#its about so many things. its about self hate and feelings of inadequacy

[slavhew]

Posting my thoughts here too.

PPS; there is something about BGD still looking the same while jake has so clearly changed in appearance. I don't have anything clever to add, except that that stupid fingerless-gloved hand is so quintessentially Dirk, it looks like an aesthetic choice that belongs to a man much younger than Jake. Because it does. Because Dirk stopped, while Jake had to keep going.

[norrizzandpia]

reader finding out that lando only pursued her bc one of his pr team told him to date somebody of her caliber

I love these kinds of tropes

One-Sided Fake Dating (LN4)

Summary: When Y/n has continuously been used for the image that has pristinely been constructed for her and the connections she has through relation to her parents, she has cultivated a dark image on the world, especially on love. However, when Lando comes into her life and shows her what it’s like to be wanted for who you are and not what you can provide, she begins to open up and she begins to explore what it’s like to be loved and to love. Although, nothing is permanent and what happens when the man she had thought to be better than everyone who had previously screwed her over turns out to be worse?

Warnings: angst, language, sexual references, i build this couple up just have them come crashing down, this one’s rough but all my posts are so its ok, family trauma, me being cliche when it comes to making up fake rich last names sorry sue me

Note: it’s a sad ending but AS WE ALL KNOW i cant take those so there will most likely be a part two lmk if yall want to see that

Part 2 link

She hated these things. Galas where men approached her for the last name written on her birth certificate and women fawned over her dress in order to become one step closer to the opportunities only she held access to. A drink in her hand, the little droplets leaking onto the ring adorning her finger, her eyes gazed upon attendees of the party her father had thrown. Men and women dressed to the nines in designer clothing, a rotten feeling manifested in her stomach. It was indescribably cold, something that settled within her and was a stark reminder that, in a room full of people ready to wait on her hand and foot, she was alone. Neither her father nor mother could make her feel any semblance of warmth, not when they exploited the image she had perfectly curated over the span of her life. The perfect, girl-next-door persona had been all she was destined for when she was birthed into the hands of Nick and Amy Winchester, two heirs to two successful oil businesses. Neither of them had truly made the effort to make her feel as though she was destined for more, other than a pawn in their Public Relations game.

She stared at them shortly, studying their faces and the way they moved about the room, wondering whether she had ever truly known them. Her parents were an anomaly, filthy rich and happy as ever. Although, no one ever knew what went on behind doors.

“Y/n Winchester, how lucky I am to finally meet you in person. I’ve heard so many great things.” A voice startled her from her deep mind, turning it back on to the mission at hand, putting on a front that she had everything she ever wanted.

Turning around, her gaze found that of Lando Norris, a man her parents had never shut up about, having been friends with his father and loving the way he so seamlessly fell into what they had always wanted her to be, but she never quite came close. This man was the image of the self-inadequacy she had been forced to feel from the moment she could slightly understand the concept. She despised him.

The fake smile she had flaunted for years graced her face, “Lando Norris, it’s lovely to meet you as well.”

He extended his hand to her, her fingers falling onto the bed of his as he pressed his lips to the back of her palm. The warm pressure spread up her arm and down her body as they held each other’s eyes. Something about the deep greenness of his made her want to know more, made the hatred and envy she had held for him diminish.

“I have to say you’re even more beautiful in person.” He whispered, lowering her hand but not letting go.

A tinge of red wrapped around her cheeks, “Thank you. You’re quite handsome as well.”

The entire thing felt incredibly mysterious. The way he cradled her hand; the way his eyes pierced hers; the way he was so intoxicating and the way she didn’t know why. She wanted more, wanted to know more.

Drowning in the confusion pertaining to her sudden change of feelings toward him, she couldn’t make out what he had been speaking about. As a result he simply stared at her with raised eyebrows, “Y/n, am I boring you already?”

She shook her head with a soft smile, “No, I’m sorry. Just got lost in thought.”

“About me?” He rubuttled quickly. So quick she couldn’t hesitate or think before she began nodding slowly. Her brain had shrunk at the hands of the smell of his cologne and all she could rely on was the years of PR training.

His eyebrows raised further, “Oh? Well, that’s a good sign considering I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you since you walked into the room.”

She choked slightly on her drink, not expecting him to be quite forward, “Sorry?”

He smiled a sinister smile, one that drew her in and made her want to run away all at once, “You’re intoxicating, Y/n.”

She cocked her head, “Is being bold your way of picking up women, Norris?”

He shook his head with a chuckle, “Being bold is my way of trying to make you fall in love with me. The women of my past are nothing like you, Winchester. I never wanted them to fall in love with me, however, with you,” He leaned in closer, “I want you all to myself.”

Pulsing between her legs told her this night would be ending very differently then she originally intended, “Is that so? I have to say, I’m not entirely opposed.”

His lips were centimeters from hers, his hot breath fanning her face, “Good because I was never going to stop until you were.”

—

In the light of the morning, Y/n’s mind ran wild at the consequences of what waking up in bed next to Lando Norris meant. He was known for sleeping around, for playing women and adding notches to his bedpost. Being another one of his past girls wouldn’t go over well for her image, an innocent and pure one that was meticulously portrayed so no one would see her as something inherently sexual.

However, as his arm slung over her waist, she couldn’t find it in herself to truly care. Sure, she was a bit panicked for what her parents would say, but with the memories of the night before and the dull aching between her legs, she knew this wouldn’t be a one time thing.

Throwing caution to the wind wasn’t something she typically did, but maybe she could try just this once.

His arm rustled on her warm skin, his eyelids creaking open as he stared at her, “Morning, Y/n.”

She giggled, “Not a good morning for you, Norris?”

His teeth peaked through in a flirtatious grin, “No, Winchester. It is a very very good morning.”

She turned around, slipping out of his arms and off the bed to pull her dress back on.

“What are you doing?” He asked, a grovel in his voice that made her never want to leave the quiet oasis of his room.

She turned around with a questionable glint in her eyes, “Leaving?”

He shook his head and propped his body up on his elbow, leaning over to grab her hand softly, “No, Y/n. Stay.”

There was a pleading in his eyes, one she had never seen in the media and one she had certainly never seen throughout the time they spent together. It made her give in.

She plopped back in bed next to him, his arm fell around her shoulders and he kissed her temple, “Why are you still in clothes?”

She laughed, thinking he was joking, but his hands over the soft skin of her arms as he pulled it down made the joyous sound dwindle down.

She certainly stopped laughing when his lips started descending down her stomach.

—

A persistent knocking on her door had her groaning and running over, “I’m coming!”

Her hand clutched the door knob, throwing open the door of her apartment near her university's campus, before she was greeted with the sweet image of her boyfriend.

She tilted her head with a soft smile, “Lan? What are you doing here?”

He pushed through the threshold, a nice smell of roses hitting her nose as he turned around to face her in her foyer.

“What’s with the flowers?” She questioned as he just stood there with an innocent smile.

He walked closer, planting a short kiss on her lips before whispering, “Happy three months.”

He held the flowers in between their bodies, continuing to grin at her as the occasion dawned on her.

She wrapped him in a hug, taking the red plant from his hands and kissing his cheek aggressively, “You are so cute! Thank you!”

He followed her further into the apartment as she went to the kitchen to put them in water. Questions flew from her lips, “How’d you know? Were you keeping track? You didn’t do this for our one month or two? Also, I thought we agreed to only celebrate the big ones like six months or a year? Was I supposed to get you something? Oh shit, Lan, I didn’t get you something.”

He giggled at her and shook his head, slithering his arms around her waist and pulling her into him when she was done with the flowers, “No, love, I just got a Snapchat memory that informed me it was three months ago today I asked you to be my girlfriend. I was going to ignore it, but I thought against it when I remembered how lucky I am to have you. I thought I’d just remind you of that.”

She blushed and wrapped her arms around his neck, “You’re sweet.”

“Only for you.” He murmured as she closed the gap between their lips.

At first, Y/n was a bit hesitant with Lando. With his past with women, sleeping around and never holding a commitment, she wondered if he would treat her a priority. Although, she was pleasantly surprised when he started speaking to her, treating her better than any of her ex’s. He was kind and gentle, compassionate, empathetic, understanding, and loving. He was everything and she was beginning to think he was her everything.

They continued kissing in her kitchen before she was reminded of the homework splayed out on the desk in her room, stress riddling her body once more. Lando clocked the tension, letting his hands rub up and down her back soothingly before softly speaking, “You okay, love?”

She tried to nod, but shook her head instead, her face pressing into his chest as she huffed, “No, I’m so stressed.”

Lando frowned, “Why? What’s going on?”

She led him to her room, his hand clutched in hers as she dragged him. When they reached her door, she opened it and he found a messy room drowning in papers and textbooks. The sight of it let alone made him panic.

“Christ,” He murmured. His hand squeezed hers in support as the two stared upon the mess.

Her voice became wobbly as she spoke, “I have so many assignments due and my room is a fucking shit show. I can’t think when it’s like this. It just adds to my stress. I don’t know what to do, Lando. I don’t have time to clean my room, I don’t have time to eat, I don’t have time to sleep. I’m fucking drowning.”

She choked up as her words felt suffocating. Lando was quick to pull her back into him, shushing her and caressing the hair on her head as she sniffled into his shirt. He led her to her bed, sitting her down and letting her lean on him, emotionally and physically. When she calmed down, he whispered into her hair, his lips having kissed multiple times there, “How about you sit at your desk, do what you can of your assignments, and I clean your room. I’ll make it spotless that way you don’t have to worry about it and then I’ll make some dinner, yeah? I can order in from your favorite place or I can make it myself. Whatever you want, baby. But, when your room is clean and the food is ready, you will give yourself a break. Trust me, laying with me on the couch and watching movies before going to bed at a reasonable hour will help you tomorrow so you can get more things done. You will get through this.”

She pulled back slightly, looking up at him with glossy eyes, “You’d clean my room for me?”

He chuckled, hands cradling her face, “Of course, love. I’d do a lot more for you.”

🏎️

Four hours later, Lando had cleaned her entire apartment, ordered her favorite meal from a diner down the street, and plated it on the countertop of her kitchen. He was pleased with himself when he walked into her room, lightly pulled her earphone out and led her back into the kitchen where her face lit up at what he had done. Falling into his arms, she mumbled quick praises of gratitude into his neck, kissing at the skin as a thank you.

The wrinkles in her forehead had loosened by the time they made it to the couch, his legs kicked up as she sprawled out on him. There was quiet conversation of what they would watch before settling on The Holiday, a movie Y/n had loved since the moment she watched it when she was twelve.

As much as she loved it, however, she fell asleep twenty minutes in. Soft intakes of breath alerted Lando of the sleeping girl on him and he decided to stay there. He watched the movie all the way through, scratching her back softly throughout the entire thing. She moved a bit, but never away from him, always closer to him and his heart warmed every time.

When he laid her down in her bed and she whispered for him to stay, there was no argument in his mind. He stayed and he was beginning to think he always would.

—

“What’s your biggest fear?” Lando said into the darkness of the night as they sat in his car.

Y/n thought it over, knowing exactly what it was, but deciding if spilling that to him was appropriate in a five month relationship.

“Spiders.” She replied, fear taking over and forcing her out of what she truly wanted to say.

Lando looked over at her blankly, “What’s your biggest fear, Y/n?”

She laughed, “Spiders, Lan.”

He shook his head, “Tell me the truth, love.”

She exhaled a breath and began, “Going my entire life without making my parents proud.”

Her sentence hung in the air, her words hitting him as he searched for clarification, “You have made them proud, Y/n.”

She scoffed and shook her head as the feeling of Lando’s hand slipping into hers spread throughout her body in a grave reminder that he was there for her, “No, they have never looked at me long enough to see what I’ve tried to achieve and what I have achieved.”

His eyes bore into the side of her face as he listened intently, “No one knows that my parents are not who they portray themselves to be. Sure, they’re in love and they have fun times together, but they never wanted me. I know that, they know that, the staff, and the people they’ve employed to keep our image know that. They had me out of obligation, out of pressure from the outside world to have a child after they got married. I know they never wanted children, they’ve both said it to me before. From the moment I was born, I was not seen as a human or a baby who needed nurturing, I was seen as an object that could warmly slip into the narrative of their lives and compliment the rumors surrounding them. I was never meant to be anything else than their public pride and joy. Privately, I have never meant anything.”

Lando’s fingers grazed over the skin of her cheek, wiping a tear she hadn’t realized was there. He turned her face to his, forcing her eyes to see the love that ran deep for her, and stated so forcefully, “You are so much more than that.”

She stared at him, not knowing what to say to something that had never been reaffirmed in her entire life, and waited for him to continue.

“For them to disregard you that way shows how shallow they are. It has nothing to do with you. You are not nothing. You should’ve never been exploited and made to feel as though you served someone else. You are wanted. I want you, Y/n. That means something. I know it does because I love you and I want you.” He finished, wiping the tears that flowed down her cheeks.

In a broken whisper, “You love me?”

He smiled at her, leaning in and letting his lips rest just beside hers, “From the moment I met you.”

The words brought life back into her body as she softly giggled through the wetness on her cheeks, “I thought you were trying to make me fall in love with you. Didn’t think the plan was for you to fall in love with me too.”

It wasn’t, he thought.

He kissed her, “It’s hard not to fall in love with someone like you. You are my everything, Y/n.”

Right there. His last sentence echoed what had been repeating in her head for months. A person who loved her just as much as she loved them, what a sight.

“I love you too, you know.” She said, loving the way he continued to wipe residual tears and whisper soft words that contradicted the idea engrained in her head that she wasn’t meant for great things, that she wasn’t intelligent or a force to be reckoned with. Single-handedly, unknowingly, Lando changed her narrative and the idea that, once her parents were gone, she was useless.

He nodded, “I know. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

He wouldn’t, that was the truth. What this relationship was built on, though? He couldn’t bear to utter the words.

Lies.

—

Galas. Something she used to hate, but, with Lando’s hand on her thigh and his jokes in her ear, she began to find fun in them.

“Don’t you think that woman’s dress makes her look like a flamingo?” Lando lowly whispered as he discreetly pointed to someone across the room that had a light pink dress on, ruffled with feathers.

His comparison was spot on and Y/n had to stop herself from snorting out her drink, “Lando! Stop!”

She giggled and he leaned into her, the two a picture of young love. There were others sitting beside them at the table, drinking expensive wine from expensive glasses and observing the famous couple. In the six months they had been together, the public had not ceased to stop talking about the two. Lando had skyrocketed to worldwide fame, larger than what he had possessed before. Y/n being the internet’s it girl, heiress to billion-dollar oil companies and a young woman who had everything everybody else wanted, forced Lando into a large spotlight. There was traction surrounding his name and because of his connection to her, his companies, his career saw an increase in brand deals, income essentially. By just being her boyfriend, everything tied to Lando had exponentially grown. McLaren included. It was everything they had expected.

A little too much wine in one of Lando’s coworkers was dangerous as he blabbered out, “I’m surprised you two are still together!”

There were a few knowing chuckles around the table as everyone eyed each other. Lando gave him a fixed glare, dark and challenging as he tried to plead with the drunk man to stop talking.

Y/n’s eyebrows furrowed as she leaned in, “What do you mean?”

The man threw his hands up as he leaned back in his chair, “Just with the way you two got together, I didn’t think Lando would stick around for this long.”

“Y/n, let’s go.” Lando stood abruptly from the table, his hand in hers as he tried to pull her from the situation.

