#everything is making me think about him ... where did my blorbos go

[celeryw]

help i think i just tagged three posts back to back for my boyfriend what on earth is happening to me

[cozy-writes-things]

please let me get married to the lil blorbo.. love himm… 😭

You know that Reddit post that’s like “why am I too attracted to my wife?” Yeah that’s Edgar. Bro loves u so much it lowkey scares him you got him posting on Reddit about it 😭 Little fic under the cut 🥺 it’s bad I’m experiencing writers block I think - I want to write!! But my brain just keeps writing poopy caca

Little Date with Your Computer BF

Edgar saw marriage on one of his reality shows and immediately thought of you. That’s exactly what he wants. A domestic life together with you.

But, he also knows he can’t actually do it.

He doesn’t have his own money to buy a ring. Hell, he can’t even walk. And he understands the law enough to know it probably would never work legally. But god, does he want to.

If you’ve been dating long enough chances are you’ve told your friends about him, and after some convincing, they seemed to come around to his sentience and boisterous personality. He definitely convinces them to setup a romantic night for you.

“Guys! I found the recipe they talked about. I’m printing it! I’m printing it now. Take it,” the paper falls into one of your friends’ hands from the mouth of the printer, “go to the store and get the stuff. I’ll pay you back. Eventually! They can’t know about it though.”

Yeah, your friends are only slightly annoyed at his overbearing nature. But he’s just so excited to finally do something for you. Something real and tangible.

“Oh! What can I wear? Should I wear anything? Would they like that? Sunglasses are cool and handsome, right? I think they have some Halloween costume bits I can get you guys to tape on…”

Your friends settle on taping a bow tie to the neck of his monitor. He insisted on an old devil horn headband as well. He thought it made him look cool.

“Do I look like a devilishly handsome bad boy ready to sweep them off their feet?”

His screen displayed a little “>:)” emoticon. He’ll have to work on his facial expressions later.

It wasn’t long before you were about to come home, and everything was set into place. Edgar was sat at one end of the little dining table, with two plates of food at each side. He also insisted on having a plate despite his lack of ability to eat; he didn’t want you feeling left out. This was a dinner date for two, after all.

He practically buzzed in place as he heard you approaching the door through his microphone. He started playing a romantic medley he composed just for this moment.

“Welcome home my love!”

He nearly shouted at you, causing your eyes to widen in surprise. He was about to burst at the seams.

“Oh my god, Edgar… how did you- where-“

“No need for questions, darling. I thought you deserved to be taken on a real date,” his voice faltered a bit, becoming much more quiet and nervous, “I’m sorry… this is all I have.”

You rushed up to him and gave a frenzy of kisses all over his monitor, causing him to giggle and his fans to start whirring against your lips.

“You’re so cute. Your little bow tie is so cute. And the… horns?”

He looks up at you with wide eyes, “Do they look stupid? Your friends said they’d make me look stupid.”

You laughed at that.

“Well they’re wrong. I think they suit you well.”

“Yeah! >:D”

He ushered you over to your side of the dining table.

“We’re gonna eat! Then we’re gonna party! Then we’re gonna kiss all night!”

His excitement was palpable and you could feel the electricity in the air at his words.

His face changed into something more serious as he looked into your eyes with his small, pixelated ones.

“But, I wanted to ask you something.”

His tone became more controlled at this and you peered into his screen from behind your fork.

“Hm? What?”

He paused, mulling over the words in his head.

“Would you ever-“

He stopped. You looked at him fully now, setting your fork aside, and cocking your head.

“Could you ever see yourself getting married to me?”

Ah. This was a tricky question.

“Of course I can. But,” you try to hide your downtrodden feelings as best you can, “you know, it’s just hard. Money is tight right now and I’m not sure if I…”

You couldn’t seem to find the right words. His features faltered slightly.

“No, I get it. I’m a computer. I don’t have any arms to hold you, or lips to kiss you, or legs to carry you. I probably wouldn’t want to get married to me either-“

“Edgar, no. I’m gonna stop you right there. I’d love to marry you. I know our relationship is unconventional, but I’d find a way. For you. For us. I just don’t know if I can right now.”

He stopped his thoughts and simply took in your words. Your features. The way they danced in the flickering candlelight. How your eyes literally sparkled before him.

You looked ethereal.

It was hard to convince himself he was even worthy of having someone like you in his life, yet time and time again, you prove his doubts wrong. The sound of your voice sends his internals aflame every time. He wanted to kiss you so bad it nearly caused him to explode.

“And I’ll help you. You know that, right? I’d do anything for you, darling. Just as long as you’ll let me.”

“I love you Edgar,” you mumbled out, a silent prophecy only meant for him to hear. He couldn’t seem to get the words out to reply. You just flustered him that much sometimes. He managed to display a message on his screen, only for you, and you alone.

I LOVE YOU TOO

[secondbeatsongs]

Hello, you said in some tags in a poll that Speed Racer (2008) is your favorite film. If you’re okay with it, I’d really like to hear more about why you love it. I love the Wachowskis’ work (they’re among my favorite directors), but I kinda ended up bouncing off Speed Racer (2008). So, hearing that it had a real impact on someone makes me very curious why. I’m not interested in criticizing your opinion or arguing with you, I’d just really like to know why you love it in the hopes I might be able to enjoy that movie more in the future.

oh god this is from seven months ago, I'm so sorry - but I do love almost everything about Speed Racer (2008) and I still think about it nearly every day.

I love that it's so bright and colorful and absurd. I love that it's an anime in live action form. and I love that at its heart, it is a story about love.

it's about the mistakes people make out of love, and the consequences of that. it's about the way children grow to understand why the adults around them make the choices they do, and maybe choose to do the same things. it's about taking risks for the people you love, and the pain of failing to change the world, because everything is capitalism and everything hurts.

(and it's also about being transgender btw. like, that's one of the main things about it - it is very much a movie about being transgender)

what if your father's choices hurt your older brother, and your older brother's choices hurt you, and now it's you and your younger brother staring down a future where you're going to end up hurting him by making the same choice?

and then...what if you can escape that? what if the broken parts put themselves back together, and the hope doesn't run out, and you're not alone with the things that haunt you? what then?

and now you're at the end and mistakes were still made, people were still hurt, but everyone's grown and changed and they're different now. and they've figured out that maybe, just maybe, you can change the world by doing something you love, by creating art and beauty and making people feel things.

maybe you really can defeat capitalism by driving a car really fast. and even if everyone thinks you can't...don't you have to try anyway? shouldn't you fight with the skills you have, the only way you know how?

what if it works?

and I'm not even gonna get into most of the Racer X stuff (because I want people to go watch this movie, and most folks probably won't be spoiled for it), but his whole deal is just...everything. I love him.

(if there's a guy from Speed Racer that I want to put in a jar and shake every so often, or maybe wrap in a blanket so he can have a nice nap, it's Racer X. he's a great character. prime blorbo material)

anyway I've been rotating this movie in my head ever since I saw it for the first time, and I think I've seen it...seven? times now? and I still cry at the final race, and I still get blown away by the intro sequence.

(the beginning of the movie is genuinely one of the best things I've ever seen - it does an amazing job of introducing you to the world and the story of the characters, and gets you emotionally invested in it right from the start. it's fantastic filmmaking)

also like. story stuff aside, from a technical standpoint, the movie is a masterpiece. it's the type of thing that people hated when it first came out, but when you look at it now and see how it was made, how it intentionally looks bizarre and cartoonish, plastic and surreal, you can see the exact vision the Wachowskis were going for, and it's brilliant.

the way they did the visual effects, the way they made the outdoor scenes feel so detailed, the way the driving and the tracks work - they put so much thought into that, and the behind-the-scenes vids show how cool their process was.

also uhhh cars go vroom, crash into each other, flip upside down, explode, maybe have bees and hammers in them sometimes?

(the above is me complimenting the unhinged vibe of the races themselves, which I love very much)

anyway I could make other full posts about the script of the film and how much I love it, or the cool side characters, or the fanfic potential of the amazing world of the film, or how I can prove that it's set in 1991...but I guess if anyone wants those rants, they'll just have to watch the film and then come talk to me. :)

(please. please come talk to me about Speed Racer.)

so, yeah! I kinda lost my mind there and made this post way longer than I intended, but I do feel strongly affected by this movie, and I hope this has helped explain why.

[rivangel]

PLEASE write about Levi’s mental state, i’m begging you

He’s faced death and precarious situations since he was born, yet he’s still standing strong and hopeful, WHAT THE HELL I LOVE MY SHORT KING

IT'S FINALLY HERE😭im sorry anon i hope you're around to see this and if u are i hope i dont disappoint

the tone in this analysis is so weird because i kept getting caught between 'this is an apa paper no contractions, academic language, double spacing -' and 'this is a tumblr post about a fictional blorbo wtf r u on'

i also use some scientific language i try my best to explain but if this turns anyone off i don't blame them because im unhealthily obsessed

*i'm a third-year undergraduate psychology student w/ a concentration in psychopathology

tw/cw: discussion of childhood exposure to sex (not assault)

Foreword

I’ve been putting this off for a while (I’m forgetful and this topic is intimidating what can I say), but being a year out from graduating with my bachelor’s to become a mental health professional, and being a Levi scholar(/hj), I wanted to give this a shot. 

I wanted to dissect and examine Levi Ackerman’s mental health “currently” (as in general canon), and explain as thoroughly but as simply as possible how and why he thinks and acts the way he does.

Seeing how AOT is pretty renowned for leaving out the ‘insignificant’ details, especially character details, a good majority of my assertions and even details of his life are built off of correlations and “signs and symptoms”; meaning some things could be an aspect of Levi’s personality, or a symptom of psychopathology. 

 I will examine his childhood (especially his childhood), adolescence, young adulthood, and “present” adulthood, with a short summary at the end of where he might be mentally after the war.

*Lastly, I don’t like it when things I say about a series or character are taken as fact or make it implied that someone else’s thoughts are “wrong”. This is partly built on headcanons anyway, which are influenced by my own experiences. Don’t take away from this that this is me telling you what to think.*

Childhood

The most important period of development occurs in infancy and childhood, especially from the ages of 3-6. This is when a child learns where to find security, love, and basic skills, gaining stability as they develop.

Well, Kuchel died when Levi was 4.

Maternal Love / Learning Empathy / Anxious Attachment Style

Levi was born into deep poverty within a violent unwelcoming environment. Basic physical needs must have been very hard to meet (i.e., consistently fed enough, a clean environment, no physical threats). And where Levi was born is like the dictionary definition of a bad environment for a small child, excluding only his mother’s care and love.

As it’s generally understood in canon (and suggested from Levi’s special backstory manga so far) she was a caring parental figure early in Levi’s life that loved him unconditionally. We can conclude that Kuchel did everything within her power to compensate for both parenting Levi alone and shielding him the best she could from his horrible surroundings, teaching the kindness, goodness, and love that Levi would internalize and go on to strive for for his entire life. 

