#and feeling less like suicide is an option. but that's hard especially when it's all that i can think about

[scarletcomet]

there's such a stigma around mental illness, especially around psych wards. fuck that. i've been using and will continue to use "i was just released from the psych ward" as an excuse when something feels too overwhelming, even the most simple tasks.

[ironunderstands]

AAAAAAAAA

Genuinely I feel annoying as fuck for saying this but like I can’t stand the way anybody else but me or my mutuals writes Aventio/Ratiorine 90% of the time

So, to vent my frustration, here’s a not in order at all bulleted list of stuff I absolutely despise when seeing content of them. This is not to call ppl out or anything, I just wanna rant about my preferences lol

oh and cw: mentions of slavery, nsfw, suicidal tendencies and non-con

-one or both of them being way to horny/flirty

Maybe this could work in content with an established relationship, but like, these guys don’t fuck, I’m sorry, they don’t. They are the biggest virgin losers ever regardless of if they have had sex in the past or not. Some of yall don’t get that they were acting in Penacony for the most part and Aventurine’s flirtiness didn’t have any weight behind it, he was really just messing with Ratio. I think if he were seriously trying to court Ratio, he’d probably be LESS flirty, but that’s just me. I understand why people make nsfw of them without any kinda buildup because well it’s fun, but for me personally I don’t really like it 90% of the time, however I fully get this is a me thing. I can tolerate it more in fanart bc well it’s fanart so yeah there’s not gonna be 3000k words of lore behind it, but like if I’m reading a fic and Aventio go from not even being in a relationship to having sex on a whim it just confuses me.

-yandere anything

I despise this trope already but it makes me 100000x more annoyed because holy shit neither of them would be a yandere I get it some people like this but WHYY THEMMM it doesn’t make sense. Yandere Aventurine makes me even more mad bc why the fuck would he make someone suffer like he did when he was younger???

-emotionless Ratio

Idk why half the community treats Ratio like he’s an unfeeling logic robot who’s sole goal is knowledge even when the game beats you over the head about how he’s the exact fucking opposite of that, but honestly I think this is just a symptom of the fact that a lot of ratiorine writers don’t give two fucks about him at all and he’s practically written as a plot device for Aventurine’s characterization.

-misunderstanding why Ratio is a tsundere

I’ve seen a lot of people misinterpret how and why Ratio is a tsundere towards Aventurine, citing it as if he doesn’t want to be associated with him/looks down upon him/is ashamed to like him when that’s really not true at all. Ratio respects and cares about Aventurine a hell of a lot, and he isn’t shy at all to show it when it’s necessary (see DSAIWYTBOL or the “if you can’t hold on any longer then tell me”). However, the reason he pushes away Aventurine isn’t exactly personal (although Aventurine’s closeness to him is part of the reason why).

Rather, Ratio tends to downplay his close relationships a lot, likely as a defense mechanism, as he admits himself that he isn’t good with people in one of the dialogue options with trailblazer for the express visits. Now why he is this way is a subject of speculation because Ratio rarely ever talks about himself, and the only character who actually has a voiceline on him is Aventurine himself, so it’s very hard to get an outside perspective on him. His character stories don’t really help that much either, as they are more about his personal philosophy and journey in life rather than his personality.

However, taking what Ratio says towards Aventurine at face value when he has proven the opposite (especially considering how the trope of the tsundere is kinda centered on the character in question spouting bullshit) results in people completely misunderstanding their relationship which can get REALLY annoying. Ratio doesn’t think Aventurine is an idiot in the slightest, he just worries about how his methods put himself in danger, not his capabilities.

-fast burn

You’re telling me these emotionally constipated idiots will get together easily? No. There’s a reason I write the most crazy bullshit happening to them before a confession scene and that’s because that’s the only way you can get them to confront their goddamn feelings quickly.

-slavery aus/anything like this

Self explanatory. If you have fetishized Aventurine’s past or made stuff like this please stay 1000 feet away from me at all times or block me. Thank you 🙏

-babying Aventurine

He’s one of the most competent members of the cast, but somehow people act like his breakdown scene in 2.1 is how he behaves 24/7 when that isn’t true at all. Aventurine is incredibly smart, and single-handedly clawed his way to the top. He does not need Ratio to save him. Would he appreciate Ratio’s support? Of course, and he definitely needs loving relationships in his life, but Aventurine isn’t a damsel in distress and not everything in his life is miserable and related to his trauma.

-or the horrible reverse of babying Aventurine: his trauma doesn’t exist actually and he’s perfectly fine/ they write him like it never happened

This one is rather rare and it has overlap with a few of the other points (seriously I’m gonna tweak out the next time someone writes the character who is implied to have survived sex trafficking being a person who would even dream of crossing others boundaries). Usually this happens because people treat Aventurine’s playboy mask as if it’s his actual personality and not traits he picked up to survive and succeed at his goals, and while admittedly even Aventurine is losing track of where the mask ends and he begins, some of y’all take it wayy to far even going on to unironically call him a fuckboy when he’s anything but that. The thing is, I think this happens when people erase who Kakavasha is from their minds, and act as if that side of Aventurine is a purely innocent child and all the “bad” parts of him are part of Aventurine’s mask. However, that’s not true, and Aventurine’s most admirable traits ARE Kakavasha’s. His strategicness, his intellegence, his bravery, these are all traits he possessed long before becoming Aventurine of stratagems, something which he demonstrated when he for example got his sisters neckless back, or made that bet with his first enslaver.

Aventurine’s purity and Aventurine’s capabilities are not separated between Kakavasha and Aventurine of Stratagems, both of those qualities ARE Kakavasha’s so if you are going to write him with the mask off, you have to write BOTH, not give into one or the other.

The things I tend to drop when writing him with the mask off are his false compliments and niceties, acting like he really gives a shit about the IPC’s goals, turning down the flamboyance and cockiness to reasonable levels and making him seem less like he’s playing pretend. Honestly I don’t think it’s that hard yet this is still a pitfall I see a lot of people stumbling into.

-Ratio talking like a goddamn encyclopedia

I understand he’s like that sometimes, but he also is well versed in internet lingo and seriously nobody unironically talks like that 24/7 because it’s pointless, and Ratio doesn’t use big words to seem smart, he uses them when they are necessary.

Like I’m sorry but if they are in a middle of having sex and unprompted Ratio starts talking like a biology textbook I’m closing the fic and running around my room screaming BECAUSE GOD IS IT CRINGE. Promoted it can be funny because yeah I can see him doing that but oh my god HE WOULD NOT SAY THAT I don’t even want to give an example it pisses me off that bad but trust me it’s a common phenomenon AND I HATE IT

-Aventurine trying to kill himself 24/7

He isn’t an active suicide risk every goddamn day of his life, he’s just self destructive and those are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

Yes, he tested if you could die in the dreamscape several times, but that’s because one of the favorable outcomes for his mission WOULD BE DYING in the dreamscape. He’s not doing this during a normal work week and even if I believe he still has suicidal tendencies, he’s not gonna throw his life away randomly or over nothing

-Ratio holds authority over Aventurine in any capacity

No, just no. Like the only other thing he might have over him is being intelligent, although they both are smart at different things so even then does it matter? Like I’m sorry but normal human with the ability to float and make imaginary constructs versus LITERAL FUCKING STONEHEART is not a fair fight on Ratio’s end. It doesn’t matter that he’s physically larger than Aventurine, muscles don’t mean shit in a sci-fi setting, especially when your opponent can just summon 3 bajillion coins to drop into your head at a whim and there’s nothing you can do about it. Not like Aventurine would ever dream of hurting him, of course, but seriously people need to stop acting like their different in stature really means anything. Even in terms of position, Aventurine probably outranks him so this false sense of authority people apply to Ratio in their relationship is confusing at best.

Hmm, well that’s all the things I remember to bitch about although I probably have more complaints. To be fair, whenever they aren’t written like incredibly smart people who are idiots hopelessly in love with one another when together I pop a blood vessel so most of these (besides THAT one) are non issues and if you have made/enjoyed these don’t feel ashamed because of my opinions. I needed to let out my inner grinch every once and awhile, so thanks for reading

[pencileraser1]

pencil eraser one. you word your long posts about dps very well so im pointing my frustration with media-ly illiterate people in your direction. im constantly seething with rage at this podcast episode i listened to a very long time ago abt dps bc they said neils suicide was STUPID and OVERDRAMATIC. and i just. i wanna throw up that boy killed himself and ur calling himnoverdramatic what do i even do. i am high a little and this is very much affecting me i cant get up from this couch 🎀

you're completely correct for this i actually have a few thoughts about this so uh bear with me for a second

theres something that sucks so much about this specific type of criticism of this movie in particular to me because of how much i relate to neil. i watched dps for the first time when i was 17, severely depressed and borderline suicidal and i related So Much to him. i didn't write off his suicide or criticize it because i'd Been There.

generally i feel like this criticism probably stems from lack of understanding Why he would do what he did, and there's a number of reasons that that this could be although that would be leaning a bit too much into psychoanalysis and assuming things i don't know about them so i'm not going to go into it really

up until it happens, neil seems like he's doing mostly okay, and particularly if you haven't seen the movie before i could see how to certain people his suicide might seem overdramatic since it's a bit of a sudden shift from mostly okay to suicidal. but the thing is that up until this point, neil has just been doing a very good job at hiding that something is wrong.

my interpretation of the movie has always been that he'd struggled with some form of depression as well as dealing with some amount of suicidal ideation before the movie and had just generally been good at masking it. during the events of the movie he is the happiest he has ever been because of the combination of the poets, acting, and keating. so when at the end of the play his father suddenly takes away all three, and his options are either to confront his father (something that he feels is impossible to do- even if it technically isn't, the fear he has surrounding it of his father listening but not caring, or making things worse than the are, or anything else, prevents him from doing it) or suffer through 10 years of medical school away from anything he actually cares about, he decides to remove himself from the situation entirely instead.

