#i keep thinking things i do r like extremely weird inherently

[elytrafemme]

sometimes i really do sit and think like. wow this truly is a universal experience. you know ?

[withgreatpowercomesmyfuckingdick]

this come out of nowhere really, I just can't get myself to sleep without sharing this but why in all time travel fanfic. sephiroth seems to be extra aware of his status of " experiment " ??? it just, I don't know. I don't say that sephiroth or even genesis and angeal are stupid but it's strange to me that they seem extremely aware about it in those fanfic. when in crisis core, that piece of Informations seems to be new to them. i mean, do I just see the wrong issue? the way they learn that they are experiment choked them to the core. none of them reacted well? sephiroth just thought that he was special he said it himself.

maybe he lied to himself or the company and hojo did not treat him like we thought they did , at least outside of those experiment. so I find it weird when I read fanfiction that the big 3 already knows and acknowledged it, when that information was one of the big reveal and issues of crisis core.

also sephiroth not technically being 100 % aware of his experiment status means that most of us write hojo extremely wrong when he interacted with sephiroth. I mean, I don't know he seems to snob every one but sephiroth. in ff7, he was just weird, extremely fixed on sephiroth.

or maybe I interpreted it the wrong way ? maybe I am just stupid I don't know. I don't want to say something stupid.

I don’t think this is stupid at all and you are definitely not stupid, lovely! No one is stupid for expressing their opinions, even and especially when those opinions go against the crowd. And nothing’s wrong with a little critique lol, keeps me humble

(long text as always, but main points highlighted red lovelies)

Truth is, most fanfic around Sane!Sephiroth is heavy headcanon, and I am no better. We know (somewhat) that Sephiroth was raised in Nibelheim for some time but obviously didn’t see the townspeople as he has no memory of them, so it’s easier to conclude he was raised in a lab or some other isolated Shinra area. Sephiroth doesn’t actually know much about his origins, neither in canon nor in my fic. He doesn’t even believe he has parents, which he doesn’t cause they’re both ass or dead, but that’s beside the point lol. Sephiroth’s backstory just gives a lot of room for headcanons and the fandom sort of mutually agreed “Yup he’s traumatized as shit” and rolled with it

Now what I definitely took creative liberties with is his confiding in Genesis and Angeal about this childhood trauma. This is a much bigger stretch and more than likely not directly canon, but since I have them in a romantic relationship, there definitely had to be some opening up about what the fuck Hojo was calling Sephiroth into a lab for once a week (back when things were *bad* bad). I think in canon, Genesis and Angeal undoubtedly spotted some things that helped them see that Seph wasn’t completely normal, but they took it in stride because they’re good friends like that.

I would like to clarify one thing: the Firsts are aware that *Sephiroth* was treated badly during his childhood, but only as a SOLDIER child. They don’t have a clue about Jenova and the extent of what Hojo/Hollander/Gast did. Sephiroth doesn’t even know the full extent of what was done to him because as far as he’s aware, he’s a mako SOLDIER with a few gimmicks wired in. Traumatizing? Yes. Inherently monstrous? In his own eyes occasionally, but he’s got other people similar enough to him he can be talked away from it

The introduction of Jenova was nerve wracking and brand new and horrible and gut wrenching. They didn’t ask to be implanted with literal alien cells before their births, doomed to unstable and insane deaths before they’d taken their first steps. Sephiroth grew up a child SOLDIER, but monsters? Artificially made ones perhaps. A little gene splicing, even breeding, like how humanity helped the Liger happen (lion-tiger breed). But monsters that used to be *people*? That was new, and that terrified him. And that’s what sent him into the spiral. So I mean, you’re right. Jenova’s existence does shock them to their core, but Sephiroth’s entire childhood did not revolve around Jenova. Even if his purpose was to be a ‘mock Ancient,’ his developmental years revolved around being a weapon for war.

While I’m on that nofe, I’ve seen some comments on Sephiroth’s “alien cells” comment when he speaks to Zack on things for the first time and I want to clarify: when Sephiroth says alien cells, he meant foreign to the human body, not the fucking earth. None of them have a right clue what Jenova is, just like in canon

Also Everybody Hates Hojo so honestly I don’t think people are concerned? This is a man who was definitely not above experimenting on children, manipulated, nearly killed, and then experimented on a former friend, took advantage of a life/scientific partner for the advancement of an experiment and admitted to having seen her as nothing more than a tool, referred to Aerith as her species rather than a person and planned to literally breed her with another species (facilitated rape, basically), and in the OG game, helps fuel a major mental breakdown of Cloud’s for basically…no fucking reason? Not to mention DoG where he just…decides the planet’s fucking moving lmao. Literally goes “Ah yes, let me follow in my son’s footsteps and genocide the whole population so we can sail the stars :D”

the man is fucking mental regardless. just a personal opinion, but any rendition of Hojo is somewhat accurate if his cruelty is kept. I will admit that my Hojo is more reminiscent of an abusive parent because…that’s sort of what he is, and there’s some projection of my own personal experiences happening

And that’s an aspect of all fiction ofc, and especially fanfiction. Renditions change with authors because authors have different experiences. I can’t begin to tell you all the things I’ve accidentally or purposefully projected into this story.

Honestly I could write more but my eyes keep crossing and I should go to bed myself lol. Your ask really made me think so thanks for submitting! Hope I actually answered you amidst all my nonsense babble, and I hope you get some sleep!!!

[actualbird]

Oh god!

I really love the poly headcanons they are so sweet.... (or don't but that's part of it and i think the tot boys+MC deserve all the love the world has to give).

But, liking it or not, our 4 beloved boys are kinda complicated (that's what makes them perfect). Plus I never thought about how people get in poly relationships. So i was thinking, how do you think they all get into a polyrelationship together?

(I really have no idea of how that would happen)

hi, two anons!! im glad you guys liked my nxx team polycule stuff!! i'll answer these in one go, my "headcanon" (in quotes because i think this kinda turned into a character analysis/minific of sorts HAHA) being what first anon asked, How They Get Together.

heads up, wc of this is 1.9k words long so buckle up for a bit of a read jfsjdfkjbf

because first anon, youre right!!! the boys are stupendously complicated which i love so so much but canon has also shown us clearly that each of the boys' quirks and habits and tendencies causes a lot of (mostly played for laughs) friction. the bickering, the backhanded insults, the "im the best one here" preening contests. theyre all SOOOO RIDICULOUS and it is hilarious but yep! the boys r complex!! and that means this beautiful ship, imo, has a lot of phases to get to the actual romantic relationship bit.

how they get together, in my opinion, starts because of mc.

not in the sense that she matchmakes them all, but like.

phase 1 of the nxx team polycule is this:

through being in love with her (which we all know the boys 100% are), each of the boys come to terms with their own flaws and weaknesses. it's very apparent to me in all the story thus far that these boys are flawed as hell, it's very compelling but even more compelling to me is how all of them also do intense mental gymnastics to Not Confront Those Flaws. like, marius is a dickbag always teasing and toeing the line of insincerity, vyn is a controlling mf who always tries to sway situations to his benefit, artem is so repressed to the point that he has genuine trouble with emotions, luke is a self sacrificial bastard and also a huge hypocrite about how no, actually, hes the only one that should be hiding his pain and being dishonest, no dishonesty from other people!! in the beginning of the story, all the boys have their flaws and seem to have just kinda...not addressed how those flaws are harming them and the people around them.

and then mc rolls around and they all fall in love with her. and she sees those flaws and she doesnt let them slide. she challenges the boys in her own ways to see another side of the situation, to acknowledge what theyre doing. she doesnt want to get rid of flaws, thats impossible and also not cool. she just has this beautiful hope for like, all of humanity, that goodness can prevail with the right work. so when she sees her beloved nxx boys, she believes that for them as well.

which leads to phase 2 of the nxx team polycule:

the boys, more aware of themselves, become more aware of each other.

they werent Unaware of the others of course. it's just that they didnt like...truly connect on a personal level just yet. they saw the other teammembers with their emotional armor and flaws and saw a wall that wasnt worth looking past.

but after mc makes them realize that hey, flaws arent the end of the world actually, it's alright and the person behind them may just be worth it, the boys like. end up understanding the others. A LOT OF THIS BIT IS UNINTENTIONAL, ON THEIR PARTS KJDSBFS. like they stumble into understanding each other by accident, they didnt plan it, but over the course of nxx investigations, it's inevitable that they end up seeing the depths of the others. i delve into this a little bit in my fanfic "filler eps of the lost gold" where the boys are just going thru their actions and then trip over another boy's fears or desires and through that, gain a deeper understanding mutually.

and with understanding, sometimes, comes trust.

phase 3 of the nxx team polycule goes like this:

everybody in this team, whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not, has a heart that wants to give love so desperately.

marius lives in a world full of snakes so he cant have his heart on his sleeve for his own protection. vyn wants to be seen as perfect and the heart is inherently messy so he holds it back. artem for a very very long time was focused on work and success and achievement that he neglected his heart. and luke has been giving love all his life in a sense but in a way thats hidden.

all these tendencies that are brought upon their life circumstances results in this: they want to love honestly but they havent been able to do this

until mc. and all of them want to push back whatever fears or patterns their life has instilled in them because they see her and see somebody so unwaveringly good that all their hearts begin giving love to her to make her happy and to make themselves happy as well.

but heres the thing. the boys dont just see mc. by this point, they have connected and understood and come to trust each other as well, and the consequence of that is that They Can See Each Other Now Too, Truly.

and heres the thing. all of the boys are unwaveringly good as well.

one by one, each of the boys realize that what they feel for the other boys in the team starts to...change. yeah theyre all friends, they pick on each other a lot of the time, but the bedrock of the relationship is solid and strong now. but when marius is with luke, marius sees a light inside of luke so bright that he seems unaware that he gives off. when artem is with vyn, artem sees a goodness inside of vyn that hesitates to make itself obvious and known because vyn is scared of getting hurt thanks to it. all of them see the other and their goodness and, unbidden, their hearts want to give love to each other as well.

and because theyre all a bit stupid in their own way theyre like, huh, weird! wonder why this feeling is so familiar! and yet i cant seem to name it...and then they all independently compare these feeling with the feelings they have for mc, a feeling they do know the name of, and theyre like.

WAIT.

THESE FEELINGS ARE...VERY BASICALLY EXACTLY WHAT I FEEL FOR MC.

which only means one thing: theyve fallen in love with everybody else

marius: //goes to his studio to Think and sees that a bunch of his recent art actually had little crumbs of these feelings already, etched into the brushstrokes and scenes. has an emotional crisis about it

vyn: //records a 1 hour long entry in his audio diary to examine and gain control of his feelings but by the end of the hour all he knows is that he wants to hold these people and be held by them

artem: //quite literally just bluescreens, artem.exe has stopped working, sits at his study and slowly, slowly, thunks his head down onto his desk, valiantly trying to ignore the fast pulse of his heart

luke: //manically vents about it to peanut who, by virtue of being a bird, doesnt get it. just keeps talking at peanut to get a grasp of it all and then lies down on the floor, overwhelmed

mc, sitting in her apartment watching some netflix: ...why do i inexplicably feel as if something very, very important has just happened?

phase 4 of the nxx team polycule is basically:

pining: extreme difficulty level

because pining is already hard when ur pining for one person. what more for an additional 3 more people. and those additional 3 more people are pining back.

and all these boys are SOOOO OBVIOUS with their romantic feelings, in their own special way. the way they show their affection to mc starts to bleed into their interactions with the others and everybody can CLEARLY SEE WHAT IS GOING ON, LOL, but also all the boys are too chickenshit to confront it, because if they confront it, what will even happen??? being in love with each other, all of them, thats going to be such a complicated fucking relationship, holy shit. it's 2030, yeah, being a polyamorous group relationship isnt completely unheard of, but sue them, theyre scared.

but mc (who i forgot to mention already knows of the boys' romantic feelings for her, shes just hasnt made a move yet on any of them because SHES IN LOVE WITH ALL OF THEM AS WELL and shes been trying to figure out how the hell to make that work, she cant bear to choose just one of them, she'd be heartbroken over leaving the rest of them behind) sees that the nxx investigation team is now all pining for each other FULLY and she kinda wants to laugh when she realizes whats going on because like, what are the chances? that this would happen? that they all found each other and their feelings fell into just the right place for nobody to be left behind?

theyre all scared, she can tell. and she is as well, she wont lie.

but shes always had a belief that goodness can prevail with the right work.

and love is one of the greatest goods out there.

phase 5 of the nxx team polycule:

It's Time For Communication, Baby!!!!!

the exact scenes of how this happens is a bit vague to me. it could go two ways: mc going to each of the boys independently to talk about feelings, hers about everybodys and his about everybodys as well. OR they have a fucking meeting about it all together and artem literally schedules it in his google calendar, or something.

either way, they like, actually talk about this. starts casual, maybe over a chill date, maybe over dinner at a nice restaurant, maybe over a walk in the park as the sun is starting to set. but where ever it happens, the end result is the same: a heart is laid out bare and it is taken in gentle, grateful hands.

marius: OKAY, NOW THAT THE FEELINGS ARE OUT OF THE WAY, CAN I PLEASE KISS ONE OR ALL OF YOU, PLEASE, IVE BEEN WANTING TO KISS U GUYS FOR FOREVER

vyn, laughing fondly: has anybody ever told you patience is a virtue? we quite literally just talked it all out.

marius: //needy whining noises

artem, embarrassed: ive...never kissed anybody before

luke, embarrassed but trying to play it Cool: ....same here

mc: kissing is great, you two will love it!

marius: awesome, awesome, so is ANYBODY going to give me a go ahead or WHAT????

phase 6 of the nxx team polycule:

i dont want to say it's happily ever after, once they all get together. thats not really realistic.

they all have their quirks and tendencies and habits. and those will inevitable clash against each other. theyll have their arguments, theyll get upset, theyll sulk and be angry, sometimes. but also...

theyll see each other smile and feel like their love shining so brightly. theyll reach out for another's hand and be held in such a way that makes them think that their heart is in a safe place. theyll love each other and theyll put in the work to continue loving each other. because goodness will prevail.

and they all see each other as the most good people in the world.

so whatever happens, theyll get through it together.

[sk1fanfiction]

the many faces of tom riddle, part 4

-attachment, orphanages, and yet more child psych: time to add yet another voice to the void-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION.

