi was loved by her owners, who had gifted her toys and sent her off in tears, and in return she loved them as well—mizisua is a video about the people mizi has loved, who have ‘abandoned’ her, and I believe this was also her realization that her family left her alone to participate in a death game, the same way sua had consciously sacrificed herself despite not knowing what may happen in the future.

hyuna had also been given and received familial love in the form of hyunwoo, and that had been her everything. these are both people who had been secure in their love and therefore had love to share, and both luka and sua were addicted to that healthy affection—however luka seemingly refused to let anyone but hyuna in and has never willing spent time with anyone but hyuna, focusing all his feelings on hyuna and ‘the person who is intruding on his time with hyuna’ that he was jealous of—luka, being older than hyuna, was probably set in his ways and didn’t see a need to change, as such change would lead to detrimental effects on his life elsewhere. he did not change, nor did he want to—why would he have to, when hyuna would seemingly always take his side and put him before even her brother? instead, he selfishly wanted hyuna to have her world narrowed to only him, he wanted to own her and I believe wanted her to choose to ‘own’ him as well.

meanwhile sua was willing to spend time with others and talk to them, while mizi was her most important person, mizi wasn’t the only person in the world and mizi had allowed the universe to expand around them, and such varied experiences of being around people had allowed sua to develop a healthier relationship and way of thinking—even if she had become childish and jealous of till at points, she did not try and steal mizis from his company and allowed her to have her own friends, and then was allowed to make her own connections with ivan (as contentious as it may be at time) and had become a person who was more socially conscious and well adjusted compared to luka.

LOVE & PEACE: depending how you look at it, LOVE&PEACE can reference both luka and hyunwoo at the same time, or either/or. For this, I’ll mainly talk about how it can possibly apply to Luka.

if you consider sweet dream to also be applicable to his character, luka says the morning (hyuna, who is compared to the sun) won’t come for him, but to hyuna even if time marches on and she can find the sun (new experiences) it still feels like she’s fumbling in the night (Luka) after everything, because luka is always associated with the night and darkness and hyuna being his brightness, feeling trapped by lukas influence even if she’s mentally aware she’s not under his thumb anymore, because he always pops into her mind.

while luka was her friend, hyunwoo was the other half of her heart—no matter what luka did, it doesn’t change that hyunwoo is apart of her, that he’s still inside her as her blood, and that’s something luka can never take away. That’s the interpretation I got from the cover art, at least. every time she bleeds, he’ll be split on her skin and that is something she will always have to live with, and something she always has to acknowledge being stolen from her.

This also contrasts their ways of loving: luka wants hyuna for herself and lives for the sake of having her, but hyuna lives in order to express her love for hyunwoo by rebelling against the system that has taken her brother away from her, and to keep loving hyunwoo and for that sincerity to reach him someday—to live on for the part of her that couldn’t, despite seemingly not taking good care of her body by drinking, smoking, and getting hurt on her rebel mission. She’s a character that claims to live for herself while taking care of others (again, contrasting with luka who lives for others while taking care of his own self preservation.)

Because Hyuna is a character that constantly thinks of others, she can’t forgive herself when she thinks of Luka fondly, or that she still has memories of them being affectionate after everything, even as she confesses in LOVE&PEACE that she didn’t think the ‘night’, the peace and safety she felt in the garden in the times spent with him, would be stolen from her and would have her reevaluate everything about him.

— re: the kiss

luka is a character with no control or autonomy in his life, he is chronically ill and he is consistently put in high stress situations that he doesn’t enjoy being in. luka is a character who is meant to be subservient and obedient to his owners and ‘betters’ while being treated like a showdog for a majority of his life for his own appearance, in an interview, he mentions ‘being made to sing in a variety of situations to be made sure that he can sing perfectly at any time’ and is someone who is meant to control his own heartbeat consistently and manually. He’s always hunched in and doing things like sucking on his sleeve are traits of neurodivergence and abused/highly stressed children (to which he only stops when hyuna pets him long enough) which reads as him being poorly or under socialized.

I believe he thought that hyuna wouldnt have reacted badly as she had always reacted positively to other things he has done (openly claiming ownership of her or when she takes his side, earnestly as seeing his questions and giving him physical affection) and had showed that she had prioritized him over everyone else. Luka is a character who is calculative and doesn’t do anything unless the move works in his favor, he’s made to be hyunas diametric opposite in that way, which is why he picks on hyunas brother to get him to lash out, to see if she will put him first.