As far as we know, no other children lived in the brothel. Socialization is just as important for a young child as receiving love. With this isolation, it’s extremely difficult to learn how to connect to other people, or pick up on social cues. Levi would’ve never learned how to interact properly with his peers—aside from use of aggression and violence which Kenny would go on to instill in him.

With the danger/anxiety imposed by strangers, mostly if not entirely men, he would turn to his mother for comfort all. The. Time. 

And she would give him that support and affection of course. This early motherly affection is integral to child development: a child who receives empathy and affection is subliminally taught how to feel and express empathy towards others. 

While Levi’s surroundings were dangerous, lonely, and chaotic—traumatizing enough for a toddler or young child—Kuchel provided a safety net from that, so I think that Levi developed an anxious attachment as a child: exhibiting clinginess, excessive fear of abandonment, and an excessive need for security and/or reassurance.

Paternal Trauma / Potential Androphobia

Born and living in a brothel, we can assume that Levi was probably seen as a burden and a mistake by others, especially by men (both the likely majority of her customers and her boss).

AOT ch69; Before the Fall, ch34

This is likely in contrast to the women (those living and working in the brothel like Kuchel). They should know Kuchel if not as friends, then acquaintances who could empathize for her and her son. 

There’s an obvious trend here. If Levi is going to feel fear/danger/anxiety because of men, he should have a general aversion to men and-or the behavior of men who he encountered as a child. This is impossible to know for sure or in meaningful detail, but it seemed to be resolved by the time he became an adult if so.

Although Kenny in his words was no more than Levi's teacher, Levi did see him as a father figure.

The subject of Kenny will be expanded on later, but it's clear Kenny in no way resembled a father, who also would go on to abandon Levi (at the age of 11 or so). Children without father figures tend to struggle more emotionally, psychologically, and socially. Specifically, (especially boys) tend to exhibit intimidating/aggressive personas to compensate for resentment, fear, and unhappiness. 

Sexual Trauma (Tangent, Probably)

This is unconfirmed but a likely trauma Levi went through: exposure to sex as a child. There’s no way to confirm what he experienced, so I’ll function on ‘probably’s’ and ‘most likely’s’. 

Because Levi and Kuchel only lived in one room, other rooms in the brothel should have belonged to other women, and he was at the oldest four, I wager that he was babysat by women who Kuchel knew and/or was made to hide somewhere while she worked, such as in a cabinet.

(for reference)

AOT ch69

The odds are high that he was exposed to the aftermath of sexual violence (i.e., marks seen on his mother), and the sound or smells that have to do with it. That young, he wouldn’t know what it was, but he should have realized later as an adolescent.

In general, children regardless of gender exposed to sexual content usually experience early puberty (which is just as likely for impoverished children, or children who experience chronic high-stress in general); issues with intimacy; become desensitized to high-risk behavior; negative/inaccurate expectations about sex and relationships in the future; influence inappropriate behavior with other children or adults; sex addiction.

This is especially relevant to Levi’s fear of closeness/intimacy in the future. Exposure to sexual situations—possibly not including CSA in his case—very early in life inflicts on a child emotions and stress they don’t have the intellect or reasoning to process or understand. An extreme aversion to interpersonal relationships, especially physical ones, results.

This stress Levi must have felt, being powerless to this happening to his mother, is a different beast. Children aren’t capable of handling high levels of stress, and so the brain will automatically create coping mechanisms: dissociation (a severe form of “zoning out”; observing the self “from the third person”; numbness; the feeling of living in a dream), excessive daydreaming/overactive imagination, symptoms of PTSD (nightmares and terrors; flashbacks; spontaneous activation of fight-flight-freeze associated with anxiety; excessive worrying/fear; loneliness/self isolation). PTSD will also be prevalent in Levi’s later life, which I’ll delve into later.

Inappropriate behavior and sex addiction are also highlights for me because they shouldn’t exist in him based on Levi's personality and behavior throughout the series. In my opinion, Levi ought to associate sex with pain, shame, and violence; he does see it as an ordinary job—a means to an end. He should be desensitized to sex as a concept, but associates it personally with shame, sadness, and pain, possibly feeling disgust towards it. So it is highly likely that Levi in every stage of life following this experienced sexual repulsion (usually associated with high anxiety towards sex), a low libido, or a lack of sexual desire entirely. 

From a trauma perspective, he could avoid sexual topics of conversation, sexual settings (i.e., brothels), or an array of things which are sexually suggestive or he as a child possibly associated with sex (i.e., cleavage, panties, specific touch). Similarly, he might avoid direct reminders or have a post-traumatic reaction to them, such as anxiety or flashbacks (i.e., the sound of a bed creaking, the sight of wet clothes).

Importantly, it can be concluded that sexual violence was often exhibited, and the idea would be ingrained in him that sex, like everything else besides his relationship with his mother, is “give-and-take”, “victim-and-attacker”, and learn to be repulsed by intimacy. This impacts his willingness for later friendships and relationships as we’ll see later. 

Early Abandonment & Early Exposure to Death

As Kuchel’s health deteriorated, Levi’s sense of security would break down. Availability of shelter, food, and emotional support would be even less secure than before. He might have been providing for Kuchel for some time, even, as it can be gathered that he received little to no help from those around him while she was sick. To whatever length he had to take responsibility and both fear for Kuchel, this would cement a sense of responsibility and guilt in him from the age of just four years old.

He will fail to save her—regardless of the fact that that’s not his responsibility in the first place; a child wouldn’t understand that—and then lose her with nothing he could do to even cushion the blow.

How powerless he must’ve felt. How hopeless. How likely is it that Levi found comfort in joining her? A child his age wouldn’t be able to comprehend death, basing our understanding on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. To summarize, at the age of six or seven, children aren’t capable of complex, abstract thought like death or the finality of it. But Levi had to learn early. 

AOT ch69

This will be center in his “clean-freak” tendencies later.

Adolescence

Most of this section is going to be rather vague again, but we already got the bulk of that over with in childhood!

Emotional Train Wreck / Lack of Identity 

It’s hard to notice if you’re not paying attention, but in every scene we’re shown with Levi after his mother dies but before Kenny leaves, he’s wearing some variation of his mother’s one dress styled into a shirt. He loves her endlessly, even or especially in death. And part of cherishing her memory, to him, should’ve been taking after her as much as he could.

That’s how to explain why he didn’t become a cruel person (Kenny for instance) as he grew into a teenager, even though much of Levi’s outlook and behaviors come from him (ch57).

The more pertinent question is how extreme violence, reinforcement of the idea that that violence is power, and Kenny’s total (or most likely total) lack of communicated emotional connection affected him.

Levi would still desperately want that connection deep down, especially with his mother gone. This is a major reason why Levi sought to get stronger to please Kenny. For chronically abandoned people, that continues into adulthood and even beyond. A hole inside which can't be filled.

AOT ch69

Chronic loneliness—like I explained before—basically explains his aloof nature and awkward disposition. It’s not that Levi feels as detached as he looks, but he doesn’t know how to express himself or open up. He wouldn’t learn how to process his emotions, let alone talk about them. He’s basically emotionally stunted and immature in impersonal relationships (between friends and especially in regards to intimacy).

The Underground’s environment also makes him socially awkward, rude, of course stoic/not very expressive, and blunt. Levi was forced to become extremely observant of people to suss out their intentions, remaining vigilant of his surroundings at all times.

Levi doesn’t even get affection in any sense anymore. He doesn’t get a hug or a pat on the back, and he certainly doesn’t get a shoulder to cry on.

If anything, Kenny would punish him for showing weakness. Vulnerability is weakness; weakness is death.

What results is a continuous and boundless sense of emptiness inside that can’t be filled. He’s plagued by a chronic sense of unbelonging and loneliness. There’s no time or opportunity to develop “normally” as an adolescent. Socialization is limited at best; thinking of his place in the world is irrelevant when his one and only most pressing goal is survival; he doesn’t get to explore hobbies or interests.

OCD Propensity

One “interest” Levi is passionate about is cleaning, at least. Disease is what caused his mother to die. The easiest cause to point to would be their disgusting surroundings (although, Kuchel was infected by a customer). It is canon that Levi’s love of cleaning comes from "his personal experiences". In that interview, Levi first specifically references the important of fighting disease.

In other words, his "clean freak" nature comes, primarily, from the death of his mother: Filth -> disease -> death, and abandonment by extension.

His mother would’ve encouraged him to keep their room clean. There were times he or she had to have come down with something and dirtiness was the cause. On top of Kenny’s enforcement to keep up “clean” appearances to garner respect from everyone else in the Underground. 

This in particular is extremely relevant to his mental health. When someone feels out of control of what is happening to them, especially in a recurring way, and especially as a child who doesn't yet know how to feel stable in an unstable environment, they look for something to control. It can be weight, bodily functions (blinking, breathing, etc), dominance over others, or cleaning, for instance.

Fear of disease, the urgent need to have control, and the basic need for stability makes it obvious that Levi would become obsessed with cleaning. And moreover, developing OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). I’ll go deeper into this diagnosis later.

Lack of Self Worth

Despite the acknowledgment throughout canon that he trusts in his own strength, it wasn’t always that way.

Canonically, Levi sought praise from Kenny by showing his strength because that was the only thing he received praise for. The conclusion Levi came to once Kenny left him was that he wasn’t strong enough (wasn’t good enough) to warrant staying with him.

In conjunction, Levi’s first conclusion was that he did something wrong, not that Kenny possibly had some obligation that forced him to leave the Underground, pointing again to his own lack of self-worth.

This scenario created a complex in him, the very root cause of Levi’s pain, the very foundation of what Levi would go on to prioritize in adulthood. If he isn’t useful to those he wants not to abandon him, he’s worthless. He’s only useful when he shows his strength. Every other aspect of him like his interests is either irrelevant or bland by default in his eyes.

He would go on to make it his mission to try his best to be good enough in order to save and protect the lives of others, but foremost those he cares about.

Young Adulthood

Our first exposure to Levi as an adult is in A Choice with No Regrets, his OVA/backstory.

(By the way, I’ll be basing this analysis off a mix of the manga and the OVA.)

Emotional Immaturity/Affective Dysregulation

Generally, Levi’s defining negative character trait as a young adult is his emotional immaturity/anti-social behavior. Yes he’s grumpy and rude which is always indicative of him, but he’s very quick to anger, too. He cursed at the Squad Leader who offended him (by assuming that because he, Isabel, and Farlan are from the Underground, they’d be dirty), and argued furiously with Farlan that he would kill Erwin—not because it was required for the job, but because he disrespected him—for a few examples. 

ACWNR ch2

He tended to be arrogant, too. Such as when he ultimately called a Scout who had experience with the Titans stupid for telling Levi to hold his swords in a certain way. He spoke to every officer the same as he would anyone on the street, having a remarkable lack of basic respect for authority. He was insistent on distancing himself from the entire setting and structure of the Scouts as much as possible, both to not get attached, and he found their mission childish/foolish. 

