#all the things i did not learn in childhood or teen years because i was too busy being actively traumatised and struggling to survive

[euseokz]

@ sungchan — why are you this shitty ? . cws : toxic behaviour . use of ‘whore’ . unprotected sex . creampie . wc : 4.2k+ . genre : angst + smut

a/n : somehow included my babyboys leehan and jaehyun because i love them very much 😛

you knew it wasn’t a good idea to agree to go out with EX-BOYFRIEND! SUNGCHAN again.

and yet, you still did.

sungchan and you didn’t break up on good terms. in fact, you thought there were very few other ways that could be worse.

it all started with you befriending leehan — or better yet, rekindling your old friendship. leehan was an old friend from your childhood, you grew up as neighbors and spent basically every hour of every day together, your parents getting along just as well with his. as kids, you’d do almost everything together. go to school, eat lunch, take after school naps, play whatever silly new game you had come up with. it was sweet really. but then you turned ten, and around that time leehan’s family moved away because of his father’s work. it hit you hard, but you both promised to survive it, dramatizing things a bit because it truly felt like you were losing a sibling by being away from each other. your parents kept in contact with his however, and once or twice a year his family would come to visit, but by then you were teens, too caught up in your own worlds to care enough to create a bond in the few days he was over, knowing you’d lose it again soon enough. you grew further apart as you aged, even more when you moved away to another city for work, already in your 20’s, full of hopes and dreams, ready to build your own path — which was when you met sungchan.

he was the friend of one of your colleagues, and you only even met him because said colleague, sohee, was throwing a little summer get-together at his house and invited a lot of people from your work who were close in age to him and that he got along with, that somehow including you. you always saw it as a pity invite, a way to try to include the new girl and not make her feel left out, sohee was nice enough to do something like that after all. you took the invite gladly either way, seeing it as an opportunity to make a new workplace friend and also just make new friends in general!

it was a good time, it was warm out as the soft summer breeze and higher temperatures came in, a guy you later learned to be named eunseok behind a small bar making cocktails, not stopping even when sohee told him to just go have fun. he seemed to like being there, keeping a bit more to himself but still having fun in his own way, talking with some people and even dancing but still keeping what seemed to be a safe distance from the more erratic part of the afternoon, that being the loud music and half-drunk people by the pool. it wasn’t a huge gather by any means, but it also wasn’t small, probably around 30 people there, apparently more than sohee even expect since, from what he told you when you walked in, some of his friends brought plus ones, not that he seemed to mind, just happy everyone was having fun.

at some point you ended up by the makeshift bar, talking with eunseok about how pretty the sky looked, hues of orange and pink glazing it as the sunset drew upon it. eunseok was funny, he had a somewhat weird humor, kinda dry maybe, but he was funny, and also cute, cute enough for you to almost muster up enough courage to ask him if he was doing anything next weekend — until sungchan showed up, and all the sudden attraction you felt towards eunseok went down the drain.

sungchan was tall, wearing only a pair of swim shorts with a big seven on the side and a pair of flip flops, water from the pool still dripping from his hair and leaving wet trails down his toned body. he didn’t notice you at first, approaching eunseok directly and asking for a beer, looking like he was in a rush to go back to wherever he came from — the pool, you assumed — until eunseok let out a small, discreet cough, ever so slightly pointing towards your direction with his head before leaning down to pick up a beer from the cooler on the floor.

“oh, i didn’t even see you there, i’m sorry” were the first words sungchan ever told you, his smile staying in place as he spoke, his eyes sparkling a little more once they laid on you, or so you thought that happened. that was the beginning of it all, a small conversation turning into you two going to a calmer corner to keep the chat going, the date you thought about having next weekend ending up being with sungchan, taking only a few more before you were officially dating.

sungchan treated you like a princess, proud to introduce you to everyone he knew, happy to do anything you asked. you genuinely thought you would marry him someday, that hopeful day never coming.

it was a couple years after you started dating that you got a call from your parents saying that leehan was now living in your city. you didn’t give it much thought, only seeing him as a childhood friend now, no space for him in your life. but then you ran into him by some weird coincidence in a coffee shop you and sungchan frequently went to. he was there by himself, sitting in a small table with his laptop and a snack. it took you a moment to register who he was, his little boy features long gone and it wasn’t like you had seen leehan recently. more out of courtesy than anything, you went to greet him, sungchan looking from afar calmly as you approached an old friend.

“the long hair suits you” you spoke as you stood by leehan’s table. he looked up at you, also confused for a second before recognizing you.

“thank you” he answered, his smile the same from when you were kids somehow, even if almost every single one of his features had matured, his smile remained the same.

you talked briefly, and what was supposed to be only a courtesy greeting transformed into a trip down memory lane, that eventually ended with him sitting with you and sungchan, both of you sharing silly stories from when you were kids all while sungchan smiled softly, listening attentively, happy to see you so excited.

you and leehan kept in contact after that, and sungchan never had any problem with it, because why would he? he had his friends, you were allowed to have yours, right? right. that thought process of his didn’t last long, however, remaining until you and leehan got closer and started spending more and more time together. you never ditched on sungchan to be with leehan, you never broke any boundaries with leehan, you were genuinely just friends, no attraction involved from either side, a simple, innocent friendship connecting you. you knew that, leehan knew that, even sungchan’s friends saw that — but he didn’t. sungchan started thinking you two were too close, too intimate, spending too much time alone. it started small, sungchan making snarky remarks whenever leehan came up in conversation, escalating to him out right being rude towards leehan whenever you all hung out. it bothered you, bothered you enough for you to even talk to eunseok, ask what he thought about it.

“you’re just friends, right? sungchan is overreacting, probably just jealous, he’ll get over it” eunseok remarked, the problem becoming that sungchan never got over it, coming to a point where you had to put your foot down.

“‘chan, you have your friends, i never questioned any of them, never doubted your relationship with them as anything more, so why are you so mad about me and leehan? we’re just friends, that’s all!” you said, agitated, the issue between you two having already been going on for far too long.

“i don’t fuck my friends, that’s the difference” sungchan answered calmly, that sort of calmness that comes before a storm. you didn’t know where that came from, all you knew was that sungchan’s words led to a massive fight between you two, one that ended with you breaking up in the heat of the moment, throwing away years spent in a relationship over a stupid issue that could be resolved over a simple, honest conversation.

sungchan tried to apologize in the weeks following the argument, saying he was completely out of his mind, admitting what he said came purely from his own insecurities, claiming that he wanted to be together again. you accepted his apology, but much to sungchan’s despair, you didn’t take him back, saying you wouldn’t allow that sort of disrespect from a partner. sungchan wasn’t pleased with that, but he took the no for an answer, leaving you alone. it wasn’t easy, you cried most nights, wondering if you did the right thing, questioning everything that led up to it. you came to terms with it at some point tho, months passing and the pain fading away with them. you heard from sungchan sometimes, even seeing him rarely, the friendship you had built with sohee and eunseok remaining even after you broke up with their friend. they didn’t think what he did or said was right, that comforting you somehow, knowing that you weren’t crazy for thinking sungchan’s actions were completely out of line. leehan never heard any of it, that becoming the first time you ever lied to him, explaining that you and sungchan broke up because you simply started growing apart.

“i liked him, you know” leehan once said, almost a year having already passed since the break up. ��he treated me a bit weirdly towards the end, but he was a nice guy” leehan continued, completely unaware of how sungchan actually felt towards him and what he thought of him. you giggled, and out of instinct, you hugged leehan, the sound of autumn leaves falling against the grass of the park you were in serving as background noise when you told him how happy you were to have found him again. leehan let out a small laugh, hugging you back, admitting he too was happy you had met up again — neither of you aware sungchan was just on the other side of the street, watching as a new girl held his hand, old malicious thoughts rushing back to his head. that was the start of it all.

the start of you getting to know just how shitty your ex-boyfriend truly was.

it started small. sohee started slightly avoiding you at work, never holding up a conversation for too long, even if his genuine smile always remained, some excuse always coming up as to why he had to go. he seemed nervous around you, uncomfortable maybe, as if he was doing something wrong by even looking in your direction. you found it weird, but thought maybe he just had some other issue going on in his life that he didn’t want to talk to you about, his personal problems probably affecting his usual behaviour. then, after a few weeks, you asked when you two and eunseok could hangout again.

“oh we’re both totally busy that day, i’m sorry” sohee replied through an anxious smile.

“i didn’t mention a date tho?”

“yeah but we’ll be busy” those were sohee’s last words before he ran off, that being what triggered you to realize something was definitely going on, and most definitely not just some problem he didn’t wanna discuss with you — so you went to eunseok. you hadn’t talked to him in a while, which wasn’t odd, he rarely ever reached out first, but maybe he could tell you why sohee’s behavior had been so strange lately.

“it’s sungchan” eunseok sighed once you approached him at his favorite bar, lucking out that he was alone there on a random friday night. “he’s been saying some shitty stuff about you and saying we shouldn’t come near you. i don’t believe any of his bullshit, i don’t think sohee does either, but you know sungchan, he can be an asshole when he wants, sohee probably just doesn’t wanna cause any trouble”

“what do you mean?” you asked after a second, confused, sitting down by eunseok’s side, now even more curious about what was apparently going on.

“look, you don’t wanna know, trust me. just forget about sungchan’s stupid ass, this will blow over and things will go back to normal” that answer, as intentionally vague as it was, only left you even more interested in what was going on so, after some more questions that almost made eunseok get up and leave to avoid problems on either side, he finally caved in.

“sungchan…” he started, sighing before proceeding “he’s been telling everyone that you cheated on him with leehan, that you two had something going on beyond just a friendship i guess”

“what?” you asked, more speechless than anything, incredulous that this was all coming back after so long.

“yeah, at least between us he has been calling you a whore, saying you were never worth his time” eunseok added, this time unable to lift his head, staring straight into the glass cup between his fingers. “if it matters, as i said, i don’t believe any of it, and i don’t think anyone else does. i know he’s my friend, but sungchan is just something else… not a bad person, just bad with relationships. he’s never gone this far tho” eunseok finished, blatantly trying to apologize for his friend’s behaviour. it didn’t work, if anything it only made you angry, so you left without another word, heading home before doing something stupid.

after that you started avoiding sohee at work, not because you were mad at him, but so you wouldn’t say something out of impulse that would just worsen the situation. for weeks you thought about what to do, how to get back at sungchan, but eventually you gave up. it was like eunseok said that one night, sungchan is an asshole, so you decided he wasn’t worth your time.

as time passed, more weeks and then months going by, things eventually got back to normal. sohee apologized when he found out what eunseok told you, which led to you three finally having your friendship again. some of sungchan’s closest friends also came to you later on saying they didn’t believe any word of what he said, one of them that you were never particularly close with, wonbin, even pointing out that the other few people sungchan talked about the matter with also never believed him. weirdly enough that made you feel relieved, knowing that sungchan’s credibility was below zero. from that point on you kept living your life as you intended, working, meeting new people, enjoying yourself without caring about some stupid ex-boyfriend you had. you even met someone new, jaehyun, a guy leehan met through a friend and that was just the sweetest. you weren’t actually dating, only going out here and there, getting to know each other at a slow pace, but it was nice to be reassured that not every guy sucked, especially since leehan really backed up jaehyun, saying he was truly a good guy, and his opinion mattered to you, so you took it as a good sign. all in all, things were going well — until sungchan reached out.

“can we meet up?” you read on your phone, the contact it came from named simply sungchan, no longer ‘channie with two heart emojis after it. you didn’t even know why you kept his number, didn’t even remember you still had it in fact, and something about it all felt off. why would he text you? why would he want to meet up? and most of all, why did you reply with a “yes, when?”.

you felt dumb, but after exchanging a few messages, two days later you found yourself ringing the doorbell to sungchan’s apartment. he opened the door without saying a word, stepping aside so you could come in. it looked different, most of the same furniture but placed in a different manner, the smaller decorations on shelves and such almost completely different, the frames that once had pictures of you two now showing him with another girl you didn’t know.

a few moments passed as you looked around, only able to see the small entryway and open kitchen to living room space, his bedroom tucked away behind it’s closed door, his bathroom too. it was dark, only the moon’s light extending through the space and somehow brightening it up enough for you to notice the small details. you had always liked that his windows were big, not only because you spent so many nights wrapped up with him on his couch with the room just as dim as it was in that moment, but also because when you woke up in his bed you had a perfect view through his living room windows. you shook your head slightly though, focusing on the present, a movement to attempt to let go of old, now basically meaningless, memories.

