#do NOT use the confuse and abuse tactic

[remixablix]

The fight between Zushi and Killua in the Heavens Arena arc is probably top 10 funniest anime moments to me. Because like… it’s the lower levels and the spectators are probably there to show support or have some competitive entertainment. There are two kids fighting and the small one who is actively losing suddenly gets into a wide stance. Odd but intriguing.

But before anything else can happen another spectator stands up. He shouts loud as hell.

🗣️ ZUSHI

The fight stops. The stadium goes silent. 👀 What was that. The guy sits back down without a word or explanation.

And then Zushi proceeds to lose

[fulfillpurpose]

I hate the thought of having a baby I can’t think of anything worse. I’m 20 and at university and see this bright future ahead of me. But my boyfriend is a bit older (30) and desperately wants me to be pregnant. But apart from the fact that I really don’t want children, I don’t want to drop out of uni and I love the way my body and life is.

My boyfriend is threatening to breakup with me if I don’t at least try, and I really can’t lose him I love him so much. But I don’t know if he loves me as much as I love him because why would he ask me to do this? I’m so confused and don’t know what to do. He says if I’m actually serious about him and love him as much as I say I do then I should give him my contraception pills to look after

I'm going to answer this seriously, because it seems like you're looking for actual advice.

Your boyfriend is abusive. This will be glaringly obvious to everyone who reads what you've just written. You should break up with him as soon as you safely can, and you should be extremely careful about your birth control in the meantime.

You're completely correct: this is not the way someone who loves and cares about their partner would act. "If you loved me you would" and "I'll break up with you if you don't" are well-worn tactics of abuse, and he's trying to use them to override your most important needs in an irreversible way. Deliberately having children is not something you should ever do unless both partners are fully on board, and this is the nightmare scenario: one partner not wanting it at all and the other one trying to pressure them into it.

This is also a very familiar pattern: he's 30, you're 20, he's trying to force you to get pregnant so that you're dependent on him and isolated from all your current support networks, with no way to get out. Age gaps like this are concerning precisely because of the possibility of abuse, and the abuse looks exactly like this.

One more thing I want to address:

I really can't lose him I love him so much

Someday you're going to look back on this and say "I can't believe I ever thought that was love." You're 20, and if this isn't your very first relationship as an adult, it's surely one of the first; you have so much ahead of you. You're going to find someone who genuinely loves and cares for you, and when you do, you're going to realize that this relationship was like a cigarette, not a campfire: it could burn you, and poison you, but it couldn't keep you warm.

Take care, anon. Tell some people you trust about this, and look for domestic abuse counseling resources at your university. You're in a very dangerous place right now, and you need to focus on making it through safely.

[mayoshifts]

⚠️YALL PLEASE WATCH THESE TIKTOKS ⚠️

these are from @/shayysplanett

if you can’t watch now, i’m summarizing these tiktoks as an exposé of a shifting cult that used shifting/spirituality in order to manipulate and abuse people for predatory and monetary purposes.

pleaseee be cautious of who you interact with in this community. while there are many genuine people in this community, there are also people preying on the trust that has been built here.

if you speak to anyone claiming to be a “god,” in reference to ruling over other people or being better than everyone else, then stay far away!

*dont confuse that with the god state, which is recognizing the personal ability to manifest quickly

continuing, people who claim to be a “god” in the manner mentioned before are 99.9% are utilizing manipulation tactics to make you feel inferior and mess with your mental and spiritual health.

if anyone tells you that paying money will make you shift, they are preying on your pockets. you DO NOT NEED ANYTHING to shift but yourself.

if you’re buying tarot or channeling services, do not become reliant on them! anyone can tell you anything. someone could guess/make something general up in order to manipulate you into continuing to pay for their services. in my opinion the best thing to do is to take the time and practice these yourself.

last topic i’m gonna mention is to stop putting shifters on a pedestal. we are all born equal, with the same resources and abilities to shift. no person is better because they’ve shifted to 64 drs and have a subconscious that has lived for over 6000 years. the same thing that any other shifter does, is the same thing that you can do.

don’t allow yourself to fall victim to individuals like the one in the video. please practice discernment and be mindful of who you talk to

.

[oscconfessions]

Now that the askbox is back open and it has been a couple weeks:

The II twist is good and you all are misinterpreting it

When Steve Cobs said 'Mephone didn't just make the show, he made you' he means that Mephone created the contestants as real living people of whom are equitable to original characters

This means YES you CAN SHIP MEPHONE WITH HIS CONTESTANTS as that's just like you shipping yourself with your oc.

THIS ACTION THAT MEPHONE DID WAS SOMETHING HE DIDN'T REALIZE HE WAS DOING. He unintentionally created the contestants with his powers. This is why when he is asked by Cobs 'Why (he) did it', he responds with a very confused sounding '...What?'. That means he didn't put thought into their flaws and attributes, all of those things were unintentional.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, THIS MEANS THAT ALL THE CHARACTERS ACTIONS ACTUALLY DO MATTER. They all ARE real people. The show IS REAL. Just because Cobs told them that Mephone created them doesn't mean that they are not real in universe.

ANOTHER THING!!! WHEN COBS IS TALKING ABOUT MEPHONE AS IF MEPHONE IS A CHILD, THIS IS A TACTIC USED BY ABLEIST PARENTS TO MAKE THEIR ADULT CHILDREN SEEM AS IF THEY NEED TO BE CONTROLLED BY THEM. THIS IS LITERALLY AN ABUSE TACTIC. Yes there are people who do need to have support from their parents but Mephone4 has been proven to be able to function without the help of Cobs. That being said, IF YOU BELIEVE MEPHONE IS A CHILD, YOU ARE BEING MANIPULATED BY STEVE COBS TOO!!! YOU ARE BELIEVING HIS LIES!!! Yes, Mephone4 has done actions that are very immature, but, get this, Mephone4 is very developmentally disabled!!! It's literally shown to be a trait of his throughout the entire show!!! He can't do the things other Mephones are able to do while at the same level as them! Mephone4 is developmentally disabled, and Steve Cobs is using that flaw to make it seem like he's a child, WHICH HE IS NOT, in order to gain control over him.

Now, onto my theory for the next part of ii16;

Cobs will use this information against Suitcase and Knife. Cobs will most definitely make it seem like Mephone has been lying to them all this time about the competition. Cobs will most definitely try to manipulate them to get what he wants; control over the show and therefore Mephone4's actions. Now I know for sure Knife will not get this easily swayed by Cobs; Knife's entire arc in season 2 has consisted of trying to get people to stop being manipulated by others. Suitcase however... as strong as she has been throughout the season and as strong as she's slowly gotten, I am still unsure on whether or not she'd be able to see through Cobs. Part of me believes that she'd immediately believe him and decide that the only good way things can 'end' is if Cobs has control over Mephone4.

Anyways. Really needed to get this off my chest bc Jesus mcfucking christ ppl's media comprehension is TERRIBLE!!!!!! Go outside and touch some grass!!!!!

thank you anon for saying what needed to be said-📻

[phoenixcatch7]

Really interesting how, iirc, of all the crimes sj got charged with, being an (ex?) demonic cultivator wasn't one of them.

The child abuse and the brothel going, the vow breaking and murder and arson, none of those could be connected to lbhs behaviour (at the time he was still in disguise as a human cultivator).

But accusing him of demonic cultivation? Training under famous criminal wyz? That would have carried a much bigger weight in the cultivation world than one off instances he did as a kid before he joined the mountain decades ago. The rest of the stuff, yeah it's nasty, but it's not cultivation ruining in bed with demons blood drinking pagan rituals in their good Christian righteous jianghu taboo.

If airplane had wanted lbh would have found or faked all the evidence necessary, regardless of if lbh even thought sj actually had done it, just like the rest of his crimes.

It would have been pretty interesting, though, if sj had done it. Had learned demonic cultivation and kept learning it in secret for when his own crippled cultivation failed, giving him a huge edge just in understanding how the enemy thinks. Knowing their tactics, their average capabilities, how to fudge a talisman, how to draw out someone else's energy by force if necessary. (One of my favourite fics for this is The Original Goods does some Original Good, totally check it out. Spymaster Sqq ftw.)

Now, back in svsss canon, can you imagine if sy could do demonic cultivation?? After throwing lbh in the abyss for being a demon, after running from him, after xinmo, after marrying him. Wife plot twist! Damsel rushes to the aid of his heavily injured demonic husband, busts out some impossible demonic moves to save him!

Lbh would find that very validating, very confusing, and more than likely Really Quite Hot.

How sy would even know he could do demonic cultivation, I'll let you decide, but imagine if there was also a body swap later and sy used both demonic and human qi like he'd been doing it his entire life. (I will also rec Inappropriate Use May Result in Strange Side Effects because it is also really good!)

But the fact that Sqq has a history of demonic cultivation and then marries a half demon emperor who can use both naturally? And the way sy treated lbh supposedly because of his fear/hate of the demonic? Only for it to turn out that he himself had been using demonic energy before lbh had even been born?? But also the horrible things sj went through as a demonic cultivator 'in training' under wyz? Leaving 'Sqq' with that trauma? The potential fear that lbh would enact or even just catch Sqq in the blast radius of all of that again?

Sqq accidentally stumbling on a plausible reason to explain his meta knowledge panic without a system reveal? Demonic cultivation trauma? A way to relieve his husbands guilt and own lingering trauma of rejection?? To prove to him that the abyss wasn't his fault or of any innate disgust of his very being??? He'd be all over that like system on an ooc breach.

Also, it would be extremely cool.

[theambitiouswoman]

Gaslighting.

When a person hurts you, denies the fact that they hurt you but plays the victim and acts like you did something to them instead, this is gaslighting. Which is a form of psychological abuse.

I believe, and maybe this is the empath in me, that a lot of people do not realize the actual nature of their actions. To them it probably feels normal. it is how they grew up, or completely lack awareness. I think this makes it worse for the victim, who may be used to this behavior themselves, or may be empathetic towards the person, or even be at a level of insecurity that they naturally question themselves. But I will leave that for another post.

Gaslighting is a tactic someone can use to gain control over the other person by making the person question their own reality. Overtime, you become increasingly dependent for your sense of reality, which further fuels the dynamic. Doubting your own perceptions, memories, or feelings, and questioning their own sanity. This form of manipulation can lead you to feeling confused, anxious, isolated and unable to trust your own judgement.

Some common signs of gaslighting are:

Denying they said something, even though you have proof.

Using what you love against you. For example, they might say things like, "If you really loved me, you would..."

Their actions don't match their words.

They project. They accuse you of doing what they are actually doing.

They try to align people against you.

They tell you everyone else is a liar.

[damagedcoda6669]

hiiiii!!!! i was wondering if u could share some of the most common to least common bpd symptoms?….and maybe ones u struggle with??? <:3

ive been thinking i have bpd for awhile,, (since i was 15,i’m almost 18 now) BUT i dont wanna self diagnose bc i don’t wanna offend anyone……is that offensive? to self diagnose? idek <:p

there isnt rlly least 2 most common, bpd is a spectrum and has a wide range of experiences!!! but i will list the diagnostic criteria 4 u, and explain it in a way some1 first learning abt bpd can understand ^w^

u must experience at least 5 of the 9 symptoms from the criteria in order 2 be diagnosed!!!

1: frantic efforts 2 avoid real or imagined abandonment; this does not include suicidal or self mutilating behavior covered in criteria 5.

this means an intense fear of abandonment. if u have bpd, being abandoned by those u love is most likely ur biggest fear. ik its mine!!! xD this can look like a number of things. this can include an avoidant attachment style, pushing ppl away becuz u feel a need 2 abandon them first b4 it happens 2 u. u might do the opposite and cling rlly hard. u might resort 2 manipulation tactics n threats 2 try 2 get them 2 stay even if its not in their best interest (not every1 w bpd does this, and not every1 w bpd doing this is doing it on purpose. ive done this in the past b4 i reflected on my own behavior and realized it was wrong. we r not abusers by default and we dont have bad intentions.) u might beg them 2 stay, promise them things, try 2 change urself 4 them, yell at them 4 wanting 2 leave. its terrifying what the fear might do 2 u.

2: a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by extremes of idealization and devaluation.

this ones pretty simple, consistently unstable relationships throughout ur life!!! but it might get a lil confusing at "extremes of idealization and devaluation", so ill try 2 explain that using a term from the bpd community, "splitting". splitting is when u switch from one extreme view of a person, object, character, pretty much anything, 2 the opposite. it USUALLY means going from loving some1 2 hating them, but it can mean the opposite (hating 2 loving), and it can apply 2 anything, not just a person. a good example of splitting is when ur fp (favorite person, another term from the bpd community) disagrees with u abt smth, or u see them hanging out with other ppl, u mightve viewed them as perfect b4 and now u feel an intense hatred and can only see them as a bad person. 2 other ppl, experiencing such a drastic change in perception over smth so small is seen as ridiculous, but rlly its entirely valid. its part of the disorder, its okay.

3: markedly and persistently unstable self image or sense of self.

u dont rlly know who u r a lot of the time, u dont have a strong sense of identity, if any at all. u might change styles often, change the way u talk, the jokes u make, ur beliefs, ur interests, ur hobbies. u might find urself basing ur entire personality on those around u. a common experience is that when ur favorite person or favorite ppl leave u, u dont know who u r anymore, becuz ur entire sense of self was mirrored from them. its like being a chameleon, but ur constantly mirroring other ppl, and ur nevr rlly ur own person.

4: impulsivity in at least two areas that r potentially self damaging (the examples listed in the DSM-5 include spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating, but i will provide moar examples!!!); this does not include suicidal or self mutilating behavior covered in criteria 5.

this ones also pretty simple!!! but personally i find that i become moar impulsive while in a bad headspace, or while im having a bpd episode/suicidal outburst. moar impulsive actions may include property damage, physical fights, running away, cutting contact with ppl, getting in contact with ppl who u know r dangerous, etc. those r all i could think of off the top of my head and they may not be the best examples, srry!!! :(

5: recurrent suicidal behaviors, gestures, threats, or self mutilating behavior.

i would like 2 say that self harm doesnt just mean cutting!!! self harm includes burning, hitting, ripping out hair, picking at skin, stabbing, and many moar. personally ive always been a cutter and i started when i was 9 or 10, but i want every1 2 know that all self harm is valid and this is a safe space 2 discuss it. im not gonna make any1 feel ashamed of it <3 also!!! suicidal threats and gestures may come across as manipulative, but that is almost NEVR our intention. we may act out in suicidal ways becuz its the only thing that gets us any sort of attention or care that we desperately need. i dont give a shit abt "ew theyre threatening suicide 4 attention, lets ignore them" becuz attention is a basic human need, and some1 threatening suicide REGARDLESS of their intentions is always a concern. whether its a call 4 help or not, they need help. dont disregard their mental health becuz their suicidal ideation doesnt present in an "acceptable" manner. all suicidal ideation, IS suicidal ideation. whether its passive, 4 attention, active w a plan, its all valid and requires attention and care.