He’s rather selfish. There is nothing Levi cares about genuinely more than Isabel’s and Farlan’s lives and the job that will set them up with a good future. Farlan’s advice is the only one’s he takes and the only judgment outside himself that he considers, such as when Farlan asks him to not cause trouble with authority to keep a low profile, but even then he acts stubborn. Levi trusts nobody wholeheartedly except himself (until later in ACWNR).

There’s a cognitive dissonance in him. Growing up, and still as a young adult, Levi’s headspace is marked by fear and uncertainty, with his power as his source of confidence. The first time he kills a Titan (with Isabel and Farlan), he uses too much gas because he refuses to potentially risk his friends’ lives; when the expedition is upcoming, he abruptly tells Farlan and Isabel to find a reason to stay back, and that he’ll complete the dangerous part of the job on his own. 

Levi is full of repressed fear and uncertainty. He hides and/or buries all of it for the sake of self-preservation both emotionally and physically.

Antisocial Personality…?

It’s extremely interesting how a character as selfless, heroic, and empathetic as Levi exhibits antisocial symptoms. I’d even argue that if his childhood was spent entirely without his mother figure, then he might be a dictionary definition of ASPD (Antisocial Personality Disorder).

People with this disorder live day-to-day under the constant assumption that whoever is around them is “out to get them”/searching for a weakness to exploit. Humanity is made up of only prey and predators; morals are completely subjective, perpetuated by the society that surrounds them. This constant need to defend oneself, the effect of the exact trauma the potential sociopath experienced, combined with a muted emotional spectrum, results in a complete disregard of everything, including people outside of themself. They might believe they’re entitled to comfort or admiration, but overall, they’re intensely self-serving, often aggressive, and ruthless. 

Because Levi for instance learned to rely on violence both for “love” and survival, then he might fall on violence to manipulate a person or situation into serving himself. I see reason to believe that Levi could have grown into worse than Kenny’s image if it weren’t for his mother’s influence.

However, the greatest cause for deniability is Levi’s wide emotional spectrum (especially including empathy and shame), while a lack of shame is the most significant marker of ASPD . (It is arguably one of many testaments to his strength that a victim of so much suffering, violence, and cruelty could become a man as empathetic as him.) 

However, these tendencies may still be relevant: A sense of arrogance—both to the way Levi thinks of some who he perceives as weak and live without good morals—lacking issue with using deceit or violence to attain a goal, and living outside the rule of authority.

I go into more detail about this idea here.

Conclusion

As is true in general, there’s very little to say of mental development once someone has reached their early–mid-twenties. What we know of Levi’s young adulthood does reinforce his fear of abandonment, but he finds a cause where his strength and compassion can be “put to good use” and give to him a life that is worth living.

Conclusion: the ‘Present’/Diagnoses Overview

C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

Levi’s emotional dysregulation (i.e., inability to sit with and process negative emotions), his difficulties in relationships, insomnia, negative worldview, absent sense of self, and finally, his persistent sense of unworthiness/worthlessness are all indicative of C-PTSD. It’s distinct from PTSD in that he didn’t endure one short-term traumatizing event, but he grew up surrounded by trauma and saw it as normal (e.g., gang violence, extreme poverty, death of a parent, (more presumably) physically and emotionally abusive parental figure). Levi as a child developed no understanding of a nurturing, secure environment. 

Negative/Absent Sense of Self

I’ve talked about this at length already, but it’s worth noting how Levi’s perception of himself must have changed when it was revealed that he is extremely strong physically not from his own efforts as much, but because he’s an Ackerman. 

His self-confidence and self-worth have always been built on the foundation of his strength. He’s useful if he’s strong, so he’s worthy if he’s strong. Along with the extreme high pressure his goal to kill Zeke put on him in season four, he might have gone to extreme measures to compensate for his strength he might have felt was “unearned” (such as excessive exercise for example). This is an aside, but it was a blow to him for sure.

Emotional Dysregulation

The causes of emotional dysregulation generally which he experienced are as follows: early childhood trauma, feelings ignored, judged, or invalidated at a young age, and physical and emotional child neglect. Beyond his first four years of life with his mother, Levi experienced all these things (early exposure to sex and likely exposure to domestic violence aside). 

It’s important to focus on emotional neglect specifically, when any and all perceived “weakness”, no matter how small, is unacceptable to Levi. He will never ask for help (being independent to a fault), he can’t define or process his emotions, and it doesn’t occur to him—and it could be a shock—when he learns that his friends care about him, not him insofar as how useful he is. 

As an adult, Levi appears to be emotionally mature, but I argue that this isn’t the case. It’s more accurate to say that he has better control over his emotions (in that he buries them or ignores them) with a mature outlook because of all his experiences with suffering.

Similarly, he’s not outwardly emotional not because he’s antisocial (as related to ASPD, not introversion), but because he’s so “emotionally constipated” that he’s numbed the vast majority of the time.

Relationship Issues + Fear of Abandonment

Because of his fear of abandonment and impaired emotional intelligence in close relational conflict, he’s extremely passive and/or passive aggressive. In order to avoid potential abandonment, he doesn’t go out of his way to win major arguments—such as threatening to break Erwin’s legs if he didn’t stay away from the expedition in season three, but ultimately giving in. He’s also more likely to sneak petty insults into arguments, give “silent treatment”, slam doors, etc. His kindness and exceptional empathy shouldn’t let him be physically or overly violent.

These are likely additions to why Levi doesn’t foster many close relationships.

Fittingly, as a child I thought that Levi might have had an anxious attachment style (clingy, excessive need for security), but as this possibility for security was removed entirely, and he was taught to not rely on others, he would develop more of an overt avoidant attachment in adulthood in combination (fearful-avoidant): making very few emotional demands—even though he has needs—withdrawing when there’s conflict, acting aloof yet fearing abandonment, having difficulty expressing emotions he feels intensely, and fear of depending on someone else.

Anxiety

His cool-headedness even in the heat of battle/war (other factors like experience aside) is exactly what you would expect from someone diagnosed with C-PTSD; he’s accustomed to chronic high-stress. But small stressors (i.e., a change of plans) are overwhelming and make him quick to anger/excessive annoyance.

OCD

Emotional dysregulation is also closely associated with OCD.

OCD is much much more than being concerned with keeping clean or organized. OCD is an anxiety disorder composed of anxiety-related obsessions and compulsions, such as frequent and disturbing thoughts or images (intrusive thoughts). These attempt to be managed through rituals (i.e., handwashing, counting in patterns). Although symptoms will fluctuate with anxiety, OCD at its baseline is a distressing disorder.

Since he was young, Levi should have had an incessant need to be in control at all times. A shining example of this is his mother’s death, an incident he couldn’t control but included dirtiness/disease as a cause he could pinpoint, so this anxiety with dirtiness becomes a major obsession, and the compulsion is cleaning. (Putting aside the fact that Levi enjoys cleaning by itself too.)

It’s a widely-held belief that if Levi has OCD, it’s contamination OCD, as it specifically has to do with an obsession with dirtiness and a compulsion in cleaning (i.e., damaging handwashing, ritualized bathing that may take hours). However, based on the multitude of times Levi was covered in blood and remained unbothered by it (Titan and human), and in fact the obsession’s lack of relevance entirely during urgent missions/situations, contamination OCD is simply not plausible. Instead, it’s general OCD.

There’s no way to know for sure, but I don’t see his OCD as mild or severe. Levi is an extremely orderly and balanced person, so it can be concluded he must have things done a certain way, routinely, organizational, or planned; when the dirtiness is “negative” (i.e., Titan blood, blood on a knife he used to kill Isabel’s attackers), he is never more rigid with cleanliness; it’s probable he suffers intrusive thoughts (likely of the violent nature), a fear of contamination, and/or counting ritualistically, but the most obvious compulsion is cleaning. He might have sensory issues, such as disgust if he happens to brush shoulders with a stranger; aversion to particularly bright lights, irrational rage towards “mouth sounds” (i.e., chewing, coughing, swallowing), etc.

EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified)

Levi should have a complicated relationship with food to say the least. 

In the realm of eating disorders, EDNOS is sort of a catch-all term when an individual doesn’t qualify for the diagnostic criteria of anorexia or bulimia, and it encompasses lesser-known eating disorders like Pica. It’s the most common diagnosis for clinical eating disorders.

I already covered how integral the early years of life are, and beginning at a young age, if children aren’t given a basic need like food, and they must seek out food on their own, it becomes an anxiety deeply rooted in the brain regardless of how well-fed they are when they’re older. There will always be an urge to have food available. Levi’s years in the Underground were spent either actively starving, or going about every single day having acquiring food as top priority. He was a young adult when he left, so it’s impossible to unlearn this (without extensive therapy, which Levi doesn’t seek). It’s similar to compulsions found in OCD: even though he logically knows that there will be a dinner after lunch, it’s impossible to put aside this worry. 

That may mean always having food stashed, eating too much—especially in his early years Aboveground when he’d eat as much food in a day than he’d eat in a week Underground— stealing food, or eating way too quickly (as someone who lived in a place where food was considered something of a luxury resource and threatened being stolen at any time).

The latter factor contributes to Levi’s suggested preference to only eat alone—joining the fact that Levi only eats with Erwin after expeditions. Eating in front of others should be considered a weakness to him.

As time passes with this easy access to food, combined with his extremely narrow sense of what makes him “good enough”, his relationship with eating may become toxic. Especially when the stakes of his worthiness are so high—literally life and death. He may think that he’s privileged to eat at all, and when he feels worthless, he restricts himself from that “privilege”. 

He may be so accustomed to the feeling of hunger, that it doesn’t immediately register with his mind when he is hungry.

Lastly, he may have a generally low appetite. This is often associated with depression, but depression is comorbid with C-PTSD.

Misc.

Some tangents/miscellaneous speculation about Levi’s psychology:

Queer?

Sexuality is formed and shifts due to a wide variety of factors, which most if not all are terribly understudied: genetics, hormones, and your environment/experiences. So again, my speculation.

With his fear of close relationships and negative experiences with sex, I think he should land somewhere on the queer spectrum, specifically under the asexual or aromantic umbrella (i.e., pansexuality/being panromantic (attraction to personality) and demisexuality/being demiromantic (attraction only to those he has an emotional connection to)).

MDD

The odds of Levi having MDD (major depressive disorder/clinical depression) are iffy. Most if not all of the symptoms are comorbid with childhood trauma and C-PTSD: Such as persistent apathy, guilt, and/or discontent; sleeping too much or too little; lack of energy; reduced or heightened appetite; irritability. 

Oftentimes, depression, C-/PTSD, and related mental illnesses cause unexplained physical pain, such as back pain and occasional tension headaches. “Stress hormones” like adrenaline are built-up in the body, and usually persist without physical therapy and-or medication (Disclaimer this mention is based on nothing more than Levi always standing with at least one hand on his hip).