“why did you want me to come here?” you asked, finally looking at sungchan, his tall figure standing just a couple feet behind you.

“why did you come?” he questioned back, looking serious, which made you scoff. this has to be a joke, you thought to yourself, letting out a small laugh before starting to make your way back towards the front door. “wait!” sungchan suddenly said when he noticed where you were headed, positioning himself in front of you, his hands unsurely rising up and softly popping onto your shoulders. “i wanna talk”

“i don’t think we have much to talk about, especially after you called me a whore behind my back”

sungchan winced, looking away from your eyes for a second before focusing again, an almost pleading look behind his own gaze.

“i know what i did was wrong, all of it, from start to end… it was wrong, it was awful, and i can’t apologize enough to make up for it. but i still want to make things right” sungchan practically begged, his tone soft, softer than you remember it ever having been. he sighed, a long sigh, and you almost felt bad for him in that moment — better yet, you felt bad enough for him to accept what he said next.

���can we try again?”

you didn’t blink, you didn’t even think or breath before saying “yes”, a rush of emotions flooding you, things you thought you had forgotten or moved past crashing you harder then they ever should.

sungchan smiled incredulously, pulling you in for a hug, his arms wrapping around your shoulders, unsure of what to even do with himself so just going for a tight embrace. you placed your own arms around his waist, your grip looser than his. you didn’t know what possessed you to say yes, it felt wrong but also right. you thought of jaehyun for a second, what you’d tell him. you were just going out though, so it was fine you guessed, leehan’s pouting when you told him probably more of a hassle to deal with — and then you remembered about the photos around sungchan’s apartment, the girl with him in them.

“what about your girlfriend?” you asked, getting an instant reply “i broke up with her last night”

there was no hesitation in sungchan’s speech, even less when he backed away ever so slightly, hands moving to cup your cheeks softly, his eyes glued to yours before both your lids fell close, his lips pressing into yours.

it was soft, a simple peck, a quick touch of his lips on yours — but then he sucked on your bottom one, and as you always used to do, you kissed him back. no hesitation again, no second thought, just pure instinct you assumed, what you two had in the past meddling with how you acted in the present, all the bad things that happened suddenly meaningless.

you now pulled at sungchan’s loose shirt, each tug at it seemingly making both of you more desperate. this wasn’t what either of you had expected from this evening. sungchan was sure you’d just slap him across the face — if you decided to actually show up, that is — and leave his apartment without a word. you expected to hear some shitty apologies from him, which in all truthfulness you did get, and to walk out after calling him a total asshole. neither of you expected this, that not even a half hour after you came into his home you’d be laying on his couch, the plush surface as comfortable as you remembered, while sungchan was positioned over you, his top long gone, thrown somewhere probably across his counter, your own shirt pushed halfway up your torso as your ex’s hands — the same ex you were supposed to absolutely hate — roamed freely across your body, warm fingertips leaving lingering trails across your sides, digging into your skin as if he wanted to pull you as close to him as humanly possible, the way his tongue slid into your mouth and allowed you to suck on it most definitely not something you predicted would ever happen again.

it was fast, not rushed, but definitely a swift pace. neither of you completely undressed, apparently no time for that. apart from sungchan already being shirtless, he only bothered with pushing his pants down enough for his bulging cock to pop out, veins running up it’s length while a drop of pre shined on his tip. you, however, let your shirt be as it was, the fabric bunched just below your chest, only interested in taking off your bottoms, your panties going along with them towards the ground.

sungchan’s eyes focused on your pussy, your clit ever so slightly moving from how aroused you were, wanting his fingers or tongue to play with it, your folds wet with your own arousal. sungchan spread your legs even more, his left hand placed at the back of your right thigh, holding it up against your chest, your other leg assuming the same position automatically. his free hand wrapped around his cock, giving it one single stroke before pressing his pink head against your clit, moving it side to side against it. you let out a small sigh merged with a moan, the slight relief heavenly. sungchan smirked, not needing to look at your blissful expression to know you liked it — he didn’t spend much time toying with you like that however, pushing away for just a second so he could spit on his cock, smearing his saliva along it’s entire thickness before finally tapping his dripping tip against your hole, looking up at you as he slid in, your eyes locked as both your faces contorted into ones that showed explicit pleasure, moving his hips the full way until he bottomed out.

“you feel just as good as i remember” sungchan muttered “such a pretty pussy, taking me so well”

no time was wasted after that. sungchan’s strokes started growing in speed, starting languid until he was pistoning into you, both hands now pressing your thighs against your chest, damn nearly completely folding you in half, his eyes shifting between your glossy with pleasure expression and the sight of your cunt swallowing him whole, your clit twitching as your high started to build, your entire being so immersed in how good sungchan’s cock felt stretching you out it didn’t take nearly as long as it usually would for your orgasm to threaten to rupture.

sungchan kept going, fucking you steadily, his own bliss or the way your slick walls clamped down around his girth not stopping him from giving you everything he had, all the pent up need he had felt for you ever since your break-up releasing itself in that moment — all it took being one louder moan from you, your fingers digging at his arms and your body shaking ever so slightly for him to cum too, following your lead almost, his seed filling your pussy up nicely.

you both stood still for a moment, catching your breaths, your firm grip on sungchan’s arms loosening and his fingers losing strength from the hold they had on the plush flesh of your thighs. you were both in nirvana, so caught up in your own ecstasy you forgot everything, both your minds numb in pleasure before slowly coming back to yourselves.

minutes later, after you both cleaned up, you now laid on sungchan’s bed, his scent almost overwhelming, everything surrounding you his — the hold he had around you, his sheets covering you up to your nose, even the t-shirt you wore.

“does this all mean i’m forgiven?” he questioned, breaking the silence you had surrounded yourselves with.

“you're still the shittiest boyfriend a girl could ever have, so i don’t know” you answered, this time actually thinking about what you were saying.

“you are laying in my bed tho, so where does that leave us?” sungchan replied, a small chuckle between his words.

“i guess we’re both just shitty… that’s probably it”

[gravebirds0dmnk]

MY RANT ABOUT

Damian Wayne!!!

(part 1)

Let’s talk about Damian Wayne, the biological son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, grandson to Ra’s al Ghul, a kid who was raised by the League of Assassins and then abruptly dropped into Gotham like a pint-sized wrecking ball. Damian didn’t just walk into the Bat-Family -he kicked down the door, insulted everyone in the room, and declared himself the best Robin before anyone could finish their coffee.

And that’s the thing: he’s not wrong. But we’ll get to that.

People love to hate Damian Wayne. He’s “arrogant,” “rude,” “violent,” “disrespectful.”

Yes - that’s the entire point. Damian is a walking nature-vs-nurture experiment gone rogue. Imagine being raised in a world where killing is standard operating procedure, then being told, "Hey, kid, here’s your dad, the most morally rigid vigilante in existence. No more murder. Also, you're twelve. Try fitting in with these older siblings who all had tragic childhoods and came out emotionally repressed instead of homicidal."

What did anyone expect? Of course Damian was going to be a tiny terror. That’s how he was built.

But people don’t seem to want to let him grow past that. That’s where the real problem lies. They see the early "I’m better than you because I was trained by the League" Damian and freeze-frame him there forever. They ignore the development, the pain, the earnest effort to be more than what he was made to be.

Damian Wayne is a twelve-year-old with the weight of two legacies crushing him. On one side: the Bat - justice, discipline, self-sacrifice. On the other: the Demon - power, domination, control. He didn’t ask for this life. He didn’t get to grow up on movie nights and pizza with Alfred. He was built in a lab of expectations and blood. And then he was dropped into a family that didn’t trust him, because they had no reason to. Imagine how isolating that is.

But despite all of it - the trauma, the conditioning, the sheer amount of emotional dysfunction - he tries. Damian genuinely tries to be better. He goes from "I’ll kill criminals because it’s efficient" to "I can be a hero, and not just my father’s shadow."

He bonds with Dick Grayson in one of the best Batman & Robin runs ever,

he grows as a leader in the Teen Titans, and he earns his place - not because he’s Bruce’s son, but because he fights for it.

And yet, the fandom still treats him like the bad seed. The brat. The mistake.

Let’s talk about that word - “brat.” People throw it around because Damian has an ego, but when Tim acts like a smug genius, or Jason has a chip on his shoulder, or Dick gets a little high and mighty, they’re “complicated.” Damian is branded irredeemable. Why? Because he’s loud about his trauma? Because he doesn't bottle it up in classic Bat-fashion?

People hate that Damian says he’s the best but if you’d been trained since birth to be a perfect weapon and you actually could beat 90% of people in the room, wouldn’t you be a little confident too? Let’s be real Damian could drop someone twice his size and not break a sweat, but he also loves animals, paints, and had a freaking pet cow named Bat-Cow. He’s weird, intense, and has more depth than half of Gotham’s rogues gallery combined.

He doesn’t just represent “what if Batman had a biological son.” He’s the embodiment of legacy, destiny, and defiance. He’s the kid who was told what to be, and chose something else.

So yes, Damian Wayne is difficult. Yes, he’s abrasive. But so was every other Robin when they were introduced. The difference is, we gave them the space to grow. Damian deserves that too.

Let the boy grow. Let him mess up and learn and try again. He’s twelve, for crying out loud. He’s not the brat people make him out to be. He’s a survivor. A fighter. A Wayne.

And frankly? He’s the most interesting damn Robin we’ve had in decades, as much as he's hailed as the heir to both the Bat and the Demon, sometimes he feels more like the heir to chaotic writing decisions and wasted potential.

the fucking clones.

What is it with the League of Assassins and clone factories? Damian's backstory already sounds like a rejected Metal Gear Solid plot. First, we get The Heretic - a beefed-up adult clone of Damian who kills him (yes, kills the 10-year-old version of him)

, and then has the nerve to try and be a “better” version of him by being even more of a brainwashed sociopath. let’s not forget the literal clone army of failed Damian duplicates from Super Sons and Robin: Son of Batman.

These storylines could be tragic and poignant if they weren’t treated like edgelord spice tossed in whenever a writer wants to remind us that Damian's life is "dark and twisted" (as if we could forget). The clone arcs are often just shorthand for “Damian has trauma” without doing the actual emotional work.

why do SOME writers write him as a dumbfuck?

Sometimes Damian is portrayed as a tactical genius who speaks 14 languages and can outthink Ra’s al Ghul before breakfast. Other times, he's a literal moron who charges into a trap that Tim Drake would've spotted from a mile away while blindfolded. You can't have it both ways. He’s either a child prodigy or he’s an impulsive brat. And the thing is - he can be both, if written well. But often, writers just swing between extremes: “arrogant genius” one day, “idiot in a cape” the next.

his bitch ass adopted siblings.

Damian’s relationships with his siblings are the most fascinating and most abused part of his character. His bond with Dick Grayson? Absolute gold - when done right. Dick is the only one who treated him like a kid and a brother instead of a problem to be managed. But let’s look at the others:

Tim Drake: The rivalry with Tim is valid. Damian sees Tim as the Robin he needs to replace to be accepted. But writers constantly reduce it to petty hatred when there’s so much deeper story potential. Damian has insecurity around Tim because Tim was Robin by choice, not birth. That eats at him. But instead of nuance, we get “Damian calls Tim names and tries to stab him (again).”

Jason Todd: This relationship should be compelling! They're both violent, emotionally stunted products of trauma with a “screw Batman” streak. But writers barely touch it or just make them snarky and antagonistic, wasting the gold mine of storytelling there.

Cass and Steph? You’d think Damian would admire Cass’s skill or at least respect Steph’s audacity, but nah — they’re often relegated to cameos, if that. Missed opportunity. Always.

Forced love interests.

Damian Wayne is twelve to fourteen years old in most of his appearances. And yet we’ve had writers try to force teenage romance arcs with Emiko Queen, Djinn from Teen Titans, and even hinted stuff with Maps Mizoguchi. And it’s always awkward.

Look, Damian is emotionally stunted. He doesn’t even know how to have friends, let alone romantic relationships. These “love” arcs feel like writers trying to shove him into the typical young-hero mold — except Damian isn’t normal. He doesn’t need a love interest right now. He needs therapy, a stable environment, and a break from being written like a tiny James Bond with a sword.

Who even is he atp?

