#check your cognitive dissonance

[mantomhive]

obv i'm sure we're all tired of hearing about the increasing lack of media literacy pervading society (unless that's just my specific corner of the internet) but oh my god if you think that liking a book = affirming it as having a 100% morally sound educational thesis statement that ought to be proselytized to the masses, and disliking a book = unequivocally disavowing it of any valuable substance or merit whatsoever... I'm sorry to say you have fallen victim to brain rot!

[tarotlexa]

PICK A PILE READING- (EXPERIMENTAL) what does your body need?

welcome back my luvs, this is the last part of my experimental saga (for rn at the very least, if anybody wants to offer me some ideas feel free to inbox me or dm me!), i already made a hair and skin version, if you're interested.

of course this is not medical advice but a collective reading made for entertainment purposes, so take what resonates and leave what does not as usual. love u, thank you for being here <3

⠀.　　　　　　　　　　⠀⠀⠀✦ ⠀ ⠀　　　　　　　　　　　　　　⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀* ⠀⠀⠀.　　　　　　　　　　. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀✦⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.　　　　　　　　　　　　　.　　　ﾟ .　　　　　　　　　　　　　. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　✦ 　　　　　,　　　　　　　.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.　　　　　 　　⠀　　　⠀.　

　　˚　　　⠀　⠀  　　,　　　　　　.

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　　　　　　*⠀　　⠀  　　　　　⠀✦⠀　

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　　　˚　　　　　　　　ﾟ　　　　　.

　.⠀　　⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀,

　　　*　　⠀.

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　˚　　　　　　　　　　　　　　*

.�� 　　　　　　　　　　.　　　　　　　　.

　　　　　✦⠀　   　　　,　　    　　　　　　　　.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.　　　　　　　　　　⠀⠀⠀✦ ⠀ ⠀　　　　　　　　　　　　　　⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀* ⠀⠀⠀.　　　　　　　　　　. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀✦⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.　　　　　　　　　　　　　.　　　ﾟ .　　　　　　　　　　　　　. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　✦ 　　　　　,　　　　　　　.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

　　　　　　*　　　　　　　　　　　.

.　　　　　　　　　　　　　. 　　✦⠀　   　　　,　　　　　　　　　*

　　　　　⠀　　　　⠀　　,

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.　　　　　 　　⠀　　　⠀.　

　　˚　　　⠀　⠀  　　,　　　　　　.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　.

　　　　　　*⠀　　⠀  　　　　　⠀✦⠀　

　　　　　　*　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　.

　　　　.　　　　.　　　

　　　　　　　　　　　.

　　　˚　　　　　　　　ﾟ　　　　　.

　.⠀　⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀‍⠀,

　　　　　✦⠀　   　　　,

pile 1: the cards i got for this pile simply scream OVERSTIMULATION. some of you might be neurodivergent, some of you are looking into getting a diagnosis, probably. you might be disassociating a lot lately from your body's needs in favor of mental control or productivity. you’ve projected your energy far into the future but haven’t checked in with the vessel that’s carrying you there. your body feels betrayed or neglected, like you’ve been pushing past limits, avoiding rest, or ignoring signs (like skipping meals, overriding exhaustion, overconsuming caffeine or stimulants, masking pain). there is also a possibility that you’re ignoring or hiding symptoms, anything from chronic tension, hormonal imbalances, to sleep issues or stomach disruptions. it is very important to look more into what's been afflicting you lately because as invincible as we all seem, we are still human and our bodies are still fragile little machines who need to get checked from time to time. you might be also recovering from an injury or past illness atm.

definitely check in with your nervous system (signs of disregulation, insomnia, jaw clenching, digestion sensitivity...remember that chronic stress can also lead to hormonal shifts (ask me how i know), water retention, fatigue). consider taking magnesium and going on slow walks before the evening.

what your body needs rn: i feel like you are aware of the cognitive dissonance you and your body have been experiencing lately and you might have been trying to "over" fix it, as in, trying too many routines at once, trends, diets or stuff from tiktok that you thought was cool or attainable. it's sensory hell. the seven of wands being here could indicate your immune system flaring up, like it's fighting to keep up with your bullshit (sorry), it needs less chaos. you could be dealing with skin flare ups, pms, cycle irregularity or even autoimmune warning signs. investigate those triggers, protect your sleep, make sure to stick to ONE routine (like meals at a set time, sleeping at a set time), slow and repetitive movement for the win. your body is desperately trying to get you to collaborate with it, rebuild trust with it and create something SUSTAINABLE. spiritually, your body is telling you that you’re not meant to be a solo soldier, you’re here to build something with your physical self, not at its expense. most importantly: stop focusing on your brain alone, your body knows more than you think.

pile 2: see, while pile 1 is struggling to put their body first, you might be having the opposite issue here. the king of cups indicates that you're silently suffering, holding everything in and appearing composed but there's something brewing under the surface. like your body might be looking fine but internally there's a flood of stress hormones, mental tension and some somaticized emotions (as in your feelings are turning into physical symptoms). you might be currently struggling with anxiety a LOT and it reflects on your body, like you might be prone to insomnia, muscle tension, chest tightness or digestive issues tied to this emotional overload. you might be also feeling in a constant hypervigilant state all the time or being stuck in survival mode, operating on fear and anxiety. your body is asking you to show it kindness, compassion and to fix the balance between mind and heart. also pay close attention to muscle injuries rn or your knees or thyroid issues, i feel like that's relevant for this pile.

what your body needs rn: your body is showing signs of burnout, post illness fatigue or a nervous system collapse that's been building for a while now. your body wants emotional release and retreat, it needs softness, water, rest, nourishment and silence, even some isolation. deep rest, lots of water, warm salt baths, cry it all out, yoga, WATER!!, soothing and hydrating foods (bone broth, herbal teas, oats, fruits, veggies...), less caffeine, meditation.

pile 3: oh you're in grind mode but there are conflicting energies here. the knight of pentacles is slow, methodical and grounded, he loves habits, discipline and routines but then there's also the knight of wands who is impulsive, fast and who craves excitement and quick results. it's like part of you wants to stick to consistency but another part of you wants adrenaline and chaos. your body is rebuilding something right now, it could be recovering from past stress or making physical upgrades or even stamina building. you are creating a new body as we currently speak. you have energy, but it’s scattered between hustle and healing. your body can go far if you align your pace but right now it’s like pressing gas and brake at the same time. it's unrealistic yk?

what your body needs rn: you need to commit to one thing instead of burning out in too many directions. your body wants you to feel sensual, alive and in movement, you might feel the need to dance more and that's great, you should definitely try that or even doing creative workouts. you have endured a lot physically, there might be some long term tension that hasn't fully healed yet, consider taking things slow. your body needs steadiness and grounded care, think nourishing meals (do not restrict), restful sleep, regularity in movement and nutrition. your bones, muscle, digestion and endocrine system really crave earth energy (solid routines, strength, warmth, safety, think warming foods like cinnamon, ginger, soup, dark greens). i feel like pilates could be a great workout for you if you're interested in that.

thank you so much for reading, have a great day/night <3

png creds @pnglove

[jesuistrestriste]

swallow me whole; eater!art x eater!reader

was originally going to post this on my sideblog where i first was thinking about this fic but changed my mind

@t1ts-4-donaldson @grimsonandclover more bones and all au? (check out their au pieces!)

cw (18+) : switch!art donaldson, switch!reader, gore, *cannibalism, death, messy + cathartic intimacy, handjob, fingering, angst, crying/dacryphilia (heed the warnings)

to you and art, consuming flesh is like breathing.

natural, comfortable, instinctual.

it's now become easy to ravenously tear open a dead body in the woods and shovel the insides into your mouth, as easy as tearing open a mailed package from your ma. it's easy to let the metallic tang of blood coat your chin and lips and stick to the undersides of your blunt fingernails before you lick yourself clean—like an alley cat. it's easy to suck the marrow from the bones of someone who probably had a life. maybe even a great one.

it's just easy.

physically, that is.

but because consuming your guys' meal of choice comes with an unfathomable amount of cognitive dissonance and all-consuming guilt, eating people is a luxury. a treat.

the both of you regularly settle for regular foods. dry waffles and bitter orange juice and bad coffee from diners that will accept the little cash that the two of you manage to collect from the pockets and wallets of victims. it's better than nothing, the both of you suppose, better than wasting away.

after meeting on the road months ago, you and art have found a way to live somewhat comfortably. trekking from county to county with stolen cars or by foot, roaming aimlessly like reanimated corpses (which is ironic, considering). no mission, no goal, just two dumb kids in love who desperately want to cling to each other for as long as possible. a vow made to keep each other safe, and to keep the urge contained.

while the journey to nowhere is usually warm and beautiful, it quickly becomes gruesome and bone-splitting as soon as the true hunger can no longer be ignored. the smell, god, the smell..

for those who aren't eaters, the wave of desire that floods through when a scent is picked up can be likened to the feeling you’d get in your body if you ran for miles and miles in the sun and suddenly stumbled upon a glass of cool water.

it's unnerving how irresistible it is.

it’s like a rabid dog caught in your chest; snarling, spitting, biting through the metal fencing that protects a plump hare on the other side.

