#and he's clearly quite sensitive and emotionally intelligent

[movementsofmylife]

god that episode was sad.

bison finally saw what fadel had been trying to protect him from all along. that the real world can be just as harsh as the insular hired killing world that they're living in. bison looks so sad and angry and will probably also feel guilty for not listening to fadel, for falling too hard. how do you learn to trust someone again when they not only betrayed you but changed how safe you find the world?

i think fadel is accepting the sadness, already resigned to losing another person he loves by his own hands. (i think regardless of whether he murdered his ex himself, which he could have, he probably got hurt because of fadel.)

bison is angry and sad, his emotions have an outward trajectory, someone to claw at and fight and process through. fadel just takes all of his feelings and pushes them into himself, turns it all into deep seated sadness and disappointment and resignation that will follow him for the rest of his life.

i know that they'll both end up with kant and style respectively, but i think they'll have to take a pretty treacherous path to get there.

and while bison will probably lash out and be more violent, i think fadel will be the one that is much harder to convince, much harder to earn back the trust of. fadel takes on the responsibility of protecting not just himself but his younger brother too. so there is more at stake for him when it comes to forgiving or letting style back in.

i'm looking forward to seeing how the show does this, and crying about it for the next 6 eps.

[rainy-astrology]

SF9 Inseong Birth Chart Analysis

Based on my opinion and observations. Not an expert. May change later.

July 12th, 1993

Seoul, South Korea

Unknown time

☀️♋️, 🌙♈️

Cancer sun + Aries moon - likely squares; protective and strong-willed, ambitious and knows what he wants as both are cardinal signs. If they do square, there could be a case of emotional turmoil and confusion on how to properly express himself, how to even deal with such feelings. Cancer is sentimental and deeply emotional while Aries would prefer to not revel in their feelings (although funnily they're a very emotionally sensitive sign too).

Cancer sun conjuncts Cancer mercury - Good communication skills and high intelligence; active mind; both being in Cancer, makes him intuituve and sentimental. There's a family and home focus. Inseong is incredibly intelligent and he does seem to care for his family a lot. Inseong does not cry much, but there was a moment during a concert where the members were talking about their families and he actually became emotional during the topic.

Aries Moon + Cancer Mercury - likely squares; if his moon squares his mercury, he may have a hard time with clearly expressing his feelings and thoughts clearly. Could be an impulsive way of showing it or an attempt to repress them. Inseong generally doesn't show his negative feelings (having only openly cried twice throughout his career iirc), he seems to prefer being positive.

Gemini venus square Virgo mars - a conflict between balancing the want for intimacy and harmony (venus) with the want for independence and control (mars). This could be troublesome in relationships (if underdeveloped) as this placement craves attention and acceptance, can be quite demanding for it at times. Tends to be affectionate but also overwhelming with the need for reciprocity. I do see this a bit with him as he is very affectionate with his members and does openly ask for love back. On a more positive note, it seems to give the native a drive for creative expression, which Inseong definitely has a lot of.

The Virgo mars also gives him high expectations for himself and others, so this may wedge some issues between him and others if they don't meet them.

Energetic Aries moon and hardworking Virgo mars can explain why Inseong pursues many activities. Likes to genuinely keep himself busy. I sometimes wonder if it is to keep himself from thinking about his deeper thoughts and feelings...there seems to be a sense of trouble of dealing with his emotions. But I could be wrong as there's no confirmed time for him.

Possible rising: Libra - Charming and fun, he certainly knows how to liven up the atmosphere. Loves to make people laugh and have a good time. It also seems he has had to settle some conflicts and/or at least seems a bit awkward with conflict. E.g He was an MC for a P1Harmony for a series and when the group started to get a bit rowdy once, he seemed very unsure what to do. The other members have also spoken about how Inseong has a hard time saying "no" to other people, indicating he is probably a bit of a people pleaser.

It could also give him a Cancer MC, with Sun and Mercury in 10th. Seems quite fitting for him. Career is important for him as he's always working on and pursuing many things (musicals, idol work, variety shows, even pursuing his college education when he was juggling all of this work).

Possible Libra rising and Gemini venus could explain his flirty and talkative nature to the others, especially as both are air placements (mentally energetic and analytical). Quite affectionate and shameless in pursuing and showing that love.

Possible Aries moon in 7th with Aries 7h could explain Inseong's affectionate nature to his members. This placement also reminds me of the time in an interview some years ago where they were asked which member they would date. Inseong chose Youngbin as he believed Youngbin would protect him. 7th house Aries tends to be attracted to people who seem strong and protective.

___

Other analysis:

MBTI | Enneagram

___

Kpop astrology masterlist

[siriuslysatorusimping]

Author Discussion - Summer Nights Part 4

I ONCE AGAIN FEEL THE NEED TO JUSTIFY MY DECISIONS AS A WRITER, AND PROVIDE SOME CONTEXT THAT WAS NOT GIVEN IN THE INSTALLMENT BECAUSE OF THE PERSPECTIVE.

You can read Summer Nights, (Installment 8 of Physical Paradox) on AO3!

I will say, it's a bit refreshing to see people upset with Rinko instead of Gojo 😂😂 but also, my rejection sensitivity came out to play and this is my way of telling it to go fuck itself 😂🥹

Obviously, for many, Rinko's behavior was far from ideal. But it was human. Just like I've emphasized from the beginning: these characters are human. They fuck up and they make mistakes, and they don't always react the way they should.

It's also important to remember that this was Gojo's perspective of the events. So her laughter at him admitting his tattoo kink felt a bit exaggerated because he was embarrassed and felt awkward. As readers, we don't know what was going through Rinko's head. But I can tell you that it wasn't her just purely mocking him. It was disbelief. Part of her thought he was joking because it had been so obvious that he'd been turned on by her tattoo. She didn't think he was serious in not being sure about it being a kink, but as soon as she realized he was, she backed off and quit laughing. We didn't get to see that explicitly stated because Gojo was stuck in his own head at that point and didn't notice that she'd quit laughing.

I think people kinda expect Rinko to be perfect sometimes. To always react the right way and make all the right decisions because she's strong and intelligent and acts so confident in this AU. But everyone fucks up.

Sometimes I think we forget that while Rinko is very emotionally aware, she also has ✨abandonment issues✨ and self-worth issues. In Another Level, we saw Rinko, at least twice, trying to pull away from Gojo after an embarrassing moment or after a fight because it was her attempting to disappear before she could be rejected. She's still like that in this AU. But she doesn't have that constant overhead of possible sudden death forcing her to mature.

She gives Gojo a hard time about childhood trauma, but oh boy, does she have some fucking trauma. Because Naobito still called her an unwanted mistake for most of her life. Naoya still calls her a half-breed from a whore because he's a piece of shit. While she knows she's not those things, she's very sensitive about her self-worth and being made to feel like someone sees her as less than a person.

Gojo implying that her friendship was worth nothing more than a means to get sex really hit at something deep inside of her. And while she knew logically that he wasn't like that, she was buzzed, and those words triggered a part of her that she'd developed out of self-preservation.

We didn't see those thoughts or feelings (a purposeful choice on my part) because we only saw Gojo's perspective.

But Rinko was embarrassed. She was embarrassed that she let herself get so close. And, she'd even had the thought in the previous part that when he smiled at her a certain way, she could forget he was a fuckboy. She clearly likes him a lot more than she wants to admit to herself. And when he's sweet and affectionate, it makes her want to lean into the feeling and indulge in the idea that maybe he'd want more than just sex. She was still buzzed and he'd helped her into her room earlier that night when she was drunk. And it gave her alcohol-filled brain a little bit of hope that he might want something like a relationship if she ever slept with him.

When he accidentally implied that being a good friend meant he thought she should sleep with him, it ripped her out of that trance, and she felt stupid for letting herself think that he might want more from her.

Does he? Yes. He does. But even Gojo doesn't fully understand what that means because he's a dumb lil fuckboy who's never had a relationship before. He thinks he just wants to be friends with benefits, not a relationship. He literally had that internal conversation with himself. He doesn't realize that what he thinks of as a FWB, would really be a relationship.

Gojo has been giving her some mixed signals, too. He flirts with her a lot. Calls her pretty, digs for compliments for himself, and teases her just as much as she teases him. It's their dynamic that they've established, and it works for the most part. But it gives weird, mixed signals on both of their parts because again he is a dumb lil fuckboy who doesn't understand his own feelings just yet. He will. But it's gonna take a little longer.

In this AU, Rinko can already see that she would tip over and fall head over heels in love with him because he's so sweet and kind and caring with his friends. Part of her, in the back of her mind, hoped that maybe he'd say he wanted to give actual dating a try. But instead, he said he wanted to be friends with benefits and confirmed her belief that he would never see her as anything more than a friend he wanted to have sex with. She believes that a FWB would just end with her broken-hearted and without a friendship that she's come to value.

And, if we're all being honest with ourselves, she wouldn't have believed him if he had said he wanted to give a real relationship a try. Gojo was right in thinking that she would just believe he was trying to get in her pants. Because she has those super fun self-worth issues.

So, after feeling so embarrassed and humiliated, she decided that the safest bet was to stop being friends with him. To avoid him and Geto so that she wouldn't be embarrassing herself further by acting clingy when she drinks, letting her drunk lil mind imagine that he'd want more than casual sex for a while and disappear once she developed feelings that he wouldn't ever return.

Would he return those feelings? Yes. Does he already? Most likely. But Rinko doesn't know that.

So, she intended to cut things off at the knees and withdraw before he had the chance to abandon her instead. Was it selfish? A bit. But it's what she felt she needed to do to protect herself.

Oh, why did she open the door? Why did she listen to him? Why did she decide to stay friends with him? Because she likes being friends with him. She knows he's not a bad person. And she selfishly doesn't want to lose him, either. Seeing him care so much that he would apologize, embarrass himself in the process of doing so, solidified that he was a friend she genuinely wanted to have in her life.

We're going to see a very different side of Rinko in the next installment. An angrier, more bitter side of her that's somewhat justified and a whole lot traumatized.

I've said before that Naobito is sort of trying to make amends with Rinko in this AU. But she is not receptive to it. She hates him. She hates him more than she hates anyone except Naoya. Because she's waiting for the shoe to drop. For Naobito to decide that he doesn't actually care about his unwanted mistake. That he doesn't want a relationship. And she's bracing herself so that when he does decide that, she's not left picking up the broken pieces of a little girl who was called an unwanted mistake until she was eighteen. She's waiting for the man she knew the majority of her life, who did and said nothing to scold his son after he broke her arm over an argument when they were teenagers, to reappear.

We're going to see that Rinko in the next installment. And it's not gonna be all that pretty or graceful. But it'll be so human and flawed.

To give a lil spoiler, the next installment is going to be called Family Trauma. Because there's a hell of a lot of trauma to be addressed, and we're playing with the little phrase 'family drama.'

It's gonna be pretty angsty, I think. Still trying to get it written, honestly, but I'm excited for you to see it!

[13eyond13]

Hello I just excited saw your tags on an L post about what you think his enneagram type is !!! Can you go deeper into what u see his type as and why?? :)

Hi hi! I got into the Enneagram a couple years back for funsies, and I think L is probably a Type 5 with a 6 wing, which I guess is called either "The Troubleshooter" or "The Investigator" (lol, fitting).

The Type 5s tend to be quite logical and independent and intelligent, very focused on gathering information and sussing out meanings and analyzing and interpreting data. The Type 6 tends to be skeptical and private and cautious and focused, which I think would be his most likely secondary type (rather than the Type 4, which is a bit more of an artsy and emotional and sensitive type).

Here is what the write-up for the 5w6 says:

People with an enneagram type 5 wing 6 personality usually identify the most with the type 5, but also share traits with the 6 type. They tend to be practical, independent, and logical in their behavior. They are much more cooperative than other 5 types and have a passion for using their knowledge to solve real-world problems.

Basic Fear

Five wing sixes fear being useless or incapable. They seek to improve the world around them in order to feel worthy.

Basic Desire

Their basic desire is to be competent and useful. They usually show this by picking up new skills and pieces of knowledge that can be of benefit.

Troubleshooters may withdraw from others to cope with stressful situations, which can tend to make them feel lonely.

In summary, Enneagram 5w6 personalities tend to...

Be hard-working and analytical problem-solvers

Withdraw from others when stressed

Prefer to spend time thinking alone

Fear being incapable or incompetent

Make practical and logical decisions

Enneagram 5w6 Strengths

Being focused and well-organized

Passion for learning and growing

Solving difficult or complex problems

Remaining calm in times of crisis

Enneagram 5w6 Weaknesses

Struggling to relate to and understand others

Tendency to be private and defensive

Being perceived as cold or aloof

Difficulty taking action when uninspired

How Enneagram 5w6 personalities like to work

Communicating with an Enneagram 5w6

Avoid emotional expressions and allow five wing sixes space to think and process.

Meeting with an Enneagram 5w6

Keep meetings short and sweet; focus on clearly addressing the purpose.

Emailing an Enneagram 5w6

Be direct when emailing, allowing five wing sixes to share insightful and new ideas.

Giving feedback to an Enneagram 5w6

Offer constructive criticism and honest feedback; give specific areas for improvement.

Resolving conflict with an Enneagram 5w6

Focus on logically expressing your perspective; work toward a mutual understanding, allowing them time to think privately, if needed.

Enneagram 5w6 Motivations

Enneagram 5w6s tend to be motivated and energized by...

Solving or preventing problems

Spending time alone to gather their thoughts

Feeling like they’re contributing to society

Pursuing knowledge in the specific area that sparks their personal interest

Enneagram 5w6 Stress

Enneagram 5w6s tend to be stressed and drained by...

Spending too much time around others

Needing to be emotionally vulnerable

Feeling unwanted or rejected by others

Self-doubt and insecurity

--

I think it all sounds a lot like him. The introversion and fierce independence, the problem-solving skills and preoccupation with privacy when socializing, withdrawn when moody and listless when uninspired, etc. The list of strengths and motivations reminds me a lot of him when he is successfully honing in on Kira during the beginning of the story, and the stresses and weaknesses remind me a lot of L when he is struggling more during the Yotsuba Arc.

[detectivist]

STAND UP , YOU'VE GOT TO MANAGE / I WON'T SYMPATHISE ANYMORE

#DETECTIVIST : scarred emotionally and physically, lipstick stained teeth, violently independent, unsolved trust issues, recurring nightmares, cracking a glass in one's own hand, emotional meltdown haircuts, no strings attached, repressing as a coping mechanism, ripped stockings, sleeping on the couch, storms named after women, a missing ring, a missing finger, [...]

TW : parent death, corruption, murder, attempted murder, loss of a finger [...]

-- ABOUT

NAME: Oona Doherty ALIAS: Detective Doherty, Number One, Red, [...] AGE: Thirty-six GENDER: Cis Female SEXUALITY: Bisexual MARITAL STATUS: Divorced

Her ex-husband is currently awaiting trial for identity theft, conspiracy, the murder of two attorneys and two other attempted murders; one on the solicitor general and another on Oona herself.

DOB: December 10th BIRTHPLACE: Dublin, Ireland CURRENT RESIDENCE: London , England ; recently moved to a new apartment right next to Acton Town station. Her humble home is still very much empty. Oona couldn't bring herself to keep anything from her old apartment. OCCUPATION: Detective Constable for the Metropolitan Police

--- APPEARANCE

FACE: Sarah Snook HEIGHT: 5'5" / 1.65 m ETHNICITY: Irish-British HAIR: Light red, thin and wavy though she often straightens it. When long it is usually found tied in a high pony-tail, but nowadays Oona likes to keep it short for the sake of practicality. EYES: Pale blue, sharp and hooded, Oona has no issues with staring and holding another's gaze. She is constantly looking for something, lies, weak spots, details she might want to save for later. Either way, being the target of Oona's attention often feels intimidating. PHYSIQUE: With wide hips and a narrow waist, Oona often struggles with her own femininity, especially in the workplace. She visits the gym often and is clearly in good shape. Her legs are toned and, despite not being particularly tall, the way Oona carries herself makes her seem larger than her most imposing peers.