Damian is one of the most inconsistently written characters in modern DC comics. Is he;

A cold-blooded killer trying to reform?

A snarky, self-loathing child prodigy?

A guilt-ridden heir trying to live up to his father’s shadow?

A Teen Titans leader who makes ethically horrifying decisions?

Or a comedic, adorable little brother in Super Sons?

The answer is: all of them, depending on the writer, the phase of the moon, and whether or not DC remembered that continuity exists. There's no solid foundation anymore. He goes from helping animals and crying over Alfred’s death to creating prisons for criminals before they commit crimes (yes, that was real). Like… pick a lane.

IN CONCLUSION:

Damian Wayne is a character bursting with potential, yet often written as a caricature of himself - either the hyper-violent League assassin or the snarky “baby genius” with no emotional depth. And it's a shame, because when he's written with actual care, he's one of the most interesting, vulnerable, human characters DC has. But too often, he's just a plot device, a lightning rod for conflict, or worse — a symbol of edgy storytelling with none of the payoff.

The clones, the weird romances, the uneven sibling dynamics — all of it could be compelling, if they stopped treating Damian like a ticking time bomb and started treating him like the child he still is, who never got the chance to just be a kid.

And maybe , just maybe , let him grow instead of rebooting him back to the same arrogant starting point every other year.

Listen. I didn’t think DC had the guts to give Damian Wayne a real love interest that made sense, but they actually nailed it with Flatline.

Flatline (aka Nika) is a Russian teenage reaper girl, trained by Lord Death Man, who literally kills Damian in their first interaction at the Lazarus Tournament. That’s right - the first time they meet, she rips his heart out.

A classic Bat-romance if there ever was one.

But here’s the thing: their dynamic works because for once, Damian is in a relationship with someone who is like him. Nika isn’t a civilian. She’s not a princess-in-a-tower type. She’s deadly, clever, morbidly funny, and has her own trauma stew to simmer in. She understands what it means to be trained to kill, what it’s like to live in the shadow of a master manipulator, and - this is important - she doesn’t judge Damian for who he was.

They flirt, they fight, and they have actual chemistry. And even more importantly: Nika sees Damian’s potential. She likes that he’s trying to become better. She doesn’t infantilize him, doesn’t try to “fix” him, and absolutely calls him out when he’s being dramatic (which he always is).

They’re goth murder babies in love. It's adorable. It’s deadly. It’s surprisingly tender.

Also: the fact that Damian openly blushed when she flirted with him?? After years of acting like a cold-blooded monk?? That was character growth, baby. Let him be a teenager. Let him have weird assassin girlfriends who wear skull makeup and call him out on his nonsense.

That relationship gave him depth. Vulnerability. Normality, in the most abnormal way possible.

The cursed ship. Damij*n

Now we pivot — HARD — into the chaotic, emotionally devastating, soul-bonded bros or maybe soulmates?? ship that is DamiJon (Damian Wayne x Jon Kent).

Let’s be real: Super Sons was lightning in a bottle. Damian and Jon had instant chemistry, not just as teammates but as characters that completed each other. The edgy, bitter, emotionally repressed assassin kid and the sunshine-filled, awkward, farm boy alien. It’s Batman and Superman, but in middle school. And it worked.

Jon brought out Damian’s humanity. Kinda.

Damian helped Jon grow a spine.

They bantered like siblings but supported each other like best friends.

Their road trip in Super Sons of Tomorrow? ICONIC.

Their team name was "The Super Sons." Like. Come on.

Now. The DamiJon ship could have stayed platonic - and for many people, it does. That’s valid. But for a huge part of the fandom, something clicked: this was Damian’s most emotionally honest relationship. He let his walls down around Jon in a way he didn’t even do with Dick or Bruce.

And then... DC aged Jon up, yeeted him into space, and basically nuked the best dynamic they had in years.

Instead of letting this amazing slow-burn grow into a genuine teenage relationship -or even just a long-term partnership -they forced them apart. Damian went full “brooding alone in the rain,” and Jon? Jon got stuck with awkward adult Superman stories and none of the vulnerability that made him great. I guess.

So the fandom stepped in.

DamiJon fanfiction took over. Why? Because people recognized the undeniable emotional gravity between these two. The way Jon looked at Damian like he mattered. The way Damian saw Jon as a safe place to be a kid. And yeah -whether you ship it romantically or just as friendship - they were each other’s person. A little.

And DC fumbled it.

Badly.

DAMIAN’S LOVE LIFE: WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Flatline: The only canon love interest that actually feels earned and meaningful. The kind of person Damian can have a messy, weird, supportive relationship with. I will go down with that ship.

DamiJon: The emotional bond that broke the internet. A tragic will-they-won’t-they that got derailed by editorial nonsense, but lives on stronger in fan works than most canon DC couples.

Other Attempts (looking at you, Djinn/Emiko): Forced. Rushed. Hollow. No emotional core. Just there to check a box that “Damian has hormones. ”

Damian Wayne, rebellious and guilt-ridden post-Alfred's death, runs off to an island death tournament to punch through his trauma and maybe actually die. Sounds metal, right?

And yeah, on paper? This arc should have slapped.

A secret tournament of assassins?

Damian coping with grief and purpose?

Internal conflict about his mother, his father's legacy, and his own morality?

Literal Lazarus pits boiling under the surface?

Peak edgy teen drama.

Great setup for character growth.

A sleek excuse to throw in new and old assassins, monsters, and obscure DC weirdos.

But the execution?

Wobbly. Rushed. Confused. Repetitive.

DC fumbled it like it was the final Lazarus Pit and they spilled it in a sewer.

Rules are like a video game

Let’s talk about the structure of this whole thing.

You get three lives.

You can die.

You get revived by Lazarus magic.

If you die more than three times, you're out.

But also maybe not because some people still showed up after that?

Uhhh. Okay.

So basically: it’s Mortal Kombat with extra chances.

Except the stakes feel fake, because death is temporary and everyone knows it. So we lose the tension, and instead we just get shock value kills that go, “Oh no! Damian died-wait, nvm, he’s back.”

And then... they just let actual children participate in this deathmatch?

No one — not even Bruce, the most paranoid helicopter parent alive — thought maybe “assassin death island” needed to be shut down?

Character arc is great but..?

Damian Wayne deserved this arc. After City of Bane and Alfred’s death, he needed a storyline that let him explore guilt, identity, shame, and grief. And for a while, it looked like that’s what we were getting.

He’s trying to prove something. He runs from home. He wants to know who he is when he's not Robin. All good stuff.

But the story rushed it. Damian went from:

“I don’t deserve to live”

to

“I beat the Lazarus demon in my head and now I’m fine”

in like, five issues. Maybe 7.

That’s not healing. That’s narrative whiplash.

Worse, we finally get inside Damian’s trauma -the guilt over Alfred, the resentment toward Bruce, the confusion about Talia - and then we speed-run emotional recovery through a hallucination of his inner demon. Cool imagery. Half-baked execution.

This should’ve been a 30-issue psychological arc, not a slightly spiced tournament brawl with a feel-good ending and a hug.

Let’s be real: the best part of the Lazarus Tournament was Flatline. Mostly at least.

She was witty, violent, competent, and emotionally grounded.

She killed Damian with a flirty grin. ICONIC.

She called him out. Made him reflect. Gave him a mirror without being a “fixer.”

Flatline had the perfect amount of chaos and pathos to match Damian, and her presence added depth to the story that none of the other contestants really brought.

But of course... she gets sidelined quickly. Because DC can't let Damian have too much growth or happiness at once. Nooo, gotta reset that character arc soon, huh?

Lazarus guy

There’s this weird demon entity connected to the Lazarus pits that represents death, rebirth, rage, and temptation.

On paper? A perfect metaphor for Damian’s psyche.

In execution? It’s like:

“Hey Damian, fight this literal manifestation of your darkness! If you win, you’re healed!”

And he does. In ONE issue.

Even though the “inner demon” literally says things like “Embrace who you are!” and Damian goes, “NO, I AM MORE.”

Cool... but shallow.

Like, where’s the tension? Where’s the long, brutal journey of self-reconstruction? Where’s the weight of that trauma? This arc treated Damian’s grief like it could be solved by punching his subconscious in the face.

Lazarus Tournament..

The setup? 🔥 🔥 🔥

The aesthetic? 🔪 Yes please.

The character potential? Off the charts.

The actual story? …meh. Shiny on the outside, soft and half-cooked on the inside.

Damian deserved a story that let him bleed, break, and slowly rebuild.

Instead, he got anime fights, a quick therapy demon, and a new costume.

It wasn’t bad. It was just half the story it needed to be.

Now..

Let’s talk about:

Who the hell Respawn is (and how wild that reveal is),

Why Damian’s reaction to him is so important,

How DC fumbled something that could’ve been huge,

And why this was the most personal brotherhood Damian never got to explore.

WHO IS RESPAWN?

Short version? Respawn is Damian Wayne’s clone.

Longer version? Respawn is a clone made from both Damian’s and Deathstroke’s DNA - an artificial “son” created as a contingency weapon. Basically a knock-off who had all of Damian’s trauma amplified and none of the love or purpose that Damian eventually found.

He was:

Experimented on,

Raised in total isolation,

Told he was a tool,

Built to suffer.

And the absolute tragedy is:

He’s everything Damian could’ve become if Bruce, Alfred, Dick, and the others hadn’t intervened.

Respawn is Damian without a safety net. Without a home. Without even the illusion of choice.

Almost brothers

When Damian meets Respawn, it’s not just, “Oh look, a clone.”

It’s a straight-up identity crisis.

Here’s someone who:

Looks like him,

Fights like him,

Hurts like him -but never got the chance to be more. Because DC hates angsty siblings obviously.

And the moment that hits? Damian doesn’t reject him.

He doesn’t go into superiority mode or cold detachment.

He sees him.

“I have a brother?.”

BOOM. That line hits like a gut punch.

Because for someone as emotionally guarded and slow to trust as Damian?

To call someone brother means everything. That’s a label reserved for Dick, and maybe Jon or Tim on a good day.

He never says that lightly. And he gives it to Respawn - this clone, this weapon, this discarded version of himself -instantly. Because he recognizes the pain. He wants to fix him.

DC KILLS HIM OFF. OF COURSE.

And what does DC do with this deeply emotional, complex brotherhood?

They kill Respawn off immediately.

It is infuriating.

The emotional fallout is barely explored. Damian is angry and guilty, sure, but there’s no real aftermath. No time to grieve. No deep reflection. Just:

“Oh hey, your clone-brother is dead, anyway let’s move the plot forward.”

This is one of the biggest missed opportunities in Damian’s entire arc.

They could’ve explored:

Cloning ethics,

Legacy and personhood,

Damian’s desire to be more than just a weapon, reflected in someone who never got the chance.

Instead? Respawn is reduced to a plot tool to escalate the Shadow War storyline.

And you know what? That’s a crime.

I'm tired. I'll stop writing this now 💕

[genuflectx]

Maaan I love the optimistic advice "keep practicing and you'll get better at art" as much as the next artist, but it always rubs me the wrong way when that evolves into "just keep practicing and you WILL 100% succeed and CAN get into the industry."

It changes from good general advice to implying you're just doing something wrong if still haven't "made it" yet. Not in the industry? Well, you just haven't worked hard enough, obviously, as if there aren't plenty of other factors that play into "succeeding” in a highly competitive industry like art.

Don’t let advice that’s supposed to be encouraging turn into something discouraging 😭

[sakuravalenp]

The Dance Academy isn't a gang- DC X DP Prompt

Inspired by this prompt

Clockwork suggests to Danny, who's been the king of the infinite realms for 6 years now, that he should take sometime off in a mortal realm. He doesn't feel like going back to his own dimension (you choose the reason), so Clockwork suggest another dimension where he thinks Danny might have fun.

Danny investigates the dimension, and finds it is a dimension where some humans, who are called meta-humans, develop powers, mostly during their childhood. Danny knows how tiring and alienating it is to grow with powers that one have to hide. He wishes to give this kids a safe space to experiment with their powers, but not as a weapon, just as part of themself.

He chooses to create a dance academy, because dancing is something in which you use your body and express yourself. It would be an excellent way to encourage this kids to use their powers while enjoying themself. He decides to open the dance academy in Gotham, were it seems metas may feel more pressure to keep themself hidden. With his ability to see and feel the differences in soul it's easy to identify metas, so he starts scouting kids for the academy.