I do not believe* have made a move if he didnt think there was an investment there, because that would risk losing her, and luka has always been someone who has ‘known his place’ and what he has to gain and lose. Even if there was not ‘love’ there, he had probably expected some positive reciprocal action.

*on the case that lukas actions were out of impulse, i think it would be spurred by insecurity and envy. while luka and hyuna hold mutual respect for one another, he does get annoyed when she calls him cute and reminds her that he’s older, despite always going to her when hyunwoo hits him back for her defense. if this wasn’t a gesture that was calculated, it was most likely one used to have her categorized as as something other than something to just be taken care of as the nature of his feelings started to change.

i believe the collar is used to track—rather than negative emotion—level of emotional intensity or dysregulation, which may correlate with heartrate but wouldn't always? for example, there’s supplementary art of mizi and sua that shows sua getting flustered at the sight of mizi’s body, which usually wouldnt indicate discomfort but rather suggests a sudden fluctuation in emotional state, if that makes sense, meanwhile since till is often shown with a green collar around mizi despite being shown heavily flustered when thinking about her, since he’s a very intense person that kind of status would be normal on him, however since sua is a very low intensity person, her red light signals an abnormality.

I think Hyuna’s light changed because she was startled, this was something that was new to her and an out of character action for luka. I do not think she expected him to kiss her as these things would not be on her mind as she has always given priority to others.

In the days that followed it is likely that hyuna had decided to put space between them and luka had ached for her attention again after startling her, and probably decided to get it again in a way that seemed to work over and over again probably provoking hyunwoo (either seeking him out or letting him come to luka and seeing a chance) and getting into a fight with him in hopes that hyuna would defend him, knowing that he was weak and sickly, however hyunwoo had died in the process and that had driven the rift further, if that makes sense?

Luka also purposely provokes Mizi in ROMH, leading to him being protected by a stronger force who will protect him while playing victim—this potentially stemmed from repetition of Hyuna’s defensive behavior when he was young, and had continued using this technique until the present day.

Tldr: I don’t think luka understood that he came off as too aggressive at this point, regardless of what led up to the kiss, and that hyuna was startled being approached in a blatantly romantic way as, while she always liked him, she could not differentiate what made her feelings for him different from anyone else and it had shocked her

—comparing and contrasting ivan, sua, and lukas affection and actions:

luka, ivan and sua all start exhibiting quiet and subdued demeanors, characterized by introversion and a sense of resignation. they all appear passive and reserved in their interactions and behaviors which makes a contrast with the seemingly more assertive nature of the rest of the cast.

ivan, sua, and luka are all self(less/ish) in different ways, they all show different aspects of the weight of being saved by love and ‘marking’ their respective interests in different ways. — sua quietly plans her end and goes out with a smile, fulfilling mizis dream of singing with her while knowingly sabotaging herself with the hopes that mizi will live and remember her, even if she’s not there; ivan forcing himself onto till and choking him in order to lose and make sure till survives, despite having sneered at sua for the same thing; though luka, without a doubt, is the most selfish, as he has nothing but his feelings for hyuna and the stage that hyuna claimed made her feel free. their object of affections affect them by changing their perspectives and motivations in the future, and as a result they’ve been changed and they changed the person who became their object of affection.

all three start the same their respective apathy for life until meeting their assigned partner, but while the former two set aside their lives for love, luka cannot let her go because that is probably his only proof of ‘self’.

first we have sua, who appears to have given up on life, living a subservient existence without expectations of a better chance at life or ever breaking the norm, full of resignation and apathy but the moment Mizi enters the scene, it's like her life is something worth living, like the colors, smells and all of her senses suddenly come to life, she starts becoming more open and expressive infatuated by Mizi's carefree existence—she becomes envious and emotional, she starts to smile brightly, and due to these experiences sua believes she's lived what she thought was worth living, and now what's truly important was preserving Mizi's existence, as life was not worth even being in without her god and the person who had made everything animated. Sua was only able to enjoy ‘living’ with her company, though she had still ‘selfishly’ marked mizi in a way where she’d never forget her.

