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#it's entirely my bad but it doesn't change the physicality of it
dyke-pollinator · 2 days
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This is a bit of a personal question so if you don’t want to answer I understand if you just delete this ask but
As a relatively younger trans woman, and especially new to actually exploring my sexuality…at what point do I feel like a lesbian? Like I always feel bad or weird for being attracted to lesbians. It always feels wrong or amoral or like I’m lying in some way idk
I apologize for taking a few days to answer this my dear anon. A combination of Pride and IRL stuff has left me exhausted and I wanted to make sure I really took the time to give you a good answer and my bad for the wall of text you're about to receive lol.
There's a lot I could say about this. For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that by "younger" you mean both in your transition and your age. Transition is hard. Finding yourself is hard. To answer your question, it takes Time. And I mean this in two specific ways:
Transition is a slow process. As you continue your transition, (whatever that means to you, whether that be social, medical, both, or neither, or something else entirely) you'll find a lot of things just making more sense. The labels might slowly start to be more comfortable. Or maybe they wont, and you'll switch to new ones, but that deeper sense of understanding yourself doesn't really go away (trust me I've changed both my labels and pronouns multiple times now lol). Either way, despite anything else, over time you'll just start to feel more at home, both in your body, and how you present yourself to the world. Now this is both the scary part and the hard part: you have to take steps to find a community who accepts you as you are, and (ideally) with people like you. Yeah this requires you to put yourself out there in a way that will be uncomfortable at first. Yeah, sometimes its going to go poorly, and you'll be rejected, or shunned. And yes, it will take its toll on you mentally, emotionally and (sometimes) physically. Its worth it. Having those people in your life does more than you can know in learning how to love and accept yourself. Having people look you in the eye and tell you that they love you, they see you, you're valid in who you are, no matter what anyone else says, is just so crucial.
You just get older. I know for a lot of people that can be frightening (and like, yeah, sometimes), but I can tell you with full confidence, I LOVE being in my 30s. You couldn't pay me to go back to 20. Your teen years and 20s are fucking hard. You just get so much better at knowing which things to give a shit about in your life and you get the necessary resources to be able to not give a shit. Most days I feel like a lesbian (more of a Dyke but w/e), so I am one, no one can take that from me, and the people who dont like me using that label can fuck off. I wear more masc clothes and have more masc hobbies because I want to and that doesn't define my gender or sexuality. I like doing mutual aid projects, and working on honing my DIY skills. I love the people who are in my life and tell them unapologetically, and I appreciate every day I get to spend with them. As I get older, the more I feel like "me" and the more I learn that in reality, I do love that person. She's actually pretty great.
I hope you can trust me that it gets better. That, in spite of all the pain, all of the heartbreak, the loss and tribulations, its fucking worth it. I know I didn't think so for a long, long time. But my god I am so happy I made it here. You'll get to that point to.
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svtskneecaps · 2 years
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GOD. FUCK. DAMNIT. I DID IT AGAIN. SHIT.
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feroluce · 7 months
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I'm still not over Nahida's second story quest, and it confirming that her physical form and appearance is based solely off how much power she holds, especially when you combine that with the info Venti gives us about how a god's power comes from their people's love and worship. This is a story that has plagued my thoughts for forever, because like. Please, that could be so sweet and heartwarming. ♡
I love the thought that now that Nahida has finally taken rightful rule of Sumeru, the Sabzeruz Festival becomes what it should always have been, a huge nation-wide celebration of the Dendro Archon's birthday. The previous celebrations involved the dendro archon riding by in a carriage, and everyone throwing flowers to her. And so they do that, like all through Sumeru City and maybe even all the way through Port Ormos.
Nahida is a little embarrassed, it's even a little bit overwhelming after how long she spent trapped alone in the Sanctuary of Surasthana, but it's still very fun for her. And it maybe doesn't happen the first year. Or the second or even the third. It maybe doesn't happen for a long time.
But there is one year where the turnout is greater than ever, all of these people, her people, are gathered to celebrate her, and Nahida climbs into her carriage at the start of the route, and she watches and waves to everyone she passes, and everyone is happy to see her and be under her rule, and that emotion is higher and more present that day than any other, and it exists like a thrum in the air that Nahida can feel.
And at the end of the route, the carriage stops, now so completely covered in flowers that no one can even see into it, but the people all wait for their beloved god to step out and address the masses to kick off the festivities.
And the door swings open, and out stumbles a woman who has to fold herself and duck just to fit past the frame, and her green-streaked white hair hangs nearly to the ground, her long dress dragging on the carriage steps.
And the whole crowd goes like dead silent because they have no idea what this means. The woman is just looking down at her hands in wide-eyed curiosity.
So it's not until Cyno suddenly steps forward and drops to one knee as he offers his congratulations to his lord and Nahida beams at him that the people realizes it really is her, and the whole crowd is ecstatic and it becomes a huge celebration!! Their god has gained more power!! This is a physical manifestation of their love for her, their kind and gentle ruler, how could they not feel such pride?!
And after it's all over and done with, Nahida returns home to the Akademiya, and she sits on the floor in front of a tall mirror, studying her reflection. Something about looking like this, it feels strangely...right.
So she has no idea why it also makes her want to cry.
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kalims · 5 months
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he's a ten but he...
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premise. sometimes certain bad habits of theirs make their overall rating just a tad bit lower—besides the fact that they keep doing it.
characters. dorm leaders
content. gender neutral reader
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malleus (doesn't have a sense of space)
"look beastie, that flower is a native of ours,"
"I agree mal, but I didn't think you taking up the entirety of my seat will make me see it better,"
he blinks, then shrugs.
like i said, has NO sense of space.
if an average person would make an excuse to constantly be in physical contact with who they admire, then malleus is the complete opposite. well, not entirely but he doesn't even bother to construct an explanation as to why he's literally sat over your seat when you coincidentally get put in a table together.
if you start questioning him about it the most you'll get in a very outright 'because he wanted to.' it's not even one of those sarcastic replies he's 100% serious!
cause he believes there's no use in lying about things to be honest.. to further emphasize that, if he ever acts like he does hold fondness for you that surpasses the platonic meter but doesn't mention it he probably hasn't realized yet.
if he did he'd already walk over and bluntly tell you about it.
(I wish I could be that unbothered.)
lilia thinks it's the cutest thing though. you swear you see flashes of light for a split second from the ceiling but when you look up there's only a suspicious swinging chandelier.
^ totally has his own album full of pictures.
if malleus ever discovers it he won't even be disturbed, probably would ask for a copy 💯
since human lives, and their bodies are so fragile he'd taken it upon himself to protect you from harm. even if it means trailing behind you everywhere way too close for comfort, or standing a bees wing away.
while he is respectful most of the time, he's encouraged if you don't comment. if anything, he seems pleased you dont seem to be bothered! (and it'll get harder to tell him to stop when he's so happy the more you let it happen..)
"child of man, have you slept?"
*starts leaning his body forward, to squint at your eyes.* practically right in front of your face.
"WTF."
not even a warning or anything! but atleast he's concerned?
idia (won't even show up for anything and insists a 'virtual' date is better.')
user: where tf r u??
ghoul666: WDYM? at the dorm?
user: IVE BEEN WAITING HERE FOR 20 MINUTES
unintentionally stood you up 💀
you literally have to tell him that you're waiting for him to arrive at the specified area you discussed where your date would take place but would end up vastly irritated when he questions if you guys even did.
ghoul666: we do??
user: I'm taking my minecraft bed away from urs.
ghoul666: NO PLS
ghoul666: HELLO????
next time you log in minecraft it's probably because he begged you to play, you WILL end up seeing some kind of structure that probably took days to make. that's not even the entire thing cause the inside is entirely decorated to your taste.
in short: he constructed some kind of venue for a wedding.. even changed his skin to wear a tuxedo 😭
though he has sparked your pettiness, hence the ignoring him period. even you have got to admit that it's freaking adorable...
big sign, emphasis on please: Im sorry pls put ur minecraft bed back I can't sleep w/o u and I have to wait entire days for it to turn into morning :(
with what he's built you're sure it's 65% true.
if you do end up forgiving him, few weeks later attempting to schedule another date will only end up in naught.
ghoul666: can we not go there
user: 😐
user: you are testing my patience love
ghoul666: 😓 (he is screeching about the term of endearment part btw KABSJAJSAJA ortho would enter his room very concerned.)
ghoul666: how abt
ghoul666: mimic together? call
user: sighs
user: I'm only agreeing cause I want to spend time with you
queue more screeching from his end that you're completely oblivious to.
the only screeching you're gonna hear though is when you guys do get into call as you play, and it's mainly out of terror when his soul gets sent to the void ascending when the entity pops out of a corner and starts chasing him.
"I GOT THIS. ILL CARRY U THIS IS FINE" *screams again* but really wants to impress you so he pushes through.
unsurprisingly does carry you.
asks to match avatars right after (idia love languange)
vil (frets over you way too much.)
"vil, did you see the chocolate in the freezer?"
"oh, that? I noticed that you've already gone through the ideal number of bars this week so I took it upon myself to make sure you don't go sick on me,"
"I love you but please give it back—"
"I love you too, and no."
disclaimer: he does this for your own good 😜 (average mom excuse.)
looks out for you more than he does for his own dorm residents. everyone is wondering where he ran off to after class, especially since he's the one that scheduled the pomefiore meeting every fridays!
and to think he was the one getting irritated over the more newer first years for being late..
*shows up literally half an hour in*
why you ask? you simply shouldn't have texted him about abandoning your daily walk together through the gardens in favor of catching sleep since you called in sick (you're suspicious if crewel really did go in to check for proof, and not concern.)
vil's really feeling the absolute regret of not checking his phone during classes.. well, he only saw the message which was coincidentally sent like somehow ONE minute after the lecture started and he's only seeing it 59 minutes later.
oh you poor thing!! though the lunch break is short, he has about 5 minutes for a trip to the mirror chamber..
you'd think the 'seen' icon below your message was a weird omen for something you're not sure but it must be doom cause vil is right at the front porch of your crappy dorm. at his own expense?! looking more disheveled than you've seen him before.
if a few stray hairs was disheveled at all. more importantly, he still looked drop dead gorgeous!
you probably looked quite terrible with the blanket draped around your shoulders looking like you just crawled out of your grave, because he looked absolutely mortified at your state.
"oh great sevens.." he looked like he was faint, huffing and fanning himself with his hand. "look at you, why didn't you tell me sooner, darling?"
you blink, swallowing to make your throat less dry but your voice still comes out raspy. "I did, like an hour ago—" without your invitation whatsoever, he steps in. promptly shutting the door behind him (which surprisingly still stands sturdy.)
vil takes a hold of your shoulders before reaching his hands upwards to tilt your face around. "you should have sent earlier," he says. you keep in the comment that you were sleeping during it, and you told him about it during second period so.. "your face is so pale."
you sigh.
"yeah, I just saw. I know, I look hideous right now."
vil frowns at you, stopping to angle your face at him. "don't ever say that. I always find you beautiful even if you are.." he glances at you from face to toe, then back up. "sickly."
"... I feel offended."
"hmph, shush now. let me draw you a bath then I know something that will boost your system."
after much coaxing in his end, you reluctantly take a warm bath in the hopefully hygienic bathroom. true to his word, vil did... concoct something. though it looked pretty the random steam that flew from it was really suspicious.
the residents don't dare to question, except rook of course. who already knew what transpired! :)
epel: 😃 (atleast vil wasn't around.)
"roi du poison~ tell me, tell me! is the trickster well? have you cured them with your love?"
"rook, you have 5 seconds to get out of my face."
rook giggles away.
kalim (thinks money will buy anything, including your forgiveness.)
"here!" there's a suspiciously bright smile on his face as he hands you.. some keys?
you deadpan, jingling it in your hands. it weighs heavy than the average, probably because of the fact that it's literally made of gold. "... kalim what is this?" you emit a sigh, from suspicion and concern.
"a gift!"
"wait why does it say lot 111--"
as you can already, that was an actual, literal house. which you imagine would probably be a lots more grand, and new compared to your old baby ramshackle.
but you do love it despite it's love for falling apart at the most inconvenient of times..
fighting with kalim was rare but it was hard to even argue with him because the notion of disagreements are so bizarre to him that he unintentionally doesn't treat you seriously with your concerns, accidentally downplaying them aaaand now you're upset.
after the ranting to jamil about how you must be busy with a lot, since you haven't even talked to him in the past 2 days. all it took was a side glance to his friend in denial and jamil immediately knew.
"what do you mean they're mad!? D:"
"just.. go apologize, I don't want to get caught up in this."
if his definition of an apology is buying you an entire house...
( ^ it is btw.)
kalim really doesn't mean any harm. he just really wants to sate whatever anger you held for him <- maybe he's overthinking it but it's kalim so he's 99% sure it's his fault! even though it hasn't even been confirmed from your end he'd probably accept it whole heartedly.
he wanted you to talk to him again so badly that he wouldn’t mind showering you with houses... since your living situation doesn't live up to your kindness (sorry ramshackle love u xx)
you know what. he wouldn't even notice he's the reason you're upset at first even though he's been asking around on who put you in that mood. despite himself being the perpetrator but he didn't really know that did he?
the only reason he does is because he assumed you were just because you avoided him like some sort of.. cockroach! (he dislikes those.) and he couldn't take it anymore.
was probably 1 sec away from barging into your dorm which wouldn't take a lot of effort since one ram to the door would probably break it.
bless jamil for jailing all the carpets so kalim doesn't find them.
even if said carpets fling him off when he's riding them.
"kalim, why would you buy a literal house... and you also got a rare address paid--"
"for them! ;D"
"... you do know they'd be more offended by the fact that you'd try to replace that.., ahem. dorm, right?"
"oh... should I buy them a vehicle then?"
you only promise to forgive him once he takes back the keys, and the house entirely...
(grim begged you to keep it, 'house for him apparently.')
azul (keeps trying to offer you discounts thinking it's a good excuse to have you over.)
"I assure you. you'll find no deal better than this."
