#(he can not. due to the trauma)

[oxfordsxbrogues]

“Wait no not like that.”

OR: Results? To MY own self-sabotage? More likely than you’d think!

OR: I don’t CARE that the prophecy was self-fulfilling, I’m still angry about it! 😤

OR: Blitzø sweetie pie please go to therapy I know this great lady with a hotel where you do trust falls and talk about your feelings she’s like a block away from your office just pop in for thirty seconds please I’m begging you 🥺

[justanotherhh]

me: dammit stolas you can't just walk away from someone who's struggling to connect with you, even if they're doing so through the poorly processed means of yelling insults, you've gotta give them time to work through it and not need to control everything

also me: [is aware that i also need to engineer situations to go perfectly and if someone started yelling at me i too would immediately get triggered and leave the situation and cry and if i had portal-making powers would yeet them to another continent, never mind just outside the door]

[liam-summers]

1.02 | 2.01

Responding after the other has already left

↳ Requested by @oveliagirlhaditright

[theheroheart]

watching Until Dawn remake and thinking about Josh

[the-muffin-master]

"Since the Netherbrain fell, you and Astarion have seen more of Faerûn than you ever thought possible. One night, he tells you that these last six months of happy memories are the counterweight to two hundred years of misery."

idk what's up with my obsession with drawing astarion being happy and cared for but I'm sure it's not gonna come up in therapy. AFFECTION BEAM!!!!

[keets-writing-corner]

Alright everyone, buckle up and sit down. I was talking with @nerdasaurus1200 on another post and came to the conclusion that I need to write Sera meta so let's freaking GO

I'm mostly gonna be talking about Sera, what we know about her so far, and what makes her tick (aka her fears) and why she's not a bitch/asshole the way apparently so many people like to portray her? (I've mostly just been hanging out with fan art and headcanons specifically about Lucifer in the fandom so I haven't seen these specifically, but someone approached me about how they liked m portrayal of Sera in my fic which was NOT that of an asshole and apparently multiple people are portraying her that way? Idk I haven't seen any but uh yeah let's talk SERA)

Characters are always the most important part of a story, and even if they're not a main character and/or the audience nor the writer know what they want/need, the writer at the very least needs to know How and Why a character makes decisions, instead of just "oh they're an asshole" So let's do that for Sera. Why is she making the decisions she's making? LETS GO

Let's start off by talking about what we know about Sera

She's at least as old as Lucifer, she was there for the creation of earth given the appearance of her silhouette in Charlie's exposition

We know that the exterminations might have been Adam's idea, but it was HER decision to approve them

We know that she's FOR SURE older than Emily

and the other thing we know for sure about her is that she is the High Seraphim (we don't know WHAT that means exactly but clearly it is a position of authority and rule)

So those are the things we know for sure:

She's about as old as Lucifer

She approved the exterminations

She's older than Emily

and she's the high Seraphim

Now I'm going to circle back to all of these points but I want to start off with her relationship with Lucifer

Unfortunately for all of us, the only thing we can say about their relationship with 100% certainty is that they for SURE know each other, either because they were essentially "coworkers" in the past, or because they're both the respective rulers of their realms (even if Sera has some people above her) and they're implied to interact with each other

(at the very least you cannot convince me otherwise that they don't interact. Someone had to have talked to Lucifer about the exterminations for him to have had "approved it" and we know it wasn't Adam because Lucifer hadn't seen Adam since he fell to hell until the finale, and we know that Sera was not only the one to approve said exterminations but also decreed that no one else in heaven know about them. She clearly must have spoken to Lucifer about it because there's nobody else left who had the authority to do that AND knew about them)

So at the very least in present day Sera and Lucifer have some sort of professional relationship as leaders. And I'll come back to this because it's implied that this relationship isn't a very good one, but first let's talk about the past

full stop, we have NO IDEA what sort of relationship Sera and Lucifer might have had when he was still in heaven. But here's the thing, even if their relation was strictly "yeah I know them cuz I work with them, but that's as far as it goes" Lucifer's fall STILL would have been horrifying for Sera to witness. He was the same rank as her, probably no other angel except the elders likely ranked higher, and they still banished him. Charlie's storybook leaves it at that, but Lucifer implies it was violent in his debut episode.