I'm going to be super biased, because my favorite portrayal of Tom Riddle is actually Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as eleven-year-old Tom Riddle, in HBP and I get to chat about child psych in this one, sooo here we go.

First of all, I’m just so impressed that a kid could bring that much depth to such a complex character.

This is the portrayal, I feel, that brings us closest to Tom’s character. Yes, Coulson’s brought us pretty close, but by fifth year, the mask was on.

We don't really get to see Tom looking afraid very often, but it's fear that rules his life, so it's really poignant in our first (chronologically) introduction, he looks absolutely terrified.

The void being the fandom's loud opinions on a certain headmaster. I wouldn't call myself pro-Dumbledore, but I'm certainly not anti-Dumbledore, either. (Agnostic-Dumbledore??)

Since I'm not of the anti-Dumbledore persuasion, I decided to poke around in the tags and see what the arguments were, so I don't make comments out of ignorance.

Most of the tag seems to be more directed towards his treatment of Harry and Sirius, but a few people mentioned that Dumbledore should have treated Tom with ‘exceptional kindness’ and tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him.

As I said in Parts 2 and 3, I am 100% in favor of helping a traumatized kid learn to cope, and I don’t think Tom Riddle was solidly on the Path to Evil (TM) at birth, or even at eleven. Not even at fifteen.

Could unconditional love and kindness have helped Tom Riddle enough for the rise of Lord Voldemort to never happen? Possibly, but...

Yes, I'm about to drag up that Carl Jung quote, again.

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

The problem with this is that if you’re going to blame Dumbledore for this, you also have to blame every other adult in Tom’s life: his headmaster, Dippet, his Head of House, Slughorn, his ‘caretakers’ at the orphanage, Mrs. Cole and Martha, and possibly more. In fact, if we're going to blame any adult, let's blame Merope for r*ping and abusing Tom Riddle Senior, and having a kid she wasn't intending to take care of.

Furthermore, you cannot possibly hold anyone but Tom accountable for the murders he committed. (I should not have to sit here and explain why cold-blooded murder is wrong.) And if you like Tom Riddle's character, insinuating that his actions are completely at the whim of others is just a bit condescending towards him. He's not an automaton or a marionette, he's a very intelligent human being with a functioning brain, and at sixteen is fully capable of moral reasoning and critical analysis.

I've heard the theories about Dumbledore setting the Potters up to die, and I'm not going to discuss their validity right now; but he didn't put a wand in Tom's hand and force him to kill anyone. Tom did it all of his own accord.

And while yes, I have enormous sympathy for what happened to Tom as a child, at some point, he decided to murder Myrtle Warren, and that is where I lose my sympathy. Experiencing trauma does not give you the right to inflict harm on others. Yes, Tom was failed, but then, he spectacularly failed himself.

We also have no idea how Dumbledore treated Tom as a student.

In the movies, it’s Dumbledore who tells Tom he has to go back to the orphanage, but in the books, it’s Dippet. We know that Slughorn spent a lot of time around Tom at Slug Club and such, yet I don’t really see people clamoring for his head.

I regard the sentiment that Dumbledore turned Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort with a lot of skepticism.

But let's hear from the character himself -- his impression of eleven-year-old Tom Riddle.

“Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?” said Dumbledore. “No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his."

Now, assuming that Dumbledore's telling the truth, I'm not seeing something glaringly wrong with this. No, he hasn't pigeonholed Tom as evil, yes, I'd be intrigued, too, and it's a very good idea to keep an eye on Tom, for his own sake.

“At Hogwarts,” Dumbledore went on, “we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have — inadvertently, I am sure — been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school."

Again, it seems like he's at least somewhat sympathetic towards Tom, and is willing to at least give him a chance.

More evidence (again, assuming Dumbledore is a reliable narrator):

Harry: “Didn’t you tell them [the other professors], sir, what he’d been like when you met him at the orphanage?” Dumbledore: “No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance.”

Now, I think Dumbledore is pretty awful with kids, but I don't think that's malicious. Yeah, it's a flaw, but perfect people don't exist, and perfect characters are dead boring. I am not saying that he definitely handled Tom's case well, I'm just saying that there's little evidence that Dumbledore, however shaken and scandalized, wrote him off as 'evil snake boy.'

It's also worth taking into account that it's 1938, and the attitudes towards mental health back then.

Why is Tom looking at Dumbledore like that, anyway? Why is he so scared? What has he possibly been threatened with or heard whispers of?

"'Professor'?" repeated Riddle. He looked wary. "Is that like 'doctor'? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have a look at me?"

"I don't believe you," said Riddle. "She wants me looked at, doesn't she? Tell the truth!"

"You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course -- well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!

Tom keeps insisting he's not mad until Dumbledore finally manages to calm him down.

I'm really upset this wasn't in the movie, because it's important context. Instead we got these throwaway cutscenes of some knick-knacks relating to the Cave he's got lying around, but I just would have preferred to see him freaking out like he does in the book.

There was extreme stigma and prejudice towards mental illness.

'Lunatic asylums,' as they were called in Tom's time, were terrible places. In the 1930s and 40s, he could look forward to being 'treated' with induced convulsions, via metrazol, insulin, electroshock, and malaria injections. And if he stuck around long enough, he could even look forward to a lobotomy!

So, if you think Dumbledore was judgmental towards Tom, imagine how flat-out prejudiced whatever doctors or 'experts' Mrs. Cole might have gotten in to 'look at him' must have been!

Moving on to the next few shots, he is sitting down and hunched over as if expecting punishment or at least some kind of bad news, Dumbledore is mostly out of the frame. He’s trapped visually, by Dumbledore on one side, and a wall on the other, because he’s still very much afraid. uncomfortable, as he tells Dumbledore a secret that he fears could get him committed to an asylum (which were fucking horrible places, as I said).

It brings to the scene that miserable sense of isolation and loneliness to that has defined Tom’s entire life up to that point (and, partially due to his own bad choices, continues to define it).

And, when Dumbledore accepts it, his posture changes. he becomes more confident and more at ease, as he describes the... utilities of his magical abilities. 

"All sorts," breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."

Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: There was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.

I do think Harry, our narrator, is being a tad bit judgmental here. Magic is probably the only thing that brings Tom happiness in his grey, lonely world, and when I was Tom's age and being bullied, if I had magic powers, you'd better believe that I'd (a) be bloody ecstatic about it (b) use them. And, like Tom, I can't honestly say that I can't imagine getting a bit carried-away with it. Unfortunately, we can't all be as inherently good and kindhearted as Harry.

Reading HBP again, as a 'mature' person, it almost seems like the reader is being prompted to see Tom as evil just because he's got 'weird' facial expressions.

So... uh...

Nope, let's judge Tom on his actions, not looks of 'wild happiness.'

To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it at the shabby wardrobe in the corner, and gave the wand a casual flick. The wardrobe burst into flames. Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged.

Okay, one thing I dislike is Tom's lack of emotional affect when Dumbledore burned the wardrobe, in the books, he jumped up and started screaming, instead of looking passively (in shock, perhaps?) at the fire. Incidentally, I can't really tell if he's impressed or in shock, to be honest. I think they really tried to make Tom 'creepier' in the movie.

This is one of the incidents where Dumbledore's inability to deal with children crops up.

I think he was trying to teach Tom that magic can be dangerous, and he wouldn't like it to be used against him, but burning the wardrobe that contains everything he owns was a terrible move on Dumbledore's part. Tom already has very limited trust in other people, and now, he's not going to trust Dumbledore at all -- now, he's put Tom on the defensive/offensive for the rest of their interaction, and perhaps for the rest of their teacher-student relationship.

Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. "Where can I get one of them?"

"Where do you buy spellbooks?" interrupted Riddle, who had taken the heavy money bag without thanking Dumbledore, and was now examining a fat gold Galleon.

But I'm not surprised Tom is 'greedy.' He's grown up in an environment where if he wants something, whether that's affection, food, money, toys, he's got to take it. There's no one looking after his needs specifically. I'm not surprised that he's a thief and a hoarder, and I don't think that counts as a moral failing necessarily, and more of a maladaptive way of seeking comfort. It would be bizarre if he came out of Wool's Orphanage a complete saint.

Additionally, I think given that the Gaunt family has a history of 'mental instability,' Tom is a sensitive child, and the trauma of growing up institutionalized and possibly being treated badly due to his magical abilities or personality disorder deeply affected him.

And there are points where it seems that Dumbledore is quick to judge Tom.

"He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."

"Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination."

"I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless?..."

And while this is all empirically true, these are (a) a product of Tom's harsh environment, and (b) do not necessarily make him evil. But the point remains that child psych didn't exist as a field of its own, and psychology as a proper science was in its infancy, so I'd be shocked if Dumbledore was insightful about Tom's situation.

But I've gone a ton of paragraphs without citing anything, so I've got to rectify that.

Let's talk about Harry Harlow's monkey experiments in the 1950-70s.

If you're not a fan of animal research, since I know some people are uncomfortable with it, feel free to scroll past.

Here's the TL;DR: Children need to be hugged and shown affection too, not just fed and clothed, please don't leave babies to 'cry out' and ignore their needs because it's backwards and fucking inhumane. HUG AND COMFORT AND CODDLE CHILDREN AND SPOIL THEM WITH AFFECTION!

I will put more red writing when the section is over.

This is still an interesting experiment to have in mind while we explore the whole 'no one taught Tom Riddle how to love' thing and whether or not it's actually a good argument.

Andddd let's go all the way back to the initial 1958 experiment, featured in Harlow's paper, the Nature of Love. (If you're familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, him and Harlow actually collaborated for a time).

To give you an idea of our starting point, until Harlow's experiment, which happened twenty years after Dumbledore meets Tom for the first time, no one in science had really been interested in studying love and affection.

"Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence."

I'm going to link some videos of Harry Harlow showing the actual experiment, which animal rights activists would probably consider 'horrifying.' It's nothing gory or anything, but if you are particularly soft-hearted (and I do not mean that as an insult), be warned. It's mostly just baby monkeys being very upset and Harlow discussing it in a callous manner. Yes, today it would be considered unethical, but it's still incredibly important work and if you think you can handle it, I would recommend watching at least the first one to get an idea of how dramatic this effect is.

Dependency when frightened

The full experiment

The TL;DW:

This experiment was conducted with rhesus macaques; they're still used in psychology/neuroscience research when you want very human-like subjects, because they are very intelligent (unnervingly so, actually). I'd say that adult ones remind me of a three-year old child.

Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers, and cared for their physical needs. They had ample nutrition, bedding, warmth, et cetera. However, the researchers noticed that the monkeys:

(a) were absolutely miserable. And not just that, but although all their physical needs were taken care of, they weren't surviving well past the first few days of life. (This has also been documented in human babies, and it's called failure to thrive and I'll talk about it a bit later).

(b) showed a strong attachment to the gauze pads used to cover the floor, and decided to investigate.

So, they decided to provide a surrogate 'mother.' Two, actually. Mother #1 was basically a heated fuzzy doll that was nice for the monkeys to cuddle with. Mother #2 was the same, but not fuzzy and made of wire. Both provided milk. The result? The monkeys spent all their time cuddling and feeding from the fuzzy 'mother.' Perhaps not surprising.

What Harlow decided next, is that one of the hallmarks being attached to your caregiver is seeking hugs and reassurance from them when frightened. So, when the monkeys were presented with something scary, they'd go straight to the cloth mother and ignore the wire one. Not only that, but when placed in an unfamiliar environment, if the cloth mother was present, the monkeys would be much calmer.

In a follow-up experiment, Harlow decided to see if there was some sort of sensitive period by introducing both 'mothers' to monkeys who had been raised in isolation for 250 days. Guess what?

The initial reaction of the monkeys to the alterations was one of extreme disturbance. All the infants screamed violently and made repeated attempts to escape the cage whenever the door was opened. They kept a maximum distance from the mother surrogates and exhibited a considerable amount of rocking and crouching behavior, indicative of emotionality.

Yikes. So, at first Harlow thought that they'd passed some kind of sensitive period for socialization. But after a day or two they calmed down and started chilling out with the cloth mother like the other monkeys did. But here's a weird thing:

That the control monkeys develop affection or love for the cloth mother when she is introduced into the cage at 250 days of age cannot be questioned. There is every reason to believe, however, that this interval of delay depresses the intensity of the affectional response below that of the infant monkeys that were surrogate-mothered from birth onward

All these things... attachment, affection, love, seeking comfort ... are mostly learned behaviours.

Over.

Orphanages, institutionalized childcare, and why affection is a need, not an extra.

His face is lit the exact same was as Coulson’s was in COS (half-light, half-dark), and I said I was going to talk about this in Part 3. I think perhaps it's intended to make Fiennes-Tiffin look more evil or menacing, but I'm going to quite deliberately misinterpret it.

Now, for some context, Dumbledore has just (kind of) burned his wardrobe, ratted out his stealing habit, and (in the books only, they really took a pair of scissors to this scene) told him he needs to go apologize and return everything and Dumbledore will know if he doesn't, and, well, Tom's not exactly a happy bugger about it.

But interestingly, in the books, this is when we start to see Tom's 'persona,' aka his mask, start to come into play. Whereas before, he was screaming, howling, and generally freaking out, here, he starts to hide his emotions -- in essence, obscure his true self under a shadow. So this scene is really the reverse of Coulson's in COS.

And perhaps I'm reading wayyy too much into this, but I can't help but notice that Coulson's hair is parted opposite to Fiennes-Tiffin's, and the opposite sides of their faces are shadowed, too.

Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. "Yes, I suppose so, sir," he said finally, in an expressionless voice.

Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colorless voice, "Yes, sir."

Here's an article from The Atlantic on Romanian orphanages in the 1980s, when the dictator, Ceausescu, basically forced people to have as many children as possible and funnel them into institutionalized 'childcare', and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

There's not a whole lot of information out there on British orphanages in the 30s' and 40s', but given that people back then thought you just had to keep children on a strict schedule and feed them, it wouldn't have a whole lot better.

The only thing I've found is this, and it's not super promising.

The most important study informing the criteria for contemporary nosologies, was a study by Barbara Tizard and her colleagues of young children being raised in residential nurseries in London (Tizard, 1977). These nurseries had lower child to caregiver ratios than many previous studies of institutionalized children. Also, the children were raised in mixed aged groups and had adequate books and toys available. Nevertheless, caregivers were explicitly discouraged from forming attachments to the children in their care.

Here's a fairly recent paper that I think gives a good summary: Link

Here, they describe the responses to the Strange Situation test (which tests a child's attachment to their caregiver).

