#he's worth so much outside of that

[stellaseveride]

I'm kinda scared that they're gonna try doing something romantically with Buck and Kameron. I just want Buck to be happy but this is not it.

[vaguely-concerned]

the more I play the more I think lucanis basically knows it's illario who betrayed him right from the beginning (he's had a year in the ossuary to think. not that many people knew where he was going. when you ask him 'did Illario know you'd be on that ship' his only answer is the hardest flattest 'yes' you ever heard). so it's not so much about figuring out who the traitor is (because that's ludicrous. we all know. immediately. they didn't really bother to hide it lmao) as about methodically closing off every single avenue of denial lucanis has clung to that whole time with as much or little gentleness as you might prefer until he has no choice but to admit it. because the moment he has to admit it, he'll have to do something -- feel something -- about it. and that's such a catastrophic event in lucanis' inner landscape (he has had TWO people in this whole entire world up until now and will do anything to hold on to them with a heartbreaking child-like desperation, even at and especially through the detriment of his own self) that he'd rather just. not. what if we quite simply. didn't. what if we just stayed here in the emptiness where we can both pretend you didn't hurt me in a way I should never forgive. I have so much practice in that with caterina already it's always worked out great for everyone so far. (press x to fucking doubt but that's trauma logic for you lol)

after everything illario did, so much of the storm of lucanis' emotions around it is 'what the FUCK did you get yourself tangled up in this time and how do I get you out of this mess safely'. what's worse: the fact that your brother murdered you, or that he put himself in horrible danger doing so and thus exposed you to the risk of losing him forever. lucanis' heart certainly has an opinion here and it's fucking unhinged (affectionate)

the themes of dissociation in lucanis' character in general makes me feel nuts. allllll these contradictory messy things he needs to cut off from each other because they can't coexist or be easily reconciled inside him. but all remain stubbornly true separately anyway and will have their due one day. love and resentment. tenderness and fear and rage. terror and longing. love and freedom don't coexist. the burned out golden child anthem is playing in the background. he was always caterina's favourite and he has to keep striving to deserve that dubious honour with every breath he takes and then, presumably, mercifully, some day he will die and be excused and can rest. and until now he's suppressed all the -- natural, healthy, protective! -- negative feelings that threaten the few attachment relationships he actually has, at the cost of ever actually having his needs for connection and safety met and leaving his core self imprisoned and compromised. and spite goes 'what. no. that's dumb fuck that' (*spite voice* I do not understand that and even if I did I would not respect it) and does not allow him to fall back into that, which I think is what saves his life, ultimately. it took being possessed by a demon for lucanis to even contemplate telling anyone he loves 'no' in any way, but hey. whatever gets you there right lol

lucanis is dealing with the freeze response allll the way down baby. and he was even before the ossuary, that just turbo powered it and brought it to a breaking point way before it could happen naturally. but something was going to break eventually no matter what, and I'm just glad that in the end, through the power of friendship and also pure spite, it doesn't have to be him

[jamandjazz]

He’s my baby you guys 😭

[qoldenskies]

i think a lot of people pretty openly acknowledge that leo is someone that self-aggrandizes and acts reckless in order to compensate for his insecurities, which is true and it's very clearly spelled out especially in the movie, but i don't really see people acknowledge the fact that donnie is the EXACT same way (outside of people who specifically like to write a lot of angst for him. leo is forever designated sadboy of the fandom). which is sad, because i think it's the most twin-like thing about them!!

it's a trait they share pretty openly. same flavor of daddy issues, although leo is always wanting to look down, to be the BEST at something, to be admired and respected and trusted, to be above other people, while donnie is always wanting to look up, the whole approval from a parental aged adult thing is the largest example but i also think about his desperation for CAMARADERIE in the purple jacket, and also like, lol the entirety of mind meld. he wants to be understood and acknowledged and praised and he practically begs for it with everything he does.

both of them desperately want to impress! but i kind of interpret it as leo trying to make a point to himself more than to other people, because he is so caught up in his own self-judgement. it's why he can act rude or try to step over the others (raph especially, although early on there is some mutual toxicity in that relationship) in order to prove that point.