"I'm not even that hungry for sea food, actually I'm craving some--"
"you're in luck then! ahem, it's 26% off due to a special event for today."
pro tip: keep insisting to eat at other places cause he's gonna keep increasing the discount by 2% until you eventually relent. once, you made him go to the point of 75% off, it's almost hilarious if not for the fact it only worked once.
now he won't go last 50!
ahem. if you look closely you can almost spot tiny cracks accumulating with each denial you respond with, and each increase of his discount. he's grown to be wary about the bullshit 'lucky' promos you just happen to stumble on.
last time you did he practically lost a week's worth of the presumed income he's predicted cause you actually went around and told your first year friends about it... who.. in turn told some, other friends of theirs about it and you could guess.
love must hurt.. and unfortunately it's his wallet wailing.
but azul is not so easily swayed by this! for you have swayed him first! *wink wonk*
but azul has another trick up his sleeve... keeping on roping jade and floyd into it; whom are far too enthusiastic cause finally— something fun to do! someone to bother! not only have you got the most stubborn octopus having frequent suspicious 'deals' but here are his equally suspicious lackeys.
who keeps.. talking about fried octopus..
yeah, you're not sure if preaching about azul’s species is the job they were assigned.
they're fairly easy to point in the right direction anyways. the tweels have always associated you with the word 'fun' so just a little, friendly suggestion from and they were off to their merry way. mortifying every single person you come across with their sudden attachment.
one of their tricks? following you around. and just somehow, every single place you enter is just mysteriously full even though you peered inside and there was like 7 tables empty. what are they hosting? ghosts? spirits?
...
they do look like they've seen some though..
jade rn: "a shame indeed, you must be hungry. why don't we escort you back to monstro lounge?" :)
long story short you can't even reply cause the sleek eel is already guiding you around by the use of his hands on your shoulders. just to make sure you don't stray away from the destination, he says.
"didn't you say that yesterday's promo was like, a one day thing?" you quirk a brow, and you almost fool yourself into thinking he flinched.
azul clears his throat. "well—today is.. the month before you've graced octavinelle with your assistance—"
he praises himself for his quick thinking.
COME ON! it doesn't matter if you're sick of eating stir fried shrimp, or the butter one, or every single dish they serve that includes shrimp! (also do not mention that you ate somewhere else before you just decide to visit his dorm because that establishment just mysteriously got filed a non-legal business report.)
then you've got floyd chasing you around with a fork. which is more terrifying because he's holding it in a notion that would seem like he'd just stab down at you when he catches up with your little goose chase.
it's just.. you're not sure if your stomach could take another bite of the poor food he stabbed into, and is now chasing you around with.
you screech. "JADE PLEASE."
the man shrugs. "it's a free taste."
"AZUL."
"... only on a condition of course."
frankly. it took all the balls he had to actually sputter out the most simplest sentence ever, cause during the time he rehearsed that in front of his mirror it just plagued him with embarrassment but he's getting desperate.
'I'd like to take you out to dinner, somewhere else of course.'
actually, maybe obliterating any possible craving for the food of his lounge just might've been part of his plans to ask you out..?
leona (prevents you from actually being productive via dragging you down to 'nap' every. single. time.)
"I will literally fail if you don't let go of me right now."
"hmph. so what? it's not like failing a grade killed anyone."
"leona just because you've lived through a lot of fails doesn't mean I have to, we're not all rich enough to not finish school."
to which he'd retaliate that all you'd need is to marry him and you'd be set for life.
there is no winning an argument with leona when it comes to his naps. if he states that you're to be next to him as he sleeps, its final. no buts, no retaliations, cause apparently they're all invalid according to him even if you drag him to court.
rhetorically of course, that if its a comical court scene his only statements are; 'well you're wrong', 'who cares', and 'i dont care'. one way or another he's still gonna win you over and now you're fit snugly in his arms, lamenting.
and if crowley chastises you for not doing the errands (via leona's common interference.) the only thing you need to honestly do is to complain to leona about it and suddenly crowley has the kindness to forgive you for your 'laziness' then says something about enjoying your time together?
leona's work no doubt.
you suppose he does has its perks. even if most of it isn't exactly ideal.
if you're being smart then you should give him an ultimatum or something, or bribe him. but... that really has no guarantee to work either cause you're ending up defeated, or just defeated and flustered since he's somehow unconsciously flirty.
at the end of the day you can't really hate him cause the following day you find out he sent an already sleep deprived ruggie to do your work. 'so you can shut your fussing up and let me enjoy you.' he says, and you quote.
it goes something like;
"if i finish my work i'll stick by you all day."
a stready flow of confidence keeps your voice firm as you glower down at the blank-faced leona sat on the grass. he merely tilts his head, raising a brow at you and seemingly pondering from the way his eyes fly to the sky.
you'd think that maybe your plan actually worked but he merely grunts and flops backwards, holding the back of his head with his palms as he laid. and! he ignores you.
...this little greedy man... "why should i care whether or not you finish your work?" he huffs, like the evil, arrogant spawn he is but you can't really defend yourself cause said evil spawn bewitched you so much that you actually still like him.
"because you care about me?"
"...fine," he scowls, releasing a breath you'd mistake for irritation. "then, do you really think i need you to finish your work when i can just keep you right here?"
you sulk. "i'll do anything you want?"
he deadpans as if you said something stupid. "i don't need you to anything else but sit still and be pretty."
...
...
see what i mean about him eventually winning you over? yeah.
next morning there's a rebellion in savanaclaw about overworked residents and ruggie is the head of them.
"he said that he doesn't need you today." <- ruggie, steering you away.
"really?" <- you, confused
riddle (overthinks TOO HARD.)
“I'm just a little busy.”
“I understand,” riddle says.
“I'm just a little busy.” he understands.
“a little busy.” its just… a small thought…
“I'm just busy.” his mind is a hazard at this point. 
for someone as supposedly maintained as riddle—you'd think his mind is as composed as it is organized. like the pens you'd perfectly align in correlation to order of colors, or the neat pile of clothing folded neatly, tucked in some corner in your closet that is farther in since it's used less.
that's just how he is, or at least seems to be. a bundle of organized thoughts, every thought connected to another. a mind too clean to be going on haywire (when he isn't in a particular mood, that is.)
you're just busy. he thinks. you said it yourself, with that agonizingly nice smile that must be sprinkled with some kind of spell from the way it just eradicated all the protests in his throat upon sight. he isn't one to question it, he wants to help but not if you don't ask.
he can only stare with resigned acceptance at your insomnia induced eyes.
but when the curtain of darkness befalls night raven college, even in the comfort of heartslabyul is he still thinking about that thought–and he can’t help but wonder; why exactly are you busy? its not that he’s suddenly hyper aware of your lack of presence since you’ve been attached to the hip the previous week and now you’re just.
…busy…
riddle likes to think of himself as a level-headed, private person. like the boy he raised himself to be and therefore proud of. but its way past 10AM. which is usually the time he sleeps, and let me tell you that he’s never once broke the cycle for years. yet here he is, a frown of frustration present on his face as he wills his mind to sleep.
somehow closing his eyes felt forced, he immediately snapped them open once his mind decides to conjure an image of you even in the darkness his lids offers.
“THIS IS ABSURD.”
and the yell promptly woke up the entire dorm from the ferocity of his scream. (and of course gave them the flashback of their year.)
that night was one of the worst he’s ever had because he woke up with red rimmed eyes and a pounding headache that ensured his bad mood the rest of the day.
everyone noted to steer clear.
and he unknowingly steered clear of yours since you were ‘busy.’
“why are you sulking?” a voice queried, spoken as though they were eating something as they asked. a reprimand rises in his throat, but it all just dies down once his sharp eyes settle on you, slipping into the seat in front of him then raising a brow and the traces of irritation practically evaporates from his eyes.
he feels the need to cough–so he does. “i’m– i’m not.” he clears his throat, avoiding your eyes but still sneaking in glances, something he notes is that you’re still looking everytime he does. (and boring an unimpressed face because he knows you don’t believe him at all.)
guilt rises in his mind, because he feels a slither of annoyance and its the presence of pettiness that bothers him. riddle knows you’re not at fault, just his mind at convincing that you just somehow decided in the span of a day that you might not like him anymore–so he can’t help the bite. 
“why are you here?” a glance not intended to look mean.
“i thought you were busy.” he adds.
your brows raise, he spots your teeth holding your lips back from showing your grin and he feels warm. “what?” he hisses defensively, despite you not even having replied to him yet.
he leans backwards, straightening up in his seat when your chin leans forward, resting on your intertwined fingers. you flash him a smile. 
“mr. rosehearts, are you perhaps… sulking because i’m busy?”
“no!”
silence.
“no.” he repeats, weaker.
“well,” you continue, beaming. “i heard from ace that you were awake the entire night, and that you kept him awake too. are you alright?” 
he sputters. “it wasn’t because of you!”
you snort. “i didn’t even say anything about me.”
so you incline to following riddle around, poking fun at him and still trailing after the seemingly enraged red head because despite his angry protests, demanding you to go away because you’re annoying he keeps glancing back to see if you’ll follow,
so cute…….
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writers-potion · 3 months
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The classic betrayer
This is where everyone subtly knows that this guy's going to turn the other way.
The betrayer puts on a show for our heroes - kind, compassionate and supporting at first.
it just so happens that the villainthinks the heros are the bad guys.
make them actually likable.emotionally ruin the hero upon betrayal.
The remorseful traitor
whether he had bad intentions from the start or was deceived by others, the betrayer regrets his choices.
when he realizes his mistakes, it's too late to stop the evil, which introduces guilt.
throw the guilt and shame on the character.
even the protagonist can be a traitor! will others forgive him?
The Double Agent
this type of traitor will keep the readers wondering whether this guy is truly on your side.
keep your readers guessing. is that an evil smirk or a genuine smile? does he really love drinking, or is he just trying to get the hero drugged?
Snape in Harry Potter is a great example.
The guy can be good or bad - just keep balancing the two
Unrealiable narrators
these characters are not entirely betrayers, but horribly misinformed. they can make others appear like traitors - when in truth, they just have it wrong.
pit your narrow-minded narrator against his allies.
these characters are great for misunderstanding plots.
have your narrator do irreversible damage to the hero. would they forgive him?
Tragic betrayers
these are characters, due to their past wounds and trauma, cannot help but betray the group.
they confess the hero's secrets under physical/mental torment and doesn't have the backbone to do otherwise.
these characters can either be pitiful or frustrating would the hero still fight for the betrayer?
Play around with pov
you can have the readers know about the upcomong betrayal by switching points of view, building up anticipation to the moment of realization.
on the flip side, you can change povs in a way that the reader doens't see what's happening at the hero's back.
If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸
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rithmeres · 10 months
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i don’t think i’ve rewatched atla since becoming a committed pacifist and i just finished what was probably my tenth rewatch and i have never loved aang more. i've seen it so many times but i still came away with a new appreciation for the way the end of the story was handled. aang is the only survivor of a genocide and he is clinging to the last remnants of his culture and religion, and everyone is telling him the only way to save the world is to kill the dictator whose regime is responsible for the genocide, but to do so would abandon the deeply held beliefs of his people. if aang goes against his beliefs and kills ozai, his people's way of life dies completely and sozin wins.
aang knows it would be wrong but he can't see another way out so he prays for an answer, and the universe hears him and the spirits send out the lion turtle, and the creator answers him. and here's the thing that i never put together before today: aang would not have been able to energybend ozai if he had given in and wanted to kill him. the lion turtle tells aang that only the incorruptible can bend another’s energy, or else they will become corrupted themselves. and i think that aang, because of his love for the fire nation as he had once known it, was never corrupted by personal hatred for the fire lord or the fire nation. he was able to expertly hold two conflicting beliefs in harmony better than any adult could, the belief that ozai is a horrible person and the world would be better off without him and that he's still a human being with a life that is sacred.
and i don't think it's a matter of selfishness like some people make it out to be. aang is not some immature little kid who doesn't want to kill because killing is for bad guys. he's an incredibly wise and spiritual person who was shaped by airbender beliefs and upholds airbender beliefs, and he can see beyond the scope of this war. the balance of the world depends on the existence of the four nations, and aang does not just represent the air nomads, he IS the air nomads. he's all that's left.
despite many people’s interpretation of the four past avatars’ advice, none of the past avatars outright tell him to kill ozai. they tell him to be decisive, to bring justice, to be proactive, to be sacrificial. but none of them tells him definitively to kill him. he doesn't disobey or ignore their advice, he follows their ancient wisdom while still staying true to his beliefs. yangchen actually comes the closest to outright telling him to kill ozai (even more than kiyoshi, surprisingly) but what she fails to account for is that aang is not just the avatar, he is the last airbender, and being the last airbender is far greater a burden than being the avatar. no matter what happens, once he dies, there will always be another avatar. but if he is not careful to preserve the airbender way of life, there will be no more airbenders. yangchen could sacrifice her air nomad way of life for the sake of her duty to the world because there were thousands of other air nomads to continue their traditions. aang has no such privilege.
and it's not that he doesn't want to kill, it's that he actually doesn't think he can do it -- both that he won't be able to emotionally bring himself to kili someone, and, prodigy that he is, he doesn't have the raw bending skill to overcome a comet-powered master firebender. and then it turns from 'i don't think i can do it' into ‘i can’t do it.’ and when the avatar state gives him enough power to actually do it, he changes the answer to ‘i won’t do it.’ he overcomes all the combined power of his past lives to say no, i have found another answer and i will remain incorruptible. to kill is to maintain the power struggle of the fire nation and to reject air nomad wisdom and without airbenders the world CANNOT be brought into balance.
the only thing ozai cares about is power, and that's what the entire fight with ozai is about, physically and ideologically, because ozai only sees power in terms of force, fear, threats, and violence. to ozai, aang (and his entire people) are weak and undeserving of life because they are largely pacifists, but he fails to see the magnificent power that the airbenders do hold, spiritual wisdom and mastery of the self and contentment and joy and harmony and a deep understanding of the world that a man like ozai could never obtain. to kill ozai would ratify ozai’s worldview that power as he defines it is the most important pursuit in the world and the only way to assert one's right to be in the world is to be cruel and violent like him. i think to ozai, becoming powerless might be worse than being dead. he wants power, or he wants death, and aang gives him neither. it upends everything he believed in. aang, the avatar, but more importantly, the last airbender, armed by his past lives' power and his people's love and the spirit world's blessing and the lion turtle's omniscience (and toph's mastery of true sight through neutral jing), ends the war 100 years to the day after the air nomad genocide, in the way that his people taught him, with power that goes beyond force and violence, with spiritual wisdom, with an incorruptible soul, with mercy -- mercy that is not weakness, mercy that brings justice.