Y/n shook her head as all eyes stared at her, “No, Lando, what’s he talking about?”

Lando pleaded with her, “Y/n, listen to me. It doesn’t matter. Please. Come with me. Let’s leave.”

She was stuck, wanting to pry into the man’s mind, but seeing the way Lando was begging her to comply.

However, at the end of the day, she was a curious individual.

“Sorry,” She stuck her hand out to smooth down the table cloth, “Can you please elaborate?”

“Y/n-” Lando started, but she just shook her head.

His mind raced as reality dawned on him and the moment where he lost her came to fruition.

Wine sloshed out of his glass as the man drank the last sip before he began, “Lando started dating you because of your last name.”

There was a lingering smile on her lips from previously wanting to keep a happy demeanor at the Gala, but the moment the sentence fell from his lips, it gradually faded.

Lando sat back down beside her and wrapped a hand around her arm, the other on her thigh, and squeezed harshly.

“Y/n, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

The man scoffed, “What are you talking about?! I was there! I was the one who suggested you approach her. I was the one who laid out what would happen to your career if you dated Y/n Winchester. Come on, Lando, don’t be a liar.”

Her heart beat slowly as she scanned the table, the others still sipping on their glasses as they watched the scene play out. Their expressions, lacking shock, made her realize that every person sitting before her knew that Lando’s love for her was a joke. Everyone, but her.

Her head gradually turned to the side, capturing Lando’s eyes with hers. There was still pleading within them, but, this time, he was pleading for her to still love him, for her to not leave him.

To hell with him, she thought.

“Is this true?” She asked, her tone cold and distant as she ripped her arm and leg from his grasp.

He shook his head, rubbing a hand over his face in anxiety, “No, well, kind of. Yes, but- Y/n,” He shot up from his chair as she made a move to leave.

She grabbed her purse which was hung over the back of her chair, her legs making quick strides toward the exit. Lando, being taller than her, walked quickly beside her, spewing out words that now meant nothing to her.

“I’m so sorry, Y/n,” He choked out. She didn’t have to look to know he was crying, “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was half drunk the night we got together, so were you. I always thought you were gorgeous. What I’m trying to say, fuck, is that it was never truly fake for me. You did mean something to me. You mean something to me. Y/n, are you listening to me?”

She threw open the doors to the party, letting the cool air coat the cold blood running through her veins, and whipped around aggressively to face him.

“Did you mean it when you said it?” She yelled, strong front trying desperately to stay up as she crumbled to pieces on the inside.

Lando shook his head in confusion, “When I said what?”

She stopped her foot on the ground, heel threatening to snap under the force, “When you said you loved me! When you said I meant everything to you! When you said I had purpose! Did you mean it?!”

She screamed at him and he stepped closer, but she put a hand up, “Don’t fucking come near me.”

Lando stood helplessly, “Yes, of course, I meant it. Y/n, everything was real for me.”

She cocked her head, “Was it? When did it stop being a ploy for my last name?”

Lando let his head fall to look at the ground, “The morning after we slept together.”

She groaned loudly, tears now falling freely from her cheeks, “Oh! How sweet! So, after you had sex with me, you started truly feeling something for me. If that’s even fucking true. You know, Lando,” She willed his eyes to keep her stare as she yelled, “You’re no better than everybody in there. I told you how I’ve never had anybody be in my life without wanting what comes with having a name like mine. I told you, I confided in you, how much it hurt for a ten word name to mean more than the feelings I have, to mean more than who I am as a person. You’re no better than my father, my mother, and everybody else who has exploited me in the past. Actually!” She continued, not caring that Lando was wiping tears off his face with his white button up, “Actually, you’re worse than all of them. At least, they were obvious with wanting me for the things I could give them. You made me think you loved me. You made me think that you fell in love with me for who I am. You made me think that I was finally being seen as a human being.”

Lando shot back, “I do love you, don’t fucking fight that. Don’t question that. I sure as fuck fell in love with you for who you are and I see you as who you are. Your last name doesn’t mean shit to me, Y/n.”

She hit his chest with her hand, “But, it did! It did, Lando, and that makes this fucking tainted! You’re just like them! You’re just like-”

She broke down into sobs, crying pathetically into his arms as he tried to coax her. The sound of betrayal was evident in the way she cried, a different kind to the one he heard before when her parents dismissed her or someone tried gaining something from her. This betrayal cut deep because of the love that clutched her heart and refused to let go even in the wake of what he had done. This betrayal ruined any semblance of trust she had with the world, demolishing it for anyone that tried to do what he attempted; to love her.

A moment went by, Y/n gathering herself and realizing she laid in the arms of someone she no longer trusted, and she forcefully backed herself away from him. Wiping her tears with his suit jacket, the one a bit too big for her because it was tailored to his frame and the one he had given her earlier in the night when she had grown cold, Y/n stopped meeting his eye.

“Delete my number from your phone. Never fucking talk to me again. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself.” She murmured, turning around and trying to walk down the dark street before Lando reached out to grab her arm.

When he forced her to turn around, his eyes were bloodshot and begging for forgiveness, begging for her, “Y/n, I love you. Please. Please.”

Still, she couldn’t meet his eye, softly and defeatedly whispering, “I will never be able to figure out if you love me for me or love me for what I can give to you. That is why this will never work. That is why you need to let go of my arm and let me go back to my apartment without you. That is why you need to let me go.”

He kept a hold on her arm and on the life he wanted them to have together, “Y/n, I can show you. I can show you how much you mean to me. Please, just give me another chance.”

She shook her head, “Goddamnit, Lando! Let fucking go of me! This is ruined! It will never be the same! You have done the worst possible thing. You have hurt me in the worst possible way. You have treated me the way everyone else has. I am not something you can use because you are greedy.”

He nodded his head intently, “I know. I know that. I always have.”

Fed up and emotionally distraught, Y/n ripped her arm from his hold and no longer did he reach out for her when her last parting words were, “No, you always haven’t. If you always had, you would’ve never approached me and we would’ve never found ourselves here.”

A/N: part 2?

UPDATE: part 2 posted

[s0fti3w1tch]

Buwan Brainrot dump: How I personally headcanon Leo to take the "it's not about you" line

note: again, personal headcanon, I'm info-dumping, and I'm projecting so hard

So, Rise of theTMNT Leonardo "I'm nothing without them" Hamato.

The simplest way I can describe this boy is: "It's either 0 or 200, no in-between lmao" (Spoiler alert: no, there are so many in-betweens)

Throughout the series and the movie: I believe Leo does have confidence and genuine belief in his own abilities, but has deep insecurities and feelings of inadequacy when doesn't fulfill those self-expectations.

He tends to put himself on the offense, putting himself at the danger head-on. He thinks that he can do things on his own, more so— that he should be able to do things on his own— So when he either doesn't or he really just can't, it itches at that insecurity. Sometimes that acts as a drive.

He's strategic and analytic, but he can still be impulsive.

I don't think Leo hates himself, but I don't think he necessarily likes himself either. He sees the value in himself, but he doesn't feel high value in himself. Regardless of the scenerio, his mindset is:

He has to do good

I feel like Leo was getting more assurance of his place with the rest of his team. His siblings. But then, he became leader. That kind of complicated things.

I do think, as a 16 year old who just went through one of the worst "wake-up calls" he could've ever gone through, that phrase may have settled in a skewed version of its original message.

"It's not about you" is a very vague phrase. Yet, it's most likely to mean:

It's more than what you provide on an individual level

This situation is more than just a test of your value

You are part of a team and "leader" doesn't change that

It's about all of us

You don't have to do this alone.

I think he understood part of that for sure.

However, "It's not about you" especially after learning that a mistake you made butterfly-effected its way to the lives of everyone you care about dying? The whole world? Innocents? After seeing what happened to Raph, after CJ's confrontation, after getting trapped by Kraang, after fighting Kraangified Raph, after the Kraang took away their ninpō in a snap—

Some people may take the original message in its entirety. But some won't.

When I was Leo's age in the movie (not that long ago mind you— I'm only 19!), I definitely wouldn't have. Because for some reason, some brains really like doing that.

I would

Leo's mind could interpret it as

"I do not matter and I nothing I do should be for the sake of me. Got it! :)"

Anyways, again, that's just my headcanon. Might be OOC. I'm gonna actually sleep because I didn't last night. BYYYYYEEEEE

This was sparked by my brother who sent an anon and I just decided to make it a separate post

[mwolf0epsilon]

Is it Really Self-Hatred When You're No Longer You?

Summary: '22 is a resentful man.

Warning: Mentions of suicidal thoughts!

[The counterpart fic to Fleeting Memory. Where Tup is struggling to deal with his grief and feelings of inadequacy, '22 has to deal with everyone else's guilt and their desire for him to "heal" and become Dogma once more. As you can imagine, this has a rather negative effect on him...]

---

Inevitably, '22 begins to resent Dogma.

It's not something he can help but to do. Not when everyone looks to him and wishes with all their might that, by some miracle, '22 would just seize to be and their lost brother was returned to them. And this is not mere speculation on his part. He's heard the whispers behind closed doors. Listened to every single word that slipped from the lips of clones that thought him too inept to understand that he wasn't wanted. That they only allowed him to stay out of pity.

He's watched from the shadows (a strange hollow feeling in his chest) as Tup asked Fives whether or not it was selfish of him, that he wanted Dogma to have truly been killed instead of being turned into '22. If it was cruel to wish for his brother to be at peace, instead of being forced to roam the halls as something lesser than a man.

Tup's words are always the ones that hurt the most.

Despite the growing annoyance (and burning hatred), he never confronts anyone about it. '22 much prefers to avoid conflict when given the choice. On Kamino peace and quiet had been just about the only luxuries he'd ever gotten. Rewards for being an agreeable little pawn that did whatever its masters told it to do without complaint.

If he didn't fight... If he didn't scream... If he did his tasks with the utmost efficiency...

The lab existed as an alternative to the dismantling and repurposing of defective units. It wasn't the better alternative, mind you, as reeducation was simply not an exact science. But it was certainly less messy in a more physical sense.

Clones who were not up to par in the field could be remade anew for a purpose that better served them.

Temperament issues, speech impediments, disobedience, independence... Those were symptoms of mental deficiencies that the lab could "fix".

Ultimately, Dogma had been defective. Disobedient in a murderous degree. Killed a superior officer (a Jedi no less), and then been sent away and never inquired after ever again. The 501st hadn't cared when they thought he was still alive and well. So why did they now, when '22 had taken his place? When they'd been shown the results of the Kaminoan's "corrective efforts"?

He's heard what the medic with the incision tattoos had to say.

How they ranted and raved with unrestrained fury that everyone was being a disgusting hypocrite. How none of them had actually liked Dogma prior to learning about the reconditioning. And yet, suddenly, everyone and their brother was crying gryzard tears over a vod they had often compared to a rupturing appendix.

The medic's honesty and outrage had been just about the only thing that had comforted '22. If just because at least someone (other than the little black and white critter that stared at him with understanding yellow eyes) didn't expect the impossible from him.

Dogma was gone and '22 had ownership of this body now.

It was never his intention to resent Dogma.

Anger, hatred and other heart-rate raising emotions were, quite frankly, counterproductive things that only caused trouble. Placidity and amicability were qualities that should be striven for. Especially if they made your chest hurt less, and your eyes and nose stop burning. What use was there to hate a dead man anyway?

Crying over something outside of his control was never pleasant. It made the headaches and the tremors worse. And then he'd vomit and the sour taste would remind him of all the times he'd nearly aspirated, during one of the many tests he was subjected to on Kamino.

Sour and salty things make him shudder and gag violently. The smell of cheese alone makes him lock his jaw on instinct. All his foods have to be coated in copious amounts of sweet sauces or other artificial sugars, for him to be able to choke them down.

'22 hates that everyone keeps giving him cheese when it clearly distresses him. Because it was Dogma's favorite. He always gives their offerings to DB instead, who eagerly eats them and then nuzzles his fingers gratefully in return (the little Bean is his only true friend).

Intentional or not, resenting Dogma comes naturally.

And it's not even his fault. It's everyone else's and their single-minded insistence on trying to push him to become someone he's not. With every comparison, every inquiry over memories or inside jokes he's not privy to, every attempt to tease him over a quality he does not possess, every single interaction where no one sees him for who he is... The burning in his chest increases.

And as time passes, his resentment of Dogma extends to Tup as well.

Tup who consistently torments '22 with the futile hope that his "actual brother" will one day return to him. Tup who is a despicable terrible man who dragged '22 out of the only place that ever made sense to him. Tup who he fantasizes about smothering with a pillow in the night so as to put an end to the perpetual misery.

He can never bring himself to do it, even when he knows he's the only one awake. The only person currently looming over the more tangible object of their ire, with clenched fists, gritting teeth, and a cold horrid burn in his withering heart.

Instead he always finds his way up onto the roof and sits on the ledge overlooking the cityscape.

Trying to desperately stamp out the wickedness that overtakes him, whenever his head gets too full of the buzzing anguish that comes with wanting someone he hates to love him just as much as he clearly loved Dogma...

One of these days he might just jump. It'd be easier after all, if he were simply dead.

At the very least easier than pretending anyone might ever come to love '22, when all he was is a reminder of someone they apparently hadn't even liked all that much if they'd let Kamino spirit him away into nothingness...

Well, someone that isn't DB and the maintenance droids at least. The little Bean and his mouse droid friends seem to be the only beings in this galaxy that give a damn about '22's well being. They're the only thing keeping him from doing more than just sitting at the precipice of his demise.

And, pragmatic as ever, '22 considers that to be enough for now.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Gerald Early

Published: Jul 19, 2023

In the spring of 2020, I taught a class at Washington University in St. Louis entitled “Black Conservatives and Their Discontent: African Americans and Conservatism in America.” Eight students enrolled in the course, all of them Black. Among the readings were portions of Shelby Steele’s The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America. On one particular day, we were concentrating on Steele’s objections to affirmative action. Steele made the standard anti-affirmative-action arguments: It stigmatizes Black people as inferior and fills them with self-doubt in a mostly white setting; it makes them trade on their past of victimization; it does not improve life for most Black people. When I asked my students what they thought of these views, they did not say much at first, probably waiting to see someone else commit. Finally, one of the more activist-minded among them said that he agreed with everything that Steele said about affirmative action, which he thought shamed Black people. But, he added, with strong emotion, “I hate Steele for saying it.”

There is an adage in football, this student explained: Take what your opponents give you, even if it is not exactly what you want. The ice broken and the tone for discussion set, the rest of the class agreed. Everyone disliked affirmative action and Shelby Steele in equal measure. It was a strange revelation, for all of us in that room knew that affirmative action had made this moment possible, both for me, as a Black professor at a prominently white university, and for them, as Black undergraduates at that same institution. At that moment, it was if the same realization struck us all: What does it mean that affirmative action brought us all here to criticize affirmative action? Why are we here? Therein lies a complex story of Black people’s feelings about affirmative action as both a gateway and a burden.

“For all its imperfections,” the sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote in his 1997 book The Ordeal of Integration, “affirmative action has made a major difference in the lives of women and minorities. … In utilitarian terms it is hard to find a program that has brought so much gain to so many at so little cost. It has been the single most important factor accounting for the rise of a significant Afro-American middle class.” It was the notion that I could more easily become a middle-class professional in the white world that led me to attend the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate in 1970, at the beginning of the era of affirmative action in college admissions. My family thought going to Penn was a great opportunity. My sisters had attended Temple University, the working-class college, but Penn was Ivy League, a high-status school. It could open more doors for a kid of my background, so everyone thought. Perhaps it did. I cannot say for sure.