6: affective instability due 2 a marked reactivity of mood (eg, intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely moar than a few days)

intense mood swings!!! u can feel happy one moment, and then switch 2 being depressed or anxious, and then go back 2 "normal" 10 minutes later. sometimes it just happens 4 no reason!!! absolutely fucking sucks

7: chronic feelings of emptiness.

this one is hard 2 explain and can mean varying things 4 different ppl. 4 me, it means i will never be happy in the long term (maybe with medication, but.. rawdogging life? bad idea) nothing gives me any sort of long term joy and i dont feel like i have a purpose. its like theres a hole in my chest that will nevr be filled. nothing will make me complete.

8: inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (eg, frequent displays of temper, constant anger, or recurrent physical fights)

angy

(also not every1 w bpd gets in2 physical fights or r angry at other ppl often, some ppl r moar angry at themselves)

9: transient, stress related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

paranoia is a symptom of bpd!!! although its shortlived in nature, and as stated above, stress related. dissociative symptoms can also present in a variety of ways!!! u can present with a fractured sense of self which may actually lead 2 u developing headmates iirc, but with them usually appearing as other versions of urself. or u might just dissociate due 2 stress or ur brain wanting 2 remove traumatic memories, 4 me dissociating feels like the whole world is fuzzy and blurry and i cant form any thoughts or emotions. i have dissociative amnesia and experience memory loss when this happens, which sucks becuz i dissociate at least once everyday. my memories r incredibly spotty and unreliable, its liek my brain is made of swiss cheese!!!

personally, i experience all of the symptoms from the diagnostic criteria, and they all effect my life on a daily basis. but that isnt 2 say that u need all of them in order 2 have bpd, as i said b4, u only need at least 5!!! there r also different types of bpd (not medically, theyre labels created by the bpd community) look in2 it if u resonate with some of the symptoms but not all of them!!! a lot of ppl who suspect they have bpd but dont present in a stereotypical way often relate 2 the term "quiet bpd", i recommend looking in2 it!!!

self diagnosis is entirely valid, and most of the ppl who r offended by it r neurotypical or they dont have the disorders that ppl r self diagnosing with. it stems mostly from ableism towards autistic ppl, specifically autistic ppl who self diagnose becuz they know theyre autistic but dont have the resources/time 2 get a diagnosis from a professional. if u believe ur borderline, and u've done ur research, i believe u. self diagnosis is not actually offensive 2 those who have mental disorders, im pretty sure the bpd community is accepting of self diagnosis!!! and if u cant find a community of ppl who r accepting of ur self diagnosis, just know that i believe u and this is a safe space 4 self diagnosis and ppl w bpd :3

bpd is also incredibly hard 2 get diagnosed with. its one of the most stigmatized disorders and often mental health professionals have a bias against it. sometimes, professional diagnosis is not an option 4 us. i knew i had bpd 4 years b4 i was able 2 get diagnosed. good luck!!!!

[womanmanipulator]

goodbye, yellow brick road.

spencer reid x gn!bau!reader.

synopsis: naturally, as a hard-headed and stubborn young adult, you’d chase after the potential unsub when he’s let go due to legality. having your heart set on getting a confession out of him. what could go wrong?

(content warning: graphic, somewhat detailed? major character death, stab wound(s)?, abuse, blood, very angsty. i did some research to write this.)

~

it’s pouring, hands grip the steering wheel tightly. speeding through the rain.

you were stubborn.

hard-headed.

cocky.

it was only natural, being new to the job. only five months in. you weren’t used to work sticking with you and chasing you around, even when you got home. the release of david sallow from the interrogation room earlier today didn’t sit well with you. you knew that sick bastard killed all those young men and women. and you were going to get a confession out of him.

sure, it was unprofessional. but the others wouldn’t even mind when you caught him and got a confession out of that asshole. that’s what you told yourself as you pulled into the gas station his SUV was parked at. you climb out of your car, striding towards where he stood. david was walking out of building when his eyes caught you. he furrows his brows, confused.

“you’re that person from the FBI.” he states. standing a little awkwardly with a smug look playing on his stupid face. you narrow your eyes. “i am.” you say confidently. “and i know you killed those people, david.” you add. getting straight to the point. “i didn’t, and you let me go today. leave me alone.” he says sternly, smirk now vanished. “i will. catch you. it all depends on when.” you glare. if looks could kill..

“admit it.” you press. he starts to get agitated. talking a bold step towards him, you get personal. an intimidation tactic. he isn’t fazed however, you are set on getting a confession though. “i don’t owe you shit, lady.” he hisses. “listen. if you don’t back off, somethin’ bads gonna happen.” he threatens.

“you killed all those men and women because they remind you of your mother and father, mr. wallows.” you say, a quietness fills the air. david’s fists ball up and a grumble comes out of his throat.

“your parents would abuse you. they’d hit you whenever they got the chance. they went so far as to make up things to be mad at you about so they could hit you, eventually they stopped giving reason and just took their frustration out on you. you want to get them back, except you can’t. you killed them, but that didn’t quench your thirst david, oh no it didn’t—“ you start to list off. you are cut off by a yell coming from the man infront of you. he charges at you with a knife.

everything happens so quick. how did you miss him grabbing his knife? you were know for being so attentive and quick thinking —

. . .

pain blossoms in the back of your cranium as you are knocked to the concrete. brain rattled, you’re confused. you try to reach for your gun but you’re stopped by the plunge of the knife in your abdomen. you can’t feel the pain, yet. the adrenaline overpowers it. coursing through your veins as your insides become outsides. a weak attempt to fight back is made, but you can’t do much with a two-hundred pound man above you, stabbing you.

i should have stayed on the farm.

i should have listened to my old man.

a warm liquid trickles out of you as your breath is knocked out of you lungs, another punch of the knife in your weakening body. you try to gasp for air but it’s as if your lungs are useless. you don’t even hear the store owner running out of the building and screaming at david.

he flees from the scene.

you know you can’t hold me forever,

i didn’t sign up with you.

when you gain a grasp on what’s going on, the store owner has sat you up against the brick wall of the building. propping you up. he has pressure on your wound as his phone wails out inaudible sound. they might as well be speaking another language. the pain of a thousand needles pricking you takes over your belly and side. trying to move and get away from the pain, you make an attempt to get up. you are held down though by a familiar face. it takes time to register it.

i’m not a present for your friends to open

blinking a few times to clear your vision, eyes heavy. you are met with spencer. “hey, hey, stay still. please.” he begs desperately. you’ve never heard him sound like this. it worries you. you don’t know when spencer replaced the nice man beside you, but you don’t think too long on it. as you can feel your heart beat in your side and everytime you try to take a deep breath it’s like a punch in the lungs. a sharp, aching pain. you aren’t getting any air. in reality you are, but. your brain can’t register it. more of the thick, scarlet liquid trickles and sprays out of your wound as you try to heave for air. you cant remember the name.

this boys to young to be singin’

the blues.

everything’s so distant and blurry. your body fights for life as pain washes over you in a new form. you want to scream, cry out but you can’t. spencer’s trying to coax you as he holds a crushing pressure on your wound but it’s like talking through a glass window. “you gotta stay awake for me, okay?” he says. tears pouring down his face.

that’s weird, you’d never seen him cry.

“wake up rookie, keep your eyes open.” he tries. speaking firmly. he wants to sound strong but fails. your ears start to ring and you feel as if you’re underwater. slowly, a black ring starts to creep into your vision. you want to close your eyes.

you’re really tired all the sudden, the pains disappeared. as if it was never there. it’s really peaceful. spencer slaps you in the face, knocking you out of your trance as you can hear sirens blaring loudly in the distance. “just a little longer, stay awake for me please, trouble.” he tries, his hands put more pressure on you. you barely register it though. eyes slipping closed again.

slap.

eyes slowly open, vision obstructed. you can barely make out anything as the black rings taken up 90% of your sight. everything sounds far away and echoey. the words he says come in one ear and out the other, rattling and bouncing around in your brain a first.

it’s really tempting to fall asleep.

so goodbye, yellow brick road.

where the dogs of society howl.

spencer knows as soon as you close your eyes you’re gone.

“we got a DOA.”

you can’t plant me in your penthouse,

i’m goin’ back to my plough.

. . .

oh i’ve finally decided my future lies,

beyond the yellow brick road.

~

wowowowoowowow

thsi was written in an hour. might be a little choppy, my first time trying to write smth longer than 400 words 😒.

lmk if ya want more 🎀

mwah mwah mwah

[t-art-c]

Love that Beat Vanity

Scaramouche/GN! Reader - Forced Established Marriage

TW: Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Verbal Abuse

A/N: HELLO! Thank you for reading my goofy little oneshots once again. I've decided to have every Scaramouche fics I write on this acc to have some kind of continuation. So, if you have read my previous works, the reader's lore will be the same throughout this series. But you don't have to read the previous works to catch up with the story since I wrote it as oneshots, scenarios and whatnot.

If you choose not to read the previous works, Reader was an orphan who survived stealing from people but stole from the wrong person one time and was taken and placed in a human trafficking ring, Scaramouche bought her to work at for the Fatui and the rest is history.

-----

It has been 5 years since Scaramouche has taken you as his spouse. You have still not adapted well into this new "domestic" life that was forced onto you by your husband. The lessons you have to keep taking because you can't make yourself to remember it all, has started to take a toll on your body.

Sleep has been difficult to achieved, it might be near impossible as your husband demands for the two of you to sleep together in the same bed, as husband and spouse. But try as you might to close your eyes, the moment you feel his arms snake around your waist, you freeze up like a statue and not sleep until you pass out from exhaustion. However, when you wake up from fainting, you'll feel the blanket placed properly on top of you, the bed side where your husband would always lay on, cold.

You have no doubt that Scaramouche loves you, too much in fact.

Early in the morning, he would leave you in bed and attend to his harbinger duties. Not a single item of his was ever misplaced whenever he fixes himself up. His sakura blossom perfume would always be placed in it proper spot and his brush to add the rouge over his eyelids were clean from any color, as if it was never even used.

Tidiness can't be said the same to your vanity table. Although you rarely use the furniture as it was intended, you do use it as something to leave the fabrics that you have meticulously stitched from the lessons that Scaramouche forced on you. They were ugly, so you have no idea why your husband lets you leave them in the open.

Your 'lovely' Scaramouche once commented on how your needlework was "god awful that even a child can do better". You might not have expressed it physically, but it hurt to hear him say that. Blood was spilled when you were creating your first fabric But you learned the truth later on that the first finished fabric you have created was hidden in the drawer of his office.

It makes your heart confused on why he has to resort to harsh tactics to get a semblance of your "love". Why can't your husband act like a normal person?

Mornings has been something you have been waiting for every single day for the past 5 years. For the whole morning, you have the manor all to yourself. A place for you to be alone with your thoughts. But when the hour hand reaches 12 PM, your teacher for that day will be coming to teach you another useless skill that you will never remember.

[e-r0da]

Starting to believe that the overwhelming amount of ness hatred I'm seeing says something deeper about the presence of toxic masculinity and victim blaming in this fandom (mostly the male audience). Maybe I should expect it at this point in shonen manga/anime, though.

Yes, his last pass to Kaiser was wrong. Putting aside the psychological programming/codependency and just looking at it as a sports strategy move, it was wrong. But I just don't get how his pass was that much worse than a mistake that any other player in this manga has made?

We've seen how things like pride/stubbornness held back many of the other characters—Rin and Shidou, Barou with Isagi, Yukimiya with Isagi, Kaiser with the first kaiser impact 2.0—but the reaction to them doing objectively "wrong" things for their teams doesn't even compare.

Ness is codependent, but he's also just a really good friend—not to mention, Kaiser's only friend. But loyalty and compassion are not acceptable traits for our "alpha" male audience and gets him deemed a glazer at face-value, even after Kaiser explicitly admits to using psychological tactics to mold Ness, who was vulnerable (and a kid). In fact, I've seen Kaiser get praised for this. Praised for continuing a cycle of abuse and then throwing away the same person he's been abusing.

Evolution in a player's soccer skills/strategy is a natural part of this manga—just about every character gets one, and it's something that the reader anticipates and later, celebrates. But for Ness, the amount of people who don't even want him to try is disheartening. They'd rather he just quit so they can keep calling him weak.

Ness was so lonely that he gave everything he had to the first person who expressed some belief in the impossible, in magic. He lost sight of himself and his true dream somewhere along the way. But we know it doesn't have to stay that way, and considering his physical stats and own analytic skills, it would be a shame to lose that. Ness was considered the heart of the team up until now, and his skills and teamwork with Kaiser showed his value in soccer just in general.

Mental manipulation and isolation can really fuck with a person. Ness should be allowed to get up, just like any other victim. (even if it doesn't happen within soccer, but that would make me sad because soccer was his dream before meeting Kaiser)

All of this rambling to say, I've just been confused with how quickly and strongly Ness is put down by a lot of readers, and I really want to understand why it is so if not for the things I've said above.

[walrus150915]

cw: discussions of nonsexual grooming

There is one thing that has been spinning on my mind ever since I watched the movie. This conversation isn't that popular in the fandom, probably due to its uncomfortable subject matter, but it needs to be discussed. I'll be the one to start

The Director has groomed Ambrosius and it affected him far into adulthood

(A really long analysis post)

Warning: I'm not a psychologist neither am I really educated in this sphere, and I never was a victim of grooming, so don't take my words as 100% truth. However, I'm a literature student, so I can analyse a few scenes and make a conclusion lol

So, to start off, let's share the definition of grooming, shall we?

"Grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them."

Now, of course Ambrosius is an adult in the movie, and we can't exactly know his entire history with the Director. So this analysis will take a few things as truth despite them not being confirmed

- the Director has been by Ambrosius's side throughout most of his life. Considering the fact that she's been around even when Ballister was a child, the same can be assumed about Ambrosius

- we as viewers do not see Ambrosius's parents (because this is quite unnecessary to the narrative, maybe we'll see them in a sequel Quane and Bruno were teasing buttt¯\_(ツ)_/¯), and he's been in the Institute since childhood, so it seems like the Director was the most reliable adult in Ambrosius's life

Despite Ambrosius being a grown man, the effect the Director has on him cannot be denied. His relationship to the Director is like half his character arc, the man being torn between his loyalty to the kingdom and his lover

I will take a few scenes from the movie where Ambrosius and the Director interact and try to analyse them

Starting off strong, we've got the "acting like common children" scene. I could point out the obvious bias the Director puts in her words (villainizing an oppressed group of people as a rich white woman in power how nice of her) but we ain't coming to her throat for classism today. Pay attention to her praising Ambrosius and singling him out. "Thankfully, we have a descendant of Gloreth to lead us"

Are other knights happy to be around Ambrosius tho? The answer is no

(Text below is taken from the screenplay. The scene is after Nimona's and Bal's escape)

***

Knights: I knew we never should have trusted Ballister./If Goldenloin hadn't trusted him.../Well, if Goldenloin hadn't helped him...

***

Todd: This is his fault!

Knights: Yeah!/Tell him, Todd!

Goldenloin realizes all eyes are on him

***

I think it wouldn't be wrong to assume Ambrosius's colleagues dislike him at best and outcast him at worst. Compared to Todd, who seems to be the more liked one amongst their peers (bro really is a jock bully high school stereotype in his 20s isn't that embarrassing), Ambrosius is isolated. He doesn't have anybody except Ballister and the Director. And as you all know Ballister and Ambrosius are separated for the most of the movie. So it leaves him with the Director as the closest person to interact with. Yeah...

