#heavier topics

[fuckyeahgoodomensfanfic]

Good Omens Fic Rec: The End is Where We Start From

“Aziraphale, hello. It’s er, been a long time.” “Yes, dreadfully long. You look different.” He immediately coloured in evident embarrassment. “I mean, of course you look different, as do I of course, I didn’t mean bad different, that is to say…” Something inside of Crowley, something that had been in a deep freeze for several eons, was starting to thaw. It was letting little bits and pieces of familiarity break loose to float back into their rightful places in his soul. One of those pieces, those round, blue eyes, suddenly snapped into place, and he felt a corresponding wave of long-forgotten feeling wash through him. Aziraphale is anxious. Make Aziraphale happy. “Yeah,” he interrupted. “D’you wanna… get a coffee or something?” *** Crowley and Aziraphale meet by chance on the street. They've met before, in their youth, in a different life. Some very difficult things have happened since then. Will they be able to find their way back to each other and to themselves?

Length: 23,411 words

AO3 Rating: Explicit / Spice Level 🔥🔥🔥

Best for: At Home, Angst, Romance, Human AU

Triggers: Grief, Period typical homophobia

Read it here, fic by tiresius

*Minor Spoilers* This is a very beautiful story of grief, longing, and healing. A human AU where Crowley and Aziraphale spent a summer falling in love as teenagers, and have now reconnected 30 years later. The years were not kind to either of them. Crowley's grief hangs off every part of him. I love that the author does not give his full backstory until he feels comfortable enough to tell Aziraphale. It feels almost like we, the readers, had to earn that trust as well. I loved all the flashbacks to their teenage years. That summer was all about new experiences and finding a joy that they weren't allowed to have. Only allowed the briefest moments of freedom before it has to be tamped down, hidden, explained away. Their adult selves are still dealing with that trauma along with a whole new set of pains. But they will learn to be patient and take care of each other. I love the hope that this ends on. I'm sure there will be more bad days in their futures, but now they are no longer alone with those burdens.

Love love, love this story. The author manages to write something melancholy, without being depressing. It knows grief, and how heavy it is. How hard it can be to manage, and treats both characters with such grace and understanding. Mostly safe in public, there are a couple sexual scenes but nothing too explicit. I suggest an at home read though, it's not a triggering story but it's heavier topics.

Read it here, fic by tiresius

[villainsally]

This is an old post, but I still use these tactics

Hey, I have been in a bit of a dark place recently. Just a lot of school stress and not being able to keep up as well as I feel like I should, y'all don't need to worry about it. But one thing that really helps me when I am in a really dark place is imagining little me, imagining her hopes and dreams. And trying to do something to honour her. Because while she is me, I'm not her. We're so different and she helps me stay here, stay healthy. And talking to little me, or imagining talking to little me has helped me greatly. Imagining talking to older me, me when I'm an adult, in college, has helped me too. To visualize where I'm going. I want to make little me proud, and be a person older me will look back to and say "I want to make them proud"

I think this tactic has helped me become more stable in not needing external validation. Because if I view past me as not me and she is proud of me? That's validation that comes from me but feels external. Little me would love all my mutuals on here and would be impressed with the amount I have.

[tls12lessthan3]

thinking about orvs metatextual engagement with its genre and specifically how that interacts with its women again. kim dokja is a self insert for the reader - what he thinks is largely meant to represent what we think, especially in the beginning before sing shong really fleshes out his character. kim dokja sees the world through tropes, directly acknowledging the genre around him and the cliches we expect e.g. the overpowered mc, the scheming villain, the beautiful heroine.

but a major part of his arc is deconstructing this reductionist view of the world in a way that parallels the author's deconstruction of the genre, and that plays really well with the way orv writes women. yoo sangah is perhaps the best exanple - shes introduced as the heroine, a one-dimensional pretty girl who in any other novel would become kim dokja's love interest. but the authors allow her to be her own character, directly challenging the stereotype of the heroine and calling attention to the genre's typical lack of depth for such a character. i think this undercurrent plays in the background often but really comes to the forefront when yoo sangah reminds kim dokja of her putting pepper in their bosses' coffee, a memory kim dokja had supressed because it didn't fit with the pretty girl persona he made for her.

i interpret that moment as yoo sangah pushing her way out of the mold of heroine often found in these stories, demanding a depth be added to her character, asking kim dokja - and thus the reader - to see her in her entirety, to see the heroine archetype for what she could be. orv is at all times in conversation with its genre, and its simultaneous writing of female characters with agency and depth and acknowledgement of the tropes these women are expected to fulfill is undeniably a part of that. and its a part i enjoy. most of the time.