We found that 100% of the community sample received a score of “5,” indicating fully formed attachments, whereas only 3% of the infants living in institutions demonstrated fully formed attachments. The remaining 97% showed absent, incomplete, or odd and abnormal attachment behaviors.

Bowlby and Ainsworth, who did the initial study, thought that children would always attach to their caregivers, regardless of neglect or abuse. But some infants don't attach (discussed along with RAD in Part 2).

Here's a really good review paper on attachment disorders in currently or formerly institutionalized children : Link

Core features of RAD in young children include the absence of focused attachment behaviors directed towards a preferred caregiver, failure to seek and respond to comforting when distressed, reduced social and emotional reciprocity, and disturbances of emotion regulation, including reduced positive affect and unexplained fearfulness or irritability.

Which all sounds a lot like Tom in this scene. The paper also discusses neurological effects, like atypical EEG power distribution (aka brain waves), which can correlate with 'indiscriminate' behavior and poor inhibitory control; which makes sense for a kid who, oh, I don't know, hung another kid's rabbit because they were angry.

Furthermore...

...those children with more prolonged institutional rearing showed reduced amygdala discrimination and more indiscriminate behavior.

This again, makes a ton of sense for Tom's psychological profile, because the amygdala (which is part of the limbic system, which regulates emotions) plays a major role in fear, anger, anxiety, and aggression, especially with respect to learning, motivation and memory.

So, I agree completely that Tom needed a lot of help, especially given the fact that he spent eleven years in an orphanage (longer than the Bucharest study I was referring to), and Dumbledore wasn't exactly understanding of his situation, and probably didn't realise what a dramatic effect the orphanage had on Tom, and given the way he talks to Tom, probably treated him as if he were a kid who grew up in a healthy environment.

In case you are still unconvinced that hugging is that important, there's a famous 1944 study conducted on 40 newborn human infants to see what would happen if their physical needs (fed, bathed, diapers changed) were provided for with no affection. The study had to be stopped because half the babies died after four months. Affection leads to the production of hormones and boosts the immune system, which increases survival, and that is why we hug children and babies should not be in orphanages. They are supposed to be hugged, all the time. I can't find the citation right now, I'll add it later if I find it.

But I think it's vastly unrealistic to say that Dumbledore, who grew up during the Victorian Era, would have any grasp of this and I don't think he was actively malicious towards Tom.

Was Tom Riddle failed by institutional childcare? Absolutely.

Were the adults in his life oblivious to his situation? Probably.

Do the shitty things that happened to Tom excuse the murders he committed, and are they anyone's fault but his own? No. At the end of the day, Tom made all the wrong choices.

And, for what it's worth, I think (film) Dumbledore (although he expresses the same sentiment in more words in the books) wishes he could go back in time and have helped Tom.

"Draco. Years ago, I knew a boy, who made all the wrong choices. Please, let me help you."

[joneswuzhere]

hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality

5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:

- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on

- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable

- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there

- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat

- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol

- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift

- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.

- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?

-  i have arrived at the point

- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky

- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’

- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth

- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner

- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note

- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there

- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward

- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?

- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out

- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself

- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)

- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent

- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king

- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon

- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’

- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train

- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment

- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump

- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time.  and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.

- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??

- however,,,

- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)

- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.

- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show

- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go

[theseerasures]

@counterpunches​ submitted:

Once again there are too many to choose so I’m going to pick too many, but really it’s your fault no I won’t be taking any criticism.

how me that solvable problem

ethically sourced kid!Elsa

well this prompt feels custom made to talk about self-harm

she drops the silver chain of sound

a love sTRONGER THAN BLOOD SISTERS r u kitten me

oh hey! you picked some that actually ended up too unwieldy to keep writing in longhand

show me that solvable problem: post-Frozen II canon divergence where Arendelle sank under the sea like a good little metaphor on sins of the father. kinda your typical “but what does it actually MEAN to step into ur power, mum” thing on both Elsa and Anna’s side, with a side helping of Honeymaren/Elsa, Kristoff discovering ~his past, and uh. a lot of political talk on indigenous knowledge and politics of redress (Arendellians are refugees now, Northuldra have been settler colonized for decades, what do?? that kinda stuff)–almost too much, but ultimately a reasonable amount!

ethically sourced kid!Elsa: stems from my…uh. inability to understand the appeal of present day Elsa meeting a POST-Incident kid!Elsa when obviously her meeting a PRE-Incident kid!Elsa has so much more inherent drama. kid!Elsa steps into an idk portal and shows up at the castle in the post-Frozen II world. it’s been a few years; Anna is VERY comfortable with her current life and is expecting her first child, so um. the child version of her older sister showing up out of the blue throws her into a not-insubstantial tailspin. present!Elsa superficially is more capable of keeping it in stride, but the elephant in the room of “well do we TELL her what’s coming” just looms larger and larger until it all ends in tears, because Elsa and Anna disagree about what to do, and it ends up being their first no holds barred FIGHT, where they both accuse each other of being selfish and they’ve somehow turned into the worst parts of their parents. Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf spend most of their time basically being Bow from season 4 of She-Ra; Honeymaren meets the kid version of her now-girlfriend, immediately and justifiably is like “wow! weird vibe,” grabs Ryder and leaves. poor, poor kid!Elsa is a) kind of a hellion, pre-Incident, which everyone forgot about, and b) comes to a whole slew of horrible realizations, beginning with the fact that her parents are both dead now, Anna is being weird and closed off around her, her present self is being less weird but apparently did something HORRIBLE that no one will talk about, and it’s. it’s bad. if someone has any advice on how to tag dialogue with two characters that are the same character, just time-displaced, that would be lovely, because the closest i came was that kid!Elsa would be called Kid Elsa ala Kid Flash and obviously present!Elsa would be The Elsa (and they fight crime! jk they cry a lot and kid!Elsa ends up throwing hands with her older self, by which i mean Elsa gets a nice taste of what being shot to the heart with ice magic feels like)

well this prompt feels custom made to talk about self-harm: the prompt was “angst, loss, scar,” so. five times Elsa didn’t scar. the self-harm part comes in a few times, but the reason i approached it at all was because i imagined Elsa going through a ~phase as an adolescent where she tore through every medical text she could get her hands on to find out what’s wrong with her, and it…spiraled into thinking some dark thoughts about what would happen, since the magic mostly comes out of her hands, if she…hurt them in some way. she ends up being too chickenshit to go through with it because she’s THIRTEEN, ELSA WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO BREAK YOUR THUMB. it ballooned out into a longer meditation on Elsa grappling with her not-quite humanity, where she’s never entirely sure what rules of mortality apply to her (all of them actually! Elsa u fucking melon), going all the way to post-Frozen II, where she’s…weirdly maudlin about her death leaving no trace on her physical body, until Anna shows up. they actually end up talking about Mattias, and the ways he’s visibly aged from his portrait (Anna commissioned a new one for him)–it all ends with something about how, like. yes living does leave its marks on you but maybe Elsa should stop thinking about it in such extreme ways, and also see a therapist

she drops the silver chain of sound: another *sigh* RWBY fic, this one charting Winter and Robyn’s relationship in universe, from Academy years to post-canon. i haven’t been able to find any fic about them that responsibly handles the nuances of Winter a) being abused a lot of multi-layered ways, but also b) being complicit in war crimes and her own transformation into an instrument instead of a person, and (as of V7) STEADFASTLY COMMITTED TO IT. basically starting from the place of “Robyn doesn’t owe Winter jack shit and is Busy, it’s Winter’s responsibility to change herself,” and trying to be realistic about the ways Winter would and would not let herself change. truth kink! it’s a thing with them. a lot of talk about agency and identity, and weird detours about how Cartesian dualism is a tool of the colonizer–but honestly, you can’t make one of your main mechanics be “an extension of the soul” and not expect me to inject some woo

a love sTRONGER THAN BLOOD SISTERS r u kitten me: to answer your PS about which fires i’m embleming: i started with Sacred Stones and then moved through Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn (still have no idea what a Fire Emblem is, which i think is v sexy of me). Radiant Dawn has some BONKER-TASTIC sapphic moments–your standard “i’m queen but i’m shy” archetype has a ladyfriend who is the CAPTAIN OF HER GUARD. Captain gets taken hostage, gets her hair lopped off (…by a professional hairdresser i guess, since this is what she looks like after) and sent to Shy Queen in a VERY STANDARD “i have your precious” moment and then has to debate over saving the Captain or the Kingdom and it’s just. so

anyways of course the extreme gayness goes blithely unacknowledged for the rest of the game, and the epilogue has the AUDACITY to say that their bond was “stronger than blood sisters,” which is…fine! it’s fine. the fic is mostly just about actually ADDRESSING the intimacy that they have through some hair washing.

PS: i’ve started Awakening, which a) looks promising re: knowing what a Fire Emblem, and b) has caused me to start a new WIP called “NO YOU’RE NOT YOU’RE OBVIOUSLY LAURA BAILEY”

PPS: appreciate the recurrence of Standard Nintendo Plot Pattern Sigma (gender fuckery to stop a bad time thing), which i THINK is what’s happening in Awakening–no one tell me if i’m right tho!!! i wanna keep speculating about whether ~~~Marth is my daughter or my grandma’s niece or Taylor Swift’s second cousin

[randomnameless]

Science projects

Thinking about Hanneman and the “war assets” mention in a certain route -

Was Hanneman mirroring Tellius’ Izuka?

I was rereading FE10′s script (and a part of FE9 too) - in Tellius, experimentations on subhumans and on humans - on living beings - are depicted as vile and even if it had been a minor (?) plot point in FE9, FE10 adresses it with a beautiful end, i.e. Tibarn destroying Izuka with extreme prejudice.

Izuka tries to sell the “war assets” argument to Miccy in RD’s part 1 but she is having none of his bullshit.

This is a line that Miccy, even if it is for the sake of Daein, will no cross.

Would part 3 Miccy have crossed it though? I don’t know, and I’m happy she didn’t have to make that choice.

What happened in Gritnea tower haunted Ranulf so bad that he vows to murder Izuka, and Tibarn, in his very tolerant approach towards anyone who hurts Laguz, delivers the execution.

Gritnea tower is never relegated to a footnote, I will not say it was a major plot point, but it was still a point adressed. Maybe because it related to the general issue of “racism” Tellius tried to adress, if those subhumans aren’t like us, then we can safely experiment on them. And we can also create super “human” soldiers because we can’t give three fucks about anyone really, let them be beorcs or laguz.

Experimenting on beorcs or laguz is vile, is treated as so and is rewarded with Tibarn using Tear against Izuka.

Then, in 3H, the human experimentation angle is completely abandoned after Part 1 save for Hanneman’s comment which is, uh, somehow, sounding as if he supports it...

Everyone hated Remire, because villagers were suffering and going crazy. When we fight in the old chapel, students are being transformed into monsters, Jeralt is horrified.

In CF’s chapter 17, Dimitri is horrified at his men’s sacrifice even if, contrary to the Remire guys and the students, the king’s soldiers seemed willing.

When Solon, leader of Agartha’s R&D’s department, is killed, it’s only with extreme prejudice because he tried to ban Billy to another space, it is not, and has nothing do to with, Tibarn Tearing Izuka because dude experimenting on people without their consent to turn them into feral beasts is horrible?

Demonic Beasts are never adressed for what they are. I haven’t played the DLC, but aren’t they basically treated as a joke for Hapi’s quirk (lol her sighs attract them)? Do anyone lament on the fate of those poor randoms who were turned into beasts? EDITED Hapi attracts weird worms and birdies

Nope (save for Dimitri when Beast-Dedue dies, i think he calls him a fool with all of the implications inherent to this pair).

Fuck, we have two characters who were experimented upon and it was apparently a traumatic experience for the both of them, but one of those people is using Demonic beasts as “war assets” and the other is just, idk, irrelevant. The two people who could have adressed this due to their backgrounds aren’t doing a thing, the games wants to you doubt the church when Miklan turns into a beast but when Random n° 45 and Random n° 89 do, no one bats an eye, no one regrets having to kill demonic beasts because of what they were before*.

(IIRC Flayn feels bad for killing a blue one in the Sothis paralogue, but blues ones aren’t shown to be made from unwilling randoms - we don’t even know what the blue beasts are).

Also, since I’m discussing about scientific projects, Rhea’s nonsensical fight in SS’ finale also involves people transforming against their wills : Rhea herself and also all of those randoms who received her blood and pieces of her crest (of the fuck is that possible?? She gave them pieces of her litteral heart? She didn’t die when she cut her crest stone to separate some fragments???).

This isn’t adressed in the game because it’s the final map and Rhea has a crapton of things to answer for but everything has to be tied to the block of wood you’ve been playing as. Also, is it most likely Rhea herself never thought that if she were to go berserk the people who drank her blood would also grow berserk.

Can Rhea’s state in SS’ finale be attributed to degeneration (but Macuil and Indech aren’t degenerating because, uh, reasons) or, and the more i think about it, the more it’d make sense, some kind of Feral One Transformation?

In RD’s script, turning into a Feral One has several symptoms, like being unable to control your transformation, “growling” as you’re starting to lose your mind and, uh, having mad eyes. Rhea growls, can’t control her transformation and growls even more turning into a twisted version of herself Seteth, her older bro, never saw.

To compare, degenerating!Duma could still talk (gibberish but still talk and give power to douchebags), just like FE3!Medeus (even if it’s the usual “Naga you’ve ruined everything yet again!”) and if Mila was degenerating she was still able to keep her humanoid form.

So, safe bet with all the cards (3 out of a game that should contain at least 42) is that Rhea wasn’t degenerating, but succumbing to a drug akin to what Muarim, Rajaion, Renning and all of the Tellius peeps who crossed Izuka’s road were fed.

* “Before” could both mean “random human” used as a host, or “remnants of the Nabatean” whose crest stone is used. I had a fascinating discussion with @damoselcastel about demonic beasts, is the crest trying to take over the host to rebuild a new body for the nabatean, or is it something else altogether? Could the dead Nabateans be resurrected if we implanted their crests in compatible hosts? Because, for some reason, when random wolves, birds and worms eat/are in contact with a crest stone, they don’t turn into demonic beasts. The only ones who do are humans.

Does that mean that Nabateans are “biologically” closer to humans than to the gigantic fauna of this world? They’re still not “human” enough for some...