Also in this scene she displays TWO tactics groomers use to manipulate their victims: isolation and favouritism

Another scene I'd like to pay attention to is Ambrosius's ✨iconic✨ freak out

"What's on your mind, Ambrosius? You can talk to me"

"...I'm fine, Director"

This scene actually left me confused on the first watch because it looks like a perfect moment for the Director to seem at least somewhat sympathetic. It truly seems like she cares about him

Honestly it's pretty hard for me to surely say whether or not she's being sincere or not but her goal is definitely to win over Ambrosius's trust, to make him believe she's a safe person (now that his real safe person is away ajdjdjj). That is also another tactic for groomers to manipulate their victims

And I think it would be fair to mention Director's attitude towards Ballister's and Ambrosius's relationship. It's obvious she knows about them (...not like it's rocket science have you seen these lovebirds) and disapproves. She doesn't outright state it but it's really clear

"Sir Goldenloin, is your loyalty to this Kingdom or to the knight who consorts with a monster?"

Again, amazing case of manipulation. She doesn't say Institute, nor "me" or whatever. She says kingdom. And she clearly knows that it works on Ambrosius, because he is, after all, Gloreth's descendant. Gloreth was the original protector, and Ambrosius is supposed to be the protector now. By choosing Ballister he betrays the kingdom, his bloodline and Gloreth

Now, I know this scene is not Ambrosius & the Director because it's Nimona in disguise but considering how good Nimona was in playing her part we might as well assume real Ambrosius would act the same.

Look at these eyes. He's afraid of her. She has the complete power over him. And Ballister is aware of this (if that's how he told Nimona to act)

Off-topic but I watched Nimona with two of my buddies yesterday and during this scene they both went like "Wait, who is she to Ambrosius again? Is she his mother? Because she acts like she one" and they are so damn right???

Now remember the fact that during one of the interviews Eugene Lee Yang said that the Director is Ambrosius's parental figure. Do with this information whatever you wanna do

I'm still not over her audacity in this scene. Her lip didn't even twitch and she's killing a person whom she praised for his bloodline. Saying "May Gloreth forgive you" while DRIVING A SWORD THROUGH HIM is beyond evil like??? Chill out Nancy Reagan???

I could say that this is the scene that debacles the American model minority myth (with East Asians being put on a pedestal and used to further reinforce white supremacy). A white woman killing an East Asian man while using a Christ-like figure to justify her actions (Gloreth is literally mentioned to be a Christ figure in the art book), and, if we take into account the theory that she wanted to set Ballister up so that it looks like he killed Ambrosius, BLAMING IT ON A BROWN ASIAN MAN was really a choice huh

The Director killed Ambrosius the second he questioned her, the second he wasn't useful to her

And how was he being useful to her? Allow me to introduce you to the scene which made me SUPER uncomfortable once I realized what was going on

During most of the movie Ambrosius acts rather impulsively, reflexes play a big part in his body language. And what does he do? He protects her with his body

"We need to get you to safety!"

Ambrosius was trained in a way that he needed to protect the Director with his body and his life.

Even in scenes where Ambrosius and the Director don't interact you can see how much Ambrosius is brainwashed.

"She manipulated you. She manipulated both of us. But together we'll take her down, you'll be a knight again"

"Thank you. The Director can't-"

"The Director? Oh, no, Bal. I'm talking about your sidekick"

Ambrosius refuses to even think about the effect the Director has on him. He's insisting on Nimona being the manipulator despite him being manipulated

Finally, when Ambrosius realizes something is CLEARLY wrong, he still tries to talk some sense into her

"But what if we're wrong? What if we've always been wrong?"

Despite him being a constant witness to Director's misdeeds he tries to do everything peacefully. Look at his face. This is a face of a man who doesn't want to harm. He gives the Director a chance to improve herself. I think he would forgive her after everything she's done

...but being a conservative she'd rather explode than admit she's wrong. So she attempts to kill Ambrosius again

This, again, says that no matter how much mercy you show to hateful people, they'll continue to be horrible to you. Just because they think they have a right to

Analysing Ambrosius's and the Director's relationship I think it'd be more than valid to state that she has, indeed, groomed Ambrosius to exploit and use him for her own (political and other) benefits. Other knights were brainwashed and groomed too, but something about her attitude towards Ambrosius really bugged me the wrong way

She is an excellent manipulator and Ambrosius fell victim to that, which is no surprise

Thank you for reading this! It took so long to make😭 If you want to add on anything in the reblogs please do, because the discussion HAS to happen at some point

[dottores]

HELIOTROPES

pairing: dottore x fem!reader & segments

summary: the gods were sick and twisted. for five hundred years, he believed he was fated to be alone. he had long accepted it—embraced it, even. that is, until a midwinter night when that elusive red thread finally appeared on his finger. but as much as he wants to ignore it, the pull of a soulmate simply cannot be ignored.

genre: soulmate au, canon compliant for the most part.

warnings: fem!reader, worldbuilding for snezhnaya & fatui & fontaine, unhealthy/abusive households (dottore--locked in closet, mistreatment/verbal abuse | reader--implied toxic stepfather & equally toxic mother who constantly believes him over reader, the slap scene from prev chapter), minor character deaths.

notes: the segment sheet is DONE, this was a rlly fun chapter to write! i enjoyed exploring both of their backgrounds ehehe

THE FAMILY JEWELS

Dottore did not dream. 

He used to dream before he was forced to abandon his original body but even then dreams were sparse and short. If he was lucky, sometimes he dreamt of answers--his mind always on his research even while resting. If he was unlucky, he would dream of fire, red and orange and yellow flames too close to his eyes; he would dream of the day he had received the scars that marred half of his face and his hands. 

But now he was sitting in an unfamiliar home, reminiscent of the estate in northern Fontaine where the Delta segment was focusing on his research. It had to be a dream. He remembered laying down in his bed, he remembered feeling his soulmate’s exhaustion. He had been back in his estate in northern Snezhnaya and now he was here.

It had to be a dream but Dottore didn’t dream so it must be something else.

But what?

He didn’t have time to dwell on the issue, he found himself moving, standing up from wherever he had been sitting and confusion began to itch at him, realizing that something was wrong. He was shorter--stood barely taller than the couch he had been sitting on--and he had no control over his actions. 

He tried to catch a glimpse of himself in the glass of an ebony cabinet that seemed to be storing some sort of antiques but he couldn’t make out his features. His features? Something felt wrong. His hands moved down on their own, smoothing down the cloth draped across his body--loose fitting, softer than anything he owned, it only reached his knees. 

A dress?

There was a strange feeling bubbling in his chest--excitement but it wasn’t his own. He was pacing back and forth and as he turned on his foot for the fifth time, he caught his reflection in the mirror: bright eyes glowing with anticipation, a wide smile. It was a girl, a young one at that--no older than seven. Something warm and heavy stirred, this was of his own.

This was her. His soulmate. He knew it.

Dottore suddenly felt uncomfortable. He didn’t know how to wake himself up. He tried searching for something to read, he tried yelling, he tried blinking repeatedly--tactics that he had used all of those years ago when he found himself dreaming of the unpleasant years he spent back in his village but none of them were successful this time. His body wouldn’t cooperate… or he supposed it was her body, not his.

This was not ideal, he thought to himself as she continued to pace around. He had somehow managed to let himself get attached to the faceless being on the opposite side of the thread, however minimally that attachment may have been, he did not want to put a face to them because he did not want to risk this attachment becoming any stronger. He had to focus on severing the thread, freeing them both of the shackles that this bond placed on them. 

There wasn’t much he could do, he realized. There were no tricks that he could use to wake himself up, he just had to wait this out, watch whatever was going on from behind the eyes of his soulmate. Exasperated, he resigned himself to his fate, instead trying to make the most of the situation and figure out where exactly she might be.

Not to find her, he told himself. 

Or, it was to find her, he corrected, but only so that he could send Lambda off to keep an eye on her. He was the only one that Dottore could trust to make sure that she stayed alive without forming any sort of attachment to her and without even making himself known to her. All of the others would take advantage of the opportunity but Lambda would do what was necessary--he was livid enough over this whole situation and how it has been affecting their research. He would make sure that their soulmate stayed alive and unharmed long enough for Dottore to figure out how to sever the thread. 

“Moooother,” the words left his lips, but the voice was young and happy, a soft singsong of a call that trailed into a gentle giggle. Innocent, sweet, untainted. “I’ve been waiting forever.” 

Dottore felt another emotion that was not his own, this one more familiar to him--a growing anxiety, a creeping sense of doubt as the girl began to look around. He could feel her lips twisting into a frown, the excitement dying as she left the room to go look up and down the halls. Dottore tried to push away her growing distress, instead focusing on the windows that she was passing by as she ran up and down the halls. 

Rolling hills in the distance, snow dusting the thick grass, the skies were clear and there weren’t many trees in sight. Dottore’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, it was very reminiscent of the labs he had set up on the Fontaine border. 

Was she from the Fontaine countryside?

He would call Lambda back from Sumeru to send him to check it out, and order Delta to take his place in Sumeru with Theta. Theta would be livid but Dottore didn’t particularly care about how Theta felt. He had only barely been able to replicate all of the lost research before the deadline Dottore had set for him and Dottore had a feeling that Lambda had done the majority of the work because he had been furious over his research being interrupted. 

Unfortunately for him, it would be interrupted again. 

But where in the Fontaine countryside? Dottore tried to figure it out, irritation growing as she came to a stop in one of the hallways, no window in sight. It had to be somewhere in central or eastern Fontaine--if it were western Fontaine, there would be no snow powdered across the grass, the heat from Sumeru and Natlan melting it before it even touched the earth.

Northeastern Fontaine or north-central Fontaine. It would be easier if he could sic Rho on the job. He would be able to track her down with a general location--they’d have her whereabouts in a matter of a week… but he couldn’t trust Rho to not tell the Gamma segment, and if the Gamma segment knew, he would tell the Iota segment, and the Iota segment finding out was how this whole mess started in the first place. 

“Miss Elyna!” she called and Dottore was moving--or she was, he corrected again--this time down a new hall, lips tugging down into a pout as she tugged down a cloak from a hook. Dottore winced as she pulled too hard, tumbling down to the ground. He could feel the hardwood floors scraping against her elbows. It hurt more than it should’ve, he had gone through worse but he supposed he was feeling what she was feeling, severity and all. Dottore wanted to roll his eyes when he felt her eyes water up, sniffling. 

“They left me,” she said to herself, voice wobbly as she pushed herself to her feet and pulled on the cloak. It was too big for her, dragging against the floor as she made her way to the door. 

Pleased, Dottore realized she was going to go outside, which would give him a better chance of figuring out where along the Fontaine countryside she was living. As soon as she pushed open the door, brisk air met his face. Her nose wrinkled, drawing her hands up into the sleeves of her cloak as she began to make her way out of the house.

The town seemed to be up a rather large hill, a mile or so away from where the estate was situated. She was of noble birth, that much was obvious, only the aristocrats of Fontaine could afford such a large estate with that much property. 

Dottore frowned as he caught something in the distance--dark clouds rolling over the town that she was making her way to, too fast to be just the average storm. Even further in the distance was a sight he could barely make out: a mountain range, large, ragged peaks that were very, very familiar. 

Dottore felt uncomfortable. Again. The storm was not of a natural cause--it was one of the harsh winter blizzards that should have buried Snezhnaya’s capital city, deflected by the Tsaritsa to batter Fontaine instead. His soulmate remained blissfully ignorant of the coming danger, bounding up the hill in the direction of the village, at a pace too slow to beat the imminent storm. He could feel the air around them getting colder, the wind picking up. He could feel the first snowflake sting her cheek, bitter and sharp.

There was a sinking feeling in his stomach--he couldn’t tell if it was his or hers. It was hers, he realized, because she was now looking around nervously, realizing that the storm was about to come down on her and she was too far from the estate to make it back there and she was too far from the town to make it to one of the houses on the outskirts. 

Snezhnayan blizzards were dangerous. They never lasted for too long, especially the ones that were deflected to the south, but they came on fast and they were harsh--the winds were wicked and the snow came down half as ice. 

“Mother!” she called, voice loud, and panicked. Dottore’s heart was racing--or he supposed it was hers, now that the severity of the situation was finally beginning to set in on her. “Mother!”

Fool, he thought to himself, you’re going to fall. His chest felt tight--this was his own, not hers, he recognized--as instead of trying to run back to the estate, she kept going up the large hill, intent on finding her parents rather than trying to get back to safety.

Just as he expected, it only took one strong wind for the girl to trip over the too-long cloak and go tumbling down the hill. She was shrieking but the wind was drowning her cries and Dottore couldn’t do anything but watch, watch through her eyes as she tumbled down the hill, nails clawing against the dirt as she tried to slow the fall. 

Dottore did not do well with these sorts of movements. He felt woozy, light-headed--or maybe it was her feeling it, or maybe it was both of them, Dottore really couldn’t tell. By the time she came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, she could barely even stand up. The wind sent her tumbling down each time she tried to rise, and the snow was coming down hard, whipping around her so that she could barely even see a few steps in front of her and Dottore was suddenly back in northern Snezhnaya, four hundred years prior.

Beta, Dottore thought to himself and he felt sick and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the dizziness or because of the reminder of his first segment and its destruction. He willed himself to wake up to no avail, and he couldn’t even shut his eyes because he was forced to watch through hers as she tumbled to the ground over and over again, trying to make her way blindly through the storm. 

You’re going to get yourself lost, Dottore wanted to spit out, livid, stop moving. But his soulmate was terrified and frenzied, shrieking even though no one could hear her, sobbing for her mother, trying to cover her face with her cloak but she kept getting knocked to the ground, taking facefuls of mud and snow. It was hard to remember that it was the past--that this had already happened years ago as he lived through it himself through her, as he felt her fear and her pain and her panic.

He hated this. 

He hated the lack of control. He hated being forced into this situation. He hated having no choice in what was going on. 

He hated having a soulmate

And he hated even more that there was the chance that she was also dreaming of his past and he had no way of knowing what she could be seeing.

You were sitting by a window. You blinked, brows furrowing softly as you tried to figure out what had happened and how you had got there. The room was unfamiliar--the furniture was a pale wood instead of the ebony dressers that decorated your room and it was small, it seemed to be some sort of living room but it was barely even the size of your bedroom.

You wanted to stand up but you couldn’t and you weren’t entirely sure why. You frowned, trying to push yourself off the windowsill you were sitting at but your body wouldn’t cooperate, locked in place. You felt a bit panicked over it but you couldn’t feel panicked, you didn’t know how to describe it. It was a muted feeling, suppressed--what was more intense was the odd sense of longing tugging at your gut, the weight heavy on your chest. 

Your gaze moved on its own from inside the house to back out the window. You couldn’t help but notice how the window was bolted from the outside--less like trying to keep people out of the house and more like trying to keep someone in. You felt uncomfortable suddenly, but again, it was a muted feeling, one that you couldn’t seem to feel strongly no matter how much you felt like you should.

There were kids outside, across the dirt street, lounging in the lush grass. They were smiling, happy, making the same motions you would when you pulled at your string and you felt even more alone, sad--you felt sad and you didn’t even know why.