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carrotkicks · 6 months
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some Post-Scoop Mike + fill-in-the-blanks headcanons
more brainworms below the cut <3
OKOK about those Custom Night headcanons: Michael gets fired from Freddy's (1987 & 1992) because of "tampering with the animatronics" which only happens after the custom nights -> changing the animatronics AI settings is the aforementioned "tampering."
"Putting someone back together" assumedly means that the souls possessing each animatronic are in control of the robots without their endo's AI programming getting in the way. In Sister Location Michael put Elizabeth back together by removing Baby's AI chip, allowing her to "be free."
But in terms of Michael's current experience, he doesn't really know how remnant work yet (he doesn't know that to remove possession he needs to do things -- Happiest Day-- in the Flipside AND burn the metal) All he's got so far as to "The endo-programming has some kind of control over possession"
Which is why he tries changing the settings/internal components of the Animatronics of FNaF 1&2 instead of just going straight to arson like he does in FnaF 3
Then again Mike is like.. a cranky 50-something year old by then. he ain't having it with the clean and neat way.
If you guys have seen the Gibi's Good Idea Bad Idea mega lore video, the entire dual-narrative concept where Cassidy operates in the Flipside/atari minigame spirit realm while Mike works the Nights and fixes things in the physical realm. Literally makes me vibrate because YEAH that literally makes so much sense!!!! Golden Freddy and Mike working in parallel has always made sense. FNaF 1 being when they team up. Yeah.. yes. I just feel so insane about that concept, it's become a fundamental part of my understanding of this series.
Also I like his video because he ACTUALLY acknowledges the Flipside as a big part of the world in his version of the lore because the only thing i know of that actually does that is DSAF. f-ing dsaf...
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reiding-writing · 5 months
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hiii, i hope you're well! i saw that you are taking requests for spencer and i really like your angst fics so i was wondering if you could write one with unrequited love?
preferably bau!reader who has feelings for him but he doesn't and she watches him get with someone else and everybody knows how she feels about him but he is oblivious, ending is up to you but i love me a sad ending heheh 😸
transgression [ s.r ]
You’re in love with Spencer Reid. He’s in love with somebody else.
WARNINGS: SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE MAEVE ARC, LOTS of misunderstanding, Spencer is kind of a bad friend, lots of arguing, major character death
spencer reid x gn!reader || ANGST || 8.2k || masterlist!!
a/n: sorry for the delay, but i did warn you it was gonna be long so- also i listened to ceilings on repeat whilst writing this so take that as you will 🫶
did i bend the maeve arc to my will for this fic? yes. yes i did.
taglist (slashed blogs couldn’t be tagged): @babyspiderling @marsxoxo2 @vytvyvy @hpstuff244444 @frostooo @ohmysw33 @radioactiveinvisible @devilsadvcte @the-local-pendeja @kakashis-formal-simp @robinswrld
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You suppose you did it to yourself.
Spencer’s migraines had gotten increasingly worse over the last few months, and after a few consecutive days of hounding him, he’d finally decided to go and see a medical professional about it.
You’d expected him to come back with news about how his brain stem was too active from how hard he was working himself, or that he’d managed to raise his blood pressure to an unhealthy high from all the stress he was under.
Instead he’d told you that they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with him and that he’d been referred to a geneticist to check if the cause of his sudden mind-numbing aching was due to an underlying condition that might have been passed down from his mother.
He’d come back and forth to you for weeks about his phone calls with the doctor.
How she was helping him with his sleep deprivation.
How she was helping to manage his diet.
How she loved classic literature.
How she and him had spent four consecutive hours on the phone debating over the logistics of a novel they both enjoyed.
You could see the change happening before your eyes, and you weren’t the only one either.
“Pretty boy’s chipper this morning,” Morgan joins you at the kitchenette, his eyes following Spencer as he takes a seat at his desk with all of the enthusiasm of a golden retriever puppy who’d been let off his leash for the first time.
You hum with a nod, focusing your attention on the two cups of coffee you were making, heaping tablespoons of sugar into Spencer’s Doctor Who mug to satisfy his insatiable need for sweetness. “They’re reading a book together,”
“Really?” You respond to Morgan’s raised eyebrow with a short nod and another hum.
“Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton, apparently she finds the religious analysis ‘fascinating’,” You can’t help the small contemptment that seeps into your tone as you reiterate what Spencer had told you to Morgan, and you can practically feel his pitiful gaze as he watches you make your coffee.
“I’ve heard of that book before from somewhere,”
“I tried to get him to read it a few months ago,” You take a sip of your coffee at the end of your sentence, barely able to taste it over the scolding water but not finding the mind to care.
You leave your conversation with Morgan at that, taking the two mugs in your hands and walking back into the bullpen, placing Spencer’s mug in front of him and walking around the cluster of desks to reach your own.
He’s sure he doesn’t need to verbalise it, but Morgan feels increasingly sorry for your situation, noting how you skirt past Spencer’s “thank you” without a response as you bury your head in your files.
he can’t imagine how much the fact that Spencer had seemingly formed a crush on his geneticist ripped you apart.
And the worst part? He’d never met her in person.
All scientific laws of attraction be damned, Spencer Reid had fallen in love with someone he’d never met in the span of three months, and you we’re resigning yourself to sit on the sidelines and watch as the man you had been in love with for six years find the happiness that you longed for with somebody else.
How you managed to keep up your facade you didn’t know.
You’d offered him change for the pay phone he’d call her from when he was running short. You’d let him rant to you about her opinions on a novel that you had failed to get him to read. You made excuses for him to leave the office early so that he could spend his time on the phone with her.
You were the one that sent him to the hospital and caused him to meet her in the first place.
He never hesitated to remind you of that fact, thanking you vicariously every time he relayed his conversations with the doctor back to you.
As the weeks progressed he stopped calling her that. She wasn’t ‘the doctor’ anymore. She was Maeve.
He didn’t call you by your first name and you’d known him for ten times longer that he’d known her. He didn’t even call Morgan by his first name and those two were practically brothers.
And that part was probably what hurt the most.
Maeve.
A name of Irish origin meaning ‘intoxicating’. How fitting.
Apparently the Irish goddess of love and desire was named Maeve. You could see the glimmer in Spencer’s eye that told you his Maeve was just as important as the mythological goddess he was describing.
His Maeve.
“So why haven’t you two actually gone on a date or anything?” You take a sip from the mug in your hands, swivelling your chair back and forth with your foot as a pivot. “You’ve been talking for what, four months now? Surely it’s about time you actually met her in person,”
“It’s complicated,” Spencer sighs as he collects the loose papers he was working on in a pile. He didn’t want to divulge Maeve’s issues without her permission.
“You’ve been saying that for the last six weeks Spencer,” You roll your eyes as you discard your half-empty mug on the table. “If I didn’t know any better i’d say you’re putting it off,”
Spencer shook his head adamantly at your suggestion. You couldn’t have been more wrong. He did want to meet her. Desperately. He’d wanted to meet her since the end of their first phone call. But he also wanted to keep her safe.
How do you meet up with somebody who’s hiding from a stalker without endangering them?
“I do want to meet her. It’s just- she’s dealing with something personal and it’s put a rift our plans, that’s all,”
“So it’s her not wanting to meet up with you then?” You raise an eyebrow at him over your desks.
“Look it’s- You don’t get it okay? It was a mutual understanding from both of us.” You can hear Spencer’s tone become more defensive as you spoke, and you raised both of your hands in surrender.
“Okay, i’m sorry for prying-” You ended your apology with a laugh, trying to keep the conversation lighthearted despite feeling your heart deflate in your chest at the way the friendliness his his eyes fizzled out the longer you looked at him.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Spencer’s late to work this morning.
It’s 8:06 when he finally walks through the glass doors, the coffee you made him stone cold after sitting lamely on his desk for the better part of twenty minutes. He doesn’t so much as offer an apology as he picks up the mug and makes his way over to the kitchenette to pour the coffee down the sink.
You follow behind him in a mix of intrigue and a want to refill your own mug, swilling it out with some water as you watch Spencer load a coffee pod into the machine. “Phone call last longer than you expected?”
“Hm? Oh- yeah, we were discussing the literary analysis of Annabelle Lee,” Spencer’s demeanour seems to brighten immediately once he’s given an opportunity to discuss the details of his phone call with Maeve, although the beginning of his ramble is quickly cut off by the beeping of the coffee machine.
You wait patiently for his coffee to finish before you begin making yours, raising an eyebrow as Spencer pulls out a regular teaspoon instead of the usual tablespoon he’d incorrectly use to load his coffee with sugar.
Your intrigue only heightened when he pulled a carton of milk from the mini-fridge. Not even normal milk. Soy milk.
“Since when do you drink coffee like a normal person?”
His eyes flickered from his mug to your face as he tipped a single teaspoon of sugar into his drink before replacing the bag back where it came from. “It’s a part of my managed diet, Maeve thinks that my increased sugar intake might be one of the risk factors for my headaches,”
“Did she tell you to put soy milk in it too?” You don’t know why you have the urge to be petty, Spencer had long since needed to change his coffee drinking habits for the sake of decreasing his sugar intake and Maeve’s suggestions were beneficial for his health.
It was just the fact that it was her that ticked you off.
“She did actually, it provides the same amount of riboflavin as cow’s milk, which acts as a soothing agent whilst also helping constrict inflamed blood vessels, but without all of the excess fats in regular milk that might make my migraines more frequent, it’s genius really,”
He thought that her ideas were genius. Him. Mr ‘I have three PhDs and an IQ of 187’, thought someone else’s ideas were genius.
You’re sure that he already knew the benefits of milk alternatives, and yet he attributed the ‘revelation’ of what they could do to Maeve. Of course he did.
“When was the last time you made a decision for yourself?” The question comes out much harsher than you intend it to, and you can tell by the way Spencer furrows his eyebrows that he’s taken offence to it.
“Sorry, that came out wrong,” No it didn’t. “I’m just a little surprised that someone as independent as you is so… willing to follow blind instructions,” Your attempt at saving yourself half-works, that wrinkle between his eyebrows disappears and you can see that the glimmer in his eyes is returning slowly.
“She’s a doctor, of course i’m going to follow her suggestions,”
You give him a soft nod as you pick up your mug from under the coffee machine. “Yeah, no, that makes sense, it’s just a little surprising is all,”
You don’t give him a chance to respond to you before you’re walking away from the kitchenette to retake a seat at your desk, fearing you might say something out of pocket if you continue the conversation any longer.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
You were really pissed off now.
You’d arrived back in Quantico three days ago, and you were still piled up to your neck in paperwork.
Maybe you would’ve had it finished by now if Spencer would stop talking about the fact that he was “-finally going to meet Maeve in person,”.
You had half the mind to snap and tell him to just shut up, although by the saving grace of Morgan you thankfully didn’t have to.
“Reid, give their poor ears a break man,” Your thankful for Morgan in times like this. He knew you were knee-deep in your feelings for Spencer, and he knew that every time Spencer so much as spoke Maeve’s name it carved another hairline fracture in your heart.
You were close to shattering, and Morgan could tell.
“Oh- right, sorry,” Spencer offered you an awkward smile which you mirrored back at him.
“It’s alright, don’t worry about it,” You shake your head in a polite dismissal of his apology before turning your head back down towards your files.
“I take it you’re nervous then?” Alex’s voice cut through the beginning of an awkward tension between the two of you as she entered to bullpen with a cup of coffee in hand.
“Well- I mean- you know…” Upon being unable to find a sufficient response, Spencer resorts to shrugging into his chair. “I just don’t want to ruin anything,”
“But aren’t you curious what she looks like?” Alex raises an eyebrow with concern like Spencer was he son going on his first ever date.
“it doesn’t matter what she looks like I mean- she’s already the most beautiful girl in the world to me it’s just-”
You don’t stick around to hear the rest of the conversation.
You sudden upheaval from your desk stops Spencer’s sentence as his eyes follow you across the bullpen and out of the glass doors, followed shortly by Morgan as he jogs after you.
“Hey- Wait up a minute-” Morgan catches your arm before you have a chance to get in the elevator, and as you turn your eyes towards him he can see the beginnings of tears forming in your eyes.
“I don’t know how much longer I can do this..”
Morgan can do nothing more than pull your head into his shoulder and wrap his arms tightly around your back with a soft mutter of your name. “I know kid, I know…”
“He thinks she’s the most beautiful girl in the world,” You turn your head up from Morgan’s shoulder to meet his eyes, a single stray tear cascading down your cheek, illuminated under the florescent lights. “How am I supposed to compete with that..?”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Incidentally, Spencer’s date with Maeve didn’t end up happening. Conflicting work schedules or something, you weren’t really listening.
Maybe all of your subconscious thoughts had leaked into reality and finally gave you momentary release from the crushing defeat of having Spencer go on a date with someone else.
Maybe it was them punishing you further by forcing you to sit through him rant about the book she’d left him at the front of the restaurant.
It didn’t help that you already had a headache that made it feel like your eye sockets were being kicked by an annoying kid sat behind you on an aeroplane, leaving a dull ache in it’s wake and making you just want to bury yourself in a hole and hibernate.
“And right at the back she wrote ’Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone; we find it with another’ it’s a quote from-”
“Thomas Merton. Yeah, I know.” You dig the knuckle of your left thumb into cavity of your eye socket over your closed eyelid, hoping to relieve some of the tension that’s lingering there and disrupting your thoughts.
“Thomas Merton’s ‘Love and Living’ specifically,” If Spencer noticed your discomfort he didn’t acknowledge it. “It’s a collection of his essays on the importance of love to live, so for her to have written it specifically knowing that I would read it means-”
“Reid.”
Your tone stops him from continuing any further, and he blinks at you with that sweet puppy-dog expression that would usually have you weak at the knees.
“No offence, but I don’t care about your over-the-phone girlfriend or the quote that she wrote in your book.” Your tone carried a harshness to it that Spencer wasn’t used to hearing from you. It was cold and detached and not like you at all.