trauma is a funny thing when you think about it, you're just as likely to develop trauma by watching someone else be assaulted as you are for you to have been assaulted. And Sera was there, she likely saw the whole thing happen. So not only did Sera watch how brutal the elders could be to someone who questioned and disobeyed the order, but the fact that it was done to LUCIFER someone of equal rank and authority as her means that absolutely NOBODY is safe from the elders

and this is without taking into account that on some level, she and Lucifer had to have been close. There are no other seraphim in heaven besides her, the elders (who appear to be rather hands off and uninvolved) and Emily. Emily was likely created as a replacement for Lucifer, so at the time, it was basically just her and Lucifer as the only seraphim up there. They not only worked closely together, they likely had a close bond as well. Now I have my own head canon preferences as to what kind of bond, BUT let's ignore that and look at 3 options (although there are likely more, but huuu this post is gonna be long already so let's not push it yeah? )

option 1: equal peers. You are Sera and you've known Lucifer all your life. You two have "grown up" together, learned about the world and your powers together. You're comrades in arms! You know all of each other's secrets! You lean on each other for support as you lead heaven together. You work together all the time. Sure, he can be a little excitable at times but it's so much FUN right? This guy could be your bestie/brother. And you sit back and watch as the only ones with more authority than you, skewer him and banish him to hell for having questioned the order and now there's a metaphorical spear against your back at all times because you know it could have been you instead, and it could still be you if you don't behave

Option 2: Lucifer is your mentor. He's taught you everything you know. The ropes, your powers, the world. He's fantastic! You admire him greatly. He has such energy you could never hope to match. You put him on a pedestal, and in one fell swoop the only people he answers to destroy your mentor in front of you. You are now alone, without any more advice or guidance other than a warning to not step out of line as your mentor once did

Option 3: Lucifer is your apprentice. He's adorable! A little over enthusiastic but who doesn't love someone who's passionate about the things they like? He brings a wonderful energy and vibe, and... he's your responsibility. You try to reign in his wild energy only for the elders to step in and banish him because you failed him and now you know that the elders could do that to you too

So, I'll be honest, option 3 is NOT the one I'm biased towards, but if it ends up being that one, it would make Sera's behavior towards Emily extra heartbreaking. She already failed one apprentice, she will not fail another one, right?

Either way, Sera is terrified of going against the elders because of what they did to Lucifer in spite of his rank. She knows first hand how harsh they can be and because of that, she will do everything in her power to make sure nobody around her falls into the same fate. No one will ever question the elders again, and she will lie and withhold information to make sure that happens

And we're just talking about the INITIAL banishment.

Now why would Sera bring this up, unless what she was most afraid of wasn't even the initial banishment, but of the suffering she clearly knows comes afterwards? And why would she care or even know about the suffering? Well, if it's true that she and Lucifer were close, then regardless if she was spying on him or not the way we know heaven can do, she still watched a cute enthusiastic little angel go from this:

to this

all because because he suffered.

She watched him question, get banished, suffer, and change into someone she didn't recognize, in real time. And the worst part is, she's not only scared of what happened TO him, she's personally scared OF him and what he's become. He might be fallen, but he's still a powerful angel

And this segways into another bullet: she approved the exterminations, but WHY

Charlie's intro implies it was as some sort of punishment towards Lilith who was rallying the demons and they felt threatened

But clearly there's more to this

So first thing I'd like to point out, Sera doesn't look happy about this decision. She mentions as much in the song "You didn't Know" when she outright tells Emily "It was such a hard decision" and earlier in the same episode she outright tells Adam she wouldn't have approved of this if she had known it'd make things "worse"

But this is incomplete. Something doesn't make sense. Sera clearly meets with Lucifer for certain matters as previously established, and Lucifer, in spite of his initial trauma "NO CHARLIE DO NOT TALK TO HEAVEN" knee jerk reaction, never doubted that he COULD in fact get her a meeting with heaven. He outright tells her at the end of episode 5

He never says, "I'll try to get the meeting". He says straight up, I can do this. There isn't a doubt in his mind that he can get this meeting. He knows Sera will meet with him/take his call (idk how he contacts heaven) and will agree to the meeting. We don't really know WHY Sera agreed to this if she thought it was a bad idea and never really intended to entertain the idea to begin with, going as far as to tell Adam to rig the results and calling Charlie misguided. So what's up? Why on earth would she agree to it? Well...?