the hunger blows your and art's pupils wide and swirls in heady waves through your heads. you can almost smell the thrum of the person's pulse under their skin, the flexing of their muscles, the stretching of their tendons. you can almost smell the way they’ll taste.

this night’s hunger is no different.

the two of you had been getting ready to squat in a seemingly-abandoned home, when the both of you sniffed the air and caught sight of a young man. probably in his early to mid twenties. dirty white tee shirt, dark brown hair, heavy jeans, leather boots.

all it took was a bit of flirting for the guy to follow you and art to the home, guided under the premise of giving and receiving pleasure before it got dark out. you had looked away when the worst part was happening—it was art’s turn to do the deed this time around anyway. he could handle it on his own.

as soon as the man was gone, limp and lifeless, the two of you stripped him bare. then you both got undressed as well to salvage your clothing. and then you feasted.

now you and him have the man laid across the wooden floor in the empty living room of the rotten house. a horrific, naked mess while you two devour him.

the room is filled with wet squelching and the moans of finally satisfying an innate craving. you and your boyfriend suddenly aren’t the lovers you’d been hours before, now having been transformed into beasts that happily swallow down the remains of another human.

when you pause and sit upright to chew, breathing heavily through your nose, you get a good look at the man’s face. the sunset’s light pouring through dusty curtains to bathe his features in orange. he has freckles. you swallow, reaching up and dragging the tip of your index finger down the length of his nose, over the small bump in it. red follows in the wake of your touch and paints his skin.

“don’t do that,” art murmurs around a sticky mouthful, “that’s s’fucking morbid.”

you shift your gaze.

“isn’t this already morbid? i just want to look at him.”

he shakes his head. he sniffles and blinks back the wetness that glosses his eyes, pulling another handful from the body and cradling it to his lips.

art cries sometimes when you and him feed.

sometimes you cry too.

you look back down to the face of the person whose life you stole for your own benefit, and you lick the remnants of his demise from your thumb.

i’m sorry, you think.

then art really does start to lose it.

his blonde curls stick to his forehead with the summer heat, his shoulders hitching and his face crumpling as heavy tears spill down his cheeks and over the blood matted to his mouth. he sits upright for a moment, only to then bury his face in the crook of his elbow and sob into it. you frown. you reach up and run your fingers through his hair and watch as the crimson coats his strands.

“i love you..” you whisper shakily, “don’t feel bad.”

which is an unfair thing to say.

you two should feel bad—should feel worse.

in fact, the two of you should probably have been brutally punished by some justified force of nature by now, but you haven’t. not yet.

maybe there’s divinity in corrupt consumption.

art chokes on his cries and sits upright again to look to your face. his blues are brighter than ever.

“we can’t keep doing this.. i-i can’t live like this. we’re bad people. you know that, right? we’re fucking monsters—“

he doesn’t mean it.

you lean in and pull him into your arms. your touch envelops him but he can’t do anything except shatter harder. you’re comforting him, holding him, over the husk of your meal. a carcass now. you try not to think about how the man below might have once been held in this way. you think about the reality that you might’ve stolen him from someone he loved as much as you love art. maybe you really are bad people.

but you shove the thought down quick enough to stop its infestation, and then you tell the blonde in front of you the only thing that makes your chest stop tightening.

“we can’t always help it.. we’re only animals.”

the words from your lips spread through art’s brain like a painful toxin. he clings to you harder, and then he’s stumbling to his feet and pulling you up with him. he smushes his lips to yours in an attempt to fuse with you wholly, his teeth clinking against your own as his tongue slips over your lip. you know he tastes more than just you.

he tugs you desperately to him, gathering your limbs in his and pushing you down onto the rotting wood flooring a handful of feet away from the mess and the man and the absence of morality. perhaps a futile attempt at distancing himself from it all.

his naked body slides atop yours and he moans into your neck, salty tears still coating his cheeks as he paws at your chest. “i’m sorry,” he whimpers, “i.. i’m scared.. i’m scared, and i’m gross, and i’m tired..”

and then he starts to rub his crotch against yours. his length already swelling with arousal as he tries his very best to ignore the prickly feeling of disgust that almost always fills his body after he’s eaten. it’s weird and he knows it, but sometimes sex helps him forget.. you help him forget.

you slide a hand down between your bodies and wrap your fingers around his cock, starting to pump it wetly. his hips immediately jerk down and he bites over a soft part of your neck. just enough to leave a mark, not enough to taste you properly, almost enough to trigger his instincts. it’s wrong to eat a fellow eater, he knows that. he would never. the both of you settle for lapping up each other’s sweat and come and spit on cool nights when being close to one another is the only thing that makes sense.

art’s touch follows, his low whine muffled in your body as he drags his palm down your stomach and then against your aching parts. he rubs quick and sloppy circles over your swollen bud, pinching it softly afterwards to roll between his digits. your back shoots up into an arch at the feeling, your spine peeling up from the splintering floor. he’s panting now into your shoulder, his length already throbbing. precum pearls at his tip, webs between your fingers.

“aah,” he squirms on top of you, “please don’t stop.. don’t stop—touch me—touch me, please, i can’t—“

you know he’s trying not to let it, but his sadness is still oozing out of him like thick molasses. it’s a wonder he doesn’t drown in it and take you down with him. sometimes, he asks you to remind him that he’s still good. it’s obvious that if you don’t reassure him, he’ll fall apart.. and putting him back together is no easy feat. he gets quiet, reclusive. he gets a bit lost.

you stroke him faster, gasping as he brings you to the brink. his touch drags up and rubs the spot just under your bead of nerves, and you can feel his muscles begin to tighten above you. the sound of the crickets outside and the rustling of the tall, overgrown grass is drowned out by your guys’ heavy breathing and the wet sounds of your bodies.

“can i have you forever like this?”

his words are desperate. they gnaw at your ribs and snap at your veins. he’s begging for you to keep him and home him, scared that one day you’ll look at him and forget why the hunger brought you together.

you nod into his frame, nip the shell of his ear, and use your free arm to keep him close. the orgasm bristling in your gut like a stoked flame is all that you can focus on now. it’s hot and grotesque, something that reminds you of the first time you ever truly ate. it almost makes you feel sick, and yet it almost makes you feel more alive. this is what art does to you.

he holds you and distracts you and consoles you with pleasure beyond anything else you’ve ever felt. and then it all bursts—

your thighs squeeze around his waist, your walls pulsating with every wave of release that starts to flood out of you. you’re relentlessly rubbed through it; he prolongs it with the frantic motions of his touch and the way he grinds his pelvis against your own. drool pools in his mouth and he has to swallow it down before he can manage a strangled cry that mixes with yours. his climax is overwhelming.

“i’m cumming,” you whimper, tipping your head back, only to feel his other open palm meet it before it hits the ground.

“me too.. cumming so hard, so much, aangh..!”

the two of you shake like there are separate earthquakes held inside you, the tremors beginning to sync up as you both work each other to the very ends of your frayed ropes. his milky fluid covers your hips and abdomen in the color of fresh cream, and then he’s hiccuping as your moving thumb runs a spike of oversensitivity down to his toes.

“nn—oh, ’m done, it’s too much now.. just let me take care of you.. please..”

you let your hand slip off, coated in art all over, and you can’t help but yelp softly as he continues to swipe the pads of his fingers over your clit. a second climax rips through you before you can even draw in a proper breath. the only thing you can see is white-hot sparks dancing around your vision. he plays with you until you’re boneless, aside from the occasional jerk of your hips.

“i’ve got you,” he groans, kissing your warm cheek.

and then he says something that doesn’t surprise you.

“i love you.”

all breathy and beautiful. something so sincere that you have no doubt about it’s legitimacy. it’ll be you two until the rest of the world rots away into nothing. as long as there is a desire to eat, there is a need to love each other.

you don’t know a more beautiful, crushing truth than him. it’s all him.

your lungs are burning and your body is spent, but he has you.

oh, he has you.

“i love you too.”

[psqqa]

yes, yes i know edgeworth’s big wet eyes and loser boy personality have captivated us all, but listen. listen.

phoenix wright

phoenix “genuinely unable to reconcile the girl on the stand with the girl he dated for eight months, a cognitive dissonance so profound it’s ultimately explained by them being literally two different people, but which he first sits with for five years and does not talk about at any point to anyone” wright

phoenix “don’t mention that name to me. i don’t want to talk about it. i don’t want to think about it. i am just going to keep myself in this state of perpetual crisis mode focus on other people’s problems until eventually i die and get to hang out with mia on the astral plane and never have to deal with any of these emotions ever again” wright

phoenix “overnight loses his career and reputation and sense of identity while gaining an adopted, probably pretty traumatized eight-year-old daughter, and rather than leaning on his friends for help, or getting therapy, or taking any time to process any of this, he *checks notes* spends seven years dedicating all his free time and energy to investigating the weird fucking circumstances around it and maintains a friendship with the guy he suspects was behind it all” wright

phoenix "runs across a burning bridge and falls through it, half a day after the game establishes that he is terrified of heights, because his friend is on the other side of that bridge" wright

phoenix “i sure felt surprised. maybe i had my poker face on” wright

phoenix “looking back on it that was actually a pretty dark period in my life” wright

phoenix “don’t ask me how i got started. i don’t remember” wright

phoenix “only you stood still, your eyes calmly watching” wright

phoenix “sometimes, life just sucks” wright

just

phoenix wright

crunchiest man in the world

and all i wanna do is chew and chew and chew on him

[kim-jongin-s]

svt fic recs (mostly nc-17; jeongcheol, minwon, multis + other)

JEONGCHEOL

"you don't understand (you should never know)". f1!au. oneshot, 2k. nc-17.

Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team's Choi Seungcheol and Yoon Jeonghan are in the midst of battling it out for the Formula One World Drivers' Championship.

"the necessity of living". omegaverse: alpha!sc, omega!jh. oneshot, 3k. nc-17.

"Jeonghan," Seungcheol says, strangled.

Jeonghan closes his eyes. Oh god, he thinks hysterically. Not this again.

"beginning song". soulmate!au. oneshot, 17k. pg-13. ♡

He’d thought, when he was younger, that his feelings for Jeonghan would eventually fade with time. But time seems to have done the opposite. Seungcheol isn't sure which version of reality might be worse: one where Jeonghan isn't his soulmate, or one where he is.

"ready to love". oneshot, 20k. nc-17.

“Felt nice, right?” Jeonghan murmurs benignly. Warning bells sound in the depths of Seungcheol’s consciousness. He’s attuned to Jeonghan’s brand of troublemaking; nothing good could possibly follow that tone of Jeonghan’s voice.

"eulalia (silver grass)". wolf!au. oneshot, 20k. nc-17. ♡

There’s a new scent in the pack’s hanok. It’s getting under Jeonghan’s skin.

"one step closer". royalty!au. 5 chapters, 132k. nc-17.

The West nations crown prince Yoon Jeonghan loses his position, land, and all of his pride in a war with the East nation's Emperor Choi Seungcheol. The next thing he knows, he's being referred to as betrothed of the Emperor.

MINWON

"miss me?". oneshot, 1k. nc-17.

Where they miss each other.

"here kitty kitty". hybrid!au: cat!ww, panther!mg. twoshot, 26k. nc-17. ♡

Panther hybrid Mingyu visits a housecat hybrid village and causes quite the stir.

"sweet accident". au, age gap, prime minister!mg. 12 chapters, 34k. nc-17. ♡

“Jeon… Wonwoo… age twenty…three…college… student… no… gag reflex. Status…very… available.”

MULTI

"rewind and repeat". s.coups/jeonghan/joshua. age gap, omegaverse: alpha!sc, omega!jh, alpha!js. oneshot, 3k. nc-17. ♡

There is shame, in letting men nearly ten years younger than him tumble into his bed. Jeonghan almost feels guilty.

"synced threes". wonwoo/seokmin/mingyu. oneshot, 5.6k. nc-17. ♡

“This is what you two do on a night without me?”

"cognitive dissonance". jeonghan/svt. au, age gap, professor!jh. oneshot, 7k. nc-17 (pls check the tags!).

“Mr. Yoon…?” Jeonghan looks up again, his stare unfocused. His mouth is so pink Soonyoung can nearly imagine the heat of it against his own.

"it takes three to tango". s.coups/wonwoo/dino. au. oneshot, 15k. nc-17. ♡

There was no room in their love for a third person, of that, Wonwoo was entirely sure, but there was plenty of space for a third in their bed, and Chan would fit quite nicely.

"being a beta". s.coups/jeonghan/joshua. omegaverse: alpha!sc, omega!jh, beta!js. twoshot, 24k. nc-17.

Hong Joshua enjoyed being a beta. Being a beta meant a quiet, simple life without being subjected to biology in the way alphas and omegas often were. Too bad he was deeply in love with an omega who craved an alpha mate.

OTHER

"an appropriate distance". seokgyu. omegaverse: omega!sm, omega!mg. oneshot, 6.6k. nc-17.

It's like this: Seokmin helps out with Mingyu’s heat, but not the other way around. Maybe Seokmin is the one holding Mingyu at arm’s length, but it's better this way.

"i'm sorry every song's about you". junhao. band!au. oneshot, 10k. nc-17.

The bass of their songs is always what sticks with Minghao the most. Junhui sticks with Minghao too.

"sip on your lips". sooncheol. au, age gap, single dad!sc. oneshot, 11k. nc-17.

Soonyoung finds it a little too hard to say no to the hot single dad across the hall.

"of the color gray". wonchan. fantasy!au: demon!ww, witch!dn. oneshot, 16k. nc-17.

Chan accidentally summons and binds himself to a lust demon. It turns out better than expected.

"son of nyx". verkwan. spy!au. 3 chapters, 31k. pg-13.

Hansol Vernon Chwe is eighteen when he decides to follow Seungkwan to the end of the earth, even if it means becoming a contracted agent with no guaranteed future.

[twinkling-moonlillie]

Hello! I saw your post saying that you accept requests and mostly for Hawks rn. As u can tell from my username I LOVE this man, so I was thinking if you can write something about the reader using the Safeword during the act with him? Maybe he hurt her without meaning to? And it turns all fluffy with aftercare! You can ignore this if you want and I honestly don't even know if Im writing this in the right place or not it's my first time sorryyy 😭

Aftercare - Hawks x reader drabble

Author's note: Sorry this took so long haha, been busy with life. But!! I loved this idea! I love writing fluffy and doting Keigo. ALSO, here is my link if you want to support me financially <3 It's totally not necessary but money is super tight right now and I desperately need to get out of my household :|

Warnings: Mentions of sex (PIV), slight cursing, mdni. Reader is afab. Not thoroughly proofread

Sex with Keigo was always amazing, extraordinary even. You were lucky that you landed a partner as dutifully devoted to you and your pleasure as Keigo. Instead of giving yourself to some selfish prick whose love was dependent on how well you sucked their dick and how readily you were to spread your legs, you freely let Keigo’s soft touch, warm smiles, and protectiveness melt your heart. 

He often spent nights in between your thighs without so much as taking off his work pants, without expecting anything in return. His lips and fingers worked orgasm after orgasm from you. Your hands gently intertwine with his as he drags his thick cock against your sensitive walls, whispering murmurs of praise, light teasing, and - most importantly - consent checks. Keigo mentioned more than once that your enthusiastic consent made his dick dripping wet with precum. 

All of these facts did not aid the cognitive dissonance in your mind though  as he mercilessly pounded into you, his breath hitching every time he bottomed out; it was so rough it hurt, body haphazardly molded into whatever shape he pleased. The breeding season always heightened his sex drive. He needed this. What kind of partner would you be if you put your own needs in front of his own? 

So you did your best to take the ruthless pounding. Tears dripped down your cheeks. The taste of blood filling your senses as you bite your lip. 

“F-fuck, such a good slut for me, hm?” He rasps. “Gonna fuck you ‘til you’re pregnant.”

Deep breath. 

You could do this

Another deep breath.

You could do this.

And…

You…really can’t do this. 

“K-kei s-stop, ‘s too much …” your voice was too weak and breathy for your liking. “H-hawks”

Keigo’s hips jutted to a stop, half of himself inside you, eyebrows furrowed in concern. Earlier in your relationship, both of you decided on his hero name as a safe word. There was a strict detachment between Keigo’s hero work and normal life, so much so that he detested being called Hawks in your shared home. 

It took another moment for him to understand what happened, the lust fogging his mind pattering away. “Shit, baby…” he slowly pulled the rest of himself out of your spent hole, your body flinching. “Songbird, are you okay?”

As much as you tried to speak, your tongue was like lead, throat filled with cotton. Your sobs sounded more akin to choked babbles. The tears dripping down your face was more than enough though to clue Keigo in. 

“M’sorry” You managed. “S-so sorry, I-i know ‘s your rut but-“

Keigo cut you off with a gentle kiss, his feathers swiftly taking over all your senses as he rolled you into his warm arms. “You did so good for me, love. You don’t need to be sorry. Doesn’t matter if I’m in rut or not,” he pressed another light kiss on the crown of your forehead, “your safety and happiness is top priority.” 

“I wanted to do good for you” you mumbled. “You always take care of me…just wanted to do the same…”

“And you did, songbird.” He titled your chin so he can gaze into you directly. His eyes were always sharp like daggers, but when you stared at him all you saw was his adoration. “I promise it’s not even a big deal. I don’t want you thinking that just because it’s breeding season that I can do whatever I want to you.” 

Keigo’s thumb worked to wipe away the remnants of your tears, cooing praise until the saturation made you giggle. Gentle kisses were frequently exchanged. He failed to mention how this time of the year made him extra doteful. 

“Here, let’s run you a bath, yeah? I’ll start it and fetch you some water, okay baby? You just stay there and be pretty for me, let me take care of you.”

[canichangemyblogname]

What in the cognitive-fucking-dissonance??? THEE woman who started the edgy “gay panic killing of a fictional gay man” joke movement is SHOCKED that she attracts and is attracted to homophobes?