DISTINCTIVE MARKS: Oona is missing half of her right hand's ring finger and has a large scar on her palm. These are the results of a stabbing attack carried out by Oona's ex-husband. The detective was also left with a gnarly scar across her stomach from that encounter. The flesh right above her bellybutton is a pink and lumpy half-circle; Oona is somewhat self-conscious regarding that particular scar. Most of her skin is also riddled with freckles.

--- PERSONALITY

ALIGNMENT: Neutral Good STRENGTHS: Committed, perceptive, resilient, confident, intelligent, brave, loyal, pragmatic, charismatic, forthright, active, strong-willed, righteous, [...] WEAKNESSES: Sarcastic, passive-aggressive, cold, manipulative, vindictive, suspicious of others, distant, impulsive, snarky, workaholic, haunted, [...]

SKILLS: Fluent in Spanish, some knowledge in the field of psychology, good leadership skills, particularly good with interrogations, excellent cardio levels, can drive a car or a motorcycle, good under pressure, knows her way around firearms, makes a mean martini. HABITS: Smoker, though usually only when under stress. Visits the gym at least three times a week. Drinks quite often and, perhaps, a bit too much.

--- HISTORY

> Born in Dublin, parents divorced when she was only 5. Oona stayed with her mother only for her to pass away two years after in a car accident.

> Oona goes to live with her father in Manchester, England. It's not particularly amazing but it's not bad either. Her father isn't the most expressive/sensitive guy but he tries his best. Oona grows to become a strong but cold teenager.

> Her dad works as a cop. Oona wants to make papa proud and tells him she wants to join the force too. He doesn't seem too happy about it. She gets excellent grades. He'd much prefer if she studied medicine or went into law. Oona doesn't listen.

> Good grades at the police academy. A lot of the old-timers speak highly of her dad. Oona doesn't feel overshadowed at all. In fact, she's proud to be associated with her dad's name. She becomes a member of the force.

> Later in life, after being moved to London and working as an officer, Oona works her way into detective work. She's focused and sharp and intuitive but her father still seems uncomfortable about her working in the same field as him.

> It becomes clear why when in 2017: just after Oona began her work as a detective, news broke out about a huge anti-corruption operation within Manchester's police force. Her father's name was amongst the list of cops who had been taking bribes in order to turn a blind eye on certain white-collar crimes. This broke Oona's heart.

> In comes Xavier, a man Oona fell head over heels for (a rare occurrence). A man's man but with hidden depths and plenty of mystery; he claimed to work overseeing a trucking business. They married after only a few years of dating and everything seemed right. This couldn't be further from the truth.

> Turns out Xavier was actually a murderer who had already taken the life of two attorneys back in 2010 and who had recently attempted to kill the current solicitor general. Oona figured this out and, when trying to confront the love of her life, she got stabbed on her stomach and hand, causing her to lose half of her right hand's ring finger. Her ex-husband is currently awaiting trial and Oona still bares plenty of scars from that relationship (physical and emotional).

> She is currently drowning herself with work, fearing that if she stops for one moment she might actually fall apart or bite someone's head off due to all the pent up anger and disappointment she has for mankind.

--- EXTRAS

INSPIRED BY: Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs), Dorothy Lyon (Fargo S5), Cersei Lannister (Game of Thrones), [...] WANTED DYNAMICS: Under co.

[assassinmidnight]

Their resident Genius

The BAU is called in by Scotland Yard to help with a case, Spencer becomes intrigued when he hears that they have their own resident genius.

_________

Spencer Reid x Holmes!Autistic!Female!reader

_________

Honestly Spencer was unsure why Scotland Yard had called them in, he always knew that their team was one of the best but the fact that Scotland Yard had called them in had surprised the Genius a lot.

--

“Okay team, we’ve been called in by the English. We’re gonna be gone for a bit so pack accordingly. Airstrip in 30,” Hotch called. “Wait, the English? You mean Scotland Yard? Scotland Yard called US in, why?” 

“Really Reid, I thought you’d be the most excited to meet their team. Apparently they have their own resident genius,” The reply from Hotch had Morgan smiling “Resident Genius? Is he smarter than Reid? Man I have to see this,”

--

During the entire flight Spencer had been thinking of the so-called Genius. He didn’t really believe in genius as a word but he had become intrigued. He wondered if Hotch was honest, if he was correctly informed. Spencer had for a long time kept track of Scotland Yard but he’d only heard of Sherlock Holmes being their resident genius, but he was a consultant not an official agent. Did he decide to join them officially?

“Reid stop, I can hear the cogs turning in your head and it’s keeping me from my sleep,” 

“Shut up Morgan,” Morgan looked over “Reid I get it, you’re stressed about meeting new people and maybe even someone who can go against you in brainiac power. But dude chill, it’s gonna be all good, chances are they aren’t even close to your level.” 

Spencer took that into consideration, it’s true most people who are called geniuses aren’t close to his level.”

_

“Okay team we’re gonna meet the people from Scotland Yard. Behave,” Hotch sounded more serious than he looked.

Spencer was surprised when they entered the building, it was nothing like their own. This place was not messy or filled with people stuffing the rooms, it was all quiet and strict as if it was a classroom. “This way to the office,” Hotch pointed towards a room and they all headed there.

“Ah Agent Hotch, thank you for coming,” The man smiled and shook hands with Hotch, “This must be your famous team of profilers,” The man quickly looked at his watch before looking up again. “We should wait with the introductions, one of ours is running late,” Morgan smirked “Your resident genius?” The man looked up surprised before nodding, he looked like he was about to answer but got interrupted by the door swinging open.

“I’m sorry for being late, you know how my brother is,” A woman came in, a bit out of breath. She looked around 21 and had (y/h) colored hair, quite long too.

She seemed to realize the company they had and went beet red, Spencer thought she looked pretty cute. 

She turned back to the man, “So this is the BAU team lestrade? The best profilers,” 

“Wait you’re Greg Lestrade? You worked with Sherlock and Dr. Watson,” The two brits looked over at Reid, the girl cocked her head to the side before smiling. “Dr. Reid I presume. I’ve read a lot about you, three PhDs and working for the FBI at 24, impressive,” now Reid turned red earning a laugh from Morgan. “You did your homework,” The woman looked at Morgan, “Yes I did, I like knowing who come here, Agent Morgan.” 

“Y/n behave. I know you prefer working alone but no need to be rude, you are better than your brothers aren't you?” The girl named Y/n sighed and nodded. “Good, introduce us to the UnSub.”

__

Throughout the entire briefing Spencer had been staring at Y/N, he couldn’t figure out how such a young woman was part of Scotland Yard. He tried to profile her but all he could decipher from her movements, which were many. She fidgeted a lot, tended to stare at the wall and kept her arms crossed over her chest. She was distracted, bored and introverted. That profile didn’t fit someone in this field. 

“Yes Y/N?” Hotch's voice brought Spencer from his thoughts.

“Dr. Reid, why are you staring at me so much? Is it really that hard to profile me?” Her voice was quite gleeful. She was proud, she had an advantage and she knew that. “Mm, yes sorry, I was profiling you but it wasn’t hard. You are clearly bored by this, unfocused throughout the entire briefing and you are closed off. These are not common attributes in Agents, that’s why I was staring,” He felt pretty proud of himself until “You didn’t introduce me Detective?” “No, I thought it best to keep the introductions til we're all here. But it seems like you know them well enough which I expected but you should probably introduce yourself,” Lestrade smiled and Y/N nodded. “My name is Y/N Holmes, little sister of both Mycroft and Sherlock. I am the one who usually works alone in my cave but apparently I was needed for this case. And no Dr. Reid I was not bored or unfocused, quite the opposite actually. I was just in my mind palace,”

“You’re the sister of Sherlock? Wait you’re the resident Genius,” Y/N laughed at Morgan’s reaction. Once again she cocked her head to the side, smiling. “How many PhDs?” She turned to Reid, “None, school bores me. Also resident genius isn’t what I would call myself, creative genius with hypersensitivity. All the Holmes boys got none of the emotion so I got all of it,” Reid nodded. “Well now that we’ve been introduced to the most interesting thing in England, how about we get started.”

__

“You still thinking about Miss smartypants, Pretty boy?” Reid tossed a pillow at Derek, but he did nod. “There is something about her, she wasn’t looking at me but knew that I was watching her. She assumed Lestrade had introduced her to us but was happy when she got to do it herself and she pointed out that she is more creative and sensitive than her brothers who are known sociopaths. I can’t understand her brain, or her profile,” Morgan stared at Reid before laughing “Dude it sound like you have a crush on Miss Holmes, well if she is as smart as they say your kids will definitely be something out of this world,” Morgan kept on laughing even when Spencer turned around on his bed.

__

“Welcome to my cave, don’t touch anything without asking.” Y/N was stern, her look was cold as well Spence nodded. “So um, why am I working here instead of in the field?” he asked, she looked at him annoyed before turning to her screen. “Because your boss thought it would be best to keep the two geniuses in the same room.”

The two kept working, Reid was surprised at all the tea Y/N was drinking and how she compulsively played with her bracelets whenever she was thinking. OCD, that did fit but something still felt off. “Just ask, get it out of the way before you drive me absolutely nuts” she looked at him expectantly. Spencer gulped before asking the question “Why can’t I profile you? I know it’s nothing on my end so it must be something on yours,” She shook her head and smiled, looking back at her screen. Spencer sighed thinking she wasn’t going to answer. 

“I am autistic with traces of OCD and dyslexia, that’s why you can’t profile me. I don’t fit the general profile for autistics. I have a deep emotional understanding but I lack logical intelligence that is usually paired with the diagnosis. My OCD traces are caused by my autism and the compulsive behaviors are mainly caused by anxiety. I suffered deep trauma in my childhood like both my brothers but unlike them I never emotionally distanced myself, this is why you can’t profile me Reid, I don’t fit the general profiles just like you,”He was surprised at her answer but considering what she just said he really shouldn’t have. 

“Wow, that’s- that’s a lot. Wait, you profiled me?” He was genuinely surprised, she laughed at him, breaking her cold act. “No I didn’t, but most intelligent people are the same,” he nodded before laughing with her.

__

“So thanks to the BAU and our own Agents we’ve managed to catch this killer and he will soon be behind bars,” JJ announced on the news. The team were currently at Lestrades house having a drink. Reid kept looking over to Y/N, ever since they’d solved the case she’d been distant towards him, it hurt for some reason. He thought they were getting along, especially after they’d started to talk about Dr. WHO, guess not. 

“Something wrong, Reid?” He turned and saw that the voice belonged to Lestrade, he nodded. “In my experience with the Holmes siblings, they rarely act like this unless it’s something that will actually impact them. You should talk to her, as much as she detests it she is like her brothers and when angry instead of being consumed by emotions like them she turns them off and goes all logical. Easy to have a conversation with if you watch your words,” When Spencer didn’t move Lestrade pushed him slightly making him go over to Y/N.

“Why are you ignoring me?” She turned to him, cup of tea in her hand, she sighed then gave him a strained smile. “Reid, go back to your team,” “Not until you tell me why you’ve been ignoring me?” She gave him a cold look before sighing again. “I have been ignoring you because I like you, Reid. You are going back to America so I am simply distancing myself to get used to not having you around any more. It’s all logical,” 

“You like me?” he was genuinely surprised, he found Y/N cute and even had a bit of a crush on her, something he’d never admit to Morgan but he never thought she liked him back.

“Of course I like you. You are smart and cute and have these small quirks about you. You are funny and a geek and get almost every single of my pop culture references,” Reid just looked at her with fond eyes, she liked him back and was now rambling on about why. It was cute, really cute. He pressed his lips against hers, successfully muffling her rambles. She seemed surprised at first but soon reprocrated the kiss.

“WHO IS THAT GUY KISSING MY BABY SISTER!” The two geniuses broke apart, red and turned to the voice. Seems like Sherlock Holmes had invited himself in and based on the look in his eyes said one thing, the high functioning sociopath was not happy with Reid kissing his sister.

[cocoartistwrites]

what is the mbti type do you think hermione and draco and tom riddle have? just asking 'cause i think your way to see this characters is great

omg thank you! what a great question.

Tom is what happens when an ENFJ/Protagonist can't love :))). He has such big main character energy he lit rally made himself the villain. Hates being alone so much he had to create a literal cult. Weirdly fond and mentoring of young Dark Wizards. All the people skills, none of the caring. You might think he's commander type (ENTJ) but he has no sense of strategy so,,,

An ENFJ who has not found their place in the world is likely to be extremely sensitive to criticism, and to have the tendency to worry excessively and feel guilty. They are also likely to be very manipulative and controling with others.

Hermione: ENFP/Campaigner. This will surprise people who read the books and didn't notice that Hermione is quite outgoing & incredible emotionally intelligent! She gets cast as introverted a lot just bc she likes reading and is logical. Her E is quite borderline. So is her F. BUT Hermione's decision-making is, I think, clearly not based on logic. You don't go on the run with Harry Potter if you make your life decisions based on logic lol. She's organised for an ENFP she's a Virgo. You know who else is a Virgo ENFP? Me. Sir, that's my emotional comfort literary avatar.

Make connections between events and information very quickly, and confidently proceed based on the patterns they see. Want a lot of affirmation from others, and readily give appreciation and support.

Draco: this is the hardest because we only really see him framed through Harrycam, so at his worst, bUT. ENTP/Debater. He's super attention-seeking, but he's also obviously very clever (the Vanishing Cabinet idea impressed even LV and Dumbledore not to mention that he's good enough at charms that he actually fixed it!! Impressive!!). He's a very talented bully, which means he is very good at reading people and working out what motivates them, what they fear, etc, which has always seemed like empathy but twisted to me. He's quite witty. He's a bit of a coward. He's quite analytical.

Quick, ingenious, stimulating, alert, and outspoken. Resourceful in solving new and challenging problems. Adept at generating conceptual possibilities and then analyzing them strategically. Good at reading other people. Bored by routine, will seldom do the same thing the same way, apt to turn to one new interest after another.

They’re all extroverts sorry Introvert!tumblr but they are 

[daughterofzagreus]

The Astrological Signs of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" characters

Part 1 - Team Avatar

♎ Aang - Libra

Libra is an air sign and Aang is an airbender. More than that, though, Libra (represented by the scales) is the sign of harmony and balance. As the Avatar, restoring and maintaining balance is Aang's primary duty. Aside from all that symbolism though, Aang's personality is a lot like a Libra.

Libra is the opposite compliment to Aries, a war sign. Libra don't really like discord (at least, they don't like to be IN the discord and chaos). They're lovers, not fighters, so they tend to be peacekeepers. This is Aang to a T. Aang is not only one of the youngest characters in the show (and therefore, the most likely to be uncomfortable with violence), but he is also a monk, raised by other peaceful monks.

He values peace and all life. Even his fighting styles are evasive and are more about using an opponent's strength against them, rather than attacking. It's something that is brought up in the Book 2 episode "Bitter Work", when Aang has trouble learning earthbending from Toph. Libras (depending on the rest of their chart, of course) often tend to respond to conflict in a similar manner, by being avoidant.

You see the pacifist in Aang anytime he needs to mediate a conflict. Examples include "The Great Divide" in Book 1, where Aang has to mediate between the two tribes (as well as Sokka and Katara). He does so by telling them that "Harsh words won't solve anything. Action will". Of course, when that doesn't work, he just lies and makes up the alternative story of WeiJin and JinWei. I don't think Aang is a big fan of lies, but it was for the sake of peace, a means to an end. Very Libra.

Another thing that makes Aang a Libra is the fact that 1) Libra is ruled by Venus and 2) Libra rules the 7th house, which is essentially relationships. Aang's relationships (platonic and romantic) mean EVERYTHING to him, and there's a reason why putting one of his loved ones in danger is initially the only way to activate the Avatar state. He's a very friendly, charming and loving kid (like most Libras) and he's the first one from team Avatar who believes they can make it through the secret tunnel, because of how strongly he believes in his love for Katara. The final point is Aang's reluctance (or sometimes downright refusal) to cause harm to others unless absolutely necessary. While others use violence, Aang is more likely to want to befriend his enemies, and that's actually a good thing. It's Libra's superpower.