[genericpuff]

I'm not sure if anyone else has made this connection, but I've never seen it mentioned before. I think, similar to Lolita, RS was also inspired by the art of Trevor Brown. His work has a lot of young girls and medical fetish themes (to put it lightly) in a style reminiscent of RS's earlier stuff.

sigh

CW: medical fetish art often depicting children / child-like characters and medical equipment such as needles, gas masks, etc. seriously don't hit the jump if medical equipment or young girls in nurse's outfits or with open wounds makes you squeamish, I will not blame you for turning around now LOL

OP I was about to just... dismiss this. Wave it away as a funny coincidence that is indeed funny, but doesn't have any real evidence to back it up. I had a post typed up in response already declaring this, after which posting I was gonna move on with my day, work on Rekindled, play some XIV.

Because sure, there are a lot of resemblances between Trevor Brown's work and Rachel's old art, but nothing that can't be dismissed in good faith as a simple coincidence of being within the same genre of fetish art (first three are Trevor's, last three are Rachel's).

But then that little voice in the back of my head whispered in my ear, "Puff. You should double check. Just to be sure. Do your due diligence." And I once again found myself on the precipice of the rabbithole that somehow becomes deeper every time I jump. This time though, I knew it couldn't be that bad, I mean, I had enough confidence in knowing that there's no fucking way she listed Trevor Brown as one of her favorite artists-

God fucking dammit. How in the world did I miss this? I mean, I suppose I missed it simply because I'm not familiar with the works of Trevor Brown, but you can bet your ass I became familiar with it in my digging. Yeah, this guy is a supreme creep.

Again, I am not going to accuse Rachel of being a pedophile because that's just not an accusation that should be thrown around without undeniable evidence. What I will say, which has largely remained the same - though even more confidently now than ever before - is that she's clearly someone who took a lot of inspiration and influence from very problematic artists when she was young (I'm talking in her late teens which has me wondering if she started making medical fetish art when she was still a minor-) and then, BEST guess, she started to drop the medical fetish stuff around the time she went to college (which was also the same time she dropped The Doctor Pepper Show, which later got reworked into The Doctor Foxglove Show which was a lot less reminiscent of her medical fetish style from the early 2000's, but still had some of her usual preferences at play) and that's led up to today where she's drawing comics that look like they're for kids but tackle heavy adult subject matter in the worst way possible that straight up perpetuates grooming.

No matter how much experience I have with this already, no matter how much I think I've already seen, I always find more, and this time was no different. In fact - though unrelated to the original topic - thanks to this one fucking ask, I even found the full Mads Mikkelson comic with the completed caption. You know, that one.

And apparently Mads Mikkelson did very much replace her crush on Jeremy Irons.

Who's Jeremy Irons?

Oh yeah.

I just... y'all I can't. This is un-fucking-real. I'm gonna go take a shower, I need to scrub myself off of this 😭

[t-u-i-t-c]

Toku Pride Month Challenge │ LGBTQ+ Characters

Ichika Sakurai

[the-awful-falafel]

I really hope Rick and Morty as a series will finally move on from portraying Rick's love for Morty / his family as this special, redemptive trait that Morty just needs to open his eyes to. Or portraying it as something Rick just needs to be emotionally honest about, finally admit in a grand gesture, and then everything will be healthy and resolved.

Two things can be equally true: Rick can sincerely care about Morty, deeply enough to be tender with him, showing gestures of affection, being protective of him, being truly proud of him... and can also constantly let Morty down, put him in mortal danger, make Morty feel responsible for his emotional health, treat him awfully and in manipulative controlling ways, and not be there for him when it matters most. His love is real, but is also a fickle thing that Morty cannot always rely on. That uneven dolling out of affection is exactly what entrenches the abuse and damages Morty further. Even now that Rick is slowly improving as a person, his simultaneous love and unreliability persists in milder ways, and the long pattern of abuse leaves deep scars on his grandson.