(theres something about the way his suicide is framed within the movie where in some fucked up way his suicide more than anything else is his carpe diem. he's seizing control of his life in the only way he is physically capable of anymore)

neil's suicide isn't rational but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense or that he's overdramatic. just because logically waiting out the 10 years until he's away from his dad or leaving as soon as he graduates high school or turns 18 or whatever it is is a better option doesn't mean that 1. he'd have the idea to run away early or more importantly think it doable (he tries so hard to not directly disobey his father the whole movie and after doing it one time is now stuck in This situation, additionally, while this is the 50's and in general shit costed less/jobs were easier to get/etc. he is financially dependent on his father and running away without any support is not the smartest decision) and 2. that he'd be physically capable of enduring the 10 years. because 10 years is a long time Especially if it's 10 years studying to become a doctor, something that is both generally difficult and also something he Doesn't Want To Do. and so the sudden switch from happiest time of his life to suicidal throws people off and they don't understand why he wouldn't have done any of the other options that they thing are the logical ones but to him probably didn't seem physically possible.

[bottlecap-joe-spooky]

How bad is the extent of Miles Edgeworth's mental state in rise from the ashes?

Tw: suicide, implied self harm

Obviously he ends up essentially leaving a suicide note of "prosecutor edgeworth chooses death", but that could be symbolic. He HAD already quit his job (one of the only things that had held his life together possibly since his father died) so him as Prosecutor edgeworth had essentially "died".

There's also the ambiguous definition of "dying" in the note. Did he mean it as in he would not be coming back (from death or to prosecution or to japanifornia or whatever) or as he would never come back as the same person (the "demon" prosecutor) or just to fake his own death for a little moral/mental break or whatever (everyone's allowed a little gay panic break every once in a while).

Who knows, and I genuinely love the ambiguity the game leaves.

Obviously, phoenix takes it as a serious suicide note, and is obviously absolutely wrecked by it for the next year. This is a topic often touched upon in fanfiction, though not in the game quite as much. Obviously it is hard to talk about mental health issues in a lawyer game, and they do it really well for a game not technically focused on it and from the early 2000s. Specifically for Maya and Edgeworth I think, as they both have loads of trauma that they deal with in fully different ways. Miles is more worrying though, as most of his coping skills are absolutely horrible, he has very little emotional support, and he's been pretty messed up in the head.

I honestly wonder a lot which people and relationships are meant to mirror the main characters, like phoenix saying shit like "that's so romantic- he saved you- I guess I'd fall in love too-" for the Delite's love story or edgeworth saying Adrian andrews codependent situation is very similar to how Franziska operates with her father or definitely Lana and ema reminding Phoenix of Mia and Maya or him literally telling Adrian andrews to kill herself in court. Specifically that last one. He specifically phrases it as "if you're going to say you would 'choose death', that is of no concern to me."

There is some especially worrying evidence in rise from the ashes, when he was at the most mentally unstable he's ever been. The only time that would compare was when his dad died when he was 8, but even then he had a new foster family to rely on (more or less). He's at his very worse, because, after 15 or so years, all of his past has just been dredged up and solved (by "that man" no less. Also, side note, does he only start saying Phoenix "saved him" after he came back from the dead?)

I really don't like any implications of why edgeworth would have traces of blood on the ground, especially at this point in his life.

So the options here are 1) it's someone else's blood, and maybe he fucking slapped someone so hard they bled or 2) it's his blood on his office floor for whatever reason. Neither imply anything remotely good for his mental state.

At this point it really could just be coincidence and ema is right or whatever. It's an easily missed peice, completely unrelated to the case and just an interesting tidbit for lore maybe. But sadly I found more evidence to support that that is not indeed the case.

I can't remember what the plot point for edgeworth's knife besides the fact that he had it in the car for Lana to find.

Mmm yeah ema. What is that little fruit doing with a knife? Very low chance that gay man knows self defense tbh.

Ema goes on to suggest he spends weekends "roughing it in the wild" and Phoenix basically laughs in her face (does this girl not understand what a homosexual man he is) as Edgeworth has probably never been in "the wild" a day in his life.

This doesn't feel like a coincidence anymore. There is cleaned up blood on his floor, enough for a nosebleed, and there is a knife in his car. One which he would probably never actually use on another person. This and then added to the fact that he had just quit his job and "died" shortly after. it's pretty obvious he is doing worse than even what he says, as he actually is kind of open about how he is doing throughout the games. Obviously he's always trying to hide his feelings (which Phoenix always sees right through), but during the case he does mostly explain to them exactly what is happening. Not that they do or even can help.

His entire career was based around punishing himself for something he didn't actually do. There is no way he isn't harbouring a lot of self loathing, and it's hinted at throughout the games (again, hard to touch on in a lawyer game). This game is so hard to tell what the writers originally meant, both beacause of it being looked at through translations and it being written in the 2000s (like how fruity they 'accidentally' made them in the first game lol) so that's not an angle I can look at this from.

So, to recap, he

had all his past dredged up, obviously very painful

he is open about talking about it, but doesn't show the true extent of how it effects him

has a knife in his car that no one has any real theories on why he has it (and the blood)

There is traces of blood on his office floor

he has spent his entire life punishing himself, and then can't forgive himself for it

he then chooses death

when he comes back, he repeatedly projects onto Adrian Andrews

No wonder he's always saying Phoenix "saved him" he sure needed a bit of saving.

This poor, poor man. His story arc is so beautiful to me.

[princess-lvcifer]

plan B

eurovarg • +1K • angst • tw: dd:dne

summary: He wanted to believe that their relationship was true love, why else could such different people end up together? Sometimes he didn't like him, sometimes he couldn't stand him, but he always loved him.

In the beginning loving him was as easy as breathing, but in the end loving him was just a matter of crying. Varg tore out his heart and handed it to him, but Øystein slapped it to the ground and stomped on it. The guitarist loved him less and less every day, while he loved him more and more. His love was unconditional, almost irrational — Øystein's was temporary, ephemeral.

There came a time when Øystein told him that if they stayed together they would "be like an unhappy married couple", confirming that he didn't love him any more. Varg exhausted his patience in many ways, plus he was simply trying to fill the gap that Pelle left. He loved him, but never as much as he loved the former lead singer of his band. This he didn't explicitly confess, not wanting to hurt him unnecessarily or cause him more insecurities, but it was obvious to the bassist knowing that he had an affair with the Swede before him and from the way he talked about him. He wondered how he could love Pelle so much, a suicide boy he had to take care of and who didn't even speak his own language, while he was easier to love because he was less complicated. What he didn't know, or perhaps didn't want to accept, was that he was equally or even more complicated than the ex of his ex.

Øystein told him to remain friends. Although no longer as a boyfriend, he was still fond of him, and being part of the inner circle it was inevitable to keep in touch with him, to be polite, but Varg was always very extreme — if he wasn't his everything, he would be nothing. He knew that if they remained friends, no matter how hard he tried, his love for him would never expire. If the guitarist no longer wanted to be his boyfriend and the bassist no longer wanted him to be his friend, the only option was to be his enemy.

The atmosphere in the inner circle became tense after the break-up. Despite not knowing that they weren't only friends but also boyfriends, the estrangement between the two was obvious. They put it down to rivalry, debts and differences — which was partly true. When they were all together Øystein didn't even look at him, and Varg tried to deceive himself by saying to himself "out of sight out of mind", that if Øystein didn't look at him it was because he was afraid of still having feelings for him and that he was ashamed of having left him, right? Well, no.

They were so different in some ways, and so alike in others... He wanted to believe that their relationship was true love, why else could such different people end up together? Sometimes he didn't like him, sometimes he couldn't stand him, but he always loved him. For him he brought out the best in himself, but also the worst. Øystein made his life better but then worse.

He supposed he felt more powerful than ever to tear a man apart like that — without even touching him, just with words. He himself thought he was an exemplary inspiration, worthy of following and admiration, but all he did was disappoint. He hated him because ever since he broke his heart he found him despicable as well as disgusting. Yet unfortunately he couldn't stop loving him. It was so irrational and it all just made him sick. He had so much love and so much hate inside him that sometimes they were mixed together, but deep down hate is another kind of love.

He would like to say that Øystein didn't know him but he did, yes he did. He gave him his soul and his body, he gave him everything. No one knew him like he did, with whom he opened up in many ways (too many). There were things he only dared to tell him, and he regretted it. He didn't want to be perceived as weak, especially by the guitarist. Nor did he want his secrets aired. He was afraid of what might be said about him behind his back, of being laughed at maliciously and of turning everyone against him after he had done everything to make a place for himself in the circle.

He missed him even though they were sitting at the same table, so close and yet so far away. At his most desperate and insecure moment, he tried to cheer himself up by remembering how he offered to stay friends after the break-up, thinking that meant he hadn't done anything really wrong and that he wasn't the problem, so he tried to convince his ex to come back. That upset the guitarist, who wasn't as delicate with his words and tone as when he dumped him. That broke the bassist's heart even more and made him mad as hell.

If Øystein treated him well, he would treat him even better — but if Øystein treated him badly, then he was going to remind him who the fuck he was. Letting the love you felt for a person go out when you promised to be in their future seemed to him as bad as murder, and he felt he had a right to take revenge by repaying the pain he caused. If his words didn't affect him, he would have to hurt him in another, more effective way. Varg went from wanting to hug him to wanting to stab him, in all his moles he wanted to kiss him but they became marks where to stab him. He wasn't a Christian, but he wanted Helvete's owner to end up in hell, becoming ashes like the church they burned.

The guitarist once told him that he would love him "until he died", so he decided to kill him when he stopped doing that. Since he had left him he felt dead in life, so he thought that killing him was the most effective way to make him feel what he felt. Besides, he didn't want anyone else to have him, but killing every living being was impossible, so there was no other option but to kill him and solve the problem at its root. But doing so wouldn't only prevent him from falling in love with someone else (if he could forget Pelle once and for all) but would also finally occupy his position, as a regent king. That circle was too small, one of them had to go, and Varg wasn't prepared to do that. To make matters worse, a rumour reached him that Øystein was planning to kill him and make a snuff film, which horrified him in many ways.

The only thing that went right for Varg was the murder, but he was quickly caught. He was judged and imprisoned, but he thought his only sin was that he loved him too much. He thought he did everything the best he could, and that in the most important things he did everything perfectly because Øystein never lacked love, he had plenty of it. He told himself that losing someone who doesn't value you and doesn't make an effort for you is not losing, it's winning. He also said that whether it was real or not, he no longer needed his love, and that there was no longer any respect or affection left in him for the guitarist, he no longer had any power over him.