Sera is scared of the demons of hell, hence why she approved the exterminations, but she's even MORE scared of Lucifer and folded to his request. (or idk maybe there's more going on here and she feels guilt about what happened to him so she folds to him sometimes idk, but for the sake of this meta, SHE'S SCARED OF HIM)

but here's what's kinda weird. Charlie's storybook only mentions LILITH'S involvement with the demons rising in power, not Lucifer. Sera later claims that they were uprising to Emily as the reason she's scared of them and that it's her job to keep everyone safe.

Clearly SOMETHING happened between the creation of Hell and the exterminations being approved that involved BOTH the sinners AND Lucifer that made Sera scared of both. Sera doesn't seem the type to fear without reason. She fears questioning the order because that incurs the elders' wrath. She fears the elders because of what they did to Lucifer. She fears angels falling because she saw how much it hurt Lucifer. Sera is not the type to fear randomly. Clearly there is some sort of thing that happened that made it clear to Sera that Lucifer is to be feared enough to fold to his requests and that the sinners are dangerous enough that it justifies genocide.

And now to bring back the whole Sera is older than Emily. Emily didn't know this otherwise Sera wouldn't have needed to tell her. AKA Emily wasn't even around when said conflict happened. Sera not only had to go through something that clearly traumatized her to the point where she agreed that genocide was a reasonable response, but she had to go through that ALONE. Trauma is hard enough to deal with, but to have to navigate it alone really gives it some steroids it has no business in having

This genuinely makes me wonder how long the exterminations have to have been taking place. It probably took a WHILE for hell to gather up enough numbers that they started making buildings by the look of Charlie's storybook, AND THEN did something against heaven, so this was not happening from day one of hell, far from it. And this also makes me wonder how old exactly is Emily? She strikes me as extremely young

season 2 come out please, I'm working from CRUMBS here, there is so much we don't know

But yeah, all of this to say, Sera isn't just some alpha bitch who's prejudiced against demons (not to say there isn't bias there, there ABSOLUTELY is, ugh) but at her core, she's a leader who underwent a lot of trauma and she's full of fear and she makes decisions, rational, moral or not, based off of that fear. And yeah unfortunately, fear, especially trauma based fear, messes with us in ways we never would expect

a kind man may suddenly resort to violence. The confident argumentative person, may instead end up frozen. Someone who thought they valued their family all their life instead runs away. We may regret what we do in moments in fear, we might even logically know that we're making bad decisions, or decisions that go against our morals. Sera CLEARLY hates that she made the decision to approve extermination, but she holds onto it steadfast because it alleviates the fear

Funnily enough, I don't particularly LIKE Sera. I dislike her microaggressions towards Charlie and her attempts to sabotage her efforts at the meeting by calling upon Adam. But as a writer, looking at the clues I got to say she's a very interesting character to me. She seems like a reasonable authority figure, but she's so full of trauma that she's letting her fear make all of her decisions for her

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I love Jiang Cheng and I hope you agree. The most tragic thing about yunmeng siblings is that JC and WWX really love each other the whole time… I like to think they can fix it someday

Someday perhaps....in the meantime, I bet he's loving having dogs run around lotus pier. As a WWX deterrent of course. No therapeutic reasons at all.

[brainworms-all-night-long]

Thinking abt how Nine is canonicaly an artist yet all the inventions we see him make are just plain single color metal with led light exept the shatterdrive (its for show budget reasons I know shhh)

[chocmoon-latte]

Another reason why I think Hancock would have a crush on the Sole Survivor besides the obvious fact that you're out here helping the people of the Commonwealth, or how he thought you were an innocent vault dweller who needed protecting, is the fact that he's finally got someone he can be emotionally vulnerable with. Being the mayor of such a dangerous place like Goodneighbor means he needs to keep up a reputation to match it. There's no room for him to be soft or emotional in a place like this.