You looked away, down to your lap, and then you felt confused because you realized, slowly, that you were not in your own body. You were wearing a pair of loose shorts--a thick rough material that felt icky against your skin, you were used to the soft silks and cottons that you usually wore. Your legs were stick thin, the bones protruding through the skin. Your knees and shins were bruised and scratched up and your hands were small but rough and calloused.

What…?

“Zandik,” you heard an unfamiliar voice call. Your head turned, but you weren’t controlling it. Again, you felt alarmed, and again, you couldn’t really feel alarmed. Instead, there was an anxiety pooling, one that you weren’t in charge of. You looked to the side--a woman was standing there, tall with pale blue eyes and dark hair. “Why are you watching them?”

“You never let me go outside,” The words were leaving your lips but the voice was not your own, it was that of a boy--a young one at that--quiet and vulnerable, loneliness echoing in his tone. “Why can’t I go outside? I want to explore. The other kids go exploring all the time, I see them.”

“Zandik, come away from there,” the woman ignored his pleas, pressed together tight as she watched him--you? you thought to yourself, confused at the whole situation. “You’re going to make them uncomfortable. We don’t need more rumors going around.”

“I want to go outside and explore,” the boy was adamant, his words edging on desperate. “I hate being stuck in here all day, I want to go out. I want to explore. Why don’t you let me out?” 

“You know why, Zandik,” the woman had not one ounce of sympathy for the boy and the hurt that you might have felt personally at the harshness, he felt tenfold. You could feel yourself sniffling--he was sniffling, you corrected, his lip wobbling and his vision going blurry. 

“I don’t get it,” he said, voice cracking, the telltale sign of a meltdown in most kids but he seemed to be controlling himself, somehow. You had never seen a kid mature enough to hold back their tears and wails. “I don’t get it, you keep telling me they don’t want me outside because of my soulmate but that’s not fair. I’ll get my mark soon, why are they being so mean? I just want to go out and explore.”

Oh, you realized suddenly as you finally began to feel tears track down your cheeks and as the boy finally let himself cry. This was your soulmate when they were younger. 

You had heard rumors of this, you read about it in some of the books in the palace’s libraries. There were certain half-stages or rare effects of the bond that soulmates could experience, some called them mutations, others called them extra blessings. There were rumors of people not being able to see certain colors until they met their soulmates, rumors that some had two different eye colors--one of their own and the other to match their soulmates, and then there were dreams. Dreams were a frequent mutation, be it seeing each other’s past through the dreams or it being a shared space for them to talk to each other in. 

You assumed this was the former. 

And suddenly you were angry. The woman, who must be his mother or caretaker, was watching him coldly even as he cried. She made no attempt to console him, no attempt to calm him down or reassure him, not even a single word or action of comfort. She watched him cry with empty eyes, unmoved by the tears. It was hard to only be able to watch--you wanted to scream at the woman, you wanted to slap her, you wanted to comfort the crying boy, but all you could do was watch it happen from his eyes, feel his distress.

“It has been over five years Zandik,” the woman said, tone void of any sort of empathy for him. “No one has gone this long without receiving their mark. It is a bad omen for the village, you are a bad omen--they say the divine have cursed you. They do not want you around and if you continue testing your father’s patience, he will stop advocating for more time with the village elders. Do you understand?” 

He was crying, hard, and you could feel him shaking his head. “I don’t understand. I do-”

The glass behind you shattered and the boy didn’t have any time to react before a rock flew past him into their house, shards of glass cutting through the skin of his cheek and his arm--shallow cuts, but you could feel the warm, thick liquid dripping down his cheek. He had stopped crying suddenly, stunned by the sudden pain and the loud sound of the glass breaking. 

The woman was staring down at the rock in the middle of their small living room, making no move to get a wet rag to help Zandik clean up. You could hear the kids laughing as they ran away--evil little demons, you thought to yourself, personally aggrieved by the situation.

“What was that noise?” 

A new voice--male, deep, and Zandik was forced out of the state of shock, heart-racing and nerves returning, this time way more intense as he looked at the woman, “Moth-” he began, voice dripping with anxiety but he didn’t even have time to finish the word before a man had made his way into the room. 

He was tall, taller than your father was with wavy blue, fair skin and sharp red eyes. He was intimidating, you weren’t even really there and you could feel your nerves beginning to heighten… or maybe it was just Zandik’s emotions forcing themselves onto you, you couldn’t tell at this point. But the man, his father, was livid, his lips were twisting in an ugly sort of fury as he stared at the broken window.

You thought he would storm outside, yell at the kids who had thrown the rock into their home and hurt his son but instead, he was moving toward Zandik. Your stomach dropped as you felt yourself--him--trying to scramble away, unintelligible, panicked babbles spilling from his lips but his father’s legs were longer, strides too big for him to escape. 

He leaned down, a large hand wrapping around Zandik’s thin bicep and you winced at the bruising grip he had on him as he yanked him to his feet so hard that the boy went stumbling. “How many times do I have to tell you-” his father started to spit out, cutting himself off as he dragged Zandik through the small room and toward the hall. 

“Zakai,” his mother began, following Zandik and his father, exasperated and maybe even a bit nervous.

“Stay out of this,” his father said roughly, turning down another, smaller hall that led to a single door at the end of it. 

“No,” Zandik was panicking, desperately trying to rip himself out of his father’s grip. “No, I don’t want to go in the dark room. I don't want to go in there.”

He went ignored, flinching as his father yanked open the door and a sharp pain flew up your back as he pushed Zandik into the room--the closet, you corrected, horrified. It was a small space with no windows and barely enough room to sit comfortably, and his back hit the wall hard before he crumbled to the ground.

“This is for your own good,” his father told him. “It’s hard enough convincing them to let you remain in the village as it is. If you continue to give them reasons to want you gone, I’ll have no choice but to concede.” 

“I didn’t even do anything,” Zandik choked over his words, you could barely make out his father’s face now from how much his vision was blurred with tears. “I was just sitting there.”

“They don’t even want to look at you, boy,” his father hissed, grabbing Zandik’s cheeks and squeezing them together hard. “They see you a monster, do you understand? The same type that rose from the damned lands and razed our villages  to the ground--those cursed people had no mark either, you know? Are you like them? A monster? Cursed? Are you? Answer me!”

“I’m not!” Zandik shouted, pulling his face from his father’s hands. “I’m not!”

“Then prove it,” his father snapped before slamming the door in his face, drowning the small, enclosed room in darkness and leaving Zandik in there alone. 

In an instant, the scene warped--another dizzying sensation that had Dottore sick to his stomach. Gone was the ferocious wind and the snow pummeling his soulmate’s small body, gone was the panic and the fear. Instead, it was replaced with beams of sun warm against his face, a bubbling excitement that was overwhelming any sort of irritation he might have had. 

She was older now. He caught sight of her reflection through the window that she was running past--still young but probably closer in age to the Iota or Gamma segment. She looked happy, she felt happy. It was a far cry from what she had been feeling before and it was giving Dottore whiplash as he tried to figure out what exactly was going on. 

She was clutching something to her chest--a flower, purple hydrangea--and there was a hop in her step. From what he could tell, she was making her way to her family’s estate from the town. There was nothing in her field of vision that could give him any hints as to narrow down where she might be.

But it was warmer, and he remembered how the mountain range encasing Snezhnaya’s capital had been visible in the distance when she had been walking to the town. It had to be a town along the Snezhnayan border--central Fontaine, most likely, considering the positioning of the mountain range and the warm weather. Central and western Fontaine frequently dealt with waves of heat drawn in by Sumeru’s desert and Natlan’s fields of magma while northeastern Fontaine rarely ever got warm, surrounded by the mountain ranges of eastern Snezhnaya and northern Mondstadt on both sides, it was pretty much a pool of cold air… and he couldn’t see any mountain ranges to the south, so it had to be central Fontaine.

But central Fontaine was large and he had no way of knowing where exactly the town could be. It was somewhere up by the Snezhnayan border in the western sector of central Fontaine, yes, but dozens of towns could match that description, more than that even. Fontaine was littered with small towns in its countryside, even without adding in the city’s population, Fontaine was the most populous of the seven nations. 

Lambda’s issue, Dottore told himself as she finally got to the front doors of her family estate, pushing it open and stepping inside. He had more important things to worry about than her location, he had narrowed it down far enough that Lambda would be able to figure it out.

“Mother!” she called loudly, making her way down the halls. Dottore could feel how happy she was--it was strange. He had felt her happy a million times before but now it was as if he were feeling it himself. It wasn’t that distinct muted feeling he had learned to decipher from his own and locked away. It felt like it was his, it felt like he was happy and he wasn’t sure he had ever felt like that before.

He didn’t like it. He felt warm, at home in a way that he usually only did in his labs and even though he knew, realistically, that these were not feelings of his own, he didn’t like the way it was affecting him. 

“Moooother,” his soulmate repeated, louder this time, but it lacked the singsong lilt it had years prior before the storm. “Moth-”

“What is it?” an unfamiliar voice asked, sharp and cold, interrupting her call. Dottore felt the change in mood instantly, the giddiness replaced by hurt, smile fading for just a second, and Dottore felt livid, murderous, but even that was displaced because he was feeling her own emotions more strongly than his own. 

His soulmate turned to face the other direction, where walking down the side hall toward her was a taller woman that looked just like her, although her eyes were sharper and her lips were pulled down. 

She shifted uncomfortably on her feet and Dottore could tell that she was bothered by the woman--who he assumed was her mother--and her coldness. 

Despite the discomfort, she still managed to smile again, “I made a friend down in town,” she said, excited. “His family owns the flower shop. He gave me a flower.”

Irritation pricked at the back of his mind, he pushed it away.

“That’s nice,” she did not sound interested. He could feel his soulmate’s smile falter again--the irritation grew, developing into subtle anger. “You were supposed to be back for lunch.”

“He was really nice,” his soulmate continued, perturbed but trying not to let it show. Dottore wanted to roll his eyes, he had no desire to hear about a childhood crush. “And guess what? You’ll never believe it! His soulmate, she’s up in the north too.”

Dottore felt her mother’s change in demeanor instantly. His soulmate remained oblivious, giddy, and excited. He didn’t have to look in the reflection to know that her eyes were shining and her smile was wide, he could practically picture it on his own. He felt tight, having a bad feeling about what was going to happen next.

“How do you know that?” her mother asked, icy. 

Blissfully ignorant, his soulmate looked down at the flower she was holding tight to her chest. “We talked about it, he said he was going to go north to find her one day and I asked to come with and-”

Her head snapped to the side, hard, and a painful, stinging sensation spread across Dottore’s face. At once, Dottore felt a wave of emotions all at once--only one was his own and that was rage, rage at being slapped, at her being slapped--but more predominantly, he could feel her shock and he could feel her distress. He was reminded of the day all of those years ago when he had gone to meet Pantalone for the first time when he had been cut off mid-sentence by a slap on her end. 

Her mother grabbed her face hard, squeezing her cheeks together, and Dottore was livid--he wanted to rip his face out of her grip, grab her by the throat, and force her off but he couldn’t, he couldn’t control anything because he was stuck in his soulmate’s body, watching it all happen from behind her eyes. 

The worst part was that he didn’t even know if he was angry because it felt as if he had been the one slapped, or if he was angry that she had been slapped.

“How many times must I tell you?” her mother spit out. “No one can know. No one, you and I, your father and Miss Elyna, they’re the only ones to know of your thread. To everyone else, you have no soulmate. How many times must I tell you?”

Dottore was taken aback. So taken aback, that he didn’t even register his soulmate’s response—something along the lines of a stuttered ‘but he was nice, I trust him’, but it only infuriated her mother even more.

To everyone else, you have no soulmate. 

Why? 

Were they able to figure out who he was through the words? No. That wasn’t possible, this was right after the beginning of the second stage. She hadn’t received any words from him at this point. 

Then it had to be something else. His location? Was Fontaine so anti-Snezhnaya already? 

They had expected it considering their archon’s stance on Celestia but how was it even possible? The Hydro Archon should have no way of knowing the plans of the Fatui but Dottore wasn’t sure what else would turn the deity against them like that.

… unless there was a spy. But even then, they should know that if that was the case, Arlecchino had implanted one of her spiders into Fontaine’s court.

Dottore was frustrated as he was forcibly ripped from his thoughts, drawn back into the situation at hand. Her mother was still going on, and his soulmate was still quiet, but she was crying now, silent tears spilling over her cheeks.

“… and your stepfather was right. Ever since he came into our lives, ever since the twins were born, you have taken every chance to act out or put our family at risk. Getting yourself lost in that storm after you told him you didn’t want to join us in town, refusing to show up for your siblings’ birthday, constantly talking back, and now this-”

“It’s not true,” she hiccuped, trying to pull away from her mother only to fail. “I wanted to go to their birthday, he never told me where it was, and I wanted to go to the town but he left me, and-”

“Enough!” her mother shouted and his soulmate flinched. “The lying is getting out of hand, all of this is getting out of hand. Do you understand how much risk you just put our family in? Your siblings?”

“I didn’t mean-“

“I will handle this,” her mother spit out, voice dripping with venom, “but this is the last time. The next time you act out of line, you will be living with your father indefinitely.” 

She left her standing there, alone, and the happiness from before was gone, leaving her as cold and empty as Dottore felt normally. Her flower lay limp at her feet, and she made no move to pick it up. 

Dottore didn’t like it.

She didn’t move for a long time, not until another figure came into the room—another woman, with dark hair and kind gray eyes, who let out a sigh when she saw her standing there alone, tears still tracking down her face.

“She doesn’t mean it, little one,” the older woman sighed, patting his soulmate’s head gently as she kneeled to pick up her flower, placing it back in her hands. “She loves you, she’s just scared.”

Dottore wasn’t so sure about that. Resentful and angry, he wasn’t sure he had ever felt such a visceral desire to kill since his days as a Fatui recruit when he was volatile and ready to snap at any given moment. He hated how a person he didn’t even know managed to draw out all of the worst aspects of himself, the aspects that he had killed and carefully tucked away a very long time ago.

“I don’t understand,” she sniffled, rubbing her eyes. “I hate it here. She’s so mean, and she always believes him over me, and he hates me because of father, and he’s always trying to leave me out and he tells her that it’s my fault, and she believes him.”

“Love is blind,” the woman murmured softly. Dottore wished he could roll his eyes. “Your mother never thought she’d find her soulmate… now that she has-”

“It’s not fair,” his soulmate interrupted, shaking her head and turning to face the woman. “Miss Elyna, he’s a liar. He’s a liar and he hates me. I didn’t even do anything wrong. And I have no friends because of my stupid soulmate and I finally make a friend and I’m not allowed to, and I always get in trouble when I don’t even do anything. I want to live with father. I hate it here.”

Dottore thought he should be offended--stupid soulmate, he thought to himself, irritated, but he couldn’t be offended because he was intrigued, trying to piece together what exactly she meant by the fact that she had no friends because of him. He was clueless as to Fontaine’s stance on those that never received a mark… and if that was the issue and she had to pretend she didn’t have one…

“You cannot go live with your father,” the woman, Elyna, sighed. “You are bad enough at hiding your bond here in the countryside, your father is still living in the city. You will have all eyes of the court on you once you’re there, and if you slip up once…”

Confirmation that it was Fontaine, he already knew it but it was good to have it confirmed—only Snezhnaya and Fontaine had courts. 