“Are- you okay?”
“No, Reid, I’m not, and if you’d bothered to ask about my life every once in a while instead of using me like a human diary maybe you would’ve realised that already.”
You practically slam your file closed as you speak, pushing your chair out from your desk and leaving him sat in shock at your sudden change in attitude.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
After a bit of introspection, Spencer did realise that he hadn’t been treating you very fairly. He hadn’t asked you how your life had been in 3 months and 26 days. Four of those days he’d spent in damn near radio silence. He wasn’t sure he could take it much longer.
He missed you.
It was a bit ironic considering you sat directly opposite him for almost eight hours a day five days a week, but after you’d snapped at him last week, he truly realised just how much of his day he spent socialising with you, and just how much he missed talking to you.
So he decided that he was going to apologise.
And what better form of an apology for being dismissive of your feelings than putting a personal effort into something for you.
He walked into the office that morning with a leather bound copy of The Parasite by Arthur Conan Doyle stored cautiously in his messenger bag, pages scrawled with annotations from Spencer’s own reading of the novel that he hoped would be insightful to you as you read it yourself.
He’d remembered you saying how much you wanted to read the novel a few months ago, so he figured giving it to you as a personalised apology would show that he really did care about you and had listened to what you’d told him.
“Are you busy?” Spencer asks, though he already knows the answer to the question.
He’d been watching you from the other side of the room all morning, hoping for a moment or two of eye contact to see if there was a possibility of a conversation. A look from one to the other; even a smile would’ve been enough to make him feel validated and content. And he would have been willing to settle for that.
But you never looked up. Not even once.
"Mhm," You continue to not spare Spencer so much as glance as he speaks, turning over the page of the file you were working through.
“Can I take a minute of your time?” He tried to catch your gaze again, only to be met by your continued focus on your work. The last thing he wanted to do was disrupt your work routine, but he also knew that he needed to talk to you sooner rather than later.
“Please,” he said softly. “It’s important.”
You exhale heavily through your nose, exasperation written clearly in your expression as you leave your pen as a page marker to close the manilla folder on your desk. You turn your head upwards, raising an eyebrow and opening your hands to agitatedly indicate for him to continue.
You wouldn’t lie and say that it didn’t hurt being so openly cold towards Spencer, but you’d reached a breaking point, and you couldn’t bare sitting idly on the sidelines and letting him tear your heart to pieces anymore.
Spencer was relieved that you’d granted him your attention, but the look you directed towards him was enough to make him wince. You weren’t looking at him through a lens of indifference but rather cold, hard disappointment.
He took a deep breath, trying to gather the right words for what he had to say.
“I’m sorry,”
He seemed almost breathless as he spoke, like he’d just finished a tangent about something without taking the time to breathe. “I know that I’ve been spending too much time talking about Maeve and not enough paying attention to you.”
"You don’t say," You mutter the words under your breath to yourself, but your sure that Spencer heard you based on the way his eyebrows knit and the small gleam of hope in his eyes dwindles to barely a flicker.
He was trying not to react to your snide comment. Spencer knew that your tone didn’t leave any room to deny your meaning. He’d been selfish in talking exclusively about his relationship and hadn’t realised how it was affecting you.
“I’m sorry,” Spencer repeated. “You mean so much to me and I haven’t been showing that.”
"Thank you," Your thanks are polite but dismissive, like you were acknowledging his apology but choosing to not actually consider it as one, and it left Spencer with an expression of clear frustration.
He was used to being able to read your facial expressions and emotions in the past, but now you were just an unreadable wall of disappointment. He had hoped the apology would've been enough, but it was clear that you weren’t going to let him off that easily.
Time to pull out the last resort.
He bent over and fumbled with his bag for a few moments before pulling out the novel he’d brought with him face up.
“I uh… got you this,” He holds out the book towards you. “You said you wanted to read it right? So I uh.. annotated it for you to make it more enjoyable,”
You take the novel from him with a raised eyebrow as your eyes scan the cover, a clear flicker of confusion in your expression.
Spencer noticed your expression and furrowed his own brow in confusion. You didn't seem to recognise the book. In fact, the look on your face made him wonder whether you even knew this book existed at all before this moment.
“I hope you… like it,” he said nervously. “I was going off what you'd talked about before. You mentioned the book was a classic?”
"I… have never seen this book in my life,”
“B-But…” Spencer knew this was going to be awkward at some point, but he'd hoped not this early into the conversation. He could feel his cheeks burning from embarrassment, and it was only getting worse as he searched your face for an answer to this awkward situation.
“I… swear I heard you mention it once.”
You give him a short shake of your head and a pursed smile of awkward thanks as you put the book down on your desk.
Spencer looked away, embarrassed beyond belief. He hadn't even been able to deliver an apology properly, let alone make you feel special like he'd originally intended to.
How had he gotten it wrong? He had an eidetic memory for god’s sake.
When you put the book down on your desk, his eyes flicked back to the book. He'd spent almost 4 hours annotating and researching it and now it felt like all that effort had been wasted.
If you hadn’t mentioned it then who had? Someone must’ve. Someone he obviously equated with you to the point where he’d somehow managed to override his eidetic memory to mix the two of you up.
It takes him a few moments before you hear him whisper out a name under his breath, the palm of his hand dragging down the front of his face at the realisation.
"Maeve…"
The mention of her name had your eyes flickering away from the leather cover and right back to Spencer’s face, awkwardness completely rid of your features and replaced with a mix of negativity that Spencer wasn’t sure he wanted to dig into.
"Are you serious?" Your words come out less questioningly and more accusatory, and you hold the book up so that he can see it once more, the gold embossing on the cover glinting under the overhead light as if to only taunt Spencer further for his mistake.
“You apologise for continuously disregarding me for your girlfriend by giving me a book that she showed interest in?”
You could see Spencer's face fall as your words sink in.
He hadn't even taken the time to think over what he was apologising with. It was almost as if his brain automatically just reverted back to his girlfriend's interests as an escape from dealing with his own guilt and sadness.
"Damn it," he whispered to himself. And in that moment he realised he'd just committed the biggest crime someone could make when trying to apologise.
“Like you constantly flaunting your relationship in my face verbally wasn’t bad enough.”
"I'm sorry I-" he says again, voice teeming with sincerity and guilt.
"You are truly and utterly unbelievable Spencer Reid." Your words didn’t carry anger as much as they did disappointment, and he could see the astoundment in your eyes as you pushed your chair backwards to stand, dropping the book straight in the trash bin by your desk before walking off.
It’s where it belongs; Right alongside the small sliver of respect you still had for him.
Spencer could've said so much more: he could've admitted how ashamed he felt for his careless actions and he could've apologised again and again a million times if it meant you'd stick around and give him a chance to make it up to you.
But you had already made it clear that you weren't in the right state of mind to discuss this matter further.
The best thing he could do now was give you space as he watched you walk away, a deep pain in his heart that slowly ate him alive from the inside.
He’d well and truly fucked up.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
“Oh sweetheart, what’s wrong?” You were bordering tears by the time you reached Garcia’s office, unintentionally interrupting her lunch break with Alex in the process, though the two seemed to care less about the interruption and more about the fact that you liked like you were about to cry your eyes out.
You take in a sharp breath through your nose as you try to tape together the cracks in your composure, although with every one you seal three more seem to appear in it’s place.
“I-” You can barely get the first word out before the tears start rolling down your face, and Alex immediately stands from her seat to guide you to sit in her place.
“Hey, you’re alright, slowly,” Alex’s hands find your shoulders and rub reassuring circles against your shirt. The slow breath you take in doesn’t stop the flood of tears that’s blurring your vision, and you only manage to get out a single word, but it’s all the two need to understand what’s got you so overwhelmed.
“Spencer-”
“I swear I am two seconds away from smacking that boy over the back of the head,” You can hear the clear frustration in Garcia’s tone. “Surely he’s got to realise how much he’s hurting you by now,”
“He does… I lashed out at him and then left to come here…” You rub your eyes with the back of your hand alongside a small sniffle, trying to rid your vision of it’s blurriness from your tears.
“Good, the boy deserves to have some sense knocked into him,” You appreciate Garcia taking your side, but you can’t help that small lingering feeling of guilt that invades the back of your mind.
“He’s just in love, it’s not his fault…” The words almost physically pain you to say. The verbal acceptance that Spencer Reid was indeed in love with somebody. Somebody who wasn’t you.
“That doesn’t mean that he should be disregarding you though sweetheart,” Alex’s tone is soft and almost maternal, and your sure that it doesn’t help how emotional you are.
Garcia’s right hand reaches forward to straighten out the collar of your shirt, unintentionally crumpled as you try to wipe your face of your emotions. “You’re his friend, and you have been his friend for longer than he’s known this girl he’s talking to, it’s not fair for him to completely push you to the side,”
Garcia was right. It’s not fair. Nothing about how Spencer had been treating you since he’d started speaking to Maeve had been fair. And you were done making excuses for the boy just because you knees deep in your feelings for him.
You didn’t deserve to feel guilty. You didn’t deserve to feel bad for lashing out at Spencer for apologising for not showing interest in your life by further proving just how little he’d actually payed attention to you. You didn’t deserve to cry because he was the most stupid genius to ever live and couldn’t see that you were hopelessly in love with him. You didn’t deserve to suffer by his hand.
It wasn’t fair.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
“Maeve’s been kidnapped.”
You have to consciously suppress the small voice in the back of your head that celebrates the possibility that she might not be a part of Spencer’s life for much longer. It’s a horrible thought. You should never wish ill upon anyone, no matter how much you internally despised them.
Still, that part of you that was still petty, that was still infuriated with Spencer and Maeve, wanted you to tell Spencer straight to his face that you weren’t going to help him find her and that it was karma for how he’d treated you.
But you weren’t a bad person.
As much as you might hate her, she was still important to Spencer.
“I have a wealth of knowledge i should be applying to this case, but- i can’t focus on anything for more than four seconds at a time… which makes me the dumbest person in the room-” Spencer’s eyes are full of desperation as they scan across your teammates.
“So please help me… Please help me find her…” The desperation in his voice is heartbreaking, the remnants of tears staining his face as he explains the context of the situation through broken sentences.
“We don’t have an official case, so we’ll be working on personal time,” Hotch’s voice is much quieter than you’re used to. Softer, more considerate. “Does anybody want to leave?”
You can feel his eyes linger on you as he asks the question, and you subconsciously purse your mouth into a tight line to stop yourself from impulsively pulling out of the investigation.
You might be detrimentally frustrated with him, but you did want to help. Even if it ultimately resulted in your downfall.
Hotch gave you a short nod before turning to the rest of the team. “Good, let’s get to work,”
It didn’t take Garcia very long to track Maeve down, mostly attributed to her unique name and specialised job.
Dr. Maeve Donovan, a professor at Mendel University who took a sabbatical leave 10 months ago.
The group split into different groups once they’d found her, JJ and Morgan heading off to a loft her parents owned, Alex and Rossi heading to the lab she used to work at, and you and Hotch, accompanied by Spencer, going to speak to Maeve’s parents.
“Reid,” Garcia’s tone is soft as she looks over her laptop screen towards him as he begins to stand from the conference table. “I have a picture of her, do you want to know what she looks like?”
“No,”
Spencer’s answer is immediate, joined by a shake of his head.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
You and Spencer watched from behind the one way mirror as the interview progressed.
They’d last spoken to Maeve five days ago. Her mother had cancer. She was also a geneticist. They were suspicious of her ex fiancé Bobby.
Her fiancé?
You can see Spencer’s face drop at the words despite the low lighting in the room, and you can’t help but furrow your eyebrows yourself.
She had a fiancé?
Spencer practically storms out of the office after the questioning is over, and Hotch has to remind him to calm down as they reach the apartment of Robert Putnam with Morgan and Rossi in tow.
When the door opens the five of you aren’t greeted by Robert, but rather a girl, a girl who looked very confused.
You invite yourselves inside at the girl’s recognition that Robert was inside the apartment.
“And who are you?”
“I’m Diane, his girlfriend,” She raised an eyebrow as the five of you looked around, confusion cut short as Robert rounds the corner questioning the sudden voices coming from his living room.
“Hey babe what’s-“
“Robert Putnam, FBI we’d like to-” Spencer’s voice cuts him off harshly as he rushes to speak, although he stops his sentence halfway as a flicker of recognition falls across his features and his anger turns to dread.
“Hey, I know you,” Robert doesn’t have the time to say anything else to Spencer before Hotch forces him out of the room, shutting the door behind him to speak to Spencer privately whilst you Morgan and Rossi remained inside.
Hotch returned a few minutes later. Spencer didn’t.
You end up taking Hotch’s place as you push yourself out of the apartment with a small “excuse me,” to follow after Spencer as he walks out of the apartment building.
“Spencer- wait up a minute-”
He doesn’t stop at your call, and you’re practically running down the stairs by the time you get to him, already out of the front doors of the apartment building.
“Hey-” You take a second to catch your breath before turning your eyes back towards him again. “Are you alright?”
You could see the flicker of confusion in his eyes as he met your gaze.
The last time you spoke to him you threw away any remnant of your friendship with him in the bin alongside the book he’d given you, and now here you were, chasing after him to make sure that he was okay.
“Why did you agree to help?”
Your face falls from concern to surprise at his question, and he takes it as a sign to continue.
“I know that you don’t like her, so why are you here?” You could see the beginnings of tears forming in his eyes, clearly overwhelmed with how the investigation was going.
“She’s important to you Spencer. Like her or not I care about you. So therefore I care about her,” You don’t think as you speak, words spilling out of your mouth with no conscious filter.
“I’m sorry.” Spencer’s apology elicits a sigh from your mouth, and you shake your head softly at him.
“Forget it, let’s focus on getting Maeve home safe alright?” He obliges to your request with a purse of his lips and a small nod, turning his eyes towards the ground.
“What’re you thinking about?” His eyes fall on yours once more at your question, round with confusion and glistening with the starts of tears. “I can see it in your face, you’re calculating something in your head,”
He exhales through his mouth in a small laugh. You’d always been able to figure him out, and not just because you were a profiler.