♋ Katara - Cancer

Cancer is a water sign that is ruled by the moon, and Katara is a (very powerful) waterbender who draws her powers from the moon. In astrology, water signs are known for being on the emotional side. And with Cancer's ruling planet being the moon (the planet of emotions and also the celestial body that pushes and pulls the tides), Cancers are known to be so emotional, that they're often just archetyped by it. Katara is similarly emotional (see the Book 3 episode "Ember Island Players"). However, Katara being so in touch with her emotions also makes her extremely emotionally intelligent. Like Cancers and most other water signs, her heightened sensitivity allows her to almost psychically sense how others are feeling, and to know how exactly to respond to and comfort them. There's a reason why Katara has such great chemistry (when it comes to her one-on-one conversations) with so many people (Aang, Haru, Jet, Zuko, Toph). Her emotional intelligence also makes her very mature for her age and allow her to see things clearer than others, or to foresee things that others don't.

Cancers are often either family oriented, or they love and value their home (this can either be their childhood home, current home, or the city, country or culture that they came from). This applies with Katara. As a waterbender, being from the water tribes is a big part of who she is, and she has a deep love for her culture. We see how being the only waterbender in the South Pole and having no one to show her the ways of waterbending saddens her, and how happy she is to hear that Hama is willing to teach her (the only other waterbender from the Southern water tribes that Katara has ever met).

With regards to Katara being mature for her age, she's also very motherly. The Book 3 episode "The Runaway" (as well as most of her interactions with Toph) demonstrates this. The moon (which rules Cancer) is The Mother in astrology, and so most Cancers have a significant relationship with motherhood. Katara was very close to her late mother and her death still affects her.

Following the death of her mother, Katara has basically had to become everyone else's mother and hold things together. You see this as well (in a more positive light) in the Book 2 episode "The Desert". In this episode, Appa is missing, Aang is too upset to think or act clearly, Toph can't see properly because of the sand and Sokka is high off cactus juice. Katara is the one that is keeping everything together in this episode.

On the downside, Katara's mothering can turn to nagging sometimes, but I don't blame her. She's a child that's had to grow up way too fast. She has a lot of pressure on her. With water, that pressure can build up, until it bursts like a dam wall (which it's likely to do). It's the combination of this, as well as Katara's strong and fearless sense of right and wrong that lead to those cataclysmic outbursts that both Katara and water signs are sometimes known for.

♋♐Sokka - Cancer sun, but with a lot of Sagittarius aspects in the birth chart

Okay, let's start with the Sagittarius side of things. There are a lot of elements of the Sag personality in Sokka. For one thing, luck. Not only does he manage to survive (and thrive) in the entire series WITHOUT any bending powers, but that boomerang ALWAYS comes back! That's some Jupiter-luck energy if I've ever seen it.

Sokka was originally going to be a more serious character, but the voice actor decided to improvise and add some of his own humor to the role, which created the Sokka that we know and love now. I mention this because the voice actor (Jack De Sena) is a Sagittarius. Sokka has the kind of personality that provides humor in difficult times and can lighten up the sometimes very heavy atmosphere in the group. He doesn't just make people laugh, he likes to laugh as well (at his own jokes and even at his enemy's jokes). In the book 3 episode "The Ember Island Players", heeven goes to the effort of getting Suki to sneak him backstage, so he could give the actor playing himself some tips and extra jokes (and low and behold, the crowd actually laughs at them). In his words, he's "just a guy who loves comedy". In fact, I think he's one of the only ones there who just decides to kick his feet up and enjoy the show (by basically turning the situation into a date night for him and Suki). Sagittarians love to laugh and make people laugh. They're optimists who like to have a good time, and are likely to be the make-lemonade-out-of-lemons type.

He's also one of the smartest and most competent characters on the show. He has excellent problem solving skills, and isn't afraid to look at things through a different angle and try new things to expand his worldview and knowledge. This is relevant, as Sag rules the 9th house which includes, amoung other things, higher learning, truth and knowledge. He can be a bit tactless and insensitive...a little slick at the mouth, but it's largely ignored by others, as he is likeable and funny enough for others to let it go. That's quite a Sag trait.

The Cancerian part of Sokka's personality is less pronounced, but it's there. He's VERY protective of his loved ones, even before the situation with Princess Yue. He is family oriented in that he admires his dad and the traditions and customs of the water tribes. He loves and is just as proud of his culture and home life as Katara is, but just in a different way. He also always looks out for the other members of team Avatar. He can tell when a member of the team needs support and immediately jumps to action (for example, the way he immediately grabs Toph's hand to guide her in "The Serpent's Pass", in "The Desert" and on the air ships during the final battle in the series finale). He's also very loving and protective of his sister, despite how often they fight. Also, quiet as it's kept, Cancers are one of the funniest signs in the zodiac.

♉♈Toph - Taurus sun, but with a lot of Aries aspects in the birth chart

Let's start with the Taurus aspects. Taurus is not just an earth sign, it's FIXED earth. It embodies the firm stance and hardheadness of not just Toph, but earthbenders in general. Tauruses are very stubborn and like to do things their own way at their own pace. Combine that with the independence and confrontational nature of an Aries, and you've got Toph.

Aries value their independence, sometimes to the point of being selfish, which is what we get with Toph in the Book 2 episode "The Chase". In this episode, it's Toph's first time riding with the group, but it's also her first taste of freedom. Like an Aries, she hates the idea of seeming weak or helpless, and has to learn that freedom doesn't mean that she has to do everything alone.

As Toph shows us, there is, however, power and strength in valuing independence, so long as you're not insecure about independence or projecting. Toph is a wealthy, sheltered child who is blind, which, in most cases, would make her vulnerable. But it's not the case. Toph ran away once before when she was little, and that's where she learned earthbending from the giant blind moles. She learned earthbending not just as a martial art, but as an extension of herself and her senses, and as a way to see. She would have never been able to master doing that (nor would shehave gone on to do even greater things like train the avatar and discover metal bending), if she didn't have the will, bravery and self assurance to run away in the first place. That little pilgrimage (her life changing adventure, if you will...but still not with Zuko, I'm afraid😔) showed the value of independence. Of going out on your own journey of self-discovery. Much like how Zuko needed to be be alone for a while during Book 2 for his own journey of self-discovery.

Oh, speaking of "Zuko Alone"...

♈Zuko - Aries

Zuko's arc in the show shows us the transition from a dark-sided, low vibrational Aries, to a high-vibrational Aries at it's best: passionate, brave, protective, strong, innovative, a good leader, driven, energetic and independent. Zuko embodies many Aries (and general fire sign) traits, both good and bad. He can be impulsive, and doesn't always think things all the way through. Aries is cardinal fire, so it's about getting up and going, just DOING something. Zuko is known for never giving up. These are things that that Iroh, Sokka and Ursa have mentioned. Zuko is an impatient person and is very fiery, hot headed and reactionary even for a firebender.

His reactionary nature makes him prone to a bit of melodrama (and I imagine that's why it's so fun for Azula or even Iroh to get a rise out of him). This is definitely the case with Aries. They're not the only sign with a temper, but they are the most likey to cause a scene and storm off in a huff about it. Or challenge you to a fight. Zuko can't refuse a fight for the life of him. At least not until he evolves and figures out his ✨true destiny✨.

One the other hand, he also keeps that same fiery energy when it comes to defending those who can't defend themselves and fighting for what he believes is right. In these cases, he refuses to back down. Even if his chances of winning are low, he'll still keep pushing forward. That's the will, energy and drive of cardinal fire. Zuko just needs to chanel all that power into something useful and constructive, like creating change for the greater good, and not distraction. Like with fire in general, Aries (and Zuko) is useful and powerful, but requires direction, guidance and purpose, so as to not risk letting the fire run wild to cause destruction and devastation.

[namimashi]

𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐉𝐢𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐧'𝐬 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲

𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬:

In general, he's a dreamy and idealistic person, although a little susceptible in many cases. He has a huge and pure heart, very sensitive and intuitive when it comes to the people he considers important. It's in his natural instinct to want to help and lead in things that he's passionate about. Jihoon is a person who moves forward in life with optimism and sensitivity, he's naturally charismatic and loved by others.

To this is added his great will and rigor to achieve what he wants. Jihoon loves challenges, in fact he moves thanks to them, so as soon as he has a goal in sight he doesn't stop until he achieves it. Fearless and brave. He knows how to lead correctly, precisely because it's something he enjoys. He often motivates others without even trying with his great energy and enthusiasm for things.

The mix of his intuition, pure heart and sensitivity for his surroundings and important people, together with his leadership skills and rigor is what makes him a wonderful leader who usually takes the role of motivating others to fight for their goals with great effort. He knows very well thanks to his intuition when someone breaks down or gives up. He will never want to see someone fall in front of his eyes.

On a more general level, he can sometimes be impulsive, impatient, and very energetic. He needs to be constantly entertained, he can't keep himself wanting for long. He's very passionate and something very trivial and boring can easily bore him. Also quite spontaneous if he wants it.

He has a very imaginative and creative mind, many times he tends to be guided a lot by his intuition when it comes to understanding the world. Thanks to this mystical tendency in his mind, his aptitude for music and art in general is awesome. He can easily be inspired. The negative quality is that sometimes his mind can be a little "cluttered" and so there are times when it's difficult for him to express some of his ideas clearly.

When it comes to interacting with others, he's playful and very intuitive. Although thanks to his impulsive and fiery nature, he can sometimes have a hard time connecting with people. He's the type of person who can be susceptible with others but also forget a bit about other people's susceptibility sometimes. In general he's a charming and charismatic person when he interacts, others end up falling for him.

It's quite common to see him one day connecting very well with his surroundings and being sensitive, but the next day being a bit volatile and somewhat insensitive (pisces-aries quality).

Note: since we don't know his birth time and therefore neither his moon sign, it's not possible to know what his emotional world is like :(

𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐡:

Jihoon isn't someone who's too complex to read, in fact he can be quite simple. It's not difficult to deal with him precisely because of that.

He's a (very) sociable person who knows well how to use his words to convince, although sometimes he can fail a little to express himself about his ideas, in general he knows well how to speak with others and in front of others.

He's very kind and knows how to treat people, he gives off a lot of charisma and charm, in fact his manners and his way of expressing himself is what makes him attractive in front of others. In addition, he has excellent diplomatic skills, many times he uses that to solve problems and disagreements between people (another reason why he's an excellent leader).

Although sometimes he can be a bit naive because he purely and honestly trusts people that even his trust can be blind. Sometimes he's too idealistic and optimistic for his own good.

He's also intelligent and has the ability to learn easily. There are moments when he sees himself rationalizing and looking for an explanation of what he feels despite knowing the beauty of just feeling.

Open-minded, values a wide and varied knowledge about different fields. He has the ability to plan ahead and be objective, his decisions are almost always (or always) well thought out.

Jihoon is generally confident in himself and tries not to think about things that make him feel insecure, however there are times when he tends to slip into a negative pattern of emotions. He many times can seek approval from others regarding his behavior and at the same time underestimate his own abilities. Sometimes his own insecurity about himself consumes him.

He's a bit afraid of the unknown and can even become mentally and emotionally isolated at times.

Maybe his father could be a little absent or he felt it that way.

𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬:

Jihoon is the type of person who seeks to mentally connect in a relationship and at the same time be able to enjoy the beauty of love. He's a romantic, sensitive and idealistic person who has a very special and mystic vision of love. He tends to look for someone to just connect with.

It's very likely that he has attracted partners with a strong intellect or who use reason and logic very well. In fact, it's something that he values very much in a partner, intelligence is attractive to him.

In a way, he's magnetic when it comes to love. He tends to seek a strong and unbreakable bond, from the most unconscious plane though.

It's possible that he has certainly attracted somewhat enigmatic and sociable partners who value knowledge as well.

Still, on a general level, it's likely that Jihoon hasn't had too many romantic experiences throughout his life.

[shrimpanalysis]

SIMON LAURENT ANALYSIS

Simon is mostly known infamously as the Villain of this season and a murderer to boot. He seems to be very insistent about his own opinions and beliefs. Going so far as to outright deny other peoples attempts at correcting him.

Due to this he is seen as narrowed-minded and egotistical, outwardly hating being wrong and giving people this intellectual leverage over him but internally rethinking all of his views. His inferiority complex I mean pride- is what I think to be one of the major factors that causes his character regression.

His pride (No, not the group of lions) is shown throughout the season by holding his ground. Most people interpret it as him being close minded at adamant to his own beliefs but I feel like the beliefs are only the basis to his inferiority.

An example, his own hatred towards Nulls. This can be quite a weak link to bring up as everyone in the Apex has this belief. However, the way he continuously reacts to them despite them showing humanity to him as compared to Grace who has gradually seen the other side of them and starts to understand and develop meaningful relationships with them-

Simon reacts negatively the nicer the nulls are to him.(Tuba’s death)

I interpret this as his own damaged pride, he hates being wrong and the more he is proven wrong the more angry he would get. This fear of being wrong could stem from past experiences of being the butt of arguments and made a fool out of it.

Him experiencing these feelings brings himself to adopt this mentality that other people are perceiving him as an idiot or a fool, causing him to try to justify his beliefs as much as he can in order to victimize himself into thinking that everyone is against him and he is the only one that is right to boost his self-esteem which causes him to adopt this narcissistic and manipulative persona to hide his own weaknesses.

(Simon looks away from Grace displaying emotion, he would be more susceptible to mirroring the reactions of his closest friend and he does not want to show weakness.)

Due to his narcissism, he also displays what the viewers might perceive to be a lack of empathy. He does not display much compassion and can be outright apathetic to other people's circumstances, Such as his dismissal to Hazel bringing along Tuba despite her looking clearly distressed when they said she couldn't bring her and completely ignores her feelings about the subject.

He perhaps reacts this way due to his own internalized hatred of himself and displaying compassion would be showing a less hardened in his eyes as he is perhaps taught from a young age that being sensitive or vulnerable is showing weakness and he does not want people to think less of him.

Him being unempathetic also stems from his ego and beliefs as he usually displays this attribute towards Nulls specifically throughout the show which is because if he was indeed wrong about Nulls, it could cause him to start questioning his own feelings about them which is something he does not want to think about as it conflicts with his own victim complex.

Due to him not wanting to be more exposed emotionally, he lashes out in anger. Anger at himself that he projects onto his relationships with others as he is unable to understand and handle his emotions effectively, this can be caused by not having a stable guardian like figure to help him through such issues.

Simon is also shown to outwardly control his anger by kicking and punching objects.

This is shown to be counter productive as it does not allow the person to understand where their anger is coming from and only prides a temporary outlet for his aggression.

His aggressive personality can also be shown in his interest with making war replicas/models.

This can be taken as him being someone who likes being in control and feels like conflict is the only way to progress which can be found in his own toxic relationship with grace where he tries to control her, not knowing that she is her own person which ties into his lack of empathy. This trait is especially shown almost at the end of the series where he commands the Apex like a leader and donning a military general like coat.

His inability to cope with his own emotions and expressing them outwardly to others is the main reason for his attachment issues.

His own paranoia and lack of trust in Grace by invading her memories when she doesn't tell him that Hazel is a Null which shows us how Grace knows his aggressiveness and acts very secretive around him as she predicts he is going to blow up when he finds out.

Him finding this out himself causes even more hurt as he is hit with the realization the only person that he thinks that ever cares about him has betrayed him. He is alone now, a reminder of the time when Samantha left him behind.

And it angers him and forces him to project his sadness as vengeance against others such as manipulating grace and using her memories against her, causing her to be stuck in her own memories as Simon just walks away.

Put yourself in Simon's shoes, you are stuck in an unfamiliar environment,

no idea where to go and the only parental figure you trusted in this whole place was just using you for her own self interest and

your closest friend seems to be tip toeing around you.