You literally joked that if you were Tommy’s boyfriend (Buck), you’d shoot and kill the man for flirting with you. That is a hate crime. That is literally THEE definition of “gay panic.” You’re not the fantastical “wizard spells” blog; you’re the I use “it’s just a joke, bro”-as-a-shield blog.

Y’all literally have anons “keep tabs” on 911 fans who support ABC’s recent decision to add more queer representation into the show, sending y’all asks about what those fans are saying about the show and their favorite characters. And you’re SHOCKED to attract the same obsessive behavior? You’re SHOCKED that you attract toxicity? You’re SHOCKED that you attract other blogs that joke about homophobic violence?

Wizard spells, right? Oh, shit. Actually, it’s a joke about gay panic killing. But it’s still just a joke, right?

Wizard spells, right?

Actually— capital punishment. For the crime of *checks notes* going on a date with a man and cutting the date short. Didn’t know that death must be the legal consequence for not continuing a bad date.

Still just a joke, right?

Oh, look— I finally found the “Wizard spells,” among *checks notes* fantasizing about black and brown people murdering a white man, more guns, and… torture. Weird fantasies, man.

But still just a joke, right?

Wizard spells, right?

Well, I found “curses” and “voodoo” on this next list. Right alongside joking about death by firearm (again), death by execution/capital punishment (again), and—would you look at that—joking about death by AIDS. Joking about a gay character… dying of AIDS. Original.

How is THIS ^^^ is a step too far for y’all when it’s literally the EXACT same joke? This blog’s violent fantasies and this blog calling Tommy a predator is a step too far, but when you did the same, it wasn’t? Where do you think “edgy” jokes lead? Why do you think so many other blogs on here kept telling you that an “edgy joke” isn’t ever actually an “edgy joke”?

This is the culture you have created. You attract these personalities because you encourage their beliefs and behavior. But rather than own up to that and look critically at how your supposed “jokes” have created a toxic and hostile and truly obsessive and frightening culture, you’d rather ONCE AGAIN all call this a “ship war.”

There is no ship war. Shut up about the ship war.

There *are* fans who are posting genuinely homophobic and frightening things because they cannot stand that 911 has added another queer couple to the show, and then there are fans who support 911 ABC’s move to expand representation. There *are* fans obsessed with fan fiction fantasies, and then there are fans who simply support canon, on-screen queer representation.

This is so VERY obviously not a ship war. This isn’t “BoBs” vs “Bummys.” This is people who are unable to come to terms with the fact they’ve sold themselves a lie: shipping doesn’t do a damn bit of difference for representation and your obsession isn’t coming true— making it genuinely unsafe to be queer in online 911 spaces.

There is no ship war. “Engaging critically with the internet” means recognizing a pattern of behavior. There is no ship war, but there is a subset of the fandom who refuses to take accountability for what they have encouraged. *You* are the only ones excusing homophobia as “rage bait” and “edgy jokes,” and that’s ultimately the issue. The character is kinda irrelevant when the issue is how you and your followers have so frequently relied on real-world homophobic stereotypes to justify your hate and OOC characterization of a queer character.

911 fans who support the addition of another queer couple and who support Buck’s bi arc have been receiving harassment for months, with other blogs calling them predators, groomers, pedophiles, the n-word, the f-slur, several slurs for women and lesbians, being told to kill themselves, among other things. And you’ve been called—what?—homophobic, racist, sexist?

I know that buddie-stans have also been called out for calling black women “sassy,” for using the mammy trope in your writing, for hypersexualizing Eddie, for harassing the actresses who played previous LIs with misogynistic hate, for writing character-bashing that relies on misogyny, and for NEVER calling this out. Now we can add “vile homophobia” and “frightening violence” to the list.

It’s everyone else’s fault but your own, and yet y’all are the only ones attracting these blogs.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

points at u. how do u play eridan so well!!! hes such a tricky bastard to write for 4 some reason

It's because he's got so many problems and playing him is basically Mental Illness Simulator :') Whipped up a small (that's a lie, it's large and extensive) guide under the cut

ERIDAN DOES NOT HAVE FUN

First most important thing about playing Eridan: THIS BOY DOES NOT DO JOKES. He does NOT DO BITS. He does NOT HAVE FUN. If you check out his logs, pretty much every time he talks to somebody, he has a very clear purpose in mind (usually flirting or grandstanding). One of the few times he does strike up a conversation without a clear goal in mind, it's absolutely disastrous:

CA: fef CA: hey CC: ? CA: glub CC: Glub glub! CC: 38) CA: yeah CA: hm CC: W)(at is it!!! CA: wwhat

He's sooooooo so so so bad at conversation. He doesn't tell jokes. He doesn't know how to lighten the mood. He has no chill. He has no sense of humor. When playing him, if you are making jokes, you are doing it wrong!

The reason for this is because, psychologically, you have to imagine that he is constantly teetering on the edge of a murderous freakout. If he is not, at all times, Being Useful (AKA murderous, sea dweller-y), then Something Bad Will Happen. His entire life is about duty, pressure, responsibility, and, accordingly, at ALL TIMES, he feels an extreme, anxious weight on his shoulders, which makes him incapable of indulging in "frivolous" behavior, like making smalltalk or doing things for fun. In fact, sarcasm and facetiousness are literally considered childish by Alternians, and Equius associates it with lower blood colors:

CT: D --> Humorous insincerity is for pedantic wigglers AG: Pshhhhhhhh, I know! I know you never make jokes. I was the one 8eing sarcastic, you stooge! AG: I was 8eing sarcastic a8out you 8eing sarcastic. Duh. CT: D --> That's because you're a little worse than me

That's why it's also kind of important to make him not really have hobbies. Eridan DOES have interests: he loves wizards and magic, and he's a hipster. HOWEVER, he only ever talks about magic in pursuit of some other goal, like finding a date or winning at a rivalry, AND he's constantly denying his own interest in these things, because they're frivolous, stupid, ridiculous, and deviations from what he "should" be like. He actively distances himself from things that make him happy. In fact, we only know he's a hipster because it's part of his design and Karkat mentions it once - Eridan himself has never talked about it. That's how far he's buried anything that actually brings him joy.

If your Eridan is smiling for ANY REASON, you are DOING IT WRONG!

While we're on the topic, things Eridan is NOT ACTUALLY INTERESTED IN:

History (he only ever talks about history in the vaguest possible terms; I think he is book smart and genuinely knows a lot ABOUT history, but his actual interest in it is middling. He's just expected to be really obsessed with history, especially military history, as a member of the aristocracy, and he reads it in the same way as one doomscrolls on twitter - it's a way for him to self-reinforce his own mental illness and soothe his cognitive dissonance)

Marine life/marine anything (he's TERRIFIED of the ocean, and has spent a few days underwater TOTAL. He knows nothing of the sea.)

Weaponry (he HAS a lot of guns, so he definitely knows how to use and maintain them, but there's a reason he outsources the building of all his doomsday devices. Also, he got a "god weapon" early on in his life, and has kind of just been... using that. He neither has a need to know much about weaponry, nor has ever displayed any particular interest or knowledge. He leaves fully loaded harpoons just lying around on the floor of his house. It's knowledge of necessity, not interest.)

Hunting/Violence/Murder (he's really good at it, he knows a lot about it, he will teach you on request, he will mention it constantly, but he doesn't actually derive any particular joy out of it, especially since we know his thought process after each kill is "that's going to make an orphaned troll very sad. they will be culled soon :/")

Fashion (he has more of an interest than the average Alternian, but it's still not a lot. He dresses up to emulate Dualscar, and his actual clothing choices beyond that are pretty disastrous. Canon Eridan has never shown an interest in fashion. Even if you do want to play him with an interest in fashion, which I think is fine, you have to remember that he deliberately distances himself from anything that brings him joy, so even if he likes fashion, he'll keep that a secret and insist he only does it for utility purposes.)

Pale Romance (just throwing this in there, it's the one quadrant he is *never* shown to pursue. He's tried Feferi and Nepeta in flushed, Sollux, Terezi, and Kanaya in ashen, and Rose and Vriska in pitch. if anything, he goes out of his way to AVOID pale romances, both because he just had a painful pale breakup, and because he freaks out at the implication that he's weak in any way, which pursuing a pale romance would all but be admitting)

The thing that makes playing Eridan so hard, I think, is that he's abjectly fucking miserable, BY CHOICE, and for most RPers, playing a character who's abjectly fucking miserable kind of goes against the appeal of RPing in the first place (that is, having fun). All of the things he says he's really into are things that he either has no interest in, or that actively make his life less enjoyable. All the things he spends all his time thinking about are things that make him feel anxious and hopeless. All the things he actually likes and would have fun with are the things he actively, deliberately, and loudly decries and suppresses.

So that's point 1: Eridan does NOT have fun.

ERIDAN IS AGGRO AS *FUCK*

The next most thing I see that trips people up is that they make Eridan too friendly, usually as an extension of accidentally giving him too much chill. There are two main factors here at play: the first is that he's desperately trying to be a violent, casteist, oppressive, dangerous sea dweller, and outright pushes that image, and the second is that he's really fucking anxious ALL THE TIME, and most peoples' sociability goes down when they feel the cold breath of the reaper on the backs of their necks 24/7.