then we have Ivan, who possibly attempted to unsuccessfully escape his caretaker as he was shortly captured back up again leading to him having a very similar sense of resignation but with a glimpse of mundane contempt. life isn't necessarily worth living but it's also not worth losing, it is comfortable enough even if just as lifeless as it had always been. however this changes when till makes a scene and not just once but multiple times- making him infatuated by the constant refusal of the conformity he had deeply fallen into. this sparked interest and curiosity in ivan who had until then, had nothing to ‘live’ rather than to ‘survive’ for until he met someone with the qualities he lacked—and those are qualities he wanted to have preserved as well, even if he had to hurt till by forcing a kiss on him as a tool for assured survival, and die in front of him, ‘inflicting’ his emotions onto him. Luka’s emotions come from a desire to have and to own due to being taken care of conditionally (due to his looks and talent) and seemingly being treated like a toy. there seems to have been a mental separation between him and other children that excluded Hyuna because she either was able to nurture him in a genuine way that he lacked the support of elsewhere AND she was able to catch his attention in ways that other people could not—whether it was due to her singing talents, her natural charisma that seemed to make her suitable to be a rebel leader, or, similarly to ivan, he was curious after spending close proximity to her due to the time he was forced to spend with other kids that brought him to her and had become curious about someone who seemed to be his diametric opposite, but still had the maturity to realize that she was a prisoner under anakt; however, unlike ivan, luka was not content just watching and provoking reactions out of hyuna, he wanted to own them as well and keep them all to himself- and once again, harming the object of his affection by forcing intimate proximity, and then leading to hyunwoos death.

if ROMH is written about hyuna (which it likely is) then all three share the sentiment of ‘I want the person i love to live’, though lukas sentiment has the caveat of *‘with me’. ivan was always aware that his feelings were not reciprocal, and had contented himself by watching and being in his presence. sua had mizi’s love and affection, and then was willing to be ‘let go’ and die loved. luka can not be happy just observing hyuna, nor does he want to let go or be let go—theyre all very different aspects of love being displayed, and i believe luka and hyuna have a lot of complexities and depth to them that make them appealing even outside of what’s on the surface! theyre all very different aspects of love being displayed!! its really interesting! It’s a really fascinating and intricate dynamic… tldr its neat!

[slocumjoe]

Can you do a companions react to a sole with poor fine motor skills that is really skilled in battle but can't do stuff like open can tabs or walk in a straight line or has trouble lile tying their shoes?

- Leaf anon 🌱

Cait; Wouldn't think much of it. She was an addict, she's known lots of other addicts, she's known raiders. People who's heads get messed with, either with substance or by getting hit too much. Fighting and shit like grabbing a door handle are different. Her worry is that they'd need their motor skills in a fight, or in a retreat...Cait would gripe about helping them with anything if they ask, but she can respect someone who's useful when it matters.

Codsworth; Would offer a hand whenever they looked like they needed it, but otherwise wouldn't comment or acknowledge it. It would feel very improper. They've got things handled most of the time, and if they aren't in pain, he doesn't need to worry. Would consult wasteland doctors if he felt they were legit, get their opinion, but Codsworth isn't the type to micromanage.

Curie; Worried mama hen. Curie would hover and possibly overstep. She means well, but if you don't want help with something, and don't need it, someone insisting they help is very 🙃🙃🙃. This is the first time I've used emojis in a react, only because I cannot describe the emotion those ones convey. Anyway. Curie would look into motor skills disabilities/in general in hopes of finding a way to remedy their struggles, make things easier. Some people might appreciate it, others would feel really patronized.

Danse; Would send them to Cade every time they returned to the Prydwen, just to check up on things. Obviously can't so that post BB. Danse has probably seen this before as well, but since he'd be traveling with them, he'd see it more and in different ways. Small corridor and they can't walk straight? His power armor is huge and lacks agility. They're bumping into each other. This would be an exercise in spacial awareness for him.

Deacon; one of the more worried ones. They're both spies. They need to be sneaking. You need to be able to move straight, pick locks, quickly type on keyboards. He's pleasantly surprised to see that Sole is still good at what they do, but there's always a little part of him waiting for that Chekov's Gun to go off. Also tends to hover around them, especially in hostile areas.

Gage; Don't let anyone know they have this issue and Gage is fine. Raiders will sniff that kind of thing out and get dollar signs for eyes. Walk straight the best you can, or play it off as a personality eccentricity. Don't say shit, don't go for soda in public. Very confused how they beat the Gaunlet. Very confused how they have such a high kill count. Will only help them out if its time-sensitive.