He's happy when strangers know who he is for having reputation that precedes him for being deadly because it eliminates any chances of someone out there possibly getting the idea that he might actually have a sweeter, more caring side. That's one of the main reasons why he even killed Finn in the first place. But he WANTS to be able to express softness. The problem is just that Goodneighbor isn't the place to do it, and a lot of the kinds of people you find in the Commonwealth in general aren't really the greatest types to be emotionally open towards anyways. In a world like this, it's something that could very easily be held against him.

He tells you that it's lonely being mayor and that he's running out on the good things and people he's got. He tells you that he's always been the one telling others to keep the emotion out of relationships in the past, but here he is being open and emotional with you. He says that everyone is entitled to some softness, himself included… but after he opens up to you about running out on the good things in his life, he asks you not to tell anyone else. Not necessarily because of the fact that it's personal, but because of the fact that he's afraid of word spreading around about this more emotionally vulnerable side of him and that people will think he's crazy for it (and as a side note, let's be honest, we've all seen how society on a larger scale views emotionally vulnerable men as weak).

A lot (not all) of his contradicting ideals when you first meet him make so much more sense when you look at him through the lens of a man desperately trying to conceal and repress the more sensitive side to him. The way he just lets you get away with so much during The Big Dig questline, even if you take your time to do every little thing against him. It's obvious that he doesn't really care all too much about punishing you - he just likes knowing he still has the power to make people frantically scramble to please him, because it helps uphold his reputation.

If there's one thing Hancock hates being more than anything, it's being powerless and weak. His biggest traumas come from how he was unable to protect the ghouls in Diamond City from being exiled or protect the drifters in Goodneighbor from being abused by Vic. If people in the Commonwealth knew there was a softer side to him, a large majority of the more dangerous organizations, especially the ones operating in his town, would consider him weak. If Hancock was considered a weak leader, then he wouldn't be considered fit to protect the innocent people that he so sworn to protect.

It's always baffled everyone how Hancock doesn't show any sadness when it comes to the death of Fahrenheit or finding out his brother was replaced by a synth and killed years prior, but I'm starting to wonder if we've been looking at it the wrong way this entire time. Maybe Hancock's lack of being visibly upset over them had nothing to do with Bethesda making poor writing decisions (they kind of do tbh), but had everything to do with him repressing his emotions.

So when he gets to travel with YOU the player, who has no prior knowledge of him, his reputation or past (and you aren't just another citizen he has to put on a show for) he feels like he can let his walls down around you. He's allowed to be emotionally vulnerable because he doesn't have to pretend to BE someone for you, and in turn, he feels like he doesn't have to run anymore.

(That was a lot sorry but I tend to get my thoughts out better in the form of long ramblings. Honestly there's so many ways he can be interpreted though, but I guess this is just somewhat of an analysis/me theorizing a little)

[desired-misery]

For my RE4R fic...

I've decided that Ashley had no idea she's in Spain. She thinks they're in Mexico or somewhere in Centra/South America. She is gonna make some comment that alludes to Mexico, and Leon is gonna be like ???? Mexico??? Wrong continent there, girlie-- And she freaks out. Leon, being Leon, is all like "hey, Spain's a great place-- except for this specific place of course. Have you ever been to Europe before? It's pretty neat." And all these terrible jokes while Ashley is like "Hold on Leon, how did I end up Spain????"

and that's how they learn that Ashely does not realize it has been longer than she thought, too, so she has a panic attack. Cue Leon feeling super bad about that, so they gotta take a break because she is really really upset. The first of many breaking points, but yeah. Ashley is very much not built for this. Of course she isn't, and she needs to have a good cry. (Capcom, I know you didn't want Ashley to be "annoying" or whatever, but SHE IS 20!!! SHE IS A CIVILIAN!!! WHO GOT KIDNAPPED AND DUMPED HALFWAY ACROSS THE WORLD INTO A DANGEROUS CULT THAT GAVE HER A PARASITE. Why doesn't she have a complete freak out???? Please??? For me?????)