There were a few things all of us Black kids who came to Penn in that year knew. We were the aggrieved and underprivileged being given access to education’s La La Land. We were expected to be a bit churlish — diversity must have its spice of difference and social adjustment — but also dazzled by the riches. We were Dorothy in Oz with a chip on our shoulders. Second, we knew we all felt varying degrees of severe inadequacy. Huddling together sometimes eased the dislocation, but it sometimes made it worse, reinforcing the sense of being a grunt lost in the gun smoke of a war. Finally, we all knew that this largess was not going to last. There was an expiration date to affirmative action. Everyone said so: jurists, civil-rights leaders, politicians, and folks on the street. “You better get it while you can,” I remember one Black co-ed telling me, “The white folks won’t keep the gates open forever. Once it’s closed, they’ll say, ‘we gave you your chance.’ White folks’ bouts of doing right by the Negro don’t usually last long.” Realizing this made everything seem urgent to me. I felt a bit like Jesus’ disciples immediately after he died: The end could come any day now.

Black Americans have had ambivalent feelings about affirmative action since its inception in the 1960s. Though the extent and implications of the policy have changed radically over time, it has never benefited more than a small minority of Black people. Yet its symbolic importance has been enormous, especially in how it has affected the culture of higher education. Once a few Black students were admitted to elite and prominently white universities, they began to exert pressure from within to admit more Black students and hire more Black faculty. This was the fight against tokenism. The two populations of Black students and Black faculty were intertwined as a political force; together, they helped to change higher education in the United States. (The other major American institution as deeply affected by affirmative action has been the military.) What made affirmative action important for so many Black people, despite the fact that comparatively few directly benefited from this rather boutique social policy, was that it changed the way we thought about where Black people could be or where they belonged. If it was not quite the broad-based intervention Black Americans needed, they were still happy to take what they made their opponents give them.

But if affirmative action was viewed as a civil-rights victory by many Black people it never directly benefited, it often became a source of embarrassment for some it did. In college admissions, affirmative action effectively protected Black students from competing against non-Black students. Black people felt stigmatized by affirmative action because it came to mean that you had lesser qualifications — that you were admitted to a college or appointed to a job merely because of your race. In academe, a whole phalanx of jobs — including appointments in African American studies, in diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, and the like — became “race” jobs, jobs that existed in part in order to diversify the campus. Many Black people do not hold these jobs in as high a regard as, say, being the dean of an engineering or medical school. (For instance, my mother, who never understood the nature of my job but was exceedingly proud of whatever it was, would never introduce me as a professor of African American studies but rather as a professor of English.) Many Black parents do not wish their children to major in or even take courses in African American studies, as they don’t think of it as a practical or prestigious field of study. But the phenomenon of “race herding” on college campuses — students and faculty of color clustering in disciplines directly related to race — is partly misunderstood: Colleges, by their administrative nature, tend to encourage cliques, silos, and fiefdoms as vectors of power. Black people, in part, are just conforming to the academic environment, by using the element that got us in the door: our race.

This institutional development over the past 50 years has made some Black people feel uneasy about, if not ashamed of, affirmative action, and led many Black elites on both the right and the left to deny that they ever benefited from it. How can one feel pride in winning something that perversely acknowledges, or even rewards, your historically induced inadequacies? Affirmative action seems to say not just that racism persists, but that there is — still — something lacking in Black life.

While the liberal-leaning Black majority has always had mixed feelings about affirmative action, Black conservatives have been virtually unanimous in opposing it. Indeed, they have had to, if they wanted to be taken seriously by their White conservative allies. As Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court, the most prominent Black conservative in the country, wrote in his 1991 essay, “No Room at the Inn: The Loneliness of the Black Conservative”: “For blacks the litmus test” for conservatism “was fairly clear. You must be against affirmative action and against welfare.” This point is reiterated more recently in the sociologist Corey D. Fields’s Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans, which states that many Black Republicans “thought affirmative action served as a test to gauge their relative commitments to the GOP and to their fellow African Americans, particularly since the issue could easily be framed as putting race and partisanship in direct opposition.” Because Black conservatives were looked upon with suspicion by their white counterparts, suspected of prioritizing racial self-interest above ideology, they had to constantly prove themselves. This pressure was intensified by the fact that Black conservatives had little leverage among conservatives, as so few Black people voted for Republicans. Black conservatives did not bring any sort of sizable constituency with them. Of course, to have Black conservatives espouse policies that white conservatives also supported protected them, or seemed to, from the charge of racism, since conservatism and racism in the United States have long been intertwined.

For Thomas, opposition to affirmative action is a not merely a test of conservative allegiance but a principle to be defended against the wrong-headedness of Black liberalism. His 57-page concurrence to the majority decision in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College is a full-throated denunciation of affirmative action as a shameful and cynical form of institutionalized special pleading on behalf of Black people. He advances, once again, the paradoxical position that Black Americans can best press their claims as a special interest group by behaving as if we had no racial grievances and accepting the basic aspirational fairness of a colorblind society.

Thomas argues that “the Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right.” The U.S. Constitution does not allow punitive racial discrimination, but it also does not permit, as the dissenters argue, any sort of compensatory racial discrimination as amelioration for past discrimination. It does not permit racial discrimination — period. He proceeds “to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution.” Part of this defense is countering the “‘antisubordination’ view of the 14th Amendment: that the amendment forbids only laws that hurt, but not help blacks.” There are two overall points that Thomas makes. The first is the legal one about the constitutionality of racial discrimination. The second is social and practical, regarding whether discriminating in favor of a racial group really winds up helping that group. The dissenters argue that affirmative action is “‘good’ for black students.” “Though I do not doubt the sincerity of my dissenting colleagues’ beliefs,” Thomas responds, “experts and elites have been wrong before — and they may prove to be wrong again.” Thomas is expressing doubt about the insistence of Black liberals that Black Americans can only achieve their full citizenship claims through racially specific emoluments. He thinks that belief is not only specious but has damaged Black people, by effectively making them more racially self-conscious.

In portions of his concurrence, Thomas offers a mildly chauvinistic version of Black history that, on the whole, shows us as a striving, hard-working folk who had intact families, full employment, and excellent schools, like the legendary Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, in Washington D.C. We Blacks went along on our self-reliant, religiously conservative, social valiant way until something called social-welfare programs in the 1960s came along, and Black progress came to a crashing halt: a virtuous, dignified people made into dysfunctional dependents overnight. (This declension story is much indebted to the economist Thomas Sowell, an intellectual who has had an enormous impact on Thomas; he refers to five different works by Sowell in his concurrence.)

Such jeremiads against the welfare state are the way Black conservatives display race pride: by telling the race to be true to itself and abhor the aberrations of liberalism and leftism. For the Black conservative, Black people being liberal or leftist is essentially inauthentic. After all, we are reminded by white Republicans and conservatives, as well Black conservatives themselves, how brave Black Republicans are for taking the positions that they do in the face of admittedly bitter and sometimes unfair or opportunistic attacks from Blacks who are, to use the conservatives’ language, still on the liberal plantation. These attacks are proof of the Black conservative’s sincerity. Black Americans were noble once, coming out of the hellfire of slavery, and they can be noble again, by following the conservative platitudes of responsibility, rectitude, and respectability.

Thomas details the principal points of the Black conservative’s opposition to affirmative action: It violates the colorblind intentions of the constitution, particularly the 14th Amendment; it stigmatizes Black people as inferior and in need of help; highly selective colleges that accept Black students who do not meet their admissions standards only hurt and demoralize these students; affirmative action helps only a small number of bourgeois-aspiring Black people. Nothing new in any of that.

Thomas’s concurrence is especially strident in its criticism of the dissents of his fellow Supreme Court judges, the liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor. At one point, Thomas characterizes Jackson’s linkage of slavery and white inherited wealth as locking Black people into a “seemingly perpetual inferior caste” as “irrational,” “an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood.”

Finally, Thomas emphasizes in his concurrence his intense dislike of racial categories, which he thinks “are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person’s ideology, beliefs, and abilities.” Orlando Patterson strikes a different chord: “The simple truth, the simple reality, is that ‘racial’ categorization is a fact of American life, one that we can do away with only by first acknowledging it.” Patterson’s view, like those of many other supporters of affirmative action, is that the virus that made you ill can be made into the vaccine that cures you. But if racism is evil, Black conservatives like Thomas would argue, how can the fruits of racism be good? To think as Patterson and other Black liberals do validates the logic of racism as something that can be manipulated but never transcended.

For Thomas, the ongoing insistence on racial categorization is the inevitable result of protest politics, which revels in the charisma of the category as identity. What Black conservatives fear is that Black Americans overvalue the power and the repetition of protest, which intensifies our experience as an immutable social category, which is why Black conservatives complain so passionately about Black people clinging to victimhood. This is the category-binding that denies Black people transcendence, any hope of escaping race consciousness, or of having a full-fledged, authentic life, as the Black conservative sees it. To glorify protest, Thomas and other Black conservatives argue, is simply to reduce Black people to anger and reaction.

There has been much mourning for affirmative action among liberals of all races in the past couple of weeks. But a recent Economist/YouGov survey found that 44 percent of Black people supported the court’s decision to end affirmative action, while only 36 percent oppose it. Perhaps affirmative action has been more of a burden on us than we have been willing to admit, and Thomas’s triumph may speak for more Black Americans than we realize. Will the strange hope in colorblindness in a country crazed by color save us from the tyranny of our categorization? It is actually touching that some Black folk think it can.

[ Via: https://archive.is/Vj1Jx ]

[kazimortem]

1, 4, 6, and 9 for Takizawa because you know what, why not. If this is too many feel free to only do a couple of your choice!

1. (Hands you a free card to ramble about whatever for your favorite character/ship)

I don't care if SeiAki is, at its core, extremely toxic and could never realistically be canon, but I will take interesting, toxic chemistry any day over healthy, boring/nonexistent chemistry. Sometimes toxic ships are just more fun with the absurd amounts of angst

I just feel like Akira and Amon's relationship is just… a whole lot of nothing. I feel like Amon only got with her because he felt guilty over her dad and because it was what she wanted at the time—and the closeness she feels to Amon kind of comes off as her clinging to the closest thing she has to her dad.

It also rubs me wrong that Akira's personality and plot relevance just kind of fizzles out once she and Amon officially get together. I hate when that happens to female characters :(

There's this infinitely compelling and beautiful tragedy to Akira and Seidou's relationship that maintains both of their personalities and desires and dynamic. I would have loved to see them continue interacting and talking about what they've been through so Akira's brain could be picked a little more concerning her feelings about not being good enough and why she felt so strongly about losing Seidou that she threw her entire life away and nearly died just to tell him she wished she'd saved him.

Another thing I like about Seidou as a love interest is that it bothers me how clear it is Amon doesn't see Akira as her own person but as her father's daughter—which could be due in part to him feeling some intense survivors guilt over his death. Be compares her to him and thinks of him and brings him up when she's around.

But Seidou? Even if he holds a grudge and sees her as a rival, he sees her as Akira. Just Akira. Not Kureo Mado's daughter. He never even once brings her father up in conversation (iirc), but he most certainly knew who he was.

Obviously he's blinded a lot by his inferiority complex and projects his feelings of inadequacy on her, but I think that also makes his dynamic and relationship with her SO much more compelling than Akira's relationship with Amon. Her sacrifice was his first time not viewing her as this flawless, cold rival to him. His entire perspective on her changed in an instant. He risked his life for someone he swore he hated for years. He was so genuinely worried about her and didn't want her to die.

And that makes me want to see him Akira more than anyone.

4. What character do you (the asker) remind me of?

This one probably won’t work very well for anons but no matter.

Seidou!

6. What’s your favorite piece of TG fan content you’ve made? (If you haven’t made any just treat this as 7)

I will be honest I'm obsessed with my Blinding Lights fic but have long periods of writers block. I get self conscious sometimes about my characterization bc I don't want it to be too fanonized but I also want to have fun.

I have a lot of plans for it that I just…cannot get to yet. But hopefully one day I can

9. You switch places with (character) for a day, what’s the first thing you’re doing with your newfound abilities/associations and do you survive.

Most definitely survive because I feel like trying to kill Seidou is like trying to kill a very stubborn roach. I'm not really sure what I'd do, though !

Maybe test out his ghoul abilities and have some fun doing like… parkour or something.

[curtklingermanposts]

The Difference Between Guilt and Conviction

Guilt

The primary focus on the word guilt being used here is the emotion of inadequacy attached to it, and not so much the committing of an actual offence. This is the unholy counterfeit of the conviction of the Holy Spirit, used to manipulate and impede one’s ability to function as a child of God. Shame has to do with humiliation that crushes the soul. It thrives on embarrassment while calling it "exposure." Shame is the demonic counterfeit of being humbled. It seeks total destruction and disgrace, whereas, Godly humility raises the individual up. It’s a stinging emotion that feeds off of guilt and shortcomings by using reproach as its thorn. The question is: are the feelings of guilt always bad? The answer is unequivocally yes! As already stated, guilt is a counterfeit of conviction. It effects the emotions. In fact, it uses them against the individual. Guilt drives a person further away from God; not closer, and it leads to shame and condemnation. There is no love in guilt. Its’ very core is manipulative and destructive. For example, people use guilt to get others to perform in a manner that is pleasing to them. The only one who benefits is the one who employs it. There is no give or receive, it’s all take. Guilt is also used as a weapon of retaliation. One way some get back at others for wrongdoing, is making them feel guilty about what they did. They are not interested in seeing the perpetrators repent; they just want them to pay. They want power over them, even to the point of making them grovel. Guilt is also used to keep others at bay, or under their thumb. Before playing Holy Spirit, we should consider that we may actually drive others away, because we would be imparting guilt instead of conviction. Remember, the enemy uses it against people all the time, and should not be used by disciples of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, some attempt to escape feelings of guilt by doing things that actually produce more of it. For example, how many have turned to drugs and alcohol in hopes of extinguishing the dread of guilt, only to wake up the next day feeling more trapped than ever. Adding insult to injury, they discover that in their stupor they committed another offence; thus increasing their feelings of guilt. How many have sought to compensate by overeating or power shopping, only to feel guilty about the overindulgence or purchasing things they couldn't afford with money they didn’t have? The list goes on. Impulsiveness can be a sign of compensation. Without true repentance, guilt perpetuates.  Another case in point: some may believe they repented for wrongdoing; and yet still feel guilty, because they are planning to commit the same offence again. Their idea of repentance was groveling over the remorse they felt as the result of the guilt. They used groveling to "show sincerity"; even though, there was none. As if groveling would make up for it. Some will say, “I’m sorry,” even though they haven’t repented. In essence, they’re really saying, “I’m sorry I got caught.”