Hancock; Takes him...so long to notice. Not because he's high, he just fully doesn't realize it. He spends time around alcoholics and chemheads. Like Cait, that's just...normal for him? Hancock will offer help with some things, and still not notice what kind of help he's actually providing. He'll realize out of the blue one day and barge into the room asking if they have problems, just to make sure he's right.

MacCready; As long as he's the sniper, there's no reason to worry. If they start eyeing scopes to add to their guns, he might sweat a little. If they're a pickpocket type, he's just sweating. Pickpocket, sweating bullets. This would turn MacCready off crime, watching them try to sneak whatever from someone's pocket, when just three minutes ago, they had to bite their bag's zipper. Leave the precision stuff to him. Please. Please for the love of god.

Nick; Look at either of his hands. He probably doesn't have such great motor skills there, either, purely because he's just so old and banged up. This is a major source of bonding. Nick is the least likely to have any worry or concern for them; he gets around fine, so can they.

Preston; Second longest to notice. Faster than Hancock, but it still long enough for him to wonder if they were always like that, or if they're injured in some way. His concern comes before combat—they fight just fine, its the getting ready. Flicking their safety off, getting the gun out, reloading. Preston tends to go in front, so they have some time to prepare before they get into the action.

Piper; Like Preston, worries about transitional periods. Downtime, they're fine, firefight, they're fine. But those little moments in between, oooh, does Piper worry. Piper will keep count of how many bullets they use and let them know to reload, switch to something else, etc. Basically tracks all the info around, gets it to them so they have a few extra seconds to think and fiddle with whatever they have to.

X6-88; They are forbidden from heights. They are to remain at least ten feet away from more than a three-foot drop. Area too small? Understood, we're not going there, we're leaving. No, I don't care who asked for what. X6-88 hates heights as is. Someone pirouetteing their way off an edge is not happening. He truly does not care about anything else. Can't open things? Whatever. Bad with precision? Whatever. You can't walk straight, you are not going near ladders, bridges, scaffolding, cliffs, maybe even stairs if he thinks they're too tall.

[tsarisfanfiction]

Beneath the Stars

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Angst Characters: Will, Nico Apollo kids slept with the sun, except for when they didn't. Overnight pre-quest outings don't help. TOApril day 9 - The Hour Past Midnight. I am tired and Will is tired so if this is incoherent, that'll be why.

Will was tired but he couldn’t sleep.  Usually, he slept just fine as long as the sun was down (when the sun was up was another matter entirely), but a pre-quest, well, quest, rather enforced the need for him to stay awake.

Then again, Will suspected that this would’ve been one of those rare, irritating nights where he couldn’t sleep even without external stimuli keeping him awake.  Going out lizard-hunting with Nico to try and gather bribes for the cavern-runners drove home exactly what they were going to be doing in the morning, but at least it came with the added side effect of knowing that they were also doing everything they could to mitigate the risks.

And there were a lot of risks.

The moon was out, no clouds thick or plentiful enough to hide its light, and Will let his head tip back to stare up at it.  He’d seen a lot of the moon over the past six months, since Apollo’s stint as a mortal had begun, and there were some things that just weren’t coincidences.  Will didn’t know how much influence Artemis had over her brother’s fate, but it was comforting, in a strange, disquieting, way, to recognise that with his dad… incapacitated, for lack of a better word, his aunt (not that he often thought of Artemis as such, wasn’t sure if she viewed herself as such) was still there.

Sure, Artemis would never drop by in his dreams, or even acknowledge his existence, but any hint of normality in a world that was currently anything but normal was one that Will would clutch at with both hands and never let go.

If only getting Apollo back where he belonged was that easy.  Right now, it felt more like Will was helping to accelerate his father’s permanent demise, because going to the trogs still felt like a terrible, terrible, idea, yet here he was.

Will was trying hard not to think about how if they weren’t all eaten by the trogs, there was still Nero to contend with, and after him, Python.

Even the name of the last one had him shivering.

His head knocked against the trunk of the tree he was leaning against, torn between being awake and passing out where he stood.  He could take a nap, if he wanted to.  Nico had never expected him to do more than keep him company for this, Will knew, especially as it was long past sunset and the lizard traps showed no sign of succeeding in their purpose just yet.