[nureyevsbf]

first ten for carlisle :3c

i literally almost cried MULTIPLE times while writing this let’s GO

tw for mild internalized homophobia in question 7

sorry if you’re just some rando looking for twilight content who comes across this bc of all the fuckin keywords in it

otp question meme

1. Who is the most affectionate?

does it even count if i say both??? like i have lovey dovey bitch disease and im extremely affectionate but like. carlisle. carlisle who was lonely and heartbroken and crushed by self-loathing for years. carlisle who was touch starved for decades and would probably cry if he was physically capable the first time i touched him lovingly. carlisle who thought he was a monster and damned to hell who finally has someone - someone who's hunted monsters like him before and yet sees this beauty in him and loves him with their whole heart - that looks at him like he put the stars in the sky himself and who loves every part of him and insists he's more human than any of them. that carlisle?????? look me in the fuckin eyes and tell me he wouldn't b the softest most affectionate full-of-love motherfucker on the planet.

2. Big spoon/Little spoon?

im the big spoon just bc i Always am and Am Never the little spoon, but a lot of time i'll sleep on his chest while he sits up doing whatever (since, like, doesnt need to sleep and shit)

3. Most common argument?

hmm. i don't think we would argue very much?? we probably don't argue at all until the other cullens start coming along, and it's more... how to correctly handle them. like specifically in new moon i would Definitely be against packing up and moving out just bc edward's being weird and fucking emo and that would definitely turn into...one of the few heated arguments we ever have.

4. Favorite non-sexual activity?

carlisle really likes cooking, even though he can't eat any of it himself, so he enjoys helping me in the kitchen when i make food. he also likes being with me when i sleep - be it curling up with me and resting his eyes or reading while i sleep on his chest or whatever.

5. Who is most likely to carry the other?

i think i've answered this before and said it would probably b an even split but. yeah normally it'd b me due to who i am as a person so u would Think. but like. he MORE than has the strength for it and definitely loves to just. sweep me off my feet, literally, when the moment calls for it tbh

also, given vampires r like. Basically stone. i think it's very difficult for me to lift him in my human form.

6. What is their favorite feature of their partner’s?

ive definitely answered this one before but. for me, my favorite physical feature is his voice and his eyes. like of course All of him is breathtaking but those two things specifically get my ass. but my favorite non-physical feature - and yes i know i wind up saying this of a Lot of my f/os, im pretty sure this is just my type - is his heart. like....he's such an inherently good person and his desire to do good runs so deep that that's the thing that was amplified when he was turned - he literally is the only cullen who has never taken a human life bc his gift is literally to be able to resist THE most quintessential part of being a vampire. and i RLLY fuckign love that abt him.

he i think also likes my eyes??? there's nothing special abt them like his my eyes are just rlly pretty like irl hjdfghdfjg. he also really just...loves the fact that i'm flesh and blood. like he relishes in my warmth and my heartbeat and the fact that i'm living and it's just made better by the fact that i'm not mortal. like he can still have a partner who's all these things and whose life he can cherish w/o having to deal with me eventually falling victim to this mortal coil that doesn't affect him (and i mean - both of us are not invulnerable but at least it's like. time that's never going to do us part.)

but then as far as non-physical features go, he likes.....ok this is very broad and i do have to explain all the shit that falls under this umbrella. but he likes my sense of good. i'm a deeply, deeply loyal person, and have this very strong sense of morals and a code of honor, and i'm naturally very selfless and giving, and these r all things that made him fall in love w me in the first place.

7. What’s the first thing that changes when they realize they have feelings for the other?

oh this is so so emo and im so sorry for how sad this is abt to get. this is one of the parts that almost made me cry and not bc of how soft it is.

for me it's not too bad i just am very obvious abt how attached to him i am and wanna spend more time w him and really like latch onto him once i realize ive caught feelings. like that's just how i am in general.

but w carlisle. it's so hard for him to deal with. like it's just massive fucking turmoil for him. this affection and adoration he feels and is dying to express but this horrible guilt and his self-hatred getting amplified - like, again, he hates himself and what he is and he thinks he's this awful monster even if he's never hurt a human being and is actively trying to help people by studying medicine, and then there's me who he sees the world in and who he knows has distaste for his kind (bc again has actively hunted his kind) and he's just hit with all this shit like. he's not good enough for me, what if i find out abt the way he feels abt me and i'm disgusted by him, what if i leave and don't want to travel with him anymore. could he take that kind of heartbreak, could he take being alone again, could he take being left because of what a wretched thing he is? (there's also probably. religious panic :\\ im sure like coming to terms w being bi/mlm is NOT easy for him, son of a preacher, and im sure that's a part of it.)

he reacts to this whole fucking chaos of emotions in him by withdrawing a lot, i think? getting quieter and distancing himself from me - he's not even really meaning to, he wants to be near me but it hurts so much he just does it on instinct. which turns around and hurts him more, and hurts me in the process, so really this initial weird period of painful ass angsty pining just hurts us both, like, way more than necessary

8. Nicknames? & if so, how did they originate?

i have Not ultimately though up anything since i was last asked this :pensive: so i think i have to just come to terms w the fact that i don't think we would give each other nicknames. not even shortened versions of our names (outside of me w eli but i literally just go by that normally.) pet names, yes, absolutely; it'd be my standard ones - dear, baby, doll, honey, sometimes love/my love, and if i Really wanna be over-the-top half-facetiously sappy and gross sometimes i'll say "my darling dearest." w him it's darling, dear, love/my love, and his gross over-the-top cheesy bullshit is 100% genuine and absolutely NOT facetious even a LITTLE bit and it DOES fluster the shit out of me when he does super gay ass shit like call me "my heart" or "my light in the dark" or whatever other sappy ass BULLSHIT

9. Who worries the most?

this one i know i've answered before. and like, it's him.... i think he just has a lot to worry abt. im fleshy and kinda vulnerable and that scares him - i think he worries a lot too abt like. what if the nature of our relationship makes me a target. esp with the volturi, who like have it in their rules that vampires are not to associate w werewolves, and that's not what i am but would they be willing to listen to that? especially if aro reads my mind and realizes i've killed their kind before?? the family probably keeps it under wraps tbh, hides me from the volturi, but that's not really a perfect solution. it's probably not till the end of breaking dawn when the volturi agrees to honor the treaties/relationship w the pack that they feel like i'm safe.

he also just worries abt little shit too!! like i can and do get hurt in ways they don't even if it's NOT a big deal. cut myself cooking (which to clarify. my blood isn't an issue bc it smells like shit to them. i think that might have been confirmed for the pack too but. i smell like dog it's Not appealing) or twist my ankle doing some dumbass shit or whatever. and i heal much faster than humans so this shit isn't a problem!! and the rational doctor in him is like this is a very small injury it's really NOT an issue. but the husband in him is like ))))): i don't want him to be hurting

and it just kind of results in him hovering nervously and fussing over me when he RLLY doesnt need to be

10. Who remembers what the other one always orders at a restaurant?

w us it's not exactly a big deal given carlisle can't exactly eat out at restraurants lol. he does remember my favorite restaurants in every town we go to and my takeout order and regularly brings food home for me on his way back from work, though.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #158

nsfw warning, there’s quite a lot of sexual questions in this one.

Where was the very first kiss you had with the last person you kissed? My back porch. Do you have a best friend?  If you don't count Sara, no. As a kid, did you ever get in trouble for drawing on the wall?  No. What are your #1 priorities in life?  My mental health. Have you ever had your mouth washed out with soap as a kid?  Been threatened with it, but no. Do you believe in a lot of conspiracies?  The only one off the top of my head that I believe may have some credence is the "our world is a simulation" theory.  It sounded ridiculous to me before I learned more about it.  If you're into this stuff, I totally recommend reading about it, it truly is interesting.  I lean more towards that it's false, but.  Possible. Being told to eat more is as offensive as being told to eat less?  Hm, not sure.  I guess it depends on the situation the person is in. Have you ever seen a ghost?  I believe so. What emotion are you most likely to hide?  Jealousy. Explain why you last ‘had to lie’.  Because I knew she'd be mad if I told her the truth, she called me out and I sincerely apologized, told her why I lied, and, as expected, was mad about it. (: Feeling guilty about anything?  Not really. Have you ever been through a phase of thinking emo guys were hot?  That phase never ended lmao. How old does someone have to be to be officially an ‘adult’ to you?  18. Anything you find gross that no one else does?  Probably... but nothing's coming to me.  Oh, actually ear gauges. ^ what about attractive?  Well I know some people hate most piercings besides ears. Have you ever dated someone that could play an instrument?  Well Girt played in high school band, but I doubt he still knows how to play. What makes you nervous?  Um everything????? Weirdest picture you’ve ever taken of yourself?  Who the hell even knows, but probably those pictures I took with Summer years back. Any bridges near where you live?  I mean, no *big* ones.  But I mean bridges are everywhere? Do you have a Gameboy?  Yeah, old as fuck. What do you do when you feel alone?  Most likely talk to Sara. Have you ever traveled by train?  No. Do you have a dirty mind?  Not especially. Ever had to have someone help you walk before?  Yes, after I fainted or when I've been very dizzy. Ever been kicked out of anywhere?  No. Do you truly HATE anyone?  Not anyone I personally know, but like rapists, abusive people, etc. Most historical/famous landmark/building you’ve been to in your country?  No clue. How long does it take you to apply your makeup?  It depends on what I'm putting on, but not too long regardless. Favorite flavor for most things?  Strawberry or chocolate, depending on what it is. Do you care what people you don’t know think about you?  Maybe a bit too much. Ever taken pictures in a photobooth? Who with?  Yeah, friends, ex-boyfriend. When was the last time your computer had to be repaired?  Now lol.  I've been using my sis's old one for months. Do you know how to knit? If so, do you do it often?  No. Have you ever flown before? If not, do you ever intend to?  Yesss, learned to love it.  If I have the window seat. How annoying are your neighbors?  The old woman to the left is super nice, according to Mom.  Don't know much about the ones to the right, other than my initial judgment is kinda negative just because of how they kept filthy yard sale shit in the front yard for literally months.  It's probably very shallow to judge over that, but like.  It doesn't make you look very good to keep couches and such sitting out in the elements with the intent for someone to actually buy that. Have you bought anyone their Christmas presents yet?  No. What are three of your favorite songs to sing?  Hmmm, not sure.  Lately I guess "This Is The House That Doubt Built" by AD2R, "High Hopes" by P!ATD, aaaand.  I should know this.  I sing in the car quite a lot lately.  OH maybe "LA Devotee" also by P!ATD, Brendon's just great to sing along with. What is your favorite ride at the fair?  Ahhh ferris wheels.  But I also love carousels my fat ass will still ride them. Would you ever marry someone who was lower class?  I usually delete purely stupid questions, but????  Honestly fuck you if that's a deciding factor???????  Work together to climb out of the lower class, the fuck?????????????? What color is your recliner?  We don't have one. Who do you write letters to the most?  I don't really write letters, but I've sent Sara a few lovey-dovey notes. Who is a singer that has given you chills?  Amy Lee. Do you get carsickness?  No. Which style of wedding dress is your favorite?  BALLGOWN. What’s a good boy’s name that starts with the same letter as yours?  The name that immediately came to mind is Bryson. Name 5 things you don’t believe in.  Horoscopes, soulmates, tarot cards/fortune telling, prayer doing absolutely anything, and the fucking outrageous anti-vaxxers.  A fucking disease that hasn't been seen in forever came back recently because of their bullshit.  Vaccinate your damn kids, for the love of god. If you had all the money you needed and didn’t have to work, what would you do to fill your time?  T R A V E L Do you ever get nervous about where your future is headed or are you just going with the flow?  Both.  Don't know which I lean more towards. Have you ever received a hickey from the last person you kissed?  No. Have you ever held hands with the same sex?  Yes. What is your mom saved as in your phone?  "mama bear." Ever made out in a pool?  Maybe very briefly??  I don't remember. Do you change your phone background a lot?  Nah. Have you ever made someone so mad that they broke something?  No. Do you tend to fall for people who don’t return your feelings? History says not usually. Who is someone you aspire to be like? Does anyone??????  Who reads these?????????  Not know??????????????????????? Do you believe in fate? No.  You make it.  What would honestly be the point of living if fate was true?  You're just walking through a story instead of writing it. Do you believe that humans are inherently good or evil? I lean more towards mostly good, judging by how we have a natural conscience. What turns you on? VERBALLY EXPRESSING YOU LOVE ME, sarcasm wars, "make me"/that kind of shit, playfighting, do not grab my hips or it's over, neck kisses, lip bites. What is your favorite type of foreplay?  Don't play with my boobs or it's also over. Do you believe in the death penalty?  For extreme offenses like rape and murder with no sign of guilt or wanting to heal, fuck yes I do.  I'm not even sure if you should give them a chance at rehabilitation. Do you use sex toys? By yourself or with a partner, or both?  No, but being with a girl now, I would. Have you ever done role-play?  Not irl/sexually because FUCKING AWKWARD, but I'm a serious forum meerkat RPer, in other words it's not a silly/playing around thing, but literally writing a story with others. Favorite sex position? If you’re a virgin, which position interests you? Uhhh no clue of the name, but probably where I'm pretty much sitting on his lap with my legs around him. Favorite dessert?  Hmmmm probably cake. What quote or mantra do you live by? Mark's "life hard, shouldn't you be too?" because it's the best inspirational innuendo I've ever heard. Where is the craziest place you’ve ever done it? Uh I guess the floor, nothing really notable. Do you judge people for what they wear or how they express themselves? It depends.  Definitely not by what they wear.  If how you're expressing yourself is harmful to others, yes, I will judge you. What was the best orgasm you’ve ever had? I've never had one.  I was right on the verge once, but panicked and stopped because I was actually kinda fearful with how extreme it felt.  And my family was home so I was worried about crying out. Do you shave or trim your pubic hair?  Trim a bit, yes, but I don't pay much mind to it. Have you ever/would you ever do anal? Nononono noooot into anything going up my ass. Biggest sexual fantasy?  Don't really have one. What’s more important- length or width?  Why?  I'd imagine length because depth, but I've only done one guy, so I wouldn't really know.  There are so many dirty questions in this one. What are you known for by your friends and family? The meerkat-obsessed, very reclusive and quiet weird one. What is a dish you are dying to try?  Nothing, really. What political affiliation do you associate yourself with?  Independent.  I'm such a mix. What is the worst experience you’ve ever had with food? Diarrhea to the point of blood AT MY GIRLFRIEND'S HOUSE FOR MY FIRST STAY after I tried a way rarer steak than I enjoy.  My stomach is seeeensitive to "different" food. Do you talk dirty during sex? Not very much, I'm shy. My relationship with my siblings: Not real impressive.  I'm not as close as I wish I was to any of them. My relationship with my parents:  Good.  Mom is everything. What I find attractive in girls:  I will find good tattoos attractive on.  Anyone.  ESPECIALLY SLEEVES. Favorite video game series?  Silent Hill. Favorite video game hero?  Spyro.  Duh.  I'm getting a small and adorable tat of him some day. Favorite video game villain?  Pyramid Head, if you consider him a "villain." Favorite video game boss?  Hmmm as far as fighting goes, most likely Avion from SotC.  Phalanx is my favorite in general, but getting on it two-three times is so tedious. Least favorite video game boss? I hate the Cenobia fight also in SotC so much.  Takes forfuckingever to get its armor off, anyone who's played that game knows the amount of flailing/losing your grip is horrendous, and if it knocks you down once you're most likely fucked. Do you like t-shirts with text on them?  Yesyesyes I'm a sucker for geeky graphic tees. Have you ever had foreign candy?  I don't believe so. What’s a candy that you absolutely can’t stand?  Twizzlers. Is there any piece of technology you want to buy?  PS4, drawing tablet, new phone. When is the last time you bled?  Now because being a woman is fun. Would you rather use hand soap or hand sanitizer?  Soap.  Feel cleaner. How many video games do you own?  Lots. Have you ever been to a casino? If so, which one(s)?  No. Have you ever visited a sex shop?  No. Have you ever had a scary encounter with a wild animal?  No. What do you normally do while waiting for your food or drink to arrive?  Talk to those with me. Describe one of your most emotional farewells.  Me and Jason's final talk. How have your tastebuds changed since you were a child?  Used to love peas.  Hated mashed potatoes.  I was crazy about Sprite, now I hate it.  I'm sure there's more. Who was the last person you cried in front of?  Mom. What was the worst mistake of your life?  Letting someone be my whole world. If you were pregnant, would your parents make you keep the baby?  Um, no????  I'm an adult???????  I would only keep it if my life wasn't endangered though.  And even then I wouldn't wanna be and the child would be put up for adoption. Have you ever donated blood?  Yes. Have you ever been to SeaWorld?  As a child, yes.  Would never go again because it's fucking animal cruelty. Do you like avocados?  asdkjfaowj no. Is your Facebook profile private?  Yes. Do you remember your locker combinations from high school?  I didn't have a locker in high school, but middle school, nope. Who were your best friends in high school?  Jason if you count s/os, Hannia, and Girt. Who was your first boyfriend or girlfriend? Aaron was the first with the title. What insects are you afraid of?  Get roaches away from me.  And beetles. Who was your first best friend (apart from a sibling)? Brianna. What was your favorite thing to do at sleepovers when you were younger? Hm, I dunno.  I guess just talk and play together. What time of day were you born?  Noon. What is the best hairstyle you've ever had?  I like what I have now I tell you hwat. Do you think you look better with dyed hair or natural hair?  DYED. Do you think your look better with curly hair or straight hair? Straight. Do you think you look better with bangs or without? Everyone looks better without bangs tbh. Do you think you look better with long hair or short? Short. When you look at your baby pictures, do you recognize yourself?  Not always. What is your favorite thing to do in the pool? Swim around. Cacti or seashells?  Ohhh that's hard.  I think seashells, but if you include all succulents, them. Dreamcatcher or wind chimes? Dreamcatchers. Have you ever taken a picture at the perfect moment? Hmmm maybe? What color(s) eyeshadow do you wear the most? Black is all I wear. Beyonce vs Rihanna? Probably Beyonce?  She has a better voice to me, dunno whose songs I like more. What’s your favorite horror movie? Both of the The Blair Witch Project movies. Would you say you have a high sex drive or not so much?  I'd say it's pretty average.  I've noticed leading up to my period though I'm usually a horny mess. How do you feel about swallowing pills? Doesn't bother me.  I do throw my head back if it's a larger one, though. What animal is the scariest in your opinion?  Hmmm.  Probably the most dangerous animal, surprisingly the hippo.  They charge fast and suddenly and those teeth are fatal.  Now if I saw a hippo and I was far from it, I wouldn't be too concerned because I believe if you keep your distance they're good, I wouldn't be too scared.  Fear on sight though... probably sharks?  Quick and so toothy, plus they might mistake you for prey.  I'm aware how rare shark attacks are, but I still wouldn't be out in the open with one.  Visually scary, giant squids are just a big 'ole nope. A band or an artist you liked when you were younger, but not so much anymore.  Ummm... I dunno.  Probably something pop.  Or country (I know right, surprising). Come with an unpopular opinion.  Don't spank your fucking kids.  You're teaching them hitting others is sometimes the answer, gg. What’s fake about you? Like extensions, fake nails, botox etc.  Nothing. What’s considered cheating in your opinion?  As soon as you're flirting in a clearly non-playful way. What about favorite person to stalk on Instagram?  Mark, who knew. What’s the cheesiest thing you’ve ever experienced irl? Idk. Something you feared as a kid but don’t anymore? Needles.  The first time I understood I was getting my blood drawn, I deadass bolted, screaming and crying, to hug a pillar thing.  Multiple people had to help Mom to pull me away from it lmao.  Then when it actually happened, I was just asked, "... That's it?" Who was your favorite teacher in high school? Coach Collie. What are five of your favorite stores at the mall?  HotTopic, Spencer's, I would love Victoria's Secret if I wasn't a FAT FUCK, and that's... like it. What is the best gift you have ever given someone?  I'unno. What is the best gift you have ever received?  My dog. Has anyone ever spread lies about you? Jason's ex spread a rumor we had a baby.  Even though it was obvious through all of high school I was never pregnant???? Do you have an alarm system on your house?  No. Who do you tend to get in fights with the most? Mom, as far as people still in my life. Would you prefer a small, intimate wedding proposal, or a big-scale, over-the-top proposal?  The former, definitely. Do you know how to properly eat food with chopsticks? No. Have you ever gotten rid of something you shouldn't have and then really regretted it later?  Not really regretted. What's the best pizza place in your town? Domino's is Daddy. Which planet is your favorite, besides earth?  Saturn! Have you ever seen a double rainbow?  Ye. Did you win any scholarships as a senior in high school?  No, I don't believe so. Skeletons or scarecrows? s k e l l y  b o y s Do you like candy corn? Omg no. What seasonal candy do you think is gross? ^ What's one social media site that you're not on? Snapchat. What is your favorite wild animal?  Meerkats.