Conviction

Conviction not only leads a person to repentance, it draws him closer to God, because the Holy Spirit is doing the work, based on His love. Of course, our job is not to play Holy Spirit; nonetheless, if He speaks and works through us, our words and actions, or even our silence and inaction, will convict. Conviction calls for change and humility answers the call. Guilt just holds on and makes you aware of your shortcomings. With guilt comes pride, and with pride rationalization. After all, guilt beholds to no one when pride is involved. Pride cannot receive forgiveness, whereas humility does. Even though individuals may hate the feelings of guilt, pride will not allow them to be washed away. The odd thing about guilt is that it is self-perpetuating. Pride does not allow one to do things God’s way. Those who feel guilty may seek to compensate for it, in order to alleviate the dread of those feelings. They may seek to do good things in order to deaden the feelings of inadequacy. They hope to balance the scale. Since they have impure motives, they're just dead works. While the deeds may benefit another, the focus is still on the self. For instance, when one offends another, he may use the old, “I’d feel better if you accept my peace offering” technique. It has nothing to do with how the other is negatively affected; he is more concerned with getting rid of the guilty feeling. Conviction on the other hand is concerned with the pain caused to others. In turn, one may feel remorse, because he injured another. The desire is to restore and heal the other. You can discern when someone is driven by guilt, or impure motives by their statements. For instance, “I don’t want them to be mad at me.” As if, them not being upset somehow makes it okay. Pride tries to earn forgiveness; humility asks and receives it. The former manipulates; the later allows for the free exercise to forgive. In the former, one can never do enough to alleviate the guilt, so the individual feels guilty about his inability to make up for it. He has no sense of assurance he's been forgiven. On the other hand, when someone humbly receives forgiveness, guilt no longer plays a role.

Overcoming Guilt

Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.  In Christ Jesus, we are no longer condemned. We are free from condemnation as well as guilt and shame. Carrying guilt, shame, and condemnation essentially means one still needs to renew the mind. It's either that, or he does not believe the Word, and has not truly repented; thereby, holding himself captive to that bondage. Whoever we place above God’s Word is on the throne instead of God. Whatever we place above His Word is an idol. Therefore, the first step to overcoming this unholy thing is believing God, and taking Him at His word. Romans 4:3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. It is important to change our thinking to conform to His, which means spending focused time with Him, and reading Scripture while allowing Holy Spirit to minister His Word to you as read. Compare what you believe with what He says! Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

perfectfaith.org

[simpfiles]

Can you write headcanons for an insecure Silco with a hot partner that gets flirted with a lot? thanks!

i admire those who know what they want and ask for it, even if what they want is cliché af lmao. edit: i read this wrong and thought you wanted the partner to flirt back.my bad. enjoy the hurt anyways.

silco is meticulous about his appearance, stoic and hellenistic, his insecurities rarely surface through his facial expressions and his insecurities are many and LOUD. being betrayed by the one you called flesh and blood will do that to a person. but it goes deeper than that. back to his roots as a child. 

silco has always been slender. a byproduct of spending his time in the mines and never having enough to eat. lanky legs, tooth pick arms, thin fingers, a cardboard silhouette... even his cheeks lacked the subtle swell that could soften his features. his nose curved, at the bridge, and he guesses that’s something.

you have curves; supple thighs, soft stomach, perfect lips that curve to a smile when you look at him. he likes to squeeze you when he holds you. something you hated at first because it made you self-conscious but he’d always quill your insecurities with adulation, “Don’t be. You’re perfect.”

his praises are different from the orgy of "compliments" you receive in a day. while side by side they may share the same words, their delivery is different, holding opposing sentiments. when others are careless and rushed, usually strung together in a drunken slur, with only the promise of a quickie in the back by the dumpster, his are reverent. and he lets you know.

he takes it upon himself to expose the inadequacies of others to you. how none of them are worth your time. that you are far above them. they will never understand you the way he does. will never love you the way he does. as if the truth of your existence is within his sole custody.

you used to like making him jealous. a horrible habit of yours that had a body count but call it an addiction. the way you'd retreat to his presence when he came near, wrapping your arms around his to feel the seething tension of his muscles. it was intoxicating, looking in his eye and seeing so clearly that you were the subject of his obsessive adoration only for them to shift and you catch the glance of a jealous scorn that attributed to his effortless handsome face. then there was the aftermath sex. WOW. how could you know what you were doing was wrong when he made you feel so good afterwards, practically rewarding you for your transgression?

but then you took it too far.

you made a comment about going on a trip with someone, who you knew he'd hate, already preparing yourself for a fun afternoon of 'stay with me' sex. but when you established eye contact his teal iris wasn't glossed over with jealousy; it was betrayal.

that day ya'll had your first serious fight. it was loud. it was long. and it was all your fault.

that night was dedicated to damage control, with you doing all you could to mend silco's frail impressionable heart. you cradle his head in your lap, petting his hair in a comforting manner with long strokes. your fingers ever so often looping back to brush against his cheekbones. there are still tear stains from before. You're a horrible person. he brings a hand to press yours against his cheek, and leans into your thighs, shifting the rest of his body to its side.

you continue your soothing menstruations with you other hand. there are so many things you want to say to him to reassure him that he's the only one for you and that nothing will ever change that. but both of you have said enough words for a day. so you settle with "I will never leave you, Silco. You're perfect."

[witch-hazels-musings]

because I need that good loving can I request Diluc and Zhongli reaction to seeing there SO dressed up for a formal event even though its not something they really like doing but because they dont want to make Diluc/Zhongli look bad in front of all these other people they put all their effort into looking like the human embodiment of attractiveness.

the way you look tonight 

(okay so truth time - I thought about you the whole time I was writing this and forgot you requested it -- I hope the love of these boys reminds you that you are lovely <3!) 

Warning -> SFW, fluff / comfort (cussing(1))(self-conscience reader)

Character X GN Reader | Anthology

Includes: Zhongli ⚘, Diluc

Zhongli

He finds your normal style of dress unique and interesting, it’s unlike most of the people who make up Liyue’s landscape and it’s independently you

When someone lives their life in the way they want to, that's what Zhongli admires the most about people, about humans 

He doesn’t mind what you wear, he would want anyone to meet you, to see you regardless because through his eyes he sees your attractiveness - it’s in the way you smile, the way you laugh, the way you react when something makes you excited or when he gives you a gift you don’t expect - how could he hide you away and not let others see the way you glow? 

You look at yourself for the tenth time in the large circular mirror. An hour had gone by and you still felt unusual, out of place, like a fraud in this attire. For the, you’ve lost count, time you fuss with the fabric that sits against your stomach, tugging on it, wondering if you should leave it open or closed. The most frustrating thing about this is that you had no idea how to wear this damn thing. 

Your head falls onto the vanity and you do your best to hold it all in. With a deep breath, you go back to messing with your hair and face. The ticking clock behind you reminds you that time is not your friend no matter how much you want it to stop. 

This is so hard for you, of course, you want to be there for Zhongli - he was there for everything you ever did, it was beyond time to repay him - but you just couldn’t find the confidence to be proud of what you’d done. So, shaping the image in your brain into a distorted representation of what you wished you looked like, you stood from your small chair and walked toward the door of the bedroom. 

Your shoes click on the hardwood floor which is something you hate, the thought of people hearing you coming only to see what appears from the source of the sound makes your skin crawl. Still, you pressed on, and that’s when your eyes fell onto the immaculate figure that stands near the entrance. His tall, elegant frame is so intense it knocks the wind from your lungs as if someone just punched you in the stomach. How can I stand next to that … you panic and turn to retreat back into the safety of the bedroom when your arms collide with a small table in the hallway.

Objects fall to the ground and, in a ridiculous display of your clumsy nature, you juggle one of the more breakable objects before catching it moments from shattering on the floor below. 

“Whew …” You exclaim, bringing it close to your body. “Sorry, little guy didn’t mean to do that.” You wince, patting its side before place it back onto its home and picking up the other objects from the ground. 

Long fingers enter your field of vision, startled you stand only to see Zhongli reaching down to assist you. 

“Ah, sorry.” You express, crossing your arms after putting the items in your hands half-hazard onto the surface. 

“No need to apologize, are you injured?” He asks, standing himself and reminding you how tall he is. 

“My pride, maybe.” You share, laughing through your embarrassment. 

“Too much of that and we might find ourselves in trouble anyway.” He looks down at you, his eyes scanning, interested and making you shift under their gaze. “You …” 

“I know... I look so strange, and,” you begin, fussing with the top again, “I can’t seem to get this right.” Turning around you show him what you were talking about and how it seems far too loose. 

He laughs softly and you feel his hands run underneath the edge of the fabric and coming to rest at the wrap at your waist. “Let me assist you.” 

“Thank you …” He’s so close to you, his hands move expertly as they work to correct your inadequacies, eyes compassionate, patient as they always are. 

“This outfit suits you.”

“Does it really? I look so … I mean this isn’t something I would normally wear. In fact,”  You think for a minute before continuing, “I can’t remember the last time I dressed up for something other than adventuring. It’s not practical to go running through ruins in this type of getup.” You explain, lifting your arms and watching how the fabric slips down to your elbows before sliding back to your wrists as they collide with your legs. 

“That could turn things into quite the challenge I’d imagine.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Nevertheless, you will turn quite a many heads upon our arrival.” 

“That’s what I'm afraid of …” You mumble, forgetting that he is close enough to hear you. 

“Y/N, need I remind you how spectacular you look.” 

You bite your lip but your insecurities make you speak anyway, “I just don’t see how I have the right to stand next to you, I don’t want you to be … ashamed of me.” The end of your sentence trails off as you look to the ground. Zhongli doesn’t respond until his hands stop fixing your gown. With comforting fingers he presses against the soft underbelly of your chin, lifting your head at the angle it should be. 

“While I am beyond sure you can hear me, I hope that you can trust me as well when I tell you that every day I am honored to stand at your side. There is nothing in this world which compares to your beauty, in fact, you are more radiant than the moon itself.” He leans in to place a kiss against your forehead. 

“You don’t wish I was … more attractive?” 

“I cannot wish for a thing that holds no bearing on reality.” 

“Mmm.” 

“If my words have not reached you, perhaps I can better express my truth through actions …” He pulled you flush against him, his hands now wrapped around your hips and eyes focused on your lips. 

“Aa! Wait … no, I believe you.” Embarrassed, you push away from him and make your way toward the door. “Let’s just go because if I get out of this thing I won’t be putting it back on.” You huff, smoothing out the wrinkles. 

“Shall we?” He reaches for your hand and easily you take it. 

“Let’s do this.” With a lighthearted Zhongli, you exit your home and head toward the lively sounds drifting over the water. 

Diluc

He already thinks you are so incredibly attractive no matter what you wear - he knows you’re one for practicality, from your actions to your clothes, you are ready to go and prepared for whatever will come your way - a trait he admires

There is something adorable about the way you fall out of bed in the morning and, in some cases, take less time than he does to get ready - it can come in handy where there much work to be done 

He never asks for you to be more than what you are - he honestly wouldn’t care what other people thought about you, all that matters is you believe him when he tells you how good you look or how you make his heart clench 

So when he sees you descend the stairs in an outfit, a formal, totally out-of-the-absolute-norm outfit, he’s stunned 

“Crap.” You say, flinging the jewelry you couldn’t decide on anyway back toward the dresser. You’d taken far too long to get ready, even though you started hours ago, it still wasn’t enough to make you feel confident and finished. Glancing at your reflection one last time, you gave up with a heavy sigh and made your way down the hallway. 

You could already see everyone else in their formal attire ready to go, even the attendants looked better than you did. When you caught sight of Diluc your steps slowed and for a solid minute to you debated about turning around and hiding under the comfortable covers of the bed you loathed getting out of this morning. 

“Ah, there you are! Are you ready?” Adaline shouted from below you and like a scene from a nightmare everyone turned to look up at you. You stumbled backward and felt your chest tighten, eyes scanning each face as you debated on your next action. When they fell onto Diluc’s stoic eyes, you felt a little bit of relief and knew all you had to do was make it down to him. 

Slowly, you started again and, with a deathlike grip on the railing, you made your way down the stairs. Diluc met you at the bottom, his hand extended to take yours. 

“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t figure out what would pair well with … this thing.” You gestured at your outfit and looked behind him, thankful that people had already started to leave through the front door. “Do I … look okay?” 

With an awkward smile, you waited for his answer, hopeful that he wouldn’t have to struggle so hard to lie to you. I mean, when you were able to see him in his suit, the way it perfectly fits around his toned body, the fabric tucked in all the right places, the sleeves just long enough to give one a peek of skin underneath - there was no way you compared to him. 

He looked at you for so long your heart started to feel like a thousand knives were stabbing you in all directions. He hates this … he can’t believe that I’m such a disaster. The thoughts circulate in your brain and just as your about to rush back up the stairs and hide he lifts your fingers to his lips and kisses them with so much love. 

“I apologize … I’m just a bit startled is all.” Your stomach drops to your feet at his words. 

“Archons, is it that bad? Did I put something on wrong … or?” 

“Nothing like that,” He kisses your palm and the action makes your spine turn hot, “You look unbelievable, is what I wanted to say.” 

“Oh, really?” 

“Yes.” He looks at you but you shy away from his eyes. “Y/N, do you trust me?” 

“What … of course I trust you.” You reply, flabbergasted. 

“Then trust me now.” He pulls you in for a hug, his arms wrapping around your neck, his hand resting at the back of your head. “I’ve never seen someone as brilliant as you.” 

Fueled by your emotions, you return his hug, squeezing your arms around his waist and doing your best not to let your face be ruined by the tears that want to fall from stinging eyes. “Thank you, I’ll trust you on this … today.” 

“I don’t have any issues reminding you again and again.” Shouting outside tells you that it’s now or never and, as much as you don’t want to, your arms release each other. “Are you ready?” He asks, offering you his arm, and with a deep inhale and sharp nod, you take it and walk through the doors. 

----

taglist: @star-gods @mercurysmaiden @dourpeep @clemmywrites @pepperoncinipizza @handswritteeen @the-mermaid-of-mondstadt @lucifucker @beelsdessert @coolcats09 @ninqat @musekala @sufzku @mooshymello @heavenlyang @plenilunegazes @odafashioned @glazelilyy

[richmond-rex]

There's so much emphasis on the extent of Tudor Propoganda while studying history (fair enough), but i rarely see any talk about Richard III's propoganda against his predecessors, the the Woodvilles and Edward IV (including exaggerations, slander, fabrications witchcraft accusations etc) and his eventual successor Henry VII, which has negatively impacted their reputations to the same extent.

Hi! Sorry for taking so long to reply, but yeah the term 'Tudor propaganda' is flung around as if only Henry VII (and his successors) engaged in the practice and everyone who came before them didn't even know that manipulation of the public opinion was a thing that could be attempted. Granted, we need to establish that despite people claiming Henry VII was a sort of proto-Joseph Goebbels, neither he nor his predecessors had extraordinary powers: as Wesley Corrêa says, 'we cannot expect a conscious and widespread propaganda policy in this period, either as manipulation or as thought-control, because we cannot expect a well-centralised government'. Yet the Wars of the Roses period in specific saw a rising awareness of the importance of dialogue with the commons — the very idea of the Wars of the Roses itself is rooted in Yorkist, not Tudor, propaganda.

Richard Duke of York, Warwick and Edward IV engaged in propaganda against Henry VI. This included attacks against Margaret of Anjou, positioning her as a threat to true Englishness and the masculine order of the realm. This included painting her in terms of sexual misconduct and declaring Henry VI's heir, Edward of Lancaster, a bastard. This included presenting Edward IV as the promised Arthurian hero. This included painting Henry VI as a fool of small intelligence. To this day many of these claims remain in the public imagination, especially the ones related to Margaret of Anjou's inadequacy as queen, her supposed unfaithfulness and Edward of Lancaster's illegitimacy. To this day I find nonfiction books referring to Henry VI as 'an imbecile'.