When looking at the 4 responses to danger - fight, flight, freeze, and fawn - Eridan will overwhelmingly choose "fight," with "fawn" as his secondary option. This makes absolute sense in context: all his trauma comes from its inescapable nature - if he tries to run from his duties, everybody dies; if he freezes up and fails to complete them, everybody dies. Therefore, his only two options are to Fight, and to channel that violent response into completing his duties, and to Fawn, to capitulate to the things that are hurting him - much moreso the former than the latter. Unfortunately, that bleeds over into everything else. Great!

We can see this illustrated really well in his conversations with Kanaya: Eridan does not ask for favors or help, he makes demands:

CA: kan make her talk to me do somethin ... CA: so help me out tell her to talk to me i think she blocked me you got to

ERIDAN: you should of told me about this ERIDAN: if theres goin to be any sort a hope for our race as the prince of hope i demand to be invvolvved ERIDAN: so dont go anywwhere wwithout me got it

The only time he ever really backs off is in confessions, where he's willing to be like "hey, I think we really got something here, don't you think so?", or when talking to Karkat (Karkat is really the only person that Eridan doesn't feel the need to put on airs around, and we can only speculate as to why. It's because they're destined moirails for each other.)

He will also do this for statements that he isn't 100% sure about. If he's going to say something, he is going to ASSERT IT as if it is IMMUTABLE FACT, even if he's immediately disproven. In which case he will admit fault, but then his NEXT wild assumption is the IMMUTABLE FACT.

CA: wwell fine you dont havve to behavve vvillainous if youre bent up on actin against the grain a your nobility or somesuch CA: i can play that role its not like i evver didnt get my gills dirty before TT: Nobility? What are you talking about? CA: wwell arent you TT: No. What gave you that idea? CA: the wway you CA: ok CA: i had a misconclusion about that so my fault CA: obvviously you got rich blood so maybe when you crash landed you wwerent recognized for it by wwhatevver vvehicle upholds the class structure in human society

I feel like he's the type who, if he's genuinely unsure about something, he just won't say it at all. Basically, Eridan is always operating at either 0% or 100%, with almost no in-between. NO CHILL. Given that he only strikes up conversations when he's trying to achieve something from it - whether that's actively getting someone to do something for him, or just trying to assert that magic is fake - he treats every conversation like it' i's a battle, where the prize is whatever it is he's attempting to do, and his conversation partner is an enemy that he has to beat into submission. (Karkat is the only exception. He actually just likes talking to Karkat, and will do more traditional "hey man you wanna talk about your feelings" kind of dialogue with him.)

If your Eridan has chill, you are doing it wrong!

ERIDAN STRUGGLES WITH EMPATHY

This really needs to be qualified: he does HAVE empathy. He DOES care about his friends. But his brain is really cooked, and he has an extremely difficult time actually working up the emotional energy to express or experience it.

He's kind of downright sociopathic, lol:

ERISOLSPRITE: iim of the miind2et that wwhen you havve a rock 2oliid piiece of a22 tiied twwo the dock, you dont bloody wwell tug the knot loo2e and 2hovve the fucker off wwiith the heel a your boot. ERISOLSPRITE: but then another part of me ju2t wwonder2 wwhat the FUCK ii ju2t 2aiid there? liike that wwa2 ju2t 2uch a wweiird 2ociiopathiic thought ii had, ii hone2tly had no iidea howw bad ii could po22iibly feel about my2elf untiil ii BECAME my2elf, iif THAT make2 2en2e.

Like, okay, how do I explain this. His body count is 2000+. He has an EXTREMELY difficult time caring about life or death. He's had to watch kids cry over their dead parents. He has had to kill kids trying to protect their parents, whom he has then had to kill. And he has done this over, and over, and over again, as long as he can remember, to the point where he calls it "all i evver done practically."

Just for the sake of preserving what's left of his sanity, he's had to learn how to not care about that. If he sees someone crying in front of him, it's unlikely to even emotionally register to him as anything beyond "factually, this person is sad." Shit happens, people die. Violence, tragedy, murder, injury, and death are literally daily occurrences to him. For you, the day I killed your lusus was the most important day of your now tragically short life. For me, it was Tuesday.

Vriska is in the same boat, BTW. I think a combination of just being a less sensitive person to start with, the existence of a support network (Equius and Kanaya and Terezi as friends + she was friends with Team Charge before the... incident), and the lack of all the Duty(tm) and Responsibility(tm), helped her cope a bit better, and be better about opening up to people and relying on them for emotional support.

What this means, in terms of playing/writing him, is that his priorities are extremely skewed, and he is genuinely not going to understand things like "maybe I shouldn't tell this land dweller I'm trying to kill all land dwellers," or "maybe this person is sad and I should comfort them," or "maybe my constant talk about murder and death is offputting to other people." Here he is, literally not understanding why insulting and belittling Kanaya has led to her not wanting to help him, as well as not understanding why Vriska might've blocked him:

CA: wwhatEVVER you are so the vvillage twwo wwheel devvice wwhen it comes to auspisticing CA: you cant let a grudge go by you wwont stick your busy stem betwwixt so get wwith the program fussyfangs GA: If Your Slander Werent So Predictable Id Block You Too For Saying That GA: Has It Occurred To You She May Have Blocked You Because You Are Vvery Ovverbearing GA: I Just Said That Aloud Now In Your Silly Accent And Had A Private Moment Of Enjoyment CA: wwho givves a shit wwhy she blocked me or about my fuckin manners come on youvve got a wway wwith her

His brain is constantly running at a fevered 100% full-tilt run; he doesn't have the space, leisure, or energy to spend considering things from the perspective of other people. It leads to weird paradoxes, where he IS considerate of other peoples' feelings, but doesn't actually consider their feelings. After spending almost the ENTIRE conversation with Kanaya belittling her and demanding she be his and Vriska's auspice, he abruptly switches gears:

CA: fine i get it ill step off CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that GA: No Thats Not It CA: yeah it is your real feelins run pretty awwful RUDDY methinks evverybody knowws it CA: especially that assblood karkat he and me havve you so pegged about that its upright silly CA: but its cool its totally fine dont wworry ill leavve you alone and givve you a shot

Because he LIKES Kanaya, he REALLY CARES ABOUT Kanaya, he WANTS GOOD THINGS for Kanaya... and yet is entirely, wholly, not taking her feelings into account at all.

BUT! This also applies in reverse! You can make all the death threats and casteist insults and demands towards Eridan as you want, and he won't give a shit aside from his usual grandstanding protests. The only time we ever truly see him offended is when he's genuinely trying to do Jade a favor by giving her the code to his gun, and she calls it a piece of shit and tosses it out with the trash - and even then, he doesn't take THAT much offense. Judge for yourself:

GG: so ill just dump it outside the house with the trash GG: and if it is fated to find my penpal one day then so be it! CA: god damn it CA: its like you people go out of your wway to think a howw to disrespect me GG: maybe you should have been nicer to me! GG: in any case i dont appreciate the spirit in which the gift was given so this is what i will do! CA: fine fuck it wwhat do i care CA: this has been a completely flippin useless exchange as havve they all been wwith your species

After all, he's accustomed to much, much, much worse. His emotional response here is indignation, not even really HURT. Karkat also makes a bunch of genuine death threats towards Eridan, which get entirely written off as "wwitty repartee." He's just really bad at processing hostility! Hostility is very normal to him!

So basically, before letting Eridan engage in any act of empathy or compassion, you have to ask whether or not he's going to recognize that the situation would call for that in the first place, which he is REALLY BAD at identifying. He only asks Karkat if Karkat wants to talk about his feelings after Karkat explicitly says that he's freaking out in every possible way, and without that explicit indication, I don't think Eridan would've even noticed.

If your Eridan has social skills, you are Doing It Wrong!

This also means that, even if Eridan has realized that he needs to act compassionate, he's still going to be really fucking trash at actually providing emotional support. He can't even emotionally support himself, you think he can figure it out for other people?

The most he can do is call it like he sees it - "this is a stupid thing to get worked up over," for example. Or he can jump straight to solutions, like "so what, are you gonna kill that guy?" Being as charitable as humanly possible, he might be able to fire off a "that's rough, buddy" at ABSOLUTE maximum.

ERIDAN KIND OF JUST SEES SLURS AS FACTUAL DESCRIPTORS (AND OTHER GENERAL NOTES FOR HIS SYNTAX AND VOCAB)

And, let's face it, on Alternia, they kind of are. Kanaya doesn't even bother to call him out for calling Karkat an assblood, Terezi and Feferi and Sollux don't bother taking offense to calling Sollux a mustard blood, and Karkat calls himself a gutter blood at one point. Like, even if you're playing/writing an Eridan who's rejected Alternian society, he'll still probably be out here calling people slurs? Things that would be considered hostile from other characters are very much just neutral coming from Eridan. There is no emotional difference to him, calling someone a rustblood or a burgundy, but he's expected to say rustblood because of his sea dweller status, so that's what he goes with.

Also, make some grounded but wild assertions about people and things. This boy loves to Assume. Writing Eridan is a lot of going "ERIDAN DON'T SAY THAT!!!" it's great. Really painful. Highly unrecommended.