He didn't even fool himself.

Øystein didn't remember him even when they were together, but it seemed that Varg would always remember him even though he had succeeded in fulfilling his plan B. It was a shameful chapter in his life but he thought about him always, night and day. They say everything passes, but apparently not for him. He knew not to look back, ever. He tried not to think about the things he could never forget so he could get over them faster, but the hardest time was when he tried to sleep, facing his thoughts.

When he was trying to sleep tossing and turning in bed, suddenly he was in his flat in Bergen with him, the two of them alone playing chess, he would always remember it as if it was yesterday. He was waiting for the guitarist to move a piece, and suddenly Øystein said smiling while looking at the board, with his cheek pressed into his fist like his elbow on the table: "It makes me happy to have you". He would never forget how his heart skipped a beat when he heard that and how his blood rushed to his cheeks. But suddenly he was back in his prison cell, filling the sheets with salty tears. That pain was proof that his love was still there, and it made him desperate.

But no matter the memories, the envy and the jealousy... Doubt was what killed him the most. He had too many questions and no answers. He wondered if he really intended to kill him and why, if Øystein really loved him at some point, if he considered him better than Pelle in some aspects, what Pelle had that he didn't... To the latter question he told himself that probably nothing, and that it was simply unfortunate that Øystein couldn't choose who he fell in love with, just like him. Deep down, even if he hated it, if Øystein loved Pelle as much as Varg loved him, he understood why the guitarist didn't love him as much.

As usual he was lying in his bed crying in a ball, when a sudden drop in temperature caught his attention. Being in Norway it was normal to be cold, but the suddenness caught his attention and made him feel strange. To make matters worse, he caught a whiff of iron and burning, and it made him think that maybe the prison heating system was malfunctioning. But what caught his attention most was hearing an all-too-familiar voice.

"I'm grateful to you, I missed Pelle."

Instantly he opened his eyes like vinyl records and looked around his darkened room. That had to have been his imagination, just like the two silhouettes he thought he saw, a silhouette as familiar as the voice he heard next to a taller silhouette. With his heart in his throat he stood up quickly and reached out to turn on the light, fearful of what he might see but still willing to take the risk. No one was there, but he swore he heard whispered laughter as he scanned up and down his now artificially lit room.

A/N: Sorry if something was weird expressed, English isn't my first language. 🇪🇸 Crossposted on my AO3.

[msfcatlover]

AT LAST! THE ZOMBIE TIMELINE!!!

Huge thanks to @666imgoingtohell, whose suggestions finally gave the creative side of my brain the kick it needed to work out Steph’s timeline! Here’s what I’ve got so far.

(Warnings for all things Joker, implied torture & experimentation, disease, death, suicide, eye trauma, asphyxiation, overdose, isolation, depression, drinking, self-sacrifice… fuck, I am definitely missing a few, but that’s all I can think of for now.)

(…yeah, they all come from dark, depressing futures where everyone they cared about died, but Steph’s is definitely the most fucked up.)

.

The Joker captures both Tim & Damian. Joker thinks it’ll be extra funny if he can make a Robin corrupt themself, so Damian is used as leverage. (Damian hates it, hates every second of it, but especially hates the guilty way Tim glances at Damian before acquiescing to Joker’s orders. Make this, do that, eat this, take a deep breath off this inhaler we all know is horribly poisoned while Joker cackles like it’s the funniest shit he’s ever seen. Every free moment, Tim looks for an escape. Every chance Tim gets, he works in some sort of message or sabotage to whatever he’s made. Even as Tim’s face sets in a permanent smile, even as he becomes increasingly bright & cheerful about following orders, Tim keeps at it. Even as the orders switch to using Dami as a guinea pig—Tim blinks rapidly, cheeks twitching, and says with a sort of happy confusion, “That wasn’t the deal.” Joker says the other option is Robin dies right now. Damian can see the horror in Tim’s eyes when the first needle slides in; Tim’s twisted lips form a silent “sorry” in the moment Joker can’t see it.—even then, Tim keeps antidotes and medical supplies as close as he can, scrambling to fix whatever he’s done in the aftermath.)

(Once, after Tim started to change but before the deal changed to match, Joker had to go fight Batman and left both of them handcuffed to the same pipe overnight. “Robin,” Tim whispered into the dark, “I need you to promise me something.” “What is it?” “Joker’s not curable, everyone knows that. If I become like that—” “No!” “It’s already happening.” Tim giggled. “I can feel it.” “Absolutely not! How dare you, ask me to—” “It doesn’t have to be you. But I need you to make sure.” “No,” Damian says again. It’s a little less forceful, a little more desperate. “I know what happens when I go bad, Dami.” Tim sounded almost giddy, though his words were grim. “That’s without Joker-fication. I—we can’t let that happen, okay?” “Stop being an idiot.” “No.” Tim laughed, but it was quickly muffled, like he was biting down on something to bottle it up. “Contingencies, baby bat! They’re important. If I go bad, I need you to make sure I can never hurt anyone again.” A pause. “We both know locking me up won’t be enough.” “It’s doing an impressive job so far.” Damian yanked his own handcuffs, so they rattled against the pipe. “If something as pathetic as this can hold you, you really think you stand a chance with Arkham?” “Arkham doesn’t have my baby brother in a death collar.” Tim’s voice went soft and distant-dreamy. It was the most serious he’d sounded in a long time. Damian swallowed. “I won’t let you hurt anyone. I promise.” “That’s the spirit!” The giggles were back as quickly as they’d left. It was awful.)

It took 2 months to find them. Damian was rescued, but the Joker just barely escaped, dragging a breathless Tim behind him. Damian had to be sedated, he was fighting so hard to go after them.

.

People started getting sick, seemingly at random. What started as lightheadedness bordering on dizziness turned to giddiness, and things escalated from there. Damian knew about Tim’s little rebellions and told everyone; the micro-doses of Joker venom worked to burn the virus out of their systems, but more victims just kept popping up.

(The fact it was so obviously Tim’s handiwork left the whole family shaken.)

The Bats kept searching for Tim.

.

They found him alone in a lab, Joker’s body laid out on the floor and left to rot. It was obvious Tim had been dipped since they last saw him, his skin bleached by the chemicals that first made the Joker. During the fight, one of the tables got overturned and Tim’s mysterious science setup got smashed.

“It’s out,” Tim whispered, almost reverently, before bursting into laughter. “It’s out! You can’t put it back, I can’t stop it anymore, because you let it out!”

(The fight ends with gas in the air and Steph’s hands around Tim’s throat, a too-wide smile creeping onto her face, before Damian drags her off, snapping at her that she’s not herself, and giving her an extra dose of antidote. Tim scrabbles back to the wall, one hand at his throat. The hoarseness from the choking almost drops Tim’s voice back to its normal register. “You promised. Dami, you promised.” Damian shakes his head. “It’s not too late—” “It is!” The cackle was just a horrible, rasping cough. Tim’s voice takes on a sing-song cadence once he gets his breath back. “Can’t come back from where I’ve gone, can’t fix what I’ve done! Red Robin’s gone, long gone. Make it stop.” The giggle is nearly silent, more of a shudder. “Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop!” Tim’s voice cracks back to laughter, like he’s telling a joke so good he can’t get out the punchline, and tears run down his cheeks.)

(It goes further, but the point is: Steph watches Damian drive a scalpel from the table into Tim’s eye, watches him twist until the twitching stops. Tim’s hands come up on instinct to grab Damian’s in the first moment, but Tim doesn’t fight it; he just holds on. Damian stumbles back and sits down hard on the floor.)

.

When Batman asks what happened, Steph speaks up before Damian can. “He killed himself.” Damian looks at her incredulously, but Steph plows forwards without hesitation. “It looked like he had a moment of lucidity. Tim asked us to kill him—his exact words were ‘make it stop’—” Her voice cracks, but she keeps going. “—and when Robin said we wouldn’t, he…” Steph swallows, and mimes jabbing herself in the eye. “Da— Robin tried to stop him, but Tim was… he was laughing, but he seemed really upset.”

Batman looks at Damian, who’s staring down at his blood-stained gloves (less blood-stained than Tim’s hands, which all but covered Damian’s.) “I promised,” Damian whispers, “that I wouldn’t let him hurt anyone. When we were both prisoners, I promised.” He looks up at Bruce, eyes full of tears. “I was going to break it! But he—”

Bruce places a hand on Damian’s head. “It’s alright, son. It’s not your fault.” (Damian doesn’t say anything else, just bursts into tears in his father’s arms. Steph wonders how long the can maintain the lie.)

(It’ll turn out she shouldn’t have worried; they’ll have much bigger problems soon, and you know what people say about keeping secrets.)

.

Here’s what they don’t realize: the Joker virus couldn’t survive outside of the human body or near-lab conditions. Transmission was near-impossible, and all victims up until this point had either been part of one of Joker’s schemes or subtly injected in crowded spaces; almost nobody caught it from anyone else.

Tim’s new strain (which he had been fighting with himself not to release, getting into a perfectionist loop as a distraction from the urge to just let it loose) as it turns out, is highly contagious. It can survive for a good few hours in open air, and rapidly colonizers any surface it lands on.  Tables. Floors. Clothes. Skin. Hair.

Steph & Damian rode back to the Batcave and underwent thorough decontamination of themselves, their gear, and the car alone. They took their shots just in case of exposure, and played cards while waiting out the hyperactive high a micro-dose of Joker Venom causes. Bruce came back, decontaminated, and sat down to run tests (because otherwise he’ll have to face the fact his son died tonight, and he’s not ready for that. Tim’s not dead until Bruce processes it, and you can’t make him.) 

Bruce did not realize he needed to take the shot too.

.

(Gonna be completely open right now: we are NOT going Batman-Who-Laughs. Mainly because he relies on several of my least favorite interpretations of Bruce’s character to make anything resembling sense, but if you need a different reason… Tim’s strain is much less about re-creating the Joker a million times over, and more about twisting how people emotionally react to the world around them; everything makes the happy-chemicals, and the stronger the emotional reaction ought to be, the higher that rush. While not inherently a degenerative condition, the ever escalating self-destructive behavior this leads to means it might as well be. For example, some of the infected are probably going to seek out fear toxin just to get that high, but just because their happy chemicals are going nuts doesn’t mean the fear isn’t under it, and doesn’t mean they’re safe from heart attacks.)