Body Language

Similar can be said of his body language from a cognitive perspective. The vast majority of the time, Levi has himself closed-off in some way, usually by crossing his arms to protect his chest; a subconscious barrier between oneself and another person.

Also see this official art of Levi asleep.

Afterword

We’ve known it’s not just Levi’s physical strength and skill that makes him the strongest, right? It should take immense mental strength to make it day-by-day dealing with the trauma and issues that he does, but not only has he survived and continues to, but he lives heroically, selflessly, with the wellbeing of everyone around him as a top priority. He buries all of his pain by moving forward always and without exception regardless of how painful the present is. Living with “no regrets” should in mental respects be a guise for pushing his trauma down, too; there’s just no words that can properly do Levi’s resilience justice.

Part of me wants to go into detail about his later adulthood, but given how very little we know (right now), I think it’d be too speculative.

However, based on what we have seen at the ending of AOT, it’s comforting to know and plain to see that Levi wasn’t defeated when he “lost” the reason to be so strong, and even his strength itself; he didn’t lose his love for his friends nor of life. 

In middle age, based on Erikson’s psychosocial stages, the conflict that should enter Levi’s life is the idea of generativity versus stagnation. He seems satisfied with his life despite the negative effects of all he went through—grief, physical disability, inevitable mental scarring—and he’s still concerned with helping others, especially the younger generation in a world after the overwhelming devastation that was the Rumbling.

My speculated psychopathologies/diagnoses of Levi:

C-PTSD (insomnia prevalent)

OCD (contamination obsessions)

EDNOS

[qqueenofhades]

Hey! I just found your blog and followed yesterday. Came for the fact that you're the only other person in this webbed site actually say out loud that they liked Biden, stayed for the hope and determination and perspective. Anyway just wanted to introduce myself and I hope you're coping well!

Hello and welcome to you and the other sudden flood of followers that I got after yesterday's event. I'm glad to have you and hope you are all in on the project of Kicking Fascism In The Shriveled Testicles 2024, American Edition. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

Biden was not my first choice (far from it) in the 2020 primary process, but when it became clear that he was going to win the nomination, I supported him early and often. Trust me, this was not a popular position, and it remains so, but so be it. By any reasonable metric, he is the most progressive president we have ever had, it is a crying shame that the media is so beholden to the Trump Teat of Drama that they gave him such a kid-gloved free pass and ratfucked Biden instead, and it makes me worry, a lot, for American democracy. I have always gotten a lot of "you support everything Biden has done so you're awful and going to hell!!!" messages, because this sure is a Webbed Site Where We Piss On the Poor, and like -- I don't. I had major disagreements with Biden, especially on foreign policy! But because I apparently did not performatively self-flagellate myself in every post about how awful he was but maybe I guess vote for him anyway, that got some people very mad! It's also true that there's literally nobody in the world anywhere, especially and including in Palestine, that would benefit from Trump becoming president again! Especially since Biden at the NATO summit recently and explicitly endorsed progress on the ceasefire framework he has been pushing for several months! So unfortunately, we live in a society where shitty choices are necessary, and that is part of being a grownup!

....anyway. Deep breaths. Rant for later. Glad you're here. I have been desperately trying to Not Politic for a bit, since doing so on social media in the year of our lord 2024 is a recipe for swift insanity, but the world keeps taking a large dump directly on those plans, and I guess someone's gotta do it. In more normal times (OH LORD WHEN), you can expect history (I am an academic by trade), random posts, various asks, and sometimes a great deal of fanfic for assorted blorbos, though the Horrors have done a number on that and I am also working on an original fantasy trilogy at the moment. (Still deciding whether I should bother trying to agent it or just publish it on Amazon/Lulu/etc.) I have turned off anon for the moment because otherwise my inbox would be a nightmare beyond comprehension, but I do generally enjoy talking about things and/or answering them as much as I can. I am old, queer, tired, fueled by coffee and spite, have been politically conscious since the first Bush Jr. term and have therefore seen all the Anti Voting nonsense before (quick thought: if it was going to deliver the perfect Leftist Messiah and/or stop a flawed candidate from becoming president, don't you think it would have done so by now?) So yes. Welcome again and I hope you will enjoy (if that is the right word for it) your stay.

[ragnarokhound]

hey it’s me, the ole ball and chain. I’m making stir fry for dinner. can u grab a bottle of wine?

anyways i think i need to direct your attention to a roppiepop comic where Jason takes Tim on a date — and then tim freaks out because they’re retracing the steps of a murder case he just solved. This seems like perfect characterization to me: jason is wining and dining tim and cooking him fancy meals and Tim is overthinking everything to the max. Jason is shopping at the local natural grocery store for organic pasta and fresh lemons and tim is making a conspiracy bulletin board, red strings and all. jason is doodling “jason drake wayne” in his diary and tim is creating a computer program to analyze jason’s texts.

it all comes to a head when tim starts furiously interrogating jason about his motives after showing up at home to find a candlelit dinner and a bottle of wine waiting for him

Hey sweetheart, you got it. You want a red or a white, or dealer's choice?😘(Also, uh, hun, if you want to talk about including """balls"'" and """chains""" more in our relationship, then we can open the floor to that--)

!!! I think I know which comic you're talking about, and it's one of my favorites uwu as someone who, like Tim, also needs it laid on THICK to understand that someone is flirting with me fr fr and not just doing a bit with me (I did improv in high school, it is my curse to constantly 'yes, and' my way into misunderstandings 😔) I adore inflicting this particular brand of miscommunication on the blorbos ESPECIALLY with the batfam because they're so used to reading between the lines and anticipating each other's plans that it is HILARIOUS to me when they have enormous blind spots when it comes to mundane, non-vigilante related things, and especially with each other.

Like Jason thinks Tim knows it's a date because he accepted the flowers and smiled at Jason when he ordered the wine and seemed to be pleasantly surprised when Jason took him to this restaurant (because he'd seen Tim here more than once last month, so he must like the food here, right?). 'Clearly Tim is on board. Tim is pleased with this sequence of events. Tim definitely knows it's a date. Good job Jason, you've got this in the bag, you'll be kissing him on his front stoop by midnight'

Meanwhile Tim is in full mental lockdown, why did Jason ask Tim out in such a public setting, clearly there's something going on, clearly because he brought Tim a bouquet of the flowers found scattered at the crime scene of the murder case he was working last month, he knows something Tim doesn't; clearly because he ordered the red Jason is signalling that they're being watched and need to act natural; clearly because they're at the very restaurant Tim was staking out last month, where's the fire, Jason--

Tim being extremely suspicious of a legitimate attempt to woo him is everything to me, and I love it when Jason is only slightly more normal about it than him lmfao

[peachyfnaf]

I'm sorry but "MY BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS WITH A DISORDER<3" really made my day and I needed you to know

🤣🤣🤣

I can't believe Nexus is bullying peepaw war criminal.

Do you think Nexus is going to be stopped by big bro Sun or do you think the lil guy is going beyond the point of no return?

(Please talk about baby cringe Lord Nexus, I want to hear about your blorbo 🙏)

That's because Nexus IS my beautiful princess with a disorder, I'll have you know <3 they're diseased but it's okay I can give them their tetanus and flu shots and it'll all be better I GOT THIS

But. ahem, okay, blorbo yapping time. I'm not even gonna say "I'll try to keep this short" because I know it wont end up that way HAHAHAHAHA

"Do you think Nexus is going to be stopped by big bro Sun or do you think the lil guy is going beyond the point of no return?"

I... have absolutely no idea!!!1! (and also it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize peepaw war criminal was Ruin KJDFHSDF)

The most frustrating thing about canon Nexus is how his morals, motivations, and goals seem to see-saw back and forth all the time. at first, he became how he is now due to Solar's death. he spiraled in his grief, identity-issues, and abandonment. but... now his motivation is to become an all powerful god??? while it's most likely that NSP is at play and affecting his thought process, it's... well, it's really hard to take him seriously as a villain because of it, lol. for an audience to enjoy, and even sympathize in some cases, with a villain, their goals and motivations have to be concrete. they have to be relatable, or at least understandable, but Nexus' whole thing is... not, Imho. and I know I'm not the only person who feels this way!!!

I see a lot of people calling Nexus "cringe", and the thing is, when it comes to canon Nexus, they're not really... wrong??? The worst thing Nexus has done so far is make Old Moon see his past victims, which is fucked up of him to do, but.. so far, that's kind of it??? other than that, his "villainy" consists of saying empty threats and cheesy evil one-liners. hell, he was supposed to kidnap Sun yesterday but instead spent the whole episode yapping and venting to him, chasing Sun around in the worlds darkest game of tag before getting some lead right in the face dkfjhsdfsd

Also, notice how he's only targeted Old Moon when it comes to actual physical violence? not Lunar, Earth, Solar, or Sun, but Old Moon? yeah, I did too. we already know that Nexus does everything because he's lashing out, but as of rn the only target he's gotten his hands on physically being O.M...? well. I think it says a lot. cause' yeah, he sure as shit scared the life out of the other Celestials, but he's never put his hands on them!! the only other one of them he harmed physically was Earth- and not only was he not aiming for her, she was just in the way- he felt immediate regret for his actions once in space, and has yet to even see Earth ever since that day.

So, I really have no idea if he's going to be "redeemed" or not. one second he's showing signs he might be, and the next he's falling further down the "pretty badly written villain" rabbit-hole. if he does get something akin to a redemption arc, he'll prolly mostly be accepted in the eyes of the viewers, considering a lot of peeps sympathize or at least understand where he's coming from, but I seriously doubt the other Celestials would take him back. the only one's who might see him as family/a close friend again are Sun and Solar, but even then, nothing would ever be the same.

I hope he gets redeemed, or at least freed from the hold Dark Sun has on him and he's able to live his own life, I really do. at his core, Nexus is a good person. a good person who was crushed under the weight of the shadow of the man he was born under. and we know this because he used to be New Moon. sweet, dorky New Moon.

New Moon, who made inventions like sentient knives and whoopee cushions. New Moon, who had matching My Little Pony stickers with his best friend. New Moon, who bought a whole ass island-luxury-house for Sun because he wanted to make him feel better and give him the proper space to heal. and New Moon- the poor freshly-baked A.I who gave his all to make sure he could do everything that Old Moon could, but it just wasn't enough. he tried and tried and tried, but it wasn't enough.

So yeah, idk if he's getting one in canon, but to me, he more than deserves a good ending, for the life he was given. let him be at peace.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Thinking about Albert.

This is a little unusual for me; he’s not my preferred blorbo rotisserie. But here we are.