He's obviously quite book smart and uses a lot of big vocabulary words. You guys need to have Eridan go on these insane purple-prose rants more often. They're so fun to write and so cringe to post.

CA: yeah go ahead and kiss us off but therell be blood on your hands CA: you could either play along as our auspistice and do a little mediating like you wwere fuckin hatched to CA: or wwatch she and me devvolvve into fuckin full fledged kismesisses the kind like you dont get once in ten thousand swweeps CA: you knoww thats wwhat it wwould be there wwould be rainboww rivvers runnin through star systems and all nebulizin like liquid firewworks CA: it wwill be beautiful and heartbreaking all at once

CA: but the thing is i need a rivval wwho can pose me a challenge CA: and frankly shes not evven fit for holdin my cape anymore CA: at this point i find all her adorable black pixie dabblins to be prime kiddie playtime shit CA: all of her FRAUDULENT MAGICS cannot come close to posin threat to my mastery ovver the TRUEST SCIENCES CA: an wwith my empiricists wwand i servve as the righteous hope that wwill incinerate delusion and the deluded alike CA: my holy fire is the wwhite fury bled from the wwrath-wweary eyes of fifty thousand nonfictional angels CA: and wwhen theyre finished wweepin they wwill boww before their prince GG: wow what are you talking about

For no reason at all. I'm going to post a little Karkat for comparison.

PCG: THE FUNNY THING IS IN THE FUTURE EVERYONE WILL RECOGNIZE ME AS THE UNDISPUTED LEADER, EVEN YOU. PCG: YOU WILL BE STANDING ON THE TIPPYTOES OF YOUR IDIOTIC METAL SHOES, TAKING DELICATE PURCHASE OF MY NUBBY HORNS AND HOISTING YOURSELF OVER MY HEAD TO PUT YOUR SWEATIEST TOUGH GUY SMOOCH UPON MY TWITCHING SPINE LUMP. PCG: IT WILL BE TENDER AND DEFERENTIAL, LIKE A PAUPER KISSING A NOBLE'S RING. PCG: JUST SCROLL DOWN, READ THE LOGS.

Also, notes about his typing quirk:

First, the ww and vv stuff is actively a fake accent he puts on for the #Aesthetic, and his natural way of speaking doesn't include those at all, so it's entirely likely that if you're writing him after he's rejected Alternian society, or if he's trying to be really really emotionally sincere, he wouldn't be bothering with that part of the quirk specifically.

He doesn't ALWAYS drop the G at the end of words ending in -ing. It's frequent and common, but don't feel bad about letting a word end in a g, especially if it would sound or look better (for example, "being a kid and growwing up" doesn't bother to drop the g's at all).

Similarly, he doesn't ALWAYS change "of" to "a," especially preceding a vowel sound. You gotta be careful with when you change this up, because he pretty much only does it when it would make sense spoken aloud.

In phrases like "must have" or "could have," he will often (but not always) change "have" to "of" (so "must of" or "could of").

Dropping the D from the word "and" happens only one time in the entire comic, so it's probably a typo, and if it isn't, it's REALLY REALLY infrequent.

He will sometimes use shorthanded words, like "em" instead of "them" or "ya" instead of "you." I'd say it's occassional, a bit rarer than the G-dropping. He does tend to use "got to" instead of "gotta," however. Again, try saying his lines out loud, to figure out when best to use what.

Given his loquaciousness and clear command of the language, it's likely that this is for Style, but he also doesn't always bother with proper grammar. Places where "[person] and I" would be used are often switched out for "[person] and me," and he might forgo a contraction like "I've" or "we've" and just post the pronoun (for example, "you got to" instead of "you've got to."

He references ocean shit, and ocean anatomy, like his own fins and gills, pretty often! He just doesn't do the puns. Try using "flippin" instead of "fuckin" every now and then, or "glubbin" instead of "talkin," or nautical analogies.

Also throw in some British "bloody"s every so often.

Cusses like a sailor, though, has one of the highest "fuck" counts relative to wordcount out of all the characters (cough like Karkat cough).

HE DOES NOT USE PUNCTUATION. EVER. (Ok, he does use a period once while talking to Terezi in Alterniabound, but I think that that's a mistake because it's literally the only time). This is actually in STARK contrast to other characters that don't generally use punctuation, like Aradia or Nepeta, who will still use ellipses, exclamation points, and question marks. Eridan actively, consciously forgoes using ANY punctuation, EVER, even for questions (which you shouldn't be asking too many of, because Eridan makes DEMANDS).

ERIDAN DOES NOT ANGST

This is another thing that I see a lot. Yes, Eridan thinks that he's worse than everybody. Yes, he deliberately keeps fun things at bay and focuses on things that make him miserable. Yes, he's sad, anxious, emotionally neglected, etc. etc. But I often see this self-loathing played for dramatics - Eridan being withdrawn, quiet, moody, and sad. Or being consumed with guilt and regret, and wishing he didn't have to be a murderer or wasn't forced into the position he was. And that's just not the vibe.

Because Eridan has a lot of pride. He refuses to appear weak, and he has genuinely lost the emotional capacity to feel too guilty about all the killing. Moreover, here's something I often see get overlooked:

He would think of the murders he committed, and the fact that he's so good at murdering, as good things.

It's not only useful, but oftentimes NECESSARY, for somebody on the team to be willing to make those kinds of sacrifices, to be willing to pull the trigger. Very literally, murder kept him and his friends alive long enough to play the game.

There's no universe in which Eridan would denounce killing and violence, because to do so would be to say that he shouldn't have kept his friends alive. Even in a hypothetical golden ending, where everybody survives to the end, Eridan would be the guy on the team who posits murder as a potential solution to problems, reminds people that society is built on sacrifices and suffering, and offers to do the dirty work himself if nobody else has the stomach for it. As much as being the orphaner was DISASTROUS for his mental and emotional well-being, he wouldn't regret the things he did.

And this is reflected in the comic - the rare times he does break down and show that he kind of hates himself, the focus is never on guilt or regret, it's on his perceived shortcomings - calling himself an idiot or pathetic. Because that's what his real insecurity is - he doesn't hate himself because he sees himself as this awful piece of shit, the way Sollux does, he hates himself because he thinks of himself as not good enough, because if he's Not Good Enough, then Something Bad Will Happen.

Remember, his danger response is FIGHT. It's a different paradigm than what most of us are used to, which is why I see his inner turmoil so often represented by him being moody and broody, which he's never really done in the comic. Eridan doesn't get sad, even though he is sad; he gets mad, aggressive, combative. He doesn't wallow; he just keeps swimming.

CA: i got to keep tryin thats howw all the great military masterminds became great through upright persevverance

Again, his response to being insulted is indignation, not hurt. He doesn't sit in his room feeling sorry for himself, he obsesses over genocide and murdering all the land dwellers. His response to seeing the love of his life turn on him with killing intent is to flip out and start killing right back. After being broken up with, his response is to go and pester his friends (and yell at Gamzee a bit) until he can get some emotional support. He doesn't angst, he tries to solve the problem, and, if he can't solve the problem, he starts shooting.

He's awfully violent! If your Eridan is not awfully violent, you're probably doing it wrong!

BUT, ERIDAN LOVES HIS FRIENDS

At his core, however, as tangled up in all of the above as he may be, Eridan loves:

His friends

Wizards

Magic

Probably hipster shit

Happy endings

He is still, after all, a HOPE player. He struggles as hard as he does because he can't give up on the idea that things will get better, eventually. Even if he's struggling in the wrong direction, toward the wrong ideals, and even if emotionally, he's feeling more and more hopeless and closed in, he can't stop himself from trying, and trying, and trying again.

He loves magic. As much as he tries to push it away and calls it stupid and fake and lame at every turn, he still brought his shitty wands onto the meteor. Why does he love magic? It's an extension of his inability to give up. No matter how hopeless the situation, no matter how awful he feels, no matter how unrealistic salvation might seem, if only magic is real, then there's a solution. He wants to be a wizard so badly because wizards can do magic, and magic can overturn reality, and reality is this awful, inescapable nightmare. He is constantly being caught between nihilism and pessimism and hope and belief. In the comic, the nihilism won, but that's the great conflict at the core of his being.

So ummmmm yeah, I hope any of that helps with writing the fish boy at all. Basically, if you aren't constantly cringing while writing the bullshit that comes out of his mouth, you're probably doing it wrong...

[nkogneatho]

don't care + didn't ask + L + Ratio + no skill + soyjak + beta + cringe + stfu + cope + seethe + ok boomer + incel + virgin + Karen + clownclownclown + you are not just a clown, you are the entire circus + nah this ain't it + do better + check your privilege + the cognitive dissonance is real with this one + small dick energy + lol copium + snowflake + those tears taste delicious + Lisa Simpson meme template saying that your opinion is wrong + wojak meme in which I'm the chad + average your opinion fan vs average my opinion enjoyer + random k-pop fancam + cry more + how's your wife's boyfriend doing + Cheetos breath + Intelligence 0 + r/whooooosh + r/downvotedtooblivion + blocked and reported + yo Momma so fat + what zero pussy does to a mf + Jesse what the fuck are you talking about + holy shit go touch some grass + cry about it + get triggered x2 + stfu + 1%iler + cry about it

[ariadne-mouse]

Still thinking about the fact that Jonas lifting Phineas out of the Delta represented not only the largest incursion of debt/caenum he has, but also the first. Like the Trust legit took someone at 0/even and was like welcome to the capitalism of morality *kicks down a flight of stairs* have fun working your way up.