He should take a nap.  They were due to head out at dawn – provided they caught a stupid lizard in time – and then the quest would begin in earnest and Will’s opportunities for sleep would drop considerably.  He wasn’t Nico, who could go entirely too long without sleep – not for any logical reasons like being a son of Hades, but because he’d messed his sleep schedule up so badly that his body just rolled with it, even though it shouldn’t.  If Will didn’t get some sleep now he was going to crash mid-quest.

The problem was, Will wasn’t going to sleep.  He could feel it in the tenseness of his body and the faintest strains of a headache at the base of his skull.  He was too stressed to sleep, too on edge for his mind to slip away.

Next to him, also leaning against the tree, Nico was fully alert despite the late hour.  They were nearing midsummer, and even Nico had shed his outer layers until he was just in a t-shirt and jeans.  His bare forearm pressed against Will’s, cool but not worryingly so, and Will’s hand was close enough to his wrist to feel the rhythm of his boyfriend’s pulse steady and even beneath the skin.

It was soothing, and Will knew Nico was doing it on purpose, using his vitakinesis against him to keep him relaxed.  It was hardly the first time, and wouldn’t be the last, either.  Nico had used the exact same trick to get him to sleep after a late night in the infirmary, and with his sword out, he was clearly prepared to stand guard while Will slept.

If only Will could actually sleep.

Above him, beyond the moon chariot, the stars shone clearly.  Will could name all the constellations despite rarely being awake late enough to see them, because they were all named for Greek mythology – all came from Greek mythology.

The newest acquisition, the Huntress, was nowhere to be seen, because she was a winter constellation, and that meant Orion was also missing, because he was part of the winter sky, too.

Will’s eyes found Lyra, the lyre of Orpheus.  It wasn’t the biggest constellation in the sky, but it was one of the most Apollo-like in the sky (Will adamantly ignored Serpens; Python was slithering around in his mind unwelcomely without further incentive), and Will would take any connection to his dad at all.  Any hint that he would survive and regain his godhood.

Right now, his father would be laying in the cot in the middle of cabin seven, a bed meant for guests when Apollo belonged in the cabin more than any of the rest of them.  Will hoped he was asleep, but he didn’t think the laws of the universe that dictated that children of Apollo didn’t stay awake easily at night applied to the god himself, even if the god happened to be mortal and vulnerable.

Still, Apollo needed the rest, so Will could hope.  He could suffer a sleepless night and its consequences if it meant his father was well-rested and had the best possible chances of survival.

He sent a private, silent prayer to the moon above him.  Maybe Artemis could help that happen – at least then, Will’s sleepless night would feel like it had a purpose.  He would gladly never sleep again if it helped to keep Apollo alert and alive.

[lesbian-kyoru]

tbh now that i've finished watching stars, i think people very much lie to themselves about how much seiya "disrespected" usagi's boundaries & "ignored her feelings"—because they don't like how it makes them feel to recognize that usagi wasn't forced into anything against her will. 

i kept waiting for seiya to be this pushy, abusive person, and make endless unwanted advances toward usagi. however, 99% of the time seiya was simply flirting & usagi was... not only wholeheartedly receptive to it, but actively flirting back. aside from random oneliners where usagi is like "huh i don't get it? 😳" (which always struck me as very dissonant, because usagi seems to be aware of seiya’s feelings depending on the episode so it’s weird when she conveniently forgets as a punchline LMAOOO but anyways)—seiya and usagi both seem incredibly aware of the romantic tension between them, and they still choose to flirt back and forth with each other. it's not seiya strong-arming usagi into these situations she's uncomfortable in, it just makes people feel better to over-exaggerate seiya as this manipulative person & ignore usagi's total agency in the whole situation.

and tbh the longer i think about it, i'm really bothered by this implication that it was seiya's responsibility to idk... not "tempt" usagi to stray from her boyfriend, as opposed to acknowledging that usagi made her own choices & wasn't unknowingly coerced by a "predatory" lesbian LMFAO. as an aside that comes back to my main argument— something i really love about seiusa as a ship is i don't think either of them fully realize how deeply they feel about each other until pretty far in. usagi obviously wrestles with being attracted to seiya & feeling like she shouldn't be up until the last episode, but seiya also doesn't seem to realize he's in love with usagi, beyond flirting with her & hanging out, until they find kakyuu & seiya realizes he still can't stop thinking about usagi. as much as usagi is confused about her feelings, seiya also has multiple moments where he thinks “what's the matter with me?” and struggles to understand how deep his initially more casual feelings for usagi have gotten.