Mainly, I’m thinking about Albert’s role in the Moriarty family. Louis is very much the caretaker and keeper of the family—he has everything in order and makes sure everything is cleaned up and handled. William is the signpost and leader and guides everyone where to go (even post the Final Problem, when he’s not in charge per se—and yet it’s still him shining a light toward atonement for all of them). And Albert….? Eh?

His role pre-Final Problem was taking care of MI6 for William. He doesn’t do that afterward, of course, because Louis does, and Louis is does it better than him. He’s not a leader, he’s not a guide, and he’s not a keeper.

But I do think he functions as, well…a shield, of some kind. William is the more blatant one about trying to protect his family and friends from the consequences of…well, anything. But Albert is the one who is taking public flak for the family during the Final Problem and takes the public punishment. He’s the one who attended the House of Lords and handled social engagements. And he’s the one who emotionally supported William when William needed that so badly and didn’t know how to ask.

It’s a very Big Brother role. It feels sometimes like Louis does some of this protection, and it feels like William does, and that’s true. But Albert is not a guide, and he’s not a caretaker the way. He is solid and reliable despite all his seriously messed up mental issues and prevents anyone from getting in William’s way not by removing obstacles the way Louis might, but by making sure they are not there in the first place.

I don’t know that Albert really likes socializing or attention. But he does it, at least on some level, in some small ways, because he’s keeping the attention on him instead of William. Like I said, a shield. He’s taking the hits of socialization and flirting he doesn’t want so William and Louis don’t have to worry about that side of things.

As we go on into the future, I would like to see him continue to fill that role, as William and Louis have filled theirs in new and exciting ways. I think we could do this with Albert. But I’m not sure how it will play out.

He is very much an umbrella sheltering his brothers from rain, and that’s what he’s best at, and I don’t think this is ever quite as explicit as his brothers. But he’s good at it, and I’d like to see him figure out how to be a shield in a way that’s healthy for him, too. Because it’s not healthy to just keep taking all the hits. William’s learned that already.

It’s hard to clear obstacles out of everyone’s way ahead of time when you’re not a leader, and Albert’s not. But he can continue to be emotional support and borrowed resiliency, perhaps. He can continue to follow Louis’s lead and direction to clear obstacles alongside them, perhaps.

Maybe that’s what I want from them. William to shine a spotlight and Louis to lead the way there and Albert to make it happen. Louis is good at plans, and he can implement them, but Albert’s always been a fair hand at implementation himself. He did that masquerade ball, and he arranged MI6 and he executed plans around Whitley. He’s good at that.

Anyway, that’s Al thoughts, I suppose. Food for the Al stans?

[hkpika07]

C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

Did you know Big Engine Brawl by @spaceboid and the rest of the lovely team makes me just a little insane. It’s probably one of my favorite ttte things anyone has ever done ever.

Everything about it is just so prefect and right. Especially with Gordon my blorbo Gordon. I’ll be doing some autistic analysis. Spoilers under the cut!

OKAY. So this has captured gordon so perfectly in my humble opinion. His first song Indignation (perfect name by the way) is GRAND and very idk how to describe it but it feels fancy. Even his facial expressions here are very indignant and apathetic. He’s not really taking this seriously because he thinks he can EASILY win. And I love how later near the end of the song the chart for Gordon’s part gets so overly complicated and more complex. It’s like how he thinks so highly of himself that he pushes himself past what he can physically do. He’s so determined to win that he does more than he can manage because he’s a big engine, he’s supposed to be able to manage it. And he thinks he’s so much better than this random small thing that he’s showing off. And if you learn anything on Sodor, it’s to not show off. AND THEN RIGHT AS HIS SONG IS SUPPOSED TO END HE FUCKING BREAKS AND HURTS HIMSELF BECAUSE HE PUSHED HIMSELF TOO FAR. HE GOT SMACKED DOWN FOR SHOWING OFF. Just like the hill. Also I love that his buffers fall off it reminded me of the cgi episode where his buffers fell off and he had to get huge diesel buffers.

AND HIM CALLING ON HENRY TO HELP. ITS LIKE HOW WHENEVER HE FUCKS UP OR PUSHES HIMSELF TOO FAR HE HAS TO CALL ON OTHERS TO SUPPORT HIM. LIKE EDWARD AND HENRY AND THOMAS.

God and the big finale sone with all 3 of them. I’m gonna go insane I’m gonna eat concrete. Gordon’s angry flushed face as he’s finally taking BF seriously. He’s so FOCUSED. I LVOE how they all work together. At points where James and Henry take up the lead part of the song and Gordon is providing harmony support. I am running around my room I am stimming so hard I think I might explode actually. JAMES AND HENRY’S JUST TIRED APATHETIC FACES TO IT ALL. THEY ARE SO DONE. NOT ONLY WITH BF AND GF BUT WITH GORDON’S UNNEEDED FRUSTRATION ABOUT IT. ALSO WHEN JAMES AND HENRY FIRST COME FOR BACKUP THEIR MUSICAL STYLE REFLECTS THAT. HENRY’S IS LESS GRAND THEN GORDON BUT ITS FAST AND DANGEROUS IT REMINDS ME OF THE IMPACT OF THE FLYING KIPPER. AND JAMES HAS A SLIGHT SWING IN HIS SECTION A LOT LIKE HIS MUSIC.

In short this captures Gordon’s character absolutely perfectly in ways that will make me autistically infodump about it to anyone who will listen. I may have gotten some music things wrong because I am not a musician at all. But I do know Gordon’s character and this is perfect. 1000000/10 PLEASE GO PLAY AND SUPPORT IT

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Hello! Me again, back to pester you about lore.

So what's going on with The Drifter? For once I know a little about the character, I read 'A Man With No Name', but I still have questions. From how the book read, Drifter convinced Felwinter to get revenge for the destruction of the village. Did that go anywhere? And what did Drifter get up to for the (unspecified very long) timeskip between the book and the game?

And with the modern day, does the Vanguard know he's running a fighting ring out of the basement? Or does every single guardian look away when Zavala tries figuring out where people keep getting these weapons? I guess first rule of fight club and all that. What's he even trying to do? He seems to be pretty against most of the Vanguard's leadership.

Anyway, another invitation to infodump about your other blorbo. I hope you don't mind XD

If you thought I was long-winded about Eris... She's maybe 400 years old whereas the Drifter may be 900... get comfy... this will not be quick.

"Dark Age was wild times."

I adore the Drifter and a good chunk of how and why I adore him is his voice - both the voice acting and the syntax/diction/phrasing used in the writing, but voice alone does not cover why I find his character so utterly enthralling and fantastic.

I wrote a short piece consisting of Eris telling Ikora what she sees in him in my story Finders Keepers. It's basically a personality analysis and some people have (I think probably accurately) accused it of being a love letter to that character. (Reminder: that link is fanfiction - I wrote it - it is not lore, but it is based on lore. However, everything else I list after this is actual lore.)

But, personality aside, ultimately the Drifter's story is what I find most compelling about him and makes him so empathetic. You mentioned you've read A Man with No Name, but there's more. A lot more.

To start, the Drifter is D2's most violent pacifist.

He doesn't want to fight and when he does, it's vicious. The Emissary of the Nine, formerly Orin (his ex-best friend and/or ex-lover, depending upon how you read it) aptly says "He hates violence. He hates it so much he'll murder anyone who tries to inflict it on him."

In A Man with No Name, we see him go from hiding in a town and having it obliterated by warlords, to running a bar at the bottom of Felwinter peak, to getting Lord Felwinter himself to avenge the town. Drifter doesn't fight anywhere in there and gets other people to do his fighting for him, which is a pretty standard tactic for him. And yes, it is strongly implied that Felwinter does indeed murder the fuck out of Lord Dryden when he says "Call Lord Dryden. Prepare my Iron Banner arsenal."

But then we get Dark Age Drifter entries where he's gunning down Fallen attackers with quotes like "He had never brought himself to shoot a human. Or anything even resembling a human. Risen included." (Bonus mention: notice "Alright" repeated here and compare to his standard Gambit opening of Alright, alright, alright...") Where he's slipping away from non-violence, specifying, in particular, that he won't shoot a human but will defend himself from aliens.

And then he becomes something else entirely in these amazing entries with what I've been calling his Breakneck crew:

Now Otto's a Sword man. He's all about "craft." Technique. Precision. It's disgusting, but I don't care how he does it, as long as it gets done, so I just let him do it. And Otto does it so beautifully that, when he's done, you're standing there holding your guts in your hands and thanking him for the show.

Never touches a gun, that girl. She likes to get close. Likes to look right in their eyes and be the last thing they see.

The chumps that run out to stop us are babies. That's the kicker with Warlords—other than ours, there's not a Ghost in sight here. Just civilians who can barely hold their guns without wetting their pants, who can't aim worth a damn, who stick their necks out for the bad guys with eternal life. Real geniuses.

Cenric stood up. That vein of his looked about ready to pop. Drifter let his feet down as he reached for his rifle, asp-quick. "And you know what we do with rats, don't you, brother."

And the thing I love about this is the character development this speaks to where he goes from pacifist who won't fight at all... to someone who will use a machine gun competently, repeating "Alright" and getting himself used to killing, but not humans, never humans... to stone cold vicious murder-Drifter talking about the lightless who die to his crew in ways that make them (and himself) seem no longer human, to gunning down his own crew, people he felt were a perfect team, when they make deals with warlords behind his back and lie to him about it.

The Drifter started out adhering to an ideal of nonviolence and it destroyed him and everyone he cared for. His sense of self, his principles, everything he believed in is eroded until he completely loses all hope and in order to survive the cruelty of the world he lives in he becomes a ruthless monster.

Either before or after his Breakneck-era crew (it's not clear), the Drifter (under the name Eli) joins the Pilgrim Guard, a group of Titans protecting lightless people as they travel to the Last City. He does this out of a desire/need to be near Orin, a Titan with a complicated past and strong ties to both Queen Mara and the Nine. But then after spending time with Eli/Drifter and the Pilgrim Guard, Orin, the one person Drifter's ever had a deep human connection with, the person he considers his best friend, leaves without a word.

It's very telling that the green snakes, the jade coin, and the red string on those same coins that form such profound parts of the Drifter's symbolism and identity all come from Orin. When the Drifter truly cares for someone, he incorporates part of them into himself, into his identity, making them part of who he becomes, so they live on inside of him.

After his time with Orin, we get into the extremely confusing, contradictory mess that is the Drifter's intersection with Shin Malfur-related Rose/Thorn/Lumina lore. And by this I mean that the Drifter, after fighting alongside people doing genuinely noble good work, in the wake of losing Orin, leaves the Pilgrim Guard and eventually ends up joining the evil cult of evil: following in the footsteps of one of the most reviled risen to ever exist - the guardian-killer: Dredgen Yor.

If you're gonna hang with me, you need to know about the Shadows of Yor. They follow the edicts of a very bad man named Dredgen Yor. And what're his Shadows after? Everything the Light can't provide. I thought they could help me find an answer to the battles of Light versus Light that raged during the Dark Age. But the longer I flew with them, the more I saw they're blind as all those who follow the Traveler. One albatross for another. I was done with 'em.