Of course convincing the kids that it's just a a dance academy that wants to create a save space for metas, instead is of a trafficking ring, is difficult. But once he gets the first couple kids in, slowly more come too.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Bruce is worried about the new possible meta gang that it's forming on Gotham, and sends Duke undercover.

It's hasn't been long since Duke joined the bats, and this is his first official undercover mission. He's excited at the start, feeling proud that he's been trusted with an independent job, but then he finds out that the "gang" it's just a dance academy. He's a little disappointed, thinking that this job is more of a probation thing than anything, since there isn't anything suspicious.

The bats tell him to stay in the dance academy, because maybe the dance thing is just a cover up and they'll reveal their real motives when he's actually accepted in the group. And Duke takes it as them wanting him to have a meta support system. See? He's learning to understand how the bats show love to each other!

Duke finds himself enjoying being in a dance group. It's a lot of fun. Danny it's fantastic, he has a lot of powers and isn't scare to show them. Which makes everyone in the group feel so much safer to use their own.

Danny encourages them to integrate their powers in their dance. It's freeing. Their powers are treated as a normal part of them, and not as this exotic ability that has to be controlled. It's such a safe space that all of them have gotten used to using their powers for day to day stuff when in the dance studio. It all feels so casual because no one bats an eye to it. There's no talk about how they should try to do things "normally," or limit their use of their power.

Danny: "Why would you? That's your normal, and this place is safe for you to just be you."

Duke realizes a bit late that the bats were actually suspicious of the group, and that his placement there wasn't really a probation. He's glad to know he was actually trusted with a job, but, he had really thought that every time they had asked about his day with the group was because they were interested in how he was doing. That they were showing love and interest in him in that evasive ways the bats did, and it kinda suck to know it wasn't the case. It also meant that he had to confront their family in their clear meta-discrimination.

"Would you have been so suspicious if it wasn't a meta group? No. Other than them all being metas there wasn't anything off. No proof of fights, no proof of robberies, no proof of trafficking, nothing.

There's no proof of anything other than a group of teens dancing, and you know that because you checked it out before sending me.

Like, I don't blame you for checking it, I'm not naive, but you were so sure it was a gang, just because they were metas. That's fucked up guys."

[beneathsilverstars]

A lot of people headcanon that Siffrin was something around 12-14 when the island disappeared, which does make sense. But it’s common enough fanon that I wanted to go back and figure out what’s actually canon!

Lots of evidence and math under the cut, including various things to consider when creating your own hc timeline, but tl;dr:

If we stick to only textual canon, then Siffrin only needs to have been old enough to row a boat, which I would guess to be 6-8. If we take into account the ranges id5 gave for everyone’s ages during canon, he theoretically could’ve been anywhere from 6-25 when the island disappeared. Or if we adhere to everything id5 has said, then he was a “teen” when it happened, so, 13-19.

Siffrin: I ran away from home once! I just didn't want to eat my veggies. And so I took our boat! Got to the beach, rowed away from the shore a bit. I was going to come back right away, I just wanted to scare my parents a bit! I started to row back towards the shore... And then, I...

People often assumes this means Siffrin was fairly young when they left. However, that relies on two assumptions, which are fairly reasonable, sure, but assumptions nonetheless: that they were young when this happened, and that this is when the island disappeared.

While throwing tantrums over vegetables is a stereotypically childish activity, chafing at strict or even well-meaning rules doesn’t belong exclusively to children. There are parents who continue treating their kids the same way even as they grow into teens and even full adults, before they move out or even just while they visit. Which is very frustrating for the kid! So imo it would make perfect sense for a teenager or even a young adult to go, “I can’t believe my parent is still trying to control what I eat like I’m a blinding 10 year old. If they won’t treat me like an adult at home, maybe I’ll prove my independence by leaving for a bit!”

It’s also possible that the event this dialogue refers to ended with Siffrin returning safely home! It’s fun to say that his story trailed off at the moment that the island was forgotten, but it’s possible he only stopped the retelling there because the curse kicked in, just like it would for any childhood memory. Maybe he didn’t get cut off from the island till he ran away for a second time. Maybe he was just on a regular, fully-sanctioned outing when it happened. Maybe he was even with other people. Who knows! Siffrin sure doesn’t!

(Edit: It’s word of god canon that the veggie event was the island’s disappearance, but it doesn’t necessarily affect our timeline anyway.)

I think the only thing this story proves is that Siffrin didn’t leave the island until after they were old enough to row the family boat. Unfortunately I don’t know for sure how old that would be. I did some research and found a couple posts about 6-7 year olds learning how to row, but one of them was using an inflatable raft, and the other was on a rowing team, so I don’t know how the difficulty compares. Young children really are quite good at picking up their parents’ hobbies, so I think even a 4-5 year old could learn how, but they may not be physically capable of handling an adult-size boat. It really comes down to a question of core strength / endurance. Found some posts saying the weight of the boat doesn’t matter as much as the weight of the oars, though, so maybe old fashioned boat vs modern inflatable raft doesn’t matter that much…? So maybe it would be possible for a child to row a small wooden skiff at around age 6-8. Probably not for long, but that just makes it all the more realistic for them to drift farther than they meant to and then struggle to return to shore.

So: Siffrin was at least 6-8 when they left!

Bonnie: I think my village was really close to it!!! My sister said it was all everyone could talk about for weeks!!!

If we assume “my village” means Bambouche, the island disappearance would have to be after Nille ran away with Bonnie, but still long enough ago that Bonnie doesn’t remember it directly. If we define “preteen” as age 10-12, then the longest ago this could possibly be would be 12 years. On the other side, I think it’s reasonable for a 10 year old to not remember a major (but personally irrelevant) event that happened when they were 6, meaning the closest it could be is 4 years ago.

If we follow WoG (word of god) age ranges, then Siffrin is in their “mid to late 20s”, which I’ll define as 24-29. Subtracting our 4-12 years ago range for the island’s disappearance, Siffrin could’ve been at youngest 12-17 and at oldest 20-25. If we stick to only TC (textual canon), I think one could interpret Siffrin as anywhere from 18-35, which would mean they were at youngest 6-23 and at oldest 14-31.

Of course, “my village” could also mean wherever Bonnie and Nille lived before running away. I think the youngest age at which it’s likely for an adult to remember a personally-irrelevant event from their childhood is maybe 5. Nille’s WoG age range is “late teens to early 20s”, which I would define as 16-23, which means the disappearance could be 11-18 years ago. Combining this with our 4-12 range gives us 4-18, meaning WoG Siffrin could have been at youngest 6-11 and at oldest 20-25.

But if we’re only going off of TC, we can say Nille’s as old as we want, so the disappearance just has to be at least 4 years ago for Bonnie to not directly remember.

Isabeau: This article says there's no record of him anywhere... Up until he appeared out of thin air sometime in his adulthood. Looks like he lived in the city of Corbeaux for a few years before he became the King...

According to the change god statue exposition cutscene, the King started his rampage “almost a year ago now”. The way Isabeau says the bit about Corbeaux kind of implies that the King lived other places before that, but not to the point that it’s unreasonable to say he didn’t. So if we define “a few” as 2-4, then the soonest the king could’ve appeared is 3-5 years ago, meaning the island disappeared at least 3 years ago. We already said it has to be at least 4 years ago, so this doesn’t change our math.

How old were Nille and Bonnie when they ran away? How old was Sif when their home got zapped?

id5: Both were teens.

Womp womp, there it is. WoG says 13-19!

But while we’re here, here’s a summary of everything you might want to consider while creating your timeline:

Siffrin must have been at least old enough to row a boat. I’m not an expert in boats but I think it’s reasonable for a kid to be capable of rowing at age 6+, but a 6-8 year old may struggle to maneuver the oars of an adult-sized boat, and wouldn’t be able to row very hard or for very long. Doesn’t necessarily take much effort to get far enough for waves and currents to take you farther, though.

It’s WoG that the veggie event is the island’s disappearance, but if you’re going off of TC, the disappearance could have happened later instead. And a dramatic disagreement over veggies could theoretically happen at any age! Its causes could also range from rather practical (Siffrin is extremely picky and his parents are worried about his health) to pure power struggle (Siffrin just wants more choice in what he eats but his parents just want him to follow the rules they’ve set).

Since the King lived in Corbeaux for “a few” years before his nearly-a-year-long rampage, the island must have disappeared at least 3 years ago.

Since Bonnie remembers Nille telling them about the gossip surrounding the island’s disappearance, I doubt they would’ve forgotten the gossip itself if it had happened somewhat recently. (I think it must have been at least 4 years ago.)

If Bonnie’s reference to “my village” means Bambouche, the disappearance must have occurred after Nille ran away with them.

If Bonnie’s reference to “my village” means wherever they lived with Nille before running away, then the disappearance could be before Bonnie was born. But it would still have to be when Nille was old enough to pay attention to the gossip and remember it for a while. (I think she must have been at least 5 years old when it happened.)

According to id5, Siffrin is in their mid-to-late twenties during the game, and Nille is in their late teens to early twenties.

According to id5, Siffrin was a teen when the island disappeared, and Nille was a teen when she ran away from home.

You can do whatever you want forever, including contradicting textual canon. ^^

[sisyphusrequiem]

AFFOGATO COOKIE ANALYSIS! +some art

Affogato cookie, my favourite in the game and one of the most underrated… and hated, for decent reason.

He also stands as one of the most mysterious, with little to nothing being given regarding his core motivations or past. As a result, this is my psychoanalysis of Affogato Cookie, and what his past may look like!

Starting off with evidence we can draw from the main quest, we can easily surmise that:

- Affogato is intelligent, cunning and manipulative. He knows what to say to sway people to his side, and make their opinions into his. He holds a subtle disdain for Dark Cacao through his dialogue when conversing with and about him, as if he has to force himself to say the words ‘My Lord’ and such.

- He shows an apathy towards the people of the kingdom, and yet also shows respect. He is quick to turn away villages desperately seeking need, but quick to reward those who follow him. Despite his cruelty regarding everything, he states his wish as a ruler is to “Make all cookies in this Kingdom able to spend their days happy and free.”

- Regarding his past he says, “Most of my life I was down on my knees. Even the moments I was allowed to sit in a chair, none of them were spent in comfort.”

- And, when sharing delicacies, he seems to favour the priests most.

Evidence outside of main quest:

- His description says: Affogato Cookie spent restless years without a place to belong until he came up with a simple solution: to create a land of his own once and for all! He appeared out of nowhere on a frigid night in the Dark Cacao Kingdom and has been busy earning the trust and favour of the locals with the help of his strange concoctions and mysterious chants.

- One of his ascension quotes is: "The Coffee Village? I barely remember my time there... "

- And his loading screen trivia reads: "After leaving his home, Affogato Cookie wandered the land and learned a lot about magic and witchcraft."

With all this evidence compiled, this is my theory for his past and motives!

It can be believed he grew up in the coffee village, spending his childhood years there. Since, however, he hardly remembers his time there, it can be assumed it was destroyed long ago, from a rough timeline of Affo’s pre-teens to young adult years. The description for its place on the map says ‘the only known home location has been left abandoned and in disarray.’ This means the villagers must have left in a hurry, so it can be theorised that something must have attacked, possibly some wild animals, especially since something similar happened to the Milk Tribes village.

He said he spent his time without a place to belong, suggesting he was travelling alone. Because of how destroyed the coffee village was, and how little we’ve seen of other coffee tribe residents, we can make the assumption Affogato cookies parents, caretakers, and/or other family died in the attack, if they weren’t already dead prior to the destruction of the village.

My belief is this event made him want to become ruler of the kingdom, so he could prevent it from ever happening again, and could protect all other tribes and villages in the area. I also believe that as time went on, this belief became distorted, until he began to prioritise his own role as leader as the most important thing. I still do believe he desired prosperity within the kingdom, but we’ll discuss that later!

Following his travels we know he learned many things about magic, witchcraft, and manipulation tactics. However, there aren’t many other specifics to fill this large gap of time in his life. From comments such as “Most of my life I was down on my knees”, his knowledge of ‘mysterious chants’, his favour of the priests, and even his decor, where he burns incense and prays, it can be surmised he was a priest or at least performed religious rites. Whether or not this is something he did as a kid, and then continued to do as a way to make money or simply devoted himself to such a thing, or if it’s something he picked up along his travels and then decided to utilise is unclear, but we know it’s a talent he picked up. It also suggests his ‘strange concoctions’ may be a form of apothecary, and that this may also be a job he picked up or pursued, perhaps even both at the same time to make ends meet and further his skills?