[plounce]

reading thru nick coa’s new posts and like

“And like you mentioned with Kurogane, both are acting selfishly - Fai for putting his wish to die above how much this will shatter his family, and Kurogane for putting his love for Fai above Fai’s own wishes.”

i actually really really like this post (especially how it brings up the point of kurogane’s protectiveness being shown in extremes, to the point of slaughter with tomoyo (although that’s a response to the trauma of suwa) and to the point of forcible life-giving with fai) but like. oooooooof i cannot wait until nick has the context to understand that from fai’s perspective, letting himself die is... not tooooootally selfish? because beyond his everpresent death wish, everything about his life and his entire experience of the world has him firmly believing that he inherently brings death and destruction and unhappiness upon those he loves... so it’s not that fai doesn’t care as much for how this will impact those he loves (and who he can barely believe love him, will actually care if he lives or dies - yuuko has to go HEY DUMB ASS DON’T FORGET YOU MATTER TO THEM), it’s that he cares more about how his absence will help them. no curse in their hearts. no traitor in their midst.

and nick also talks about “different values” and perspectives and i just think that’s very good. and maybe it’s because i’m a depressed bastard and Fai Stan PH.D but like. OOOOOOOOF!!!!!!!!!

i guess my point is... i’m not saying fai is “right” because 1. different values 2. i know how his narrative will go 3. i know tsubasa’s themes so i know that in tsubasa’s context, fai eventually grows to think differently.................. so anyway i’m not saying that he’s “right” because i’m not interested in that, i’m focused on understanding fai’s reactions to things and i have a total bias to go “yeah that’s justified. look at this poor bastard. he has anxiety”

although speaking personally (as i just said i’m not interested in doing lmao): i do disagree with anon about kurogane’s decision being “horribly selfish.” maybe because i read “horribly” as “negative” here but like........ fai was still making that decision to die under REALLY FUCKED UP MENTAL ISSUES! and kurogane could tell fai’s gone through shit to make him deeply unhappy! and kurogane is demonstrably willing to put in the love and effort to help fai through dealing with that! he is ride or die, baby!

i guess at the end of the day: fai is a character who has been manipulated by people for their own goals. but at the end of the day, kurogane is the one w

hm i just had a thought. a weird thought. i don’t like it because i don’t like ashura because he’s a gaslighting bastard, but ashura also does all that he does for the sake of freeing fai from fwr’s curse/manipulations, in a really fucky way to return agency to fai, in a way that fai REALLY DOESN’T LIKE AND NEVER ASKED FOR AND DOESN’T WISH FOR, in a way that sort of... sacrifices his own wellbeing? mental wellbeing?

i guess the main difference is that kurogane keeping fai alive after fai asks to go gently into that foul night is not the same as slaughtering a whole country of people. i’m actually kind of annoyed with myself because i’m drawing more connections and parallels between kurogane and ashura than i want to, because i dislike ashura, but the problem is ashura did try to help fai in his really terrible way. and to fai as he was in tokyo - with very little capacity to have the desire to live - kurogane was helping him in a really terrible way too.

ashura did all that he did to help fai escape fwr’s curses. i’ve said before that kurogane’s goals were to help fai continue to live so/and then help him regain a grip on his agency. i guess the thing is: ashura did ‘sacrifice himself’ (idk the particulars of how he ‘went mad’), but he also sacrificed (read: murdered) hundreds of lives. at the least. clamp presents his love for fai in a complex way - he loves his son, so he does monstrous things to help him on a grand scale, as in rg veda. that’s what ashura does. kurogane never put anyone in harm’s way but himself, and he never gave up his own life. so ashura and fai were always unequal, while kurogane and fai are.

the tsubasa/holic narrative has four stories about bringing someone back from the brink of death by way of a deal: three are virtuous, one is... a disaster. in-series order: the clones’ memory/feathers deal, the kf vampirism deal, the original’s reservoir deal (that they were manipulated into thinking), and... clow’s wish for yuuko to open her eyes again.

the difference here is that yuuko was already dead. c!sakura, fai, and r!sakura were about to die, but the syaorans and kurogane interceded and made their deals in time. they asked for lives, but the lives were still there, and they did pay MASSIVE prices for them in their own ways. (relationships, captivity, etc). so there’s that theme of “moving forward and claiming your future and wanting to live happily in the future you choose” that tsubasa fucking adores. kurogane pushes for that. and i guess in the end, kurogane’s action in tokyo........ ok wait i was about to say “is more heroic/virtuous because he isn’t totally sacrificing his life for fai,” and right NOW i was about to say “because this post is meant to be about fai’s agency” but THEN i remembered that clamp has all those themes about total self-sacrifice being bad so i guess it kind of IS about kurogane not sacrificing himself? fuck!

well here’s what i think. kurogane didn’t re-traumatize fai in tokyo. c!syaoran did. fai was responding to the physical and mental trauma he’d just experienced, and kurogane was going WAIT HOLD ON A SECOND LET’S GET THROUGH THIS AND THEN WE CAN HAVE A NICE SIT-DOWN AND TALK ABOUT WHAT JUST HAPPENED WITH OUR SON AND YOUR EYE AND OH MY GOD? MY FAMILY JUST VIOLENTLY DISSOLVED AROUND ME? I NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS TOO BABE

but of course kurogane is only halfway through his character arc as is fai, so he just has a couple awkward conversations with r!syaoran while fai Hides and Plots with sakura. OH YOU TWO!

okay last thing: yes it’s bad to be suicidal. i’m just gonna say this. speaking objectively, and not as me at a bad moment who would be kicking and screaming against what i’m about to say, but that’s me in the grips of depression: people should not be allowed to kill themselves. people should be stopped from killing themselves. fai was not a geriatric turning off the life support, or someone in need of a mercy killing because they could do nothing else but die slowly and painfully: fai was passively suicidal. kurogane has known about this tendency for like maybe a year now?

so yeah. kurogane stopping fai from basically killing himself is absolutely different from ashura slaughtering a population of people in an attempt to free fai from his curses that didn’t work at all, and directly re-traumatized into thinking that he brought death doom destruction etc wherever he lived and loved. glad i had this talk with myself to arrive at my regular conclusions. HOORAY

[birdscreeches]

Breathing Exercises || Aisha R.

My father had given my siblings and I his asthma. Not on purpose, sure, but that didn’t matter as much as the fact that now we had to live through the curse. Childhoods were bright with afternoon sun and asphalt dust, but at the end of the day it was a room of wheezes, inhalers, and nebulizers.

I remember sitting with my younger sister in my grandparents’ room. We watched TV with the volume up real high so we could hear the cartoons over the loud buzz of the nebulizer. When she’d laugh, the vapor pouring from the mask strapped on her face would puff out in billows like a dragon. When it was my turn, I blew air out, like a silent kind of whistle, and watched the mist spill out while I wheezed from the exertion. I didn’t feel like a dragon so much as completely breathless and disappointed. Even more so when I got scolded for wasting the mist I was supposed to be breathing in and given a mouthpiece attachment in what I assumed was punishment. Back then, I hated the thing, but if I could go back, I’d tell seven-year-old-me, come on, dude. You deserved it. I deserved it. We both did, didn’t we?

The neat thing about the asthma was that when we reached a certain age, it disappeared. My siblings and  I grew out of it. We grew a little taller, a little smarter, a little stronger. We grew up and mastered the art of pushing air in out of our lungs, unaided and unassisted. It was almost as if our bodies were telling us that it was kid stuff, really, to have trouble breathing. When my siblings reached twelve, the inhales and exhales were steady and sure.

When I was twelve, my breathing just got worse. My breaths were quiet and shallow. Not so much a rise and fall of my ribs but instead miniscule shifts every half seconds. I refused to take deep breaths, afraid that maybe, I’d rip at the seams. My asthma attacks got worse. They seemed to go past my lungs, now also tremors in my hands and the pounding in my chest and the buzzing in my head. I found my asthma in moments where I couldn’t stand people looking at me, or when the noisy classroom got too loud and so I banged my head against my desk once, twice, thrice, four times in quick succession, again, then again, or when the jacket I always wore for comfort now hid scratch marks and welts I gave myself to shut up the noises that followed from school and now lived in my mind, jeering and heckling constantly.