(It’s just not funny if everyone is telling the same jokes, is it? If everyone has the exact same sense of humor? Wouldn’t that get boring after a while? Obviously. Big J was just too self-absorbed to realize Timmy’s joke was better.)

.

The early symptoms can be easily mistaken for sleep deprivation & too much caffeine. The secondary ones can be chalked up to grief. It takes a little over a week for the infection to become obvious. The incubation period is only a couple of days.

Wayne Manor: compromised.

The Batcave: compromised.

Literally everywhere Bruce went before he realized what was going on: compromised.

(Wayne Enterprises, city hall, the public funeral, the Watchtower: all compromised.)

(Bruce locks himself in quarantine as soon as he realizes, but here is another problem: the micro-doses of Joker Venom are not a vaccine. They burn through the bloodstream like a secondary immune system, wiping out the J-virus specifically, but they do nothing to build up immunity. Re-exposure is always a concern. Bruce is perpetually contaminating everything in the room, and no sooner has the Joker Venom left his system than the infection sets in again. His blood work is never clean for more than a few hours.)

Heroes infected. Allies lost. No matter how hard they try, there’s not enough Joker Venom to go around, but oh, oh do they try.

.

The family falls apart.

Alfred’s heart can’t handle the treatments. 

Babs goes into complete lockdown. 

Damian feels so guilty, he throws himself into helping as many people as he can, taking only the bare minimum of shots so that there’s more for other heroes & civilians; when Damian gets sick, those borderline suicidal tendencies mesh with the J-virus in truly horrifying ways. 

Cass is the one who finds Damian’s body, barely managing to choke out her message to the other Bats as the gasses start to take effect. She manages to drag Damian almost to the window before she just can’t do it anymore, gasping laughter over the coms as her lungs give out, with backup still several minutes away. 

Jason (not yet reintegrated into the family) goes from a not entirely trustworthy, usually distant maybe-ally who would at least reliably back them up in an emergency to a usually hostile, paranoid mess, spiraling even deeper into his own depressive tendencies & terrible coping mechanisms as the virus spread, the shelters fell, and his trauma compounded on itself by the day.

(Once, Steph found a stash of liquor while searching for survivors. She, Jason, Dick, and Cass (who wasn’t dead yet) proceeded to get absolutely plastered that night, each talking about how they’d want to go out and making promises about what they’d do if the others died. It was the closest thing to relaxed any of them got since Tim & Damian first disappeared, and it would be the last they had together ever.)

(Here is why Jason is unrecognizable to Steph: he’s been a hostile loner for as long as she’s known him, pushing others away to protect himself, never abandoning them but never lingering any longer than he had to. He made it very clear he was helping because he “had” to, not because he wanted to, and even when they became closer after the world had fallen apart, Jason was still gruff & distant even at the best of times; even when they got along & liked eachother, the paranoia of never knowing if one of them might actually be sick was a constant wedge keeping them from getting too close. A Jason who doesn’t just occasionally let people stick around but seeks them out, whose insults are more affectionate than razor-edged, who grabs on and says, “This person is one of My People(TM), and anything that wants to mess with them has to do it over my dead body,” is an alien concept to her.)

Dick died evacuating some survivors from a 3rd floor apartment. Purely reflexively, he tried to give them a reassuring smile. Purely reflexively, they shot him in the face. (Steph, on the building just across the street keeping lookout, heard the shot and saw Dick fall. Whether he would’ve survived the gunshot is irrelevant when hitting the pavement practically head-first.)

One rescue mission was almost a clean success. They got the survivors all the way to the escape vehicle before realizing there was a kid still in the building. Jason’s jaw set, and Steph barely had time to scream for him not to go, don’t do this, don’t leave her like this, before he was running back in. (The kid made it out. Jason did not.)

Steph broke every promise she’d made about not giving up, about fighting to the end, about going out in a blaze of glory, after being cornered by a swarm. She chose to go out on her terms, though, refusing to give them the satisfaction of her pain or of her becoming one of them. All Steph’s cures would be unusable by the time help came, either smashed or tampered with by the Joker-zombies, but she had enough for the Joker Venom to do its original job.  She took all of them, and died laughing at her own ultimate failure.

.

.

.

(And then she wakes up.)

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

disclaimer before we start, this is not a suicide note. promise. if you're concerned about it, either scroll on by or read the whole thing before you jump to conclusions.

I wish I could know what I mean to you.

You say you've lost friends before; you say you couldn't bear to lose me too. And yet. (There's always an and yet.) I can't believe you. I can't believe that you care about me, that you wouldn't forget - that I won't simply slip through the cracks when I'm gone.

I'd be devastated if you died, especially like I'm planning to. I know I would. But I simply can't believe you'd feel the same way if I died.

Call me a coward if you like - I do, often enough. I know it's cowardice, to look for the easy out instead of the hard continuation. And yes, I do call killing myself the easy out.

Be comforted, at least, that I'm determined - no matter how often it occurs to me - not to do something actually cruel like go play in traffic or jump in front of a train. I don't need to traumatise people like that: there are other ways that will less affect people.

I wish you'd forget about me altogether. I really, really do, sometimes. I love you - I do, I love you dearly - but I wish you'd forget I exist and just let me go.

This has always been my destiny. I promise. I always expected to die by suicide, unless the Lord Christ returned before I did. I never expected to get this far, anyway - and I absolutely promise you this, you are one of the very specific reasons I've got this far. If I was to pick merely a handful of instances, five, well - I don't know precisely which the other four would be, but you and your actions would definitely be one of them.

Forgive me. That's all I ask. And seek help when you need it. Don't be ashamed to do so: it's not a moral failing. Or so I like to think. But how would I know? God knows I wouldn't be writing this if I was absolutely mentally stable and certain everything I did was right.

I don't claim this is right. But it's the only option - I can't go on like this. They don't think I'm mentally ill enough to be hospitalised, which is fair enough. Maybe I'm making it all up, and when it comes to it I'll find myself unable to. But how hard can this method be, really? Of course there's the risk that I mess up, survive and screw up my entire life. That's always a risk. It's possible I should do more research into this method just in case, though it's rare enough it's difficult to find much information about people intentionally taking it as a method of self harm and/or suicide. Or maybe I just say screw it and go through with it, see if it kills me. Hope it does. Or maybe that fun thing called 'complex suicide' where people use multiple methods in combination to kill themselves. Frankly I think that's most likely.

I'm not planning to do it right now, or even tonight, mainly because I'm too likely to be interrupted, so it would only be useful as a cry for help.

Also see: I do not want help, because I want to kill myself. Sorry to be blunt about it, but it's true. Getting help just sounds like too much hard work.

I don't know. I'm tired. I hope you take care of yourself more than I take care of anyone, including myself.

bolding this to make sure people notice it. since it has happened before. if you call the police for a wellness check on me I promise you I will tell them I'm fine and the only thing you will have gained is breaking my trust. I give you permission to call them if you have some reason to suspect I am actively in the process of suiciding. I am telling you right now I am not. that's a promise. but you know what genuinely could tip me over the edge? having my trust broken again about that. I. am. not. kidding.

[trans-axolotl]

I'm rly sorry to put this on u and u don't have to respond. But idk how to de-institutionalize myself. Like I was in psych insitutions for 6 years continuously I've been out since October but had time out somewhat frequently for the past year and a half. But it's like in my head. I do better with less control from providers, and I recognize how much the system has traumatized me (so many horror stories you don't need to hear, gaslighting, restraint, seclusion, didn't get to see my dying father/attend his funeral, denied gender affirming care, over/mis-medicated, etc.).

But it's like I smoked weed recently and I'm NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT. bc I have a psychotic disorder. So I agreed to go to a partial. And just the sight of young people in like those hospital lanyards caused me extreme flashbacks and led me to dissociate during which I fired all my providers. I hired them back and am now under watch during my waking hours. In my apartment by like, a carer. And I was doing BETTER before I had this stuff!!! Even though I smoked weed! I made friends, got engaged to a long time partner, had a regular part time job, left the house, etc.

But it's almost like I'm doomed into having this identity of "patient" be the only one that matters and my relationship with the psychiatric system mediate the way I experience ALL OF MY EMOTIONS and do EVERYTHING. If I smoke I need to go to treatment. If I dissociate I consider going to the hospital until my fiance convinces me I can get through it myself (which I have been able to. I've stopped self harming, haven't attempted suicide, etc. partially bc I just don't SEE myself that way).

I'm sorry for venting. It just feels so so so so hopeless. Like how the fuck do I escape this? Especially bc like if I just fired everyone I could get put under conservatorship for refusing treatment, even though I've proved I can live and survive independently. I just don't know an alternative because I've been in this since I was a teenager. I really need advice. It's so scary like psychiatry is the devil I know and it's destroyed my self esteem/confidence that id be able to exist without it.

Don't feel pressured to respond if this is too much. I'm sorry.

Anon, this is such an important question and something I really resonate with. I appreciate you sharing your experiences <3

You are absolutely not alone in this, and I've spent a lot of time talking with some of my friends about our experiences. It is really, really hard to adjust back to life after spending a lot of time institutionalized, and it is not your fault that the role of "patient" feels like it's taking over your life. So many other people I've talked to also feel this way, people write about it in books, professionals recognize it. I think that when we're in institutions, it's a role we have to take on to survive. There becomes particular ways of coping and routines we fall into because it's the only options available to us while institutionalized, and no one really gives us a workbook for how to transform those skills and routines into our real life. I'm so sorry that psychiatry has caused you so much pain and is still causing you pain, and I really empathize with feeling hopeless and stuck. I think it makes a lot of sense that you would be feeling overwhelmed and trapped, and any feelings of anger or sadness or anything are important and worth listening to.