imo, people just ignore this & use it to interpret everything seiya does as inherently predatory from their first interactions. however, often times in their early scenes, it's usagi who is assuming seiya is making moves on her & subsequently freaking out about it (she also spends a LOT of time thinking about him making a move—like, to the point where it’s clear she isn’t just panicking about it but is actively kind of waiting for it to happen—but that's another conversation LOL). but then in reality, seiya is. not doing anything. it’s just usagi projecting this overtly forward intent on his objectively not-super-provocative actions (which imo further drives home the point of, if usagi is so very much not interested in seiya, then how come she thinks constantly about him making a move..... and what does that tell us about her attraction/potential feelings for him.... but again, a different conversation).

for me, the date episode & the sleepover episode comes to mind. like, seiya invites usagi to go out, & usagi chooses to go. seiya offers to stay over when usagi is home alone, & she gets super excited & says yes (and immediately invites him up to her room skdlhfsdkhfls anyways). and people would argue, seiya knew she had a boyfriend, therefore he shouldn't have made these invitations or offered in the first place.... as though usagi isn't capable of making her own choices & turning down a friend if she was so uncomfortable with the way he was treating her. 

i think the problem is that people just find it easier to blame seiya & act like he was this manipulative lesbian preying on a vulnerable girl with a boyfriend vs grapple with how usagi had control of her own actions and had the agency to do things that make fans uncomfortable. these boundaries that people always are so mad about seiya not respecting were only “not respected” because... as time went on, they just did not exist, and that simply falls on both of them, not just seiya. for the few times that usagi would remind seiya she already had a boyfriend, she still tears those boundaries down on her own—by developing really intense feelings for seiya, by choosing to spend time with him again and again, by not turning him down from the start (which she could've done if she was truly uninterested and uncomfortable, like so many people decided she is). 

tl;dr it’s not that deep, but i'm just baffled by these “seiya is an abuser & creep” allegations that have been thrown around for decades—when usagi has such obvious feelings for him & it went both ways. because of their preconceived notions of usagi's feelings & actions, people have built up this self-fulfilling idea of seiya as this manipulative abuser who takes advantage of the poor fragile girl, but that’s just blatantly ignoring the complexity of literally everything that happened onscreen. it also robs usagi of the agency she has in all of her choices and her relationships, including with seiya. usagi wasn't naive or unaware or coerced, you just don't like how she felt and what she did. like yeah it's easier to scapegoat seiya as the predatory butch lesbian who’s being creepy to the pure pretty girl, but in reality usagi pretty clearly fell in love with or at the very least developed more-than-platonic feelings for someone else & it's messy! sorry i have eyes.

[blues824]

So I saw your requests were open. Could you write something for a reader who believes humans are inherently flawed? Like they think people are born bad and don't change easy, and are easily swayed by selfish things? These ideas came from things that happened to them as they were growing up. (The reader is also human, and fully acknowledges this, and does there best to be nice to set them apart from the rest? Sorta like Rollo's hatred for magic, but toned down a notch.) Thank you if you decide to write this, and have a nice day!

It’s alright, Anon! I chose the Diasomnia crew because I love writing for Sebek and Malleus. @animusicnerd was so kind as to allow me to use her lore post

Gender-neutral reader.

Malleus Draconia

He learned about your belief when you both were on a walk through the night. He doesn’t quite recall what brought up the topic, but he was saddened to hear you say such things. He believes that everyone has flaws, but it’s one’s duty to either embrace them or reject them.

He understands where you’re coming from, since the things that you experienced weren’t the best example of his beliefs. Those humans were people that rejected their own flaws and projected their own insecurities on you. In fact, the faes back in the Briar Valley felt the same way as you do about humans.

However, his dream is to unite the two. If he can get you to see past the flaws that were bestowed upon humankind, then you both can come together (preferably in matrimony) and show everyone that faes and humans can get along. Not just that, but he could get you to see that you could help solve the problems that your people like to create.