[naivety]

okay i need feedback from the autism mentall illness website um. this is going to read like an AITA post. brother vs half-sister (who are currently my dependents do to their own individual disabilities + ptsd/depression) spat i will skim the details on but i'm worried my sister will discount my take since i'm not autistic myself so. am i crazy to call it ableist to look at an autistic person (23) who is clearly going through it dealing w long term depression, a world that doesn't give a shit abt him, unemployment, very self-isolated and burnt out barely leaving his room because the world is an ableist dumpster fire with zero opportunities for him, and then bring up childhood abuse he's suffered and his diagnosis as reasonable factors on top of this to worry he'll [checks notes] abuse my cat just to hurt me or even worse have a breakdown and kill me and his other sibling in a violent episode, a train of thought i probably wouldn't even be having were he not [checks notes] mad at me for the first time in my life?

like i don't have any other read on this kind of fear-based characterization other than ableism. like those are very real things in his life but she never points out any current violent behavior, of which there are none, only the one (1) instance of him lashing out when he was like 14 and Officially Diagnosed Low Empathy she thinks is a concern and Hateful Looks toward her since he stopped getting along with her, that's it. i tried explaining to her why i, someone who's lived w him his entire life, can vouch for how unlikely he is to do anything like that, especially when it's again not based on anything he's actually currently doing except for isolating in a way that is much more indicative of him potentially being a danger to himself than anyone else, and being cold towards her specifically, and i thought she had let it go, but when i brought it up off-hand in a conversation tangentially related, she continued to defend and justify her Concern about the potential directions his behavior could lead to because [checks notes] other people in similar situations have lashed out and killed their entire families according to. true crime books or videos she's watched on youtube as far as i'm aware. ignoring the fact that her and i have had the same or Worse childhood abuse and have acted similarly isolated in the past, or for her literally just as currently as him, and she's not expressed any worry past or present about either of us doing anything like that, in my opinion obviously because i haven't cut her off due to our differences like he decided to. like am i big sibling biased because this is pissing me off so bad.

[potatobugz]

i feel as if im going mad so im going to just put this out here. real quick. movieunleashers starters ramble.

i cant stop thinking about how mudkip broke down in that one scene in "Typomaniac," when Chespin called him mean. for a second he lets his mask slip a little bit and to me he just... acts his age. he starts crying and calls chespin mean back. maybe im just hyperfocusing on this one detail but mudkip is about 12 years old.

and that just makes me wonder what happened in this guys life that brought him to where he is now. and it makes it all the more tragic how his whole world revolves around chespin, but he is the one bringing him the most pain. and how young he was when he died.

there is a large theme of growing up in "Rare Candy." the characters ages are emphasized in that particular episode, and one of the main conflicts is fennekin wanting to evolve faster.

the thing about characters in these stories is that they're not allowed to just be kids, to have a childhood. so many bad things happen to them. like. mudkips whole, Everything. fennekin when she was famous in typomaniac, or dealing with her own insecurities/pressure from society about her relationship w chespin. and chespin always having to shoulder his friends problems & always somehow managing to stay positive despite everything.

why cant they just. play video games. eat ice cream or something. go to the movies

at the end of the day, i think both mudkip and fennekin are characters who grew up too fast. by distancing himself from them, chespin refused to follow in their footsteps and just wanted to stay a kid.

good for him.

[mobblespsycho100]

kabru as a pwnpd headcanon is genuinely so iconic that man rlly is odysseus' hubristic tendencies made manifest tbh . . .