Finally, his lovely entrance into the Dark Cacao Kingdom itself! It says he appeared on a frigid night, quite possibly using a vulnerable day as a way to make himself appear as a sort of angel, helping them at their most desperate, and earning their trust. He probably started as a helper, earning the affection and approval of the locals (which was probably easy even without manipulation, because he had first-hand experience of the difficulty of surviving without security!), before working his way up as an apothecary, priest, (these are both implied in: ‘busy earning the trust and favour of the locals with the help of his strange concoctions and mysterious chants’) and finally becoming the king's right hand man. Then it continues on with the events we already know from the main story.

From my theory of his past, these are what I surmise as his motivations: Following the destruction of his village, he wished he could become ruler so other villages could stay protected and be safe forever. Along his journey of furthering his skills, he began to lose sight of this goal and instead wished to become ruler of the land and have everyone under his rule. However! My belief is when he became ruler, he looked back on his previous wish of safety, and thought while safety is important, comfort should be valued above all. Spending his life on his knees and in discomfort, he wishes for everyone who went through similar things to no longer have to suffer the way they always have. He begins to slow the security of the walls surrounding the kingdom because he prioritises his subjects happinesses before their security, the complete opposite of Dark Cacao.

Dark Cacao and Affogato parallel each other in a way no one else seems to realise, with Affo growing up in harsh environments and wishing for no one else to experience the same, sacrificing their security to do so, and Dark Cacao, following the dark flour war, became so terrified of losing his citizens that he put all his focus into security, sacrificing their happiness to do so.

It’s sort of tragic, two people who at their core want what’s best for the kingdom, but can’t seem to find a mix between protection and comfort like they should. I genuinely think if they worked together they could make the kingdom as great as it could— (gets dragged off stage) “”HEY HEY!!!! I WASN'T GOING TO RANT ABOUT AFFOCAO— DON'T BOO ME????””

Regardless, I really hope they do expand on Affo’s character!! If you have any alternate theories or headcanons you wanna add on feel free to hit up my inbox or add your own tags to the post!

[loveless-arobee]

"I never liked roses anyway"

For the last day of ASAW, I have a slightly more personal piece. And also a self-portrait.

Somewhat an explanation below the cut, as well as some more personal thoughts about my aromanticism (and my queerness in general.)

My relationship with my aromanticism has not always been nearly as positive as it is today, which is not surprising at all given how I was raised. Being aromantic meant not being at all what other people wanted me to be, and what I (thought I) wanted to be.

So, figuring out I was aromantic (and trans) also meant learning that everything I’ve been doing throughout my childhood and teen years had been fake. That I’ve been lying to myself because others, especially my mother, wanted me to fit a very specific mould, and my queerness meant I’d never fit that.

That was hard for me to deal with and accept. That I never liked what I made myself do and tried to convince myself I wanted.

The aromantic community, and especially the AroAllo community, has helped me a lot to learn to accept myself for being aromantic and also helped me learn a lot more about myself. Somehow, it has helped me even more accept my transmasculinity than the trans community ever did, too.

My whole life was basically build on doing what other people wanted me to do. Being the perfect daughter, and that I’d have to become the perfect wife to a good partner and mother.

The aromantic community helped me learn that I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do. And it helped me understand what I even wanted in the first place.

It helped me understand and accept that I didn’t want romance or love (roses), or even most types of partnership, and that that wasn’t a bad thing or meant I was broken, and it helped me embrace what I do experience and want; which is sexual attraction and sexual connections (represented here by dill flowers, which are associated with lust).

So, despite how afraid I was in the beginning of being queer, and especially of being aromantic, today aromanticism, for me, means freedom, in a way. Freedom to do whatever I want to do, to make the choices I want to make, and most importantly to just be whoever I want to be.

This is why I came here in the first place to talk about my experience. I hoped I could help other people figure themselves out the way I’ve been helped (and I’m very happy to know that I have in fact helped people with that! Such a great feeling :D), by sharing my experiences.

I hope I can continue to learn about myself and others, and that I might be able to help more people learn about themselves at the same time.

All this to say: I really need to thank the aromantic, and especially the AroAllo community. I don’t know where I’d be today had I not found aromantic people speaking about their experiences a few years ago.

So. Everyone, keep it up. I hope you had a nice aro-week.

[tracksuitponytail]

These were the fics I read in February 2025. This month, I was once again amazed by this fandom's talent and how stories written years ago can still bring so much joy today.

🩷 feed a fever, starve a heart by @insightfulinsomniac [E, 12k, omegaverse]

When Louis turns twenty-one, he receives a call from the National Secondary Gender Services alerting him to prepare for his first rut. Everyone presents two to three days after their twenty-first birthday, and all heats and ruts require medical supervision just in case one thing goes wrong:

Rut fever.

Louis is certain his first rut will be normal. He hasn’t seen the only person he ever had a crush on in childhood in nearly three years, and besides, they were only ever best friends.

Everything will be fine… right?

🩷 Bijou by @kingsofeverything [E, 6k, friends to lovers]

Being in love with his best friend wouldn't be so awful if Harry didn't have to listen to him constantly complain about how the guys he dates don't measure up.

🩷 Too Young by @jaerie [E, 18k, omegaverse]

Accidentally bonded as 8 and 10 year olds, Louis starts resenting Harry once they were old enough for him to realize what had been taken away from him and now they're roommates who fuck out of obligation,

🩷 Click by @allwaswell16 [E, 5k, college/university AU] via @podfic-pals

When Louis got assigned a roommate, he wasn’t exactly thrilled, but as far as roommates go Marcel was a pretty good one. That was until Marcel started clicking a counter everywhere he went...

🩷 Dear Blue by TheIfInLife / @larryismyotpuniverse [NR, 9k, omegaverse]

Harry wasn’t sure what he was expecting to be on the living room table but a stack of papers definitely wasn’t it.

The paper on top was a plain piece of notebook paper, Louis’ scrawl all over it.

‘Some people collect coins or knick knacks or even dolls. Me? I collected Valentine’s Day cards. When I was six years old, I met the love of my life, my mate. The very same day, he wrote me a card. I saved them all and this year, I wrote back.’

🩷 Chaos by @haztobegood [100 words, mature, drabble]

Against the barricade, it’s complete chaos.

🩷 I Trust You by @neondiamond [teen and up, 1.8k, omegaverse, asexuality]

As an asexual Omega, Harry deals with his heats a little differently than most. His Alpha Louis is nothing but supportive.

🩷 incalescent by @eleadore [E, 5k, omegaverse]

The onset of heat is something Louis still hasn’t learned to recognize.

🩷 When you look at me like that, my darlin', what did you expect? by INnenaHeart / @thechavier [M, 1k, bi awakening]

Louis realizes he's into men because of a long hair, chelsea boots wearing, Harry

Be sure to check the tags if there are any topics or tropes you prefer to avoid, and if you enjoy a fic, consider leaving kudos or a comment to show the author some love 🩷

[smiley-positivity-potato]

i have something to say, for all young transmascs or newly transitioning transmascs: just know the "womanhood" you had to endure will be used against you EMOTIONALLY as a trans masc. And not in the way many have spoken about. when you speak up on the abuse, trauma or experiences you went through growing up, people will make excuses of having thought you were just an "emotional teen girl", despite you trying to explain it to them- as an adult trans man. you try to tell them you just wanted help and presently want people to recognize their wrongs. like how they taught you as a child.

but instead they'll make excuses on how they each don't know how to take accountability, for the past or present. they'll say how you seemed like "your mother" at that age, so they thought it was a phase. so now they don't even want to hear or learn how they hurt you. they don't even want to know how to get help or therapy to communicate with you better. AND THEY DONT EVEN WANNA HEAR THEIR OTHER OPTIONS EITHER. they feel like you should just "let it go" when you bring up how it has effected you as a trans man growing up NOW , they dismiss you or blame your behavior on YOU INSTEAD. the reactions of a child, are labelled as an inconvenience, that you should take accountability for when you held no power. they did. so now that they don't, they don't even want to TRY to understand you-

all in all: they will use your past unchosen childhood to label you as an emotional "woman" who is hanging onto the past. when that is not it. it is NOW the accountability of the PRESENT. you want PRESENT ACCOUNTABILITY AND APOLOGIES. YOU WANT ACTUAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND GENUINE EMOTIONAL REFLECTION. and every person in this world deserves that. do not fall for this lack of effort and communication- do not endure it to feel loved as a transmasc. the fact that you are younger AND have tried your best to understand EVERYONE around you all your life is enough. the fact that they won't even try to do it on their own FOR FIVE GENUINE MINUTES, says enough.

saying they don't know how to NOT say awful things to you- is a lack of effort alone. if they can watch you try to get help to understand them for YEARS, they should AT LEAST TRY to find a professional or group or ANYONE to learn how to mend the relationship they damaged or broke with YOU, if they are able. they should NOT use your past or present emotions AGAINST YOU- indirectly defining you as just an "emotional, hormonal, traumatized woman". but they will try. do not let THEM gaslight you or trick you into thinking they can't at least put SOME effort into respecting you as a MAN with FEELINGS FROM THE TRAUMA THEY MAY HAVE DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY CAUSED. they can AND they should put effort into rebuilding what they destroyed. because let me tell you something i've learned:

"If you stepped into a puddle and forgot to wipe your feet before you entered a loved one's house; then the tracks you left are still your's. No matter where you go in the house they will always be yours- and it's up to you to not keep leaving them."

whether they meant to or not, they still left filth on your floors- and we all know who's tracks they are. we all saw it, but the question is: will they return and do it again, with cheeky pride and their head held up high, or will they clean up the floor apologetically, and reflect on every time they left tracks accidentally, or purposely, in your house. will they think about how YOU felt; how they put you into a position of having to speak up for yourself to keep your "house" clean and respected? will they acknowledge all the other times they wouldn't listen or will they dismiss them? as said by ALL my medical professionals, the LGBTQIA community AND my chosen family, you have a RIGHT to cut these people permanently out of your life, and out of your emotional "home".

and if the next time you see them is at their funeral, that's ok. because you have a right as a TRANS MASC HUMAN BEING to put your safety, sanity, well being, respect and emotions FIRST. you have a right to PROTECT yourself from that negativity and pain. do NOT sacrifice yourself to PROVE ANYTHING to ANYONE. do not overexert yourself trying to get them to understand you when all it does is cause you to breakdowns- AND it hurts.

you KNOW who you are. and that is ENOUGH. KNOW IT WILL ALWAYS BE ENOUGH. for you are a transmasc who has EMOTIONS, A PAST AND PRESENT, PAIN AND TRAUMA. You are a VALUED, LOVABLE PERSON AND YOU DESERVE TO FEEL RESPECTED AND SEEN IN THIS WORLD REGARDLESS OF WHAT ANY "LOVED" ONE SAYS- and if your "family/loved" ones have too much pride to acknowledge that- LEAVE.