“It’s not fair,” she was melting down, shrieking. Dottore could barely even see through her eyes because they were blurred with big tears. “It’s not fair, I don’t want to hide it. I don’t want to. Do you know how mean people are because they think I don’t have a soulmate? They call me cursed, they say Celestia rejected me.” 

“Are you like them? A monster? Cursed? Answer me!”

Dottore felt cold but more than that, he felt something heavy in his chest. He didn’t know what it was, he didn’t want to know, so as always, he pushed it away. Instead, he found humor in the situation because he thought it was all ironic—he was persecuted for not having a soulmate, and she had to pretend she didn’t have one to avoid persecution. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he spat at Celestia’s wicked sense of humor. 

“… hate me either way, so I might as well-”

“Enough,” Elyna hissed. “You can’t speak like that. It is not a matter of hate, it’s a matter of freedom and imprisonment, life and death. Your father sent a letter warning your mother that Her Excellency was becoming even more extreme in her position on Snezhnaya, you have to be careful.” 

There had to be a spy, Dottore realized. Someone leaking information from the higher levels of the Fatui to other nations—this had to have been nearly a decade ago. How had they gone so long without knowing?

He would have to bring it up to Pantalone, he would be able to work with Pulcinella and Arlecchino to weed out the rat.

“He lies to her,” his soulmate cried harder after being scolded. Elyna wrapped her arms around her and Dottore felt uncomfortable, claustrophobic. He wanted to yank away but his soulmate appeared to have no intention of doing that. “Who lies to their soulmate? If he loved her, he would love me. I didn’t do anything wrong, I was nice to him.”

“Hush now,” Elyna said gently. “You-”

“No, it’s not fair. None of this is fair. Soulmates are supposed to be good and he’s not. He ruined my life, and my soulmate is ruining my life, and none of it is fair. I have no friends, I just want friends, and now mother is going to ruin that too. And if father cared about me, he’d want me to live with him but instead, he makes me live here with them.”

“It’s safer-”

“I don’t care,” she shouted.

My soulmate is ruining my life, he echoed in his head. 

Bitterly, he thought, well that goes for both of us but at the same time, that heavy feeling returned and this time, he couldn’t bring himself to push it away. 

You were running. He was running. Your heart was racing, beating outside your chest as you slammed into a tree, stumbling past it to continue in whatever direction you were running in. It was so hot, it felt like the air around you was suffocating you; it felt like your mouth was stuffed with cotton. You couldn’t tell what was going on--you felt panicked, frantic, as if you were fighting for your life against an invisible enemy.

Invisible. 

As soon as the word crossed your mind, an explosion rocked the earth beneath you, sending you flying ten feet forward, slipping on wet, mossy rocks, and rolling down a steep hill. You hurt, your whole body ached, branches dug into your skin, rocks scraped against your face--ordinarily, you would have given up, the pain too much for you to handle, but somehow he kept going. 

You felt him push himself to his feet, you could feel blood tracking down his arm and the side of his face, but he didn’t cry nor did he falter. Wheezing for air and eyes wide and wild, he continued.

Something large was behind him, large and metal with a glowing orange and gold orb in the center of its head--a ruin guard, you realized, horrified. You had heard there were a lot in southern Fontaine, on Sumeru’s border, but they couldn’t traverse the mountain ranges and vast rivers and lakes that littered central Fontaine, freeing the north of their destruction. 

But you had studied them. You had studied ruin machines for a long, long time once you began receiving words from your soulmate and had access to the palace’s extensive library. You received odd words like chaos cores and circuits and bolts and oculi that you learned were associated with the old, destructive technology. There wasn’t much information on them and you thought that in itself was telling. The Hydro Archon censored any material that could be interpreted as fostering dissent against her rule, or the heavens, expunging the history that she didn’t like. 

You wondered what exactly was it about the ruin guards that she wanted to prevent the masses from learning.

Zandik gasped as the ground beneath him trembled again--the ruin guard had caught up already, heavy steps tracking after him. You could hear a whirring noise behind him and you knew it was going to let out another blast of energy in his direction. Your throat felt swollen with anxiety, or you supposed that was his anxiety, but he was focused ahead. You could see a village in the distance, in a small clearing of the dense forest he was running through.

He didn’t cry for help, he didn’t scream, and you remembered the last dream of his life. You wondered if he didn’t call for help because he knew no one would answer and you felt sick. 

The explosion didn’t hit close to him this time, veering off into a tree, and Zandik spared a glance behind him to see the ruin guard falter as it skidded on wet rocks, the same ones that Zandik had slipped down. He let out a shaky breath and you could feel his relief as he made a break for the village. 

The ruin guard did not stray too far behind. 

When he got to the village, the people were oblivious. Some spared him looks, mostly of irritation and distaste, but most ignored his presence. 

Zandik made no effort to warn them of the imminent danger and a part of you hesitated, uncomfortable, a foreboding feeling bearing down on you as you realized what might be about to happen. 

He kept sprinting through the small village, past a small bakery, and right through a crowd of people who cursed him for his interruption. He was running somewhere specifically, or to someone, you realized as he set his eyes on a woman you recognized from before: his mother. 

She looked angry but more than that, she seemed distressed, grabbing Zandik’s forearms as he nearly crashed into her at full speed.

“Where have you been? Your father and I-”

“We have to go inside,” Zandik said, voice little over a wheeze. “We have to-”

He didn’t have a chance to give any further explanation because at once, there was a massive explosion, one that shook the ground beneath the entire town as the ruin guard finally set its target on the villagers. 

Zandik turned his head, eyes wide, and you wished he would look away because you felt sick to your stomach at the gory scene before you. The blood, the fire, the screaming--every single one of your senses felt overwhelmed as catastrophe met the peaceful town, ravaging the unexpecting villagers.

But as much as you felt sick, you realized, slowly, that Zandik did not feel that same horror that you did. You wondered if he was in shock… you wondered if it were something else. He stared in the direction of the destruction, lips parted, unable to draw his gaze from the ruin guard as it prepared itself for another attack, energy swirling around the orange and gold orb. People were running, calling desperately for family members and friends, trying to hide behind houses and wells to escape the onslaught. There was blood. There was so much blood and so much death, and it was readying to attack again.

But he felt no guilt. No fear. No shame.

There was only satisfaction… awe. It was subtle, bubbling beneath the surface, but it churned your stomach. You told yourself that you didn’t know the whole story, that you didn’t know the extent to which the villagers had put him through hell--you hadn’t even scratched the surface with that previous event in his life you had dreamed of but-

“Zandik, Zandik,” it was his mother screaming, tearing him from his trance as he watched the ruin guard and forcing you from your thoughts. She was shaking him violently, fear stretched across her face. “What happened? What did you do? What did you do, Zandik?” 

“It followed me,” his voice sounded hollow, void of any sort of emotion. “I went exploring.”

“You brought it back here?” his mother was on the verge of tears and Zandik remained unmoved, standing there limp as she continued to rattle him around. “You stupid boy, they’ll kill you. They’ll kill you.” 

“Not if it kills them first,” you wondered if he intended to say that because you felt a jolt of surprise that was not your own. 

His mother stared at him, horrified, but she jolted as a figure grabbed her arm.

His father.

There was an unreadable expression on his face. “Inside,” he said, voice brusque and cold. He grabbed Zandik by the arm, dragging him inside after his mother and slamming the door behind them. 

He felt empty. You didn’t like it. It made you uncomfortable, it made you sad. You didn’t think anyone should feel like this, much less your soulmate. Even as his father let go of his arm, Zandik just stood there, gaze trained out the window much like how he was years earlier, watching the kids lay out in the grass--except this time, he was watching as they ran for their lives, screaming for their mother and father, hurt and bleeding. 

You didn’t know how long he stood there watching the horrors outside. Eventually, they managed to destroy the ruin guard, and as the sun set in the distance, they began to collect the dead and the wounded. Every now and then, you could hear his parents shouting at each other: “They’ll have him burned! We have to do something!” and “They already thought of him as one of the heretics from the cursed land. There’s nothing left we can do for him without us meeting the same fate.”

Zandik didn’t react to any of it--there was a vacuum where his emotions should have been, a cavity where his heart should have been. He felt cold and numb and you couldn’t tell if it was because he was in shock over what had happened and what he had caused, or if it was because he truly did not care. 

It seemed like an eternity when the shouting finally began again, you could see the torches lit outside, the crowd of survivors in front of his home. They were angry, bloodthirsty, out for vengeance, and still, Zandik remained apathetic, standing in the same spot. 

“Bring the boy out, Zakai,” the man at the head of the crowd called loudly. “You can’t protect him anymore.”

Neither his father nor mother responded but the words broke his stupor. Finally, he turned to face his parents and you could feel a bit of anxiety start to pool in his stomach as if he were finally realizing what was about to happen.

You were starting to realize it too and you wanted to throw up. 

“The Celestial gods have turned their backs on us for harboring a heretic. We have faced famine, drought, plague, and now this, all within the ten years that abomination has resided here. Our wives, elderly, children were slaughtered because he brought that monster from the cursed lands to our homes. If we don’t do something about it, it will happen again and again and again until we’ve atoned.”

“Zakai,” his mother whispered, shaking her head.

No way, you thought to yourself, horrified, as his father refused to meet her gaze, looking away from both Zandik and his wife. You could feel Zandik’s stomach drop and you could feel the fear begin to settle in his stomach.

“Zakai, you can’t,” his mother said desperately. “It was an accident, they’ll-”

“Enough,” his father responded quietly, and finally he looked at Zandik, only for a moment before he made his way to the door. “There’s nothing else we can do for him. It’s time to let go.”

When you woke up, you knew you had dreamed of your soulmate. You could remember the pain, the shock, the loneliness, and that terrifying sort of satisfaction he felt after he had accidentally led the ruin guard back to his village but you couldn’t remember anything that mattered and it made you want to cry. 

Cursed, they called him, you could remember that but not his name, not the place he had been living, not the faces of the people that had been in the dream, not even his face--you couldn’t remember any of it. It felt like a distant blur, something you could picture but all of the distinct features were smeared into something you couldn’t recognize and you were frustrated. 

Two and a half years. You had two and a half years and then you’d finally be able to get some answers out of him. 

You stared at your forearm, waiting to see if his word would change, wondering if he had dreamt about you too. 

Dottore was livid. He bit back a string of vile curses as he paced around his bedroom. He had dreamt of her. He knew it. He could remember it—he could remember her fear, he could remember her anger, he could remember her desperation. He could still picture the vague memory of her smile, and the way she felt as everything came crashing down around her, but he couldn’t remember anything of importance.

He knew he had figured out where she was. He knew it. But every time he tried to think back on it and remember, he was met with a frustratingly blank slate, an answer that was on the tip of his tongue that he couldn’t figure out.

The gods were fucking with him—again—and he was sick and tired of it. He could picture them laughing at him, mocking his situation, jeering at his failure. 

He tried to take steady breaths. He tried to calm himself down. None of it worked. He felt like he was in his late twenties again, unable to control his wild emotions and bouts of anger after being cast out from the Akademiya. 

He braced his hands on the edge of his desk, leaning over it as he shut his eyes and tried to settle down, counting slowly—an old tactic he had used back when he had first been brought into the Fatui. It worked, albeit slowly, but it cleared his head enough so that he could think.

What could he remember? 

A winter storm. A warm summer. A large estate. He could remember what had happened in the dream—memory? He could remember her getting lost in the storm, an unwelcome return to a past he tried to forget, and he could remember the argument with her mother, the slap.

She had to hide her mark, he remembered, eyes widening a bit. A winter storm. A warm summer. A large estate. Having to hide her mark. The answer was on the tip of his tongue, again, but again it dissolved before he could capture it. 

He let out a heavy, shaky breath—running a hand through his hair as he returned to his pacing. 

There was something else. He had figured something out beyond just where she was located—something important—but he couldn’t remember what. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, he inhaled, turning his mind to a different subject, something else to focus on before he destroyed half of his room in a fit of rage. 

Her. She must have dreamt too, and if her dreams were anything like his, it must’ve been of his childhood. 

Dottore suddenly felt uncomfortable, gaze drifting down to his forearm. No one knew of his past—no one besides him and his segments—and he liked to keep it that way. It was a history he had left behind, a name and a face that had died centuries before that he did not want unearthed.

He only hesitated a second before he rolled up his sleeve, intent on trying to get an idea of what she might have dreamed about his past through whatever word passed to him through the bond. 

And he stared—cold, empty, the rage returning but this time it did not burn, it froze. It froze everything, all of the emotions that had been rattling his body, any desire he might have felt to try to locate her, and most importantly, whatever attachment that might have grown in the past thirteen years as he was faced with the word that had haunted him his entire life, branded on his forearm as a searing accusation from the one person that was meant to be his.

His body moved on autopilot as he shuffled through his desk to find the notebook he had kept of all of the words passed onto him. Once it was in his hand, he took two long strides to the opposite side of the room before flinging it right into the fireplace, watching the flames engulf it before leaving his room and making his way down to his labs.

Cursed. 

rbs appreciated!

[bioethicists]

hm i really hope that someone has said this better than me but the betterhelp ads (specifically the video ones, as the podcast ones tend to be less scripted) are such poignant examples of alienation + the role of 'go to therapy' in perpetuating that alienation. keep in mind that, if you personally found a therapist who is genuinely healing for you + that therapist happens to be through betterhelp- i'm genuinely happy for you + that experience does not invalidate anything i have to say below! (but jsyk they're trying to sell your shit to facebook lol)

starting strong w/ the fact that betterhelp is essentially the uber of therapy (aka using an independent contractor model which is harmful + predatory towards its providers), rushing in to fill the market on largely uninsured and/or uninformed ppl who want the ease of a concierge system without the cost + lacks a meaningful supervision system (which led to one gay man being recommended a conversion therapist when he asked for someone to help with his identity struggles, btw!). smarter people than me have written about the ways in which these trendy independent contractor apps strip people of labor rights, fail to provide adequate wages, + in the case of healthcare apps, increase digital surveillance + decrease accountability demanded from providers while exploiting the failure of the US healthcare system in order to churn a profit w/o actually creating sustainable, equitable change.

the betterhelp video ads all circle around a theme- a millennial starts talking about some form of emotional pain or worry, usually relatively standard existential worries ("do you ever think nothing has meaning?") or life worries ("i hate my job" "i think i'm gay"). their friends or the ppl around them respond blankly + coldly, looking at them like they're crazy. while i understand these ads are supposed to be tongue in cheek, they demonstrate the crushing reality of our alienation from one another- the solution to your friends responding to your evident pain with confusion + apathy is to confine that pain to a therapy session! nobody wants to hear your struggles or understands them- come generate profits for us by facetiming a newly graduated 24 year old who can barely make rent!

this theme fits well with what already put me off about betterhelp's marketing- their goal has never been to provide access to therapy for those who want it or to altruistically fill in some healthcare gap. their goal, bolstered by the rise in emotional suffering following, you know, the worldwide pandemic, is to generate + increase demand for therapy as a commodity. their earlier podcast ads focused on convincing others that therapy "isn't just for crazy ppl" + "everyone should be in therapy". regardless of if you personally agree with that statement, it should be evident that this is a blatant marketing tactic in which therapy is a commodity to be peddled, not an offer of support or healing. in fact, they're probably actively shying away from treating "crazy people", bcuz their flimsy support systems could not possibly handle an influx of ppl regularly in crisis or experiencing breaks with a common reality. their target audience is your average millennial under late capitalism + post COVID - anxious, lonely, vaguely depressed, unhappy with their jobs, worried + hopeless about their futures.

i'm not here to tell anyone not to get therapy. that's a personal decision + is none of my fucking business. it's about questioning the total alienation we feel from one another, such that pouring our heart our unexpectedly to a friend + being met with a blank stare is framed as "haha you need therapy" + not "it's crushing that this is how distant we are from one another". it's about a company noticing that (unfortunately very real) distance + fear of vulnerability + using that to direct our emotions into the confines of a business transaction under abusive labor conditions. it's about a world in which we are not engaging with one another emotionally (despite, or i guess bcuz of: widespread suffering, recent mass death, class warfare/untenable working conditions, increased pressure of fascist politics, generational trauma + abuse, etc etc). commodifying therapy isn't going to make that loneliness go away- it's going to normalize it.