As someone who has been hospitalized twice in the past three years and spent many months institutionalized, this is something I've also really been grappling with. Even though I know how much the system harmed me, know that the psych ward really, really traumatized me, have so many horror stories, and spend all this time organizing against psych wards, there are times that I do fixate on returning to psych wards and have impulsive thoughts about returning. When it comes down to it, I don't ever want to return to hospitalization, but sometimes I do have a strange sense of nostalgia for parts of it, especially when I remember the people I met there, some of the good days, or the sense of what it was like to at least feel familiar in a situation. For a long time, especially when I was younger, going to the ER was an important part of my self harm routine for the riskier forms of self harm I engaged in, and even though I didn't recognize it consciously at the time, I can look back and connect the dots and understand some of the underlying reasons why hospitalization felt important to me as a teenager. Sometimes, especially when I'm struggling not to engage in self destructive behaviors, I miss the way that hospitalization let me not give a fuck about anything, self destruct as much as I want, and how the experience of being in that type of crisis meant I had no responsibility to myself and didn't have to put the effort into healing. And I don't think we talk about these really complex and nuanced experiences enough in antipsych community, where even though we recognize that we deserve better, that we want to abolish psych wards, at the same time we all have our own complicated experiences that are worth sharing.

What has helped me transition into a life without hospitalization is a lot of reflection with myself and my loved ones to help identify my triggers when it comes to hospitalization, and to make plans for what I wanted my care to look like. For me, I know that one of my triggers that might make me impulsively do something that will end in hospitalization is when my pain feels invisible, my emotions and experience is invalidated, and when I start to feel like the people in my life won't support me unless I'm in crisis. When I start to feel this way, I know I need to go reach out to friends, tell them that I'm feeling vulnerable and worried and in pain, and they know that it's really helpful for them to listen, to validate me, to promise that they believe me, etc. That is just a personal example and might not be at all relevant to you, but what was really just most helpful was understanding the ways this pattern showed up for me, really analyzing what situations, emotions, actions, are likely to cause me to feel impulsive, vulnerable, and to start having intrusive thoughts about hospitalization, so that I could make a plan with my loved ones about what kind of support I need to avoid hospitalization.

I think something else that has been important to me is recognizing that I am allowed to fuck up, that there is room in my life for risk, and redefining what crisis looks like for me. In a lot of treatment setting, we spend time learning our warning signs, triggers, stuff like that. Which can be really helpful, but I know for me, sometimes it can actually be really damaging when I only think of my life in terms of warning signs. Because at this point after years of treatment I am so aware of what things are risky for me, when I do inevitably end up engaging in some of those behaviors, sometimes labeling that as a warning sign makes me start to panic. I start to feel like it's a slippery slope straight into crisis, and gets me into a mindset where I think that since it's inevitable that I've fucked up, I might as well just continue doing risky stuff, escalating my behaviors, and eventually pushing myself into crisis because I believe that it's going to happen anyway. Moving away from labeling things as an automatic warning sign helped me to get out of that rigid treatment mindset where everything is labeled as either good or bad, and warning signs are seen as an automatic crisis. Leaning towards harm reduction, acknowledging what things are risky for me, are likely to cause other harmful behaviors, and committing to a mindset where although I don't have to fix everything in one day, I have to make one small positive change, has been really helpful for me in stopping those warning sign spirals. Leaving room in my life for me to fuck up, make bad decisions, and still also use coping skills, reach out to supports, and have all of that coexist, has been super helpful for me.

I think it's also really crucial to have the space to undo some of the myths told to us by providers. Being institutionalized can really wreck our self esteem, when we're constantly told by providers that we don't know what's right for ourselves, that we're dangerous, that we are incapable, broken, and that we need to rely on the experts in order to be fixed because we can trust ourselves. Part of building our lives outside of hospitalization requires learning how to trust ourselves again, and celebrating ourselves for all the ways in which we are capable, talented, the experts, able to make decisions and choose what is right for us. Spending a long time institutionalized can get us out of practice in all of those things, and being able to slowly find ways to celebrate ourselves, even for small things, can go a long way to building our capacity to trust ourselves. Finding support people who are willing to encourage and validate us is also so important, whether that's from our loved ones, outpatient providers who are allies, online community, whatever.

When we've spent so long institutionalized and having our self esteem wrecked by providers, it can feel like we don't have any capacity to use coping skills, care for ourselves, or make decisions. For me, it was really helpful to find small ways to practice making decisions again, even just about tiny things that have nothing to do with my mental health. Building up my capacity to use coping skills was really hard, because it kind of honestly can fucking suck in the moment and it's hard to feel like it's worth it. For me anger has been a super helpful emotion, where in those moments I'm having a hard time, I draw on my anger at my providers as a way to motivate myself to thrive in all the ways they said I couldn't. Any time you can make those changes, use skills, make goals, practice your autonomy, it all goes a long way towards building the life that you want and increasing your capacity to cope with what challenges and distress we're going to experience.

Although it can feel impossible to believe that we can build a life for ourselves outside of the patient role, it is possible. It already sounds like you've been doing so much work to make it happen. It sounds like you know that treatment is a trigger for you that makes things worse, that smoking weed is something that is complicated for you and might require a more careful approach, and that your fiance is supporting you and affirming your capability to live your life outside a hospital. It is such an amazing accomplishment that you have been able to stop self harming and attempted suicide, and that you have built all these things in your life that you want. You already are doing so much of the work, and although it sounds like things have been particularly difficult to navigate and that partial has been a challenge, there are already so many ways in which you are taking care of yourself and fighting back. Even if you need to bullshit your way through partial long enough so that you can get back to doing healing work outside of that space, it sounds like you do have the skills, capability, and insight about what you want. And just also want to affirm that healing doesn't have to happen in isolation-interdependence, support, and community are so important, and whatever ways you need to rely on people in your life to get you through this is not something to be ashamed of.

Truly sending all the love and solidarity your way, and please feel free to reach out if there's any specific resources you want, or even just to vent.

Followers with relevant experience, free free to add on your insights.

💜💜💜

[transgenderer]

It would be so easy to win at morality. All I would have to do is empty out my savings account and send $ to givedirectly (it would take a few days bc of transaction limits) then wander around aimlessly fasting until until I died. It wouldn't take long - 3 weeks without food is enough to die, probably less if I walk a long distance every day. Yet I don't. I'm not afraid of hurting my loved ones and I don't want to live. Yet I'm still posting instead of winning. Why is this?

well. okay so if we are adopting this stance, and to be clear i dont endorse adopting this stance, 1) unless you have a LOT of money (like, thru inheritance or something) and very little earning potential, you could probably net donate more money by staying alive, having a job, and spending as little as possible on yourself and donating the rest to givedirectly or whatever. which is actually really hard! part of why winning at morality is hard, 2) wandering around fasting aimlessly for weeks would be a crazy way to kill yourself. good chance you would get forcibly institutionalized. 3) your happiness (and that of your loved ones!) goes into the great moral integral in the sky! if you make them sad, or yourself sad, by your choices, that's bad to the calculator! ergo, i think its pretty unlikely killing yourself would be winning at morality!

i mean, to be clear, there are lots of reasons you shouldnt kill yourself. but "killing myself would be the most moral option" is a thought ive often had myself (especially when i was like 14), and man it just does not make any sense in any non-stupid moral system. its trying to justify your desire to kill yourself with ethics. if youre gonna be suicidal, say it from your chest, yknow. anyway i always feel like such a square encouraging people not to kill themselves but man. are you on antidepressants? antidepressants might be placebo but they made me personally way less into wanting to kill myself. if you are, have they done the wacky treatments? go for the wacky treatments. electroconvulsive works, its crazy that it works. but it does. anyway if youve done all that idk, move to another country, join a convent, write an album of shitty songs

the best anti-suicide advice is ive heard is that if you want to kill yourself, do something crazy instead. its not like you have anything to lose. and i think what you will realize, or what i realized, is that its not that i wanted to kill myself, i just wanted to be happy. which is less cool seeming than wanting to kill yourself unfortunately. but anyway. uh. personally i cannot reccommend eating a bunch of delicious food enough. worst case you get fat i guess. food is so good and delicious food can be very cheap. get some fast food you really like. eat candy, eat chocolate, eat cake. get a little pleasure in. speaking of i need to eat something.

[witchvvolf]

this or that? tag!

i was tagged by @thewardenofwinter! you can find their post here! i am combing through my tags to see which ones i'm able to participate in. thank you for giving me plenty of options teehee.

historical or futuristic

i feel like it's much easier to do something historical considering there is already something to build off of? and you have to pull a lot less shit out of your ass, especially considering you can have easy reference for clothing and such. a lot of my rps (shhh) are more historical than modern.

the opening or closing chapter

while i am fully aware of how hard openings are— i love endings. i have yet to write one, but they are so bittersweet. i think i prefer it more out of anticipation.

light+fluffy or dark+gritty

give me the dirt and blood beneath the nails, the pining, the bad boy. in fact, give me the castlevania style shit. give me all of that. in fact, i'll do it myself.

animal companion or found family

in project tsa the mc Venus does have a cat named Farah, but i think found family is so so so sweet. theres just something about it.

horror or romance

romance is so fun. i'm getting into establishing a relationship with some charachters and i think they're going to be absolute sweeties. i also like romance between villians? like the bad guy should get the girl, i'm not even sorry.

hard magic system or soft magic system

i feel like it is so much easier when a magic system is strict and linear. i'm going to have to write one myself for some projects, but especially project labyrinth.

standalone or series

i can see some fulfillment in a standalone, but i can see the appeal of a series. i actually prefer a series, especially if it's slow burn, it won't feel rushed, and if it's the 'a touch of' series, just throw it away.

one project at a time or always juggling 2+

researching for 'endless wip' as we speak.

one award winner or one bestseller

now i aint sayin she a golddigger...

fantasy or sci-fi

give me a sexy mentally ill vampire with mommy and daddy issues. thats all i fuckin want (alucard from castlevania).

character description or setting description

as long as youre not telling me that the mcs brown orbs pierced her own in the mirror as she pulled her shiny, chocolate brown hair pulled into a bun to begin her day so she can have cereal for breakfast before school— then i'm cool. i'd truly rather hear about the sky. if the sun burned like a fluorescent lightbulb in a classroom at 8am— I want that shit.

first draft or final draft

i suppose first! i've not made it to a final yet. i hope i can sometime soon, i want that fulfillment of ending something.

love triangle in everything or no romantic arcs

if there is anything to be learned from twilight— it is the fact that love triangles fucking suck. especially when both characters are unstable as shit, one of them being wildly suicidal and the other has some insane anger issues. and besides, the mc always ends up choosing the douchey dude anyhow.

constant sandstorm or rainstorm

my boyfriend made me fall in love with rain. i've learned to tolerate thunder.

as per usual, i have no one to tag, so i will leave the floor open!