[mangionebabymama]

ok, think this:

you and lu childhood friends. close to the hip, always playing together outside, riding your bikes together, go to the same school. your friends tease you, i mean, boys are terrible, they’re gross, how are you besties with one. you couldn’t care less, y’all have so much fun together. catching the ice cream truck in the summer and getting vanilla chocolate swirls. sitting on the park bench, looking at birds in the trees, both of your parents wondering where you guys have been. getting invited to the mangione family picnics, playing with super soakers, laughing around with Lu, his sisters and cousins. going to the library together, his older sister taking you guys while she’s there for one of those teen computer curriculum sessions. spending hours in the fiction aisle, listening to each other read in funny voices. You asking Lu who’s this penguin writing all these classics? Him bursting in laughter, much to the librarian’s disapproval.

all changes in grade 5, when Lu’s parents transfer him to Gilman, the all boys private school. Lu was vehemently against it, for so many reasons, but the biggest being he wouldn’t be able to hang out and see you everyday. it hurt him, but as a boy just growing up and beginning puberty, he wasn’t really sure why it hurt him the way it did, and if there’s one thing Lu is good at, it’s avoiding his emotions. so, one day in the park, before the start of the school year, when you express how sad you are that you’ll no longer be together in class, playing at recess, taking the school bus together after class, the sadness he feels hits so hard suddenly and he doesn’t know how to vocalize it, or even fully understand what he feels, so he does what he does best, just puts up a front, brushes it off. “oh, it’s not that serious, i mean, it’s not like we’re always going to be close, that’s weird, you know.” he immediately regrets it once he sees the look on your face, like you’ve been slapped. but he can’t back down now, cause he isn’t about to pour his heart out when he doesn’t even know where these feelings are coming from anyway and he doesn’t want to scare you off. but when he sees you silently retreat and put a distance between how you were sitting, he feels like he’s been hit in the gut. you start to think maybe the girls were right, “boys are terrible.”

you guys lose touch after that, you continue your way, he continues his way at gilman. you both excel at your studies, another thing you both had in common, loving to read and learn new things. it’s like you two were mirror images of each other, both top scholars, both athletic, both outgoing. you think about him a lot, especially when you see his family around town, or his nonna at church (your parents put you in the choir, no if, ands or buts.) his nonna always liked you, said you always smiled with your whole face.

you’re both teens now, wow has time passed. you’re still in choir because you find you love to sing, and the sound of the organ playing in the church hall always soothes you for some reason. the choir is preparing for its annual Christmas show that they host in the church. you’re excited because they picked you to sing the lead in The Prayer, a duet originally sung by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli, with your choir friend Andrew. He’s a bit older, and you think him and his girlfriend Meadow are the cutest couple ever, you wish to have a relationship like theirs, they always seem happier in each others company. You’re a bit nervous because you have to sing Italian in some parts of the song, and being the perfectionist you are, you want to get it right! Especially since it’s the grand finale of the show.

Day of the show arrives, and the pre-performance jitters are really getting to you. It’s all fine when you’re singing with the choir ensemble, songs and hymns of the Christmas season. But when Bianca, the head of the choir, lets you and Andrew know that you’ll be up next in 2 minutes, the butterflies in your stomach increase ten-fold. You suddenly feel like your voice is going to give out, light-headed at the prospect of potentially messing up and not hitting all the notes. “Just relax, you’re going to surprise everyone, you have the best voice here!” says Andrew, trying to calm your nerves. He continues, “just look at me if you get nervous, we’ll keep each other in check.” You nod, feeling a bit at ease, even though your hands are still a bit shaky.

Bianca introduces you and Andrew and the song you’ll be singing. You both walk up together to the platform, the pews full of people, though the lights have been dimmed in the church hall so you can’t quite make out who’s there. The opening notes of the song begin, and you let yourself just feel the music, and let go. “Lead us to a place, guide us with your grace, to a place where we’ll be safe” you sing in perfect tone. The next verse is a call and response, with Andrew singing his parts in Italian and you responding in English. The melody between you two is going so well, every note sung with emotion.

The next part is the height of the song, both of you having to sing together in Italian. You take a deep breath before getting into the verse, and look to your left to see Andrew looking at you, his eyes at ease. You feel a bit more grounded, smiling and letting your voice carry throughout the church hall. Your voice with Andrews blends so well, that when both of you finish hitting your high notes in that verse, people immediately begin to clap, even as the song continues. You smile and continue to sing, closing your eyes and feeling the emotion as the song begins to reach its conclusion. The last verse is in Italian, and you sing it with such melodic conviction “E la fede che, Hai acceso in noi. Sento che ci salverà…”

As you both conclude the last note together, a rupture of applause breaks your trance, everyone on their feet. You and Andrew both bow as you take in the cheers. You see Lu’s nonna sitting right in the first row of pews, and you make sure to smile wide directly at her with your whole face. she instantly smiles back.

A few rows behind, you see a set of dark brown curls though you can’t quite see the face. You find yourself hoping it’s someone you used to know, even though you aren’t sure he even remembers who you are…

Everyone is gathered in the Church basement for an after-show gathering, filled with food, beverages and music. So many people come up to you, complimenting you on your performance and your impeccable voice. You’ve been blushing the whole night, you aren’t very good at receiving compliments so you tend to get pretty embarrassed. As you’re finishing up speaking to one of the regular church attendees, you feel someone tap your shoulder. You turn around and see it’s Andrew, who you haven’t actually seen since you both walked off the stage and were surrounded by your choir ensemble. You both smile at each other and he pulls you into a tight hug. “You absolutely hit it out of the park!” Andrew exclaims. You respond with the same enthusiasm, letting him know that his voice was so good, and his performance was so emotive. As Andrew continues to talk about the details of the performance, you sense in your peripheral vision a pair of eyes staring your way. You turn my head just a bit and your eyes stop in their tracks. You see Lu, right there, and once you lock eyes with him, he immediately looks away, his eyes darting in all directions except your way. He starts to run his hand through his curls a bit, which even when he was younger was always a sign of him being nervous. Your mind tries to process the fact that he’s here, especially since he’s never been the biggest fan of these types of Church events.

“—special, you know that?”

Your eyes go back to Andrew, and you immediately apologize to him for missing that last part.

“Haha, I said you’re special, you know that? And regardless of what you sometimes tell yourself, please never forget it.” You appreciate his kind words, and he gives you another hug before telling you he’s going to find Meadow who’s texted him that she’s got a big slice of tiramisu waiting for him at the table.

You wave goodbye, and as you watch Andrew disappear into the crowd, your eyes immediately go back to a familiar figure who appears to be walking in your direction, hands fidgeting slightly on his sides as he gets closer. He stops right in front of you, and you’re immediately faced with a ghost from your past, a person who meant so much to you at one point, maybe even still does, even though you’ve tried telling yourself the opposite many times over the years.

You hear his voice directed at you for the first time in years, and it immediately hits you right in the chest. “Hey, you were–you di–you were so amazing tonight” he stutters through his words a bit, which surprises you since Lu’s never been the one to shy away in a convo, always had a determined voice, full of confidence. “Thanks Lu, it means a lot coming from you,” you respond. Upon hearing your response, he looks right at you with such intensity, almost as if he’s staring right into your soul, his mouth parted like he’s stuck in a trance. You both are caught in each others eyes for a moment, not saying anything. You decide to smile, because seeing him after all these years does bring a warmth to you. You suddenly notice his pupils dilate and he immediately looks down to the floor, his hand coming up to run it through his curls. You could tell he’s nervous, but there’s also something else there too, almost a feeling of desperation and longing, but of what, you can’t quite place.

He takes a moment to look to the side of the room, using his tongue to poke his cheek, trying to ground himself, reel himself back in. He looks back down and takes a deep breath, before locking eyes with you again. He looks blushed a bit in the face, but the next words out of his mouth are more steady, determined, almost as if he’s intent on getting to the truth, “You and the guy you were singing with, seems like you two are close. Is it that– I mean are you–”

Anon, this is such a FUCKING masterpiece what in the entirety of fucks!!!! 😩😩😩😩😩😩

Like c’mon Luigi, say it, don’t spray it, are they WHAT????

I also love how Nonna loves you 🥺 but this is just PERFECT omfg

[maxdibert]

People don't understand that what Snape went through and that he chose to follow the dark lord makes sense, even if it is morally wrong. If people don't believe you, I can testify that you said nothing but the truth even if you didn't lived through that (one doesn't have to ,to understand), I grew up in the worst neighborhood in my country and we were poor to a point that I had my own room only because my parents slept in the livingroom and I only got my first bed at 9. But I was loved and cared for by at least one parent! It makes for a lot things up!

And boy, does that make a difference ! So many of my childhood-friends that grew up here joined gangs, became teen parents, dropped out of school stay unemployed and so on. I'm the exception out of all the kids, it's pretty lonely though .I was the first one to graduate high school in my whole family, the first to not have a kid before 24, and will soon be the first one with a degree ! I know I am the exception because my mother took action in my education, spent time and cared for me and dropped my dad after his gambling addiction went overboard. This is the very difference: yes Snape was poor , but also no one cared or loved him. Money can't buy everything , it can't buy love or a good childhood, we see young adults every day from good stable families crashing out and doing crazy shit, the public points at them with fingers only later to find out that they went through hell in that big fancy mansion.

Of course Severus went for the first hand that fed him, you can count either lily or death-eaters. And it makes sense that he put lily even decades later on such a high podest mentally , because she was the first one to show him kindness and after years of mistreatment he thoroughly believes he deserves nothing but cruelty. He was denied love all his life and as an adult he rejected any form of love or friendliness.

I handle legal cases for people who were born and raised in terribly hostile environments, with families that were not only poor but trapped in spirals of violence and dysfunction, where the entire setting was basically a constant push toward substance use, addiction, and consequently, criminality. And I find it quite… I wouldn’t even say just classist or privileged (though it is that too), but downright audacious to claim that if you were in those people’s shoes, you would have acted in a morally impeccable way. Because 1) statistically, it’s extremely unlikely—numbers don’t lie—and 2) no one has the slightest idea how they’d turn out after growing up in such a hostile environment.

It’s like people can’t really put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They try to “imagine” it, but always from their own privileged perspective, never by truly trying to think like a person with all those disadvantages and hardships. And it’s so easy to judge—my job is literally to convince judges that people did something wrong due to a series of understandable and explainable circumstances, while another lawyer, usually the prosecutor, is trying to convince them of the opposite.

So yeah, I’m used to it, but I’ll never stop being amazed at how selective empathy is. People can be very empathetic—as long as the victim is compliant or socially acceptable. But if the victim doesn’t fit into the moralistic and classist narrative that’s been ingrained into our culture, then suddenly it’s all unforgivable.

What people don’t understand is that just as you can’t ask someone who’s never seen the ocean, a lake, or a river to know anything about swimming, you also can’t ask someone who’s never been taught to be emotionally or affectively functional to just be that way overnight. Or ask someone raised around violence, who never learned any patterns of self-control, to magically know how to manage themselves. It’s absurd. The mind doesn’t work like that.

[rallamajoop]

Mia Winters in Shadows of Rose

I really did think I was done talking about (read: furiously defending) Mia Winters when I made all those other posts earlier this year. I’ve even touched on the misconceptions about her in Shadows of Rose before, at least in a reblog. But someone reblogged one of those posts recently with a comment that mentioned this particular aspect of the hate she gets in passing, and I had such a strong response to it (and for what is honestly in no way that poster’s fault) that I had to accept that maybe I wasn’t as done as I thought he was.

So there’s the idea in fandom that Mia voluntarily gave up her daughter to the government after RE8. It's bullshit and obviously so, but it's still going to take me another whole post to get into why seeing this ‘fact’ parroted about her annoys me so damn much.

Because this is not an outside take. I’ve seen people claim they didn’t have any particular opinion on Mia until this was the tipping point that pushed them into hating her. I’ve seen "sympathetic" takes on Mia which suggest that really it’s not her fault at all that she couldn’t love her own daughter, because [elaborate bullshit]. "Mia abandonned Rose at the first opportunity after RE8" is one of those takes that gets repeated ad nauseum.

First question: based on what, exactly?

No really, if there’s some obscure, mistranslated press release out there as the source, please, someone point me to it, because nothing in Shadows of Rose tells us anything of the sort.

Excluding Eveline’s horrifying Mia-puppets, the real Mia is mentioned all of twice in Shadows of Rose. The first mention comes when you find young Rose’s diary, which tells us that she found regular school a bit basic, because she’d already learned all that stuff with ‘Mommy’. So we can safely assume Rose was home-schooled by Mia for much of her childhood, though now Rose is attending a regular school. "Home schooled with enough care to put her ahead of her same-age peers" sure says "abandoned" to me!

The other mention of Mia is more ambiguous, and is easily missed, heard only if you read her letter about baking a cake for Rose’s half birthday in the Winters’ home sequence. After reading it, Rose sadly says, "I haven’t seen Mom in ages." Why she hasn’t seen her mother in so long isn’t explained (though she certainly sounds like she'd like to), nor do we have any idea how long ‘ages’ really is. It’s certainly enough to make the player wonder, but no answers are ever supplied, or even really hinted at.

And that’s it. That’s everything we’ve actually got on Mia’s place in Rose’s mid-teens life. I have played this DLC multiple times and poured through the game files ‒ trust me on this.

Unlike so many other bits of slander thrown at Mia’s feet, the idea that Mia ‘gave up her daughter to the government’ sometime after that first diary was written is at least theoretically possible, given the very little we know. But why the fuck do people treat it like it’s the only possibility? Do we really have so little imagination?