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[someobscurereference]

ive been rereading your ffxv fic "im trying hard to take it back" for literally four years now. please end my suffering and tell me how gladio feels. please. PLEASE. (but only if u want ofc)

(fic) Short answer: Gladio feels insane guilt and spends a lot of his life trying to make this up to Prompto. In the process, they deepen their connection as friends and do begin a relationship probably around the one-year mark of endless darkness. <3

Longer answer: (implications of abuse/violence tw but no worse than in the fic itself; just what others assume to be true even if it's not in the context of this specific fic)

Gladio is a secret romantic at heart who has always envisioned meeting his soulmate, but he's also duty-bound and duty comes first. So even though he reads romance books (amongst other types of books too) and indulges in his head a bit as many people do, he's often put his duty to the crown first and foremost in his mind. He also didn't imagine his soulmate was anyone on this trip and thought perhaps the person he may have been fated to meet died in the assault of Insomnia. Even if they were a refugee, they can't be a priority to him at this moment. His priority has to be Noctis.

Prompto has obviously grown on him over the course of their road trip, but there are aspects of them that don't 100% mesh (as is true with every realistic relationship). That said, Gladio never in a hundred years would want this moment of (understandable but out of line) frustration and anger in the wake of Luna and Altissa to be a permanent mark on Prompto's face. He's genuinely horrified and disgusted with himself for a long time after this and spends most of his life trying to make it up. He feels like a dirtbag about it.

That said, Prompto runs away from him in this moment and they need time to calm down, just as the fic shows. Noctis goes after Prompto, just like in canon. Prompto falls off the train and has his Despair Arc just like in the DLC, now with the added despair of "well, in addition to being a clone, my soulmate hates me. And in addition to the mark of inhumanity on my wrist (barcode), I have a giant hand print of him literally Shoving Me Away on my face. Forever."

Aranea: Well, do you want to die about it. Or do you want to live.

Prompto, eventually like in canon: Live, I guess. But it will be excruciating.

Aranea: That's what living is. We do it anyway. Your friends love you. Get off the floor.

He fights his way through his issues and gets rescued like in canon. Gladio probably tries to talk to him when they all catch up again, trying to apologize, and Prompto tells him to hold off on that for later.

Then, of course, Noctis is eaten by the crystal and "later" becomes much, much later as they evacuate and try to survive in eternal darkness. (Though they also can't Not think about it because it's a giant hand print. On Prompto's face. And every person they meet has Something To Say about it, for better or worse, whether they knew Prompto before or not. Prompto cannot escape it, and when Gladio is not doing Crown Duties he feels he must do in Noct's absence, he's with Prompto, so he also Cannot Escape It either. Even when the person speaking is unaware that Gladio left that mark. It's almost worse when they don't know, but when they see it's Gladio, who is such a big guy who seemingly hit Prompto and left that permanent mark there, some of them get nasty to him and some back off out of fear. Both are horrible. The guilt is eating him alive.)

Eventually, enough time passes as the dust settles that they do Talk About It. Gladio apologizes sincerely, for the 500th time. Prompto's like, "Well. It's not like you could have known that this would be The One Time it happened." And then cracks a joke about their soulmate mark being a Prompto's hand print on Gladio's ass from a butt slap in another life, which does help the tension somewhat. (The more Gladio tries to apologize, the more Prompto grows sick of hearing it, so they just have to move on and keep going, as he's learned to do.)

They grow closer over time, especially because there's not a lot of people who have survived to this point and even less later on. They do get together romantically, both because they do like the idea of soulmates (for different reasons) and also because they're living out of each others pockets for years, so there's an affection and dependency that develops there. Also, teenage Prompto always thought Gladio was really handsome and teen Gladio thought Prompto was cute and sincere for a pipsqueak.

When they are out together on dates in normal settings surrounded by strangers after the light returns, Gladio will receive dirty looks for the rest of his life from strangers who see the hand print on Prompto's face and immediately (correctly) assumes it was out of anger rather than a funny accident or something. (Edit: Some people will assume there is a funny story attached. Gladio will not know what to say to this. Prompto will play along.) He will learn to live with this. Prompto is really grateful Gladio is with him despite everything.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

kinda wild to me that one of the most compelling aspects of both Chuuya and Kunikida's characters to me, that I never really see talked about, is how they're heavily set on a doomed crash course towards complete and utter destruction, and how I am so, so worried for them both.....