[shortkidenergy]

ohh i really shouldn't post my thoughts on Tommy, Tubbo and Dream's dsmp finale because looking at other people's posts about it is kind of making me feel bad, but perhaps my favorite thing about the dream smp this whole time (that I don't think was lost at all in the finale) is that the inconsistency that comes with it being a minecraft roleplay allows for a fair amount of variety in interpretation.

so i want to propose one reading on the ending, particularly in terms of the common ground that Tommy and Dream seem to find.

cw for canon-typical discussions of suicidal thoughts and attempts.

(bear in mind, I was watching both Tommy and Tubbo's streams simultaneously, and I've gotta say Tubbo and Jack screaming over nukes perhaps distracted me a bit from the philosophical debate happening on the other screen. so if i missed something or didn't get it quite right. oops. but ive got to be honest especially in this fandom, i have a lot more fun when i don't worry too much about being accurate to the source material. there are so many conflicting things that happen (due to it being a roleplay that is sometimes scripted, sometimes improvised, and written and performed by over two-dozen gamers on a minecraft server) that i think part of the fun is picking and choosing what to accept as your own personal canon, and what to leave in the hundreds of hours of live streams)

when Tommy and Tubbo escape from the lava pit thingy, Tommy is hopeless. he has lost greatly, and everything he has left to lose is at risk of being taken away from him. so when Tubbo reveals the nuke to him, he sees only one option.

now you could view it as a pure act of heroism. of Tommy sacrificing himself for the good of everyone else. but i think it's worth noting that he seems almost strangely at peace with the idea of dying. while Tubbo is flip-flopping between accepting this as the only way and trying to come up with something, anything else. Tommy is convinced that this is the only way out. he makes his way around the server, saying his last goodbyes. he tells Tubbo his wishes for what to do after his death. he wants Tubbo to be happy. he thinks, genuinely, that Tubbo will be happier once he's gone.

which sounds a lot, to me, like the Tommy that built that tower. like the Tommy that drank invis. and wanted to disappear.

so. and here's the controversial part. what is the thing Tommy and Dream found common ground on in the prison? what is the thing that made Tommy regret the plan he and Tubbo had set?

life. both he and Dream wanted to live.

and here I want to note the part where Dream kills Tommy, and Tommy begs to be brought back. and it's only *after* that that Tommy has a change of heart. that he starts to think that maybe there could have been another way.

and i want to make it clear that that consensus would have been REALLY FUCKING HARD to come to. Dream would have to undergo some Incredibly Deep Psychological Changes in order for the two of them to be able to exist in the same world. and it would take an enormous level of trust and sacrifice for Tommy to be able to walk around knowing that the man who put him through so much pain was still out there.

but. the important part is that in that moment, Tommy (who loves Wilbur even after all of the ways he hurt him, who jokes around with Jack who tried to kill him, who wants Sam to come to their new nation despite getting him trapped and killed through his own rigidity) Tommy (who's greatest strength is coming up with a plan and bringing people together with his words) Tommy (who can be thoughtless and entitled, but at the end of the day will give up anything for the people he loves) Tommy. thinks there might be another way.

a way that means he doesn't have to die.

and so. I wonder. if that moment of regret. if that apology. has less to do with seeing eye-to-eye with Dream. has less to do with forgiveness or understanding. and has more to do with choosing to live. choosing to keep fighting. choosing to try to find another way.

but there isn't enough time. it's too late.

unless it's not.

unless they get another chance to try again. start over.

simpler this time.

[so-litudinal]

my back hurts. wish i had one of those cool and actually comfortable gaming chairs to sit in at my desk. wish i had that kind of money. wish i had money. like one with a seat wide and deep enough that i could have enough space to sit cross-legged or hugging my knees to my chest. god my back would be so grateful. i love the plain little old wooden chair i have, it was left at the house by the owners when we moved in so technically it's not even mine. it's cute and i'm weirdly attached to it but not the kind of chair you want to sit in for hours on end. but anyway. yeah. no money for a gaming chair. and even if i did, i'd have to buy a new desk as well cuz the one i have wouldn't accommodate it anyway. it's the same desk i've had since my teenage years. i had it at the previous place i lived in. same for my bed. and most pieces of furniture i own, really. and i mean, that's fine. it's just the desk and the bed that make me feel kind of weird when i think too much about it. especially the bed. "what 30 yo sleeps in the same bed she did when she was 15?" kind of thought. that's not quite the right question i mean to ask, though there's definitely a clear line of reasoning there, but i'm too much of a coward to ask myself the more honest question.

i'm kind of aching all over lol. every day, some time after i wake up and i've had my first glass of water/cup of tea, i start feeling sick and it lasts all day basically. nauseous. and always the headache and sore eyes by the end of the day. they're all things i could avoid if i made even the smallest bit of effort to take better care of my health...

(i'm used to this but every once in a while, it'll strike that a train of thought could start with "i'd like to own a gaming chair" and conclude with, well, suicide is the only option. i'm aware it's become normal to me, as in, i'm used to thinking like that all the time. but it's not normal, is it? i'm not even sure lol.)

whenever i come on here to write about myself, i realise how hard it'd be to have any kind of sympathy for someone like me lol. i read what i write and i feel nothing but contempt. even a spike of cruelty. like wanting to kick a stray dog in the rain. not that i would ever dream of doing that. just how i think of myself. and yet i remain as complacent as ever. can't tell if i'd feel any different, even the slightest bit less mean, if it were anybody else but me and my own words. i don't know. after all, i'm not a very kind person at heart.

i initially sat down to do some back up stuff but my aching back brought me here i guess. i put on some music and when i opened spotify, i remembered something i've been thinking for a while. i don't think i like ichiko aoba's much anymore.... which makes me sad. and angry with myself because i know that part of the reason why is because after i discovered her, i introduced her music to someone else (it's horrible of me to even put it as "someone else"...) and i always end up regretting doing that after a while. i hate myself for that. that's what i mean when i say that, deep down, i'm not much of a good person at all. other reason is mainly i'm one of those very annoying people who start to lose interest in a thing when it becomes more popular. truly, what an unlikeable character lol. maybe i also don't particularly vibe with the direction her music is going in, which is fine at least. i do still really like her old duo's music (especially the album w/ave).

......feeling particularly inarticulate tonight. so. time to go.

[brightblessed]

hello! my name is TOPAZ, i go by he/they pronouns. i’m gonna iron out the really important stuff here first. i always tag triggers. I am currently caught up to the end of 7.0 msq. I will tag all spoilers as 'dawntrail spoilers' and '7.0 spoilers'. If you are on a previous expansion, please let me know so I can tag spoilers for those. By default, I do not. But I will if requested.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT ROI DOES ENGAGE IN SUICIDAL/SELF-HARMING/SELF-DESTRUCTIVE WAYS. I will always tag these things but fair warning!

I have not played Kingdom Hearts or basically ANY Final Fantasy games aside from X, VIII and XVI. I won’t follow you if you are from any of the other games or from KH. I am not familiar with them at all. I am open to crossover if you have a XIV verse. If I KNOW you OOC or you have a XIV verse, I will follow you regardless of what you are from.

I don’t follow blogs that are just companions for in-game roleplay. I don’t really do in game rp. I also won’t really follow aesthetic blogs for characters because I am strictly interested in writing. 

I am open to plotting multi-WoL threads. It just has to be plotted out a little bit. I do have some options for non-WoL verses, but Roi is VERY DIFFERENT in those verses. I can also leave things vague until we decide.

If I am interacting with someone that makes you uncomfortable, please let me know. I know confrontation is hard, but I promise I value your safety especially if we are friends/interact at all.

Roi does not like or trust Garleans. He gradually gets better with this, but he still has a lot of personal issues with them. He can be downright aggressive at times. He also hates A LOT of characters I don’t. I don’t want to water down his very real feelings. I LOVE Fordola, but Roi hates her with a  passion. There are a lot of examples. 

now on to the roleplay stuff. 

PERSONAL BLOGS: do not reblog ic posts, headcanons, or answers to asks. i will tag posts with ‘ok to rb’ if anyone can reblog them. please respect this. 

IN REGARDS TO MAINS/SHIPS: If you go inactive or stop interacting with me, I’ll probably just remove you. I am always open to becoming mains again. But it is kind a sad to go to my mains page and see no one that still interacts with me. 

muse:

Roi is, by default, the WoL. I have added a non-WoL verse. it’s very different from his main verse. I can use this when interacting with WoLs. My default will be WoL, however. I can do non-specific interactions around ARR, and depending on that it could branch off to him joining the scions since he does have the echo, and going down a different path. but it’s only if plotted out with specific partners. Roi was not going down a good path in ARR. His ONLY goal was to get stronger so nothing would hurt him again.

Roi is incredibly traumatized. He’s got a lot of issues. In general, in ARR he can appear reserved and standoffish, whereas in HW he is at his lowest. Dealing with him in heavensward is VERY DIFFICULT. He slowly starts improving from stormblood on. But please keep in mind that Roi has some ugliness inside of him. He usually takes it out on himself. 

Roi does not like the empire. They ruined his life and more or less killed his entire family. he has almost no sympathy for them. He can feel for conscripts who have no choice, but anyone willingly in support of the empire is an enemy to him. He HATES them. Roi LOATHES the empire. There are a few imperials that he is more sympathetic towards. He has very complicated feelings about Yotsuyu for example because of her circumstances and his own personal feelings about society. But yeah, if your muse is imperial he is not going to get along with them. He eases up as time goes on, but he will not go easy on reminding them of the sins of the empire. 

INTERACTIONS:

IF WE ARE MUTUALS, send memes, like my calls, respond to my opens. if we’re mutuals, i want to write with you!

IF WE AREN’T MUTUALS, you can send memes so long as they aren’t interaction-based (drabble prompts, headcanon asks, ect…), but do not like my calls or anything. thank you. this isn’t personal. it usually means i don’t think our styles will work together, i don’t know your fandom, you’re a personal blog, you have broken one of my rules, or i will possibly break one of your rules with the content i post. 