but donnie has a lot more self-security because he knows what he does! he knows he's good at it, i don't think there's any denying that. but under real praise he gets starry-eyed or he softens. he makes a big point out of presenting new things because that's what he's looking for. and i think that makes him so averse to the potential of failure. it's why he'll shrug it off or outright deny it when its brought up to him. he sucks so bad at taking responsibility lmao.

i think mind meld in particular is a very telling episode, especially the beginning of it. he gets rash and upset when he feels like he's doing too much on his own. he feels ignored and disrespected for his efforts, and makes bad decisions as a result. and between that and donnie's gifts it's very very obvious he is projecting the fact that he equates his usefulness, his role, to his self-worth as a person. a lot of that crowing confidence is not real. he is MAJORLY overcompensating just like leo is. (and i would also like to point out the kind of things he makes shelldon RESPOND to in smart lair before he's reprogrammed, like leo's ribbing)

idk, i just feel like donnie wants to be seen and leo wants to be able to see himself, although there is some overlap there and the two problems can bleed into each other.

(and i do think a big point of leo's arc in the movie is for him to genuinely stop being selfish. his insecurity gets in the way and he's thinking about himself when he acts, and that's what hurts people. all of them have the potential to be self-centered, but leo's behavior was putting people in danger, and he had to look past all of that because he has ALWAYS been a strong and capable person and a good leader, but he was afraid of it because he was setting the goalpost for himself too high, and it was RAPH'S thing. it all felt too daunting. he's never going to feel ready if he only thinks about himself. at a point it's just not about him. as dubious as his sacrifice at the end was, that was the point. get him some therapy for that blunder though)

and i think it has a lot of potential to make them clash in a really interesting way. donnie's like,,, got his THING!! leo is not CONFIDENT in his thing!! and he can't ever be better than donnie at his particular thing, so he LEAPS onto any chance to get one over on him, which clashes very badly with donnie's issues of easily feeling dejected or unappreciated. he's going to take that personally, and then leo is going to take donnie's bad interpretation of that behavior personally, because like... why doesn't donnie trust him? :((

anyways they are majorly twinning they are both dramatic unconfident bitches with self-worth issues and they both get louder and meaner when they feel hurt about something. its why i keep accidentally writing angst of the other when i try to write angst of one. ahaha lol oops

sorry ive had this blog for only a few hours i just needed to get my thoughts down mostly for myself. for writing purposes

[thegraininessofitall]

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

I was rewatching The Stone Forest and I really like to think that Hilda had to pass by the Bell Keeper’s outpost on her way out of the city limits. I like to think that idiot looked at what was happening, shrugged, and said ‘eh, she’s the scariest thing out there’

[kyouka-supremacy]

Failed a social interaction 0 injured 1 killed (me)

[buwheal]

For me, I'm one of the ones who knows some of the things that shouldn't be done (don't mention his appearance, don't make references to stardom, washed up celebrities, religious imagery, puppets, loss, fortune, loss of fortune) and I still slip up.

My running theory is that I'm not used to seeing an askbox that isn't just a race to see who can get the largest emotional reaction (and the cool dramatic art that comes with it). There isn't a lot of experience to draw off of that isn't going to extremes.

Ahhgh,, yeah, i think thats whats happening for /everyone/,, me included... I kinda have to hold back on doing those all the time even though theyre so fun... womp.. You CAN mention some of those things, though!! Puppets/his appearance obv not, losing everything..also /maybe/ not.. but i think depending on what is said/how its said the others may work n be interesting. (except for a whole lot of religious imagery,,* ill add stuff in my tags i dont want this part to be long lol) I think also its just a different way of using the askbox compared to regular which also throws everyone off.