You also feel like everyone is out to get you and that your flawed beliefs are wrong but it was the basis of keeping you sane throughout.

Not wanting to believe that any of these things happened to you, you disregard all emotion and lash out at others because you don't want to feel that any of these things are real.

It sounds like a fever dream doesn't it?

Congratulations, you are basically in denial.

I would say the beauty of Simon's portrayal in season three would definitely be the lack of context behind his actions. He is very easy to dismiss as a one sided evil character. (I don't deny it, he is one.) Due to this we don't really see him as a fleshed out individual and he feels like the Tom Riddle of the season.(slowly devolving into a villain.) His own deterioration into this ultimate descent to becoming a murderer and attempting to murder his childhood friend; the instances to solidify his own inferiority complex (the mentality of "Grace already perceives me as an evil character, what use is there to better myself when it's already too late?") Which is what I think to be the cause of his inevitable demise.

I doubt it is going to happen but I do wish that the next book will cover some parts of Simon's past. He isn't a redeemable character, and never has been. He is someone molded by his own upbringing that we do not see, the most integral parts of his development. Many people have made the comparison that Simon had just as many chances as Grace, if not more to redeem himself.

I feel like he does not need chances, he needs to build himself from the ground up and truly look deep into himself and figure out why is he acting this way. None of these chances provide him with that opportunity and this is where him and Grace deviate.

The train has improved Grace and supported much of her character development as shown in the series where he becomes more empathetic, more trusting and open to others such as Hazel and confronting her own demons in her own mind.

She also finally manages to stick up for herself after the emotional roller coaster Simon put her through.

Simon on the other hand, uses this opportunity on the train to cause much destruction and chaos. He has a disconnect with the plane of reality inside the train as opposed to real life and this stunts his development. In my opinion this would be due to the faults of the train and the limitations of the amount of people that it can help. Yes, some people get off the train and become better. People like Tulip, Jessie and Lake. But we don't really see the people that the system has failed. This is where Simon comes in, he is the very person that the train has failed and it shows how counter intuitive it is with the limited opportunities and the disregard for the different circumstances of the people in it, bundling them together.

I doubt Simon will be the first, or the last passenger to be ruined by the whole system. I do like how his character gives us an insight into something not many of us have thought of before that is; how can a train be designed to be so perfect that it can help every single person on board? It is impossible. Even Artificial Super Intelligence like One-One would have trouble doing so. Which can represent how people can only change if they want to, and if they genuinely don't they have to be stuck the feedback loop of hell.

_____________________________________________________________

Big thanks to my homeboy @useful-crew-too​ for supplying all of the screenshots for this analysis

[autumnblogs]

Day 32: Through the Looking Glass

https://homestuck.com/story/4116

So right out of the gate, we learn a few things about the Scratched version of the universe, aside from the obvious fact that the new heroes are the previous guardians. Everyone is a little more mature, and identities are a little more fully-formed.

Jane’s name is already set in stone. Notably, the definition between the audience and Jane is also a little clearer here than usual - the Narration implies a distinction between us and Jane. Could be because we’re not controlling her yet - but as we get into Act 6, we will find a lot of cases where audience participation happens as part of the mechanic of narration, and this distinction will be called to a lot more.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/4117

So let’s unpack Jane’s interests and relation to pre-established parts of the Homestuck Universe, and see if we can’t start making guesses about Jane.

First thing’s first is that while we could read Jane’s affinity for these mustachio’d funnymen as being purely an attraction, she roleplays like John does - as a bit of a prankstress herself, and one who dons a fake mustache for one of her disguises, Jane roleplays as these men immediately suggesting to us that she looks up to them, and wants to be like them, rather than that she’s attracted to them.

(Though she certainly could be.)

Second thing is that Jane’s position as the Heirress parallels her not to John, but to Feferi. Like Feferi, Jane is a sweet girl who is the heir to a position of abominable power, and because she is beholden to the shape of that power, as long as she remains wedded to that shape, she will not only struggle to do anything productive with it, but in the course of the story, be subverted into a villain, at least for a little while, and it’s clear from the way that Crockertier Jane’s situation is communicated to us that she is an accomplice to her own brainwashing, and that the actions she takes in that form are meaningfully hers.

On another note, I think it’s interesting that on this side of the scratch, the Condesce has reimagined her empire as a megacorporation.

https://homestuck.com/story/4120

What do we learn about Jake right out of the gate? He likes movies - adventure movies. Jake, like Tavros, the other page, loves to bluster about subjects that he actually has relatively little affinity for - and in both cases, their lack of affinity can largely be described as performing their culture’s ideal of public personhood - warrior virtue. While Jake has all of the outward signifiers of masculinity, and is actually a pretty brave and technically skillful fighter by the standards of the real world, up until the Hopesplosion, he is outclassed by a lot of his friends, and ultimately, the cases where he most embodies warrior-manhood, Jake is being forced into it by someone who wants to take advantage of him.

We benefit from most of this knowledge with hindsight. It’s not actually there in this opening section, but the main thrust of Jake’s interests is his love of adventure and his love of wrestling, and I’m principally interested in Jake’s physicality in addressing his interests - he’s a very physical kid.

https://homestuck.com/story/4121

We’re hot off the heels of Terezi’s fake choice, and a lot of conversation about free will and fake choices in Act 5 - and here we’re presented with one almost immediately. We can pick either option, but the outcome will be the same whatever we do.

https://homestuck.com/story/4124

I’ve always thought the Condescension’s relationship with Jane is deeply fascinating. There is something about the prospect of cultivating an heiress, someone to take over her legacy, that brings out something tender and maternal in her, I think, even if it only manifests in a twisted way. She’s a bit of an enigma to me.

https://homestuck.com/story/4126

Well, Jane is certainly interested in Foxworthy, so I rescind my earlier comment.

We’ve barely been introduced to her and she pretty much immediately starts showing off her paternalistic disdain for rural and vulgar people through the narrative’s language, and her nostalgia for Problem Sleuth characterizes her enjoyment of its sequel.

Jane has an aristocratic mentality, and conservative leanings in the media she appreciates, and the way that she appreciates it. If Andrew’s commentary that he continued to examine the themes he started with Feferi in Jane, I think what we should take away is that Feferi’s concern for the lowly comes with a heaping helping of...

Wait for it.

Wait for it...

Condescension.

B)

https://homestuck.com/story/4127

Jane’s disdain for the vulgar - low culture, low classes - also shows itself pretty quickly. In stark contrast to the other two leaders - John and Karkat - Jane isn’t much of a movie watcher at all (Jake gets that attribute in his session) and her attitude toward’s Jake’s movies is one of snobbery. Both of the other two movie watchers have a playfully self-deprecating attitude toward their own bad tastes in movies, but they still enjoy those movies sincerely.

Her relationship of passive-aggressive one-upsmanship also distinctly recalls Rose’s relationship with her mother, suggesting that Jane shares some of the underlying pessimism and mild hostility that Rose struggles with.

Also, as a symbol Swanson is a representative of the sort of anti-government animus that characterizes the politics of Trans-Mississippi America outside of the heavily populated West Coast, where the wedding of big business and state planning have created a lot of disaffection toward the distant and disinterested corporate landlords and bureaucratic apparatuses that govern huge tracts of federal land and private property in the west. Pawnee Indiana may not actually be on the other side of the Mississippi from Washington, but having grown up in Montana for at least a part of my childhood, Swanson’s politics are immediately recognizable.

Unfortunately, this anti-state animus has manifested not in the form of a renewed commitment to emancipation, but to the uniquely American, get-off-my-lawn form of Right-Wing populism practiced by the short-lived Tea Party, and smug “It’s just basic economics” Reagan-worshipping conservatives.

What I’m trying to say is, Jane would probably be a Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder fan in the modern day.

https://homestuck.com/story/4136

Jane’s skepticism prevents her from listening to her friends when they tell her about the extraordinary things that they do, but it’s also not exactly a kind of scientific skepticism, and more of a dogmatic realism - she has a narrow vision of what the world is like, and is dismissive of ideas that are outside of her bubble.

Quick Note that while Jake makes only an off-handed remark about it here, he is sensitive to the hostile, toxic relationship between the AR and Dirk in a way that neither of the girls really is, and while that may seem uncharacteristically emotionally intelligent of Jake, I think he’s a lot more aware of his surroundings than he lets on.

https://homestuck.com/story/4142

Now as long as we’re talking about Right Wing Populism and comparing Jane to John there is an extremely potent assertion.

The USPS, and the idea of privatizing it, is as much a symbol of the war of corporatists and authoritarians against social democracy as anything is, and because of the way John is associated with Mail in general as a Hero of Breath, Jane is almost immediately setting herself up as a foil to John.

https://homestuck.com/story/4144

Calliope is so cheery that it’s easy to take everything she says in stride, and yet, with all the horrors Sburb has to offer, in terms of the way it destroys planets, and traumatizes its players, her optimism toward the game is at least disquieting.

Sure, the Null Session isn’t going to destroy the kids’ session, but her language is contrasted against both Kanaya’s and Karkat’s when they berated Aradia and Jade respectively. Both Karkat and Kanaya rue the effects of the narrative on their lives, but Calliope is a superfan.

https://homestuck.com/story/4156

I know I’m spending a lot of time ragging on her here, but like, as long as I am; Jane is sure openly hostile to her best friend, in a way that comes as kind of surprising even given the precedent that we have to work with.

https://homestuck.com/story/4160

Poirot is from Belgium.

I wonder if Andrew or Jane is the one committing that error?

https://homestuck.com/story/4168

Jake is full of little contradictions like this. Likes Adventure, terrified of monsters. Not even ambivalent about them, certainly not excited by them. It’s like the opposite of how little kids are usually super into Dinosaurs.

https://homestuck.com/story/4171

So what is the deal with Jake and his fascination with Blue Women? Aside from the metaphysical connection with Vriska and Aranea (and to a lesser extent, Jake), like... what’s the meaning of it?

I think a possible answer to the question lies in the process of the initial portraits becoming blue - leaving them out in the sun to fade - and the relationship between that, and the way in which he likes mummies and suits of armor, and so on and so forth - and even his stuffed trophies.

Maybe this suggests that Jake is, on principle, far more comfortable with the idea of a thing, than with the thing itself. Jake’s Blue Women are comfortably static. They have ceased to change a long time ago, and now exist, preserved in perpetuity, without the need to worry about adapting to suit them.

https://homestuck.com/story/4175

While a lot of Jake’s guesses are incorrect, he’s still clearly spending a lot of time pondering over the mysterious time shenanigans - he just hasn’t quite put it all together.

https://homestuck.com/story/4177

The same way that Dirk’s fastidious organization is equated to his complicated and demanding modus, and the way that John being a big impulsive himbo is equated with his inability to manage his fetch modus, constantly getting distracted from his goal by the card on the surface, Jake’s Modus has an enormous capacity, but most of it is preoccupied inefficiently.

https://homestuck.com/story/4184

The Autoresponder continues the conversation that Andrew has with the audience about the distribution of the self - Dirk does this more generally, but the particular thread the AR tugs on is the question of where a person’s self really stops - just as the question lingers in the air because of John’s disposition toward Davesprite, the question of whether the AR is really a separate person from Dirk, or a part of him, is posed continuously just by the fact that it exists.

https://homestuck.com/story/4192

To be fair to Dirk, who I will have a lot of kind-of-sympathetic-antipathy for, I had forgotten that it is, in fact, the Autoresponder who sets up this particular challenge for Dirk.

The parallels between Dirk and English are nevertheless being set up through this conversation nevertheless - by sending him the parts and getting him to assemble the robot, Dirk makes Jake complicit in his own humiliation, even as he attempts to build Jake up into an ideal partner.

https://homestuck.com/story/4196

Already we’re seeing indications that this segment of Homestuck will deal with different themes of growing up than the first half. Which is already kind of obvious, but we’ve moved decisively out of Part 1: Problems, and into Part 2: Feelings. The second half has moved out of the territory of other humans and their emotional situations as somewhat idealized problems (somewhat) and into this situation where everyone is a moving body, complicated and the characters are each others’ biggest obstacles, and their own biggest obstacles. That’s a bit of a reductive way of describing it, but I think it rings true.

https://homestuck.com/story/4256

While I am willing to concede that Dirk is not literally responsible for siccing the Brobot on Jake today, he more or less assents to AR’s sexual harassment and physical abuse of Jake.

In addition to his vicarious physical abuse, Dirk’s persona as the Prince of Heart calls him to suppress the uniqueness of the people who are around him, moulding them like clay into shapes that better resemble him. Jake and Jane need to be more like each other in his eyes - which is to say, they both need to be more like Dirk.

We also get some insight into Dirk’s sense of humor here - it’s not just about the irony. I think there is an extent to which at the base of the thing, Dirk’s sense of humor is about simultaneously denying and affirming a thing’s meaning - making fun of it while cherishing it. Having a thing be incredibly silly - while also being incredibly serious business. He cherishes the absurd.

I wonder if he’d like Kojima’s stuff.

https://homestuck.com/story/4257

The way that Dirk identifies with logic and reason recalls the sort of “enlightened by my own intelligence” New Atheist jerks who were known to prowl the internet in the early half of the decade, and to some extent, still do. Like Libertarians, these folks have often in the present day gotten caught up in Right Wing Populism. Maybe it’s something about the way that Right Wing movements increasingly identify as a part of counter-culture even though they advocate reactionary policies.

https://homestuck.com/story/4273

This is extremely silly, but Jake is in mortal peril all the time, and I expect even at the best of times he might be uncomfortable being touched.

https://homestuck.com/story/4284

Here we shall pause.

Sorry for the late post. Early work was quite busy, and once the rush was over, it was already quite late.

So the first Act of Act 6 has been very informative! Compared to the first Act of Homestuck, we’ve been introduced already to all our Dramatis Personae!

Tune back in tomorrow to here Cam Say,

Some variation on Alive and Not Alone.

[ganymedesclock]

Dead Cells and the weight of small lives pt.2 (NPCs, the dead and alive)

Continuing from part 1, now that I’m refreshed, rested, and ready to continue this monster post. I finished off last post talking a bit about the way Prisoner acts onto NPCs and interact-able bodies, so this chunk is picking up with that in earnest.

Here is the thing. If you punt the corpse of an executed prisoner, that’s generally a dick move, so this is another place I feel like I can understand why people might get the takeaway Prisoner is kind of a jerk. But I feel like it’s worth examining, in detail, the kind of interactions he has.

The mechanics of Dead Cells are very focused on scavenging, looting, and a limited amount of buying your way forwards- and, spoken as someone starting to dip my toesies in the higher Stem Cell counts- thus, more difficult runs- any random encounter you can get items from is a godsend.

It’s also where you get a lot of the lore of the game, in random events- some of which will show up in multiple areas, others unique- that tell you about the world.

It’s in these interactions, mainly, that I see Prisoner characterized as a fairly compassionate guy with a morbid sense of humor, and I struggle to see him as a total uncaring asshole. To gloss over a large number of interactions, here’s some common threads:

Prisoner is fairly flippant about death / used to seeing corpses. He will also sometimes kick the bodies with his bare feet to make them drop items, which, as a fairly tactile sensitive person, the thought makes my soul depart my body. Kicked bodies are seldom visibly disturbed from their position by this, though they do drop items. 

He is not opposed to looting said corpses / prying useful items out of their hands, though he may comment on riffling through someone’s stuff being a social no-no while doing so.

At the same time, he far more often uses “personlike” language rather than “objectlike” language to describe the bodies (“this guy” “her” “him” “population”) with the main exception being interacting with a bloated, waterlogged corpse.

You can virtually always examine a lot more than what has money or weapons and Prisoner will have salient thoughts about it suggesting he is proving keenly observant and not specifically looking for loot and ignoring all else.

From here, I’ll go into several incidents I think are pretty noteworthy. 

A fair warning that these are quite morbid and discuss/depict the kinds of things people do when everything is falling apart and people are dying all around them, so, not exactly gentle reading.