IF YOU ARE A DIFFERENT FANDOM, so long as we’re mutuals i want to write with you. i don’t typically follow fandoms i’m not knowledgeable about a least a little. unless i know you from another blog or the character seems really interesting. 

IF YOU ARE AN OC, if we’re mutuals feel free to interact with me in every way you can think of lol. if not, it may be because i couldn’t read your about page or something, your character won’t fit with mine, or you’re part of a fandom i don’t know. 

ON THE SUBJECT OF ASK MEMES, if i reblog them it means i want them in my inbox. i don’t care if you reblog from me every so often without sending any in. but i greatly appreciate when you do. even if it hardly works and i never answer it, it means a lot to me that you thought to send me something. asks are how i get 90% of my threads. 

FOLLOWING/UNFOLLOWING:

IF YOU ARE INACTIVE FOR SEVERAL MONTHS, i may unfollow you. if i did, just unfollow and refollow me or shoot me a message. 

IF YOU BREAK ONE OF MY RULES, i’ll unfollow you depending on the rule. if you want to talk this over calmly, message me. in case tumblr made me unfollow for no reason, since mobile likes to do that.

IF YOU MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE because of the content you post, like constant suicidal/self harm ooc content, i may unfollow you. 

IF YOU SAY SOMETHING I DISAGREE WITH to the extreme, i will unfollow you.

IF YOU VAGUEBLOG A LOT, i will def unfollow. i don’t need that drama in my life lol. 

IF YOU POST A LOT OF CALLOUTS, i’ll unfollow you. please tag them with cw drama and it should be fine. i understand why callouts have to be posted sometimes. 

I DO NOT ALWAYS FOLLOW BACK RIGHT AWAY. I like to look over someone’s page before I follow them. So if you follow me and a week out, I have not followed you back and you have a rules page and about page AND I have been remotely active. I may not have time to look over your page yet. Sorry.

SOFTBLOCKING

IF YOU SPAM THE SHIT OUT OF MY CONTENT, i will softblock you. this means you going down literal pages and reblogging stuff. i’m happy you like my content, but please use the queue. 

IF YOU REBLOG CONTENT THAT I HAVE WRITTEN, HEADCANONS, ANSWERS, REPLIES, ECT… and you are a personal blog. you will be softblock, if not just outright blocked. 

BLOCKING

IF YOU ARE CLOSE WITH PEOPLE THAT HAVE HURT ME, i might block you so they don’t see me. 

IF YOU SEND ANON HATE and i find out, blocked. 

IF YOU SPREAD LIES about people, blocked. 

IF YOU TRY TO FORCE ME TO SMUT, blocked. 

IF YOU MESSAGING ME OOC EVERY SINGLE TIME I COME ONLINE and get really passive-aggressive when i don’t answer, blocked. 

IF YOU GUILT TRIP ME, blocked. 

IF YOU POST SEXISM, RACISM, TRANSPHOPBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, OR BIPHOBIA… you will be blocked. i don’t care how mild it is or if you don’t see it that way. 

IF YOU REBLOG CONTENT that i have written, headcanons, answers, replies, ect… and you are a personal blog. you will be softblock, if not just outright blocked. 

UNLIKE WITH UNFOLLOWING, AND EVEN SOFTBLOCKING, DO NOT TRY TO ASK ME WHY. BLOCKING YOU MEANS I DO NOT WANT TO SEE YOU. IT MEANS YOU MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE. IT MEANS, PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN. THANKS. 

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

oversharing time whoooo. putting this under the cut for like 10% length reasons 90% This Shit Gets Kinda Dark

so like the worst my mental health ever got was in college and it’s not like i was actively suicidal but i had VERY easy means to a very quick end. and i was getting like, more and more scared that i’d wake up one day and do something abt it (which is why the part of ed’s suicide/recovery arc that fucks me up the second most is when he’s drowning and fighting it bc there’s a part of him that wanted this, that’s why hornigold pushed threw him off a cliff and that’s why ed forced the crew to kill him, but then underneath all that he really really DIDNT want to die and is going kicking and screaming and fighting so hard to stay alive. ahaha anyway!)

so then when i dropped out it was a rlly difficult and emotional decision, definitely the best decision of my life hands down but at the time i felt like a failure and i had to say goodbye to a lot of friends, some of them i just had to text bc it was like a random ass monday and they were in class. it was very sudden too like i did not wake up that morning even rlly knowing that dropping out was an option but then by noon my half of the dorm was packed.

but then as my parents were driving home and i was texting ppl letting them know what was going on i started getting like. rlly giddy. and at one point we stopped for food and i was literally skipping into the restaurant and cracking jokes and my mom was like “why are you smiling aren’t u like suicidally depressed” which yes i absolutely was and would continue to be for a pretty good while

but the thing was that i no longer had access to that quick n easy way end my life. and literally just that fact itself was such a huge and instant relief it made me feel genuinely happy for the first time in weeks or months. nothing was really fixed but just being out of that environment, as much as it was rlly sad to leave, was such a huge weight off my shoulders

so yeah ed in e5. my man is in a remarkably upbeat mood for someone who had just barely survived his very very very recent suicide attempt. he’s all cheery during his youtuber apology speech and he’s having fun hanging out with stede very calmly and definitively saying things like “i’m not the captain” with absolutely zero negativity and he’s fixing doors and getting pushed off boats and doing a cannonball off the side of the ship and getting all excited to fish with fang

he’s not the captain anymore! stede is! and not only does Not Being Captain make him less miserable but it also takes away his ability to order the crew to do literally anything. no more forcing everyone into endless back-to-back raids no more steering them into storms and ordering ppl to fight to the death, he can’t do any of that shit. he no longer has access to his prior method(s) for killing himself. and ed’s got a lot of work still to do, he’s definitely still having a hard time believing that he’s not unlovable. but just no longer having the ability to force ppl to kill him in self defense (him, in his fucjing cat collar and burlap onesie) is a huge weight off his shoulders. especially after he did successfully get them to kill him and then realized in a weird dream hallucination that he actually did not want to die. unlike me where i never quite got to that point ed was fully there, he was making that choice to end his life even tho deep down he really really wanted to live.

but now he can’t make that choice again. it’s out of his hands. and that’s gotta feel really fucking good.

rlly tired should b sleeping but im thinkin abt ed teach again and im gonna tell y’all abt the part of ed’s suicide/recovery arc that fucks me up the most on a personal level but im gonna have to overshare abt my mental health in the process

anyway it’s actually not anything in the first 3 episodes altho that shit fucks me up too. but no it’s the way ed behaves in episode 5 that like. OOHHHH BABY that hits rlly fuckin close to home.

[autumnslance]

How did you like the level 83 story arc?

I feel like Fandaniel will join Ilberd in the ranking of overlooked but extraordinarily effective antagonists who plotted circles around everyone and got everything they ever wanted, spurring on even more spectacular events and the entire next arc of the story.

I literally just finished replaying the 82-83 zone and arc on Aeryn, so here we go with lotsa spoilers for Endwalker MSQ up through the first trial:

I love the intro to the Ilsabard Contingent and how it brings together so many friends and allies, characters from our past. It's the first place that really rewards you for having completed content, as any Job NPC you've met through those stories is available, showing their name and having dialogue if you've met. Everyone's hopeful and determined to help the Garlean citizens on this humanitarian mission, hoping to stop the Telopheroi but also break the cycle of conquest and violence. It's heartening.

The initial mission into the Magna Glacies is fun; I did worse on the Metal Gear Thancred mission the second time around! I got impatient and distracted, sorry Thancred. But we still succeeded. Anyway, the set up is great.

Helping the refugees, trying to convince the 1st, all is good if sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes heartwarming. Quintus' argument stopping the twins is sorta dumb, but also...he wasn't looking to be convinced or have his mind changed. Like Varis in the bad faith parley at the end of Stormblood, Quintus was looking for a reaction to justify the view of Eorzean savages. The twins shouldn't have been stumped there, and may not have been, really.

I am not one to be affected by the suicide of a character like Quintus, but FFS some things need content warnings and that was fairly graphic even if they didn't show the exact moment. Not everyone CAN handle something like that.

And it is all distraction. Misdirection and bluffing by a most theatrical Allagan Scientist.

I've seen some people upset the kidnapping, soul extraction/bodyswap isn't more of a big deal, but it's just more distraction (and Most Stressful Duty Ever; I panic cried and was frustrated until I realized the win condition was a lie, the real win was not giving up). Individual WoL reactions vary, and there isn't much time given to dwell on it. It's all a way to placate Zenos, dangle a toy in front of him while also spurring on Team Hydaelyn. Get things moving. Fandaniel is playing a longer, more manipulative game.

If he gets Zenos to the moon to kill Zodiark, cool. If he get the WoL to the moon to kill Zodiark, cool.

Fandaniel took control to make sure of his victory condition. Every road, every option, every contingency, led to him ensuring Zodiark died. Not just rebound, as the Watcher intended as soon as we finished subduing the possessed primal. Fandaniel needed Zodiark dead to remove His protective shield from the star and allow the Song--the truth of the Sound--through.

We all got played and it was amazing. Who expected to kill Zodiark Himself at level 83?

My first time through, realizing all those ancient souls were in a purgatory and unable to rejoin the Lifestream while part of Him, hit hard. Especially when I realized Hythlodaeus was one of those--the original, never reborn, never sundered, trapped in the god of his own making for the sake of the world and people he loved.

No wonder Emet-Selch recreated him in the First's shadow of Amaurot.

And those shades of the Ancients, stating their purpose and duty, and begging the WoL to stop Fandaniel, to preserve the star at all cost--their only goal, their only plan, joined as Him.

Killing Zodiark would never have been a victory, and Fandaniel made it less so. Amon's twist on the original's soul led to ruin.

(All cuz he never got Xande's dick, which makes his possession of Asahi even funnier really...)

Anyway. While it IS slow in parts, the level 83 storyarc is a chess game of epic proportions, the prelude and piece setting. Killing Zodiark is where the game and story begins, after a long intro and buildup.

The much needed levity with the loporrits after that was a Good Call. A breather is required after everything from that dinner scene and Most Stressful Duty Ever and then the dungeon where Anima is only a 4man boss (rewatching the trailer I realized in the Anima fight WoL is alone to disguise it's a light party, not a full) so Zodiark is the trial...yeah. Moon is purposefully chill after that.