These propaganda efforts were of course a double-edged sword. When Warwick revolted against Edward IV he used some of the same tactics they had used in Edward's favour: namely, declaring a claimant to the crown a bastard (this time Edward IV himself) and declaring the decay of the realm's commonweal thanks to the influence of evil councillors, this time no longer Somerset and other favourites of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, but the Woodvilles, the Herberts, and others of Edward IV's new men. This was an active act of propaganda—no English chronicle before Warwick's revolt had registered any claims against the queen's family—yet to this day, we hear all about the supposed nefarious influence of Elizabeth Woodville and her kin and how everyone supposedly hated them.

Richard III in turn appropriated much of Warwick's propagandistic legacy against the Woodvilles, and even the bastardy accusations were resurrected under a new guise, this time against Edward IV's children. Not only did he disparage his nephews and nieces, he 'launched a frontal assault on the very morality and integrity of [Edward IV]'s regime'. Richard III's views on Edward IV and his accusations against Hastings and Dorset (Elizabeth Woodville's firstborn) in face of his own self-proclaimed morality still colour a lot of our understanding of those figures. As he accused others of debauchery and witchcraft, Richard III 'deliberately cultivated an image of the virtuous prince'. Ricardians take all his noble deeds whilst king as genuine piety and pure kind-heartedness, never as an act of self-fashioning as rooted in genuine feelings as it might have been.

Richard III also appropriated the xenophobic fearmongering levelled against Margaret of Anjou, this time using it against Henry Tudor. Henry VII's perceived 'Frenchness' or 'un-Englishness' also has its origins on Richard III's propaganda. Likewise, in the same way that Richard III's administration felt the need to refer to Edward V as 'Edward the Bastard' every chance it got, Richard III made an effort in declaring Henry Tudor had 'no manner [of] interest, right or colour, as every man well knoweth' merely months before Tudor invaded because evidently, people were of the contrary opinion. Richard III took some lengths to declare Henry Tudor was corrupted by his bastard blood (going so far as to declare Owen Tudor a bastard), yet to this day all we hear about is how Henry Tudor had no claim to the throne, as though the Englishmen that went over to Brittany to join his cause couldn't rally around anyone else with an actual claim since according to them Henry had none. Everyone had a better claim than Henry Tudor yet no one else was more qualified to marry Elizabeth of York.

None of this is to be taken as an attack against Richard III, Warwick, Edward IV, etc. Henry VII himself did of course engage in propaganda not only against his predecessor but also—and I would say especially—in the affirmation of a self-mythology that placed him as the long-awaited Son of Prophecy and the healer of old divisions. Legitimacy was a quality that could be given, made, or taken away, so it needed to be constantly built and rebuilt. As Rodney Barker says: 'what characterises government, in other words, is not the possession of a quality defined as legitimacy, but the claiming, the activity of legitimation.'

The period of the Wars of the Roses was characterised by a remarkable easiness in toppling regimes—all of the figures I cited here were in need of establishing and maintaining legitimacy. It's naive to think no one ever engaged in propaganda before the Tudors or to think that Tudor propaganda against Richard III is the only type of propaganda that ever came down to us. In short, anon, I agree 🌹x

[dutchdread]

No offense bro, but why are you always so protective of Cloud? No disrespect to you or anything but I've heard quite a bit of different opinions and theories on Cloud myself and I do agree with the people who say that he takes Tifa for granted. Going through trauma in the past is not really an excuse for his behavior. He also does act like he's the only one who has suffered in his life. Do you have other reason to defend him other than the fact that you "relate" to him? Just wondering.

Sorry for the late reply, my life has basically left no room for hobbies these past months. Your question is hard to reply to because I am not sure what you mean when you say I am protective of him. I guess you mean I defend his actions? Specifically in ACC? Firstly let me state that there is a difference between being a good character and being a nice character, there is also a difference between agreeing with someones actions, or just understanding them. Personally, I never really liked Cloud, especially not when I was younger. A lot of my defense of Cloud doesn't come from me personally liking him, but from me thinking he's a good character. I also think Snape is a good character, but I don't like his actions, and I don't defend them, although I still understand them to a certain degree. I should also say that as I started to understand Clouds character more, I also started liking HIM a bit more, although I still don't like the things he did, and would very likely not be friends with him. But I do understand why he did what he did and cannot be too critical of him because of that. You've probably heard that before you judge someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That's great advice, if you want to judge someone, you should imagine what it would be like to be them, however, I've noticed that too often when people try to walk a mile in someone elses shoes, they refuse to take their own shoes off first. They don't think "what would it be like to be him", they think "what would I do in that position". But Cloud is not you, and you cannot judge him by how you would act, you've not gone through the same things he has, your thought patterns aren't the same etc. This matters because too often I see people judging Clouds actions in ACC, and establishing his motivations by saying things that boil down to "If I were in his position, I would only do those actions if I loved Aerith/didn't love Tifa/whatever". But they're not Cloud, and they're not understanding how Cloud thinks, and that it's different from how THEY think. But like you said, I do see some recognizable elements of myself in Cloud, which is why I do understand his actions, and why I feel relatively certain in defending them, because I see them coming from a good place. It's common for me to react to things in a way that others find counter-intuitive. Let me give you an example, my brother once was mad at me because I had not told him my girlfriend of several years and I had broken up while I did tell a random stranger at the pub. He said that he felt like he wasn't important to me if I told a random stranger but not him. The truth was the exact opposite, I love my brother, and could not bear to face him for some reason, as I told him: "if not caring enough was the problem, then I wouldn't have told a random stranger". I see people exhibit that same lack of understanding when discussing Clouds actions, where they feel like his actions must be the sign of him just being a bad person, or not caring. But ask yourself what is more likely, that Square-enix wants their hero to be a bad person, or that you simply are misunderstanding the character? I understand why people don't get Cloud, Cloud suffers from obvious mental health issues, and mental health issues simply are not something that the general public understands, even today. Not only that, but Cloud went through the most insane series of traumatic events anyone could ever imagine. He had an alien parasite in him, saw his entire town murdered before his eyes, then saw Zack murdered in front of his eyes, then saw Aerith murdered in front of his eyes, and just when he started living a peaceful life he is forced to watch his child succumb to sickness in front of his eyes, and then he finds he himself is dying. All this on the psyche of a man who had had a fear of failure ever since he was a child, spent most of his life essentially in war, and had a severe identity crisis as well. Do you think you can honestly judge him by going "that's not what I would have done"? Would that not be incredibly

presumptuous? Have you suffered from depression as a result of severe post-war PTSD and a lifelong feeling of inadequacy combined with a fear of failure and the belief that many of your loved ones died because you failed and were inadequate? Because that's the context in which you have to view Cloud when watching Advent Children. Saying "Going through trauma in the past is not really an excuse for his behavior" is just incredibly short-sighted, your behavior is determined by who you are, and who you are is determined by what you go through in the past. You can't expect a broken child to become a well-adjusted adult when being a well-adjusted adult is the result of having a normal childhood.

I also don't want to cause offense, but this really is a mindset you should change, because this mindset is one of the most pervasive and damaging ones in our society, it's the one that probably bothers me most when I hear it because it makes zero sense. It's like breaking a robots self-repair unit, and then being angry at it on the grounds that the self-repair unit should have fixed it. It's also very insensitive in general, it's the equivalent of saying "why are you depressed, just stop being depressed", people don't choose to be depressed, people don't choose to have a fear of failure. People don't choose their emotions, they're just there. They can be influenced by behavior over time, sure, but behavior is equally influenced by who you are and your emotions, which, as mentioned before, is determined for a large part by your past. People don't just "snap out of it". They fight and fight and fight, and sometimes they win and break out of the spiral, and sometimes they lose and it breaks them.

FFVII, and especially Advent children, is all about that struggle, and during those struggles you will have high-points, and low-points. FFVII shows all of those. It shows Cloud trying, it shows Cloud wanting, it shows Cloud failing, but it also, ultimately, shows Cloud prevailing. Judging Cloud for not breaking out of the spiral by the time of Advent children, when he was mentally only barely 18 years old, and when he started at the worst place anyone could ever imagine, is just not reasonable. It's the modern day equivalent of "let them eat cake", something that can only be said from the place of privilege of not knowing what the struggles of the people you're critiquing are actually like. So having that out of the way, lets look at Clouds actions from the perspective of Cloud. Cloud is a young boy, and he's in love with the girl next door, he wants to get her to notice him. One day said girl walks up a mountain and he follows, she falls off a bridge and ends in a coma. Cloud followed her because he's in love with her, and he gets the blame from the adults. Cloud internalizes this, and its important to imagine what this must be like for a child, to have the adults all tell him it's his fault that the person he loves ended up hurt. "your fault", "your fault". Afterwards Cloud starts thinking Tifa hates him and starts acting out. I think this is a good moment to point out btw that this child has no father figure. This is the start of his feelings of failure and inadequacy, he blames himself for not being able to protect Tifa, failure number 1, he thinks that if he were strong, he'd be able to protect her, he thinks that if he were like Sephiroth, then even Tifa would have to notice him. Now until this time Cloud is not an asshole, he's a bit of a rebellious kid yes, but notice that he's not a bad kid as much as he's a kid who wants to protect someone, has no direction, and is acting out. So Cloud thinks he's not good enough, but he leaves town confident that he'll become good enough, and even makes a promise to Tifa. All this follows logically from what we know about Cloud, and tells us a lot about how deeply seated these feelings are. Becoming Soldier wasn't a small thing, not some small passion project that he just came up with one day, it's the result of the things that happened in his childhood and he left everything behind make it so. He told the girl he loved, he promised, he boasted. And then he failed. Failure number 2. He comes back to Nibleheim and can't bear to look Tifa in the eye and admit that he couldn't do it, that he's a failure. His entire life so far has revolved around this and he wasn't good enough. So here we have Cloud, not in a great mindset, thinking he's a failure, and what happens? His entire town is murdered by the person he admired, someone he worked with. His Mother is killed, and Tifa, the girl he PROMISED to protect, gets slashed open so badly that apparently she needed to have her ribcage reinforced with metal. I think we can all agree that this by itself would be enough to potentially scar a person for life. (Cloud, not Tifa XD) So what's next for the boy who left town in order to become a hero? Well, he gets captured and experimented on for 4 years, during which his mind and sense of identity is bombarded with memories and knowledge of the lifestream in the form of mako, muddying up his thoughts. Cloud already had a weak sense of self as a result of his childhood, it's why he failed to enter Soldier and now this distaste for who he is makes him extra susceptible to Jenovas influence. The next thing Cloud sees, (he didn't consciously experience the 4 years of mind-fuckery) is his best friend getting killed trying to protect him, because Cloud wasn't strong enough. Failure #3. At this point, in Clouds mind the list of people dead because he could not protect them, because he's a failure, include his mother, his entire town, his best friend, and as far as he knows, the girl he loves. This is his life. His mind is broken, he hates himself, he doesn't want to be himself,

he has a mind-altering parasite inside of him trying to adjust his identity and Clouds just goes "I reject this reality and constitute my own". And why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he want to live in a fantasy world where he wasn't a failure, where he made it into soldier, where he was cool and successful and not a disappointing failure? Zack tells him to be his living legacy and Cloud goes with it, then he runs into Tifa, Jenova adjusts Cloud further based on Tifas memories of them and rejoined with the girl for whom he joined Soldier Cloud is unconsciously all too willing to play the part. FFVII starts and it doesn't take long for the cracks in his fake persona to show, he meets Aerith, and becomes her bodyguard. He gets to be the hero he always wanted to be. But then, even as "Cloud strife, soldier first class", Cloud is still a failure, the plate still drops, killing thousands, he gives Sephiroth the black materia, he beats up Aerith, and ultimately, fails to save her as well. Tifa was the First Failure, and Aerith was the Final Failure. Even as a soldier, Cloud still couldn't save anyone, he loses even more faith in himself, he doesn't know who he is, he doesn't trust himself, and then when he also loses Tifas trust in who he is, he just breaks and gives over to Jenova/Sephiroth. Even Hojo calls him a failure. Cloud feels like a nobody. Now mentally weakened, under the influence of jenova cells, he gives Sephiroth the black materia AGAIN, and meteor is summoned. Another entry on the long list of moments Cloud can look back on in shame later on in life. He falls into the lifestream and again his psyche is under attack. We know what happens afterwards, Tifa finds him, cares for him, and saves him through his feelings for her. Cloud realizes who he is, realizes he's weak, and goes after Sephiroth without lying to himself. In the end he defeats Sephiroth mentally and is supposedly rid of his direct influence.

But that doesn't mean that this mentally 17 year old is now fine, we should remember these events when analyzing ACC. Cloud has been in constant fighting/war/peril ever since he left home as a child, and is now a traumatized 17 year old in a 21 year olds body. Novels and other materials give us an insight into how Cloud thinks during these times, and how he thinks about himself. We hear him say that he's going to live because that's the only way he can atone for his sins. He talks about wanting to change, and about believing he can change because he now has Tifa. He's a man (boy) who just exited war, and wants to be positive, but is still clearly blaming himself. We see that this initially goes well, we are told that Cloud experiences peace and happiness that he's never experienced before. We're also told about the things that make it go badly, when he has to deliver flowers to the ancient city for instance. While Cloud regained the sense of who he was the belief that he wasn't good enough, that he was a failure, was never solved, if anything it was put on hold until he got his memories back, and now he is forced to deal with it.

While he is no longer directly manipulated by Sephiroth he's still suffering from PTSD and, most notably, survivors guilt. He blames himself for the deaths of Zack and Aerith in particular, and starts visiting the church. Now most people might think it's natural to avoid places that make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not how a depressed person thinks, Cloud thinks he deserves to feel badly he WANTS to punish himself, he WANTS to feel bad. He's ashamed of the moments where he's carefree and laughing with Tifa. Why should he get to be happy when Aerith and Zack are dead because of him? He shouldn't be happy, he should be in pain, he should remember them, not doing so would be an insult to their memories, he must never forget how he failed them! That's how Cloud is thinking. We know of course that this is non-sense, Aerith and Zack wouldn't want this, if anything it's this mindset that is tarnishing the memories of Aerith and Zack, but that's not how a mentally unwell person thinks. Cloud wants to atone, and thinks he finds salvation in Denzel, whom he finds at Aeriths church. He thinks that by saving this life, he can, in some way, make up for all the death he caused. Tifa has a similar belief when she finds out Denzels parents died in the plate crash. And when Denzel joins the family, and Cloud has path towards redemption in his mind, things start getting better again. Because this is the cause of the problems Cloud is having in ACC. When Nojima says:

first off, there’s the premise that things won’t go well between Tifa and Cloud, and that even without Geostigma or Sephiroth this might be the same

This is the conflict he's talking about, he's not saying "Tifa and Cloud are incompatible, it has nothing to do with Sephiroth", he's saying "if Sephiroth didn't show up during Advent children, Cloud and Tifa would still be having problems because Cloud is going through survivors guilt."

