#he knows hes repressed and hes okay with it

[generalpenguinangel]

For my money, the most (only?) interesting thing about Frank Harkness is seeing where River Cartwright gets his crazy streak from.

River spent most of his childhood and youth raised by his grandparents, in what I can only imagine was a mostly pleasant stereotypically repressed British upbringing. His hometown is wealthy and picturesque. He probably went to a nice university and did mostly normal university things there. And yet he is, canonically, a maniac, who is ready to commit violence at any given moment. My two favourite examples:

s1: beats his erstwhile friend unconscious

s2: chokes a random cab driver (and then tells him "I'm one of the good ones". Lol, okay honey bunny)

And he also has the other side of the coin, which is that he's unruffled by the prospect of enduring physical violence himself.

And Frank sees this in him, instinctually.

When Frank tells Taverner that River is a poor fit for MI-5 and that's why he's mouldering in Slough House - ask yourself, where is the lie? River is constitutionally ill-suited for life in a modern bureaucratic institution, even if that institution does spy stuff.

He would never join Frank's operation because unlike Frank, he has good in him, or at least he wants to do good. But ooh, he also wants to be good at what he's doing. He wants to feel good in the way you feel good when you're doing something that comes naturally to you.

The most best thing about the scene between Frank and River at the bar in season 4 is when Frank gives him a few crumbs of praise and River just fucking eats it up, despite himself. Because actually he IS good at the kinetic stuff. But what drives that side of him is also what gets him continually shit on by the Service. And it must feel amazingly good to have someone recognize and validate that potential in him, even if it's coming from his nutcase absent father.

Lamb sees River's potential, of course, but he never shows it or overtly encourages him because Lamb understands him and knows that he's already got a big head and no impulse control and that he needs to learn to get over himself and calm the fuck down. He doesn't need the OB filling his head with Rudyard Kipling nonsense or Frank Harkness selling him American-style on the glamour of being a mercenary. He needs someone who can show him how the world, in all its ugliness, really works. That's what's going to keep him alive and possibly intact in some sense.

I think this is all pretty obvious but I've been trying and failing to plot a River Harkness AU so here are some thoughts that arose on father/son dynamics.

[girderednerve]

okay i understand why everyone is obsessed with dale jennings but i really think that we should spend more time on helen, who is like. the best. she's the best i love helen. she's like 'i don't know how to talk to pregnant women but let me publicly yell at her boss about maternity leave. i made my boyfriend's career & then we broke up not just because he's bisexual & wildly repressed but that probably didn't help, but now we're friends & i think our professional lives shouldn't dictate our personal lives.' she's a fucking hero is what. helen! also i think lesbian sex could fix her. i mean no i don't. but i think she should try it just in case <3

[mostlikelyshutup]

newsflash assholes, everyone in the butcher shop is repressed!

[soultiio]

how funny it is that you are the first to crack

[exilepurify]

it’s been four months since December 2022 and I’m still not over the fact that Reigen was apparently so haunted by guilt from that one time in S2E2 where he scolded Mob for eating too many french fries that it showed up in the super emotionally charged eyecatcher montage during the series finale.

I wonder if reigen will ever find the closure he needs to free himself from the poltergeist of regret that obviously follows him around as a result of this incident. the confession incident really had reigen re-evaluating everything from the past three years.

[presumeddeaddie]

we really had evan ‘buck’ iconic-line-of “well, uh, wish i could help” buckley. newly realized bisexual buck talking to his sexy male best friend about his sexy male best friend’s sex life and about how pent up said sexy friend feels, while this same sexy bff aggressively uses a bench as a prop to… “squat” quickly, up and down, and buck’s only response to all of this is “well, uh, wish i could help”??????? i—

[lucabyte]

transfem loop + siffrin... you agree

i does agree.... i does in fact ... write a 7k word essay on the subject..... if you would like to perhaps click that link and read it if you were not already aware...... kisses u on the forehead......... sorry its that long but i had to cover all of my bases you know how it is with textual analysis when you're trying to draw a distinction between "headcanon" and "reading of the text" because those are different things.... to meeeeeeee.......

[varilien]

i already sorta played with the idea of bill having emotive hair in the first exploration doodle page i made for him but i figured it couldn't hurt to pin it down a lil more precisely :3

Palestine: Funds | Action | eSims | Info Sudan Resources | Congo Resource | Lebanese Red Cross

[crimeronan]

Luz borrowing Hunter's scroll to call Amity after she sleep spells him because even though Hunter's breathing and she can feel him breathing, "Sleep followed by petrification" was Belos' "Humane" way of putting down Hunter and she's A Little Bit Crazy and Traumatized so she's like "I need someone here who can Fight Me to the death if it seems like I'm going snap and try to petrify him. Amity can you come to my room and spend the night please I need you to protect Hunter from me :(((("

i've had a couple friends with OCD talk about how strongly they see themselves in AU luz & nowhere has the evidence Ever been stronger than in this ask.

luz. baby.

you have OCD.

[anna-scribbles]

h-how do you ever finish any of your work? genuine question because you seem to be productive despite your agreste syndrome and I need to learn your ways. but also how do you ever finish any of your work

unclear. last night i stayed up and finished a report worth 25% of my grade at about 5am, arrived on time for my 9am lecture, and spent about half of it zoned out while thinking about seventeen year old emilie agreste. and i was one of the most active participants in the class discussion

[h4zardousch3micals]

Au idea that just hit me - vampire Heart, werewolf Mind, ghost Soul, paranormal investigator Whole

[mefuwie]

dream who sees his relationship with the corinthian like some kind of angsty ust unrequited love situation and the corinthian who is so used to loving his king he thinks it’s obvious to everyone in the dreaming and outside of the kingdom as well

[theoldworldsrunnerup]

Okay so um. To the Soichiro enthusiasts who don’t headcanon him as straight (specifying this because I’m assuming straight is the most commonly agreed on), what do you headcanon him as?? Personally my default headcanon is that he’s bisexual but genuinely just doesn’t realise he’s attracted to men, but him being a really closeted gay man is also really fun to explore. Idk I want to hear people’s thoughts

[blackrocks-king]

He's homophobic! He's homophobic and torturing people who have homosexuality! /ref (very stupid joke)

NO ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

OKAY— Just to be clear— I don’t give a SHIT about gay people. They can do whatever they want.

But YOU— calling ME GAY— IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STORY ? !—

Especially with Aspen ? ? ?— WHY ME AND HIM ?— // We’re don’t even like each other . . that . . way.

Yeah. We don’t like each other that way. We . . don’t.

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Mildly obsessed with the concept of Lan Zhan being cursed to act in every impulse.

Edit: for clarification, I specifically meant truth serum

[zappedbyzabka]

johnny is a man glazer tho. a meatrider 💀💀perhaps thats why he fancied bike riding.

What is glazing? Help😭