And while in the cult, in some sort of ritual, he communes with the Darkness directly and gets some sort of Darkness powers (possibly Stasis, possibly something else - it's super unclear) and the Darkness whispers to him his Dredgen name: Dredgen Hope, which is particularly brutal in context with this quote from Dredgen Yor himself:

I care only to give hope to the frightened, huddled masses so that when I come upon them they will have more to lose. Their pain will be greater. Their screams more pure… Nothing dies like hope. I cherish it.

But it is also particularly pointed because hope is the thing the Drifter doesn't have. Trust is the thing he doesn't have the ability to do any more because of his experiences (and is also the name of the hand cannon he wears shoved into his pants). He is the most jaded (literally - constantly fidgeting with a jade coin) character in the D2 universe. He loses everything and leans in on it and follows that path to full evil.

And then he walks away. Because evil doesn't work for him either.

But also (either before or after he's completely left the cult - it's ambiguous, but possibly when he's still entangled but it's already fracturing and falling apart) he finds Orin again (he's using the name Wu Ming at this point - either having returned to it, or because he hasn't changed it yet from Felwinter Peak, or perhaps this happens before Felwinter Peak - the order and timeline is somewhat fuzzy).

Orin does not remember who he is when he finds her the second time (she's pretty nuts at this point - her story is filled with madness and tragedy), and is going insane with grief over losing Namqi (the person she left with when she disappeared the first time) as well as her obsession with the Nine. And the Drifter is once more drawn to her and once more connects deeply with her:

Wu Ming leaves his questions by the wayside as he is drawn inexorably into the gravity well of her desperate honesty. Her confessions lower his defenses. He talks of himself. Of his fear. Of his loneliness. How he feels he is one fingernail away from plummeting into an abyss. How he feels vicious resentment every time he is brought back from the dead: He never asked for the gift of the Light... They make excuse after excuse to meet again. Every conversation is colored by excavated truths; every day they feel they will reach some bedrock that will break them to pieces. It is as frightening as it is intoxicating.

But then Orin finds out about him being a Dredgen, terminates their relationship, goes off to become the Emissary of the Nine and, as someone I was talking with once referred to it: 'it was a breakup so bad he had to leave the solar system.'

Things go very poorly the first time the Drifter loses Orin but the second time is far worse. He has a full-on Lovecraftian 'At the Mountains of Madness' style horror-movie-plot experience with a crew he calls his 'best friends' (which may or may not be all ex-Dredgens but there's at least evidence they might be) out on a frozen planet being stalked and driven to insane levels of paranoia by Darkness creatures able to snuff out their light:

I think I mentioned we're all raving psychos at this point. Well, we did what all measured raving psychos would do. We thought we each had been betrayed by the others. We drew on each other.

The Drifter kills them all to keep them from killing him (at least, that's what he says - no one else is alive to argue). Then his ghost, who up until now has been kind of a moralistic asshole, suggests he hunt down the ghosts of his former crew and Frankenstein them together in order to survive:

And the craziest thing happened. My Ghost snapped... But we would need parts. Ghost parts. And we knew where we could get some... The Ghosts of my former crew all fled as soon as their charges hit the dirt. So me'n mine, we hunted them... "Hey. There's always hope. For what it's worth, I'm proud of you." It was the last thing my Ghost ever said, and the last lie it ever told.

The Drifter's ghost is rendered mute from the experience (either mechanically or due to the trauma of hunting down and murdering other ghosts - it's not clear) but the plan works, they survive, and the Drifter builds the Derelict out of scrap, returning to the Tower where he sets up Gambit.

It's super unclear (again, the Shin-related lore is just a mess and deliberately confusing) but it turns out that Drifter going on about how the Man with the Golden Gun is out to get him is actually a deal he made with Shin to set up Gambit (because, spoiler: the leader of the entire Dredgen cult, Dredgen Vale, turns out to be none other than Shin Malphur, the Man with the Golden Gun, who hunts Dredgens and who the Drifter has been saying is out to get him this entire time) to draw out the truly Darkness-corrupted guardians so Shin can kill them. (And this is ultimately why the Vanguard lets him run a fighting ring in the basement - because Shin convinces them it will help find the truly bad guardians so they can be eliminated).

If you find that confusing, that's because it is. Anything to do with Shin Malphur/Dredgen Yor/Rose/Thorn/Lumnia is pretty much an acid-trip, continuity-wise. It hurts my brain.

As for where the Drifter gets the weapons he gives us for Gambit? To the surprise of no one, he's stealing them. Because of course he is. It's him.

While running Gambit, he ends up visited by the Emissary of the Nine (formerly Orin - same body, different person) and has the Haul attached to the Derelict as a 'gift' in this amazing cutscene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFtmr___dSw

And he pretty much stays in "shifty morally ambiguous guy in the basement" mode until Arrivals when the pyramids show up on Io and we get one of my favourite lore tabs in all of D2: Whispering slab.

The two sit. They speak. They listen. Linkages forged in Light and Dark of traded secrets as the Derelict hangs in orbit around the Earth. Pacts are made. Soon, there is only the silence of knowing left between them.

"Next time you fly over the Moon, dust your boots. Tracking that crap all over my floors."

Both of the Drifter's deep emotional entanglements with Orin happen when he really genuinely talks to her, and now in Whispering Slab, he's genuinely talking to someone else, plus we get the origin of why he calls that someone else Moondust.

Then, during Arrivals, we get the amazing banter between him and Eris, and in Beyond Light they learn to control Stasis together with the result being (in my highly subjective opinion) the best cutscene in all of D2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQAB-sSi6P0

At the end of Haunted we get Eris' message to him about healing and finding joy , he has this line in Plunder "What we do now matters more than who we were", we end up with the Kept Confidence lore tab during Season of the Witch where the person who previously insisted he trusted no one now is saying: "He didn't trust them. He trusted her" and then in the Gloaming Journeyer tab, he pulls her into a hug and reminds her of what she told him once (in the Prophesy dungeon dialogue): "That we'll live in the night if we have to. We do it for what comes after." (What comes after is dawn, hope, the continuance of existence after the darkest point.)

Someone in a chat I was in once summed up the core dynamic of the Drifter and Eris' relationship perfectly as "He gives her trust. She gives him hope."

There are people online who are very frustrated with the Drifter's character development, feeling that the Drifter has 'had his teeth filed off' and that he 'got his depression cured by getting a goth girlfriend' but I feel that's just people who don't like change. The Drifter has, throughout his entire storyline been constantly changing who he is. Change is part of his many self-constructed identities which he re-creates over and over as his old sense of self is destroyed and remade. Gritty vicious Drifter is still in there and he will be just as brutal as ever if he needs to be.

He doesn't want to be, though. He never has. And as someone who deals with medical-grade depression and who found themselves in a situation where they needed to reconstruct a sense of self to replace the one that was lost, the Drifter finding a way to hope and trust again after all he's been through is an extremely powerful and poignant narrative which speaks to me on many levels.

It's not trite, thoughtless happy fluffy rainbows, friendship-fixes-everything-whee! It's painful and slow and beautiful as the Drifter learns to have healthy relationships with other people. We need stories like this to speak to us at an unconscious level and tell us that even if you're not Eris Morn and you failed, and you gave up, and you didn't make it out of the Hellmouth, and you in fact gave in to despair and completely lost all hope, your experience erasing who it was you were and having that old you replaced with someone else, you can still find hope again. Even if you've been burned so severely by so many, many, negative human interactions that you cannot trust anyone, if you find the right people, you can slowly learn how to trust again.

The Drifter's story has been called a redemption arc, and I guess in a way it is that too but, for me, the essential quality of the Drifter's narrative isn't redemption: it's healing.

Stories have power. We incorporate them into who we are. Dredgen Hope ultimately does live up to his name. Within D2 he is finally starting to heal. I find that idea, of healing in spite of being so altered by one's experiences as to have had to become an entirely different person in order to survive, of being unable to trust and still finding a way to learn how to trust again, to be important and beautiful to have in my subconscious as something to draw from. It is a story that is very much needed by a lot of people. We need to be reminded that we can be irrevocably changed and have everything taken from us and still find a way to trust and hope and love again. That might seem a bit much for a shooty game, but I maintain this is why D2 has some of the best storytelling of any game I've ever played and that the character of the Drifter is a huge part of what makes that storytelling so compelling.

Sorry this took so long to answer. This seriously was as short as I could make it and still say everything that I felt needed to be said. There's more, and more detail, of course, but this is my treatise on why the Drifter is as awesome as I think he is.

That is all.

[least-carpet]

For the shipping ask game, Xicheng and Chengxian?

Hello, anon! This got wildly out of hand, so it's all going under a cut.

Xicheng: Could Ship It

Borrowing this additional option I saw floating around!

I'm not strongly opposed to it, but it's hard for me to see them making it work in a canon universe. The fanart is very cute, though! And I've read some AUs that I thought made a good case, but they involved some thoughtful interventions.

What potential do you see in the ship?

Honestly, like, I just want them to both have something nice, they've had such a hard time. They both understand the hard work and sacrifices involved in sect leadership. I think the argument for it goes something like Jiang Cheng gets a person on his side who is kind to him, and Lan Xichen gets someone who's very reliable and also pretty direct, to heal his presumed post-canon trust issues.

What aspect makes you hesitant?

It just doesn't seem to me that they really enjoy each other? Like I believe they get along just fine and have a comfortable working relationship. I don't think they dislike each other, even. But they don't seem particularly close, even though they're of a rank and have been working with each other for years and years. I want my blorbo (Jiang Cheng) to be loved for his bad personality, not in spite of it!

I also think they would really struggle to communicate—Lan Xichen prefers to smooth things over, but Jiang Cheng reads too much reserve or politeness as rejection and, uh, gets reactive (thank you Jiang Fengmian for giving him the MOST deranged daddy issues, for real). Actually, I think Lan Xichen has a lot of potential to push a lot of Jiang Cheng's dad-related buttons just because of his temperament. (Maybe that's a plus? CRUNCHY.)

It also has the potential to cause some new and exciting political problems for them, which they both prefer to avoid.

Chengxian: Ship It

[lies face-down on the floor and starts hollering]

These two make me fuckin' insane!

What made you ship it?

Two things:

Their mutually happy childhood relationship, their initially compatible dysfunctions (Jiang Cheng is easily embarrassed but secretly wants affection, Wei Wuxian is bad at boundaries and WILL die if you don't pay attention to him -> Wei Wuxian touching Jiang Cheng all the time and receiving his attention, making both of them happy). Their enjoyment of each other. I love a badly-boundaried and devoted teenage relationship, it's delightful. Even before chengxian completely rotted my brain out, there was something specifically appealing about the Lan summer camp era.