1. The Flower Loving Prisoner

This is a fairly common encounter you can find in the Prisoners’ Quarters and Promenade, possibly other places. It is a small cell, with several points of interest, mostly being the large number of potted flowers and the small window. Poking around will have Prisoner note that the flowers “have been a bit underwatered recently” and that the fabric of the mattress was torn up and used elsewhere.

Specifically, for a noose- the person occupying this cell hung himself, and his corpse is holding a single flower in its hands.

For the room, Prisoner remarks “looks like this guy loved flowers.” For the body itself,

“Guess he wanted to choose the time of his death. He’s holding a faded flower between his fingers. A moment of silence… NAH! I’ve got better things to do!”

The “nah” is punctuated by him kicking the body, causing it to drop a necklace- but not the flower it’s holding.

So here’s the thing. This is a flippant action. At surface pass, Prisoner is disrespecting this person who is characterized by growing flowers in a prison- and holding onto this small thing of beauty, even in death.

The thing is though, someone who doesn’t care at all wouldn’t, of their own accord, independently air the idea they should have a “moment of silence” for this person, even to veto it a second later. Nobody is here to see or care what Prisoner is doing.

Also to someone who doesn’t care at all, the entire rest of the room would be of no interest; it would be trivial that flowers were important to a dead person.

So this creates an interesting duality. On one hand: Prisoner very clearly doesn’t care much about bodies. This is a repeated pattern. The main time he’s particularly shocked by corpses is when they were someone who was alive the last time he checked (as is the case of the Tutorial Knight). He has a calculated angle and he’s interested in what he can get from them and how it can prevent him from dying, again.

On the other hand... Prisoner equally clearly cares about people. He thinks a lot about what people wanted, felt, what choices they made. He shows a lot of interpersonal intelligence and even to people who he has every reason to not listen to, his responses tend thoughtful and he socks this information away as important in a context where he is, by necessity, otherwise rigidly focused on survival. He hates the King, but will also talk thoughtfully about the way the royals of the island lived.

And of the two elements in this juxtaposition, while survivalism and gallows humor are clearly strong threads in him... it’s clear the caring part is the larger factor of the two. It persists, while his cheerful morbidity sometimes just utterly fails.

2. The Stilt Village family

In the fishing hamlet, you can find a small house featuring a hanged woman. A letter by her feet, that the Prisoner notes are probably her last words, reads:

“The Malaise won’t get us. I’ll protect you… I’ll protect you.”

The Prisoner, our usually quite chatty protagonist, has almost nothing to say here. The closest he gets is, on examining the woman’s body, notes she “opted for the fast method” and aforementioned observation that the note is her last words.

There is also a bed in the room. Two sets of small feet poke out from under the blankets. If you examine it, Prisoner only says “throats slit.” and nothing more.

There is nothing in the room to loot, no jokes made, and the overall attitude is deeply, crushingly somber. There are closed drawers, but there’s no prompt to go through them.

If Prisoner didn’t care, this would just be more of the same, what’s three more bodies, right? But it’s clear that he isn’t just idly curious about the way people live and what they thought and felt- he has a certain amount of compassion, so that faintly nauseous feeling we get as we creep through this room is probably simpatico with our protagonist.

These people are strangers. He never knew them. They’re villagers of a fishing hamlet that was a hotbed of rebellion, and disrespectful of the king; they are small lives. They are “irrelevant people”. Mechanically, you have no gameplay incentive to stand here and look around.

But it’s clear this encounter affects Prisoner a lot emotionally. He doesn’t know who these people were, never met these kids or their presumed mother- but it’s clear he didn’t want this to have happened to them. 

In particular Prisoner seems to be disquieted by young corpses any time he finds them; the closest he comes to joking is finding the executed body that he notes is “either a dwarf, or... no more than seven or eight years old. ...Let’s... say she’s a dwarf.”

Another half-joke, also in the Stilt Village, is he finds a desperate letter to the Alchemist, written by villagers pledging their bodies to his research and begging him to save them. Prisoner notes that it’s partially damaged by water and hard to read, and then frankly follows with “I don’t think I want to understand what I read.”

This is worth noting, in particular, because we find a lot of the Alchemist’s grimoires, and he mentions his “volunteers” often- the kind of things that happen to them in particular tend to be fatal. One setup in High Peak Castle notes that those exposed to the experimental cure became twisted half-plant beings, and then as a near afterthought, notes “the subject failed to survive.”

So Prisoner- who’s just trying to save his own hide at best- is pretty strongly depicted as more upset at what happened to the villagers than the Alchemist who was trying to work on a cure. This is significant, when we happen to know said Alchemist becomes the Collector, who basically spends the entire game using Prisoner to harvest resources from corpses (the titular Cells) in exchange for better equipment. The Collector also makes it quite clear from the start he knows who Prisoner is, but is not interested in disclosing this information.

(And, if you, like me, don’t think Prisoner is the same person as the King given the wild discrepancy of personality and other evidence- when he finally does “fess up” it’s in the form of lying to Prisoner’s face)

3. Moments of anger

This is actually not one moment but several. Part of what Dead Cells does with its dialogue is convey tone and intensity by changing colors. Most text comes in blue boxes- when it’s lit in red, it’s almost always for emphasis. Especially if the textbox shakes slightly and the text scrolls faster than usual, giving it a sense of slamming into place on the screen.

In several areas- the Promenade or the Ramparts- you can find a setup of “live target training” in which a human prisoner was chained to a post, and then shot at by archers. This is at first perhaps a bit morbidly funny, given the wall behind the prisoner is littered with arrows- but, overall, it’s just dark.

In particular, a single arrow has struck the shackled prisoner. When Prisoner observes this, he notes “Only one arrow hit the target.”

Then, in shaking red text, “Right in the head.”

He then turns and faces the empty stand where the guard stood, and flashes a thumbs-up that I struggle to read as not rather scathing in its condemnation. Again- to someone who doesn’t care or thinks of this as funny, that kind of emphasis doesn’t make sense.

But even some things he says calmly seem to suggest Prisoner’s pretty angry about the whole situation- sometimes, upon finding a large gallows section, it will have an order pinned to it:

By order of the King, all persons presenting behavioural disorders or noticeable deteriorations in their appearance... shall be imprisoned, and hanged by the neck until dead. ...(If the prison doctor confirms the diagnosis of infection.)

There is a distinct beat before the last line is read, and then Prisoner’s commentary ensues:

“Glad they added that. For a second there I really thought we were talking about genocide.”

He also at one point responds to a desecrated statue of the King, defaced with “We’ll skin you alive!” by calling it a “brave and courageous statement,” and seems mildly impressed that someone peed on a royal order in the Stilt Village relatively high up. Besides that, a lot of the area flavor text talks about the abuses of the guards, and in particular in High Peak Castle, it’s noted the royal guard were pulled back into the castle when the rest of the island needed them.

In a way, the way that Prisoner uses humor often trivializes his own anger, which again, ties back to what I said in part 1: everything the game says about small lives- about the “irrelevant little people” that suffered in the wake of the plague emphasizes that Prisoner’s perspective is that he is one of those little people. In the sewers, examining a strange cocoon, Prisoner seems to have a full-on crisis about what he is and why he’s here before interrupting himself with a joke.

Someone who thinks they are important and is used to demanding others’ attention and validation doesn’t treat their own genuine anger and revulsion like it’s something to shrug off.

[subtlereferencetomyinterests]

Communication Issues (Alternative Title: Three Touch-Starved, Insecure, Metaphysical Beings Constantly Misinterpreting Each Other and Yet Somehow Falling in Love)- Chapter One

Ao3,  MasterPost,  Chap.2,  Chap.3

Relationships: Eventual Analogince, implied Moceit

I usually have new stuff up on Wednesdays, Sorry this is late. I hope the length and angst will make up for this slight :) Also, because of how long this fucker is, I did not go in and manually add italics, so you can just. Imagine them there when you need them. 

Warnings: Panic attack (?), overworking oneself, self-hatred and insecurity, Excessive Amounts of Hurt/comfort, eventual friends-to-lovers, slow burn, arguing, crying, angst w/ a happy ending, swearing, creative blocks, mentions of isolating oneself, excessive hugging. 

Word Count: 6,396

What do you do when you find someone crying, and it’s all your fault? What do you say when you hear the muffled sobs and frantic words behind the blood-red door? When you know that, no matter how much you never wanted to hurt him- never wanted to hurt anyone- you still did. Is there anything you can do to fix it, when you’ve spent so long pretending that nothing was broken? When you’ve spent so long pretending that you didn’t care if things were broken or not? 

Well, if you're Logan Sanders, a metaphysical representation of the logical thinking of one Thomas Sanders (and you are, for the purposes of this story), then you book it down the hall in a desperate effort to find someone more emotionally competent to solve the problem. 

The search is short, lasting just to the bottom of the stairs. As soon as your feet touch down on the living room carpet, your haste brings you slamming into just the side you were looking for. Hands wrap around your middle, narrowly stopping you from stumbling over. 

“Geez, L, what’s the-” Virgil doesn’t finish his sentence, his expression wrinkling in concern when he sees your face. He leans down to your level, his gaze flickering over you to search for injuries. 

You take a step back and shake your head, struggling to explain. 

“Roman- I- He-” you’re supposed to be articulate, intelligent, eloquent- but when it comes to feelings, you never are. You never have been. You try so hard nowadays, but God, do you still need help sometimes. Like these times. These confusing, awful times when you hear dear sweet Creativity sobbing self-deprications loud enough to be heard from well outside of his room, many of which are dramatized repetitions of things that you have said to him.

“Is he okay?!” Virgil, bless him, snaps you out of the oncoming mental panic before it renders you any more useless. 

“Physically, yes- as far as I know- but emotionally, well-” you cut off, terrified of choking up. He seems to catch your meaning, though. 

Virgil doesn’t ask any follow up questions. He grabs your arm and the room blurs. Static hisses against your ears and pricks at your skin, this form of transportation being mostly foreign to you. You don’t even rise up, merely popping into existence right in front of Roman’s door. Virgil throws it open before you have the chance to react. 

Roman doesn’t notice the increased population of his room, which is concerning. His back is to the door as he works fervently at his desk, but evidently not making progress, shaking as he is. He’s muttering under his breath, much quieter than what you’d overheard before, but you can hear distinct utterances like ‘unrealistic… overused… disappointment…’ et cetera, et fucking cetera. 

“Roman, what happened?” Virgil’s voice is distorted, loud and quiet all at once. You barely keep yourself from covering your ears. 

Roman clamps his mouth shut mid-wail, his hands spasming in surprise against his desk. His quill drops to the paper with a soft clatter, a sound that echoes about the walls. Then, the only noise left is his staggering breathing.

Slowly, Roman peers over his shoulder at you, eyes puffy and red with mascara practically dripping down his chin. 

A gasp draws from you, against your will, at the sight. 

Roman makes some strangled throat-clearing sounds before trying to speak. 

“Oh, hey-” 

“Nope, none of that,” Virgil is across the room in two strides, effortlessly taking the lead in this situation. You can’t push yourself any further into the room, but you do shut the door behind you. Probably best not to involve any of the more unpredictable sides in what was sure to be an… emotionally charged discussion. 

Roman looks absolutely mortified, jolting up from his chair and backing into the wall like a cornered animal. With distance between himself and Virgil reestablished, he then buries his face in his hands. He trembles like a leaf caught in the wind of fall, and he’d probably crumble just as easily. 

Many times in your life, you’ve wished that you couldn’t feel. You even had yourself convinced that you couldn’t, for a while there. Now, all you wish is to know how to feel correctly. You’re meant to know things, Logan, aren’t you?

“Alright, so I’ve been having a bit of a rough time,” Roman’s voice cracks and wavers when he speaks, “It’s just writer’s block. Sure, I got a tad bit frustrated- but I’ll be back on track in no time, I promise! You needn’t concern yourself with my momentary lapse, I’ll have a new story for you by Saturday at the latest!” 

He’s looking at you. Virgil is standing right next to him, but he’s looking at you, all the way across the room. He’s trying to… appease you? Reason with you? Give you what he thinks you want?

Say something, Logan.

“You need to take a break, Ro,” Virgil’s voice slips back to normal, “C’mon, you’re overworking yourself,” he tries to be nonchalant, but it’s obvious just how concerned he is. You can hardly blame him. When he reaches his hand out, Roman recoils, showing his face enough to see the guilt written across it. 

You need to say something, goddammit. 

“I can’t just ‘take a break’,” he spits, “I can’t stop now. I need to get this done first- I’ll stop when I finally do this properly. So, maybe never, right?” He laughs, horrible and twisted, and he looks at you because he’s really, truly asking you. Is he really expecting you to agree? Is that the impression you’ve left him with? 

You say something.

“This is all my fault.”

Clearly, neither of them expected that. You press on.

“Your worth as a side-” no, not quite right, “-Your worth as a person is not measured solely by your productivity. I know we’ve talked before about the damages of excessive perfectionism, but I know I may not have been effective in ‘showing not telling’ that your ideas don’t need to be flawless. My harshness. My Coldness. I thought I was doing better, but obviously... I was wrong.” Again. 

Virgil looks half-way to anger, but it’s unclear what he’s directing it towards. You aren’t sure of anything right now, really, except for the general upset tugging at your stomach.

“L, no, if this is anybody’s fault- it’s mine,” he turns to Roman, and what. “I didn’t know how hard you were taking all this. Dude, I had no idea. But I owe you an apology, I have for a while, for making fun of you about your insecurity. Like, kind of a lot. Long after you stopped doing it to me. Honestly, I can’t believe that I didn’t realize how much it was actually getting to you.”

“What? Virgil, I truly appreciate what you are trying to do, but I was clearly the one who pushed Roman too far,” you find the courage to step a little closer as you argue Virgil’s point, spurred on by how ridiculous you find this exchange.

“Well, I mocked his sensitivities. This is my responsibility!”

“But you didn’t know you were doing that- I acted like I didn’t care for him, and now he thinks I don’t! I am doubtlessly the one to blame.”

Virgil looks ready to snap back, and you’d be just as ready to retort, but a quiet sniffle alerts both of your attention to the matter still at hand. Roman, standing back against the wall, growing increasingly bewildered. He’s still crying, a surprisingly open display for a prideful trait such as himself, but you get the impression that he simply can’t hold it back anymore. You can see him squirm under Virgil’s and your gazes.

“It- It’s nice, that you both are attempting to take the blame for my failings, but you don’t have to. I can figure this out for myself. Then, I’ll finally prove myself to you, and no one will need to worry about anything. Which is why I need to keep working.” 

“You have proven yourself to me,” Virgil darts from the desk to Roman. He grabs the trait’s ink-stained arm, gaze fierce and unyielding. 

“Why, then,” Roman mutters, eyes downcast, “doesn’t it feel like I have?”

“I never tried to do right by you. Like you did for me.” 

You watch them sway, awkward, and finally, finally push movement into your legs. You step to Roman’s other side, much slower. It probably appears to be deliberate, but in truth you just feel unsure. You place your hand on his shoulder in a way that is hopefully comforting.

“The same, in a different sense, is true for myself. But if you would allow us to make it up to you…?” you aren’t sure where to go from there. Virgil nods, though, granting you a hint of pride. You don’t quite buy it when he says he’s part of the problem, but you’d rather not start any arguments at this particular moment. 

Roman won’t look at either of you for longer than a second, like he’s not sure if you’re serious. Just so he knows that you are, you gesture to your necktie, giving him the tiniest smile. 

He buckles to the ground immediately, a mess of sobs, the both of you letting yourself be dragged along. He clings to Virgil, and you try to keep an arm around him as well. He needs all the support he can get, really. 

“I-I’m so so-rry, I don’t- I-” 

Virgil shushes him and shoots you a deeply concerned look: This is really bad. I’m not letting him go. You rub Roman’s back as he shakes and return your friend’s gaze with a nod: I’m not either. We’re going to help him. Don’t worry. 