But the good times don't last, Denzel has Geostigma and Cloud cannot find a cure, Denzel....is going to die. Cloud, has failed again. Not only that, but Cloud catches Geostigma....Cloud is going to die. And THIS is why Cloud leaves in Advent children. And you have to look at this as Cloud. Cloud said he was going to live to atone for his sins, but instead he's going to die. He won't atone for his sins, even worse, he's going to leave Tifa and Marlene behind. He failed again. He couldn't protect Denzel, he potentially brought an infectious disease into their house as well. Literally all Cloud can think about is that literally everything he's ever tried has ended in failure, everyone he's ever tried to protect, he's failed at. Do you understand how easy it would be for a person like this to fall into the trap of thinking "I deserve to die", "I don't want Tifa and Marlene to see me die", "Tifa and Marlene are better off without me anyway", "they'd be happier if I weren't here". Etc. Now we know this is nonsense, but come on, how many instances have you heard of depressed people genuinely believing that their loved ones would be happier and better off if they just didn't exist? However, throughout the movie, Zack, Tifa, and Aerith, all confront Cloud, and urge him to not give up. Cloud eventually does try again, and ultimately finds redemption not by being stuck in the past, but by letting the past rest and be beautiful (a lesson Cleriths unfortunately never learned). "I never blamed you you know, not once" "I want to be forgiven. By who?" "Isn't it about time you did the forgiving?" In the end, Cloud moves on, and therefore, so do Zack and Aerith. Aerith and Zack walk into the light, Cloud plants flowers on Zacks grave, and lets Zacks buster sword rest in Aeriths church, now no longer rusting, but shining. Instead of the past being a negative reminder, Cloud lets the past be beautiful. Cloud was doing Aerith and Zack a disservice by remembering them the way he did, because it was ruining his life, it wasn't a good thing, but it did come from a good place, from a good man whose ashamed of not being good enough. Yes, it harmed Tifa, people going through these things often do hurt those around them, but it's not because they're bad people, or even weak, but because people are imperfect and Cloud has gone through hell, both internally, and externally. Are his actions really that weird or deplorable? "He didn't even go save the kids!" Yes, he's hesitant about saving the kids, why shouldn't he be? Everyone Cloud tried to protect or save, ended up maimed or worse, or as Cloud puts it: "I can't even save myself". "He left Tifa alone!" Yes, he thinks he's going to waste away and die, can you blame him for not wanting to put Tifa through that and for thinking she'd be better off without him? "He drinks!" Wouldn't you?! Who wouldn't want to forget that stuff? But in the end, He's only gone for about a week, he never intended to harm Tifa, he never physically harmed Tifa or cheated on her, his entire life revolved around wanting to be better for Tifa and blaming himself when he wasn't good enough, how is it reasonable to say this man takes Tifa for granted when the fact that he thinks he has to BE BETTER in order to be worthy of being with her has been a constant throughout his entire life and story? He DOESN'T take Tifa for granted, that's why he's beating himself up, that's why he leaves, not because he thinks he's better than her, or that he'll always have her, or that she'll follow him like a dog, or something like that. But because of the opposite, because he thinks HE is not good enough, that SHE would be better of without him. Saying Cloud takes Tifa for granted, is honestly, simply, wrong. It's 180 degrees the opposite of what is happening in FFVII, the biggest constant in Clouds life, is that he doesn't take Tifa for granted, and I don't understand how anyone could argue otherwise.

[kirinda-ondo]

You know him, you either love or hate him (or are moderately confused by my sudden dive into this hyperfixation); we're talking about Orko because I have a lot of feelings.

As a disclaimer, I am not gonna claim to be some kind of superfan. I am not aware of every single iteration of the lore and all of its secrets. I don't know anything about the DC comics. I'm only halfway through the 2002 series as of me writing this. I am not someone you want to have discussions on the wider Masters of the Universe.... universe with. However, after watching Revelation, the entire Filmation He-Man (and some of She-Ra, cause he was there too), and going on a deep dive of storybooks, annuals, and minicomics courtesy of He-Man.org and the lovely people who submitted their scans there, I do feel pretty qualified to at least talk about Orko.

So, with all that being said, I'd like to get into a little bit of backstory, if only for my followers who came to this blog for completely different things and are wondering where the hell my love for this funky little wizard dude came from all of a sudden. Truth is, Orko is actually one of my earliest faves! Mind you, I only had limited access to Masters of the Universe as a kid, only seeing a couple of rented VHS tapes and later getting my hands on a small pile of the Golden Books from Goodwill, but apparently it was enough for Orko to  imprint himself into my brain. However, also due to my limited exposure, he kind of got shifted to the back of my head as I got deeper into other things. I still knew for a fact I liked Orko a lot though, even if I couldn't quite remember why anymore.

And then Masters of the Universe: Revelation dropped on Netflix. I'm not gonna get into my opinions of that show lest I open a flood of irrelevant discourse (for those uninitiated, it is a bit... divisive, to say the least). However my feelings on the matter did encourage me to go and watch the original and well, holy shit I love Orko more now than I could have ever comprehended as a kid. He is THE quintessential underappreciated comic relief character I tend to gravitate towards, and then some.

But before I get into that, let me back up a bit and explain. Orko is a Trollan, a race of magical little dudes that are basically floating sweaters with hats and covered up faces. Out of these Trollans, Orko is an incredibly fucking OP archmage. Like, they straight up call him Orko the Great, he's so powerful. But then, he gets caught in a freak storm that whisks him away from his home dimension and into Eternia. Immediately, he runs into a young Prince Adam, who is trapped in a swamp/tar pit and needs rescuing. Orko, being the upstanding lad that he is, uses his magic to save him but in the process loses the item that allows him to focus his magic to the swamp (in the 80s version, it's a medallion, but in the 2002 series, it's a wand). Worse yet, the magic (and dare I say the very laws of physics) in Eternia works pretty much the opposite as it does in Trolla, so he's been incredibly nerfed.

So basically, Orko is trapped in a topsy-turvy world away from friends and family, a world with magic he is fundamentally incompatible with. Ouch. He's not completely screwed, however, as he is rewarded by the king and queen for his heroism and appointed... the court jester. Double ouch. He surprisingly doesn't seem to mind though. He genuinely does enjoy entertaining people, even when his tricks only ever work like half the time because he's basically a Mac program trying to run on a Windows computer.

It's not all horrible though, as he does quite literally get adopted by the royal family  and thus sort of become the entire palace's weird son/little brother (despite being older than many of them. He's very, very child-coded largely for the purposes of being a stand-in and example lesson to the actual children watching). But also, more importantly, he becomes one of the very select few to know that Adam and He-Man are one and the same.

But outside of secret-keeping, he is actually a pretty valuable ally to have against Skeletor and his dudes because even though his magic is kind of screwed up, when it does work, he's still one of the most powerful mages on Eternia. In various materials, he's created floods, a second winter, and hell, he can literally explode himself and still be perfectly fine. He's also really clever and can weasel his way out of a number of situations. In one episode, for instance, he manages to convince someone that he's He-Man and Adam is his "assistant" in order to free him from captivity so the day has a better chance of actually being saved.  He's also got the ability to just be really frustrating and incomprehensible to the point that villains who capture him sometimes either don't want him or don't know what to do with him anymore, which is honestly really funny. In an episode of She-Ra, the villains tried to scan his brain but because the inner machinations of his mind are that much of an enigma, he got diagnosed a weirdo and broke the entire machine. Absolutely delightful.

However, there's a lot more to Orko than just comedy and bungled magic. He's actually surprisingly complex!

See, going into this, I expected Orko's whole situation be played entirely for laughs while the sadder implications of his existence go entirely unaddressed. Coming off the heels of characters like Cobalt and others I enjoy, I'm used to this sort of treatment by writers. But they actually don't do that. The depressing subtext is for once, actually TEXT, which was INCREDIBLY surprising to me. We actually get to see another side of him, a side that hates that he can't be taken seriously no matter what he does, a side that is well aware of all the trouble he causes and feels like a burden to those around him. He actually runs away on multiple occasions, fully believing that he's unloved and everyone would be better off without him, even if that couldn't be further from the truth (a point which the Sorceress hammers home with multiple straight up magical video presentations, and in the 2002 series, a literary adaptation, of why he is loved and important).

Underneath all the hyping himself up that he does, there's a lot of insecurity. He's someone who desperately wants to be loved and respected and feels that without funny magic tricks to entertain people, he has no inherent value (which is incredibly relatable if you are also known by people as The Funny One). At one point he agrees with the notion that he doesn't feel like much more than a pet, which is absolutely heartbreaking. Even when he gets the ability to go back and forth between Eternia and Trolla, his feelings of inadequacy now extend toward his family, worrying that his own uncle, the one who taught him everything he knows and greatly contributed to him being Orko the Great back home in the first place, wouldn't be proud of him. Being on Eternia highkey wrecked his shit, man.

However, even when given the opportunity to go back home for good, he always chooses to stay because he's loyal as hell. Even if he needs some reminders, he does know he's needed not just in the fight against evil, but just because his friends and newfound family genuinely love him. It's heartbreaking, but also incredibly wholesome. I did not even remotely expect a comic relief character like this to get this much depth and respect from the writers, especially not from the incredibly campy and cheaply animated 80s series. I am genuinely so unused to this.

But I think that's also what separates him a bit from his fellow Silly Kid Appeal Characters That Kids Fucking Hate ala Snarf Thundercats or Scrappy Doo. He not only makes a concerted effort to be an actually useful ally, but he's also in fact very self-aware of his status as one of these characters. He knows he screws up a lot but he actually tries to accept responsibility and fix it. It makes me wanna root for the lil dude. Now I understand if someone isn't a fan of the brand of humor he brings to the table, or feel like he's simply a distraction from the Cool Buff Dudes Fighting Each Other, but I hope you can see why he might also be a really appealing character to other people, both kids and adults alike. I mean, he was popular enough to be embedded into the canon despite originating from the cartoon and not the toyline for a reason, after all.

Orko is a fun, entertaining, but also complex, heartwarming, and relatable character. I know there is a faction of people that would disagree with me, but I don't think you need to change him all that much or make him a super serious character to be more appealing. He's already got a lot going on that a writer could easily work with. It all just depends on where you decide to focus. Take a lesson from the show and accept that he's fine just the way he is.

[robininthelabyrinth]

the nie sect is known for strong, angry sect leaders and strong, angry women; nie mingjue is just the first to be both. she refuses to let this burden fall on her little brother, who is far too young for it (he's barely old enough to understand that their father is dead, and still sucks his thumb at night)--she can swing a saber like the best of them, and, well... it's not like there are many nie elders to object anyway

also on ao3

The stories said that Nie Mingjue’s mother was a goddess.

They said she descended down from the mountains, crisp as a winter breeze and tall as a temple statute; they said Lao Nie fell in love with her the first moment he saw her and married her the next; they said that the heavens were jealous of their love and summoned her to return –

It was a little nicer than saying that Nie Mingjue’s mother was a rogue cultivator that lingered in Qinghe just long enough for a marriage ceremony and a baby before remembering that she preferred living alone.

Still, as Nie Mingjue grew up – and she did grow up, up and up and up – people started passing around the old story more and more. Lao Nie rolled his eyes but didn’t stop the rumors, which Nie Mingjue interpreted to mean that he thought they were useful somehow, though she never quite figured out the reasoning there. What difference did it make if she were the child of a goddess or a mortal woman?

Either way, she was still a girl.

Oh, Qinghe was famous for its indifference to such things: in Qinghe they don’t care if you’re a man or woman, the story went, as long as you can swing a saber, and it was even mostly true. No one would raise an eyebrow if you shared your bed with a man one night and a woman the next, no one cared if you said you were one for a week and the other for a month…

Still, for all of Qinghe’s indifference, the Nie sect had never had a female sect leader.

At least, not officially – there were a number of sect leader’s wives who were terrifying enough to have deserved the title – and officially was what mattered, in this case. The sect leader was the fulcrum on which the sect turned, the core of their fearsome cultivation: if water ran downhill, then evil flowed up, and the sect leader’s saber spirit was always by far the fiercest in the sect.

That was why Nie Mingjue’s ancestors died so much more quickly than her cousins – why she had plenty of great-uncles and great-aunts, and a family consisting of only her father, herself, and her younger brother.

“Do you not want me to be sect leader?” she asked her father once, because he had deliberately gone out and gotten himself a new wife to have a child with, showing great relief when it turned out to be a boy. “Is it something I’ve done, or haven’t done?”

“It’s not that,” her father had said at once, with such surety that her fears of inadequacy had been relieved. “It’s only – there are sacrifices that must be made, if the sect leader is a woman. A saber spirit powerful enough to support the sect cannot be allowed to escape.”

She hadn’t understood it at the time, being too young, but then she got a little older and started bleeding, and an old auntie came and told her why the bleeding mattered.

The sect leader’s saber was too strong, too fierce, too alive: full of resentful energy, almost like a ghost, hateful and vicious, and their bond with their master was too close. Normal swords could be used by anyone; only the powerful refused any hand but their masters – the powerful, and the Nie sabers.

A sect leader who was a woman could never have a child, lest that child’s soul be stolen away in the womb and replaced with something else.

“So I won’t have children,” Nie Mingjue said, when her father died before his time. “Easy enough.”

There were elders enough in her sect, those that had been lucky enough not to be part of the main clan line and to escape the burden of being sect leader; they looked at each other with concern.

Nie Mingjue wasn’t about to let them put the title of sect leader on Huaisang, then only a child of seven, not when there was her father to avenge, and so she reached up behind her back and brought Baxia down on the table in front of them, cleaving the old wooden table in half.

“I have the bloodline, and my saber’s strong enough to bear the strain,” she said while they stared: that table had survived more than a few of her father and grandfather’s strikes, only to yield to hers as if it were nothing. “If you want to protest, challenge me now.”

In the end, they didn’t.

And so she became sect leader.

The sacrifice of any future children turned out to be the easy part.

Jin Guangshan stared at her breasts whenever she sat across from him, and tried to stumble into her to take advantage of the fact that the top of his head only reached her chin; she made sure never to accept any invitation to ever be alone with him, especially when he was drunk. His wife glared at her as if it were her fault that her chest and hips had grown proportionate with the rest of her, giving her curves that were relatively rare among her countrymen.

Jiang Fengmian might have been all right, she supposed, if his wife hadn’t hated her nearly as much: Madame Yu had been childhood friends with Madame Jin, Nie Mingjue vaguely recalled, but she suspected the real reason was the Jiang sect’s inclination to keep women away from politics no matter how high their cultivation.

“How are you supposed to ‘attempt the impossible’ if you refuse to let half of your population even try?” she asked Jiang Fengmian once, and he just shook his head and tried to pat her head (she glared death at him until he retracted the offending limb before it could be chopped off), and said she wouldn’t understand, that Qinghe was too idiosyncratic, too indiscriminate, that other places were different.

(His daughter gave Nie Mingjue a flower after that meeting, blushing red to her ears, and followed it up with a bowl of soup, and to this day Nie Mingjue still didn’t know if it was because of what she’d said or if everyone in Yunmeng was just as indiscriminate as Qinghe and they just didn’t admit it to themselves.)

Even the ever-polite Lan sect wasn’t friendly.

The irritating part was that she was sure they would have gotten on well if she had been born a man, or at least presented as one, as she would have if she’d been a misaligned reincarnation; alas, she wasn’t, she was a woman, and the Lan sect rules dictated that men and women could not grow too close or intimate. Lan Qiren guarded his nephews against her as if they were treasures, and it took quite a while before she finally met Lan Xichen face to face.

“Wow,” he said, blinking at her. “They weren’t kidding when they said you were a goddess.”

“No, that’s my mother,” Nie Mingjue said automatically.

Lan Xichen smiled, his eyes turning into crescents. “No,” he said. “I’m sure I meant what I said.”

Nie Mingjue felt something jump in her chest, which had never happened before. But she had fought long and hard to be taken seriously as a sect leader despite her youth and her gender, and she wasn’t willing to give that up by falling, like every other female cultivator her age, for the man ranked first on the list of most attractive young masters.