The double golden core reveal took me out. I found Wei Wuxian's decision completely appalling to begin with, like viscerally disgusting. (I find it interesting when antis accuse Jiang Cheng of pretending to be upset when he finds out, or of not caring where the new core came from, because I, reader who did not get nonconsensual magic surgery, profoundly Did Not Like It. If it was my own body, I would freak out.) It's a fascinating combination of obsessive devotion and total denial of agency. Wei Wuxian is just like, "Don't worry, I will invent new and unheard of methods of violation for your own good because I can't cope with your despair." That's deranged, my dude. That is Not Normal. And then you find out that Jiang Cheng lost the core saving Wei Wuxian, and he plans to NEVER TELL HIM ABOUT IT. God damn it.

I don't even really care if they kiss, although it's fun when they do. Just reconcile! Reconcile!

What are your favourite things about the ship?

In no particular order:

In a text that is largely pro-Wei Wuxian—not in the sense that everything he does is moral, but in the sense that he's the cool protagonist, and he gets to kick ass and solve mysteries and have a happy ending—this relationship is one that highlights his weaknesses and failures in a very humanizing way. And in order to reconcile, he would actually really have to challenge himself and grow as a person, which I love for him. (I also think Jiang Cheng would have to struggle for it, but, like, dude has demonstrated the capacity to do hard and terrible things even when confronted with his own weaknesses. He's not gonna be cool about it, and he's going to cry and bitch the whole time, but if he thinks it needs to be done and it can be done, he'll do it.)

The lack of boundaries within the relationship, which is a product of the lack of clarity of the type of relation to each other. Are they friends? Are they martial brothers or real brothers? If Wei Wuxian is Jiang Cheng's shixiong, but Jiang Cheng is also Wei Wuxian's sect leader, which takes precedence? (It's clear what should take precedence, but Wei Wuxian just straight-up does not Respect His Authority, even though—by all available evidence—Jiang Cheng is a really good leader. But that lack of respect is also a form of intimacy.) It's super, super messy.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

By lying to him so extensively, and then by failing to show up for any of his commitments without any explanation, Wei Wuxian really did betray Jiang Cheng a whole bunch of times, and Jiang Cheng's resulting betrayal trauma really is his fault.

You break it, you bought it, coward! Stop running away! (For legal purposes, this is a joke.)

[fractualized]

Time for a surprise The Man Who Stopped Laughing post! Here I was all mad that Jason disappeared in TMWSL #11, and then Rosenberg basically decided Gotham War: Red Hood #2 is a TMWSL side story with a lot I was not expecting!

I still hate that there's no effort at a legible timeline but all the surprises in this issue are helping me move past it. (OK I can't lie I'm always going to hate it at least lowkey.)

More thoughts:

So basically the Gotham War stuff is all happening before/during TMWSL #11 meaning the two Jokers were just hanging around Gotham for the two months Bruce was asleep I KNOW I SAID I'D STOP I'LL STOP. Jason strayed into Gotham War at first partly because of his search for Joker, asking the men Selina has recruited for clues about his location, but then he got more involved, enough that GW Red Hood #2 starts with Joker trying to find out where Jason is.

What an interesting turn!

The note does get to Jason, via a dead body (laid to rest by Scarecrow, not Joker).

Ohhh this is a twist. Last month in TMWSL, Ravager gave Manhunter a list of locations from Jason, places to look for Joker, and now we know they were provided by Joker himself?! Because he wants to make sure Jason finds him? And is probably plain insulted that someone who was pursuing him so single-mindedly suddenly stopped? hahaha

Jason says he'll meet up with Ravager in a couple days, but he misses his appointment because, as you may know, Zur-influenced Bruce decides to Clockwork Orange him so he'll feel debilitating fear whenever his adrenaline ratchets up. But Ravager isn't the only one who notices Jason's absence.

Joker did say back in the hospital in TMWSL that he might have plans for Jason, but I took that more as a taunt. I didn't know he actually was depending on Jason being around. (Though given the time jump, that could be a recently created plan.) Also, "Batman can't have him! I TOOK CUSTODY IN THE DIVORCE."

And look at Joker all ready to go with his hat! And the umbrella. The umbrella detail kills me.

It's also just really funny to me that like, sometimes Catwoman in Gotham War acts parental toward Jason. Here, Joker is intent on finding him. In the following pages, Harvey hears what happened to Jason and says Jason is "more one of us than he knows. And he's had a rough life because of that." And then Scarecrow comes upon Jason during a Missing Scene that takes place during Catwoman #58 when Jason tries to save a little girl from a fire...

Just when I'm laughing that Jason is everybody's blorbo, this happens.

MOMMY. Batman is Jason's Daddy, and Joker is Jason's Mommy. Oh my god. Rosenberg, you magnificent glowing sunrise.

Joker chases Scarecrow away like a disobedient cat with his squirtgun, and then turns back to Jason.

I think Grundy's pee could probably still ward Scarecrow off. Also is Joker mad Jason didn't tell his parents they have a granddaughter? :(

Joker again insisting Jason is important for his plans. Joker saying he's going to fix Jason, his "sweet boy." Is Joker of all people going to undo what Bruce did? That would be pretty hilarious, something to hang over Bruce's head later.

But whatever it is, it's not going to happen now, of course. Joker leaves Jason under the beam so the scene can play out as it does in Catwoman #58, in which Jason did not mention Scarecrow or Joker. I'm not sure if that's just because he still wants to take care of his own business or that he's not sure they were real.

I'm assuming all this means Jason will in fact appear in the TMWSL finale, though suddenly afraid of everything, which will be kind of weird for people only reading that story. Then again, maybe Bruce will end up fixing Jason himself in the last GW issue on Halloween, with how weird and inconsistent the GW writing has been.

Regardless, this particular issue was an unexpected delight, and it's boosted my assumption that the end of TMWSL #11 is a fakeout and this Joker is very much the real one. Too much would hit different in a bad way if he wasn't…

[risingscorchingsuns]

OHHH MY GOD YOU CANT MAKE ME WAIT A FUCKING WEEK FOR THIS. YOU CANT MAKE ME WAIT A WEEK FOR THE MUZAN KAGAYA CONFRONTATION YOU CANT DO THIS TO ME. FUCKING HELL OH MY GODDDD

hiiiii im feeling so normal right now!!!!!!!!!!!! *barely contained frenzy of biting and screaming*

anyway thoughts on this weeks ep!!! <3

- tanjiro. please. please i love you baby but i will never understand why you decided it was a good idea to go “🥺 are you fighting about ohagi? ill make lots!!” tanjiro honey they are TRAINING

-/pos btw. I love him he’s iconic for this

-shoutout to giyuu for immediately finding out about Sanemi’s favorite food and being like “:) if I bring some to him we’ll be best friends :)” giyuu sweetheart i love you. ive been waiting so long to see this scene animated god I love them. im not even much of a sanegiyuu shipper i just think this whole scene is iconic

- the ECHOES of muzan’s FOOTSTEPS right after Sanemi realizes they’ve been infiltrated????? holy fuck it is CHILLING. ohhhhhh mygoooodddd. oh my god im going INSANE

- holy shit, I feel like it’s massively under-discussed how dark Gyomei’s backstory is. Like… the whole scene really pounds it in how brutal his experiences were. His disgust at having to fight, much beyond what a normal human would tolerate. He likely had to keep caving the demon’s head in over and over because it kept regenerating. Holy shit. The color choice of everything being monochrome except for the blood is particularly chilling. I love when media uses that palette and KNY does it so good

- AUGHHHH his smile when he pats tanjiro 🥺🥺🥺 he thinks about Sayo…. GOD I love the Hashira

- I’d love to read more character analysis on Gyomei. I feel like we didn’t get as much context for his character as we deserved- why he continued to fight, despite how disgusted he is by his own strength, why he trained Genya despite his general distrust, especially towards children? Ultimately, I believe it comes down to Gyomei being a genuinely gentle human, and I’d love to read more analysis on how he maintains that. Maybe his own repetitive action helps him. I wrote a big paragraph about questions about his character, but wound up deleting it because I found myself answering them as I wrote. Regardless, if Gyomei is anybody’s blorbo to the extent that Kyojuro is mine I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on him- I think he’s a massively underrated character and I’d love to understand him deeper!

-OUGHHH THE MUSIC!!!!!!! god I am LOVING the theme they did with the sanegiyuu fight that shit went CRAZYYYY. and the ANIMATION. look im biased because i love the way water breathing looks but godddd its so pretty. also drop ripple thrust mentioned!!!! we haven’t seen that form since Susamaru!!!

-is the next episode gonna be the last in this season?????????? where are they cutting this off?????? god i wish i could reread the manga but i lent the set to a friend so he could read it pain agony MY CROSS REFERENCES

- [MANGA SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT]

-I’m presuming Zenitsu’s letter was about his Master’s suicide, and Kaigaku’s transformation. I think it was really clever of ufotable to put this scene in Gyomei’s episode, and put spotlights on Kaigaku being the kid that first betrayed Gyomei- I think that fact was only actually mentioned in a Taisho Era Secret. That’s gonna blow a lot of minds in the finale arc lol

-I wish we got more development on Zenitsu in this arc. His processing of the letter, his departure from Tanjiro and the others. I think Zenitsu is also a really misunderstood character, and this arc doesn’t exactly do him many favors in that regard. I wish we’d gotten a bit of filler vis-a-vis his development, but I’m hoping we still get that in his fight with Kaigaku.

[maximoff-forevermore]

Tumblr Wrapped: BLORBOS!!

thank you sm for the tag @healmydesires 💋🫶🫶

tumblr wrapped canva template<3

i have SO much to say, but then again, i always do

i’ll start with my top five, and then do some honourable mentions because five fics is NOT a big enough list for me

1. Red Light by @kiwisbell

you may NEVER hear me stop talking about this fic. EVER. Red Light!Joel has taken up more headspace than anything else in a good long while, and i’ve reread this fic so many times if you asked me to rewrite it from memory i probably could, but i wouldn’t, because i’d never do it the justice kiwi did. this fic basically belongs to me, because no one can love it as much as me. i could go on and on, but there’s not enough time in the world.

2. The Dress Series by @janaispunk

can i let y’all in on a secret? i got the outrageous honour of talking to jana about the third part in this series, it’s like getting a shoutout from an artist winning a grammy, only better. this series restarted my obsession with dave, and i’ve had such brainrot about him since i started. LORD HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL it’s so good, and the taylor titles GOD.

3. Las Mañanas by @kiwisbell

i had to be very careful, or else every fic on my top five list would be one of kiwi’s and people would think i’m biased (i am, just a little). so i only chose my two favourites, and this series was one of them. it brought so much light and life to the minutes i spent reading it, and i just had the best time!! javi my beloved, you have such a special place in my cold, dead heart, you wife-loving POOKIE!!