In my opinion, it makes perfect sense for Morty to see Rick's care for him as this unreliable, dangerous, and potentially non-existent thing, but also to paradoxically crave it nonetheless. Every time he lets his guard down and starts to trust Rick too much, he's been kicked in the nuts for it to varying extents-- even recently. I don't think he actually believes Rick cares nothing for him, but he's been trapped in this cycle of good and bad for so long that his self-worth is eroded and wholly defined by his grandpa's conditional affection, and he's scared of and dependent on it simultaneously. Even if Rick became truly healthy and openly caring from now on, that won't change how he's screwed up Morty with his behavior.

The series isn't going to make any meaningful progress if the writers keeps cycling around the superficial "does Rick care? does Morty know how deeply Rick cares?" question that they've asked since Season 1, instead of progressing to more meaningful, realistic questions about what Rick's love even means after all the past seasons of codependent abuse, and how much it should be worth to Morty in the end. (Ideally, much, much less than it's worth now.)

Yes, Rick cares. Yes, he loves his family deeply. But as with many forms of abuse, that's part of the problem.

[ghoul--doodle]

This comic is about vampirism

[sweetfoamspirit]

~🛡️ Madeleine Cookie Headcanons 🛡️~

Definitely some flavor of Cluster B personality disorder. Personal projection leans into Borderline.

Was one of those kids in school that would turn a three page assignment into ten pages except half of it is a really long run-on sentence and doesn't make any sense. Teachers hated him.

Loves reality dating shows. Has not missed an episode of cookie Bachelorette since it started airing.

Grew up with an "anti-clutter" ruleset but now has a ton of trinkets and souvenirs from his travels. Also has a vinyl record collection and a scrapbooking hobby.

He canonically, at least according to one of the Aunts, skips meals. Perhaps not full-blown anorexia but definitely some type of disordered eating/complex relationship with food.

NEEDS to hold something to sleep. Usually a pillow, sometimes a stuffed animal.

Kouign-Amann is his cousin but with how close the family is, they were pretty much raised as siblings.

I've posted this elsewhere but he and Financier were childhood besties that had a severe falling out due to typical high school drama (on Madeleine's part 100%. dumbass kid.) They've sort of resolved it in adulthood but it's still kind of awkward.

[innovation-is-key]

Hey guys just like, a small mod post which i usually dont do but, a bit needed right now so i hopefully don't get pushed too much right now.

I may be taking a small step back from this blog for like, a day or two maybe?

I will still be awnsering and responding, just maybe a bit slower then usual because i feel like i need a break from tumblr or something after last night (sometimes i may respond faster when i have a mood boost but don't expect that). Just feeling a bit down and triggered after all the stuff, even if it was just a small thing that could be brushed off for some people.

So replies and posts will be a bit slower, but keep sending asks and reblogs<3 I'll try my best to respond to all! (may temporary not respond to heavier topics until i feel better, just for my own mental health). If asks are closed, they will reopen! I'll just need time to get the asks that are in, out there!

Take care all of you, I'll be doing silly posts right now until i feel good enough in my skin to post about other things <3 (tags have little bit more yapping)

[sockempossum]

Office Party dream sequence pt 1

A sequence that takes place a bit later in the story, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy how the dialogue came out. Welcome to the deep end of the pool kid, I hope you know how to swim.

[lakesandquarries]

why are people trying to insist that ghibli movies are secretly like. dark and edgy somehow

there's this pushback against people characterizing ghibli movies as "cozy" and "hopeful" and it seems really silly to me. yes ghibli movies are about war and violence and loss of innocence. they are also about hope and love and kindness and are very cute and cozy. these can coexist! people who reduce ghibli to #cottagecore #hopepunk #cozycore are wrong but the solution is not to swing hard in the opposite direction and claim my neighbor totoro is like. dark and edgy. it's about two little girls struggling to cope with their mom's illness and there's sad moments and thats an important aspect. howl's moving castle is about war very explicitly. but they're still kind and hopeful and have a focus on the small, mundane joys of life.

yes i'm vagueing another post.....i don't wanna start shit i just think. lets all chill. sometimes things can handle heavy emotional topics and also be sweet and cozy. these do not cancel each other out. they can and should coexist

[op-dumpstertruck]

This is a little place for me to dump my one piece art in :) enjoy!