Lilia Vanrouge

You told him about how you believed humankind was inherently flawed when you were learning about the war between humans and fae in Briar Valley, and he was helping you since he was a general in the war. Even though he saw the ferocity firsthand, he didn’t particularly agree on your viewpoint, but he saw where you get that ideology.

In the war against humans, he had seen and learned about the reasoning behind them attacking, and he agreed that their reasoning was absolutely horrible. However, their behavior did not set a precedent for other humans. He believed in Malleus’s dream to unite the two and increase the human population and half-fae population for more diversity.

He hopes that he can get you to see that not all humans are bad (for example, you), and that even though you had bad experiences with them that they aren’t the example you should base humanity as a whole off of. He will be patient since trauma doesn’t go as easy as dirt and grime does with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, but he will be there every step of the way to your emotional recovery.

Silver

You at first steered clear of him, and that made him chase you (think of that moment in Sleeping Beauty when Phillip sneaks up on Aurora). Your heart is conflicted because Silver has shown nothing but kindness to you, but your mind is telling you that you can’t trust him.

However, if there was any lesson that Lilia drilled into his son, it was to never give up on the people that you love. So, he begged you through letters (this man stayed up with Sebek so that the poet-in-denial could help the sleepy human write letters that could possibly make you swoon).

Silver is one of the few humans that reside in the Briar Valley, and he knows that he has one fatal flaw: his exhaustion. However, since he was chosen to be a knight of Malleus, he had to have the virtue of a knight to enter knighthood. With this reasoning, you grew closer to him. Now, the two of you can be seen in each other’s arms as he naps and you just bask in his company.

Sebek Zigvolt

You also steered clear of him, but you were also conflicted considering Malleus and Lilia gave you a good impression on faes but you had a bad impression of humankind. As the wise Bo Burnham once said, “a half-good-half-bad-half-boy”. 

He learned about your personal philosophy, and he too was conflicted. He also grew insecure of himself, and tried to lower his tone around you to try and give you a better impression. He tried to convince you that he rejected his human side constantly, but it seems as though it got in his way again.

It was through a poem that he wrote to you that contained a line from your favorite book that really got your attention. You realized that he tried to understand you and even tried to change himself for you, and you saw that maybe people can change. So, you went to him one day and placed a kiss on his cheek, which let him know that you returned his feelings.

[greenmeanqueen]

Alicent, Lyonel, literally everyone in Westeros: Rhaenyra having bastards is a huge problem that puts us all in danger.

Rhaenyra: I have finally realized that this is indeed a huge problem. Alicent, you will hand over your only daughter to make my fuck ups your problem too.

Alicent: No.

Fandom: That power hungry bitch.

thank you for your asks, anons and @cheriealicent !

honestly, the scene where alicent vented to criston as they went down the hall was so valid, and i think it perfectly surmises alicent’s mindset at this point. i’m gonna quote it here just for reference before i go on:

“Have I lost my sanity, Ser Criston? Do my senses lead me astray, or is everyone else asleep dreaming the same woolly dream? … She flaunts the privilege of her inheritance without shame, she expects everyone in the Red Keep to deny the truth our eyes can all plainly see. And the king her father— … Of course he knows! Or did once, but has convinced himself otherwise. He'll do naught but make excuses for her! … I have to believe, that in the end, honor and decency will prevail. We need to hew to that and to each other.”

it’s as if rhaenyra is pushing her privilege to see how far it can go, and alicent, the one who has had to completely adhere to the societal womanly role, is sick of it. “why isn’t everyone being held to the same standards that i am?” how frustrating is that?!

the fact of the matter is that rheanyra’s choices are effecting everyone around her, but both she and her father refuse to fully acknowledge it. she unfortunately does not have the freedom she thinks she does, and it’s bound to come crashing down on her head (and her children’s heads!). she and viserys can play ignorant all they’d like, but word gets around, and the misogynistic and patriarchal westeros is not going to take too kindly to this “breaking of the rules”. they can skirt the line all they’d like, but that will only take them so far; they can’t execute the whole realm for having eyes.

it puts the strongs in danger (and ended up burning them, likely), it screws over alicent’s children, and it complicates the succession of driftmark. i truly do not understand how we get to villainizing the people with the justified concerns? and lest we forget the double-standard that alicent having illegitimate children would be “inexcusable”, in-universe and out.