[hella1975]

your sokka is SO sokka and i say this as someone who holds him so dear ur writing of him is amazing. tbh im sooo fussy with his portrayal but its pretty nailed. like so many fics (esp zukka and zuko centric and ESPECIALLY ones where hakoda like adopts zuko) he's constantly pushed to the side in favour of zukos issues and zukos problems when in reality sokka is very hurt himself and has suffered a lot. man i GET taob sokka i really do bc people seem to think he was a lil mean but nobody seems to realise when you're in sokkas position it would've read like everyone was against you. all the swt men, including his dad who snapped at him, and even katara and aang and suki tell him to give zuko a chance and the fact that they were trusting someone who had hurt all of them so much- because yes WE know zuko wouldn't have killed them, but the gaang didn't. not when they were being chased and terrorised, and when sokka had his trust betrayed in the prison, he had absolutely every right to hate zuko, esp when it felt like everyone who he thought would understand his feelings, including his own dad who had been hiding his relationship with zuko from him, seems against him. his conversation with hakoda was probably my favourite scene in taob just bc he was allowed to feel like that without being treated by the narrative as someone just being mean to poor little zuko. he gets to be a sourpuss and angry and jealous at zuko for feeling like hed been replaced by his own dad. all of the water tribe men get this treatment like they're not written as bad people for being wary or disliking zuko initially (even chena despite being enemy no.1 at the start). his convo with hakoda was so important bc it stressed the detail that yes zuko has suffered and deserves to be cared for but SOKKA is his son, his actual child who is so hard on himself for things out of his control and who has hurt so much and deserves just as much as zuko does. sokka is just a baby my boy. he's not the main character but he's just as complex and intricate as zuko, not just in taob but also for the times we have seen him in tams there's been keen detail to his emotion and how he's feeling pointed out

me rn

[commsroom]

As our resident Eiffel expert, what do you think his childhood was like? As in, do you think there might be some trauma there? (Probably nothing “major”— nothing he’d think of as trauma— but I feel like it probably wasn’t entirely healthy either. Or maybe that’s just projection due to knowing someone veeery similar to Eiffel)

oh! i wrote about some of that in this post.

that line from his backstory doc - "eiffel was extremely hesitant at first, but desperate to become independent from his family and strapped for cash, he finally relented." - and what gabriel urbina said about eiffel being an unsupervised "tv is my parent" kid really defines / reinforces my perception of his childhood. like, mostly i think eiffel's parents just... weren't around. i think he was an only child, and hasn't been in contact with his family for, like, his whole adult life. he's resentful about people always forgetting his birthday in a way that makes sense if he's been holding onto that hurt since childhood. he's so used to being alone - not even being present in his own life - and he's internalized the feeling that he doesn't matter much to anyone. i think it was @books-space-things who said something to me, like, eiffel is so used to being alone, he doesn't realize how lonely he is.

most of his relevant backstory stuff with canon basis is covered in that linked post, so, on the headcanon side of things... he's got that undiagnosed / unmedicated adhd; i'm sure as a kid he was constantly getting the message, like, "i know you can do this, why don't you try harder?" and he didn't know why it was hard for him, so he thought he must just be lazy. i think he really wanted a dog, and either 1) really got his hopes up, but never got one, or 2) had a dog, but came home from school one day to find out his parents gave it away. if his parents were still together, they probably shouldn't have been. needless to say, i don't think he had a happy childhood, but i don't know if he fully recognizes the ways it was unhappy, because more than anything it was just kind of... empty? because his parents' lack of attention meant he got to like, stay up and watch movies all night on a school night, and eat junk food, and go wherever he wanted by himself, whenever he wanted... when he's talking about his childhood, sometimes he mistakes that for freedom. and that kinda ties into his pop culture escapism. but, like, he's probably got a core childhood memory of waiting for one of his parents to take him to / pick him up from something they completely forgot about. pretty much his whole life, i think eiffel's been training himself to expect disappointment.

[theotherrichardpapen]

david levithan

[bard-of-spiders]

'Normally, a strange, disguised, illithid wouldn't be his first choice of people to trust in any other situtation, in this situation the last choice. However, he has held off the worst case scenario once already, which Ilztaun figured was worth not distrusting him just yet. He owed him that little, surely? Or simply this was a more interesting path to that inevitable worse case, a line of thinking better kept to himself than used as a justification to the others.