The only thing we can positively say about Mia in Shadows of Rose is that she’s not in it. Mia could be in a coma for all we know! She could be in prison! The government could’ve taken Rose from her against her will! She could be deep undercover in some criminal organisation who represent a real threat to her daughter! She could be in some mental institution after the stress of losing Ethan proved too much! Those experiments Miranda performed on her could’ve had horrifying long-term side effects! ALL of these things are at least as possible as ‘Mia gave her daughter up voluntarily’. And they’re all a whole fuckload more plausible.

Because lemme tell you what we actually know about Mia's relationship with her daughter. In fact, you know what, have a whole mini gallery of what we know.

Mia ‘nothing else matters as long as my family is together’ Winters – the woman who advanced on Chris demanding where is my husband? Where is my daughter? – who positively lights up when she sees her daughter safe at the end of RE8 ‒ the one with the whole photo album full of pictures documenting her pregnancy or where she's gazing happily at her newborn daughter… you’re telling me this woman would just give Rose up? Come on.

Even Shadows of Rose contributes to this take on Mia: to get that one line from Rose about not having seen her mother, you have to read the one document in the game written from Mia’s perspective, which is full of joy about making a cake for her daughter’s half-birthday celebration.

Heck, even the Baker Incident Report makes clear that Rose is the most important thing in Mia’s life. Mia loves Rose more than anything in every other part of this canon.

And someone still went, "Oh, well Rose hasn’t seen her in a while in SoR, and the government seems to have their sticky fingers in her life, so clearly Mia just gave her up"? And the rest of fandom has been repeating it ever since? What is wrong with people?

In fact, while we’re talking the adults in Rose’s life as of SoR, why on earth does Chris get a pass? The only thing we hear about his current ‘relationship’ with Rose, a girl who’s still in high school and hasn’t even begun learning to control her powers yet, is that he’s apparently pestering her to join his para-military squad. Her first assumption when a member of his squad comes to talk to her is that this is what it’s about. I mean, that’s objectively pretty fucked up.

In all seriousness here, I’m not trying to start some #cancelchrisredfield movement, because I really doubt those lines were written with the primary goal of establishing Rose’s relationship with Chris – they’re just clunky exposition. They’re here to let us know a) Chris is still working with his Dog Dog Squad, b) Kay, the guy we’ve just met, is a member, and c) Chris is aware that Rose’s powers are going to be a big deal – and presumably he’s still as weirdly intense about everything as he is in the rest of RE8. Rose does seem happier about Chris’s role in her life in her diary, where he seems to have pulled some strings to allow her to go to a regular school (but presumably even Chris draws the line at recruiting pre-teens, so that’s yet to start), so we've got some friendly interactions between them, but Chris seems no more involved in Rose's teen life than Mia is.

I don’t know how the RE8 writers did expect us to interpret the idea that Chris is apparently trying to recruit untrained under-18s to his team, but I’m sure with enough imagination, you can come up with some way to spin it that doesn’t paint him in a completely irredeemable light (maybe he just wants her involved in training and self-defence or something, or maybe it’d give him the power to tell other government departments with an interest in her to take a hike, who knows?) What really stands out to me, however, is that I don’t have to defend Chris over how his non-part in this DLC is so under-explained. So why the hell does Mia get both barrels, when we know even less about her current relationship with Rose than for Chris?

Oh wait, I know this one. It’s because she’s a woman, and we’ve already decided she’s a bad person. Any mother whose life doesn’t seem to revolve entirely around her sad daughter is obviously an irredeemable human being, amirite? [Insert table-flip here]

As I’ve said before, I’d really like for there to be a more interesting explanation for why we hear so little about Mia in Shadows of Rose. I would love for the reason to be that they’ve got big plans for Mia in RE9, and don’t want SoR to pre-emptively spoil whatever’s going to happen to her. I would kill for a whole game about Mia, starting way back before RE7 and filling in all those big holes in her story, before picking up again post RE8 and beyond. I’m realistic enough to realise that’s not likely, but gdi, I can dream. It’s certainly possible that one of the reasons we hear so little about her in Shadows of Rose is because the writers are trying to leave their options open, just in case.

But putting all my pipe dreams for RE9 aside, I'd bet good money the main reasons why Mia has so little presence in Shadows of Rose are thematic. The whole story depends on Rose feeling isolated and lonely as motivation for why she wants to be 'normal', before she finally decides it's worth giving that up for the chance to meet her Dad properly for the first time. That all hits a lot harder on a thematic level if we downplay the few positive relationships Rose does have in her life ‒ her mother included. I mean, you may as well ask why all the teachers in any Harry Potter novel are so useless most of the time: because it’s easier to tell the story they want to tell that way. Chris’ part in Rose’s life is almost certainly downplayed for the very same reasons (plus possibly some resistance to making fans face an incarnation of Chris who might well be in his 60s by whatever year this actually is).

So, yeah. Maybe Mia as-long-as-we're-together Winters did home school her beloved daughter all through her early years, and then one day just decided "y’know what, I’m done with this" and signed Rose over to the government without a second thought. God knows I’ve heard of worse cases of random character assassination from franchises I’ve trusted. And the moment Capcom actually gives us any reason to believe that’s the intent, I’m sure someone will let me know.

But in the meantime, Jesus Christ, people – this DLC is like three hours long, and it’s all on youtube – it is not hard to check this shit, c’mon.

[fischyplier]

Misfits and Magic Season 2 Episode 2 "Magma and Mingle": My Thoughts and Analysis

So here are my thoughts on Evan and Sam. Am I the only one that doesn’t see their relationship progressing into romance? I can understand that in this season Brennan and Danielle are having more scenes together. At this point, Evan and Sam's relationship feels platonic to me, but who knows what could happen in the next few episodes. I prefer platonic relationships because they feel more interesting than just romance. Also want to take the time to say, I love and appreciate all the hard work that went into this and every season of D20. Thank you to the crew, the players and Aabria cause misfits and magic has become very near and dear to my heart!

Click below to read more, warning long post:

Anyways, Evan has gone through a LOT of traumatic experiences since childhood and continues to till this day. Evan's body is riddled with scars, broken bones that healed wonky, etc. He got stabbed on a bus at night trying to retrieve a talisman for Boodle 10 months ago. And I would not be surprised if he's been through more but hasn't had the opportunity to tell his friends or elected to say nothing. I can't help but to read too deeply into the quote "dream small". Is it cause I feel that Evan has learned to dream small in order to not get his hopes and expectations too high? Just a theory... A game theory! I'm sorry.

After 3 years of no contact the pilot project are back! But they haven't really had the time to sit down and catch up. In the video below, Sam says "I feel like there's a lot of things that when we talk you don't tell me." Which kinda leads me to believe, Evan doesn't want to worry his friends so he bottles up his feelings and doesn't open up. And when he does it's always with a smile and jokes to mask the hurt. He isn't just sad, he feels like a burden and tries to not take up space. I can really relate to this.

Even Brennan says Evan is in deep pain. The breakup he went through didn't help but there is more under the surface we as the audience still don't truly know. The experiences of being a lonely unhoused teen is the reason why Brennan chose "belonging" as Evan's ideal track. Because that is the one thing he's been deprived off, humans are social creatures and need to interact with others. What happens to a developing brain when that is taken away? When all you know is your shadow, loneliness and hunger? So when his friend says we can talk, he takes that as a serious invitation. Evan now surrounded by friends wants to do everything in his power to protect those he loves. He doesn't expect it to be reciprocal. You can see that when he says "if I've ever done a bad job about being here for you, I'm always here for you" after Sam says we can talk. When Brennan tears up with that incredible delivery of "I missed you"... I keep rewatching that part! Evan is always on the go, needs to be prepared, needs to be ready when shit hits the fan. Sam has created a safe place where he doesn't need to be hypervigilant and can relax, maybe open up and be a little vulnerable.

Sam is rightfully concerned that something deeper and terrible is going on with Evan.

When Evan continues kicking a half dead Salamander that isn't a threat to any of his friends, a darkness in him wants to kick it mercilessly for pure enjoyment. That even his eyes turns black. The first thing Sam does when she sees this is to attempt to drench it in water like Jammer did. Cause she said that this has become "unnecessarily dark" and that "this is freaking her out". That she'll even resort to spitting on the creature if it means that Evan will stop kicking that crap out of it. The water cools and stops the creature. Sam is a great friend that sees Evan do something twisted and wants to help so desperately. You do not have to be falling in love with someone to do the right thing! I still think they should just be friends.

I love that in this season we can really see their friendship blossom and not just be surface level chit chat. As they get closer hopefully they can help each other in ways they really need. In the preview for the next episode Evan says, "I don't see you the way you are afraid people see you." Sometimes it takes someone outside of your point of view to see aspects of yourself you are too close to see. And I think that's beautiful.

That leads into my next point, no I don't think the progressing of their relationship means that romance is in the air. I can't remember where I read it but another person said it best, intimacy doesn't mean romance. You can get close to someone, be a shoulder to cry on and depend on without developing feelings. You can love and respect your friend and keep it at that level but develop on that intimacy of a great friendship. I feel like it made the most sense for these two to get closer in this season because they have more in common now. Before it was just the fact that they were students learning magic at Gowpenny and being NAMPS (non magical person or let's be serious MUGGLES!). But now Evan and Sam have both underwent break ups and that's something they can really connect on. I really hope they don't get together right after cause that sounds like a rebound and to me, story wise pretty boring. And in my honest opinion, jumping into another relationship right after being with K is a little too soon. Evan needs a friend not a lover, at least for the time being. He needs to keep his inner darkness and insecurities in check. That or a therapist.

Hopefully this doesn't age like milk, and if they do get together I guess I'm wrong! :3

Thank you if you read till the very end, here is a gif of Brennan giving you a thumbs up!

Why? Cause you are pretty cool!

Please consider liking or reblogging this post if you liked what you read. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode and if I should continue!

[neveralarch]

hello! have you been watching me n dez's output rapidly explode with gai and kakashi fic? have you been wondering who the hell this man with the bowlcut is and why we have suddenly succumbed to the allure of white-haired anime man? did you somehow escape from the teen-years vortex of naruto because you had good taste or just weren't the right age? i'm here for you. @deadtrilobitesociety asked about a gai primer and i kinda went off the deep end by crowd-sourcing (asking dez) an amazing list of naruto to watch and then putting it under neat little headers for your enjoyment.

how do i watch this naruto stuff?

there's 500 million episodes of the anime so i'm gonna give you specific recs. confusingly, there's original naruto, naruto shippuden (picks up after a timeskip), and boruto, which we don't talk about. you can find a lot of it on netflix, tubi, and crunchyroll, depending on your country. it's an older anime, so you'll also have a lot of success on the pirating sites. for one of the below suggestions, i specify that you should go to naruto kai, a fan project which basically edits out all of the extra nonsense stuff that sometimes makes the show boring to watch. kai is soooo much snappier and really makes the old show i remember more enjoyable, so if you're interested in just actually watching naruto i would start there. google it and you'll find a reddit post with links (or message me and i'll link you)

i was a manga person as a kid but i'm more into watching cartoons now and also a lot of the gai backstory is mostly in the anime filler. read the manga if you care more about this naruto kid haha.

also - blanket warning for naruto being full of people dying, usually in battle but also by suicide and often in very bloody ways. this isn't an adult horror anime - it's for kids and teens - but gai and kakashi's backstories are essentially about being a child soldier in the middle of a war that decimated multiple generations. it's bleak! if you need specific warnings or want to know about a specific arc or episode, please reach out.

okay, noted. i want to know about gai!

gai....

maito gai/might guy is an elite-level ninja who specializes in physical combat. he's modeled on bruce lee! he's got a sick bowlcut and a formfitting green jumpsuit! he mentors a group of young ninja including a kid who looks exactly like him. and his greatest rival and man of destiny is hatake kakashi :)

to get his backstory in one episode, watch episode 419 of naruto shippuden

to learn about his bond with his student rock lee, watch episode 100 of original naruto

i want to know about kakashi!

oh yeah he's also cool

hatake kakashi is probably the greatest ninja of his generation. he's also a depressed burnout who's perpetually late and reads erotica all the time in public. all of his friends are dead except for gai and also a bunch of other people that he sometimes reluctantly acknowledges are also his friends. technically he's the mentor of the main characters in naruto, but really you get the sense that he's mostly focused on stopping them from dying or killing each other and any actual learning is incidental. he has a lot of dogs!