The three of you sit there for what feels like hours as he cries, and cries, and cries. None of you say a word, letting him get it all out. You let him hold onto you- you hold him as well, because you’re nearly as dismayed and unsure as he is. 

But eventually, you need to talk. Once he finally settles, his head resting against your collar and his legs splayed across Virgil’s lap, it’s you who gets the proverbial ball rolling.

“You already know that overworking yourself leads to exhaustion, which in turn leads to an overall drop in productivity and quality of work,” Roman’s eyes fill with guilt, but you’re quick to elaborate, “but that isn’t at all my primary concern. I won’t carry on acting like it is for a moment longer, now that I see how it’s hurting you. Hurting you is something I would never intend. You mean so much to me. There are so many arguments I could use to convince you why you need to give yourself a break, but I’ll settle with this: a hypothetical ‘perfect story’ is not worth your suffering, and it never will be.” 

Roman looks up at you, once more crying, so that was probably a very unhelpful thing to say. But he leans into you and hugs you close, recontextualizing his emotional display. Relief washes over you. 

“Thank you, Logan.”

Virgil clears his throat.

“I know I’m not as, um, articulate as Lo is, but- for what it’s worth- I care about you, too, and all.”

You stretch out the arm that you had around Roman’s back, pulling Virgil into the hug. Roman lets out a shuddering breath from where he’s cradled between the both of you. It’s the deep, relieved breath that means the sobbing is through with, leaving only tired eyes and silence. 

It is at this point of alleviated tension that the uncomfortable nature of the floor begins irking you. Like hell you and Virgil would live Creativity alone like this, so after brief deliberation you stand to move as a unit. An amoeba of facets making their way down the hall, in a manner likely comical (though thankfully no one is around to see). Your room is the optimal place to rest, as it eases emotions and calms overthinking minds, even if it is a little chilly. 

You let your fellow traits drop down onto the couch, passing Roman the TV remote. Yes, whatever you like to watch, you inform him. Yes, really, anything, you confirm, waving your hand to conjure some blankets for them. The smile he gives you, though small, is enough to boost your hopes considerably. 

You really can’t fix everything- at least not immediately. But perhaps, with Virgil to fill in your gaps, you’ll be able to make things right for the Prince. 

<<<???>>><<<???>>><<<???>>>

So looking after this insecure dumbass is totally your job now. Said dumbass, of course, disagrees strongly; he tells you he’s doing better, and thanks so much for the one afternoon of help, Virgil, but he can totally take it from here. You do not give a single shit about what Roman claims, because he is very obviously lying, because he doesn’t want to be a burden. Yeah, as if. 

You’re taking care of that idiot if it kills you.

Thankfully, Logan is on the same page as you (proverbial page, as he would specify). It almost surprised you that he didn’t make himself scarce as soon as he told you about the situation, but it’s certainly a pleasant surprise to have him by your side in this. Roman needs all the help he can get, and you can’t think of anyone better.

The pair of you only begrudgingly leave him alone after a sufficient several hours of Comfort Time, retreating to the hall so he can rest. He looked so fuckin’ tired, face a dull red and eyes puffy, but he was smiling. You count it as a temporary win. 

The first thing that you do, naturally, is slam your back against the wall and let yourself slide down to the floor out of sheer emotional exhaustion. 

Logan sits next to you, much less aggressively. It’s a nice gesture, considering how he absolutely despises sitting on the ground and this is the second time he’s had to do it in one day. You glance at him from the corner of your eye. He keeps trying to say something, before clamping back down on it. You bump your shoulder against his, telling him that whatever it is, you’re listening. 

“I feel-” which is already a testament to how serious he’s taking the situation- “horrible.”

“Yeah, same- I mean, big mood- no, that’s worse, fuck-” you take a deep breath, hitting your head back against the wall, “I mean, me too. So, at least there’s that, right?” 

Logan shoots you one of his patented Microscopic Smiles.

“I suppose that counts for something, yes.” 

You manage a laugh, leaning even more against your friend. You’ve got a whole contradictory bundle of feelings coiled up in your chest, and it sucks, but also it’s a relief, but also it’s the worst thing ever. You exhale slowly, your eyes falling shut. 

“I don’t wanna leave him alone, ya know?”

“I know. We’ve done all we can do for now, though.”

“I guess.”

“I’m just glad he let us help at all.”

  “Well, assuming we did help. Who knows, we could’ve made him feel a million times worse by confronting him, and now-”

He cuts off your spiraling immediately. 

“But we didn’t. He clearly needed intervention by that point. Besides, If we’d been making it worse, it’s unlikely he would’ve let us stay for so long. Nor would he have accepted your plan of ‘helping him deal with all this shit from now on, no matter what he says.’”

“Right,” you take another deep breath, “You’re right.”

“I usually am.” 

You elbow Logan in the side, playfully. He smiles again, wider and brighter in a way that most others probably wouldn’t notice. It could, from some angles, in the right lighting, possibly maybe be considered a little bit pretty. Not that you think about things like that, of course, that would just be weird. 

You stop leaning so heavily against Logan, only to find how much your back hurts from sitting in the hall. Come to think of it, the hall might not be the best place to calm down from emotionally charged interactions. The only issue is that your room is literally the exact opposite of a good place to chill out right now, and you’re reluctant to move.

“Hey, uh, would it be okay if I- like, my room isn’t the best for times like this, and I-”

Logan’s  already standing, taking your arm to help you up. 

“Come on. I’ll set up the Planetarium for us.” 

“Thanks,” God, you’re thankful for somebody like him. Such a simple word, when you aren’t crazy about spelling out all of the gratitude and nervous tension that lays behind it, and he picks up on the layers perfectly. He gets it- he gets you. 

Things will be okay. 

<<<???>>><<<???>>><<<???>>>

Once upon a time (ha), you felt appreciated. Of course you did, else how would you remember it so vividly? How would you long for it so desperately? Yes, you can safely say that you, Roman Sanders, had once been cared for. But that was countless screw-ups ago, before hundreds of your careless insults, your many vicious words followed by weak apologies and unchanging ways. The distant past of a disgraced royal- one far too imperfect, far too cruel to be forgiven without first proving himself time and time again. 

That’s what you’d thought, anyway. When you expressed such beliefs to other sides for the first time, just a few mornings after said sides comforted you in the midst of a breakdown, they told you it was the stupidest thing they’d ever heard. Direct quote from Virgil. 

It was stupid, apparently, because you were forgiven so very long ago, and you are actually considered to be better now than you were then. It shakes you up inside to think about. In a good way, for once. 

They hover around you almost always, offering you plenty more of those somewhat aggressive reassurances whenever you give the vaguest hint of self-deprecation. You were sure they’d brush it under the rug after those first few days, perhaps even tease you about it, but it seemed that was completely false. It’s been a good week. 

They’re with you this very morning, chatting idly while you wait for the kettle to shriek. You let the drone of Logan’s voice wash over you as you finish fixing your tea. You don’t believe all of their reassurances just yet, but God are you trying. You want it to be true- more than you’ve ever wanted anything- when Logan says their care is unconditional, or Virgil says that he likes spending so much time with you. 

You turn around, the mug in your hands warm against your chest, and stare at the sides on the couch. The three of you are in your corner of the Mindscape; they had already invited themselves in when you awoke. You quite like that they do that- you still aren’t sure how to express that you want to be with them, without prompting. You would feel clingy. Greedy.

“Thank you,” you settle down Virgil, smiling groggily. He waves his hand dismissively. 

“Don’t worry about it, man. What’s on the agenda for today?” 

That’s another thing. It’s not all crying and hugging, Lord knows how old that would get- but they just end up hanging out with you. Sometimes it’s just Logan, if Virgil’s having an off day, or sometimes it’s the opposite, when Logan’s particularly busy, but you really like it best when it’s the three of you. 

That didn’t used to be unusual; you used to spend all of your time surrounded by all of your family (or most, in light of recent acceptances), laughing and joking and working all together. Then, slowly, you stopped, just as things became more complicated for everyone. Camaraderie was a waste of valuable time, time that could be used coming up with ideas that would finally be good enough. They got the hint easily enough, allowing you to isolate yourself until you were perfect for them. 

No, you aren’t thinking about that right now! It isn’t the time to worry about how this will all have to end eventually. You’ll have to think about it soon, but not now, dammit!

You swing back a sip of scalding cinnamon tea, letting it clear both your throat and your mind. 

“I have a wonderful idea for today!” You puff your chest out and straighten your back. In actuality, you haven’t had a ‘wonderful’ idea in ages, but you hope the confident stance will give you one. 

It doesn’t. Logan notices this. 

“I sincerely hope that this is not yet another attempt to ‘cure’ your writer’s block and attempt to get ‘back on task’?” he chides you. You falter, letting the regal pose fall away. Logan tells you that what you need is rest. You do not want to rest. But you don’t want to get lectured, either.

“I do not have any ideas for today. Or in general,” you grind out, the second part tacked on bitterly. You don’t look at them, even as Virgil knocks your elbow with his. 

“Good, that means you can come play Scrabble with us.”

The hesitance must show on your face, because Logan sighs and adds:

“I will allow you to use your original- completely nonsense, meaningless, irrational- words, if butchering the English language makes the game more fun for you.” 

Now that. That is a tempting offer. You really would be a fool to pass it up. 

You might as well indulge yourself this much, for however longer they’re willing to let you. It’ll be a nice memory to draw from when you do get back to work.

 Good God, your ribs hurt. You can’t breathe.

“I’m just saying, you can’t prove that the earth is round,” Virgil claims, staring mischievously across the table at Logan. Logan fumes. It is fucking hysterical.

“That’s ridiculous! Putting aside the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary for a moment, you can literally see the curve of the earth on the horizon!” 

“Uhh, it looks pretty flat to me. I’m not buying your government propaganda, Lo,” Virgil’s very clearly trying not to chuckle, and his resolve is impressive. You’ve already been reduced to unintelligible cackling at their interaction. This exchange has brought the progress on the jigsaw puzzle you’d been solving together to a screeching halt, but you couldn’t care less. 

“What do you mean ‘propaganda’?! This is common knowledge!”

Virgil cracks, bursting into raucous laughter. He grabs onto your arm as gravelly chuckles escape him, the both of you scrambling to keep upright. Logan narrows his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. 

“Unbelievable. Infuriating. Intolerable, the both of you.”

You compose yourself just enough to stick your tongue out at him teasingly, before hunching right back over into your giggle fit.

Then, you notice it as it happens. The aggravated expression etched across Logan’s face shifts, but he keeps staring at you. It’s inscrutable, and also weird. 

“What’re you looking at?” you challenge, voice broken up by subsiding laughter. You turn your head to Virgil, as if to say wow, what a nerd, huh?, only to find him staring at you with much the same expression. 

“Guys? Is something the matter?”

“It’s nothing,” Anxiety amends.

“I’m sure we were both just caught off guard, is all,” Logic adds, his attention redirected from you to the carpet hastily.

“In a good way, though. It’s nice to see you smile- ugh, that sounds so weird, I just meant- it’s been a long time since you’ve. Done that.”

You blink, taken aback, only to feel the dull ache in your face. You reach a hand up, pressing a finger to the corner of your upturned lips. It really has been a while since you’ve laughed like this, hasn’t it? 

A selfish, malicious creature that stalks around in your chest tells you to stop smiling. If you’re happy it means that their job is done, then you’ll be all alone again. Is that what you want, Roman? 

You almost listen to it. Before-

“Don’t think that I’ve forgotten what you said just because Roman laughed, V.”

“Nah, you never forget anything, O keeper of memories,” Virgil flicks a puzzle piece at Logan, smirking just enough to show off his sharp teeth. 

“Stop.”

“Stop what?” he flicks another puzzle piece. Logan’s face twitches in what is either a barely suppressed smile or a grimace, but likely a combination of the two. When Virgil finally aims a piece to hit his face, he snaps, throwing little bits of the jigsaw back at the anxious trait.

“Wow, L, you’re really just throwing away all our progress like that? Tsk, tsk.”

“I will end you,” he lands one smack on Virgil’s nose, earning a hiss. The puzzle continues to be destroyed by their squabble. 

You don’t think you could stop yourself from beaming at them, even if you wanted to. Toothy, confident, amused- oh, how you’ve missed this.

How you’ve all missed this.

 It hits you with the swiftness of a bullet, right when you least expect it. You’re just sitting in the living room, idly sketching as you half-watch TV with Patton beside you on the couch. You offer a laugh when he pipes up with a pun based on whatever’s on screen, but your mind is far elsewhere.

You’ve got an idea. A really good one. 

You’ve filled up a page with mindless doodling while the thought was still forming, for fear of jumping on it too suddenly and losing the inspiration, but you find it solid as you continue to mentally examine it. Perhaps a bit overeager, you flip the page, scrawling excited concept sketches across the thick, rough paper. The details flow and evolve in your mind’s eye, and it becomes something of a struggle to hold back your creative aura from infecting the common area. 

That confident smile, one you’ve been wearing more and more often these past few weeks, graces your face once more. The semi-subconscious expression brings a memory from just nights ago: Logan told you that your face was built to wear such a grin (‘Speaking architecturally, of course,’ he cleared his throat awkwardly, ‘The form that you’ve chosen for yourself is suited to it. Objectively.’). 

You find your smiling widening, just as it had when he first told you. 

So caught up in your art, half-listening to Patton, and also vaguely following along with the show he’s watching- you don’t even glance up when Virgil rises up and seats himself at the arm of the couch. It’s the way he huffs a laugh at something Morality says that first catches your attention, and suddenly he’s got all of it. 

“Virgil!” 

He grimaces at the volume, tilting his head to look at you. 

“Something got you excited, Ro?” 

“I’ve got a story! That is to say, I’ve got a premise, but also characters! Look- it’s- come here, let me show you what I’m drawing, it’s easier than explaining,” you chatter happily, shuffling your way to Virgil’s perch. You hold your sketchbook out to him and jump into explanations.

The drawing is messy, and not nearly finished, but it’s you and it’s good and it’s new. It’s a scene- heavily annotated to explain some of the more abstract concepts in the image- depicting an ent-like creature towering over a young woman, who holds a flower crown up to him. You tell Virgil about the story based around the two, some of the major plot points already planting themselves in your brain. You inform him that it just came to you, and you’ve got so many different ideas for what these two will do, what will happen to them, and how they’ll get out of it all. When you look up from your rambling, all the excitement slips off your face. It’s replaced by awe. 

Virgil is grinning, showing a good deal more of his fangs than he usually likes to, enthusiasm dancing in his eyes. You’ve never seen him emote that much ever, not for any purpose. You would be lying if you said that those huge chompers weren’t at least a little hot. 

“Okay, I totally wanna hear more, but pause for a sec. I gotta get Lo, ’kay?” And with that, he’s gone as quickly as he arrived, pausing only to toss the sketchbook back to you. You twist around, eyes wide with shock, to find Patton smiling softly at you. 

“You saw that, too, right? Or have I gone mad?” you ask him, earning a chuckle.

“I think Virge is proud of you,” he shuts the TV off as he talks, moving to stand, “I am, too! It sounds really cute!”

“Thank you,” Patton arches up to stretch, tossing the remote down on the couch. “-Er, where are you off to?”

“I think I’ll let you three have the living room, to talk all about your story.” 

“I’d hardly mind if you wanted to hear about it!”

His eyes dart to the side, an awkward smile stretching across his face. His noticeably pink face.

“Oh, I- I was planning on spending some time with Jan today. I was about to take off, anyhow.”

“Aah,” you start sketching again, if only to spare Patton your wolfish grin, “Well, if you’ve already got plans.”

He gives you a tiny wave, sinking out immediately. Thus leaving you alone with your thoughts. Fuck. 

It crosses your mind that- now you have an idea to work on, an idea you’re proud of- your slump is over. The creative block has been cured. Logan and Virgil won’t need to coddle you anymore. 

Your hand ghosts over the paper, and for a second you consider tearing it up. Pretending you lost the spark, pretending you need more time and help and companionship. Guilt rises in you at even the thought of being so selfish, the doubts and worries overpowering your former giddiness completely. 