[princessmyriad]

.

[phoenixcatch7]

What I'd really love to see is a svsss au where shen yuan had the immense powers from saiki k.

Like, svsss is already a romcom of a guy shunted into a fantasy world with meta knowledge and immense power for no reason apart from 'make a happy ending' as a fairly thick veneer over an absolute hot mess of a tragedy with a happy ending, red flags galore, complete with a protagonist completely removed from the concept of romance and resigned to his fate of being abandoned by the people around him because of the circumstances he was 'born' into, but he's funny about it.

The disastrous life of saiki k is a fast paced crack comedy about a guy granted immense power for no reason with meta knowledge of the world as a thick veneer over something a little darker and traumatic with a happy ending, complete with a protagonist completely removed from the concept of romance and resigned to being ignored by the people around him because of the circumstances he was born into, but he's hilarious about it.

Now I don't think it should be a 1-1 transplant of saiki to the svsss world, but to imagine an sy with those powers who didn't manage to find loyal friends, who moved out to live alone as soon as possible to avoid issues with his powers, who gravitated to web novels because of their regular updates as opposed to being constantly spoiled for books with finished endings. An sy who despite his ridiculous levels of power died alone in a stupid way and woke up in a world filled with people who also had immense and varied powers, dealing with the prospect of immortality when his own powers are still constantly growing and interfering with his life, but be silly about it.

I want to see a sy with telepathy still failing to understand what lbhs deal is because of his own denial, a sy with the power to crush mountains with a finger trying not to blow down walls with a sneeze because someone put him on a mountain FILLED with plants in SPRING, an sy who deleted an entire country from the planet aged four trying to dodge overly enthusiastic maidens he keeps saving because he doesn't want to steal from the protagonist and also no, lady, please. Shen yuan sitting in the water prison absolutely deadpan as people try and scare him with 10 iq stories about the acid waterfalls. An sy who hares around the peak trying to avoid being spotted on valentines day as he redirects unwanted admirers and improves his disciples dates just so they can all have a good day.

An sqh who really, honestly truly doesn't know how pidw was made real, honest!! All he could do was see ghosts! It's not his fault the story he wrote to make rent turned into all of this!! But because you're here can you pretty please make some ice, I'm in desperate need of air con and my king hasn't showed up in weeks!

Sqq and sqh playing telepathic chess during boring meetings and sqq leaving him to suffer when sqh is asked a question even though he himself knows the answer.

Lbh trying everything to get shizuns attention and discovering his total weakness to his cooking. Like, will let you cheat in class levels of bribery.

Sqq stalking dourly through fields of aphrodisiac plant because he's raised his body temperature high enough to burn out any pollen before it gets too close and the system just despairing at getting this man to do something interesting.

Cat!sqq transforming back as fast as he can because he's got a meeting in half an hour and having to rush around trying to find something to cover the cat ears he didn't manage get rid of.

Shen qingqiu pulling out his limiters and dropping the mask to reveal a deity in the shape of a man, something crafted purely of psychic energy and burning fury, determined to hold maigu ridge together and keep the realms apart with his will alone, to save luo binghe if it killed him again. A shining aura stretching miles, glowing like a star, halting the earthquake with his bare hands.

Sqq seeing a bug and freaking out so hard he teleports to the northern demon realm and lands in a slushy pond, and sqh nearly giving him away because of how hard he's laughing.

[boysborntodie]

I think that Johnnyboy’s potential to complicated and messy is criminally untapped in fanon. Ponyboy ‘fucking sucks at feelings, both his own and of others, and can be a bitch’ Curtis and Johnny ‘imperfect victim with shit self-esteem’ Cade would definitely have their ups and downs

[hauntingblue]

Jaya time

I love these moments of nearly cosmic horror when they encounter inexplicable things (at first) they are so intriguing

Is strawhat here?! *Megan thee stallion saying AAH 😜*

This cover just goes hard... Get it chopper