“2,412 hours,” His tone is uncertain, mixed between gratefulness for you observance and something far more upsetting. “That’s how long Maeve and I have contacted each other counting letters and phone calls…”
“That’s what-” You take a second to do the calculation in your head. “100 days?”
“100.5…” He runs his hand backwards through his hair, pressing his eyes closed like he’s afraid tears will spill from them if he doesn’t. “What if that’s all I get?”
“It won’t be Spencer…”
“You don’t know that-“
“Yes Spencer, I do,” You have to consciously suppress the sigh that threatens to leave your mouth, pushing your lingering distaste for Maeve down with it. “She is going to be fine, I promise,”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Turns out Maeve’s ex fiancé wasn’t the stalker. In fact, he was being stalked himself, and whilst JJ and Garcia were looking over the images posted to Robert whilst him and Maeve were still together they discovered something that changed the entire direction of the investigation.
Maeve’s face had scribbled out in eyeliner.
You and the team spent the next thirty minutes rebuilding the profile from the bottom up.
“Celebrity stalkers are usually non violent,”
“You want to tell that to John Lennon Rossi?” Spencer looked up from his lap towards the group at the table, having separated himself from the group to sit on a sofa lining one of the walls so he couldn’t bias the profile.
It wasn’t going too well.
“What was it that Mark David Chapman said after he shot him?” Spencer stood from his seat, anger flaring in his nostrils. “‘It was like all of my nobody-ness and all of his somebody-ness collided’,”
You could hear the rise in his tone as he worked himself up the more he spoke.
“Spencer-“
“Maeve is somebody. And this- bitch is a nobody.”
“Spencer.”
Spencer caught your gaze, and immediately fizzling out of his eyes and replaced with guilt. “I’m sorry- I can’t be very helpful right now I should leave-“
“Yes you can Reid, you have 100.5 days of communication with this girl and a recall everything verbatim,” Morgan’s gaze is entirely concerned with Spencer’s outburst.
“There’s too much of it, and I can’t sort through any of it clearly-“ Spencer is clearly on the edge of breaking, and you can tell he’s not going to be able to keep his composure for much longer.
“Then pick one of us and we’ll go through it with you,” Hotch leaned his elbows against the table, his voice again portraying that soft, parental tone that said he knew how overwhelmed Spencer was getting.
Spencer didn’t even say anything, his eyes just silently flickered over to you and you knew you couldn’t refuse him.
You return his silence as you get up from your seat and pat your hand on his shoulder for the two of you to exit the room together.
Time to torture yourself for the sake of Spencer’s wellbeing.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Diane Turner, a research assistant working for her PhD in the same lab as Maeve. A student who had her thesis rejected because it contained a heavy sample bias that included both of her parents.
It took a while, but Garcia eventually managed to track down a loft that was owned under Diane’s parents’ names, less than 10 minutes away from Maeve’s apartment.
“Take your gun and vest off,” Diane’s voice is harsh through the receiver attached to the front of the building, and Spencer’s eyes flickered up from the silk blindfold in his hands to the metal box.
He doesn’t question the orders as he immediately begins stripping the vest from his torso, dropping it and his gun on the floor.
“Now come in alone.”
“Spencer.” You call out to him as he reaches for the door handle, and he gives you that look that makes your stomach do flips in your torso. Except this time it’s not that pleasant fluttery feeling, but instead an existential dread at the fact that he might not walk out of the building alive.
“I’ll be okay,” He gives you a nod of reassurance as he pushes the door open, and you find yourself clenching your hands around your gun to stop yourself from following after him.
The six of you wait outside for what feels like hours, and you lean back and forth on the balls of your feet as you become increasingly restless with the situation.
Then, a gunshot.
And a second.
And your heart drops in your chest.
You’re not entirely present as you rush into the building with the team following behind you, gun raised at your eyes.
Spencer had to be okay. He had to. He was going to be fine. You were going to walk into that room and he was going to be perfectly fine.
You hoped Maeve was alright too. As much as she was unintentionally causing you literal hell, you knew that she meant everything to Spencer.
You knew that he’d choose her over anything. He’d choose her over you.
And right now you don’t care. You just want him to be okay.
You force the door open to the loft with your foot, gun pointed straight ahead at the first person you see.
“Stay back-“ Spencer practically shouts from where he’s half lying on the floor, right hand clutching tightly at his left bicep, trails of blood cascading down his fingers and onto the floor.
“Stay back stay back don’t shoot-“
You let out an audible sigh at the fact that Spencer wasn’t critically harmed, although upon a whimper of his name from further across the room you turn your eyes up to the noise.
And you finally meet the girl that’s caused you ten months of hell. Held at gunpoint.
That small voice in the back of your head tells you that this might be your chance to finally rid her from your life, to let her succumb to whatever Diane had planned and leave Spencer to you.
But you take one look at the desperation in her eyes and any loathing that remained in your mind immediately fizzled out.
It wasn’t her fault. Of course it wasn’t. She was just a girl that happened to be in love.
“Diane,” Spencer pushes himself to stand, and you can see the pain in his face as he does. “There’s still a way out of this,”
“You never wanted me. Never!” Diane pushes the gun she’s holding hard against Maeve’s neck, and you can see her eyes squeeze closed as she attempts to keep herself from crying. “You lied!”
“I didn’t.”
Spencer shakes his head adamantly, and you glance over at Hotch as you spread across the back of the room, guns raised in Diane’s direction. “Diane, I offered you a deal, and you can still take it,”
“Me for her. Let me take her place,”
You only have a view of the back of Spencer’s head now, but you can tell by the tone of his voice that his expression is a pure display of desperation, one that you’re happy you can’t see because you’d lose your composure in an instant.
“You would do that?” Diane’s question is angry and accusatory, tears rolling down her face as she presses the gun against Maeve’s neck once more.
Spencer nods with no threat in his tone. “Yes,”
“You would kill yourself for her?”
“Yes.”
You practically feel your heart stop.
“Thomas Merton,” Maeve’s voice is almost exactly as you imagined it to be. Soft, smooth and, as Spencer had called it all those months ago, ‘dipped in honey’.
“Who’s Thomas Merton?” Diane’s tone contrasts Maeve’s tenfold, pitchy, uneven and overrun with manic anger.
“He knows,” You can see Maeve’s eyes flicker, and you assume that they meet Spencer’s as his shoulders drop. “He knows.”
“Who’s Thomas Merton?” Diane shakes Maeve in her grasp as if to intensify the urgence of her question, and you tighten your grip on your gun in instinctual response. “Who is he?”
“He’s the one thing you can never take from us,” Maeve’s voice is confident and defiant despite the clear tears in her eyes.
Thomas Merton could’ve been something between Spencer and you.
“No.”
You can see a clear change in Diane’s expression at Maeve’s words, and she lowers the gun from Maeve’s head only to hold it up against her own, staring directly into Spencer’s eyes.
“Wait-”
Spencer barely has time to shout the word before the gun fires, and you flinch at the sound as you watch Maeve and Diane both drop to the floor, dark red blood pooling around the two.
You can feel the tension in the room as everyone computes what just happened, guns lowering slowly as their eyes lock onto the two women on the floor.
You’re not focused on that. You’re focused on the tightness of Spencer’s shoulders as he takes sharp breaths in and out of his nose.
The way he seems to forget about the bullet wound in his arm as his legs give out underneath him.
The way a sob that leaves his mouth despite the fact that he tries to muffle it with his hand.
The way that Spencer broke.
He's crying. Big, heaving, heart-wrenching sobs.
His shoulders are trembling.
His hands are shaking.
His head is hanging downwards so that his hair is covering his face.
You approach him slowly, kneeling down at his side and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.
His eyes slowly shift from Maeve, his sobs only seeming to amplify as he meets your gaze. His eyes are red and closely with tears, his cheeks running hot and his lips trembling.
You don’t speak, knowing that you’ll break if you do. Instead, you guide his head into your shoulder and let him crumble in your arms, grieving the loss of the love of his life.
You’re sure you’re going to cry yourself to sleep when you get home, but right now, you needed to be strong. For him.
“I’m so sorry-“ Spencer speaks through broken sobs as you hold him, the rest of the team moving to secure the scene.
“Shh,” You shake your head against his softly, rubbing the palm of your hand up and down his back as you let him cry until he physically couldn’t anymore.
“I treated you so horribly-“ He pulls away from your shoulder to look into your eyes once more. “I’m so sorry- Please don’t leave me…”
You purse your lips into a line, your expression full of so many emotions Spencer can’t distinguish any of them.
“I’m not going anywhere,” You pull his head back into your shoulder, leaning your head against his. “I promise…”
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msbyslilbimbo · 6 months
Text
toji!!! with a piss kink who is so mean to you :(
he forces you to drink water bottle after water bottle, lemonade after lemonade, then only two hours later, when you try to sneak to the bathroom, immediately snarls at you "the hell you think yer going?"
"...bathroom?"
"i sure as hell don't remember telling you you could," he snaps, standing up and stomping over to you. you cower at his raging dominance, but you can't help but moan as he grips your chin in his meaty fingers and dragging your face closer, "in fact... you don't piss until i tell you to."
memories flood back at the last time he made such a command, and you whimper in distress and try to talk despite the smooshing of your cheeks, but all he does is smirk, "that's not a negotiation, brat."
"toji no please-"
"don't make me repeat myself."
and that's where it's left. you, whimpering and caught under his feet the entire day until he takes mercy.
there seems to be no mercy for you. you're not even sure if this isn't a punishment anymore, his cruelty is harder than it has been in weeks, and you're not even sure what you did.
when you're cuddling, a warm hand rests on your bladder, massaging slightly while you squirm in discomfort. when youre play wrestling, his hands dart under your arms and tickle you furiously, and you physically have to cross your legs in between shrieks to make him stop- which he almost doesn't in time, and you nearly sprayed the couch with everything your body holds.
close. too close.
and it continues for hours- drinking, massaging, another form of stimulation. drinking, massaging, another form of stimulation.
this is it. this is the time you're going to piss your pants. you're positive.
"'c'mere babygirl," he finally calls, and you shift over as quick as you can despite your circumstances. you give him a set of puppy eyes and he looks you up and down. he smirks, "you look so defeated. is not letting you piss yourself really so bad you could cry? is that it?"
"you're so mean," you whimper.
"you don't even want to know how mean i can be, dollface. knees." his dark eyes flick at the floor, and you take a grounding breath and slowly sink to your knees in front of him. "i am impressed though," he confesses. "i thought for sure you'd've safe worded by now."
"i can't hold it anymore," you sniffle, stuck to the floor in fear of relieving yourself when you try to stand.
he gives you a dramatic sigh and steps forwards, making direct eye contact with you as the toe of his shoe kicks your knees apart. his shoe then makes the signals in your brain process on hyper drive and presses firmly, hard against your swollen bladder, nestled between your legs.
you sob. he smirks.
"pee. now, before i change my mind." the foot presses deeper, your bladder literally sloshes.
"i c-ant-"
"let it out, babyface."
"toji it hurts please-"
the foot on your bladder pressed harder, and you physically can't stop it. you let out an embarrassed wail and bury your face in your hands while you cry softly, the warm fluid slowly trickling past your pussy lips, over your thighs and onto the floor and into the gaps if tile. you can't even begin to try and look at him, so self-conscious and warmed by your own urine that slowly turns cold under the chill of night.
it takes minutes, literal minutes for the piss to stop dribbling from you, and the whole time, toji says nothing, merely watching your quivering frame on the floor and listening to the dripping of your fluids.
once you're finally done, you hear footsteps slowly approach and scoop you up, pressing a kiss to your temple and walking you down the hallway. you can't even imagine looking at him right now, completely withdrawn from his attentions. you're embarrassed, you're cold, and you would hate him, if you didn't love the praise he whispers in your ear afterwards.
"gets hotter every time," he assures, nudging the door of the bathroom open with his knee and placing you in the tub. "get undressed while the water warms up, i'll be in to clean you in a sec."
and you whimper and slowly remove your clothes, turning the knobs to let the cold water fill the tub before transforming to warm. in the other room, you hear him opening cabinets to clean your mess, and you let a shaky exhale out as you pile your wet clothes and pull the stopper on the tub.
for as feral as toji can be, you can't ignore the thump of arousal that brews as he cleans just a few rooms over, an arousal he'll degrade you for but ultimately relive you with.
you'd be lying if you wanted it another way fnfjfdnkwdjw
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flamingpudding · 29 days
Note
All right you got my creative juices running with part five of Klarion is Dan yes the first series I ever came to you with
To find him Klarion isn't the only one living in the DC dimension in like the word of protective mother Danny is he sent one of clarion's older siblings to go with him Larsal/Lassie
She was one of the clone children that was created long before Danny knew that was trying to clone him she was one of the first failures
She doesn't really have a physical form as much she is more of like a big pit of water that has like a spiritual like form like Dr Fate
She hates Vlad so much that the entire League of assassins who's also hit him even though they don't know who he is but know that Danny got from Clockwork was about her and visiting
Klarion knows about the quote as the same thing last knows about him being a villain they keep each other secrets cuz they know they make Mom disappointed
When they do have somewhat of a physical form it's a cowgirl with a horse made entirely of Lazarus Pits
Along with that Vlad making surprise visit after feeling someone's littering his name more than usual it's like a call about anytime he knows his children or Daniel is talking about him
Also Batman's freaking out after I think that one of Danny's kids is such a little hater that they made a cult just despite their father which makes the Justice League think Vlad really that bad
This is just the funny idea and I know it's not a good prompt I'm still trying to think of more sorry
Oh I love this! Thanks you!
This is going to be fun in a way I hope! Enjoy~
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Danny barely avoided getting questioned further about his relation to Vlad when he noticed the green post-it note and made a grab for it. "Oh would you look at that! Pop is sending us a message!"
Okay maybe he said that louder than necessary but he needed to change the topic. He didn't need more people on to torment the fruitloop. His own kids were already giving the man enough grief as it was. He didn't need distant cousins or an entire hero society of another dimension coming after the fruitloop too. Not that he would mind that much but some mercy towards the redeemed man would probably be appropriated.
Either way Danny focused his attention on the note only half heartedly listening as Klarion continued his family tree explanation to his little hero friends. He blinked at the note several times before laughing happily. "Would you look at that! Lassie is going to come by! Your Granpa Clock is giving us a heads up, so I can prepare a fresh batch of ectoplasm for her to stay healthy!"