You can’t imagine anything worse than that brilliant smile Virgil gave you turning to disappointment, if you pretended to lose your inspiration. Or the disdain that would surely flash in Logan’s eyes at having his work interrupted for absolutely nothing. Plus, if you did so, what’s to stop them deeming you a lost cause and abandoning you anyway? 

If you’re being honest, you need approval more than anything. And dear God, it is so close. You have to tell them, and hold on to whatever scraps of praise it earns you before the three of you revert back to normal. You’ll fall back into seclusion, as that seems to be one of the few things you’re good at, and they can actually get back to their own existences. 

There’s a whoosh behind you. You spin around, forcing the tension out of your shoulders. 

“Well hello there!”

“I want to hear about your story,” Logan cuts straight to the point. You couldn’t care less about his bland bluntness because he is watching at you in a way so unbearably fond. They both are. You push your reservations down and present him with your sketches, diving into what you’ve come up with so far (plus a few extra points off the top of your head, which isn’t an uncommon method for how you develop plotlines). 

When you’ve finished, not quite as exuberantly as earlier, Logan continues with the theme of surprising the fuck out of you that this day has established. 

He settles a hand on your upper arm, but really he might as well have swept you up in a hug. You blanch, the touch fuzzing up your brain, just like it has been doing so often now and God you don’t want to lose this. 

“I told you so,” he sounds playful.

“What?” you question, vaguely dazed.

“I think that L’s saying we were right about you just needing a break. Seems like the rest cleared up your burnout pretty well,” Virgil loops around to your other side, patting your shoulder awkwardly. 

The euphoria from being touched is broken once you actually manage to process the words.

“Oh! Right, yeah, I'm- I'm so excited to get back to work!”

Logan removes his hand and you burn cold. 

“No, you aren't,” you hear his confusion, like he's trying to unravel why that could possibly be and wow you are not as good an actor as you’d hoped. “What's upsetting you?”

You try to say that it's nothing, but your voice pitches up embarrassingly. You clear your throat, but you can't make yourself maintain eye-contact anymore.

“Dude, you can tell us what's up. Are you just overwhelmed?” Anxiety is worried and caring in a way you didn't know he was capable of and it hurts worse because you don't know how to tell him that you're just selfish. But you knew this was coming- and you aren't going to make these two waste their concerns on you any longer. The problem has been solved, Roman, get that through your skull! 

“I- I suppose I'm just- I’m lamenting the end of this. It’s unimportant.”

“You are upset about the end of your writer's block?” Logan tips his head to the side and gives you a bemused look. Frustration stabs at your skin.

“No! That's a good thing, obviously it's a good thing- I'm saying that I'm going to miss… I mean, I'd gotten used to spending time with you. The both of you,” Virgil's eyebrows shoot up, Logan squints at you, so you backpedal like there's no damn tomorrow.

“See? It was stupid, I know I can't always have all the attention, any-”

“You're right, that is stupid,” Virgil cuts you off with a grumble. You must deflate visibly, though, because his voice softens, “That you think we aren't gonna hang out with you, I mean.”

You feel something. You think it’s hope. It almost feels foreign- unbelievable, even. 

“What?” a murmur, too small and doubting for you to associate with it, though it must be yours. Pathetic.

Logan leans forward, as though he's studying you. Good God, who let him be so tall?

“Were you under the impression that we were going to cease contact with you once you resumed productivity?”

“Wha- I mean- when you say it like that it sounds… bad.”

“It would be bad. It would also be incredibly manipulative; being kind to you only so as to get you back in working order, rather than being kind to you to provide genuine help.”

Virgil nods his agreement.

“Yeah, you aren't getting rid of us that easy, Romano.”

You recall the first Big Conversation you had with the two left-brained sides. They'd insisted to help you, despite your lack of understanding in the beginning why they'd do so. Similarly to that talk, this is filling you with an almost painful fondness, almost too much to bear.

“But, you already helped me, just like you said you would!”

“Why did we help you, Roman?” Logan inquires, in a way that makes you feel like you should know the answer. You do not. 

“Because you were worried about me?”

“Why would we be worried?”

“Because you… felt bad for me?”

He groans, tapping Virgil on the shoulder. The anxious facet rolls his eyes.

“You're our friend and we care about you, stupid.”

You clear your throat, attempting to say that you knew that (even if that isn’t entirely true), but Logan interrupts you. 

“In case it wasn’t clear why, allow us to explain: one, as I’ve stated before and will likely state again, we don’t value you for your ability to create alone.”

“Two,” Virgil cuts in, “You’re, like, fun to be around. Way less stiff than us, and honestly we probably need that.”

“Three, we were never opposed to being around you even before the- this. You claimed to like being alone. And I’ll admit I’m not the best with subtext.” 

Virgil looks ready to add a fourth. You don’t let him, waving your hands wildly. If you verbalized what you meant to convey, you’d definitely start sobbing, and that’s just embarrassing. Thankfully, Anxiety seems to pick up what you’re laying down, giving you a moment to collect yourself. You take a few breaths and try to pretend that you aren’t being watched like a hawk.

Aaaand you’re already crying. That’s probably the point of no return, isn’t it? 

“Ha, and I thought that you two weren’t the sentimental ones,” the effect of your teasing is ruined by how much your voice wavers, “You’re just big softies, aren’t you?”

Logan’s expression is caught somewhere between concern and confusion.

“You are quite literally sobbing? How are we-”

“Shut up,” you retort. The effect is once again ruined when he comfortingly pats your back and you absolutely fall against him. 

“Wow, again? You’re really set on making a habit out of this,” Virgil hovers uncomfortably apart from the set of you, eventually landing on wrapping an arm around you. And it’s so him, that you can’t help the little chuckle that breaks through your crying. You really have been doing this a lot more than you’d like lately. 

“I- I’m okay,” you stammer, “I’m good- this is- just- I’m relieved. Why am I crying? I’m happy!” 

“It’s alright, man.”

“Yes, take as long as you need.”

You tear yourself away from them, scrubbing at your eyes, but grinning all the same. Your skin burns, you’re shivering, but you’re sick of clinging to them and crying and the desperation that tugs at you. You feel so many things, but there’s one that’s overpowering, one thing that’s so familiar and has been so distant. It’s a blur, a mash, but it goes something like this:

The people you care about, that you work so hard for- they aren’t going anywhere. No conditions. Logan repeats it plenty, Virgil shows it to you quietly, but only now-

Now you believe them. You feel looked after. Cared for. If you’re being bold, you could even say loved. 

You feel secure. 

“Thank you,” for being there, staying there, helping you, everything. You can’t thank them enough for everything.

Virgil shrugs. 

“You’re worth it.”

[uncloseted]

i know you like harry potter, right? i recently read an article called The Danger Of Ron & Hermione's Relationship (bustle) and i never thought about it that way... what do you think?

(Sorry in advance if this answer is a little disjointed) 

In general, I really dislike when people try to argue that Ron and Hermione are “toxic”.  They’re children who are the main (and sometimes only) combatants in a major war.  No, their emotional maturity is not at the level of an adult’s, and no, they don’t always make the best decisions with regards to one another, but I think that’s to be expected given the two above facts.  

I think the Hermione/Ron and Ginny/Harry ships were clearly set up as endgame from the beginning- even six year old me in 1999 could call that (and JKR says it too- “[the Ron/Hermione relationship had] far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron.”).  

There are a lot of people who hate Ron for who he is in the movies and forget that his book character has a lot more nuance.  In the movies, yes, his character is largely characterized by being mean to Hermione.  But in the books, he’s all sorts of things- a clever strategist, a loyal, good friend, in awe of Hermione’s intelligence, their guide to the Wizarding World, funny, sensitive, and ambitious, to name a few.  There’s actually a whole trope for this vilification of Ron- it’s called “Ron The Death Eater” (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RonTheDeathEater), and as you might expect from the name, it happens to Ron quite a bit.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “Ron Weasley spends the majority of time with Hermione being unkind to her”.  He spends the majority of time with her being her friend; even when we see their fights, it’s because those fights are unusual for them and because they move the plot along.  Ron’s “unkindness” towards Hermione largely comes from jealousy that she’s not interested in him- he’s upset because she went to the ball with someone else, he’s afraid that Hermione will choose Harry over him.  

And Hermione, for her part, isn’t a saint, either.  Ron can be insensitive when he makes jokes; Hermione is insensitive right back when she makes him feel stupid.  She “emotionally tears [Ron] down” just as much as Ron does to her, by tapping into his inferiority complex.  She often belittles him for not understanding things that are obvious to her, and is frequently unwilling to try to see things from his point of view.  For how smart she is, Hermione is incredibly unself-aware and emotionally inept at the beginning of the series, and that impacts her relationships just as much as Ron’s “emotional range of a teaspoon” does (something Hermione actually said about him to his face).  I think there’s also an aspect of that combative relationship that Ron and Hermione like- they’re young, and I think they see it as passionate.  

I think the article’s narrative also ignores that we do see a lot of really tender, caring moments between the two of them, especially after they mature and grow out of the “boys are mean because they like you” phase (which is true to life, whether we like it or not).  Ron only “gets the girl” once he starts being more emotionally mature and treating her well.  Ron can be petty, sure, but to suggest he’s just an abusive husband waiting to happen feels like nonsense to me.  He’s someone who’s shown himself to be incredibly kind, supportive, and loyal to Hermione as well.

Then the author of this article brings up Cursed Child to justify their point, which just shouldn’t be considered canon.  Everyone in Cursed Child is a weird flanderization of themselves and acts in ways that they wouldn’t in the core series.  Cedric Diggory becomes a Death Eater and Voldemort produced a child.  Cursed Child is garbage and shouldn’t be taken seriously at all.

To me, it mostly seems like the author of this article is projecting.  It seems like she just has a chip on her shoulder about an ex she has who is a “Ron Weasley”, and sees herself as a perfect Hermione character who can do no wrong and has to “apologize for who she is”, “suppress herself” and felt like she needed to “fix her Ron”.  To me it seems like she thinks that she deserved better, and that she can blame Harry Potter from preventing her from realizing it earlier (because that’s easier than admitting you made a bad decision).

Look, are Hermione and Ron a perfect couple at age 12, or 15, or 17?  No. Of course not.  But very few couples are.  You have to learn how to grow into and with one another, how to interact with one another in a way that’s healthy, how to honor your partner’s needs even when they’re not what you would need yourself.  Relationships don’t just pop into existence being perfect- they require work.  And I do think we see Ron and Hermione doing the foundation for that work throughout the series, and especially in book 7.  Should JKR have done more to show that Ron’s (and Hermione’s, for that matter) actions in the early books were NOT OKAY and ABUSIVE AND HARASSING?  Maybe.  But I don’t think it was meant to be that deep.  I think it was just a woman who grew up in the 70s writing kids the way they acted when she was a kid herself.  Sometimes the ways kids act are “problematic”, but I think it’s better to show that than to have every character be a paragon of morality.

Also, on a side note, the “JKR REGRETS RON AND HERMIONE TOGETHER” thing that the Bustle author cites was, like a lot of the things she says, taken out of context and blown out of proportion to the actual comment.  I don’t want to be a JKR apologist here, because I do think she holds some awful views, but I think it’s important to get the whole picture when things she’s said get referenced.  In the article, she’s talking about how she doesn’t know if Ron and Hermione could get past the “combative side of [their relationship]” as adults, but then she also says, “oh, maybe she and Ron will be alright with a bit of counseling, you know...they'll probably be fine. He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical.”  She acknowledges that while they both have issues, they can work through them and have a relationship that’s successful. 

Edit to add: I do get where the author of that article is coming from. A lot of little girls are told to put up with bullshit from little boys because “he’s being mean because he likes you” or “boys will be boys”. But I don’t think the Harry Potter series, which models all different types of relationships, can be blamed for that. We should be holding the parents, teachers, coaches, etc. who say those things accountable and asking them to think differently instead of blaming media representations of relationships.

[smuttymess]

bts astro soulmate reading | for brie

sign: aries sun | taurus moon | cancer rising

lover: Jung Hoseok | soulmate: Kim Seokjin

This reading is for Brie, a Jin bias with Namjoon as a wrecker. I can’t tell you how much Iove a woman that loves our fine ass hyungs. Thanks for waiting, and please enjoy <3

Those born under an Aries Sun and Taurus Moon are a truly powerful force and are considered one of the prized fighters of the zodiac. You are extremely independent and move through the world on your own terms, craving stability - both emotionally and financially - but also artistic and creative expression/freedom, traits which are often at odds with each other. Your Aries Sun is spontaneous, excitable, and determined while your Taurus Moon you patient, grounded, and rooted in reason. While you may have struggled with striking a balance between these two ideals throughout your life, over time it is likely that you've learned to harness your enthusiasm and focus, understanding how to both dream and do in a practical manner. Your watery Cancer rising brings softness and raw emotion to the tangible, grounded nature of your fire and earthy persona. While you are extremely driven towards your goals, Cancer makes you outwardly emotional, expressing your wide range of moods, making you inherently human and more endearing to everyone in your orbit. Highly charming, charismatic, and emotionally intelligent, you are a natural born leader amongst your friends, family and colleagues, likely finding ways to merge your need for artistry and creativity with something that draws a profit. You know how to speak simply about your many entrepreneurial ideas, but with an energy that makes people believe that your words hold authenticity and weight. And as a true caring and sensitive nature of your Cancer rising, that sincerity is your super power.

You, dear Aries, know how to get what you want in life without being overly pushy or manipulative, your passionate yet calm nature typically making people see things your way. This comes in handy in your work life where you lead teams and spearhead projects but also in any social setting. Your demeanor naturally attracts swaths of new fans and admirers in spaces where your communication prowess is able to shine. As a result, you are a bit spoiled - your Taurus moon is quite stubborn and occasionally inflexible when faced with opposing opinions while your Cancer rising makes you particularly sensitive to others viewpoints. While at a dinner party with some coworkers you can't help but feel your blood boiling as you sit across the table from Jung Hoseok, a mutual acquaintance and the life of the party whose sole purpose seems to be to toy with you, playfully pressing your buttons and watching you come undone. He is opinionated, unapologetic, smart, and not hanging off of every word you say - offering up valid retorts to your arguments and having fun doing it. Loving a challenge, you can't can't help but find yourself trying to bring him to see your side of things, resulting in an intellectual sparring match that everyone else can't help but observe. You can't help but be drawn to his striking features as he retorts: the sharpness of his jaw, the darkness of his eyes, his clearly intelligent mind and charisma to match yours. Your Taurus Moon and Cancer rising generally makes you more of a romantic, valuing a long-term relationship over a short term fling with a handsome stranger. But there is something about Hoseok: you don't know much about him, but you definitely want to fuck his brains out sooner rather than later.

Luckily, that is exactly what this Aquarius has in mind as he calls for his car after leaving the second bar where you've ended your night, his hands moving steadily up your back and lets out hisses against your neck. You melt into his grip, your hard Cancer shell crumbling while he whispers into your ear. Show me more of that fire, won't you? And you do, shoving him against the leather interior of his backseat as his fingers move to roll up the partition. In mere seconds you are devouring each other, his mouth moving from your lips to your neck and down to your nipples, licking each one and making you shudder before slipping his fingers beneath the fabric of your skirt and your panties. You can feel his hardness pressed between your legs, and want nothing more than to feel him deeper as his fingers expertly work your clit before finding your center. Eyes locked, you fuck yourself against his fingers while he stares up at you with awe and pure, unadulterated lust. In this moment and the weeks that follow you two are in game of who can drive each other the craziest, your competitive egos more than happy to play. This is the first in a series of wild nights of you getting fucked in various public locations - bars, restaurant bathrooms, dressing rooms - his fingers in your mouth as he stifles your frenzied moans as he makes you cum back to back. Your inhibitions cease to exist when Hoseok is involved, igniting a certain energy in you that has you practically always craving his cock.