Phineas's total fixation on Jonas makes even more sense and is also just absolutely wallpaper-chewing territory. Jonas is a major figurehead of the Trust both as his job and in this case also just literally the person that got Phineas into it in the first place, for better and for considerably worse. As Phineas struggles to measure up to the Trust's expectations, they're synonymous with Spahr's expectations (at least before Spahr starts having his own crisis) and also when Phineas begins the agonizing work of splitting away from the Trust - beginning to see its problems, taking accountability for his own wrongs - inherently that will mean grappling with what Spahr means to him and represents. Spahr, who he respects so deeply and looks up to, brought him into the system that chewed him up and spat him out. I'm only just finished with 2x16 but it's pretty clear this is integral to Phineas's turmoil.

On the flip side, Phineas also represents a catalyst for Spahr's own journey of checking back into reality. This man was a full on cognitive dissonance space cadet until Phineas snapped and nearly beat a man to death. Well, he is still largely a cognitive dissonance space cadet but like Phineas he is taking gradual steps, seeing the problems that are right in front of him, questioning the behaviors of Imelda and otherwise taking on his own agenda (like mentioning Phineas to the upper trust in Oversight) instead of just checking out and going on autopilot for what his role requires. He's still pretty weak in the ways he pushes back, in part because he is also realizing that for all his status and power, he is a cog in a system that wants to limit his agency as much as possible (you're the arm of the Trust; you don't think, and you don't have any leverage if you step out of line). Sorry Jonas you have to grow your own spine. Also, as Jonas's arc continues and he sort of metabolizes what Phineas has done and how he/the Trust played a role in that, and reconsiders his own faith in the system (RIP ur identity), Jonas will also have to contend with the fact that he brought Phineas into this mess with the cheerful smile of a rescuer.

These two are just SO fucked up. It's great.

[breadvidence]

Curious about number 16 from the ask game :3

#16: "a tiny detail in canon that you want more people to appreciate."

Particularly given how big canon is, this fandom is impressive as hell with the little details. Took me a minute to puzzle up an answer, because everything I came up with, I was like "... no, that's appreciated at least in some quarters."

But!

"He enveloped in a blind and profound faith every one who had a function in the state, from the prime minister to the rural policeman." - 1.5.5

You might be thinking, c'mon, Bread, we definitely appreciate that Javert is the State's bitch. But! Listen: I love cunty competent intimidating his subordinates Javert as much as the next guy, and I think you get evidence for that in 1.5.13 ("“Sergeant!” he cried, “don’t you see that that jade is walking off! Who bade you let her go?”") but we're also told in that moment that he's behaving out of sorts ("It was evident that Javert must have been exasperated beyond measure before he would permit himself to apostrophize the sergeant as he had done, after the mayor’s suggestion that Fantine should be set at liberty."), and I think you could derive that as much as it's against his habit to contradict the mayor, he's taking more tone than he normally would. He's a little short with his men in 3.8.21 ("“Well,” said Javert, “where is he?”") but we don't see him direct his annoyance at Valjean's escape towards them, after.

All of which is to say: you could argue for a Javert who, despite being unsociable, with a sharpish sense of humor and doubtless off-putting haughtiness, is... collegial. The bonhomie would be strictly work-related, of course, and—yeah—all right—"faith" doesn't necessarily equal "respect", but the idea cracks my shit up.

Imagine it, OK: you're a rural policeman, halfway to a highwayman, your boots are coming apart, on market day you get side-eyed as bad as the constantly drunk gal everyone knows steals eggs out of other people's chicken coops and frankly it's earned, mostly you use your authority to collect bribes. One day, this guy comes into the village, you check his papers to see if you can get a sous or two outta the situation, and you learn he's a fuckin' inspector (of the first class? whatever that means) out of Paris, he's probably gonna butt in on your business. Guy looks like a goddamn mastiff. Except he tips his hat to you, right? And it's the weirdest conversation you've ever had. He listens politely when you tell him about the locals, and if he's a little brusque when you make a suggestion on his case, well, he also doesn't follow-up on why you know quite so much about the personalities of the bandits who've been sticking up travelers, either. He continues on his way, and as you watch him go, you realize the weird thing was that he treated you with respect. Nobody fucking respects a rural policeman.

It falls into the circle with "When the requirements of the service imperatively demanded it, and he could not do otherwise than meet the mayor, he addressed him with profound respect." (1.5.5) for me—the idea of polite Javert, and the cognitive dissonance in that. Also the comedy.

[ofeliaxoxo]

You don't have to worry about it looking like you have a personal vendetta against Lando. It'd be your (un?)reliable narrator Charles (that ? is bc I'm not fully convinced it isn't already canon lol). I think we can all agree that it is the juiciest and spiciest and realest option out of them all.

My favourite version of Charlos + Lando to imagine is Carlando besties with Lando privately being the biggest support Carlos has, a lot bigger than his family but at the same time on the outside taking a piss at Charles at every opportunity bc 1. he is a brat and 2. bc he knows Charles gets jealous and he loves having that power over Charles bc he knows there's nothing more than a strong friendship between him and Carlos but Charles doesn't know/believe it. So for me he is a Charlos supporter in reality, doesn't like hate Charles or anything but loves being dramatic and annoying towards him for funsies and then laugh about it. He makes Carlos want to rip his hair out and then laughs at him for it too. Basically Lando is having Fun, Charles is Not and Carlos is just Exasperated.

Ugh Charles being jealous of Lando is my favourite scenario ever in all its forms. And part of what I like about it is, my version of Charles is always someone who is new to being with a man and new to his feelings for Carlos. And everyone around him is like ok Charles’ life has changed in this way but it really hits as being REAL Charles is REALLY IN IT for them when they see him being jealous. Someone clocks it and is like OH that’s Charles BOYFRIEND. not just Carlos Sainz from formula one it’s actually legit his man. So there’s the weird cognitive dissonance of it for them. And for him as well I think. He’d be like I need to fucking chill whatever. This is fine and I don’t give a fuck. And it means nothing that I’ve been checking carlos location all day. I like to picture the jealousy situations as being when they’re just settling into being together so his feelings are still all over the place/not entirely easy for him

And yes agreed I like the jealousy to err closer to sitcom than tragic. Charles is like *eye twitching* oh you’re gonna spend all day golfing with Lando and Max Fewtrell. Thats awesome babe no seriously love that. Enjoy. And Lando would think it was absolutely hilarious he’d be delighted. Actually I think he’d be way too delighted poor Charles. Or maybe it would piss him off. Like oh you think you own Carlos now just because youre dating well he was my friend first fuck off. And yes he’s ultimately supportive because he loves Carlos but he still gets weird with it along the way because he’s Lando and because CHARLES are you SERIOUS he bypasses surprise at Carlos being gay and goes right into SERIOUSLY HIM?!

And crucially it never occurs to Charles that Carlos might be jealous/possessive about HIM even though he’s so gorgeous and everyone is gagging for it.

[jjenthusee]

happy birthday !!!!!! I saw 'send your favorite Jason headcanon' and IMMEDIATELY every single thought I've ever had about him flew right out of my head, lmfao

UHHH I like the idea that even after the Lazarus Pit he keeps the worst of his scars from before, albeit much faded from what they were. this can be angry because crowbar injuries, but it could also be comforting to him to see the scar from a hit he took as Robin. I feel like, for Jason, sometimes all the stuff from before his death feels a bit like a fever dream, and having physical evidence that it wasn't, especially when he's at his lowest, could really help him.

also scars hot.

the idea of magical healing erasing scars and that causing a sort of cognitive dissonance/a little body horror is cool too but for Jay I just like him still having some scars from before.

anyway again HAPPY BIRTHDAY whenever the actual day of is lol I hope you have a good timezone :D

i like this headcanon, it’s so good when writers touch on this subject. it opens up so many good plot discussions and how Jason handles them. The physical scarring can make him self conscious and he can have physical appearance issues that have him wanting to avoid his reflection. As painful as those scars may be, it validates that he can be angry or sad about them. When fics touch on this subject, it’s just so good to see into Jason’s head 😫

“also scars hot” HELPPPP 😭 i am also at fault for making sure to include those in my drawings HAHA it’s just appealing to my Jason-Todd-loving eyes

Thank you for sharing and welcome to the party!

Check out JJENTHUSEE’s Birthday Bash here!

[jovialbasementmusic]

What do you do with a brainwashed army of cult survivors?