I called it all asthma until I learned what an anxiety disorder was a year later.

An anxiety disorder is a whole lot of things, but over the years, I’ve cultivated my own metaphor that I used for myself. It goes like this: in every person’s head, there’s the fear dial. You can turn it to tick from the numbers zero to ten. There’s an employee who lives in your head and it will turn the dial when danger is present. Maybe a two for when you drop your phone. A five for sound in the dark. A nine for a shadowy figure in the corner of your eye as you’re commuting home. The dial is important. It’s supposed to be there. Fear keeps us alive. It triggers the fight or flight response, releases hormones that promote fast reactions, and other things that makes me think of gazelles running from cheetahs while David Attenborough’s voice croons in the background.

“A second is all it takes between life or death,” Imaginary David Attenborough says. The gazelle makes a mistake, and claws sink into its thigh. Or the gazelle escapes and lives to prance another day. The gazelle needs fear to run as fast as it does, and we need fear too.

Anxiety is what happens when the employee in your head dies from a heart attack, or something. With its final breath, it scrambles for purchase, grabbing the dial and turning it, one, two, three, ten, past that to a section under it labeled You’re Gonna Die.

I’m now essentially Always About To Die at any given moment. The fear is a constant thrum under my skin with everything I do, and since humans can’t exactly be screaming twenty four seven, it manifests in things like paranoia and over thinking. When I can hear my head past the shallow wheezes of my lungs, I hear the constant litany in my head. Every day, it plays like a PA system in grocery store. Calm, cool, and as a matter of fact, it goes: you’re walking weird you need to fix that because you’re doing it wrong no you can’t eat in front of people they’re all watching you and you’re being greedy you’re not very smart are you you’re not very good at anything really are you you need to leave you need to be gone you need to be quiet everybody is speaking you need to speak louder speak softer speak slower speak faster you need to go to sleep you’re not needed right now go to sleep go to sleep. Good night. Insert grocery theme song here. A part of me knew the words were either wrong or magnifying small things into huge things, but logic didn’t mesh with anxiety. There’s dissonance and then there’s a disconnect. What I knew refused to make amends with what I felt. Here I am in my grocery aisle, screaming at a speaker in the corner. “You’re wrong, I know you’re wrong.” I say.

All the PA says, calm, cool, and as a matter of fact, is, Good morning shopper, did you really have to wake up today or are you just being greedy?

Greed was a word my anxiety loved to throw at me. An intense, selfish desire. Growing up in a Catholic school, greed was taught to me as one of the seven cardinal sins, one of the real bad ones that got you in those VIP hell sections. Greed is when you want too much. When you want for what’s no longer your share. What you don’t deserve. Greed was, apparently, in everything I did. Waking up. Eating. Sitting. Talking. Laughing. Smiling. Crying. Existing. All the other -ings of life. Breathing. If this was anxiety or something else in my head that maybe just wanted an excuse to finally come crawling out, I don’t know. What I did know was that by twelve years old, I started looking at every second I lived in regards to the questions like did I earn this? Did I deserve it?

When I was maybe seven or eight, my parents had signed me up for a summer swimming class, just like the rest of my siblings had when they turned seven or eight in hopes of alleviating the constriction of my airways. Every day for two weeks, I’d spend two pathetic hours in a pool. I was awful at swimming. The water was liquid fear and every inch I submerged was an inch of terror. I was graceless in a pool, and I did so awfully that I had to be taken out of the main class and taught, one on one, how to do something as simple as hold my breath. I didn’t actually get the whole concept that you were only supposed to do it when you were out of the water. Constantly, I was sucking water into my throat and lungs. It was in this class I taught myself the intricacies of drowning. It was here where I learned how to fear it. But it was in my senior year of high school I learned that maybe I deserved it.

I tried my best to avoid pools, but it was inescapable in twelfth grade. Our required PE class was swimming, and if I wanted to graduate, I had to get in the water. For two hours every week, I would drown. The moment I was in the water, my mind went loud with the mumbles: your limbs are moving in all the wrong ways you’re making a fool of yourself you’ll never get better Ma'am is yelling at you just stay under stay under stay under, the usual yadda yadda yadda. I wouldn’t have such a hard time if ten years prior, I just bucked up and learned how to swim. This pain I felt as I gulped chlorine water into my throat, as I cried tears nobody would see, as I flailed and breathed in something I wasn’t supposed to, was my punishment for once being the scared and useless little kid who didn’t want to get into the pool. Stay under. You didn’t deserve to breathe air. Stay under.

I did eventually surface, but it wasn’t my choice so much as my body’s survival instincts. It can’t seem to get with the program. What if, sometimes, I didn’t deserve to survive?

It’s a little capitalistic to subscribe to the concept of deserving things. Of having to work to deserve things. In a lot of contexts, earning things is important. Rewards only come to those who work hard, afterall, but things start to get odd when you apply the same principle to things people just inherently have. Case in point: life, living, and all its permutations. Sure, one could work hard to improve the quality of their life—and if they succeeded or not will not always be because of them, things like privilege and circumstance mucks up the entire system of deserving things even more—but you didn’t have to work to earn the right to live. Nobody asks to be born, and we’re all just here because we are. If somebody gets told they need to reach a certain quota to be alive, that’s an injustice. Prejudice, in extreme cases. Ascribing the concept of having to deserve to live brings up the corollary of who deserves to die. That’s called playing god, and over the course of history, it’s generally frowned upon.

I figure I can play god when it’s just in the confines of my head since the only one frowning is me. One of the ways I cope with the constant stream of noise that sometimes makes sense and sometimes doesn’t, is to use a solid system of deserving. Worth. It filters the noise down to what’s true and what isn’t. If I recited well in class, I earned the right to hang out with my friends and laugh for a half hour or so. If I got a high score in an exam, I earned the right to eat dinner later that night. If I wrote at least five hundred words every weekday of a week, I earned the right to sleep in til noon on sunday. If I didn’t do something right, if I didn’t do something enough, if I got through a day without having done anything to justify my living it, I’d take away things I could do or indulge in. Food. Sleep. Contact. Those were things I had to earn. If I went even further in the wrong direction, I deserved punishment. A punch to the wall of our bathroom for every slip up I did. The next day, I fail a test because I can’t hold my pen correctly, my fingers bruised and shaking. I make up for it with the left hand, and so it goes. This is what I deserved. By ascribing achievement with worth, I silence one voice in my head that tells me I’m selfish for doing one thing. In this, finally, I can breathe. All I have to do to keep on living without the voices suffocating me is to work hard and work right and everything will be okay. 

Or it wouldn’t be.

On a given day, I’ve either deserved to live or not. One of the easiest breaths I’ve ever taken was on the top floor of a retreat complex in Antipolo. The building had five storeys along with an open roof and no railing. Just a meter tall concrete barrier. It was seven in the morning. I was seventeen. I was standing on top of the barrier. I walked it like a catwalk for a few minutes before I stopped, looked out into the dawn.

I dangled my foot forward then I did the same but back. I remember thinking about my skull crushing upon hitting the ground below. I remember standing and wondering about myself as a scale. On the end above the safety of the roof would lie all the days I deserved. On the other, the one that hung above a drop that maybe I’d survive if I was lucky, if I earned it, were all the days I didn’t deserve. I never got around to learning what the verdict was because a teacher found me right then. I had to explain with words pouring out like chlorine water that I wasn’t thinking of jumping, which technically wasn’t a lie. I was thinking of falling. 

My moment was cut short, but I swear, I felt the scales tip forward. I swear I almost followed it. I swear I would’ve deserved it. I still think I do.

From an objective perspective, my deserving-things system works in keeping me functional and productive. From another perspective, it’s apparently abuse. I understand this, but deny it when it comes to myself. If anybody were to do this to another person, I’d think them evil. When it’s just me, I call it motivation. In my defense, people who are abused never deserve it. Everything that happens to me is something I had coming. Or something I tell myself I had coming. I’m lying to myself, but I’d rather believe in motivation than the possibility I have a problem. It’s not like I deserved to even say this was all real anyway.

Nothing particularly bad has ever happened in my life to have caused this. No traumatic experience at twelve, no definitive history of bullying, no nothing. One of the worst things anxiety has ever done to me was rob me of a reason, and I’m not even sure if the anxiety is real or not. I don’t even want to know. I refuse to see a counselor or a doctor because the prospect of having an answer terrifies me more than having a question. What if I get diagnosed and it’s real? I actually have a problem. What if my cartoon metaphor isn’t just for kicks, but my brain is genuinely wired differently in a way that causes me trouble not everybody else goes through? The implications of it being real would mean things like treatment, therapy, medication, expense. Anxiety never existed past my own body and so the thought of it becoming tangible and real has me crawling back to the safety of uncertainty.

On the flipside is the possibility that really haunts me though; the one I can’t decide on whether or not it’s better or worse. What if I go to a doctor and there’s nothing wrong? What if I’m fine? Every single thing I had gone through was a fabrication. Every terrible thing in my brain was something I made up. I’ve been lying this entire time, and I didn’t even notice. I was a fraud in every sense of the word, not just to everybody I know, but to myself.

Maybe I deserved that; the death sentence of knowing if it was yes or no. But this wasn’t the type of deserving that set my mind at ease. It was the kind that scared me. The kind I’ve been shying away from. It’s this fear that hinders me from moving forward and even beginning to recover. How do you get better from a sickness you don’t believe is there?

My maybe-maybe-not anxiety has plagued me for years and it’s made my life worse. In spite of this, I refuse see if it’s a real issue and I refuse to seek help for something that might be a fake one. I assume that maybe there’s a part of me—perhaps the survival instinct that never got the memo—that wants to get better, that wants whatever the hell this might be out of my head. But then I wonder if there will be anything left behind.

My anxiety dictates how I function. How I sleep, eat, talk, breathe, live. Take that away, and I’ll be years late in the game of figuring out how to exist in a world I never had to earn to live in. Eighteen is young still, so maybe I have time, but it’s daunting. Fear is sometimes a warm blanket to hide under. Something, something about dogs and old tricks. The usual excuse. My guise of I can’t do it actually just a farce to hide the scared shaking, terrified kid who didn’t want to go swimming saying, over and over again, I don’t want to do it. The difference, I guess, is that it’s not as hopeless as I’m making it out to be.

A month ago, urged by a week of monumental stress punctuated by a panic attack each day, I started smoking. My lungs aren’t asthmatic anymore, so physically, I can take it. Every other day I’d pull smoke into my mouth, wait til I could inhale it into my lungs, hold it until I was ready to breath out, like a silent kind of whistle. The dragon of my childhood dreams.

It was the perfect compromise. A smoke was a punishment because I knew it was messing up my health, but it was also a reward because it shut my mind up for a blissful few minutes, the voices steadily trickling in. I liked smoking. It was quiet, it was bad for me, and, ironically, my lungs felt lighter each time.

Maybe, after years of wheezing followed by years of frantic, shaking rasping, I got tired of not doing this whole air thing right. Maybe I started smoking to teach myself how to breathe again. It’s not much but, however misguided, it’s still a step. I figure if I can take one, I can take another. Then another. Then another.

[tulpacest]

Repost, don’t reblog.

Tagged by: @ahogedetective​ , thank you so much!

Tagging: @luminaryblood​ if u haven’t! And if u have... pls link me this is my fav kind of quiz. Otherwise!! Please steal! 

Name: K/orekiyo Shing.uuji. (Sorry but,,, I’m going to be talking about some uncomfy stuff and I’d really rather it not go in the tag riuguir). 

Nicknames: Sweet/Gentle Korekiyo, Kiyo, Korey (Hagakure why...), Shitguuji, ‘shit eating worm’, ‘slug’, ‘creep show’ (I love you Miu). 

Orientation: Pansexual Panromantic (No preference.) 

Preferred pet names: I think Korekiyo would find petnames to be interesting. I... actually like that he offers the name ‘Kiyo’ on first meeting, it creates a sense of immediate familiarity between himself and his peers - exactly what he wants as an anthropologist, after all. Additionally, it means ‘Korekiyo’ is a name reserved only for his Sister - which we’ll get into later. Obviously, he doesn’t particularly like being compared to an insect or dung, and would prefer only beautiful things be associated with him. 

Relationship status: He’s currently in a fully committed romantic relationship with his own tulpa. He truly believes that his dead Sister’s spirit rests inside of him and they are continuing the loving partnership they had in life - but she does not. This is a coping mechanism born out  of impossible grief, and he does have brief moments of self-awareness. In those moments, the world feels sterile and empty. This is his reality.   

Favorite canon ship:  H E  I S  T H E  C A N O N  S H I P.   In all seriousness, I do find the relationship he has with the tulpa to be incredibly fascinating, fucked up and inherently unhealthy. The tulpa is simultaneously the only thing keeping him alive, and simultaneously destroying any development he could possibly have. He cannot overcome grief without it, he cannot overcome grief with it.  And if he just didn’t ... you know... kill people because of it, I feel that the tulpa perfectly embodies the theme of the game. A lie can sometimes be good, can sometimes even save lives - and that is what his coping mechanism is -  simply an incredibly well-fabricated lie. He’s such a fascinating and... oddly tragic character because of it. 

Favorite non-canon ships: I really like Korekiyo/Rantaro! Their interactions in the board game were incredibly sweet... Korekiyo is actually concerned with his health! He asks after him! They visit each other inbetween trips! K O R E K I Y O  H A S  A  F R I E N D ??? And I know you could read that he’s just getting close to him in order to kill his sisters... but? He was doing all of those things before he even knew Amami had sisters! 

I really... really feel like Amami is one of the very few people who would have the patience and the kindness to help Korekiyo work through the whole tulpacest situation. I... Idk, I just have this really profound image of Kiyo finally asking Rantaro if he wants to meet his Sister, and Amami is hesitant at first - like, he knows by now that... something weird is going on, but it’s okay, he trusts his friend enough to see where this is going...  And then Kiyo takes the mask down, and Amami’s heart just. Breaks as Sister says ‘hello’ to him, her lip trembling - and he finally clicks it all together and he understands. And then he rushes forwards and just wraps her in the tightest embrace, and her eyes immediately turn to glass and she just sobs because this is the first time he’s been hugged properly in years, and suddenly all that time spent hugging himself is... not enough. Bluuhhh and that’s my sickly-sweet power fantasy, eventually Amami helps Korekiyo get over the tulpa and accept death (or he supports his friend’s coping mechanism and they enter into a more complicated relationship) - either way, GOD. That’s the healthiest Kiyo ship I can think of and I Am Here For It. 