For Aquarius Hoseok, sex is a sport, a means of expressing energy and physicality and not necessarily love in the way that you would prefer. His Mars is in Aquarius, making him at times detached and impulsive in relationships. You are impatient, wanting more of a commitment after so much incredible sex and time spent while Hoseok only plays on his terms and no one else's. Ultimately, you can recognize are interested in a more traditional, solidified relationship which the airy, less emotional Aquarius can provide. While your emotional disconnect does not equip you for long-term love, the sex is something that you can't (and don't) give up easily, reuniting with him whenever you see his name pop across your phone. I land tomorrow, can I take you out? You never say no.

One of the main pleasure-seekers of the zodiac, your sign is often seeking out life's finest things from sex and food to travel and new experiences. Your refined taste lends itself to adventures including international jaunts (Aries kryptonite) and of course the most delicious food a city has to offer. It is no surprise when, on a trip of Seoul, that you find yourself booked at the restaurant owned by the infamous Kim Seokjin - its had nothing but rave reviews. Its on this particular night that the owner is making a surprise appearance as a maitre'd, a no-phones policy keeping the vibe intimate but still lively and high-spirited. You are drawn to his effortless Sagittarius confidence, the way that he so easily plays to the guests and the fans that occupy each table as the soju flows and the delicious scenes float around the room. As one of the last tables to dine, an adorably tipsy and flushed Seokjin slides into your booth, asks you how you enjoyed yourself. In the moment it is hard for for you to pretend that you were focusing on anything else that night but the breadth of his shoulders in his button up, the way sweat formed on his brow as he sauntered from table to table, or the generally perfect nature of his face. You are both sugar and spice, singing high praises of the meal and atmosphere while flashing him a fiery stare, suggesting you're interested in more than food. Seokjin bites, equally curious in getting to know what lies beneath that Capricorn exterior. I'm hosting a smaller gathering for my chef to present a new tasting menu - would love to have you.

Your Aries and Jin's Sagittarius Suns have multitudes of acquaintances but only few close friends, and are not ones to commit to anyone or anything too soon emotionally. Yes, you're both big softies beneath a cool exterior but you have been hurt before and therefore have incredibly high standards for the people you involve yourself with romantically. As a result, your dates are proper and curated and of course competitive - think go-carting or mini golf and a four-course dinner, and a chance to get to really know each other beyond the physical even if its just a few dates (you're both impatient). You can hardly wait when you find yourself backed against his front door after you return from that evening's date, a whimper escaping you as he pushes his body firmly against yours as he leans in to trace your lips with his. Stopping just short of a kiss, he smiles at your desperation. I'm going to show you how much I hate losing. You're happy to show him up more often if it means more nights like this: your legs pinned up by your shoulders as Jin thrusts into you softly and deeply until you're cumming mercilessly onto his cock, grabbing onto his thick hair and broad back to stabilize yourself. The hot sex launches you into a relationship that starts off very fun, light-hearted but over time moves into something more serious - something you both likely didn't expect but are happy to fall into.

Jin's Saturn in Aquarius makes him a very diligent, dedicated worker - its one contributor to his major career success - and he likes to enjoy the benefits of his hard work. He very much a provider in the traditional sense, in that he wants to take care of the ones he loves with no questions asked. Jin is happy to provide you with the financial stability you require, as long as it makes you free to pursue more creative, perhaps less lucrative endeavors. For the Sagittarius man in love, you can't put a price tag on joy - the limit does not exist, and this is only aided by his romantic Capricorn Venus which just wants to make you smile by any means necessary. It is not that he is your sugar daddy by any means, he just instinctively wants to anything to make you happy. He enjoys watching your face light up while talking about a new entrepreneurial endeavor and ways to boost your shared wealth, our mind working a mile a minute as you work through your many ideas that he thinks are both crazy and brilliant. You often struggle to recognize your greatness and unlock your potential, something Seokjin's Aries Moon sees and understands on a deep level. His Aries Moon can make him impatient with you and relentless in making you see what he sees.

It's worth mentioning that while Aries holds their own in any relationship, your Taurus Moon is innately turned on by his ability to take care of you financially. He has no issue showering you with affection, gifts, or whatever you need - his Capricorn Venus pairing well with your Cancer rising which is the embodiment of sensitivity, emotion and romance. For you, sex is a way in which you express your love, thinking of ways to satisfy and be satisfied in return. Even when you're the one dressed head to toe in an angelic impossibly gorgeous white lingerie set he bought you when he walks through the door, you hold the reigns. I want to take care of you, baby. Let me do that, please? Your dynamic in bed is naturally one where you are more dominant, with Seokjin happy to lean back against the couch cushions and submit while you lower your lips onto his cock, your tongue swirling around the tip just how he likes it. Nothing is hotter to you than looking up at him, his eyes fixated on your lips as you swallow him - his groans picking up in fervor as you work your way up and down his length. Only you know how to get him this incredibly hard, practically ready to lose it before you climb on top of him sliding the fabric of your stockings to the side so you can take him in. The sex here is sexy but sweet, his lips sucking on your sensitive nipples as his hands gently roam your body to heighten the sensation of your bodies together. I like to think that Jin has a bit of a breeding kink, one that you're happy to indulge, his strong hands frantically gripping your hips and sweet nothings pouring out of his lips as he finishes in you. I love you so much, baby, so fucking much. Jin is insatiable, so there will always be rounds.

Aries and Sagittarius are two of the most passionate signs in the zodiac and you both need someone who endlessly fuels their respective fires. While their interests and careers may take them around the globe and to great heights, you two never stop having fun together. Once these signs go for it, they truly commit to making the best of their partnership, keeping the spark alive by all means necessary: with silly dance parties and hot tub sex in your winter chalet after days of snowboarding in Aspen. You require your finances and relationships, both romantic and familial, to be solid before you can focus on other areas of life, often obsessing over making sure these pieces are in place (looking at you, Taurus moon!) Luckily, Sag Jin is able to take your mind off of the money and onto less serious matters so you can enjoy all of life's little pleasures, of which he knows there are many. With your inner Aries/Taurus worlds battling for stability and adventure, your home needs to reflect each of these proclivities. Luckily, this sense of excitement and responsibility is something that you and Jin share, and you can both take comfort in knowing you could easily spend your Monday night curled up with a favorite movie or jetting off to Jeju Island for a day trip. Together, you cultivate a warm and inviting home that reflects your many travels and adventures, alongside all of the creature comforts you both need (RJ plushes galore). This pairing is one of uniqueness and a learned ability to not care what anyone thinks, allowing you to live peacefully in your own perfectly quirky, fun and beautiful world. Together, the fire of Aries and spontaneous, highly adaptable nature of Sag makes for a strong duo that can achieve great things so long as they have a business manager handling all of their affairs - making sure they don't go too overboard along the way.

[border-spam]

Troy HC dump

These span all eras and are valid for the Troy I write , some are 18+ so read more at your discretion:

Hugely into any puzzle / collection echo games (think puzzle and dragons), and uses them to relax very often in private. Finds puzzle games really destress him and help him sleep. Has spent an insane amount of money in them.

Keeps his own personal coffers and the amount he spends wouldn’t even be noticeable against his almost infinite wealth , but he’d be intensely embarrassed if anyone found out how much God King Calypso spends on gatchas.

Hair is naturally very thick, his iconic hairstyle was originally born out of frustration after going for a bandit mohawk, realising how much work that was going to be every day, then swiping it all forwards and hoping for the best.

Has v little torso hair but does pluck the patchy little bits he grows for the aesthetic, bitch.

Incredibly hygienic for a Pandoran, but more so with his oral hygiene than anything else. Had to keep a rigorous cleansing routine for the first few months after his jaw mod and just kept it up from then on.

Understands a huge amount of different languages, but not fluently. Leda taught him the basics of a lot of language cores and he can understand and read a lot relatively well. Cant speak or write them though, and keeps this skill close to his chest.

He’s intensely clever and realised early how useful it was to understand what sponsors were saying to each other in “private” by using another language during meetings with the twins. He’s turned having his intelligence underestimated so often into a weapon he wields with great skill.

His hand writing is atrocious. He can read it fine, but not even Tyreen can half the time. Almost proud of having his own shitty shorthand code he can use for notes.

Can count the amount of times he’s worn underwear by choice on his one hand since adulthood. Didn’t have any on Nekrotafeyo, and fuck it. Freedoms comfortable and let’s you have very low slung pants.

Very low slung pants are very good at distracting possible competitors/business partners enough during interactions to either cause them to slip up, or underestimate his cunning again. Either works fine for him, he gets attention, and the upper hand. Win win.

Snores really bad from a combo of mods and compromised respiratory system. Modded tongue tends to slowly extend the deeper his sleep gets, and he’s woken up with it over his eyes before. Will completely deny he snores, only Tyreen has heard it and she’s clearly lying, right?

Did most of his own piercings and barely flinched. Full on SOBBED after he pierced his nips. Sat on his bathroom floor for an hour waiting for the pain to pass while strongly second guessing his life decisions.

Gets extremely emotionally invested in classical music / soundtracks and falls asleep listening to his fave playlists often. Has nicer dreams when he does than if he doesn’t, and also feels like it helps boost his creativity while working. Doesn’t know why.

A combo of keeping his neck covered under the collar, and the scarring on his throat, has left it hyper sensitive when uncovered. A caress will instantly have him snapping viciously or melting into a gasping mess of goosebumps and shivers depending on who’s hand it was.

Super comfortable with nudity, his self esteem issues are focused on his body’s layout and the self perceived damage/disfunction of it, nudity doesn’t come into play at all.

That is, as long as his bracer is on. What’s under the bracer is the one part of his body he would be terrified of showing to someone he valued in a vulnerable situation. Any COV worshipper stupid enough to think just because they can touch him naked means they could try and touch under the bracer is going to really miss their hand afterwards ( if they are still alive to miss it ).

Would love to be able to play a musical instrument well but he’s struggled with any he tried before as only his existing hand is dextrous enough for one. Would really appreciate and treasure someone with the patience and kindness to teach him, but knows that would mean dropping the God King persona, and can’t justify damaging their reputation just for something that would make him happy.

Gets recognised instantly regardless of how he dresses or looks, which he loathes. There is no way to hide his height or build, let alone the markings on his face. Really misses being able to just wander and explore like he could in the COV’s early days.

Really, really, really loves food, but his ill health means he can’t eat the way he’d like and often has to avoid foods he wished he could eat more. God King Calypso is known for being exceptionally choosy about the food he eats. In reality, Troy just can’t trust a lot of the overly rich food he’s served.

Massively enjoys cooking in his Sanctum when alone, and would treasure doing so for anyone he sees as a friend. Has, very rarely in the past, and loved seeing how surprised they were that he’s not useless at it.

Solely drinks alcohol to get drunk, can’t really taste beer very well and doesn’t enjoy most spirits. He’s a functional alcoholic but would deny he relies on it or other drugs (he absolutely does) and blows off concern from medics as it being something he chooses to do, not needs.

Wishes he could smoke Pandoran weed but wouldn’t risk the damage to his weak lungs, tends to make tea with what he grows in his ship, shares it with Tyreen a lot. She can’t touch plants, so he has no problem doing the green thumb work and sharing with her when she needs to relax.

Unless their dad had thought it to them or they saw it in an echo show, then the twins had no grasp of basic social do’s and don'ts when they reached Pandora.

Troy would have no problem sitting in a merger meeting picking his nose while Tyreen scratched her ass in front of board members. They learned a lot of their social skills the hard way, having been asked to please, please stop by priests and saints.

Has never won a burping competition against Tyreen in his life. Is genuinely irritated by this.

Can’t dance. Can strut and pose, has a great sense of rhythm, just cannot for the life of him do anything dance wise. Please don’t ask him to it will end in tears (his).

Savant with numbers, sees them as patterns like his dad did. Thought everyone could till he met people on Pandora. Gets aggressively frustrated with anyone who he needs to explain his process for reaching a mathematical conclusion to, because they never get it.

Complete idiot tier for animals. Likes them a lot, just doesn’t know what any of them are and no one is in a position to correct him without risking embarrassing the God King publicly and having their neck snapped.

Calls everything he sees a Skag. Rakks? Flying Skags. Bullymongs? Arm Skags. Skags? “Those bitchin lil’ mouth dudes.”

Really enjoys art and has a beautiful defined style with spray paint. Dumbs it down for propaganda, but his Sanctum is filled with canvases that are experimental colour and line pieces. Very much likes working with holy iconography but tends to only illustrate Tyreen this way in his own time..

Spends a lot of hours in the Mechanicum and knows a lot of the Tinks in higher leadership position by name. Likes to talk engineering with them and feels comfortable enough to drop a lot of the God King persona and actually enjoy the conversation.

A Troy who’s excited and interested in a discussion is all twinkling eyes and gentle, eager smile. He often has to remind himself to shift back into persona mid conversation, and it can be quite.. sad.. to see him go from so clearly happy, back to an icy, scathing asshole.

Incredible at lying but cannot bluff for shit. Play any card game with him and he has instant facial tells (squints and sticks his tongue slightly out the side of his mouth when looking at his cards). Doesn’t understand why he could never win against his dad or Tyreen, probably never will.

Would never wear his reading glasses publicly, thinks they completely destroy his overall aesthetic and lines of his face mods. Won’t accept his’s wrong about this from anyone, though he personally likes how much more like himself he looks when wearing them in private.

Tyreen was so sick of seeing his ass crack, she was the one who suggested the overly tight belt that became part of his outfit. All his pants that are the right length are far too wide in the waist for his narrow hips. He could just get fitted ones now, but the low slung waist line + belt combo is part of his look at this point.

Incredibly high pain tolerance for almost everything, says he barely felt the tattoos and genuinely means it. The constant pain from the bracer and damaged shoulder joint has let him numb to most other relatively low levels of pain.

Is an amazing kisser as long as what you enjoy is the threat of being consumed alive. Troy’s mouth is a self designed weapon, verbally and physically, and he’s never been in a position to learn to use it tenderly. Doesn’t let worshippers choose to kiss him when bedding them, and is aggressive with it if he chooses to kiss them.

Would love to learn how to be tender from someone who cared for him and he felt safe enough with to allow his persona to slip and be vulnerable with, but as the years go on and the God King becomes more in control, Troy has become resigned to the fact that it’s something he will never have.

Very self conscious about his hygiene and showers usually twice daily if he can. Everything on Pandora is covered in sweat and filth, and he can’t risk getting infections considering the amount of open ports along his body. Really enjoys scents and has a surprisingly large collection.

Gets highly irritated with public displays of affection. Intensely, soul crushingly envious.

This gets dangerous late God King era as he becomes more and more violent. People have learned to be extremely careful to not show affection to each other in viewing distance of him at all, or risk losing a limb. Or worse.

Sex drive only gets higher as time goes on. For the first few years he much preferred pleasuring himself rather than interacting with the squalid heaving masses of followers throwing their bodies at him, but by the time of the God King era in later COV years, he can’t stand touching himself anymore. He doesn’t want to touch his body, and the God King is more than happy to let others praise it nightly instead.

Sleeps with huge cushions he brushes off as being for comfort, but deep down he knows its because their weight and pressure helps him not feel so alone.

Squints a lot and is known for scowling, but it’s mostly due to terrible headaches, not eye sight issues or his mood. The dark eye makeup helps with the glare a little but he’s noticeably paler than his sister due to the bright sun causing them more often than not and him preferring to stay in the shade of indoors.

Has kept every single thing given to him out of kindness. Will keep sugar packets if someone brings him a coffee with one out of concern for him looking tired. If he feels it was done because they like him and not out of respect for his title, he will keep anything he’s been given.

Most of the people who gave him these tiny things he’s kept.. well.. they aren’t around anymore (no one he’s gotten to know well chooses to stay very long ).. but he still likes to look through them sometimes when he needs to be reminded he’s possible to like.

The collection looks like a little box of trash to anyone else, but bar his old jacket his father made for him out of one of his own that he still keeps hidden away, it’s probably his most treasured possession.