At the end of Heart Part 2, Etheria still has a population of thousands of Horde Prime’s clones. This is going to be, putting it mildly, a Problem for the Etherians. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what happens to a cult follower when they are faced with conclusive evidence that their entire worldview was false, but you probably have some intuitive idea. Imagine if you said to a young-Earth creationist “Hey, here are multiple overlapping lines of evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that life on Earth evolved over hundreds of millions of years,” or to a Scientologist, “Check out this evidence that L. Ron Hubbard was a fraudster who started a cult as a money-making racket!” You can probably guess that in each of those cases, the response is unlikely to be, “Goodness, I have been mistaken all my life! Thank you, kind friend, for relieving me of my false beliefs.”

As someone who’s left a cult, let me tell you, the clones are not all gonna react like Hordak or Wrong Hordak.

You might have heard of cognitive dissonance theory, but most people misuse the term, so I’ll quickly explain it. When humans encounter information which contradicts or disproves their deeply held beliefs, they experience psychological discomfort. This feeling sucks, and people will go to great lengths not to experience it. But when those beliefs are central to your identity and your place in the world, letting go of those beliefs also sucks, and people will go to even greater lengths not to do it. So they resolve the cognitive dissonance however they can. They might decide the person who gave them this information is an evil liar and lash out at them. They might find a way to convince themselves the information is in fact compatible with their beliefs after all, and then try not to think too hard about whatever mangled assemblage of the facts they have settled on, in case it falls apart under closer examination. They might modify their beliefs slightly to fit the facts ("Prime always said he would go away for a while before returning in triumph!"), and then maintain that this is what they thought all along.

As an aside, one of the landmark texts on cognitive dissonance theory is When Prophecy Fails, which tracks the actions of a doomsday cult after the world failed to end on their predicted date. Sure enough, the acolytes of this cult did not abandon their beliefs despite this pretty concrete evidence that they had been wrong. Instead, they started recruiting new followers as hard as possible. They tried to get social reinforcement for their beliefs (“This must be true—look how many people believe it!”) to help them cope with the empirical disconfirmation they’d just lived through. So yeah, this theory is highly applicable to cult behaviour. And Prime’s clones are quite definitely a cult.

So it’s fair to say that just because the Hive Mind is down and She-Ra has just kicked Prime’s ass into oblivion, the clones are not all gonna just accept that Prime is gone and his mission is over. Some of them are going to continue fighting, convinced that Prime is not really gone. Some will insist that their connection to the Hive Mind is still intact, and deliver messages as the word of Prime. At least one clone is going to claim to be the reincarnation of Prime himself, and begin recruiting followers. More likely, several clones will attempt this gambit, creating factions with names like The True Followers of Prime and The Glorious Servants of Prime. These factions will go to war with each other in service of their Prime (honourable, redeeming) against the enemy’s Prime (evil, destructive). As time goes on, these factions’ ideas about Prime’s teachings will diverge, providing new opportunities for conflict. If they’re allowed to go on long enough, probably some benign and progressive versions of Prime’s cult will emerge, teaching that Prime in fact existed to bring peace and freedom to the Universe, and that those warlike factions have strayed from the true path of Prime.

All of this gives the people in charge of Etheria a headache. Etheria doesn’t believe in retributive justice, and as brainwashed cult members, the clones have diminished responsibility for war crimes they committed while Prime was alive. So it’s fair to say they can’t kill them. But they also can’t just ship them all off to live unsupervised in a colony somewhere in case they radicalise each other and start another war. Sure, some of them will follow Wrong Hordak into accepting that Prime lied to them, and they will find meaning by travelling the universe, attempting to restore planets Prime destroyed. Some, like Hordak, will give themselves names and begin the agonising process of creating an identity for themselves outside of everything they ever thought was true. But what of the rest of them? They’re essentially adult children, ignorant of everything Prime did not want them to know. They also trigger PTSD flashbacks in a great many citizens of Etheria, who cannot look at them without remembering what they suffered under the Horde.

What do you do with that many brainwashed survivors? What does compassion and restorative justice demand? I don’t know if I’ll get around to writing this as a fic or not, so here’s the setup and you can let your imaginations take it where you like. I’m new to tumblr and to the spop fandom, so if you read this far I’d really appreciate a reblog. And if anyone else has already had similar ideas, I’d really like to read them.

[dukeofankh]

So, part of being a homeschooled pastors kid is that you can get very like... sensitive to misinformation. Like, it's hard not to be, constantly having to sit through people shitting on climate science and evolution, rewriting history to make Christianity look good and to sweep crimes and flaws and errors under the rug. Eventually, you just can't keep up the cognitive dissonance and keep smiling and nodding every time someone tells you something that you know straightforwardly isn't true. You lose the ability to say "well, I mean, I don't necessarily agree with that, but their hearts in the right place" or "I know that's not true but they're on my team, so I'll let it slide."

Like, I am legitimately concerned with the left right now. I am seeing so much conspiratorial thinking and full blown misinformation at this point. About the election, about Luigi Mangione, about the Tiktok ban...like, it's a lot, you guys. The election legit seems to have been an inflection point for a lot of folks, and that is wildly uncomfortable for me.

Like, I am not saying "trust the government." Please don't. But like...also maybe don't trust random screenshots off of tumblr.com like they're inherently true either?

Like, this shit is so widespread at this point that if I responded to all of it I'd be doing nothing BUT that. Like, just sitting there saying "no, Luigi Mangione has not claimed that the manifesto or the gun were planted on him, he just claims the money was." "No, Trump didn't orchestrate the Tiktok ban just so that he could save it. It is wildly more complicated than that and it's a bipartisan issue that's been in motion for like, five years at this point.", and especially "No, there is no evidence that Donald Trump stole the election."

Like, please. I am begging you. Learn the basics of how conspiratorial thinking works and keep an eye out for it. Stop reblogging stuff just because it feels right and gets you in your emotions and at least occasionally fact check claims. You are not immune to propaganda either. This is something that people find very difficult to come back from.

[russenoire]

i just finished fullmetal alchemist 2003...

and i have words about this.

while both series have lovely scores, courtesy of michiru ooshima here and akira senjuu for FMAB, FMAB's OPs and EPs are almost all far too good to skip, ever. (if i have to hear pornograffiti's 'melissa' one more time, i will scream.) both series rely pretty heavily on slapstick humor to leaven the surrounding darkness, and the massive chip on edward's shoulder about his height, grating in brotherhood, also wears on my patience here.

i liked this story's approach to alchemy and how it works. but the creators' vision of homunculi here, where each homunculus arises as a result of a single alchemist's hubris and becomes their sin to answer for? i prefer it a little more than the admittedly more cohesive explanation of a single being splitting off aspects of himself.

we get to spend more time with scar and maes hughes (my favorite character; i adore his hazel eyes in this adaptation and hearing the late keiji fujiwara's silky pipes voice him twice is a joy). i still can't decide which solf kimblee i like best.

both fullmetals are examples of satisfyingly meaty storytelling and full of awesome animation. i suspect a dislike of canon divergence behind a lot of the hate for the first series, and a preference for deeper character study and pathos behind hate for the second.

i'm usually wary of adaptations continuing after creators run out of source material myself, but the story shō aikawa and seiji mizushima constructed out of whole cloth offers up a feast of philosophy, character study, mindfuckery and intricate military-political intrigue. and for the most part, it holds up under its own weight.

here scieszka, winry and rose are more instrumental to the story's plot. dante the cursed shapeshifting genius alchemist is a brilliant addition to the story, as is archer (more on him below). lust becomes an almost sympathetic character, what with having loved and lost multiple times as she manipulates mankind into seeking knowledge while being only a tool herself. alphonse is a formidable alchemist and a prodigy in his own right. here that's not just hinted at; both boys could have passed the state alchemist exam with ease. i loved seeing the elric brothers use alchemy to squabble with each other, not just fists and limbs. and edward... he's a double amputee, but his prosthetic limbs work well enough to rid him of any real functional impairment (bless winry's fantastic engineering!). i'm not going to get into the fucked-up implications of that in this post, but i will say that FMA '03 makes his disability much clearer. we see how painful attaching his automail limbs is, repeatedly. a character pries them off of him at one point and he's almost helpless until he can get them back. it's now obvious why he wears gloves most of the time.

the brutality and pervasive racism of the military dictatorship running amestris is given far more focus here. (edward himself gets checked on his own racist assumptions quite a few times.) we see more of the armed forces in the act of genocide, not just flashbacks in haunted soldier memories. officers openly call people savages; kimblee is sent in as an exterminator because of his amorality and solipsism; shou tucker's sick research is allowed to continue, even though the military already has a more efficient method to make chimerae. while making the situation the elric brothers left behind in liore worse, the shady lt col archer sustains what would have been fatal wounds. he gets rebuilt into some sort of robocop hybrid sentient killing machine with no qualms about gunning down his own men. rose is traumatized to mutism raped by the military for having led a rebellion and still leads her people.

whether this feels heavy-handed to you may depend on your tolerance for darkness and cognitive dissonance; i'm still processing how i feel about it. both takes on arakawa-sensei's story present their main and supporting cast as capable of cruelty and kindness, but FMA '03 foregrounds that evil a bit more alongside the good. it made the kindness less palatable for me, in a good way.

also i spoiled myself a bit by watching the conqueror of shamballa before finishing this series. when i learned that mizushima-san is a huge fan of hideaki anno's work, FMA '03's 'inconclusive' ending made even more sense.