[galatoma]

i understand quackity not wanting to be as hands-on in this project because you also want to enjoy it as a player, but when it's tied to your name and shit starts going south with management then you have to put your hands back on the wheel.

I'm glad the qsmp admins are putting more eyes on the behind the scenes issues because the way they talk about how management treated everything is bonkers, and there needs to be an intervention of some kind

[strawberry-seal77]

What is kitakawa

Kitakawa is short for Kitanai Kimi Ga Ichiban Kawaii, a manga featuring some not-so-healthy yuri!! One might call it toxic, in fact.

English title translations ive seen have been "I love your cruddy" and "The filthy you is the cutest"

Starring Airi Sezaki and Hinako Hanamura, we see their rather codependent lives together, and the fallout of a certain classmate discovering them! Or rather, discovering what they do together after school. Which includes such things as; making Hinako vomit, and forcing Hinako to eat (as it turns out, not that bad tasting) bugs.

However, nobody in this manga is normal, and Hina has her own reasons for sticking so close to Airi. Which you find out over the course of the manga !! teehee

[sanguinesorcery]

a kiss on the ‘v’.

A Kiss Before You Go || Always Accepting

She tenses.

It's no more than a reflex and yet, it still says much. It's not that she doesn't want this. It's not that she is being hurt to warrant the need to steel. It's the unfamiliarity mixed into the familiar that stutters her breath and makes her prepare for what she feels like should come, but logically knows will not.

After all, Astor is many things and devious aside. But she knows too he would not hurt her. Not like that.

It doesn't change the memory of the flesh, however. The tension of a scared animal, hard and ready to strike. The way the shiver against his touch cannot help but translate as a shuddering crawl. She wants this, in the forefront of her mind and has communicated it more than once. A tic to tell herself it is alright more than it is to tell him. But the body remembers.

It's only now that she notices he's stopped. That he's staring at her when she tries to come back into herself. To be in the moment, rather than out of it. For so long, she has allowed herself to simply disengage from the world, to only allow things to happen, that it's hardly more than part of the process, an instinct. A reflex.

She doesn't feel pain in this in-between space of her mind, internalizing and processing from a different place seemingly outside of her body what is happening. She doesn't feel remorse or sadness. She doesn't feel pleasure either.

Her lack of response would not have stopped Turyl from taking more out of her, it never did. Despite the paperwork saying so, despite the rushed ceremonies (if they could even be called that). She was not his equal, his spouse, his partner. She was nothing more than property, hardly anything higher in his eye than the dog at his feet. And something to stick his dick into when the stress was too high. Which was often enough, Sonyt's parting curse made the world around his head crumble from the start. He had to have control over something...

"You seem oddly distant."

She's back. Into the present, realization sharpening her gaze again. Ears snapping up to attention. She is remiss to admit she hadn't expected to see the piercing golden stare of Astor there, so close. She had expected someone else...

"I--" Words stopped in her throat for a moment. Her voice sounds foreign even in so small a noise. Like it isn't hers. "It ... it's nothing. No need to worry about it."

He's astute in reading people. Hearing between the hesitations. Knowing her own uncertainties. That's what makes him dangerous, she knows. This is probably a sign, to try to keep him back at arm's reach. She's never been very good at that sort of impulse control, though...

"We don't have to if you don't want to."

It's a surprise to her he would suggest such a thing. She expected him to take her word at it, to simply continue into the motions. She knows he wants her. In their closeness, it is hard to not notice his want of her. If not for the obvious reasons, the way he gives the scars that litter her exposing flesh just that little extra amount of attention. Although he has stopped outright caressing her skin, the thumb that gently toys across a knotted thing on one side of her torso says it.

It's distracting...

"It's not that." she admits, with the tiniest twinge of embarrassment on thinned lips. "I have never been with anyone. I think this is ... performance anxiety."