(Also I love the loporrits; they're cute and silly but also have a necessary and serious role in the plot and their own stakes in things so it's a lovely balance between their levity and the heaviness of the rest)

From there, we are on Ishikawa and Soken's wild ride, and they do not let up the entire way. Which really we shoulda figured when they gave us the moon in all the promos and then we realize it's only the fourth zone of six...

In short: -Protect Jullus, he's a good kid in over his head. His breakdown over being shown kindness, when we'd failed to reach others, was a relief tearjerker. -I was afraid for Lucia and the others when the bodyswap happened, and I'm glad that turned out cuz I love them. -Goddammit Zenos. -OK That Happened and where do we go from here cuz that's Bad (and as a player, exciting). -Argos is best pupper and I immediately said "he better be a mount by the end of this" on meeting him. -Hythlodaeus is still the best bestie. -It's still always the Allagans' fault. Damn Allagans.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Hey, you once mentioned something about Tom Riddle being a little suicidal. Your new post reminded of that and I wonder why you think that. It’s the complete opposite of what the books want you to think.

Alright, it’s time, let’s do this.

My standard disclaimer whenever we venture into the dark pit that is my thoughts on Tom Riddle: I’m going to say a lot of controversial stuff that fandom generally doesn’t agree with, I will say so much of this shit that I simply do not have time to explain it all, I expect 99% of you to disagree with me and the other 1% to be so horrifyingly offended that I dare to contemplate a world in which Tom isn’t always an overly competent psychopath that they leave me notes telling me to take this trash out of their character tags.

We good? Alright.

So, when I say a little suicidal, I mean that he is suicidal.

Not on the level that he’s going to kill himself tomorrow, or even has plans to kill himself, but in that he makes very strange decisions for someone who desperately wants to live.

And yes, I realize I speak blasphemy given that Tom Riddle’s entire m.o. is supposed to be his crippling fear of death.

Oh man, this one’s going to be so long.

So, my reasoning comes down to a few things:

The location of the horcruxes and the nature of their protections.

The events of Deathly Hallows and Tom’s final actions in the novel

The nature of horcruxes and what it means to not only be able to create one but what it does to you (caveat that I am going to headcanon hard here and speak utter blasphemy)

So, let’s start in order this time, because I think the first two are actually far easier for me to explain.

The Location and Nature of the Horcrux Protections and the Trouble with Backdoors in Security

So, first, the horcruxes are all conveniently located in Great Britain. Not even just in Great Britain, all in places that Albus Dumbledore and later Harry Potter can track down with relative ease, all fairly close to each other.

Now, part of this is undoubtedly attributable to Tom’s overly romantic nature. 

Yes, Tom Riddle is a giant romantic, though not necessarily in the traditional sense everyone thinks of. The film “Patton” and its treatment of Patton comes to mind. Tom Riddle is a man enamored by a sense of greatness, of being remembered in this world rather than fading into oblivion, by the significance of places and times in history not only of the world but of himself. He creates an entire, grand, persona for himself because to live an ordinary life for him is to be worthy of nothing.

So, given that, of course Tom places the horcruxes in sentimental locations that have personal meaning to him.

However, it also makes them perilously easy to find and collect.

By itself, this wouldn’t spark my notice.

The ability to destroy horcruxes are not easy to come by. There’s only one basilisk and it’s by chance/Lucius fucking up that Harry gains access to the necessary basilisk venom. Using Fyendfire is an incredibly dangerous thing to do and just as likely to blow up you and the next three towns over as it is to destroy a horcrux. And if there are other means of destroying a horcrux they’re just as hard to come by or just as dangerous.

It’s not quite throwing it into the fires of Mt. Doom from which it was forged but it’s pretty damn close.

So, really, without JKR’s convenient Deus Ex Machina giving both him and Dumbledore the means to actually destroy these things, Tom Riddle’s horcruxes are pretty damn safe no matter where we put them. As we see from the locket, which Regulus manages to collect but Kreacher cannot destroy even after several decades.

However, what does spark my notice, is that the horcruxes can be collected by someone other than Tom Riddle when it appears as if they were never intended to be. What do I mean by this?

From what we see, there’s no benefit to Tom if the original horcruxes are found by anyone. He doesn’t seek them out to restore his original body, they’re just anchor points that should be hidden at all costs. So, he’ll never need a Death Eater to go collect them for him should he be indisposed (indeed, to do so would require a tremendous amount of trust in people he has very little trust in). 

So, why hide them in such a way that others can access them? There are canon based options which would have prevented anyone else from reaching them. Given the existence of age lines, I imagine Tom Riddle could make some arbitrary barrier keyed only to himself. There are mokeskin pouches, such as the one Harry is given in the seventh book, which we know can only be accessed by whoever they’re keyed to. There’s the Fidelius Charm which, true requires a secret keeper which Tom would be very meh on, but options exist.

Tom Riddle could wipe the locations of his horcruxes off the face of the map. He chooses not to. Which leads me to believe that, at least on some unconscious level, he wants the horcruxes to be found.

Then we have the protections.

Specifically, I’m thinking of the locket here.

Yes, the protections are very formidable, but they’re also goddamn weird. 

Rather than make the horcrux simply inaccessible, kill all those intruding, instead the intruder has to go through a very “Saw” like puzzle in which they drown themselves in despair until they finally get the locket, at which point they likely suicide by zombie.

More, there’s no hint that there’s any other way to retrieve the locket. 

Backdoors in security are a very bad idea. What they do is weaken the security as a whole and, if you can take a short cut is, it means that someone who is clever enough and motivated enough can to. Dumbledore is both clever and motivated enough, and I imagine if there was a way to get the horcrux that involved not doing this ridiculous task he would have done it.

More, we’d be back to the land of Tom making sure only he can access the horcrux by requiring a password, keying it to his magical signature, or something so that no one else could get it.

Which means, that’s right, if Tom wants to get the locket he’s drinking the goddamn despair juice just like the rest of us.

What kind of a person would do any of this?

I’ve gone over this before, but I don’t think Tom Riddle’s crazy. Rather, in this case, I think he’s driven by an unbelievable amount of nihilist rage and is also quite depressed.

Tom goes to collect his horcrux, “Ah, it’s time to remember what a miserable life I’ve led and the sheer awfulness of my own existence. Good, I was starting to feel a little too happy. Let’s see if I get eaten by my undead, vengeful, victims today.” 

The Events of Deathly Hallows and Tom Riddle’s Death

I think Tom Riddle’s final death in the books was suicide.

Tom takes over the Wizarding World, finally, and it’s as miserable as ever.

He’s trapped in this sham, barely functional, probably very painful body. His Death Eaters are completely out of control and for all that he wanted society to burn it’s now burning and no one’s even learned anything from this. Children in Hogwarts are being routinely tortured and have now staged a rebellion in which he’s having to slaughter them (I have reasons to believe that this is not what Tom Riddle wanted, at all, but that’s best saved for another post), and then he learns his horcruxes have all been destroyed without him even noticing.

There’s so little left of him, he has accomplished nothing, and there’s Harry Potter back from the dead yet again, gloating at him that love conquers all and Tom Riddle will never understand.

And Harry’s right, Tom Riddle will never understand, the world is meaningless and flat to him now and he finally understand that there’s no point to it. I think Tom Riddle decides he’s done. He’s just done.

He enters in a duel with Harry Potter knowing the weird nature of their wands. Now, it can be assumed he used the Elder Wand, but we know they get locked in Priori Incatatum , and that makes no damn sense with the Elder Wand (well, wandlore in general is silly, but I’m working with what JKR gave me here). So I choose to take JKR at her somewhat established canon and say that, no matter what Harry thought, Voldemort was using his original wand.

He throws out the killing curse, despite having now witnessed Harry resurrecting twice to this thing, and within two seconds it rebounds and kills him.

Voldemort’s death is a lot like this scene from the recent, terrible, 2020 live action Mulan (10/10 do not recommend).  Now, we’re supposed to think that this scene is the witch saving Mulan’s life and thus showing her hope for the next generation. In actuality, the witch literally flies into an arrow she could have easily deflected from Mulan’s path. It’s a suicide that Mulan is too stupid to notice.

Tom chooses suicide in the most ridiculous, flamboyant, and easily written off manner one can and no one even notices. Instead Harry crows that he has personally defeated Voldemort, with the power of love no less, HUZZAH!

And the castle parties.

The Nature of Horcruxes

I almost don’t want to include this because it’s so... well, I’m really drifting far from canon and fandom now.

However, with horcruxes, there’s always an overriding question of why Tom is able to make so many when we don’t see anyone else with these things around (especially as it’s clear that murder doesn’t simply happen for those that now have horcruxes).

Usually, you have fic authors just sort of shrug and go, “Well, he’s that evil, I guess.” Sometimes you have them go, “No one else is crazy enough to keep going, and that’s why Voldemort’s cuckoo bananas.” 

One very good explanation I’ve seen is that it’s because most people, when they murder, feel remorse immediately. The soul split happens, but they’re haunted by the murder for the rest of their life, and thus the horcrux isn’t made. Voldemort, feeling nothing when he kills anyone, is thus able to make them even for when he’s only indirectly associated with the death in question.

However, to me that never really jived philosophically.

Mostly, I simply cannot imagine that tearing apart your very soul is an act of indifference. Here’s how I see it: to do something like that to yourself, you must care, you must care beyond all imagine and human endurance. Your soul literally cannot abide it and saws itself in half, purging what you cannot stand about yourself the most. 

The remorse part is, yes, remorse for the act and the victim but more to the point it is the ability to forgive and reaccept the worst part of yourself. That part of yourself that you purged and destroyed, which is nearly impossible to do and might very well destroy the fabric of who you are). 

In other words, while creating a horcrux is an abominable act of hatred, it is also one of profound self-hatred.

Tom Riddle loathes himself so much that he is able to do this over and over and over again. 

As Tom Riddle goes on he makes himself into less and less and less of himself until he probably doesn’t even know who he is anymore. He just knows, whatever is left of him, he loathes that too. 

And then, of course, he gives up, runs into the nearest flying arrow, and dies.

TL;DR: Tom Riddle’s is a miserable existence that ended in a miserable if unintentionally hilarious manner