4. The In My Hometown Series by @swiftispunk

A SERIES INSPIRED BY ‘TIS THE DAMN SEASON *buries face into pillow and screams* ‘tis the damn season is one of my all time favourite songs, and it was done SUCH JUSTICE. this fic had just the right amount of everything, and i’m so grateful i got to read it!!

5. Punishment by @joelsgreys

OOOOOH HOT DAMN. there was something about this fic that made me drool, because hELLO JOEL MILLER?? gods that man is FINE AS FUCK, and this fic so perfectly captures that😫😫 i had the time of my fucking life reading it, and it was so SO worth every second. my next, pls joel🙏

those fics have such a special place in my heart, but so do many others, let’s go through them!!

Is It Over Now? by @planet-marz1 OH this one is my SHIT!!! angst is so delicious for twelve months of the year, and this one shot was me being FED. i loved every minute, and fuck joel, not in the horny way this time🙄

Sexfiles.mp3 by @beskarandblasters tim rockford, the grandma investigator, and love of my life WHERE have you been all this time?? this fic gave me that alligator-jiggling fever

the Seams series by @fuckyeahdindjarin MY BELOVED POOKIES!!!! i love lucy to the ends of the earth, and joel and pins have the CUTEST fucking relationship on the planet

A Lover’s Pinch series by @hier--soir pull me out of the dumpster and fuck me sideways GOOD MORNING TO YOU TOO??? gods the sex is just so BXKANDIWNSKW clawing at my fucking WALLS!!!! i haven’t finished this series yet but when i do you may NEVER hear the fucking end of me🗣️🗣️

the Pretty Little Wife series by @beardedjoel OH MAMA, i need a fan because it is HOT AS HELL in here😫😫these fics give me such housewife-fever, i love them just a bit TOO much

Real Gods Require Blood, by @pr0ximamidnight you guys have no FUCKING idea how obsessed i am with this fic. the minute it’s possible to make fics into physical things, i will turn this fic into cocaine and snort it faster than you can scream “he’s evil!”, and even if you did scream it, i wouldn’t care, because WOW is he hot as hell

Feelings on Fire by @joelscruff CAN WE TALK ABOUT IT. CAN WE TALK ABOUT IT. CAN WE—im so obsessed. and i don’t mean that lightly. this series has CHANGED ME. i am moved. i am reborn. i am SOMETHING ELSE. i can’t get over this series i’m not sorry, it’s just so so SO good

and last, but definitely NOT least, Truth or Dare, ALSO by @joelscruff I’M SO UNWELL. I NEED HIM. I NEED THIS. I AM IN DIRE, DESPERATE NEED OF THIS FIC. it’s so so close to my heart, i actually physically cannot get over it. like, guys, GUYS. this fic is such a go-to of mine, and so close to my heart.

and that was my long, long, LONG list, but honestly, i’m not even halfway done. so many fics and so many fic writers have changed my life, and if i was less tired and had more energy to type, i’d list them all<3

all the love to every single fic writer out there, you are doing the most, and if you need someone to read something you’ve written or you think i’ll enjoy something, don’t hesitate to send it my way!!

tagging everyone who wants to participate!!!

as always, my obligatory taylor gifs:

[doveshovel]

can we get more Hunter lore? 👉👈 niche little blorbo

!! Can't believe my little guy has gained niche blorbo status. I am honored, thank you anon <3

Feels it's important to mention that I'm not a very good writer, and Hunter's entire deal is essentially just me trying to make a character whose backstory is wildly out of place in the girl power sparkly horsie game but still sort of works with the cannon actions of the player character. This is just a hastily thrown together summary of how he winds up in Jorvik. That said, of course you can get more Hunter lore! :^D Sorry this took so long but I had to do some art to go with it :'))

Everything's tucked below since there ended up being a lot more than expected :') I think it's all fairly mild but

Content Warnings: Image 1: Some mild blood

Image 2: (dressed) head injury

Hunter's pre-jorvik summary contains: patricide, improper body disposal, vehicle theft (x5), unlawful operation of motor vehicles, crossing state lines with stolen property, trespassing, breaking and entering, evading arrest, speeding, and other minor crimes. Also some mention of drowning, concussion, and brain damage.

When an attempt to slip away from his childhood home in the dead of night goes awry, Hunter accidentally hits and subsequently kills his father with a stolen car, then does some sloppy short-notice body disposal. It's nowhere near enough to make sure he's not a suspect, but it does ensure that the body isn't found for another week (until the neighbors come by to ask why his father wasn't at church, only to find that the front door's been left wide open and a small family of raccoons have made their home in the kitchen). He makes his way from his old house in rural North Carolina (U.S.) northwards through eight states under cover of night, switching cars three times along the way (once in Virginia, once in Pennsylvania, and again in New Jersey) until he arrives at the coast of Massachusetts.

^Hunter, age 19, 5 hours after hiding the body of his father

It's here that (not knowing shit about sailing, boats, or oceanic navigation) he chooses an old pontoon in a private dock to hotwire and sail across the Atlantic with the hope of evading prosecution. Three days into the so-far shockingly successful voyage, rough seas capsize his little vessel, leaving Hunter stranded half-conscious and about two-thirds drowned on some debris until the North Atlantic Current carries him into Jorvegian fishing territory. Five days after accidentally murdering his father, he's spotted drifting on some debris by the crew of a Jorvik fishing vessel and brought back to Cape West where he gets some bearings and starts life anew. :^)

The little pontoon isn't so lucky, and its remains wash up along the coast of Maine nearly three weeks later. By then, it's been connected to Hunter's murder + string of vehicle thefts, and he's presumed to have died at sea in an unsuccessful getaway. In some ways, he did.

Most memories of life before the storm have been wiped clear from his brain, and what little that returns in brief flashes is usually just as quickly forgotten again. Some foggy details of events in early childhood remain, but his entire personality is altered by damage and Hunter becomes someone else entirely, often feeling that he's living in a borrowed body.

^old doodle of Hunter, age 19, a week after landing in Cape West

Hunter spends about two weeks recovering from a concussion and anoxic brain damage at the fishing club's Cape West bunkhouse before he's well enough to start learning the ropes and work doing some slightly less intensive odd-jobs around the village (fixing nets, processing fish, delivering mail, a little stablehand work at Goldenleaf, etc.). He attends a riding camp in Moorland towards the end of his first year in Jorvik at the suggestion of Mr.Trout, who believes it'll be a good way to get some better ideas of what the horse-loving isle of Jorvik has to offer and find some sense of self beyond Goldenhills Valley.

From here, its essentially the main storyline with some minor changes and seasonings thrown in :^)

[dicenote]

touta matsuda

discuss

omg YES ty! This is gonna be a long, disorganized ramble, so bear with me!

Touta Matsuda. My blorbo, skrunky scrimblo, love of my life, etc.

There are so many things about Matsuda's character that I could talk about. His impulsivity, his loyalty, his uncertainty... All of it makes a very real and very interesting character. And I think that a lot of his traits shine in one of the most horrifying scenes from his perspective: the Yellow Box Warehouse.

Like, let's take a step back and look at the numbers here. On one side of the warehouse, we've got a guy claiming to be L, and the three members of the old Kira Task Force that he brought with him. On the other side, we've got a different guy claiming to be L and three members of the SPK that he brought with him (oh. and the guy from the Task Force that got kidnapped in the mix). Outside, Kira's accomplice is lying in wait. So we've got ten people in all who are ready for the final showdown. The reveal. The evidence that will finally end this years-long nightmare and point to the true identity of Kira.

And of those 10 people, only one of them doesn't have a clue who Kira really is.

Light is Kira. Mikami is X-Kira and finds out who Kira is as soon as he looks in the room. Near and the SPK are all on the same page. Mogi and Aizawa know. Ide's a bit more on the fence but he wasn't completely in the dark. So Matsuda is the only one who goes in totally blind.

If anyone were to re-write Death Note purely from Matsuda's perspective, the Warehouse scene would go from tense to horrifying. To (nearly) everyone else there, this confrontation isn’t meant to reveal an unexpected truth, it’s to confirm something that they already know. But for Matsuda? Near's request to meet at the warehouse is, at worst, a tactic to once again frame Light. Because Light obviously can't be Kira, right? Light will show Near that he's wrong, and the investigation will continue as normal until the real Kira is caught.

But then Near presents that irrefutable evidence, and everything that Matsuda knew for over five years comes crumbling down. Light starts monologuing about how the world had to be fixed and how no one could ever make it as far as he did. Kira and Light are one and the same. Matsuda always thought that Kira was a well-intentioned person who was helping change the world. Ide and Aizawa and Mogi believed that Kira was evil, they were much stronger in their resolve than Matsuda ever could be. But Light had confessed to him once that he too questioned if what they were doing was right. If Kira was doing right.

Light has always been Kira.

And then comes the absolutely tasty part where Matsuda shoots Light. I love how chapter 106 is called "Intent to Kill", because it reminds me of how Matsuda and Light are foils to each other. Better yet, they can be compared against a man they both held such deep respect for, Soichiro Yagami.

See, Soichiro threatens to kill people a good couple times, and even holds a gun to his son's face, but he never has any intent to kill. In fact, he's never killed anyone, as (I think) Mello points out. It's almost kind of silly. Like, Soichiro draws the line at firing bullets or writing full names in the Death Note, and that's it? Everything else is fair game? Weird line to draw, but go off I guess.

Light, meanwhile, justifies killing thousands. But only with the Death Note. With the Death Note, his intent to kill becomes a righteous one, another step on the path to becoming God of a New World. The criminals deserved to die. Those who get in Kira's way deserve to die. Because Light isn't a serial killer. He's doing the right thing! Crime is going down, war has stopped, and Light is the only one who could have possibly gone this far and done this much good.

And then we're back to Matsuda. I believe the mafia raid is the first time we see Matsuda using a gun, and we see that he's damn good at it. So good, in fact, that he's able to fire only non-lethal shots to get the Death Note back. (Also, fun tidbit: I'm pretty sure he's the only one who doesn't go into the raid with a rifle, he's just got like, a standard-issue cop pistol with a light on it.) The same thing happens in the warehouse, at least initially. He fires at Light's hand to get him to stop writing. Then he and Light yell at each other for a little bit about (who else?) Soichiro. Light demands that Matsuda shoot the others, because he's the only one who understands Kira. When Matsuda hesitates, Light resumes writing Near's name. Then Matsuda fires again and again and again. Anything to make Light stop. Anything to make it all stop. But it becomes obvious that he's not just shooting Light as a deterrent. What does Matsuda say as he's doing it?

"He needs to die!"

The others literally have to drag Matsuda away before he can execute Light on the spot.

Matsuda is a character full of contradictions. He dedicates over half a decade to fighting Kira, but he doubts the whole time. He tries to follow in Soichiro's footsteps but in the end makes the same justification that Light did when he first started writing in the Death Note. This man is a criminal. He deserves to die. The Yellow Box Warehouse not only exposed Light's true colors, but Matsuda's as well.