[bitethedevil]

Living with The Devil You Know (Raphael x Tav): Chapter 8

Chapter: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen

Read this fic on AO3 (Link)

Fic Summary: Tav broke their agreement by handing the Crown of Karsus to Mystra instead of Raphael. Not only that, but she also robbed his house and killed his incubus. Raphael is patient and he is determined to get his revenge.

…Tav isn't too bothered. She will figure something out eventually. Until then she just has to find a way to live peacefully with a devil.

Chapter Summary: Tav snaps. Her determination to get out becomes stronger than ever and she decides to change her tactics when it comes to dealing with Raphael.

AN: This turned super horny, idk what to tell ya. Also, I found it really difficult to write Hope because she just acts and speaks in such a specific way that's really hard to capture.

TW: Mentions of Abuse

WARNING: NSFW

Tav sat up in the bed and looked at him. Raphael so blatantly admitting to what he had done had made something snap in her head. It was as she was finally resurfacing back to reality and back to the person she had been before Raphael had gotten his claws in her. For the first time since she got to the House of Hope, she saw him for what he was.

“I thought you said that your plan was to kill my friends and then me,” Tav said with a calmness that surprised even herself.

“And I am a man of my word,” Raphael said, still lying in bed. He was studying her face for a reaction. “I never specified when. I will one day take your soul, which is my property by right, and should your friends decide to pay us a visit I will kill them. Though I have removed any motivation they might have to come knocking on my door, for which you are very welcome, by the way.”

He ran his fingers over the metal cuffs around her wrists.

“So, you are not even trying to lure my friends here. You intend to keep me here…indefinitely...” Tav said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I want to,” he answered. “I made it clear from the beginning that you would never leave, did I not? Death would have been all to easy for such a fearless little thing like you. It has been much more fascinating to see you trying deal with all those wonderful conflicting feelings of yours.”

She could see it in his eyes and his widening smile that he was expecting a reaction from her by saying this. He wanted her to get angry, to cry, to be scared. Something in his eyes reminded her of her father. The way he would look at her after he had beat her or said something cruel to her to get a reaction out of her during her childhood. That gleeful anticipation as they waited for her to either explode or break.

She looked at him and was quiet for a moment. She could hear her blood pounding in her ears out of anger, but her expression remained unreadable.

Then a smile spread across her face, and she leaned forward to brush a hand over his hair. She kissed him sweetly on the lips and he froze.

She wished that she could bottle up the look of genuine confusion she saw on his face.

She did not say anything. She just laid back down on the bed beside him. She pulled his arm around herself and got comfortable.

Raphael had made a misstep in his eagerness to piss her off: he had admitted that it was not his plan to kill her anytime soon.

Tav was not going to let herself be a passive player in his little game anymore. She would play and she would win. Not by giving him the resistance that he seemed to be thriving on, but by giving him exactly what he wanted.

He had told her the first day they met that he liked when people put up a fight. She would not. She would shower him with affection, heed his every whim, be his adoring little mouse, and when she finally found that damn hammer, she would watch him burn, just as she had watched her father do all those years ago.

As always, he was gone when she woke up. She got dressed. Instead of searching for the least provocative piece of clothing she could find as she usually would have, she grabbed a rather revealing dress from the wardrobe.

It was a tight-fitting dress with a plunging neckline in a burnt orange color that complimented her red hair. There was a matching gold choker with yellow stones that she also put on.

It looked completely foreign on her who had mostly dressed in thick robes for the majority of her life. It felt more like a costume, she thought as she looked herself in the mirror. Then again, she was definitely playing a part with what she had planned, so perhaps it was fitting.

She left the boudoir. She reached the entrance to the main area where she usually ate her breakfast when she stopped in her tracks and her eyes widened.

With her back turned to Tav, she was looking out over the balcony: it was Hope.

Hope! How could she had forgotten Hope? Tav felt terrible but she had not as much as given a thought to the odd Dwarven woman she had met back when she had broken into Raphael’s home. Tav had even promised to free her, she remembered with a knot in her stomach.

It had been too risky to free her. She even remembered selfishly thinking to herself that it was not her problem before they left. What Raphael did in his privacy was not her business. Neither her nor her companions ever spoke about her after they had left.

How fitting that Tav herself should end up in the very same position as her. She really did deserve it in a way, she thought to herself. She completely understood why Hope had stayed away from her during her time there. She had every right to hate her.

“Hope…?” Tav called out softly.

The projection of Hope turned around and a wide cheery smile spread across her face.

“There you areee! And without my sister or his new one at your heels!” she said in a cheerful tone. “He has barely had time to torture me since you got here, you know? Maybe if he leaves me long enough, I’ll be in one piece for the first time in years!”

The sad and pitying look in Tav’s eyes strongly contrasted Hope’s cheerful demeanor.

“What is it? Are you hurt?” Hope asked, looking her up and down. “Hurt, but you still look like you are in one piece…Hm…Oh! Oh! Did he drown you? Suffocate you? Was it the Omuan dreamcatcher? Oh, he loves that one.”

“I’m fine, Hope…” Tav said quietly as she tried to hold back the ocean of emotions that was building up inside herself by seeing Hope again.

She could not even begin to imagine the things Hope had endured. Her heart had sunk to the floor. Who knows how long Hope had resisted Raphael’s persistence? And Tav had brushed her off back then instead of saving her while she still had a chance…

“Oooh, no one’s fine here for long,” Hope said with the same manic intensity. “He prods and pokes and slices and cuts and then he puts you back together to do it all over again!”

Tav took a deep breath. The guilt she was feeling was crushing her.

“I’m so sorry, Hope,” Tav managed to say. “For not saving you back then…”

Hope went quiet for a moment.

“And I’m sorry that you are here…” Hope said in a sad tone, though it quickly turned hopeful again. “But…your friends will come with the hammer and save you! Maybe they will smash my chains as well. Oh, please don’t leave me here after you kill him…”

Tav sighed. She almost did not have the heart to tell her.

“My friends can’t get to it right now…Raphael took it back,” Tav said in a defeated voice. “But I’m determined to find out where he is hiding it. When I do, I will free both of us.”

Hope's smile returned even bigger than before.

“This is great news!” Hope said. “It means it’s here. It will be, it has to be, it is! It’s hidden, but it’s here.”

Tav’s brow furrowed.

“How are you so sure?” she asked.

“It’s what he does…” Hope said, still smiling but with a sad tone in her voice again. “He dangles things right in front of your nose. Freedom, riches, everything you could ever want! Always so close that you can smell it and always just out of reach.”

The projection of Hope froze after they both heard a noise. A servant was walking down the corridor towards them.

“Oh! I have to go,” Hope whispered.

“No, wait—” Tav said, but Hope had already disappeared.

Tav was looking at the spot where she had just stood. If Hope was right, there was a chance that she could find the Orphic Hammer and escape on her own without the help of her friends, which would be ideal.

Her meeting with Hope reaffirmed her plan. Resisting him was not the way to go. Hope was the living example of that. Perhaps, there was a chance that he would even grow bored with her if she simply gave him what he wanted.

She would keep the peace. She would keep him happy and distracted for as long as it would take her to figure out how to escape and then she would strike.

She had been scouring the parts of the house that she could access without servants or debtors watching her for where Raphael might be hiding the hammer. There were a couple of options for where it could be that she knew of: the archive or the vault.

It was obviously not on display in the archive, but she knew that there were more to the archive than what met the eye. She had heard that more artifacts were hidden in the bowels of the house underneath the archive. How she would access it or even find the entrance, she was not sure, but perhaps Hope knew if she could find her again.

Then there was the vault. Her and Gale had tried to break into it back when they had broken into his house, but without any luck. The lock was heavily protected with magic, but if she could get to it without any debtors or servants watching, she might be able to crack it with enough time on her hands.

She had given up for the day, but at least she now had some leads as to where to look. She knew that it would not be long until Raphael arrived home again, so she sat down in the archive to read and prepare herself for her role as his adoring prisoner.

For once he sought out her and not the other way around. He entered the archive and smiled when he saw her. He was in human form. She looked up from her book and smiled back warmly, without showing as much as a trace of bitterness in her expression. She saw him narrow his eyes at that, but his smile did not falter.

It was clear that he was still waiting for a reaction. For her to either explode or break down crying. It was delicious to see him treading so carefully, because he was not sure what to do next. She was not following the script that he had so carefully planned out for her, and she could see that underneath his smile, there was a tinge of frustration over it.

“Evening,” Tav said breaking the silence.

He took a seat in the sofa opposite from where she was sitting.

“Good evening,” he said back, still studying her face for a reaction.

Tav’s smile widened as she noticed how he had decided to sit away from her. She closed the book she was reading and put it on the table before getting up from her seat. She walked over to where he was sitting at a leisurely pace. He sat in silence as his eyes followed her every step.

He then seemed to notice she was wearing much more revealing clothing than she usually did. His eyes were devouring her exposed skin for a moment before they settled back on her face.

She sat down right beside him on the sofa. She leaned forward to place a quick kiss on his cheek that seemed as casual as if she had done it a hundred times before. His body tensed but he did not move away from her.

“How was your day?” she asked with a bright smile.

She could see that there was a bit of amusement to his smile now. It was clear that he was not quite sure what was happening, but he knew that she was up to something.

“Slightly tedious,” he answered casually. His eyes drifted down to her dress and lingered on her cleavage for a moment. “You look even lovelier than usual. The dress suits you…as does that charming smile of yours. You really should smile more, my dear.”

Tav’s eye twitched in annoyance at his last comment, but she quickly hid it. Though not quickly enough that Raphael did not notice it, and she could see the satisfaction in his smile at his comment managing to get a reaction from her, albeit a small one.  

“Thank you. That’s sweet of you to notice,” she said instead of the many things she wanted to say to that comment. “It’s difficult to smile when I miss you so much all the time.”

“Is that so?” he purred and snaked his arm around her waist to pull her closer.

She was not fooling him, and she could see it in his face, though that did not stop him from seeing how far he could push her in the little game they were playing.

“Mhm” she affirmed and leaned more against him.

“Hm,” he hummed and kissed the side of her head before murmuring into her ear: “Nothing ruins a good play quite like actors overplaying their parts, dear.”

She smiled and turned her head towards him. Her nose was almost touching his and she was looking directly into his brown eyes.

“You’re one to talk,” she said before kissing him.

He kissed her back and tightened his grip around her waist. He put his other arm under her leg and lifted her to sit on his lap.

He was in control again and Tav was not having it. She was done with simply letting him do what he wanted to her and be a passive participant like she always was with him.

She snaked her arm down between them and felt his hardening erection. He made a low groan in response and his tongue invaded her mouth. Both of his hands were around her, kneading her ass as she rubbed him through his pants. It did not take long before she could feel that he was fully hard.  

She tried to discreetly unbutton his pants while they were kissing, but one of his hands slid up her back and into her hair. He yanked her head back.

“What is it that you are trying to achieve with all of this?” he asked, looking into her eyes. Though his question had no doubt been meant to sound threatening, his tone and dilated pupils revealed just how aroused he was.

Tav smiled. Oh, she was having fun with this. It was immensely satisfying for her to finally see him a little rattled and confused. She traced the outline of his cock through his pants.

“Do you want me to stop?” she asked.

Raphael growled in a way that sounded simultaneously aroused and frustrated, as she touched him. He yanked her head back further, so her neck was exposed to him. He left a kiss and a gentle bite just above the choker she was wearing, before letting go of her hair.

“Off,” he commanded. He gave her a firm but not painful slap on her ass and then gestured for her to get off his lap so they could go to the bedroom.

 

To her surprise he indulged her and let her take the lead, at least for the moment it seemed. He had always been on top of her, but now she was on top of him, kissing her way down his body. She heard his breathing become heavier and heavier the closer she came to the part of him that was aching for her.

The moment her kisses and bites down his stomach reached to just above his cock, she heard his breath hitch slightly at the sensation. She saw his cock twitch in anticipation. It was her first time seeing it so up close. Even in his human form it was impressive in both length and girth.

She teased him by leaving sloppy kisses and small licks up and down his shaft, all while keeping eye contact with him. She could see that the teasing was getting to him. His body was aching for her, and he seemed to be on the verge of losing control.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked impatiently, referring to her endless teasing. She could hear that he was getting impatient, but it was too delicious to have him in the palm of her hand like that for her to stop.

“Mhm,” she affirmed and ran her lips over his shaft, earning her a groan.

She felt his hand tangle in her hair. He was not taking control over her movements yet, but it was a clear warning that he would if she kept going.

“Patience is a virtue, you know,” she said.

She teased the head of his cock with her tongue. It made him instinctively tighten his grip on her hair and groan deeply.

“Is that so?” he said. “So is humility, I hear.”

With that he pushed her head down, signaling that he was done waiting. He inhaled sharply as she took him fully in her mouth. When she began moving her head up and down on her own, his grip on her hair loosened and he let her do it at her own pace.

It did not take long before she managed to push him over the edge. She dug her nails into his thighs as he came in her mouth. He held her hair in a grip that told her that he expected her to swallow. His seed was almost burning in her mouth, but she forced herself to swallow.

He was breathless. He loosened his grip and ran his fingers through her hair instead.

“Such a good little mouse,” he said condescendingly, almost as if to a pet, which somehow managed to both piss her off and turn her on at the same time. “Come here.”

He gestured for her to kiss him. As she did, she wondered exactly how far he would let her take her little game. She felt daring. She wondered, not for the first time, how it would be to sit on that smug face of his and shut him up.

She moved further up his chest, and he must have guessed her intentions, because he smirked and grabbed her. He pushed her backwards, so she landed on her back. He pinned her to the mattress and then he started kissing his way down her body, the same way she had done with him.

“Control freak,” she muttered under her breath. She received a bite on her stomach for that comment.

Raphael was twice the tease that she had been. When he finally reached her now dripping core, he started teasing her with his tongue in an excruciatingly slow pace. She bucked her hips against his mouth, which only made him grab around her thighs to hold her down.