Whatever Klarion was explaining right now was abandoned as he sat up straight. "Lassie is coming too?"
"Well of course she is." Danny hummed happily, thankful for the chance of seeing both his kids that liked to life in the same dimension.
"Lassie?" Red Robin piped up questioning. Oh looks like this is one of Klarions siblings they hadn't gotten to yet regarding explanations.
"Yes my fourth oldest but unofficial second oldest." Danny nodded with a proud mother smile on his face. "She lives in this dimension too to keep an eye on Klarion so he would stay safe and dosen't over do it."
Klarion on the other hand groaned. "I don't need Lassie to baby sit me!"
"Klarion, sweety you were new to the whole living alone in another dimension thing. You spent the longest in FarFrozen and the Ghost Zone with me because of your destabilisation." Danny reprimanded him softly and the teen heroes snickered behind Klarions back to which the witch boy turned to glare at them with a greenish blush across his cheeks.
"So what does that sister of yours look like?" Impulse asked to change the topic and because he took a bit of pity on Klarion for the way his Mom was apparently embarrassing the witch boy. His question resulted in Klarion flipping though the photo album before stopping at an image of Klarion next to a pit of green something. Impulse arched an eyebrow and was about to comment when he got pushed roughly to the side by Red Robin.
"THAT'S A LAZARUS PIT!"
The way Batman's chair clattered to the ground as the man stood up looked every bit like he was going to rush over to the teens spoke for the shock that Red Robin shout had caused. The Ghost King and Klarion on the other hand looked rather calm as they barely reacted to the shout and Danny even motioned to Batman to sit back down again, as the chair that fell rightened itself again.
"Calm down. Lassie is a good child. She wouldn't hurt a fly." Danny told them smiling, not realising that both Batman and Red Robin were giving him increadulous looks behind their mask.
"A.... good child?" Batman repeated his slowly his voice even more tinged with his usual gruff gravel in a way that both Superman and Wonder Woman side eyed him worried while Flash snacked on a pack of melon flavoured ships he snacked from a table.
"She doesn't have a physical body, that is why she is relying on the pits of natural ectoplasm your dimension has. There was a little problem with her physical form and we just couldn't restore it and she refuses to get a unoccupied clone body like Klarion has." Danny explained further not minding the stares he or Klarion were getting.
"Pits of natural ectoplasm?" Batman reiterated, his tone clearly questioning, to which Danny only blinked a couple of times surprised. "I thought your dimension knew what they were? Sure the way you guys use them is strange and Lassie did sound a bit concerned when she told me about it but I didn't think you guys weren't aware what they were."
"No that is not...." Red Robin started but then but himself of as he turned around hurriedly in a defensive position as he noticed someone coming in through the window. He wasn't the only one. All the heroes reacted as one at the new presence, however what they didn't expect was a member of the League of Assassins blinking up at them stunned after climbing in through the window lifting their hands palm up in a gesture of peace.
"Woah hey there calm down! Klarion what the fuck? Why are there so many heroes in your Apartment?" The LoA member spoke up and all eyes turned to Klarion who instead only deadpanned. "I told you Mom was visiting to meet my 'friends'"
"Lassie, what did I tell you about possessing bodies?" The Ghost King piped up in a disapproving tone and they heard the distinctive tone of someone knocking their head against the table, probably Constantine.
"Sorry Mom but there are not Pits of ectoplasm near baby brother I could use to form a body." The LoA member, apparently possessed by Klarion's elder sister replied sheepishly. To say Red Robin was weirded out was an understatement. Usually if he encountered LoA members they were aggressive and most likely there to take him or one of his siblings out.
"That's an League of Assasin member...." He muttered under his breath to which said member laughed. "This guy was the closest to me to use for the moment. Don't worry I will release him later and he won't even remember a thing. I got my little sheep's well trained."
"Little sheep's?" Wonder Girl repeated a hand on her hip as she stared sceptically, to which Klarion face palmed and muttered a low "Sis shut up...."
"No Lassie, don't shut up." Danny intone from the kitchen table he was still sitting at with the other adults, his head was now resting on his hand as he stared at his two kids who visibly flinched.
The LoA member, possessed by Klarions sister, scratched the back of is head nervously as they faced the Ghost King. "Ah Mom, uhm hehe you know funny story..."
The heroes were pretty sure that the room had gotten several degrees colder and they weren't sure if that was because of the mood of a parent about to interrogate their child or because of the Ghost Kings power. (At a later time Constantine swore it were the Ghost Kings powers.) There was a awkward moment of silence the heroes weren't sure if they should be present for that or not especially when Danny stood up and walked over to the teens.
On reflex Wonder Girl, Superboy, Impulse and Red Robin made room for Danny to walk past them as they watched on torn between curiosity and pity, because clearly Klarion and his sister Lassie must have done something they weren't supposed to do. And honestly they were more curious what they did, after all the Ghost King hadn't been that faced when it got revealed that Klarion was more of a Villain than a Hero to them.
"Lassie, what did you do?" The teen heroes couldn't see Danny's face but from the tone they had a feeling that Danny was arching an eyebrow at his children.
Lassie laughed awkwardly once more. "So... you know how grandma Pandora kind of thought us about how our own emotion can influence those around us exposed to our ectoplasm over a long period of time?"
"Lassie..."
"I might have raised something akin to a cult on accident and passed on my personal grudge and hate towards the fruitloop along to them and they might now have the subconscious drill of attack on sight if Vlad ever makes an appearance in this dimension...." The LoA member slowly spoke up which had several of the adult heroes blinking in disbelief.
Batman especially was in shock of hearing about this since had the most interaction with this 'cult' as apparently one of the Ghost Kings children liked to call the League of Assassins. The bat suit wearing hero was about to interject and ask more but stopped when the Ghost King let out a suffering sigh like the most tired parent in existence. "And you didn't think about telling me this sooner because?"
"We don't like to disappoint you Mom." The two children of the Ghost King replied simultaneously like one united front. Danny in response gave his kids a light chuckle. But before Danny could go on any further Red Robin decided it was probably a good time to interject and remind the Ghost King of their presence.
"I got a question if you don't mind..." He lifted his hand like he was in school as he pulled the attention towards him. His curiosity won over his caution of the situation. "Klarion if the Lazarus Pits are actually 'ectoplasm' as you mentioned before, and are largely influenced by your sisters emotion. What happens to guy that bath regularly in them or someone that got thrown in there and game back out rage filled?"
"Red Robin!" Batman call out reprimanding instantly knowing where Red Robins line of question was going.
The possessed LoA member on the other hand blinked at them before scratching their head sheepishly. "I think I know who your talking about. I am still sorry about that second guy. When he got dunked into my ectoplasm, I kinda just came back from a visit home and had a bad fight with Vlad and was especially rage filled towards him."
"So does that mean...?" Red Robin inquired further ignoring Batman's silent glare towards him for even bringing these questions up and just as Lassie was about to answer Danny interjected.
"Lassie, go fix your cult." Another green note at materialised out of nowhere and had fluttered in the air before him and caused the Ghost King to face palm the moment he read it's context.
"Mom?" Both Klarion and Lassie asked with a shared worried glance.
"Vlad has come into the dimension for some reasons and is currently getting chased down by your cult."
There was a stunned silence after which Klarion and Lassie, in the body of the LoA member, broke out laughing hysterically which only caused Danny to lightly glare at his children. Meanwhile the teen heroes weren't sure if they should feel sorry for the old man called Vlad but considering all the red flags they had picked up from what Klarion told them, they felt a little like the man deserved that.
The adults on the other hand felt slightly torn, well mostly Batman. It was clear that this Vlad was a bigger threat than both Klarion and the Ghost King were making him out to be, considering the entire existence of the Lazarus Pits hated that man. But on the other hand as heroes they probably should feel obligated to help the man especially if, according to the Ghost Kings words, he was currently gotten chased in their dimension by the League of Assassins.
Danny on the other hand never felt more like a tired mother than he did right now. Sure he knew about his unofficial second oldest hatred towards Vlad but this certainly was a new level of hate. Especially since she apparently 'accidentally' (he doesn't by that at all) raised an entire cult that subconsciously hated him too.
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I think the most important part of the Isafrin confession in act 6 isn't the actual confession itself. Yes, it's adorable and wonderful, and CATHARTIC especially if you got obsessed with getting it. (Me I was. I YELLED at my computer multiple times in my playthough bc of it). BUT truly the most important part is HOW the confession happens.
Mainly, even in act 6 Isabeau has issues confessing. He still stammers. He still cannot say it.
And then Siffrin reaches out and takes his hand.
THAT!!!! THAT IS THE IMPORTANT PART!!!
The entire game Siffrin has been waiting for Isabeau to breach that gap. To reach out. To confirm that he wants to touch Siffrin. ANYTHING. But no matter what, when Isabeau pulls away, Siffrin does the same, either physically or emotionally. What's most interesting is when you finally get everyone to not interrupt. Siffrin is READY for the confession, but Isabeau stops? Because? BECAUSE SIFFRIN LOOKS OFF. Isabeau cares more about how his friend is doing than his own romantic feelings (which is also an issue why the confession isn't happening, bad timings). And every time Isabeau tries to confess after, Siffrin cuts him off. Because Siffrin has accepted that no matter what, this confession isn't happening that the Universe doesn't want it to happen.
But it could happen. If Siffrin asked. But to them, asking for that touch is too much. It's devastating. So he's stuck in this endless cycle of waiting for this confirmation that will never happen because both sides are too scared to act.
At the end of the day, the confession isn't as much about the romance but rather specifically a RELATIONSHIP. And in doing so, confidence that the other person is reaching out.
Isabeau will never touch Siffrin's shoulder. He will not cross a boundary he thought was in place. Siffrin has to communicate to ease that misunderstanding. In that where where Siffrin reaches out and takes Isabeau's hand? That! THAT! Changes everything.
It's vulnerability. It's reassurance. It's trust. Siffrin will take Isabeau's hand to reassure him, and Isabeau will take that as permission to love them back.
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comicaurora · 7 months
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If YouTube shuts down in five years or if the channel stops doing well or if you just burn out or whatever, what’s your backup career? I feel like a lot of “content creators” become super specialized into doing content creation stuff
This question is interesting, because you've given voice to one of the anxieties it took me the longest to overcome.
My thesis on life is you can't live in any sort of healthy manner if you're constantly planning for the worst case scenario - what you would do if everything in your life suddenly changed. Like how you can't live comfortably anywhere if you've constantly planning for the next time you'll move out.
For me, that question takes the form "what if youtube suddenly exploded", but everyone has a scenario like that. In fact, everyone has an infinite number of scenarios like that.
What would I do for I living if I got sick or had an accident and could no longer meet the physical demands of my job?
What would I do if I had a breakdown and needed everything to stop?
What's my contingency plan for if my entire company exploded and I got laid off without warning?
What've I got lined up if a global pandemic shut down all in-person jobs?
What's my backup plan if I lost the sense I needed to create the art I specialize in?
What if my mind deteriorated and I could no longer engage with reality at all?
What if technological advancement replaced the need my job currently fills?
What'e my plan for if I lose someone I love and it breaks me?
What will I do if a natural disaster destroys my house?
Where will I live if a meteor hit the earth tomorrow?
The idea that "content creators" overspecialize ignores the fact that most people get very comfortable doing the thing they spend most of their time doing, and very rarely seriously plan for the scenario where their One Thing is ripped away from them and they have to find something else. The phenomenon of "person loses their job after years of work" is famous for being massively disruptive, and that isn't because everyone in the world is dumb or bad at planning ahead - it's because a disruption like that is a disruption, in the same way that an injury will always hurt. I don't think it's a failing for someone to live their life as it currently exists, just like it isn't a personal failing if someone experiences a catastrophic change and has to readjust. You can't solve a problem that doesn't exist yet, and if it does happen, it'll come with information and parameters that you'll need to actually deal with it rather than just worrying about it.
If youtube explodes, maybe I'd join our other youtube friends on another platform as we all worked to solve the same problem together. Maybe I'd be in a financial position where I wouldn't need an immediate fallback plan and could take uncomplicated time off. Maybe I'd pivot 100% to writing. Maybe I'd drop off the grid and live in the woods for a while. Maybe I'd get serious about pursuing voice acting or theater. Maybe a friend would recommend an opening at their normal person job. Since we're only pondering a hypothetical catastrophe, we can't predict any of the other factors that'd be in play that would actually determine how we'd handle it.
Most of us will experience many life-changing turning points, and in turn get to experience many different lives. I'm very much enjoying this one, but I'm not worried about what the next one might look like. Overplanning will spoil the adventure with needless anxiety - I'll just be excited to explore it whenever it comes.
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cy-cyborg · 7 months
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Disability Tropes: The Miracle Cure
The miracle cure is a trope with a pretty negative reputation in disability circles, especially online. It describes a scenario in which, a disabled character, through either magic, advanced technology, divine intervention or some combination of the three, has their disability cured throughout the course of the story. Sometimes this is literally, as in the disability is completely and entirely cured with no strings attached. Other times, it looks like giving an amputee character a prosthetic so advanced that it's basically the same as "the real thing" and that they never take off or have any issue with, or giving the character with a spinal injury an implant that bypasses the physical spine's break, or connects to an exoskeleton that allows them to walk again. Sometimes, it can even look like giving a character some kind of magic item or power that negates the effects of the disability, like what I talked about in my post about "the super-crip" trope. Either way though, the effect is the same: The disability is functionally cured and is no longer an "issue" the author or character has to worry about.
But why would this be a bad thing? In a world with magic or super-advanced tech, if you can cure a character's disability, why wouldn't you?
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[ID: a screenshot of Roy mustang from Full metal alchemist Brotherhood, a white man with short black hair in a hospital gown. In the corner of the screen is the hand of another person holding a small red gemstone. /End ID]
Well there's a few reasons. First, lets talk about the purely writing related ones. If you've been around the writing or even media critique communities for a bit, you've likely heard people voicing their frustrations with tropes like "The fake-out death" where a character is either implied to have died, but comes back later, or is explicitly shown to be dead and then resurrected. Often when this happens in media, it leaves the audience feeling cheated and like a character's actions and choices don't really matter if even the worst mistakes and consequences can be undone. In the case of the latter situation, where they die and are brought back, it can make the stakes of the whole story feel a lot lower, since even something like death is shown to be reversible, so the audience doesn't really have to worry about anything bad happening to their favourite character, and once you've used this trope one time, people will constantly wonder why you wouldn't use it every time it comes up.