A little lie, woven into threads of truth. It's poorly crafted, she knows he sees through it with the slightest narrowing of his eyes in response. The way he slowly and deliberately rises to sit, to scrutinize the little tics and twitches in the guise of giving her space.

"You and your husband never did anything?"

It's a very tentative question. A spark behind his eyes that tells her he already knows. But he wants to hear it. She takes a slow deep breath, wants to melt into the silken sheets. Focuses on the chime of hung cut crystals in the chandelier blowing in the warm breeze through the window nearby. The way the facets of light play over him in his towering position. How it catches his angles, the sharp eyes.

She's using him as a distraction, though the steadiness of her voice masks the low rumble of panic vibrating in her core.

"It was never with me. It was always to me." She pauses, centering her breath, on steadying her words and blocking out residual emotion. Trying not to delve too far into the hazy details of Turyl's reign. "...I think ... he derived pleasure from hearing me beg him to stop, more than anything.

"I do not count that decade as anything. It was not something I really wanted."

Two fingers, pressed gently against her sternum. Drawn down slowly between her breasts, over her stomach. The lower they travel, the more she is aware of the rumble coursing more into a shiver. A pleasant little sensation, familiar in only the best ways. A distraction from the past, focusing on him in the now.

"And this, then. Is this something you want."

It's a smooth amusement. He already knows, though he bides his time. He wants to hear it. She makes eye contact, one ear flattens to her head in the mere second she takes to say it.

"Yes."

The fingers against her mound are replaced by his lips, caressed in hot wet breath. And she finds herself back in the moment.

@devilsprophet

[rimeiii]

I hate beating up a dead horse (and in fear of incurring the wrath of the fandom once more) but the way WHB handles content warnings is just...

Where are the detailed content warnings? Not just for the angels, but for everything? Because honestly, I think the game would've garnered less backlash for having them - a "this game is made for mature audiences, viewer discretion is advised" screen before logging in would be the bare minimum honestly.

Say what you want about the angel cards including dub/non-con content and the cards themselves veering towards that sort of territory but at least give a fucking warning about it? I've always criticized the devs for not having 18+ rating all across the board when clearly mature games like Limbus Company get the 18+ rating. If WHB is NSFW because of the sex and kinky stuff, Limbus is NSFW because of the immense amount of gore and dark content.

"But they have content warnings-" ONLY FOR SEX. AND PAIRED WITH 16+.

It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that, for people who played this game without following any of the pre-release contents, with this combination THERE WON'T BE ANY DETAILED DUB/NON-CON.

This is in Indonesia's Google Play Store, and if it's different in other regions, then it also begs the question - why the FUCK is it not just rated 18+ across the board?!

Limbus Company, the closest comparison I can think of being with their devs (Project Moon) also being a Korean indie company that created a gacha with mature content that has a staff team the size of a high school class (in fact I wager Limbus has less staff working on the game because around half of their staff works almost exclusively at their merch café), only had warnings for extreme violence and strong language, but at least they had the decency to put more warnings in their earliest trailers and the game website - and it's always common courtesy in the fandom to warn potential players with one particular image I'll show down below, containing a list of the game's content warnings.

Oh, and they're rated 18+ across the board, including a Mature Content Description on Steam.

And sure, you can make the argument of "well you know what you're getting into upon looking at the card art", but therein lies the issue of not warning at the very start of the game - nobody knew for sure what triggers would be in the game upon startup.

Whatever way you slice it, dub/non-con is a genuine trigger for other people despite it also being a kink (I personally don't get it and it's a no-no for me even in fiction, but you do you). Adding clear content warnings would literally harm no one and helps people avoid things they know they don't want to consume. Yes, despite the in-game context clues providing hints, a clear indicator is still preferable.

Take, for example, the Lobelia summer skin controversy in Granblue Fantasy. People already know Lobelia as the twisted Evoker who not only murdered his own parents but recorded their dying screams of pain in his conch shells, doing the same thing to his countless victims afterwards. All of this is mentioned during the Fate Episodes to recruit him. You want to know the problem with his summer skin, Danger Beckons by the Shore, though?

There's a home screen voiceline where he offers one of his conch shells for the player to listen to, wherein you will hear the pained and tortured screams of one of his victims as she's attacked and later on eaten alive by a shark. Keep in mind, this sort of voiceline wasn't even in his base art, and while his Fate Episodes had tortured screams it wasn't even half as bad as this particular voiceline.