“Tut-tut. Patience is a virtue, dearest,” he said repeating her own words.

“You’re—” she interrupted herself with a moan as Raphael lightly ran the tip of his tongue over her clit. “You’re hilarious…”

So much for staying in control and not being a passive participant. Raphael was being relentless with his teasing, to the point where she was becoming a moaning and dripping mess under him. It went on for a long time and it was pure torture.

“Perhaps I would be able to find a shred of sympathy for you, if you begged nicely,” he suddenly said. She could feel him smile against her inner thigh, as he kissed and nibbled at the skin there.

Tav had to remind herself of the role she was currently playing. She was supposed to indulge him in what he wanted instead of resisting.

“Please…” she said.

“Oh, come now, dear,” Raphael said and looked up at her with a look that was downright sinful. He inserted a single finger into her, making her grasp the sheets. “Surely you can do better than that.”

He curled his finger inside her.

“Please, Raphael,” she moaned. She almost cringed at how pathetic and desperate she sounded.

“Much better,” he said and spread her legs slightly more.

He transformed into his devil form without warning, making her jump slightly in surprise. She seemed a bit confused with why he would suddenly do so, until he lowered his head between her legs.

“Mind the horns…” he said before he started eating her out.

He had to hold her legs open, so that she would not instinctively close them and hurt herself on his horns because of the sensation she felt between her legs. She suddenly understood why she had changed into that form: his tongue was not only longer but it was also forked.

He was looking up at her through the whole thing. He was making a low rumbling noise in his chest that almost sounded like a deep purring sound as he hungrily ate her out. His long tongue was inside her, and it almost sent her over the edge immediately.

She came harder than she ever had before, and it took her by complete surprise. She was grasping the sheets and on the verge of screaming as her climax washed over her. She closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath as it passed. Her legs were shaking, and she could hear Raphael chuckle as he was looking at the state of her.

Fuck him for being able to make her feel like that, Tav thought.

He leaned over her and kissed her. His long tongue was almost in her throat, and she could taste herself on his tongue. It was passionate, hot, and intoxicating. When he let go of the kiss, his gaze went from her lips to her eyes.

She was looking directly into his burning orange eyes when he suddenly changed back into his human form. He kissed her again, but this time it felt sweeter and more loving. His hand was caressing her face gently.

He left sweet kisses down her jaw and neck before laying his head on her chest. An all too vulnerable gesture that made her freeze.

She was not quite sure how to react.

She put her hand on his head with the gentleness of someone daring to touch an animal that might bite them. When he did not move or make a snarky comment at the gesture, she started slowly massaging his scalp with her fingers.

He made a low rumbling noise that almost sounded like a purr. He fell asleep on her chest not long after. Tav could not sleep. His arm was around her waist and his head was resting over her heart as he began snoring softly. She looked down at him. This man who was bigger than her and who was snuggling up to her in a way that seemed completely out of character for someone like him.

There he was, the devil that rips people apart simply to put them back together and start all over again, being infuriatingly human and vulnerable in her arms.

He was doing it on purpose, the bastard, Tav thought. He knew that she was playing games with him and now he was doing the same to her just to assert control over the situation.

She would not be fooled by him again, but she would play along.

[angelofthenight]

What Doesn’t Kill Me Pt.2

(Yandere!Alex DeLarge x Fem!Reader)

Warnings: Yandere, Dark themes, Ladstat, Swearing/Language, Unhealthy/Abusive relationship, Jealousy/Possessiveness, Social isolation, Obsessiveness, Controlling behavior, Intimidation/Coercive control/Power imbalance, Emotional/Mental trauma, Violence, Gangs, Manipulation, Physical abuse, Snake phobia, Boundary pushing, Mentions of Rape/Non-Con, Paranoia, Sexual context/themes, Alex is his own warning, You are responsible for your own content consumption

Word Count: 3.9k

Table of Contents

~

Alex Delarge was nothing but a sadistic maniac with a disturbing infatuation for you. A lunatic who could never keep it in his pants. A sociopath who acted like he’s never seen skin before. A monster who claimed to simply be in love.

And the belief of being in love was the worst thing a monster could have.

Despite his charming tone of voice and smile, despite him telling you in different words and metaphors that he loves you, he was awful to you. It was as if his infatuation and fascination with you further eroded any remaining empathy he possibly had left in him before he started to like-like you, which made him indifferent to the suffering or pain he inflicted upon you and others in the name of his delusional love.

And one of the things that created a confusing and fear-inducing environment for you was the fact that he casually alternated between moments of false kindness and extreme violence. He could be playing with your hair and telling you how pretty you were one moment then throwing a glass cup full of liquor at the wall beside your head in the next.

He used your own fear to keep you grounded and dependent. He used threats to you and others to strain you from seeking help or “tattling”. And along with fear, he employed manipulative tactics to isolate you from your friends and family. And the people he couldn’t exactly detach you from, like all of your coworkers and management, he charmed them into thinking he was this picture perfect boy.

Because of this false image of himself, you’ve despairingly found him repeatedly warmly welcomed into the restaurant you worked at. So you couldn’t even get away from him at work. Sometimes he would bring his droogs with him and seat themselves into your section. You’d watch from the back with tears in your eyes before swallowing them to go and wait on the criminals, knowing Alex was just going to flaunt his dominance over you to the boys by jokingly mocking you as you served them. They never tipped, though some days you noticed Pete linger behind the group a bit to sneak in a 15% tip under the bill.

Alex was possessive and controlling, yet he continuously pretended that he wasn’t insanely jealous of all your interpersonal relationships. He isolated you from all your friends with the threat that he would do something violently heinous to them, and he had proved to you to be true to his threats after multiple instances. He also had cut off any contact you had with your family. He claimed that he was all the company you’d ever need.

Even though his love was intense and twisted, and despite the mix of obsession and a desire to control every aspect of your life, you were still allowed to still go out and continue your life just… with no interactions longer than a minute. Especially with boys. Just seeing other guys around you drove Alex absolutely ballistic and homicidal. It was often when he would lash out at anyone who got too close to you. His overprotectiveness and his jealous greed just all overwhelmed him. He had repeatedly gone to extreme lengths to protect you, even if it meant resorting to violence. But in his twisted mind, he believed that his actions were justified simply because he was acting out of his love for you.

Even though other gangs already used to stay away from you when Alex simply just pined after you, now they really wouldn’t touch you now that you belonged to Alex. And if he ever found out another gang messed with you he would maul them all like a savage bear. He became increasingly violent and controlling, going to extreme measures to eliminate any perceived threats to this relationship of his.

He wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way or let anyone take you away from him. Not even you.

He’d use manipulation and mind games to keep you grounded, but he mostly just used fear and violence to control you. And it was a frequent thing that you found your throat being squeezed by his large hand in a fit of rage or just for fun. It took awhile, but he finally trained obedience into you. And with your obedience, only from you being utterly terrified of him, you finally got to see where he lived.

He was like a little boy excitedly showing you his room, tugging you by your hand to show all his records, especially the one from the band that united the two of you in the first place. They say that one’s bedroom was what the inside of their brain looked like, and you agreed on that statement when taking in Alex’s bizarre room. Especially when your eyes honed in on a very large poster on the wall of a traced girl with her thighs apart, her fingers spreading her vagina open.

Alex noticed where your attention was and stepped next to you to say while smiling, “Don’t get jealous, it doesn’t compare to the real thing.” He glanced down at your crotch with carnivorous eyes before telling you he had something to show you. You didn’t pay him much mind as you then dropped your concerned focus to the small four Jesus statues in a dance line, their hands still having bloodied nails.

You finally turned your head to check out what Alex wanted you to see only to be faced with a five foot long Boa Constrictor snake. You screeched loudly and flinched backwards, you couldn’t help it when you had a slight phobia of snakes.

“Don’t be poogly, my lovely, he’s not venomous. This here is Basil!” Alex said to you cheerily, holding the snake out to you as it laced around his forearms. Your eyes grew wide as you paled, you wanted to faint just at the sight of it. And the thought of touching it…

Either Alex didn’t register your disquietude or didn’t care as he wrapped his heavy snake around you starting with your arms and ending with your shoulders. You froze up completely with your features trembling in alarmed fright as the snake slithered around you, making your heart beat rapidly. Your lips were quivering and your eyes appeared blurry from growing tears. You would’ve thrown it off you if you didn’t feel paralyzed by the fear that if you just moved a muscle it would strangle you to death. Yet that fate seemed kinder than the fate with Alex.

It wasn’t until the snake slithered around your neck when your arms began to shake uncontrollably and a palpitation conquered your chest. As if it felt your pulse tap against its scales, it slightly tightened its hold on you. You snapped and loudly begged Alex through stuttered whimpers to get it off of you.

He callously giggled before he unraveled it from your jittery arms. “Alright, alright, don’t lose your head!” He joked. You did not find it funny.

Alex would make you listen to Ludwig loudly and make you listen to his rants and complaints about his day and his droogs. From what it sounded like his droogs have been questioning his leadership, you kept your theory that they were probably plotting behind his back to yourself. You eventually got to meet his droogs when you were once leaving Alex’s and they sat in the area at the bottom of the stairs. They already knew their place with you.

Alex only allowed his droogs to say hi and bye to you and maybe ask how you were doing, but that was it. You were an occasional topic the three droogs discussed when Alex wasn’t present, specifically about what they should do with you if they usurp Alex. Georgie had a fantasy of having his way with you simply because of how much Alex endlessly threatened them about you, like how you belonged to Alex and if they ever touched you he would castrate them. So fucking you would be like the ultimate middle finger to Alex.

But Georgie and Dim didn’t really see the appeal to you. Of course you were absolutely breathtaking, they all had eyes and wet dreams, but you just looked like you were about to bawl your eyes out at any given second. Alex fucked you up so much that if they tried to do the old in-out-in-out with you you’d probably just let them. And that was boring to them. You were like a doormat and plus you just kind of… bummed them out.

Though, Pete secretly had a harmless thing for you, always being the first to say ‘hi’ to you and the last to say ‘bye’ to you; being the only one of the three to ask how you were doing, really abusing the one phrase that Alex allowed them to say to you.

You could recall one time when you were descending Alex’s stairs to see them all waiting for Alex who trailed behind you. “Hello and goodbye, boys.” You said hoarsely with a pink puffiness circling your eyes and cradling your bandaged dorsal side of your arm that Alex had bitten into too deeply during a long night of fornication. Georgie and Dim both unenthusiastically mumbled a “hello, (Y/n)” in unison as you quickly passed them with your head hung low. You went straight into the rusty elevator and hit the button just as Pete squeaked out a “bye, (Y/n)”.

The doors closed yet because of how crappy it was, the elevator needed a quick minute before it could move you down. So you heard the beginning of the conversation that was about how Alex was late again so they came to wait for him. Georgie noted that he had been spending an awful lot of time with you lately and Dim joked that “The girl might’ve rotted your brain a bit?”

There was a haunting silence. The elevator finally jerked and started moving down just as a loud crack of a cane was heard followed by a pained yelp. It made you jump backwards in startelement, your back hitting the wall of the elevator as the continued sounds grew more distant.

You had spent the night at Alex’s many times, waking up to his nude body behind you with his arms cradling your nude body tightly against him; your back to his chest. His twin bed was small, not being built for two people sleeping next to each other, so the only two positions you could sleep in were him sleeping right on top of you or him squeezing you tightly against him to fit.

He always slept in which was torture for you as you always found it difficult to sleep around him. So you would stare into space for hours in a gloomy and drained state. You couldn’t get up and leave as his door had a combination lock on both sides. He’d spin the lock too fast for you to memorize or even catch the numbers.

Most days he’d send you off right away if he had a busy day ahead of him or before his parents had the chance to speak to you. But some days he’d keep you around a little longer just to take up your time. But because of this you once met his social worker who let himself in to have a discussion with Alex about his school attendance.

Alex, in only his underpants, stood behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder as a way to exemplify his innocence to the social worker as they talked and a threat to you to not say anything. But despite you not saying a word, the older creepy man took a mental note on your downcasted mood and quaking eyes. And the subtle bandages in a few places on your body.

But despite the horror of vulnerability in his home, you had grown to find your own home much more horrible.

You became a housemaid in your own home, a slave and a captive. Alex expected your flat to always be neat and tidy when he came, and better than how he leaves it. And not just simple tidiness, he would run his finger over surfaces for dust. He was a nitpicker about what needed to be cleaned or organized. Despite him not getting violent or aggressive about it, just his mere disapproval scared you enough to cater to those expectations. You couldn’t even fall asleep before scanning your whole flat in fear he would find something you didn’t notice to complain about.

You always had to cook for two just in case he showed up, always unannounced, ready to eat dinner or lunch with you (he never woke up early enough for breakfast but you would rather be safer than sorry). And every time you didn’t he would accuse you of not wanting him to show up, leading to him either brutally slapping you or choking you against the wall. And it had to be food he liked. And you always had to make sure there was milk and alcohol in the fridge, as well as drugs and marijuana he forced you to get.

There were oh so many times when you were extremely close to switching one of his drugs to a physically identical yet fatal substance. Yet you lived in the unearthly terror and dread that he would find out.

You lived on edge at home, jumping at the smallest creaks and you destroyed your clock as the ticking drove your anxiousness absolutely mad. You were a mess of a person, a neurotic person to be more exact. You just never knew when he would show up. Show up to hurt you for fun, draw blood, fuck you into the mattress despite your pleas of ‘not tonight’, smother you in his unwanted affection, forcing you to listen to his jokes about all the monstrous things he did the night before in graphic detail.

He acted as if the innocent, simple dates he took you on and the expensive gifts he bought for you with stolen money evened it all out. But it didn’t. He had damaged you inside and out; emotionally, mentally, physically, and sexually.

You became a constant jittery person so the sound of a knock at your door nearly gave you a heart attack, jolting in a shake in your spot on the couch.

But… Alex never knocked.

You feared the day had come. You feared it was the day the droogs finally took down Alex and now they had come to kill you for knowing their crimes and identities. You were confident in your theory that the droogs were going to stab him in the back, and so you spent many nights praying at the foot of your bed for it to happen since it seemed more realistic than Alex’s death or arrest. Yet you also found yourself praying to God for the droogs to show you mercy and spare you. But that specific prayer didn’t feel as listened to, nor realistic to you.

So you slowly and cautiously walked to your front door with shaky breathing pumping through your lungs. You delicately placed your hands on the door so you could carefully peek through your peephole. Your shrunken pupils saw a boy your age from your college standing in the hall with his hands patiently in his pockets. You flinched away from the door when he knocked again, the worry for both of your safety’s embraced you like suffocation. If Alex knew about this…

You wanted to go hide and wait for him to leave but the fact you shared a class with him made you think this might be important. So despite your paranoia that Alex would learn of this interaction with the opposite gender, you unlocked and opened your door the size of your shoulder width. You didn’t greet him as you quickly looked down both sides of the hallway to check for your unhinged and possessive boyfriend.

When the coast was clear your obviously nervous eyes looked at the awkward guy, waiting for his explanation. He awkwardly smiled softly, his hands fiddling in his coat pockets. “Hi, I know we don’t really talk, but I’m in your anthropology class.”