A quick note on shipping: Korekiyo is really... really difficult to ship. He firmly believes his one true love is inside of him, and he has sacrificed everything to fulfil that delusion. Unpicking it would be a long and hard process, and cheating on her is not going to be an option unless it’s like. a very very very clear one-time affair. Even then, he’s... unlikely to get completely physical with you - and falling in love is simply not an option........ at least, not right away. Any shipping I did with Kiyo would have to be delicately paced and involve a lot of plotting/threading. 

Opinion on true love: He firmly believes in it, and it is one of the only matters (asides from death) where he will suddenly start acting illogical. Anything concerning love makes him highly emotional, but he would also expose that ‘real’ love is not a physical connection, it is something that is worked on and reshaped and kneaded over time. He is extremely romantic,  to say the least, and believes that you should do anything for the one you love. 

Opinion on love at first sight: Although this is something ever present in folklore, fiction and fantasy - he believes that love takes more than a mere moment. It’s something that requires tending to - even if it begins like a hot-flash in the pan. 

How ‘romantic’ are they: Very.... Korekiyo’s appearance may imply anything but, but he is a highly romantic person. He enjoys affection, soft touches, hugs, being squeezed, giving gifts, huge gestures, romcoms, holding hands, dates... I could go on. He adores the saccharine and can be incredibly gentle when it comes to matters of love.  

Ideal physical traits: Korekiyo would struggle with this question - after all, his pet theory is that all humanity is beautiful. Beauty is alluring, and beauty is born from the soul - less so the body. However... He has an aesthetic appreciation for features similar to his own - archaic beauty, ink-brush strokes for hair, well-kept and slender. But! Tbh, radiant love overcomes any physical imperfections, his tastes bent to his heart’s desires. 

Ideal personality traits: He is particularly drawn to bright, effervescent people. Those who possess a deep, unending curiosity - who possess wit and good humour, intelligence and grace. There are many traits that he admires - just as there are many roles in this great kabuki play of life. However, above all else... A thirst for life. If your character displays a drive to survive against all odds, a ‘fuck you’ attitude to death - then his heart sings. Bravery in the face of impossible odds, an unwavering heart, hope blossoming amongst  the tangled thorns of despair... cliche, yes, but traits he finds incredibly attractive.  Additionally, he really enjoys being approached by someone else. His love hotel scene begins with Saihara taking an interest in him, after all. 

Unattractive physical traits: Hmm, again... there really aren’t many. 

Unattractive personality traits: He is not fond of people who are loud-mouthed and quick to interrupt him. He really dislikes those who shut down intelligent conversation, or think of him as boring, or refuse to pay attention. He hates promises being broken, and he will blame himself for being a poor teacher if someone shows even the slightest disinterest in what he has to say.  He also dislikes those he cannot pin down easily. If he cannot assign you a role and you baffle him with layers of inconsistencies/lies, he’s... going to lose interest, fast. If, however, he can pick up some threads of your puzzle - he’ll have... so much fun deciphering you that he’ll get lose in it.  Overall, it can be difficult to predict what traits Korekiyo is going to find unattractive since he is forever fishing for your beauty... 

Ideal date: Travelling, discussing anthropology, consuming media and analysing it afterwards... but more romantic moments are appreciated, too. If it’s an activity that allows him to revel in your beauty... he’s down, lmao. 

Do they have a type? Immensely passionate, confident & bright people!  

Average relationship length: Forever...

Preferred nonsexual intimacy: Being held/holding. I mean. The boy literally hugs himself bc no one else will... he’s honestly so desperate for this kind of physical affection that it breaks my heart on some level. Please.. someone... anyone.... hug him,,,,  Outside of this, while sexual intimacy can be incredibly loving and important in a relationship, I think he values nonsexual intimacy more. I know! This sounds! Really weird! Coming from! The self-declared rope man! But! He constantly reiterates that love does not have to be ‘a physical connection’. So... honestly - beyond cuddling, his favourite thing to do to express intimacy is probably  just to talk. Talk and talk and talk. Enjoy doing things together, be in one another’s company, revel in the beautiful connection between you both  - the real meat of a relationship, you know? 

Commitment level: He’ll literally destroy himself and give up his flesh in order to let you inhabit his body if u go and die on him. And although he indulges his curiosity  in the love hotel scene... we have to remember that that is his fantasy. In the dating sim mode, he repeatedly shies away from sexual topics/intimacy (though he expresses they are normal human behaviours and he respects/is intrigued by Saihara because of them), because it would be ‘cheating’. Then again, he does claim that he tied up a whole village of women, so....

The thing is, Korekiyo’s. Well. What counts as ‘cheating’ might be a little fluid - can he indulge in Kinbaku because he’s doing it for ‘anthropological’ reasons? How far does that card stretch? He seemed to be aware that he actions with Saihara were dodgy given how much he emphasised it was a one-time affair... so, idk. GENERALLY THO I’d argue he is more committed than most, lmao. 

Opinion of public affection: He wants it, but it makes him incredibly uncomfortable. Like. Ideally he could be physical with his partner near constantly - but he’s learned that matters of love are best kept private, and with good reason. 

Past relationships: My personal headcanon is that his Sister is around a year & a half older than him, and they have been engaging in taboo acts since he was around 13. It’s... highly uncomfortable to think about, but. Yeah, so. Considering he still thinks he is in this relationship, they’ve been ‘together’ for 4-5 years. 

[itwasjustmisplaced]

Do you think if the reunion is in say February, do you think that means the kid is likely Roberts snd sticking around? Like maybe that leaves time for R to die and the rest to leave. Single dad Rob and Robron growing closer. Hey presto Robron back together & a 'robron' baby? I hope not. Maybe timing of the reunion doesn't mean this whenever it is. I guess I'm just losing faith in a satisfactory ending to the baby plot (tbf I'll only be satisfied if its revealed the kids not his). I'm intrigued

The only reason I don’t necessarily see this is because it’s sort of the same plot that’s running with Cain and then it will bring Moira back into him at some point to raise this kid. Like Cain is doing the doting single date routine to prove to Moira he can be reliable. He may be dating Harriet but she’s the clear second choice and the narrative has been super clear the reason he’s being there for Isaac is to address the bigger Coira issues. So would they really do that again? Have Robert be the doting single dad so Aaron can see how much he’s changed? I don’t know but it doesn’t feel like it works in this narrative like it does with Coira. That’s why I am baffled and intrigued. 

Again, I’ve said this so many times but they sort of tied themselves into knots in this story and I’m not quite sure why. They had Aaron have such an adverse reaction to the baby and then they made Robert do such extreme things to the Whites that them fridging Rebecca to just give Robron a baby seems hella wrong. It reminds me so much of Archie with Jai who they were never going to reward Jai for his vile behavior by giving him sole custody of Archie and fridging Rachel. It was just would have been so wrong, and this feels the same way entirely. You didn’t need to make Robert /this/ crazy and do so much damage to the Whites if we were to believe Robert was going to be raising the child. They could have had him do the Rug Tree Bonds thing and leave it at that, but no they went to such extreme lengths with his character. Plus inherently they’ve kept the narrative the Whites are the victims of Robert so why would he get their sole blood grandchild to raise and his husband back? Just because he’s finally decided to be a good person on his own. It just has fundamental flaws in the narrative. 

Just because it’s been brought up today I keep thinking about how Jimmy wound up with Carl and not the bio mother. They did the whole plot and had Nicola deliver him, then they even had Juliette name him Carl without her knowing about Carl King, had Nicola even kidnap Carl so Juliette couldn’t run away with him and when it was all said and done Juliette left with Carl for ages only to reappear and dump him on Jimmy. Like not only was Juliette not a real character they made a serious effort with Nicola and even the naming of him to hint that he would be back and be staying with the Kings. So it’s weird they cut the Jack bit about Seb and didn’t even pretend he was gonna be a Sugden and continue to have Aaron super far removed from the baby as a whole. He just, in general, feels like a White and he still doesn’t feel like something that fits with Robron’s future. 

So here we are again where the narrative is a mess. Most of the time it feels like we are stop-starting and almost stalling and repeating certain beats till we get to Christmas. It almost feels like at times that IM had a great vision for Robert’s character and wanted to do his own redemption arc for Robert that would culminate in this big episode that can’t really be done till the holidays, so we get stuck. You need to continue to create situations and things that both push and pull Robron back together. As he described it as two ends of elastic stretched to their limits but not breaking. Every time it looks like they might be pulling back together we need to stretch them back apart over and over again to bid our time.

That’s why Seb feels like such weird part of this because again it’s the thing that has been keeping them apart and yet they don’t appear to be doing anything to make that elastic come back together over him now that’s he’s here. Like, instead of having Robron grow closer and closer after the baby is born and maybe even have so moments where it appears Aaron is coming around to the baby they are bringing back Alex to show Aaron is ‘ready to move’ on or at least try. They are having Rebecca ghost at a crucial point in the narrative. So in the end, that doesn’t really work for them ending up with a baby in many ways because movement wouldn’t happen till after Rebecca may die and then we end up back where this whole ask started which is that it’s too similar to the story with Coira.

I don’t think the reunion happening in February if that’s when it is makes it more or less likely they end up with the baby. The story just has fundamental issues surrounding Seb, in my opinion, to end up this cut and dry. I’m just guessing the Christmas episode will tell us everything. Because IM loves big game changer episodes. He loves them for all the characters. He likes those moments. So I have no doubt so much will be answered on Christmas day and in the lead-up. But mostly, I can’t escape IM’s quotes about how good drama is knowing what the audience wants and giving that to them but not taking the easiest route from point A to B and the ones about how the reveal would tell us the direction of this story and satisfy our concerns and worries. Those fester in the back of my mind when you look at how much this story has tanked with not only the audience but also the press as well. And yes, dude is messy a lot but he generally means what he says and is pretty excellent at describing these big moments, so I just feel like till we reach the end none of this is gonna make sense. Like eventually we will look back on all of this and probably see the signs that were there and it will all be okay. 

Basically, what I am trying to say is we are back in our holding pattern and we can sit here as much as we want to try and solve for A but we can’t because we don’t have all the information needed in this equation to do that. So, we go around in circles, we drive ourselves a bit crazy and we all fall into bouts of negativity. We can’t let us get this down and we can’t let people like Eastie stress us out. We are just so close so we’ve gotta wait and see how this all plays out. This is like mile 23 of a marathon, our blisters have popped, we’ve run out music, we are slowly dying and don’t think we can make it but we can almost see the finish line. We can almost taste it. So just tell yourself to hold on because we can do this. Now we just have to trust our training (IM and the story team) that it will get us there all in one piece and with a time (ending) we can all be happy (okay) with. 

[alluring-skull]

ancient scapes

I just got back from Seattle, after watching the Valve Dota 2 tournament The International all week. I don’t talk about it too much beyond random tweets while watching other events at work (and so on) but I’ve played the game for a super long time (albeit somewhat sporadically overall) and definitely have a lot of attachment to it. I wanted to talk about some of the things that have really appealed to me over time, what it’s been like watching the evolution of a game that’s been alive, changing and competitive for longer than almost any other i can think of, a bit about the big event itself, and hopefully some stuff that will give other people an appreciation for what it’s like seeing a game that’s so much the same yet so different from one i played so much as a teenager. This isn’t the most complete, knowledgeable (I really have no familiarity with the pro scene before TI1 in particular), or accurate history you can probably find, but it’s mine, and I hope some people enjoy it. With all that in mind this first post is background (I’m giving this topic...probably 3-4, at least. I have a lot to talk about.)

In 2000 or so a distant, much older cousin introduced my younger brother and I to Starcraft. I think that was about the last time I ever talked to him. (It was extremely unrelated, but I have no desire to return to Texas at any rate.) At some point, probably about a year later, we found a copy for like $10 at a Toys R Us and instantly bought it. We didn’t have a home internet connection that was really usable to play online at the time (dial-up...) so we mostly played single-player, both vs AI and the campaigns. (Brood War didn’t have a key, so we totally just burned a copy of the CD we got from the library.) I played a bit with the map editor, but I couldn’t think of anything interesting to do with it, and making Starcraft maps kinda sucked anyway because the kind of symmetry you have to work with is really limited anyway due to the isometric view.

When Warcraft 3 came out, my older brothers’ friends (I think...) convinced him to get it since he was in college at the time. He got really into it, and my other brother and I played some as well. Eventually he moved home and the expansion came out, so my other brother and I got to start playing a lot. I again messed with the map editor, though I didn’t have any programming experience to touch the more advanced parts. I loved all the terrain construction and deforming (I was a huge, huge fan of Simcity 2000 and especially 3000 before this), but placing trees was kind of tedious and I never really finished anything still. Maybe if I’d had a better concept of “starting small” I could’ve gotten somewhere with things, but that took me a long time to learn. I’m saying this obviously not to be like “oh, I could’ve been Icefrog” (or even Guinsoo) but to emphasize how interesting the UMS map scene (”Use Map Settings,” the common Blizzard RTS community term to refer to these; now most people just use “mod”) was to me from the start.