The same is true for "fixing" a character's disability. It sets a precedent that even things as big and life-changing as disability aren't permanent in this setting. We don't have to worry about anything major happening to the characters, there's no risks associated with their actions if it can all be undone, and it will lower the stakes of the story for your audience. Personally, I also feel like it's often used as a cop-out. Like writers wanted to include a major injury the leads to something big like disability for shock value, but weren't sure how to actually deal with it afterwards, so they just made it go away. Even in cases where the character start the story with a disability and are cured, this can still cause issues with your story's stakes, because again, once we've seen you do it once, we know its possible, so we won't feel the need to worry about anything being permanent.
Ok, so that's the purely writing related reasons, but what if that situation doesn't apply to the story you're writing? What if they're "fixed" right at the end, or the way they're cured is really rare, so it can't be used multiple times?
I'm glad you asked, because no, this is far from the only reason to avoid the trope! In my opinion, the more important reason to avoid it is because of how the a lot of the disabled community feels about the miracle cure trope, and the ideas about disability it can perpetuate if you're not very, very careful.
You might have noticed that throughout this post, I've put words like "cured" and "fixed" in quotes, and that's because not every disabled person wants a cure or feels like their ideal to strive for is able-bodied and neurotypical. For many of us, we have come to see our disabilities as part of us, as part of our identities and our sense of self, the same way I, as a queer person might see my queerness as a part of my identity. This is an especially common view among people who were born with their disability or who had them from a young age, since this is all they've ever really known, or who's disability impacts the way they think, perceive and process the world around them, how they communicate with people or in communities who have a long history of forced conformity and erasure such as the autism and deaf communities. Many disabilities have such massive impacts on our lives that we literally wouldn't be who we are today if they were taken away. So often though, when non-disabled people write disabled characters, they assume we'd all take a "cure" in a heart-beat. They assumed we all desire to be just like them again, and this simply isn't the case. Some people absolutely would, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not as universal as media representation makes it out to be.
Another reason it's so heavily disliked is because this trope is often used in conjunction with other ableist and harmful tropes or it's used in ways that perpetuate misinformation about living with a disability and it can have ableist implications, even if that's not what the author necessarily intended.
If the miracle cure is used right at the end of the story for example, as a way to give characters a happy ending it can imply that the only way for a disabled character to be happy in the long run, is for them to be "fixed", especially if they were miserable all the way up until that point. If it's used earlier in the story as a way to get said character back into the action, it can also be read as the author thinking that disabled people can't be of use to the plot, and so the only way to keep them around is to "fix" them.
Of course, there's also the fact that some authors and writers will also play up how bad being disabled is in order to show why a cure is justified, playing into the "sad disabled person" trope in the process, which is pretty much what it says on the tin. Don't get me wrong, this isn't to say that being disabled is all easy-breezy, there are never any hard days and you should never show your character struggling, not at all, the "sad disabled person" trope has it's place (even if I personally am not a fan on it), but when both the "sad disabled person" trope and the miracle cure trope are used together, it's not a great look.
This is especially bad when the very thing that cures the disability, or perhaps the quest the heroes need to go on to get it, is shown to be harmful to others or the disabled person themselves. Portraying living with a disability as something so bad that it justifies hurting others, putting others at risk, loosing yourself or killing yourself in order to achieve this cure perpetuates the already harmful idea that disability is a fate worse than death, and anything is justified to avoid it.
I've also noticed the reasons the authors and writers give for wanting to cure their characters are very frequently based on stereotypes, a lack of research in to the actual limits of a person's disability and a lack of understanding. One story I recall reading years ago made sure to tell you how miserable it's main character, a former cyclist, was because he'd been in a car accident where he'd lost his arm, and now couldn't ride bikes anymore, seemingly unaware of the fact arm amputees can, in fact, ride bikes. There are several whole sports centred around it, and even entire companies dedicated to making prosthetic hands specifically for riding bikes. but no, the only way for this to resolve and for him to be happy was to give him his arm back as a magical Christmas miracle! It would be one thing if the story had acknowledged that he'd tried cycling again but just had difficulties with it, or something was stopping him from being able to do it like not being able to wear the required prosthetic or something, but it really did seem as though the author was entirely unaware it was even possible, which is an issue when it's the whole point of your story existing. This happens a lot more often than you'd think, and it's very clear when an author hasn't even bothered to google search if their character would be able to do something before deciding the only solution is to take the disability away.
There's also the frustration that comes from being part of an underrepresented minority, finally seeing a character like you on screen or in a book, only for that representation to be taken away. Disabled people make up roughly 16% of the population (though many estimate these numbers are actually much higher), but only about 2.8% of American TV shows and 4.1% of Australian TV shows feature explicitly disabled characters. In 2019, around 2.3% of films featured disabled characters in a speaking roll, and while it's slowly getting better as time goes on, progress on that front is very slow, which is why its so frustrating when we do see characters like ourselves and so much of their stories focus on wishing to be, trying to become or actually being "cured".
An finally, there's the fact this is just a really common trope. Even if we ignore the issues it can cause with your story's tone and stakes, the harm it can do to the community when not handled with care, the negative perceptions it can perpetuate and everything else. It's just a plain-old overdone trope. It shows up so often that I, and a lot of disabled people, are just getting tired of seeing it. Despite everything I've said, there are valid reasons for people to not want to be disabled, and just like how I made sure to emphasise that not everyone wants a cure, it's important to recognise that not everyone would refuse it either. So long as it's not done in a way that implies it's universal, in theory, depicting someone who would want and accept a cure is totally fine. The issue is though that this trope is so common and so overdone that it's starting to feel like it's all we ever see, especially in genres like sci-fi and fantasy (and also Christmas movies for some reason).
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[ID: A Gif of a white man in a top hat nodding his head with the caption "Merry Christmas" down the bottom. /end ID]
Personally, because it's so common, I find even the few examples of the trope used well frustrating, and I honestly feel that it's at the point where it should be avoided entirely where possible.
Ok but Cy, you mentioned there are ways to use this trope well, what are they?
So, like I said, I'm of the opinion that this trope is better off not being in your work at all, but if, for whatever reason, you can't avoid it, or it's use is really that important to the story you want to tell, there are less harmful ways to implement it.
Don't have your only disabled character take the cure
If you really must cure your disabled character's disability, don't make them the only disabled person in the story. Show us another character who, when offered the same cure, chooses not to take it. This at least helps push back a little against the assumption of "of course everyone would want this" that these kinds of stories often imply and doesn't contribute (as much) to disability erasure in the media.
Don't make it a total cure
In real life, there are cures for some disabilities, but they rarely leave no trace. For example, an amputee's limb can sometimes be reattached if it was severed and they received medical treatment fast enough, but it usually results in at least a little nerve damage and difficulties with muscle strength, blood flow or co-ordination in that limb. Often times, these "cures" will fix one issue, but create another. You might not be an amputee anymore, but you're still disabled, just in a different way. You can reflect this in your fictional cures to avoid it feeling like you just wanted to avoid doing the work to write good disabled representation.
Do something interesting with it
I got a comment on my old tumblr or possibly Tik Tok account ages ago talking about their planned use for the miracle cure trope, where their character accepts the cure at the cost of the things that made her life enjoyable post-disability. Prior to accepting the cure, she had found other ways to be independent to some extent and her community and friends helped her bridge the gaps, but they were all taken from her when she was "cured" forcing her into isolation. Kind of like a "be careful what you wish for" sort of thing. The story was meant to be a critique on how society ignores alternative ways of getting the same result and how conforming to other people's ideas of "normal" isn't always what you need to bring you happiness. This was a genuinely interesting way to use the trope I think, and it's a perfect example of taking this trope and twisting it to make an interesting point. If you must use a trope like this, at least use it to say something other than "disability makes me sad so I don't want to think about it too much". Alternatively, on a less serious note, I'm also not entirely opposed to the miracle cure being used for comedy if it fits the tone. The Orville has some issues with it's use of the Miracle Cure trope, but I'd be lying if I said Isaac amputating Gordan's leg as a prank, knowing it could be reversed in a few hours did get a chuckle out of me.
If your villain's motivation is finding a cure for themselves, don't use it as justification for hurting people
Disabled villains need a post all their own honestly, but when a villain's motivation for doing all the terrible things they do is so they don't have to be disabled anymore, it's especially frustrating. Doubly so if the writer's are implying that they're justified in their actions, or at least that their actions are understandable because "who would want to live like that?" Honestly, as a general rule of thumb, avoid making your villains disabled if you aren't disabled yourself (especially if they're your only disabled character), but if they are disabled, don't use the disability as a justification for them hurting people while finding a cure.
So are there any examples currently out there to look at where the trope is used, if not well, at least tolerably?
Yeah, I'd say so, but they're few and far between. Two examples come to mind for me though.
The Dragon Prince:
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[ID: A Gif of Ava the Wolf from the Dragon Prince, a light brown, fluffy wolf who is missing her front right leg. /End ID]
The Dragon Prince on Netflix uses the miracle cure twice, but I still really enjoyed the show (at least I did, up until my Netflix subscription ran out, so I've only seen up to season 4). The first time the trope is used in the series, it's actually a fake-out. Two of the main characters, while looking for someone to help them heal the dragon egg they're carrying, encounter a young girl named Ellis and her pet wolf Ava. The two explain their egg is not looking good and they need to find someone to help it, but no one they've found had the knowledge or ability to do anything to help. Ellis says she knows a healer who can help them, and tells them that this healer even restored Ava's amputated leg when she was a pup. When we actually reach this "miracle healer" however, she is revealed to be simply an illusionist. She explains that Ava is still missing her leg, she simply made it look as though she had restored it because Ellis's parents were planning to throw the puppy out, believing it would not survive with its disability and would only be a drain on supplies. This was not actually true and Ava adapted to her amputation very well, she simply needed more time, and hiding her disability and making her appear abled gave her the time she needed to fully recover and adjust. When they return to the healer with the main characters, she removes the illusion and explains why she did it, emphasising that the real problem was never with Ava, but with how people made assumptions about her.
While I do feel it was drawn out a bit too long, I do appreciate the use of the trope as the set up to an overall positive twist. Disability does come with down-sides, it's part of the deal and it would have been nice to see a bit more of that, but for disabilities like amputation in particular, the worst of our problems often come from a lack of adequate support and people's pre-conceived ideas about us, and it was nice to see this reflected, even if it is a little overly simplified.
The second time this trope comes up in the series is when one of the antagonists, Soren, is injured during a fight with a dragon, becoming paralysed from the neck down. His sister, Claudia is absolutely beside herself, believing it was her fault this even happened in the first place, but Soren actually takes his new disability very, very well, explaining that he understands there are things he can't do now, but that there's a lot of things he can still try, that his previous job as a soldier just didn't allow time for. It's possible this reaction was him being in denial but it came across to me as genuine acceptance. He is adamant that he doesn't want a cure right from the beginning because he knows that a cure would come at a cost that he doesn't want his sister to pay, and that he is content and happy with this new direction his life will be going in. Claudia, however, is not content. It had been shown that she was already using dark magic, but this event is what starts her down the path of using it in earnest, disregarding the harm it will cause to those around her. She ignores Soren's wishes, kills several animals in order to fuel the healing spell that will "fix" him, and Soren is pretty clearly shown to be horrified by her actions. What I like about this use of the miracle cure trope is that it touches on something I've seen happen a lot to disabled people in real-life, but that rarely shows up in media - the fact that just because we accept ourselves, our disabilities and our new limits, doesn't mean our friends and family will, unfortunately. In my own life, my mum and dad were always accepting of my disability when I was younger, but as I got older and my support needs changed, my body took longer to heal and I stopped being able to do a lot of things I could when I was little, they had a very hard time coming to terms with it and accepting it. I'm not alone in this either, a lot of disabled people end up cutting contact with friends and family members who refuse to accept the reality of our situations and insist "if we just try harder maybe we won't be so disabled" or "Maybe you will get better if you just do [xyz]". Unfortunately however, some disable people's wishes are ignored completely, like Soren's were. You see this a lot in autistic children who's parents are so desperate to find a cure that they hurt their kids through toxic and dangerous "treatments" or by putting them through abusive therapies that do more harm than good. Claudia has good intentions, but her complete disregard for Soren's decision still harm them both in the long run, leading to the deterioration of their relationship and causing her to spiral down a very dark path.
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
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[ID: A Gif of Ed from full metal alchemist, a white boy with blond hair, staring angrily at a jar of milk on the table. His brother Al, a sentiant suit of armour, is in the background looking directly at the camera. The caption, spoken by Ed, says "So we meet again you little bastard" /end ID.]
The show does begin with Ed and Al looking for a way to cure their disabilities (which they gave themselves when trying to resurrect their mother as children went horribly wrong). However, when the boys discover that the object needed to do that - a philosopher's stone, can only by made through absolutely abhorrent and despicable means, and using one, likewise, comes at the cost of potentially hundreds or thousands of people's souls, they immediately stop, and shift their focus on finding the stones that had already been made so it can't fall into the wrong hands, and preventing the creation of new ones. The core theme of the show is that everything has a cost, and sometimes the cost is simply too great.
However, right at the end of the show, several characters are healed in a variety of ways. Ed gives up his ability to do alchemy to get his brother's body back, as well as his arm so he can save his friends in the final battle, but neither of the boys come away from this completely "healed". Al's body has not been used since he was a child, and so it is shown he has experienced severe muscular atrophy that will take a long time and a lot of work to recover from, acknowledging that he has a pretty tough road ahead of him. When we see him in the epilogue, he is still on crutches despite this being several months after getting his body back. Likewise Ed is not fully healed, and is still missing one of his legs even if he got his arm back.