(Nie Mingjue was ranked seventh. She’s not even sure how she got on the list, but apparently there were plenty of female cultivators who were happy to vote for her no matter her gender.)

Besides, even if her heart did beat a little faster whenever Lan Xichen smiled at her, and even if he indicated through some hints that he might be inclined to feel the same, it didn’t matter. She knew, even if he didn’t, that she wouldn’t bear children in this life – she loved Baxia dearly, she did, but her willful, vicious saber would make a terrible child – and she couldn’t impose that on anyone else.

Anyway, she’d figured out pretty quickly that Lan Xichen’s younger brother was a cutsleeve – whatever Lan Qiren might think, pornography was a perfectly reasonable gift for a teenager, especially given how successful Nie Huaisang’s side business was – and that meant Lan Xichen had to be the one to have descendants.

Nie Mingjue had heard all the stories about what happens when a man marries one woman who can’t give him children and another who can, and she wasn’t interested in that.

So they were friends.

She wasn’t sure if it got easier or harder when she met Meng Yao, who was small and delicate and scheming in a way that she found ridiculously endearing.

He wasn’t expecting her to be a woman, she thought: he’d set himself up on a mountain path, buckets of water at his side and a pitiful expression on his face as he chewed on hard bread without even taking a sip of the water right beside him to wet his throat, and when she’d stopped right in front of him to ask him about it he’d looked up at her and his eyes had gotten to be half the size of his face.

Nie Mingjue might’ve fallen for the gambit if it wasn’t for the way she could almost see the way he was rapidly reevaluating his entire strategy in real time – it almost made her nostalgic about listening to her cousins teach each other the warning signs of a white lotus seductress selling misery and purity.

Still, in the end it didn’t really matter if he was deliberately exaggerating his misery to sell it to her – the responsibility for good behavior was on the bully, not the victim, so she went and scolded the people inside the cave.

Afterwards, she took him out to walk with her.

“I’d already spoken with some people about you; it seems like you’ve established your merits in the battlefield and off,” she told him. “You don’t also need to be pitiful to get my attention.”

Meng Yao smiled self-depreciatingly. “I find that men have a soft spot for people they think need them.”

“Well, I’m not a man, am I?” she pointed out in return. She thought about it for a moment, then decided, as always, to be blunt. “I might spend most of my time now with men, but I spent my childhood with women; a woman’s tricks don’t work that well on me. What is it that you want?”

He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Do you want to be my deputy? I’m willing, since you seem competent enough,” she said. “But if your goal is to get back into your father’s good graces by reporting on me, don’t bother. He has spies enough for that – he doesn’t need a son to do it.”

“Perhaps I just want to show him what I’m capable of,” Meng Yao said.

Nie Mingjue laughed. “At my side? If you’d like to try, I’m not going to stop you, but I’ll tell you now that the merits that Jin Guangshan values may not be to your taste.”

She made him her deputy, and he lived up to her expectations – he was efficient, capable, competent. He was good at understanding people, which she wasn’t, and he could figure out within moments what any given person wanted.  Just as importantly, he lived up to the principles she prized, valuing the lives of the common folk as well as Nie cultivators; he did what she asked of him, and he did it well.

It would be a shame to lose him, she thought, but she still brought him with her to a wartime meeting with the Jin sect.

Afterwards, she made her excuses to leave early, as she always did, and when Meng Yao showed up later that evening to drop off the usual round of spies’ reports, Nie Mingjue could smell blood from where his nails had pierced his palms.

“He asked you if you were fucking me,” she said, accepting the papers. It wasn’t a guess. “You can tell him that you are, if you think it would help your standing with him.”

Meng Yao seemed repulsed by her suggestion, which amused her.

“Don’t you mind that half the camp thinks I got my position by climbing into your bed?” he asked her, a wrinkle in his brow suggesting that the question mattered to him. “Most of them can’t decide if I’m your boy-toy or merely stupid enough not to notice that I’m deliberately seducing you for my own ends, but either way the implication is highly unflattering. Don’t you care?”

“…not really?” Nie Mingjue said. “I’ve been sect leader since I was fifteen and more than half the sect leaders that currently report to me have been treating me like I’m a walking collection of fuckable female body parts since then; they get extremely irritable any time I open my mouth and remind them I’m not. Keeping a boy-toy is positively tame compared to the rest of it…you must have heard the one that says that I’m a frigid bitch that can only be satisfied by fucking my saber? That one’s a perennial.”

Meng Yao’s expression suggested he had, in fact, heard that one.

“My father always told me that the more people talk behind your back, the harder you have to work to leave them with nothing to say,” Nie Mingjue continued. “But I’ve found that they’ll find something to say, and if there isn’t anything, they’ll make something up. There’s no way to stop gossip.”

Meng Yao was frowning. “That seems unduly pessimistic. Not to borrow our enemies’ words, but if you shine like a sun in the heavens –”

“I’m the sect leader of one of the Great Sects,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’m a war hero. I have a reputation as a upright and righteous person. And yet between me and Wen Ruohan, who’s to say whose name is dragged through the mud more? They curse at him as the man who ordered the rape of their wives in one breath and talk eagerly about how much they’d like to rape me the next…Meng Yao, don’t take insult when I say this, but you could be as wise as a sage, as powerful as a landslide, as beneficent as a buddha and they’d still ask each other behind their sleeves what you learned from being a whore’s son.”

His expression was rather ugly – nothing at all like his usual calm smile.

“I usually get over it by associating myself with better people,” she added. “Have you met Lan Xichen yet?”

It turned out he had, and that they were rather fond of each other, too. Very fond, to judge by Meng Yao’s starry-eyed expression, and wouldn’t it be just her luck if the two men she was attracted to – and which she’d refused on the basis of not wanting to cut off their family lines – ended up pairing up together, which would also cut off their family lines?

Of course, Meng Yao was off limits for other reasons as well…

One day she overheard them talking about Meng Yao possibly leaving, probably intentionally on Meng Yao’s part, and she walked inside rolling her eyes already. “If you want to go, go,” she said. “I’ll write you a recommendation letter, for whatever it’s worth – he’s got a thick enough face that it might not do you any good, but he’s already noticed you, so hopefully that’ll be something.”

“Sect Leader Nie –”

“I didn’t promote you out of a sense of gratitude,” she said impatiently. “You’ve always wanted to get back to him, for whatever reason; I’m not going to hold you back.”

He smiled at that, and Lan Xichen smiled with him.

Really, there were limits to the sort of things you could expect a person to resist, even with willpower like hers.

“Have you decided that you will go?” she asked Meng Yao. “Is it your final decision? Let me know now.”

“It is.”

“Good,” she said. “You’re fired as my deputy. Also, I’d like to take the two of you to bed, if you’re similarly inclined.”

They gaped at her.

“What?” she said, crossing her arms. “He’s not my deputy anymore, there’s nothing immoral about it. Besides, nobody will get any stupid ideas about marriage if there’s three of us involved. It is only if you’re interested, though; I won’t be offended if you say no –”

Lan Xichen was kissing her before she even finished the sentence, so she assumed the answer was not, in fact, no, and Meng Yao’s reaction was equally enthusiastic – though perhaps equally wasn’t the right word, given how both she and Meng Yao ended up tied up in Lan Xichen’s forehead ribbon before the night was done.

“I knew it was a kink,” Meng Yao said, inspecting it with an expression of satisfaction, as if he hadn’t just demonstrated a fair share of his own. “Something so prominently displayed, Xichen-gege, for shame…”

Lan Xichen didn’t show so much as a hint of shame about it. “We’ll have to do this again,” he said. “I’m not even a fourth of the way down my list.”

“There’s a list?” Nie Mingjue asked, stretching out her legs to see how they felt after all that tossing around. “Tell me this is written down somewhere – no, tell me your uncle found it.”

Lan Xichen shuddered. “Thank you, da-jie. I didn’t need that mental image – it’d be like the time you gave Wangji pornography, only worse.”

Meng Yao decided the best way to muffle his laughter was in Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. With his teeth.

Nie Mingjue gave him a half-hearted shove. “Get off,” she grumbled. “I need to go drink some medicine to prevent contraception before we encounter disaster – this wasn’t planned, you know. I was intending on dying a virgin.”

“Da-jie, for you to die a virgin, that would mean – uh – that would – you were…? Mingjue!”

Nie Mingjue gave them both a glare. “Don’t tell me you two listened to those stupid rumors. I don’t take just anyone to my bed.”

“And you decided on two of us?” Meng Yao said, blinking at her. “Da-jie is very ambitious.”

“Not as much as you,” she said, rolling her eyes and pushing away their grasping hands. “What’s your real plan, anyway? You know Jin Guangshan won’t accept you as a son just because you show up and volunteer.”

“I don’t need to be his son, I just need to wear his colors,” Meng Yao said. “It’ll make for a better story when I defect to the Wen sect – as a spy, don’t look at me like that. You know I’d be good at it. And if I get close enough to Wen Ruohan, I can kill him. I’ll give you his head as a present, da-jie.”

“Unfair, A-Yao! I can’t compete with that,” Lan Xichen complained. “You have to let me help.”

‘Help’ turned out to be Lan Xichen allowing himself to be captured and Meng Yao stabbing Wen Ruohan in the back when he was about to start torturing the First Jade of Lan – Nie Mingjue had a headache and a strong desire to kill them both.

Even if they did bring her Wen Ruohan’s head.

“Stop looking so pleased with yourselves,” she scolded them – both Lan Xichen and Meng Yao, now officially Jin Guangyao (thanks to a bit of pointed haggling over which clan got what war merits and how that applied to the division of the spoils of war), looked positively smug. “What if you’d died?”

“But we didn’t,” Lan Xichen pointed out. “And now we’re here to claim our reward from our goddess.”

“Did I promise you a reward?”

Two sets of puppy dog eyes…and they did help her avenge her father.

“Fine. What do you want? If I can give it to you, it’s yours.”

They looked at each other, and Nie Mingjue immediately started to worry: they’d had time to think about it. That was dangerous.

“We want to marry you,” Lan Xichen said.

“Both of us,” Jin Guangyao said. “To avoid any jealousy.”

“That’s…not how that works,” Nie Mingjue said blankly. Men married multiple wives, not women multiple men: they had words for women who did that, none of them complimentary. Or legal, for that matter. “And anyway, I’ve already told you, I can’t have children. Huaisang’s my heir, and he always will be – you deserve to continue your family lines. Both of you.”

They exchanged looks again.

“That’s fine by me,” Jin Guangyao said. “Jin Zixuan’s the heir anyway.”

“I have plenty of cousins,” Lan Xichen said. “Can we go to bed now? I was injured in the line of duty –” He had a scraped knee and exactly three bruises, she’d counted. “– and I need some care and attention.”

“And an agreement of marriage from da-jie,” Jin Guangyao said, because he had a lawyer’s eye for such things.

This was almost certain to cause some sort of political disaster.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t settle for sworn brothers or something?” she tried.

They wouldn’t.

(The stories said that the leader of the Nie sect was a goddess – a war goddess, a goddess of the blade, sharp as the saber she carried and tall as a temple statute; they said that her two lovers fell in love with her the first moment they saw her and fought a war that upturned the entire cultivation world just to win the right to claim her hand; they said that they served as her right and left hands, and that when the three of them were together, the venerated triad, they could never be defeated.)

[bellatrixobsessed1]

The Killing Cure (Part 25)

It has been so long since she has been in the Cave Church under the warm glow of many flickering candles. Her body is uselessly weak, her forehead slicked with sweat. Fighting back isn’t an option when her every muscle cramps and her body has just been freed from the throes of a seizure. There will be worser throes soon enough.

“Mother Miranda...mother…” she whispers. She wonders if the woman will understand. If she will accept her back under her wing. It was warm there once upon a time. And she had made a mistake in letting Winters throw her loyalty.

Mother miranda stoops down and caresses her cheek. She wants to say that it is a loving gesture, she wants to believe that it is affectionate. But it is rough, scrutinizing. “What has he done to you?” She murmurs with a click of her tongue. “What a shame.”

“No, don’t say that.” Alcina mumbles softly. She can’t be a disappointment, not to Mother Miranda. But she knows that she is. She knows that the woman is right; just look at her, she is a disheveled mess. One who an only lay pathetically on the floor, a victim of faulty genetics and self-neglect. Really she has done this to herself. She let this happen.

Mother Miranda inhales sharply. “You’re a lucky woman, Dimitrescu. I will fix you, but only because your siblings are disloyal, unappreciative little leeches. Alcina tenses, so he has gotten the rest of them to go along with his schemes after all. He has left her to her fate and over a misunderstanding, a lack of communication.

“You can fix me?”

“I fixed you the first time, did I not?”

Her lips part. She can’t deny it, the woman had fixed her, had cured her. She wasn’t broken, delicate, and weak. “You can do it again?”

“Of course I can.” Mother Miranda declares. “It will be excruciating, of course, but I can do it.”

Alcina swallows, she doesn’t remember how it had felt the first time but she can’t imagine that it can be any more unpleasant than all of the things she feels now. All of the aches and pangs. All of the inadequacy and helplessness. The betrayal.

“You know that I would never betray you, Mother Miranda. I had been meaning to double cross, Winters. Things went amiss…”

Mother Miranda puts a halt to her lies with a sternly raised hand. “Stop groveling, Dimitrescu, it’s unbecoming.” And with a pointed degree of venom adds, “especially now.”

Especially now that she is a hungover, sickly, disheveled mess. She is well aware. “Fix me.”

Mother Miranda disappears into the bowels of the church and when she returns it is with a rolling metal table, rusting and with squeaky wheels. Upon the table are several utensils sharp and hateful looking. And at the corner is a flask containing a cadou. Her stomach sinks despite knowing that this will only do her good in the long run.

“Now, I have a different variant prepared for you. An improvement.”

Alcina nods, she thinks that anything would be an improvement from what she is now. Without warning, Mother Miranda plunges a scalpel into her chest. She cries out--a sharp, blood curdling shout that echos around the cave. She is crying again, very openly. She resents her own weakness. The scalpel drags down, digging mercilessly deep and with a bite to rival the best of lycans. She fixes her gaze on Mother Miranda’s face. It is cold and impassive at first glance. Lips pressed firmly together in concentration as red bubbles up around her fingers. But the longer Alcina stares the more she can see, there is a twinkle in those pretty icy blue eyes. Alcina believes that it is delight in its cruelest form.

And when her chest cavity is gaping to the woman’s satisfaction she lifts the cadou from its flask with more care than she has ever afforded Alcina. Alcina who squeezes her eyes shut. The transplant is the worst part. She is nauseous with nerves just thinking about it. About the feeling of it wiggling about inside her. About those merciless stings and jabs. About the cracking of bones and tearing of skin and muscle tissues as her body contorts and stretches far beyond what it was meant to. She is a small woman and the fear makes her feel smaller still. Her mind is small and meek and she is beginning to think that it would be out of place in a larger body. She isn’t sure that she remembers what it was like to fit a more impressive stature.

Her vision is growing mercifully faint. She hopes that when she wakes she will be herself and she can consider the past month or so to be a vivid nightmare. One that has come to pass.

.oOo.

Ethan takes a deep breath. He isn’t sure what to expect upon entering Castle Dimitrescu. He can’t imagine that it will be the lady’s loving embrace, especially not with Karl and Salvatore in tow.