to get his backstory, watch episodes 119 and 120 of naruto shippuden

to see more about how he burned out and got involved with teaching mostly against his will, watch the arc starting with episode 344 of naruto shippuden. 344-348 are mostly about kakashi's childhood friend obito, and then 349-361 show in detail how all of kakashi's friends die and everything is terrible forever.

shippuden 360 has the most gai content, if you're just looking for that. also that's where things start looking up for kakashi haha

i want to know about this fucked up world they live in!

gai and kakashi live in konoha, which is a secret ninja village in the land of fire. during the wars between the different lands, it's essentially the home base of the army, but for most of the series they're technically in peace time so instead they're doing protection missions, assassinations, and other ninja stuff. you definitely shouldn't be worried about how kids start on this career when they're six or seven!

this doesn't have any gai in it, but you should watch the Zabuza/bridge builder arc if you want more of the general naruto experience. this is definitely the one i remember best from reading as a kid, and it comes early on in the series so there's a lot of scene setting. might also make you cry if you're a wuss like me but it's worth it.

zabuza/bridge builder arc starts at minute 11 of Naruto Kai episode 2. dez says def don't try to watch this one in the original anime cut because it's badly paced but it's GOOD in kai

i just want. shenanigans. please give me the gai and kakashi shenanigans.

yes please they're SO silly with each other ;-;

watch naruto shippuden episode 18 for a sense of the extreme differences between gai and kakashi's teams lmao

watch episode 219 of naruto shippuden, where kakashi is angsting about whether to step up as konoha's leader so gai challenges him to a race that the animators so clearly had a blast making. also they touch butts.

watch episode 241 of naruto shippuden, where gai accidentally send an SOS to kakashi and kakashi drops everything to rescue him and then gets accused of being an imposter or possibly a mirage instead

okay but actually i want the sick fight animations

gaara vs rock lee is a classic and has some GOOD gai moments. it's episodes 48 and 49 of original naruto

kakashi vs obito is INTENSE especially if you've seen the kakashi backstory. watch naruto shippuden 375, sorry about the sasuke nonsense at the start. i didn't talk about sasuke at all because we don't care about him

gai reaching his ultimate form is one of the coolest things in the series imo. starts at the end of shippuden 417 and continues through 418-421 (crossing through the Gai backstory in 419)

nev you and dez have written almost two HUNDRED and fifty THOUSAND words of naruto fanfiction in the last twelve months. where on earth should i start

look, i know. i know. here's like… four fics. fourish. all of these are on ao3, under neveralarch or desdemonakaylose, sorry that tumblr hates links

my fic Stand Me Up at the Gates of Hell was my first and probably greatest take at rival competitive sex nonsense. (explicit fic)

our series A Man Like You looks at what kakashi and gai would look like if they'd figured out their relationship drama before becoming senior ninja mentors. i especially recommend dez's fic Happy, Despite it All for some truly epic ship moments - if you want to skip the explicit fics in the series, that one is pg and can stand on its own.

Red Sun, Autumn Chill (by me n dez) is an au where kakashi and gai are from different ninja villages and end up in an arranged marriage for peace. since it's an au, we spend a lot of time on our fun new backstory and also all of kakashi's problems. (explicit fic)

Lungs Overflowing With Funeral Flowers (by dez) is THE hanahaki fic and really digs into how kakashi thinks about gai early in the naruto series. it's so beautifully written also, i'm obsessed with it

okay!! that's the information i have for you!!! let me know if you have questions and thanks for reading please join us in hell

[prettymuchpotter]

One of the things that hurts the most in SPY is the end where Nancy finds Kate's letter to her in Ewan's hideout. I may have spoken about this before so forgive me, but it's weighing on me tonight so I gotta yap to yall about it. Spoilers, okay? I know SPY has been out forever, but just so yall know I talk about the end of the game a lot here.

Nancy, after being falsely dragged to Scotland (I used dragged loosely, I KNOW she went willingly, but she went under false pretenses. She was manipulated into going, and I can yap about that another time), basically dredged up her entire childhood trauma. I'd say Nancy is a pretty well adjusted adult (again, I know she toes the line between being a teen and an adult, but in my head she's like eighteen-nineteen years old, so an adult, but like. baby adult. you feel me?), but you can see through her flashbacks that her memories of the time leading up to Kate's death was pretty traumatic in itself, with hearing her parents fighting (especially the moment where Carson says "What should I tell Nancy, huh? That- That her mom doesn't care about her enough to stay?" [paraphrasing, I may have misremembered the exact wording but the sentiment is the same]). In Scotland, she's continually learning about the things that lead up to her mother's death. From Moira's deception to Kate (IE; guaranteeing her protection despite knowing that there was no backup for Kate) to how Kate was involved with Cathedral, it's a lot of information to be suddenly dumped upon someone, even if they're actively seeking it out. Nancy learns about Revenant, and their plans for the world, and how Kate sacrificed everything in an attempt to keep the world safe, both for Nancy and for everyone else. Alright, alright, I know I said the letter to Nancy, I'm getting to it, I swear. At the end, when Nancy finds Kate's letter, that's when it hurts the most. The whole game really hurts, if I'm honest (especially with my emotionally unavailable mommy issues), but the moment when Nancy sees the letter, and Ewan has scribbled all over Kate's final words to her daughter, it just rips my heart out. Kate talks about Nancy's silly horse shirt, and how stubborn of a little kid she is, and how much she just really loves her daughter, and the whole thing is just marked up by a basement dwelling creep. There was no EARTHLY REASON for Ewan to both keep the letter and write all over it. None. The letter provides no information about Revenant that he could have used to replicate the virus that the organisation created. It was a letter from a terrified mother to her soon to be grieving daughter. I'm literally tearing up writing this, LOL. And the worst part about it is that Ewan had no real reason for doing what he did. He only turned to Revenant "because he could". Nancy speculates that he felt small and wanted to feel powerful, but that's not confirmed by him. His only reasoning behind his actions is because he could. That's it. For some reason, that makes the entire game hurt so much worse. Everything about the game is painful to me, especially the parts where you can hear how scared Carson is for Nancy (I mean, I would be too, he probably spent the whole time worrying that he was going to have to go through that grief again of losing someone who was only trying to help others). I'll wrap up my yapping now, but feel free to add onto this if I missed something, I'm just in AGONY over my favourite Nancy Drew game again :')

[xx-projectsekai-au-concepts-xx]

okay!! that anon who asked about major additions additions to common aus here

i don't know if you'll allow this but

wd au but instead of being born and raised in the dark kingdom like is the common view, rui was actually one of the white knights in the past, but the dark kingdom manipulated him into believing that the other knights didn't actually care about him, and brought over to their side

i've had this idea since before nene5, and since before i learned about the thing in the last image:

but those strengthened the idea. so yea that's my take on things :3c

sorry if this isn't the kind of thing you accept

Ohhh, that is such a cool idea. I honestly never even realized that the white knights or the new Nene set had that symbol, so this connection is news to me, lol. That is really interesting to think about.

So, how about this?

(full response under the cut because this is long as shit, lmao)

The four all met each other for the first time in their teen years. Rui Kamishiro and Nene Kusanagi had been close friends since childhood, but neither of them had met Tsukasa Tenma or Emu Otori before that fateful day.

The four had just been accepted into a training program, overlooked by the king of the Kingdom of Light, so that they could one day become a part of the Knights Of White, the trusted protectors of the land. It was the first day of training, and they were all so glad to be able to meet other people who wanted to keep their kingdom safe.

Rui, Nene, Emu, and Tsukasa quickly became close friends, and they promised that they would have each other's backs, no matter what happened.

And they did. For the next couple of years, the four of them trained tirelessly together. If any of them were sent on a mission, at least one other member of the friend group went as well. Whenever any of them were injured, the others made sure to patch them up and/or keep them company in the infirmary (with a healthy does of scolding for their reckless behavior).

The group were a package deal- even outside of their knight training (and eventual knight work), if you saw one of them, more often than not, the other three were close behind.

It wasn't until years after they first met that the tragedy struck.

Rui, Nene, Emu, and Tsukasa were on a mission together, the four of them and a couple of fellow knights investigating some activity within a nearby forest. It was supposed to be a simple mission; get in, look around, and get out.

However, the whole group was ambushed, and Rui ended up separated from the other knights. Scared, badly wounded, and hopelessly lost, he began wandering through the rapidly darkening woods, praying to whoever was up above that he could find a way out.

Unfortunately, he just got more lost, and when he settled against a tree to take a quick breather, he was discovered.

He didn't recognize the person, and he didn't trust her at first, but the woman was kind, patching him up the best she could and brought him to the base of whom she referred to as the Imperial Soldiers. Rui fought with her about it, as he'd been told that the leader they worked for was the ruler of another kingdom; the Kingdom of Dark. One that did not think highly of the Kingdom of Light, and who would tear him apart if they found him alone on their kingdom's soil.

But despite his hesitation, the woman insisted that it would be alright, and he reluctantly gave in.

The Imperial Soldiers ended up being much more welcoming and kind than he had expected. They clearly all trusted him as much as he did them (so not a lot), but they tended to his wounds more properly, and offered him a place to rest until he could return.

When he told his story to their head knight, explaining his mission and the ambush and the separation, the man told him something that has left his heart shattered into pieces to this very day.

That he had likely been left behind on purpose.

He protested at first, telling the soldier that his friends would never do something like that, that they wouldn't think of abandoning him, that they cared for him.

He will never forget that moment, after the man had left him to his own devices, so he could rest up and process what he had been told.

The woman who'd found him before grabbed his hand, clasping it in both of her own as she looked up at him. And said to him, with a pained look in her bright pink eyes, that she understood how he felt, and that he would be okay someday, too.

He waited for them to come for him. He waited for a rescue team to arrive, to take him back home to the Kingdom of Light. To see Emu and Nene and Tsukasa again, to hear their voices as they scolded him for not being more careful, and to feel their touches as they held his hands and replaced his bandages. To hold them close, to see that they cared, like he had before.

But they didn't. And by the time his injuries had healed and he could leave, he didn't see the point. He clearly wasn't wanted, so why would he go back to them?

Rui never forgot his old friends- the memories hurt, but the idea of forgetting them hurt even more, and so he continued to wear the Knights of White emblem on his belt. But he knew that he had to put that past behind him, and force on his future as an Imperial Soldier.

Meanwhile, the group of White Knights returned to the castle, informing the king of the ambush, as well as of Rui's disappearance. The king had ordered a larger group of much more experienced knights to look for him, and Emu, Nene, and Tsukasa all waited with bated breath for Rui to be found.

But he never was. For days, the knights searched every inch of those woods, looking in every nook and cranny, and Tsukasa and Emu had taken it upon themselves to look for him on their own, against both the king's and Nene's wishes.

But nothing was ever found, not a trance of Rui was ever uncovered, aside from a few patches of blood that lead only to a tree, and his sword which has been stuck into it's roots.

The forest was discovered to border the edge of the Dark Kingdom, a well known enemy of the Light Kingdom, and the king concluded that Rui had been taken by the Imperial Soldiers, and that nothing more could be done for him at that moment. That his army may not even be strong enough to defeat them, and that it was too high a risk for one measly soldier.

Emu, Nene, and Tsukasa argued with the king, begging and pleading for something more to be done for their friend, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

They were all distraught, as were Rui's family, and all of the other knights could clearly see the effects his disappearance had on them.

Nene had even considered leaving the Knights of White, as it just didn't feel the same without her childhood friend there, though she decided that she should keep on going, to protect everyone she could in Rui's name. Emu pushes herself even harder, determined not to let Rui's possible death be in vain, and to not let something like this happen on her watch ever again.

And Tsukasa? Tsukasa had never been more angry in his damn life.

Of course, nobody in the Kingdom of Light was too fond of the Kingdom of Dark. Everyone and their grandma has heard story after story of them, of the things they've done, if they haven't experienced it themselves, and Tsukasa is no exception. He knows how dangerous they are, and that challenging them is essentially a death wish, especially all on your own.

But this is the third time that these Imperial Soldiers had taken someone from him. His brother, his sister, and now one of his closest friends? Tsukasa will not let them get away with this any longer. This is personal.

And that's where I'm gonna stop, lol. What happens next? Will Emu and Nene join Tsukasa in his quest for vengeance? What will happen when Rui finally reunites with his old knight friends? Will the four of them ever reconcile? That's for you to decide!