You acted like a kicked puppy and looked like a sad clown painting, clinging onto your door like you were about to slam it at any second. “Yes… I know you…” You glanced down the halls again before looking him up and down. “…Why are you here?” Your voice was hoarse and quiet; shaky and weak.

The boy, whose name you recalled as Patrick, removed his hands from his pockets to nervously fold them together. “Well, I know it’s not my place but I’ve noticed you have been missing a lot of classes lately, which I found a bit out of character for you compared to how you’ve always been in school.” He said, referencing how you used to always be an exceptional student… before Alex conquered and messed up your life patterns.

You kept avoiding eye contact, glancing around the hall then looking to the floor then to the wall behind him. You wiggled a little bit in nervous discomfort. You wished he would stop digging and leave the way he came. “I just… I have bigger things going on in my life right now.”

Patrick nodded with saddened features. “I know. That’s not the only thing I came here to say. You might know my girlfriend, Sheila? She’s roommates with your friend Adrienne.” You shifted again, because of Alex you no longer interacted with any of your friends anymore. And the one you kept socializing with, one that called you often when Alex was at your place, had a violent surprise run-in with a masked gang wearing white and codpieces. You avoided her after she got out of the hospital, for her own safety and your own guilt.

“…We don’t really talk anymore.” You spoke in a hushed tone, staring at the floor again. He slowly nodded again with a sorrowful frown. “Yes, I know. Adrienne said you completely shut her out out of the blue one day, same with the rest of your friends.”

You didn’t respond. You didn’t even know how to respond. So you remained silent.

“It was actually Adrienne’s idea for me to come here. But I mostly just came here on my own accord.” He started with a firmer tone of voice. “I know your boyfriend. Alex. I’ve seen you guys together a lot around town. I went to school with him before he was held back then put in the correction thing, and our fathers work together.”

You shrunk away from him, squeezing the door and the doorframe while glancing into his concerned eyes then the floor once again. “…I’ll tell him you said hi then.” You said, beginning to lean back to close the door but his voice halted your action as well as him reaching out to you but not close enough to touch. “No, no. What I’m trying to say is…” He took a long pause, seemingly trying to gather the right words as he bit the inside of his cheek and his brows curved upward.

“I know what kind of person Alex is. And, forgive me, but I can’t help but worry about you. I just wanted to stop by and ask if you were okay. Because if he’s…” he tried to think of a softer way to say what he was suspecting was going on in your relationship, “doing bad things to you I can help you.” He ended his statement and offer with a frown and consoling look.

Your head began to feel dazed and a thick lump sat in your throat that you just couldn’t swallow away. You glanced around the hallway again, feeling your paranoia and fear crawl up your back like snakes with the intent to strangle you. “I appreciate your worry,” you finally made eye contact to use all your strength to morph your face into contentedness and force a small smile, “but I am happy and doing just fine.” But your smile merely looked like someone put fish hooks in the corners of your lips and lifted them up by the thread. And the thick gloss in your eyes and your eyebrows that curved up only made your expression more unsettling to Patrick.

“I’m happier than ever, I really am.” You forced yourself to say. Yet visually and audibly pretending to be happy to be with Alex made you ferociously sick deep in your stomach creating a nasty nausea, your mind only replaying the most traumatic things he’s done to you from the horrific raping to the strangulations.

“Are you sure?” He pushed, wanting to hear the consenting approval of his help from your own mouth. Your forced smile began to shake like it was a heavy weight you weren’t trained to hold, and your tears also grew so unbearably heavy that you believed if you just blinked they would cascade down your face. “Yes.” You forced yourself to say again through your shaking teeth and self-repugnance. You forced the words of, “I think you should go now.”

Patrick frowned but gradually nodded. He said something as he slowly turned on his heels to leave but the ringing in your ears deafened it out. He was leaving, this was the first person to seriously reach out to you and offered you help and an escape, and you were sending him away! Were you really going to pass up this rare opportunity? You were practically digging your own grave and picking out your own tombstone. You were walking towards the edge of the cliff while thrashing your arm out of the hold of someone trying to tug you away from it.

You realized you couldn’t live in fear of Alex forever, you had to take the leap of faith and trust yourself to outsmart Alex. All you had to do was make a phone call when Alex wasn’t around: the early morning where Alex would still be asleep at his flat. You wanted to leave Alex more than you ever wanted anything ever in your whole life.

“Wait… please.” You squeaked out in a hushed tone as the tears finally drizzled out of your pink eyes, Patrick quickly returning to his previous stance to face you. You weeped for a few seconds to gather your thoughts before you moved to the side to rip off a corner of the morning paper that laid on the coffee table beside your door, grabbing the pen as well. You handed them both to him. “What’s your number?”

Patrick smiled happily for you before quickly jotting it down and handing it back to you. You quickly hid it in between the pages of the newspaper. You looked back at him with your bottom lip quivering and tears still swelled up within your orbs. “Thank you.” You croaked through your restrained sob, eyes bright despite the tears as you appeared like you’ve seen an angel.

Someone had finally sent you down a rope into your hellhole.

[ayakashiz]

Thoughts on Alien Stage FINAL Round

This is gonna be more of a word salad of my raw, biased feelings after watching R7 (with some leftover R6 thoughts) rather than a coherent, comprehensive analysis. Till’s death so far has been the most devastating to me, because I fail to see the meaning or reason behind it, story wise. Sua’s death was a catalyst to shatter Mizi’s rose colored glasses and open her eyes to the cruel reality of their world.

Ivan’s death was the climax of his character arc, both meant to show us his mask finally breaking and a release of his true emotions, and to be a turning point for Till to move forward (I will get back to this). It was also a sobering reminder of the dangerous and unforgiving system the characters live in, shattering the false sense of security built up during All-in and therefore raising the stakes for the upcoming rounds. 

Even Hyunwoo’s death had a similar effect as Sua’s on Hyuna. It fundamentally changed her, exposed her to the ugly side of Anakt Garden and Luka’s true nature (also a direct product of said abusive system).

But who or what did Till’s death change? What did it tell the audience that it hadn’t been told before and what purpose did it serve the plot? His death traumatized Mizi and brought her back to reality, but we had seen that before with Sua. It highlighted Luka’s absolute command of the stage, his power-play and the joy he gets out of asserting dominance over his competition; but that point had already been made very clear in R5. He even used the exact same tactic to win.

I love tragedies, and the beauty, the climax of tragedy is the catharsis it provides. It’s defined as “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions”, and this is what R6 managed to accomplish perfectly. Granted it still left me with many unanswered questions, but the purpose was clear. 

Till’s death in contrast left me feeling empty. It lacked buildup and catharsis, and in my opinion it stripped the previous round of its initial impact in the overall story (bear with me).

I was excited when I heard about vivimeng’s interview where they stated (very paraphrased) something along the lines of Alien Stage being a story about love and grief, and how the living are affected by those that they have lost. 

We see the way the grief of Mizi possibly being dead affects Till to the point he loses the will to keep fighting for survival in R6, and then we see how shocked and horrified he appears while witnessing Ivan’s death, not as a concept or possibility but something tangible happening right in front of his eyes. This sets the audience up to wonder how that grief (and Ivan’s actions) will affect him, how it will make him question his assumptions about Ivan’s goals and intentions, because they were never able to understand each other in life.

And don’t get me wrong, I did love the way his trauma from Ivan’s death was shown in such a raw way in R7, the memories of him filtered crimson red and Ivan’s hypocritical mocking of Sua coming back to bite him, because unlike what he assumed Till did care, so much so that it ironically contributed to his demise.

What I didn’t like was that, because R7 happened immediately after R6, Till never had time to sit with that grief, never even had time to process it. He didn’t get a chance to look past the visceral image of a friend dying in front of him and question why Ivan acted the way he did, why he decided to throw the round. (Even if Luka’s provocation scene still went the exact same way, it would have hit so much harder if we had some context as to why Till’s reaction is so strong to the point of a nosebleed, beyond the obvious shock and stress of a life or death situation.)

I would have loved to see Till do some introspection, even if it concluded in anger, frustration and confusion. And possibly regret, in some form. Regret is an overarching theme in Blink Gone’s lyrics, full of cheerful proclamations of living in the moment and forgetting the burdens of the past, while Till is clearly still haunted by it. And yet, such regret isn’t shown anywhere. 

This would have been the perfect moment to learn about Till’s POV of the meteor shower scene. Sure, it was an event that affected Ivan more deeply, but I find it very hard to believe that Till (arguably the one who was tortured the worst being in segyein captivity) doesn’t reminisce about it, doesn’t ponder about what would have happened had he made different choices, especially after Ivan’s death. Even the lyrics of the song “the dark crimson air embraces us, lifting our spirits, and the fiery thrill blazes out to the sky” are a blatant callback to it, so I’m surprised none of it was utilized visually or narratively.

Of course, it’s a short video and perhaps challenging to cram everything into a single round but alas… that wouldn’t have been an issue if Till hadn’t been killed off right away. 

Another regret to explore could have been how he was never able to get close to Mizi when he had the chance. He expresses this in his yearbook message to her, and we know he wants to, but his own shyness and perhaps inability to see Mizi eye to eye rather than put her on a pedestal was ultimately his biggest self-imposed obstacle. I would have also loved if Till lived long enough to realize this. Grief (over Ivan and Sua respectively) could have been a vehicle for Till and Mizi to truly connect as friends. I was really looking forward to how their relationship would develop once Till was able to look past his idealized version of Mizi and see how she has grown from that bubbly, sheltered little girl he knew in Anakt. He witnessed some of this in R5, but I don’t think it ever truly sank in.

Overall it was such a missed opportunity to show us Till's perspective and inner world outside of his adoration of Mizi, which is the only POV we ever get from him (I know we might get a comic with his thoughts the same as Ivan and Sua, but this will no longer influence the main story or be acknowledged by the remaining characters either way).

And while the same could be said about Ivan’s character, and I definitely have many questions left about him (which I hoped would be answered via Till), it makes more sense for his POV to be so Till-focused because the nature of his love is obsessive. Through Ivan’s POV we also learn a lot about his inner world, how he sees himself in comparison to others, his self hatred, how his fascination with Till stemmed from finding in him what he thought he himself fundamentally lacked, how he carried a strong desire to connect and be acknowledged by Till but his ability to form attachments in a normal way was stunted from the way he grew up, how he regretted this as an adult, how his near-death experience cemented his masking and complacency as a survival mechanism and how this very thing that helped him survive ultimately kept him isolated, etc etc. A lot was shown about him as a character in two MVs.

And even if Till’s feelings for Mizi had a more innocent, boyish nature (as stated by vivimeng), I would have liked to get a deeper insight into how they began, how and why Mizi became his light and muse and driving force. Of course it’s easy to come to a conclusion, but this is something I wanted to learn from Till himself. There’s also this whole untapped potential and exploration of his most brutal, explosive side, the one capable of turning his former classmate into a sacrificial lamb with zero regret for the sake of expressing his feelings, the one wild enough to risk death or punishment breaking an alien guitar just to get Mizi’s eyes on him. The genius. The mad artist.

There was such a huge buildup of Till being a wild card, the one to finally threaten Luka’s unshakable number one place because of his unpredictability, the one pet to challenge the status quo. I wish the trauma of Ivan’s death had awakened some of that madness, too. 

Rather, the progression of his emotional state struck me as a bit confusing (at least before Mizi showed up). Nothing had changed for the better after R6 and on the very contrary, things had just gotten exponentially worse. Not only was Till already in a depressive state over Mizi, he just watched Ivan die, assuming R7 took place only hours after R6. And yet at the start of the MV he appears very much in control and fairly unbothered up until Luka’s taunt throws him off balance and the reality of his weakened mental state comes through.

There was no narrative progression to how he went from point A at the end of R6 to point B at the start of R7.

I’m not sure if the intention was to show Till being in denial and trying to drown out his feelings but not only did it not come across as intentional but that would also be such an un-Till thing to do. He’s officially described as the most sensitive and emotional of the cast, and he isn’t good at or I think even capable of masking or hiding his feelings to the degree Ivan does.

It also feels like a step back for Mizi’s character development. She spent weeks (months??) with the rebellion and now knows how to use guns and grenades, what it takes to sneak past security and the risks of being seen. Yet when she reached for Till’s hand in the crowd she was back to R1’s blind optimism, rather than the anxiety she showcased before setting off to the rescue attempt.

Even if she had managed to pull Till off stage before the bullet got him, they would still be alone and unarmed (or not nearly sufficiently armed) in a crowd full of segyein. It was far from a victory yet.

I do LOVE how there was a role reversal though, with Mizi fiercely trying to protect him the way Till spent his whole childhood doing, refusing to leave him behind even if that compromised whatever Hyuna’s main plan was (which has been confirmed NOT to be a rescue mission from the start). I reckon also that she was probably so desperate and relieved to see the last of her friends still standing after losing everyone that for that moment she lost sight of the harsh lessons she had learned previously.

There are many wonderful things about the MV too. The art direction is INSANELY good, the use of the flashing colors of the stage to match with Till’s emotional state, the incorporation of the instruments, the beautiful quality of the animation that keeps getting better with each release, and the way they managed to make it so emotionally gut-wrenching despite the absolute banger that is the song. 

I’m glad that Till at least got to die in the arms of someone he loved and felt safe with, being cradled with the gentleness he was deprived of his whole life.

That said, the episode still left me feeling quite empty and disappointed, personally. I’m disappointed that Till’s character was discarded so early. Even if he was to be killed off in the end, I would have wanted them to postpone it a bit longer, give us a bit more time to watch him grow and learn about him and make his death something more meaningful than shocking. 

I’m disappointed that his death was the last nail on Ivan’s coffin, because Till was the only other character who could have carried his memory and give the audience a different perspective from Ivan’s extremely black and white, biased one. I’m disappointed that those answers that the audience was eager to learn were just left as a footnote on Patreon, which makes me feel like they never really planned on elaborating on it in the main story. Though who knows, maybe we’ll get a comic or supplemental material in the future.

I know the series is unfinished, and a lot can still change. I’m still deeply invested in finding out what will happen, especially since Hyuna is one of my absolute favorite characters (who now I’m also terrified for).

Many of my opinions may change with the new releases, but this was my impression now, with Blink Gone as a stand alone MV. I also wanna reiterate that I’m extremely biased because Till is a character very dear to me and I feel like he brought so much life and spunk to the story, so it just seems a little bleaker without him in the picture. 

To be honest the more I marinate on the thought, the more I’m inclined to believe that Mizi was always intended to be the last one standing, and that the plot just took a turn different than my expectations. Either way I’ll be along for the ride and wait for all new updates on Friday.

I refuse to put on my ‘Till is alive’ tinfoil hat because I just cannot handle more heartbreak, lol. But there was that tidbit of information about Sua having a loyal fanbase demanding her revival, so that tells me it is possible in the ALNST universe. There’s also that ‘joke’ comic on Patreon with Mizi spoiling the whole plot (iykyk). So we might actually get to see at least some attempt at Sua’s revival. Who knows!

Anyways I have yapped even more than I did after R6, so I’ll leave it here. If you made it this far, feel free to share your opinions or predictions!