In fact he is rather certain that he will be met with shouting. Good lord, his ears are already ringing. Tall or short, the woman can project. A skill that he imagines did wonders for her musical career. It would be nice to hear her sing for him…

He grits his teeth and scolds himself. How is he supposed to tell her off for real if he can only compliment her in his head.

“Idiots first.” Karl gestures to the door.

Before he can take his cue, Salvatore waddles his way past and gives the door a good knock.

“Oh forget that.” Karl grumbles. He smashes his hammer against the door until it gives way.

“She’s going to kill me.” Ethan winces.

“Relax. Bitch has it out for me.”

“She has it out for me too!”

“I assure you, my feud with her takes priority.” Karl boasts as though it is a thing to be admired. “I’ve been going at it with her for decades. She’ll know that the door was my doing.”

Ethan enters the castle with a growing sense of unease. Maybe it isn’t smart to come back here. If he is right, if she has been working with Mother Miranda this whole time then he might have walked himself, Karl, and Salvatore into a trap. A fly infested, feathery trap.

What he finds instead is The Duke comforting three crying fly beasts. “Oh, hello, Duke, where is--”

Daniela’s head snaps in his direction and on her face is the most viciously hateful glare he has ever seen. It is a look he hasn’t even seen on Alcina herself. “This is your fault.” she growls.

“What’s my fault?” He winces. “Where is your mother.”

“She’s gone, Winters.” Bela stares at her palms.

“Gone? Gone where?”

Bela lifts her hand, pinched between her fingers are two black feathers.

“It might be for the best.” Cassandra muses. “She wasn’t doing good--she wasn’t going to last the way she was. Maybe where you come from. But here in the Village? Humans don’t really last here.”

“I’m doing fine.” Ethan points out.

“Who says that you’re human.” Karl props himself up against the wall.

He makes a point of ignoring the suggestion. “Are you saying that Alcina willingly went back to Mother Miranda?”

“Don’t act surprised.” Karl grumbles. “She’s always been at the beck and call of the bird bitch.”

“None of us were there, Mr. Winters.” The Duke speaks up. “She took herself to bed and when Cassandra went to check on her…” he jabs at the feathers on the table.

Ethan rubs his hands over his face. If she had gone willingly to Mother Miranda than he truly had been a naive dolt. He’d wasted so much precious time, neglected his daughter in favor of a lustful fantasy. And if she was taken, that’s an entirely different realm of problems. It would mean that he’d inadvertently gotten her killed--stripped her of her power and left her to her fate.

And part of him hopes that the prior is the case, it makes him less sick to his stomach to have been betrayed than to have made the betrayal. “If she was taken, we’ll get her back.”

“And if she left on her own…” Karl trails off into a soft chuckle as he strokes his hammer.

“You won’t hurt mother!” Daniela screeches.

Ethan swallows, his head throbbing with stress. He thinks of her smile, of her laugh. He thinks of the first time she shot a lycan and of her aggravating sarcastic remarks. He thinks of laying in a small bed with her, of her warmth. Of how protective she is over her girls. And it hurts like hell. It hurts like hell because he knows that whatever state he finds Alcina in, it won’t be good. He can only hope that it is a lesser bad.

[lassieposting]

ghasdug for couple questions if you like feeding me

1. Who said I love you first?

Ghastly. Mid-orgasm. The first time they slept together. He. Is. Mortified.

2. Who laughs and kisses their partner on the cheek while their partner isn’t happy about something trivial to try and make them feel better?

Skug. Ghastly has some inadequacy issues during their first century or so, mostly about being ugly and poor - he knows skug could do better. He's attractive, he's funny, he can be very sweet when he wants to be - he could make an excellent match with someone as landed and titled and wealthy as he is.

Skug does try to reassure him, but between his tactlessness and his tendency to not take anything seriously, he kind of sucks at it. Ghastly feels like his being "less than" is a big hurdle, while skug sees it as a trivial difference - he's much happier living with ghastly's family in their cramped farmhouse than he ever was at his parents' vast estate. So he tries to turn it into a joke - "good thing I'm handsome enough for both of us, then," - while completely missing the point that ghastly wants forever with him, and he's worried he's going to spend the rest of forever getting looked down on and whispered about because skulduggery could've done better.

3. Who cuddles up to the other after a long day at work, and this soon escalates to a playful pillow fight?

Ghastly is the cuddler. It escalates because skug is adhd as hell and cannot just lie still and snuggle for long without getting bored. He needs constant stimulation. He'll sit on the counter while ghastly works and chat for hours though, swinging his legs and passing over tools when ghastly needs them

4. What is something that they gave one another that has a lot of meaning?

Ghastly makes all skug's clothes, including his armour, because he doesn't trust anyone else to keep skug safe in battle.

Ghastly has skug's signet ring, which he found in the burned down-ruins of the pleasant family home after skug was killed. For decades, it's the only thing he had left of skug - the clothes ghastly made, the scarf wifey made, and the locket with wifey and skugbab's portraits inside were all cut away and burned, and the house was razed to the ground. Skug knows he has it, but he's never asked for it back.

5. How would one another describe their partner?

Skug would either deliberately misread the question ("What, haven't you seen him? How could you miss ghastly? He's...he's this high and built like a wall.") or come out with something explicit to deter follow-up questions.

Ghastly mostly talks about how annoying skug is, but it's? Endearing to him. At this stage of their lives, he is the only person who's actually happy to listen to like, an eight hour infodump with no breaks. Skug is. A Lot to handle and society does not have the terminology for him yet.

6. Who wraps their arms around their partner as they look them in the eyes and compliments them with a goofy smile?

Ghastly. Skug, under all the vanity and egocentrism, has critically low self-esteem and very little self-worth. He's the Family Scapegoat, and got the lion's share of the abuse before he ran away, so he absolutely melts for compliments. The boy has praise kink up the wazoo. Ghastly will happily feed his ego to watch him get the smile and the sparkly eyes and puff up like a proud peacock.

7. Who loves saying ‘my wife’ or ‘my husband’ or ‘my spouse’?

They don't really have this tbh? Not only is the vocabulary of the period insufficient, they see the relationship differently.

Skug is like. Anxious-avoidant attachment personified. He doesn't like to get too close. He falls in love with ghastly a long time before he's able to admit it to himself, let alone anyone else. He essentially treats their relationship like a fuckbuddies kind of deal, and he feels safe like that, because he can't be hurt by someone he doesn't care about. He can't be let down or abandoned by someone who has no commitment to him in the first place. Admitting he loves ghastly leaves him vulnerable, and if he's learned anything in his childhood, its that vulnerable people are the ones who get hurt.

Ghastly on the other hand considers skug his boyfriend, and there's no equivalent term from the 1500s. "Gentleman caller" hardly applies when you live under the same roof and share a room (and, more often than not, a bed), so nobody is calling on anyone. Privately, he thinks of skug as his lover, but he knows skug is allergic to intimacy, so he keeps that to himself for the most part.

So ghastly usually introduces skug as "this is my - this is skulduggery pleasant" and skug usually introduces ghastly as "this is my dear friend, ghastly".

8. Who always talks about how amazing their partner is when their partner isn’t there and they just light up with genuine love and happiness?

Ghastly. Skug is his first love, and he's completely lost in it. He's had crushes before, on pretty girls who only ever spoke to him to enquire after his "handsome brother", and strapping young men at market who avoided looking at him to speak to his father, but he's never felt anything like this before. He lives with skug. He sees him first thing in the morning and last thing at night, he sees him happy and depressed and drunk and furious, he kisses him and fights with him and fucks him and defends him and laughs with him and cries with him and for years and years, they're inseparable. He's? Completely unprepared for how hard he falls for skug.

9. Who loves it when their partner kisses them good morning?

Ghastly. Drowsy morning skug is snuggliest skug. He doesn't get as many snuggles as he'd like, tbh, because skug is active and easily distracted and doesn't like staying still for too long, but in the early morning is when he's most likely to be warm and cuddly and relaxed, and when he's least concerned about keeping ghastly at arms length. He'll pull skug back against his chest and he'll wiggle round to press a sleepy kiss to the corner of ghastly's mouth and tuck his head under ghastly's chin, and he'll doze off again with his hand stroking idly up and down skug's spine.

10. Who shows the other how to balance a spoon on their nose?

Ghastly.

11. Who loves to pull pranks on the other? What type of pranks do they pull and do they pull their pranks off?

Skug likes to pick up the absolute ugliest thing he can find while shopping and pretend he loves it while ghastly cringes and swears blind that he will not be seen with you while you're wearing that thing, skulduggery, so help him god. What usually happens is that skug pulls his new purchase to pieces as soon as they get home, and then gets ghastly to make it up better.

12. What is something small that they would randomly pick up for one another?

Skug taught ghastly to read, so he'd bring home books for him while he was learning and get ghastly to read to him, lying with his head in ghastly's lap and lazily correcting his pronunciation or reminding him how to sound out the words.

Ghastly doesn't have the sort of disposable income skug does, so he makes him things instead, like stylish hats with feathers in them, even though he personally hates that fashion and is delighted when it dies.

13. Who is the one who can’t stop laughing when trying to tell a joke?

Skug. Ghastly loves watching him laugh till he chokes though. He adores seeing skug happy.

14. Who would plan the other a surprise birthday party?

Ghastly. Skug is an attention whore, he loves that kind of thing. An entire event all for him? Hell yes, baby

Ghastly himself, on the other hand, is painfully insecure and selfconscious at this stage of his life, and he'd be mortified at being the centre of attention like that. Skug is a vain, arrogant dick, but he's not cruel. He wouldn't make ghastly feel bad for funsies.

15. Who picks the other person up when hugging their partner?

Ghastly picks skug up. There's not much of a height difference between them, just two inches, but teenage skug is a lanky little twink and ghastly could benchpress him, which skug is rabidly horny over. Because, you know, muscles.

Once they join the army and skug fills out and gets all lean and fit and strong, ghastly can still pick him up, but he absolutely complains that he weighs a ton now.

Adult skug can lift/mostly carry ghastly in an emergency, like if he's injured and needs to be helped back to camp or carried off a battlefield. But it's difficult, and ghastly is really too heavy for him, so picking him up isn't something he'd do for fun. Teenage skug can't pick ghastly up at all.

[afairytalestray]

Tuggoffelees 2

Part 10(b) of the precanon hc series (masterpost here)! This is almost a direct continuation from the last one, but I think it’s different (and long) enough to merit its own post! It’s a bit feelsy I think, but hopefully not too much!

When Tugger decides he wants to learn to fight, Cassandra is the one he goes to for help.  She’s generally private and could take a secret to the Heaviside. She’s tough, and blunt, but not unkind, and quite happy to help him out and give him instruction. Tugger, bless him, despite his large size, is not great at it. He skipped out on the basics when he was younger due to laziness/not having any interest in it (and not being naturally skilled at it - Tugger used to refuse to do anything unless he knew he would be good at it [or at least look good doing it]), but then Mistoffelees arrived and turned Tugger’s entire world upside down. Misto makes him want to be his best self, and makes him more confident in himself (on the outside he always seems confident, but damn, on the inside? Not so much). Tugger becomes really protective of Misto, and as his mate and the younger brother of Macavity, decides he must learn how to fight to protect him.

The funny thing about that is, when Macavity wasn’t draining Misto’s magic, he trained him to unleash hell with it. Misto can shoot lightning with frightening strength and accuracy from up to 10m away. However, using his magic in this way is incredibly upsetting for him, and brings up horrible memories of violence and pain and torturous flashbacks of being in agony, pushed far beyond his limits to cause devastation. Before Macavity, it had brought him joy, he loved creating sparkles and lights for his mother’s entertainment. By the time he makes it to the safety of the Junkyard, he’s horribly afraid of his own power, and won’t use it at all around other Cats. Tugger absolutely adores his magic and tries to help him build his confidence with it back up, but it’s slow going, and Misto won’t so much as zap a fly. Eventually, he’s able to conjure up his lights again around all the other Cats (he’ll even occasionally playfully zap Tugger [only ever Tugger]), but he won’t ever be able to use it to fight again, even in self-defence.

Tugger resolves that he’ll never have to. There’s basically nothing he wouldn’t do for Misto. Being a caretaker is in his nature in general - it’s just hard to see for most of the others as he doesn’t let a lot of Cats in. Despite that, however, he does see the Jellicles as family, and cares about them a lot. When the kittens (or any other Cat really) get upset or scared he’ll quite often be seen with an arm around them to comfort them, or will take on some of their duties to give them a rest, or will hunt for them or leave them a gift or something - it depends on the Cat and what they need really. 

This part of him can manifest itself a bit differently when it’s one of the few Cats who he’s let into his inner circle. If he senses a threat, or gets worried about one of them/his relationship with one of them, he tends to get into a sort of mood: he becomes overprotective, a bit broody, and can go overboard with the caretaking. Logically, he knows these Cats can take care of themselves, and he certainly doesn’t think they’re weak, it’s just that being a caretaker is in his nature. Since he doesn’t let many people get into his inner circle, he’s very keen to look after the ones who do. 

Misto is the one who tends to bear the brunt of this. It was very overwhelming for him at first - like Cassandra, he wasn’t used to people caring so much about him, especially in such an over-the-top manner as Tugger’s. He does get used to it though, and helps Tugger work on expressing himself in a healthier way. Normally Tugger is a very sweet and attentive mate, and Misto recognises that it tends to go overboard when Tugger is feeling down, or helpless, and that he’s overcompensating for that by trying to prove he’s helpful and worthwhile (everything Macavity made him feel he wasn’t). Over time Misto gets better at spotting the signs early, and can pull Tugger back before his feelings/worries go overboard. There’s an increase in tension: Tugger gets almost too attentive to the point of being stifling, and jumps to attention at as little as a breeze rattling something nearby them in the Junkyard. When he spots these signs, Misto removes Tugger from the open to the quiet privacy of their den. Normally some alone time with his mate is enough to soothe Tugger and bring him back to the bouncy, flirty Cat he is, but if he is feeling like he’s a bad mate (feelings of inadequacy in this department account for a good percentage of his worries), Misto will drop his glamour when they’re alone.

Misto removing his glamour before him means the whole world to Tugger - it means Misto trusts him completely. Misto hates taking it off, and only ever will for Tugger because he loves him. Misto has lots of scars from where Macavity used to drain his magic from him, and usually hides them with his magic (a low-level trick called a “glamour”). Tugger learned about it before they were mated, when they were talking one night about Misto’s magic, and he let slip that he modified his appearance around other Cats. At Tugger’s probing he revealed that it was because he was quite badly scarred from his time with Macavity. Tugger all but begs him to take it off, just for a moment. Misto is extremely hesitant and it takes a lot of convincing for him, and only agrees on the condition that Tugger promises not to tell anyone, or make any comments about it. When Tugger sees, it takes everything in him not to burst into tears on the spot. It’s bad. But of course, Tugger being Tugger, can’t help but break his promise, and tells Misto he’s the most beautiful Cat he’s ever seen, and means it. This, of course, makes Misto cry when he sees that Tugger is completely serious. Tugger actually thinks Misto is more beautiful without the glamour, but sees that Misto really doesn’t like taking it off, so never asks him to. He does manage to keep the other part of his promise and never tells another living soul. Obviously, Misto is still the most beautiful Cat to Tugger with the glamour on, but when he takes it off it just encapsulates a whole lot of feelings in Tugger: appreciation, love, pride, and above all - trust. If Misto trusts him with this huge and emotional thing for him, then Tugger must be a pretty good mate.