DotA Allstars, as it was called during the 5.5x era when we started playing, was not the first map to use the general concept that’s become defined as its own genre, with a bunch of predecessors generally named things along the lines of “Aeon of Strife,” dating-I’ve heard, since I wasn’t around much on battle.net then, as I mentioned-back to Starcraft. (The name is a reference to the Starcraft backstory, I guess, so it’s not very hard to believe.) I did eventually find a couple, years later, and messed with them a bit, but the limitations of the design system in that game really don’t work well with the concept, even ignoring the maximalist design elements that are to some extent highlighted in dota’s enormous pool of heroes and items. (These elements are highlighted even more in the popular “Evolves” game type, where, for example, at some point in the game you lose a very good unit because it’s replaced with horrifically clumsy Protoss Dragoons, who have slightly better stats and extremely poor interactions with the engine’s pathing systems)

The newer AOS maps weren’t very good either, but the inherent leveling mechanic in Warcraft 3 made it a little easier to keep some semblance of consistent progression, and the amount of unit types you could set was much higher (I don’t know if there is a limit, but for Starcraft you can generally only create 1-2 different versions of any given unit, depending on if they have a “Hero” counterpart with a different name to tweak). Broadly speaking, most custom maps focused on hero play fell into what I can only describe as the “tome trap,” where you could buy items (consumable tomes) which didn’t take inventory space and permanently buffed stats. There’s three kinds of heroes in Warcraft, correlating roughly to the “Warrior Rogue Mage” thing, and each benefits most from a specific stat. That stat increases attack damage, and each stat has benefits for all heroes as well, with Strength giving health, Agility giving armor and attack speed, and Intellect giving extra mana pool and regeneration. But spells have cooldowns, so the tome items quickly become relatively useless for Int heroes, while Str heroes see slightly better scaling. But Agility gives attack damage and speed to Agility heroes, creating a compounding effect that becomes increasingly absurd the more you feed into it. Although, it did cause the animations to break in all sorts of hilarious ways, with certain breakpoints making the attack animations stop altogether or even go in reverse, so I still consider that a huge plus.

There was a bigger issue with pretty much all maps, due to the way that the map editor exported maps in a format that was, essentially, open-source. It was therefore very easy for people to make small tweaks to a map which would specifically benefit a certain player spot or character, save it under the same name, then host a rigged version of the game for other players. (There were a couple ways to tell if this was probably what was happening, but even so, it made looking for games very frustrating.) As it turned out, there was a workaround for this, by which you could make the editor unable to read the customized script data. The map still worked in game, but other players wouldn’t be able to make slightly altered copies; they would lose all of that code by trying to tweak anything and save a new version of the file. Essentially, it was copy-protection, and few mapmakers used it, probably since most AOS games, Tower Defense maps, and other styles didn’t really use any sophisticated scripting anyway.

Dota Allstars used the copy protection, though it had had relatively few unique abilities at the time we began playing it (I was familiar with another map with far more custom effects, Elil’s “Vale of Nightmares”). Perhaps the most well-known was the Crystal Maiden’s “Freezing Field” ultimate ability, still represented in the game to this day. But most characters simply had weird mixtures of default Warcraft 3 abilities, tweaked with different stats and so on, and strangely, the most egregious example of all (the Brewmaster, who pretty much just had the original Pandaren Brewmaster abilities from the game’s regular RTS mode) still just has the same stuff as ever. I think it’s fair to say that Allstars was never the most original game, and some things that have survived to this day (Lina Inverse is still called Lina!! What is that???) are still incredibly obvious ripoffs of stuff from Blizzard games, other video games, and anime. I understand the “Allstars” name came from this version being a patchwork of characters from different maps, though I’m not sure how true that is. It might explain some of the worst 5.5 era heroes, like “God” (a nigh-unkillable wisp with no offensive skills, who was removed for .52 and has never returned), and “Conjurer” (an outrageously busted magician on a horse, who could push to win the game in as little as 20 minutes with chain-stunning golems, even in a era where player micro was relatively poor), but it became very difficult to find other AoS type games at all once 5.52 and 5.54 locked in as extremely popular maps across the server. Both enjoyed popularity at once, as I recall; it seemed many people simply preferred one or the other and would gravitate toward that choice, making both open all the time. But the release of 5.55 was a huge paradigm shift, with complete overhauls for many heroes and numerous bug fixes and tweaks. Its release signaled the future of the game, in a sense.

Well, I don’t know. That might be giving too much credit to a version of the game which, as I recall, was the newest for approximately one hour.

(Part 2)

(Part 3)

(Part 4)

[bonnissance]

me @ cam: maybe use ur words and tell ur mother you don’t want to do things?! instead of letting her pull you along w things you don’t want to do bc she doesn’t know you don’t want them?

Edit: below the cut!rant thinky thoughts bc I’m real worried about what the writers think is the point of Cam as a character 

So Can doesn’t make any sense as a real person in-universe. 

His emotional maturity is w e i r d it doesn't follow Bernie's pattern and it doesn't follow Marcus's either. He got this weird “I dont want what my parents want for me,” even tho either of his parents actively forced him into medicine? 

Like, having both ur parents in the same field and feeling as if you should do that is one thing, but you’re only going to feel like you should do that thing if you don’t know what else you want to do enough to stand on your on feet and say: I want this other thing. in which case, the actual issue is the not knowing what you want in life, and not external influences i.e. parents wanting you do do something more than the you wanting something else.

so Cam chose to go into medicine, of his own volition, and then dropped out for the same reason. 

and obvi Bernie is excited to see him go back to medicine in Indefensible bc he'd been rolling after flunking out and not really doing anything nor having anything else he wanted to do. but she didn’t force him back into it, he chose to come back bc of Morven etc. Then he came to Holby and then left for the same reasons: they were all his choice.

Just like him agreeing to observe must have been his own choice. And I can see how that agreement to come observe might be just about the fact that the surgery sounds interesting regardless of what medicine he wants to specialise in, but he could just as easily have said “no thanks i’m happy in London” if he really didn’t want to come back to Holby or spend time w his mother. 

But he chose to come back for a bit of his own volition bc there's no way Bernie could have exerted enough pressure on Cam while he was living and working on London to make him feel pressured to be involved in trauma. She’s been distracted af by huge things happening in her life recently and there's no logical way she could have been involved enough in Cam's life to make his decision about her. That kind of pressure w the filial history they have would be enormous and it’s not something Bernie is capably of doing unconsciously. 

we know she's not an inherently overbearing parent - of course she has expectations and wants and she’s def been more involved w Cam and his life since the car accident and then again after Elinor died, but more likely than not that’s just text messages and the odd phone call), but that’s and nothing that could possibly make Cam feel like his life decisions are all about her bc Cam has had plenty of time apart from Bernie to develop into his own human away from maternal expectations.

and if she had intentionally tried to apply that kind of pressure (wildly out of character as it is) there’s no way she’d have had that time or the energy to make that happen anyway. like, she can’t even got on top of her paperwork ffs. so it simply isn’t possible for Bernie to have pressured Cam enough to make him feel his life choices about her.

So unless the writers are deliberately trying to create a character with no inherent sense of self and is thus incapably of know what he wants in the first place (which i don’t think they were), neither his relationship w Bernie or his emotional palette makes any sense what so ever. 

And it unsettles me, bc I think what writers are trying to implying that Cam has some extremely serious emotional issue re his mother, but nothing serious enough for him/them to actually address in canon.

Bc when Cam came to work at Holby he makes out like Bernie refuses to talk to him of her own volition (i.e. “this is not an appropriate work place conversation” “well you’ll just have to have a proper conversation w them then”) despite the fact that we know Bernie wants her children in her life and def kept in contact w Cam after the car accident (bc you don’t not keep in contact w ur kid when they’re been in a car accident like wot?).

and like, Bernie’s surprise at Cam being at Holby could only have been bc Cam never told her he was coming back to medicine/the ward. he must have made the decision not to mention it to her, bc sending a “oh btw mum, i’m coming to work w you” text would be the natural thing to do in that situation. But he didn’t do that. Add that to all the digs at Bernie about never using her words to validate him re the compliments etc

And when he left w/out saying anything is was if he was skulking away, and I think it was supposed to be both an act of care i.e. not wanting to worry her more than what she always was re Serena, as well as an unconscious but deliberate act actually wanting to hurt Bernie (like a revenge act of leaving when she needs support akin to how it felt to Cam when Bernie went off to serve during his teens, for instance).

And now they’re framing that him being back at holby is Bernie's fault, as if he - as an adult human - has no say about how his life turns out. Which is simply Not True? it cannot be true, bc anything that would compromise his emotional development to the that degree cannot have existed in his childhood and align w the canon we have for Bernie and Bernie/Marcus.

Absent parenting only messes someone up so much but Cam appears to be displaying extremely deep seated issues that outflank which is logically conceivable given the canon info we know atm but the writers aren’t engaging w any of this, at all. And it’s got me real unsettled I don’t know why they’d include this content and not address it unless they’re legit not aware it’s in his character. In which case, Cam is legit a just prop they bring in to traumatise Bernie when they feel she needs a good kicking when she’s down, rather than a legit character in his own right, and that’s got me fucking unsettled. 

[morelovelyandmoretemperate]

All from A to Z :)

Oh my Lanta. Really? I mean, I’ll do it, but wowza. Thank you, anon. :D

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

I’m not honestly a huge shipper. I prefer bromance to romance... if I HAD to pick a ship or two? Demitri/Anastasia from “Anastasia”, and Mr. Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet from “Pride and Prejudice”. Always get me every time.

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

Mmm... Spirk (Star Trek) and McKirk (Star Trek). Damnit, I didn’t want to get sucked into this hell hole, but here I am.

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

Sherlock/Anyone. I just don’t see romantic relationships there. I mean I can see how people get the Johnlock thing going, but honestly... I don’t ship him with anyone. Again, bromance before romance for this one.

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

Dean Winchester/Lisa (Supernatural). But that might be because that storyline was pretty weak.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

Some of you may well remember that there is a little known one-shot lurking out there inspired by @faragonart‘s Hiccup in Aperture Science drawings from... Jeez, like a year and a half ago? Not sure. But it’s out there. It’s cracky as hell.

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?

Been in the Teen Titans fandom for... jeez uh... 13 years? Harry Potter is closely behind at 12.

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

Again, not super shippy. When I was a wee tot I adored Robin/Starfire on Teen Titans, but the older I got the more I was like “I just don’t see it.” I do love me some Harry/Ginny (Harry Potter).

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

Usually tv shows. Almost always. Sometimes movies. Rarely books.

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

Tumblr has turned me off of so many fandoms before I ever even saw the show, because I was sick of it before I ever got a chance to enjoy it, including but not limited to: Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Voltron, Troll Hunters, Hannibal, etc.

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

Supernatural. Honestly had no idea what it even was before I saw it on here, and then of course I got obsessed.

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Ooohhh. Sherlock is one of my faves, just watching him become more.. human, is great. Jesse Pinkman and Walter White (Breaking Bad)... there are so MANY.

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

John Winchester has a pleasant sounding voice when he isn’t screaming at his children? Does that count?

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

Lorelai Gilmore (Gilmore Girls). I want to be her.

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

Jesse Pinkman character analysis and canon compliant Harry Potter learning to deal with his upbringing.

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

“Reflecting Light” by Sam Phillips- Luke/Lorelai (Gilmore Girls)

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

I actually developed a relatively in depth baby bots AU for Portal in one of @faragonart‘s streams. The idea was more or less that in an effort to tame Glad0s, they scientists desperately tried to bring the human part of her (whatever was left of Caroline) back into control by appealing to her maternal instinct with android baby bots, creating first Virgil (who was too soft spoken and non-assertive, and brushed aside before being reassigned to maintenance) then Wheatley (who was too curious and outgoing, and caused her to become increasingly hostile against him to the point that his memory of it was wiped, and he was left with nothing more than an inherent fear of her), and finally having no choice but to bring in Caroline’s actual daughter: Chel. If anyone wants more than that, I have it all written down somewhere and I’ll hunt it down and share.

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

Ooooh. LOST. Too weird, my dudes. Far too weird. And Grey’s Anatomy.

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

Merlin/Arthur, Sherlock/John, Harry/Hermione, this is a looong list.

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

Hmm... alright, so @orhowfar and I were watching Anastasia a few weeks back and I went dark af and just proclaimed that I think Dimitri was abused by the staff of the palace. He very clearly gets manhandled rather aggressively on a fairly frequent basis, and his self esteem is virtually nothing. So we came up with this whole big thing where his favorite of the nobility was always Vlad, who had kind eyes and a big belly and would sneak him sweets when he assisted, and after helping the princess escape and being knocked unconscious (by a blow to the head from a gun which 100% broke his nose btw have you ever noticed?) He finds himself with nowhere to go. He runs into Vlad and there’s a moment of pure panic because Vlad knows how bad things are right then, but they both just nod, and wind up taking care of each other. Vlad becomes something of a father figure to Dimitri. He notices pretty early on that Dimitri doesn’t like contact unless he’s initiated it, something that carries over into adulthood, despite his best efforts, but it does get better. Vlad just makes sure to let Dimitri come to him as often as possible instead of reaching out first. Etc. etc. it was a LONG thing.

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Hiccup’s hair looks the way it does because he won’t sit still for a haircut- he’s always off doing something or other- so his father will just randomly grab a handful of his hair and slice through it with his knife to keep it manageable. Hiccup barely notices until after Stoick’s death when his hair is suddenly longer than it’s been in years and then he remembers and ouch.

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Merlin- self sacrificing, intelligent, lovable little dork with immense power.

Dean Winchester- self sacrificing, intelligent, lovable little dork with virtually no self esteem or self preservation skills.

Jesse Pinkman- self sacrificing, intelligent, lovable little dork with virtually no self esteem or self preservation skills who is far too broken and has seen far too much but is desperate for love.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

It varies... I related to Jesse Pinkman more than I probably should have but... given current circumstances.. yeah. I understand Lorelai Gilmore on a spiritual level as well.

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

“Bad guy is reformed and becomes besties with the gang”. Get away from meeeeeeeee.

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

One character slowly humanizes another through little acts of affection and teaching and both learn from the other and become best friends in the process.

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

Hmmm... does The Office count? I see a lot of The Office second hand.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

They have never once cast a decent Dick Grayson (Batman) and let me tell you why because when a child is of Romani descent they are not some little pale white boy with dark hair. They have a very specific look and I have yet to see it. Not to mention they never pick the right body type. Dick is an acrobat first and foremost; he just learned to adapt that into a fighting style. He would not be some top heavy bulky af ripped dude with giant shoulders and biceps and thighs as wide as a tire, he’d be lean and wiry and small. He needs to be fast, be able to get and keep himself airborne, and fold into all sorts of weird shapes (the kid is basically a damn contortionist). He’s strong as hell, but it’s not just big ass muscles, it’s... *deep breath* he’s not the body type they keep casting. Furthermore, that kid is definitely his own special brand of damaged and I get very tired of seeing the “so sarcastic and carefree” attitude given to him in movies and tv shows, but I also can’t stand the other extreme: the cold, clinical, calculating, trying to be Batman nonsense. That’s not who he is. He’s smart and capable, and certainly can be serious, he’s been playing a part in public for most of his life, just as Bruce does, but he’s also very careful not to become what Bruce has... I could go on about this for a long time... @cinemamind, help me? 

Thanks for the request, anon, sorry this is SO long...