It's even given a content warning in the wiki.

For a rather significant amount of players who bought the skin, the inclusion of this voiceline despite the subtle warning in the skin blurb (which, fyi, is only accessible AFTER you bought the skin) hampers their enjoyment of the skin when they put it on their home screens then tap Lobelia - which many people who get character skins do. Mostly because there wasn't any clear indicator of the scream and a lot of people never appreciated the sudden jumpscare scream. The fact that Lobelia is a psychopath and doing this shit is in character for him should also be able to stand together with the fact that including a scream out of nowhere is pretty scummy and not a good time. Especially for non-JP speaking players, who essentially got jumpscared by a scream out of nowhere, as they never understood the fact that Lobelia was offering one of his conch shells.

Back to the rating issue, though. Why not rate WHB as 18+ if you're going to include content that could very much be considered controversial, like non-con? Like, say, Limbus Company (which I hate bringing up again bc fuck kjh)? Which not only has the warnings in the app store but plastered in the earliest trailers (still viewable on Steam and Project Moon's YouTube channel but not on the Google Play Store) and the official game website?

And sure. Some of these trigger warnings sound silly (reference to traffic accidents is more or less Charon driving Mephi like a maniac iirc based on the content we already have in the game). But I did genuinely appreciate the warning because let's talk about the first three Cantos after the prologue, hmm?

Canto 1 already includes cannibalism, war, torture, and body modifications, among other things! Canto 2 has references to alcohol and gambling, as well as mentions of homicide - despite being a lighter Canto overall! And in Canto 3, we experienced discriminatory violence, more body modifications, enforced ideologies and/or actions, and religious torture and violence among other things!

I can stomach gore easier compared to non-con and even I appreciate the warning, particularly with regards to Canto 3. Kromer's fascination with everything pure (i.e. no body modifications), all stemming from seeing...something...in the basement of Sinclair's old mansion, the cult behaviour that led to mass murder and torture by the faction she leads (up to and including brainwashing as detailed by Kleinhammer Heathcliff's Identity story) Kromer's obssession with Sinclair and him standing beside her as an ally...it's all genuinely so unnerving, and are story beats the game handles really well despite how disturbing it all really is when you stop and think about it.

"But you should've known considering the game's aesthetics-"

Maybe, especially considering one of Gregor's launch cards is literally this, and most if not all Uptie II arts are gory at the very least.

However, again, I have to underline the importance of content warnings - this time with an irl example.

I have a friend who was interested in Limbus Company. I've talked extensively about Gregor and how much I love him, and it started because I have a drawing I made of him in the back of my phone case and Liu Gregor's Uptie II art as my phone background at the time. They said they were interested, then I had to explain the sorts of contents she would encounter in my native language, Indonesian.

"Blood and gore, violence, a lot of mental health issues - Gregor has PTSD and his chapter depicted it pretty well, human experimentation, homicide, so Nagel und Hammer is basically the Inquisition and kills people to 'purify' them, oh yeah cannibalism is also a thing-"

"Stop, stop, I'm not playing if that's the content I'm going to see. I don't think I can handle it."

This same friend was also interested in playing If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers - a free point-and-click adventure game that deals with themes like depression, homophobia, racism, and suicide. She was willing to try that game out because it wasn't as gory as Limbus Company. For context, the Mature Content Description for this game on Steam:

In both cases, I had to personally explain the content warnings in Indonesian since my friend isn't the most fluent in English and she has a far lower limit for dark content compared to me, but I did send that image of content warnings for Limbus Company and urged people to read the Mature Content Descriptions on Steam for anyone who wanted to try any of the two games and is fluent in English. Why?

Because it's basic human decency to try and keep people informed of any potential triggers and content they might not be comfortable seeing.

Either way, main takeaway from this issue:

Dub/non-con might be your kink, but it might not be for others - it might be uncomfortable or downright triggering as all hell for others, in fact. So, clear content warnings (in particular for any and all triggering content) harm nobody, especially as it helps people avoid story beats where their turn-offs and, more importantly, their triggers.