The more... interesting use of the trope, however, is in the form of Colonel Mustang who was blinded in the final season. Mustang is shown to take to his blindness pretty well given the circumstances, finding a variety of ways to continue doing his job and reaching his goals. When other characters offer to let him use the philosopher's stone to heal himself however, he takes it, acknowledging that this is a horrible thing to do and that Ed and Al would be extremely disappointed in him if they ever found out. He uses it both to cure his own disability, and to cure another character who was injured earlier in the show. While I'll admit, I did not like this ending, I can at least appreciate that the show made sure to emphasis that a) Mustang was doing fine without the cure, and b) that this was not morally justified. The show spent a very long time drilling into the viewer how morally reprehensible using the stone was, and it didn't try to make an exception for Mustang - you weren't supposed to like that he did that.
When I talk about these tropes, I do try to give them a fair chance and discuss the ways it can potentially work, but I really do want to reiterate that this particular trope really is best avoided. There are ways to make it work, but they will still leave a bad taste in many of your viewer's or reader's mouths and you have to be exceptionally careful with your wording and framing, not just in the scenes where this trope is used, but in the lead up. If you really must use it, I highly recommend getting a few disability sensitivity readers and/or consultants (yes, even if you are disabled yourself) to help you avoid some of the often overlooked pitfalls.
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somecunttookmyurl · 2 years
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extremely ymmv but i've had multiple psychotic episodes a year, every year, since 2006 that were entirely untreated until 2020 because literally nobody would believe it was happening. still entirely untreated bc frankly meds just made me feel like ass and i long ago employed One Simple Trick (Psychitrists Hate Her) for turning that from an always-distressing experience to "mildly annoying, only occasionally distressing and still less so"
gonna share it with you okay. you ready. again ymmv
the only hallucinations/delusions that it actually matters whether they are real for everyone or just real for you are ones that could put you in actual physical danger.
ex: i frequently experience the lights flashing in what i can only assume is morse code. does it matter if anybody else is seeing that? only in the sense that if they are i need to change the lightbulb i guess. at the start i never tried 'translating' or figuring that out in any way because i was too busy being extremely upset about it. i still haven't de-coded my lightbulbs because I Do Not Fucking Care and It Does Not Fucking Matter. this could have been an email. this should be an email, actually. it's a mildly annoying distraction but does it matter if it's "really" "happening"? Not in the fucking least.
Does it matter if the cool shop I was so VERY sure was there last week but which is now a coffee shop everyone insists has been there for 10 years actually did exist or not? Literally no! It's still Not There right now whether it was there last week or not so this changes absolutely nothing.
Listen. Look at me. For... most people I think, a lot of the distress from psychosis comes not from the direct content of any hallucinations or delusions (some very much are genuinely unpleasant in their own right, obviously) but from questioning reality and being unsure what's real and what isn't. Realising and internalising that unless something is going to actually directly impact your life in some way it doesn't matter drastically cuts this down
"is this real?" is the wrong question. "does it matter if it's real? like actually?" if the answer is no because "it" happens to be a cat that is in your kitchen when you do not own cat then like. whatever, dude. you got bonus cat company for the duration whether it was "objectively" "real" or not anyway.
(last one brought to you by an old friend who was hallucinating an entire cat but was freaking out because it was in the doorway and she did not know if something bad would happen if she touched it, and then i pointed out that it doesn't matter if the cat is there or not and doesn't matter if touching it would be a bad idea because it is cat sized and you can... step over it. that is not really a problem and even if it were it's a problem for the future version of you who does not have to pee unfortunately i have never hallucinated an entire extra cat)
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luveline · 2 years
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Okay but what about Eddie and reader having been going strong for awhile and Eddie wants to take things further and ask reader to marry him, but he wants to ask Roan’s permission first bc he cares about her opinion.
I thought this was so cute! it's almost entirely eddie and roan but r is mentioned lots and lots and is also a bit long my bad 🥺 ♡ fem!reader
He really wants to get you a ring.
Eddie Munson can be stupid. He makes rash decisions all the time. He bets on the wrong horses and he's almost always late to parent-teacher conferences. He buys Roan's clothes by holding them up to her body in the middle of the store and asking her if she likes them. He knows there's a thousand wrong decisions to make and half of them he's already made, but he really thinks this is the right one.
He just needs Roan to agree.
You're at your own place for once. Not for Eddie's lack of trying — he'd asked you to move in twice already, and though you'd kissed him silly and told him you loved him an insane amount, you'd reasoned that you should keep your place. (Though you had, in a way, moved in anyhow.)
"I don't want us to rush anything, Eddie," you'd said carefully, eyes on Roan's dark head of hair across the room. He'd followed your gaze. "I don't want to be the evil step-mom."
He'd promised that could never, ever happen.
He probably shouldn't have. While Roan literally loves you so much it makes her cry, things can change.
Right now, Roan thinks that she's sharing Eddie, and she's doing a great job at adapting to all the changes that come with that. Your clothes in his room, your coats on the hangers. Your work stuff where her princess ponies used to live, your fancy shampoo next to her jellybean two-in-one. Getting married would make you her bona fide mom. Eddie's not sure Roan realises that she's the one who'd be getting shared.
Though you act like you're her mom already. It's one of the many reasons he loves you. You've never once made Eddie feel bad for being a dad, or for having Roan full time. You genuinely miss her when she's at Wayne's. You love his daughter. You play games and you sing songs and you cuddle her whenever you can. You wash her hair and take care of her curls, you do plaits and bows and bunches. You'd learned how to do all of that stuff without ever having been asked.
Eddie wants to marry you so badly it's a physical ache.
Which is why he's as scared as he is to ask her about it.
"Roan?" he calls, stretched out over the couch with a coke can on his chest. Moping, maybe.
"What?" she calls back, voice littler still because of the distance.
"Are you busy?"
He hears the tap running and then she appears, water dripping down to her wrists. Eddie swaps her for the coke can, rubbing her wet hands dry with the excess fabric of his shirt.
She sits on his stomach. She's incredibly big and small at the same time.
"What, dad?"
"I got something to ask you."
Roan squirms until Eddie brings his legs up to let her lean against his thighs like a chair.
"It's a big question," he says tentatively.
Roan crosses her arms in front of her, hands on his stomach. "Like, big as you?"
"Right. Super big."
She nods thoughtfully before flashing a huge, charming smile. "Okay."
Eddie lifts his hands to her small face, tucking her freshly shorn locks behind her ears. Long hair like daddy had been a good idea in theory, but she just can't stand all the fuss of it.
"I'm asking because... You're five now. And I know you have lots of big feelings. I wanna know what you think about-" He doesn't chicken out, per se, more like opens softly midway through. "Uh, how you feel about Y/N."
Roan wrinkles her nose. "I love her."
"I know you do. And you don't mind that she spends so much time here?"
Again, Roan looks perplexed. How many times has she cried now because she wants to see you and you're busy? How many times has Eddie told her you can't spend all your time here? It probably doesn't make much sense to her that he'd be asking.
"No. I wanted her for my princess party after and you said no."
He grins ruefully. "I didn't say no, babe. She couldn't come because she's at her own house tonight."
"Why can't she be at our house?"
Brilliant question.
"She has stuff to do." Like make sure moths haven't eaten your clothes. And dust.
You don't really spend a lot of time there.
Roan harrumphs. "Whatever. Why can't we go to her house, then?"
He takes Roan's hands into his and toys with her smaller fingers. "I can't really explain it. But you like when she's here all the time?"
"Yeah," Roan says, clearly bored of this conversation.
He laughs under his breath and steels himself for a bunch of huge questions.
"You know I love you more than anybody else?" he asks.
"I love you more," she argues.
"No, like. Out of everybody in the world, I love you the most. I could love Uncle Wayne the most, but I love you the most." Sorry, Wayne.
And while Eddie loves you so much (and Wayne, of course), it's the truth. You're always gonna be that tiny fraction below, though Eddie's not sure he likes the word below. It's a different kind of love, regardless.
Roan seems really, really happy with this prospect. She giggles for a second and throws her arms out toward him, face landing perfectly under his chin.
"I love you, daddy," she says. She manages to sound both shy and exuberant, little face digging into his collar. "I would pick you out of the world too."
"You would?" he asks. Eddie's not too proud to admit he wells up. He laughs it off, wrapping his arms around her as tightly as he can.
"You first. Um, and Uncle Wayne and Y/N and damnation and Stacey P. second most."
"Damnation your imaginary dog is on the same level as Uncle Wayne and Y/N?" he asks, laughing hard enough to shake under her hug.
"Dad!"
"Sorry. Your totally real and invisible dog."
"Well, maybe not as much as Uncle Wayne and Y/N."
"No, I thought so."
She hides her hands inside of his short sleeves. Eddie lets her get on with it, happy and honestly buffeted by her affection. He feels both the euphoria of having a great kid and the self-satifaction of a parenting win.
"Do you think Y/N loves me that much?" Roan asks. "In the world?"
"Yes," he says without hesitation. "Of course she does."
"Mm," Roan hums, pleased. "I miss her."
"If I ask you my really big question, maybe we can go see her afterward. But it's- it's a big question, Roanie, I mean it. And it's okay if you don't know the answer, or if you feel mad or angry first."
Roan looks very concerned, climbing up on his chest to giggle at him. "Ast me, dad."
He blows her hair out of her eyes with a breath from the corner of his mouth. Heart in his throat, he grabs a hold of her waist in one hand and tries.
"I want to ask Y/N to marry me."
She blinks.
"I don't know if she'll say yes, but if she does that means lots of things would change. We would live together, and we'd maybe not live so close to Uncle Wayne, I'm not sure. Do you know what I mean?"
Roan leans forward. "Marry in a wedding?"
"Yeah. A big wedding. Or actually maybe a little one. I haven't really asked. Roan..."
He drifts off, distracted by her lovely tiny face growing more and more excited by the second.
"She would-"
"She would be my mom?" Roan shouts, eyes wide with a blazing amusement. "She would be my mommy?"
"Sweetheart," Eddie says apprehensively, "I'm not sure-"
"Oh my god," Roan says, already climbing off of his chest.
"Roan, I really need to finish talking to you," he says, listening to her sprint away in defeat. He rubs his eyes for a second, stressed, though slowly he starts to smile.
That's a good reaction.
That's a great reaction.
"Roan, if we get married, that means more- It means a lot of things," he calls, struggling to keep the smile out if his voice as he gets onto his feet to track her down.
"Yeah!" Roan calls.
Eddie walks down the hall and finds her in the middle of her room, backpack in the middle of her floor and upheaved. She's crammed three different teddies inside and a mismatched pair of pajamas, and now seems to be deciding between her pens or her long crayons.
"Babe, what are you doing?"
"I'm getting my stuff!"
He bites back a ridiculous smile. "For what?"
"You said we'd ask the question and go see Y/N," she whines, expecting a rejection.
"I didn't ask my question yet."
Roan shoves her crayons into her backpack and stares at him expectantly, a frenzy of ringlets and a palpable excitement.
He feels suddenly sheepish. "So can I... Is that okay? If I ask her to get married?"
Roan starts laughing like a maniac, the smallest, most intense vestibule of joy that's ever existed. "Dad, I need my shoes."
"No, but you can't tell her! It's a secret!" he warns seriously.
"You said we could go!"
He looks down at his girl. She's frenetic, jumping on both feet with her hands bunched into fists like she's willing to fight him for this. She wants to see you so badly now she's practically vibrating.
"Alright. Alright, come on. Let's get your shoes on."
Roan screams and runs past him, almost barrelling him down. He picks up her backpack and zips it closed, standing in the middle of her room for a few private seconds.
"Holy shit," he whispers.
"Dad!"
"I'm coming, Roan," he says, closing the door behind him.
-
more eddie and roan
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doki-doki-imagines · 4 months
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Mind numbingly in love with bihan and kuai liang
author note: previous. Happy Valentine!
Bi-Han: -If doctors told him that shooting his head would let his crush fade away, he would do it without thinking twice. -It's hard to notice his change, mostly because he is almost as efficient as always. -Almost is the key word. -His punches are good, but not perfect, his kicks are perfect but not excellent. -Bi-Han is grumpy as always, but his eyes always search for your figure, even in a crowd. Fingers playing and twirling with each other, biceps and pectorals twitching. -Liang is the first to notice his brother behaviour, sly smirk appearing every time he knows you are nearby. -"You look like a lovesick fool, Grandmaster." "Shut your trap, Kuai Liang." "Oh the full name. Did I strike a nerve, brother?" "Silence!" -Tomas chuckles behind them, enjoying the Liang teasings. -Bi-Han will reduce at maximum his relation with you. If possible, he won't even acknowledge your presence in the room. -If you want something to happen, you'll have to take the reins! Bi-Han is already wrapped around your fingers, it is just hard for him to accept that he can't command his own heart.
Kuai Liang: -Liang knows those feelings. He knows he has a crush on you. He just has to understand how to woo you. -Liang doesn't want to bury his feelings. He wants to love you and for his love to be reciprocated by you. -At first, he is a bit rusty. The last time he tried to woo someone, he was a teenager, a time when he was dumb, but his partner wasn't much better. Both felt something more physical than romantic. -Liang knows he doesn't look bad, so his appearance doesn't worry him much. But will you be able to love his personality? -You do already, but he doesn't know. -You flick up his chin, and his heart skips a beat. Once you asked him if you could braid his hair and Liang accepted. He thought about your fingers on his scalp for an entire month; every morning when he had to brush his hair. -Liang also has a problem with jealousy, not as bad as when he was young, but it is still a problem. -He feels sparkles in his hands when you lean a bit too much on Liu Kang. He has to move his fingers around to make sure a fire won't start in his hands. -Liang's voice gets so deep when you get closer, face softening up, a smile always adorning his face. -But he is really weak for your fingers. The slightest touch, and he feels his skin melting. -"I didn't know you are a pyromancer too." "I'm not. What do you mean?" "Because you set my skin on fire every time you touch me." "Fuck this sound stupid" Liang thinks, crossing in his mind this new pick-up line he came up with. -You won't need to take the first step because Liang will take it at the first good occasion. Maybe it's raining and you ask him if you can sleep in his house for the night (Liang will take every occasion to make you wear his clothes). Or the weather is chilly and Liang will seize the opportunity to warm you up. Or simply Liang won't be able to take it anymore and ask you out, dining out begging Madame Bo to keep the temperature of the room chilly so you'll lean on him…
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