#i know i have ptsd from very specific things that happened and i live on a hospital path so every day i hear sirens

[willowfey]

starting to think maybe waking up with an anxiety stomachache every single morning and then needing to spend the entire day trying to get rid of said anxiety just to maybe have a few minutes in the evening of feeling relaxed before going to bed is perhaps not normal

[parfaitblogs]

sleeping with the lights on ❀ s. reid x reader

in which the first time you kill an unsub hits you like a truck, and spencer reid is there to pick up you back up. 

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader genre: hurt/comfort tags: comfort very little hurt. ptsd. description of someone being shot. this is my thesis for my phd in yapology. spencer reid loves you sooo much like sooo much. word count: 2k a/n: i miss posting… i miss you guys… im deeply sorry for not posting for over a month. i have so much in the works i promise i promise!! anyways yesss i read dostoevsky before writing this im sure you can tell russian novelists take over your brainnn.

"thank you for loving me when i still tasted of heartache and war." (nikita gill)

There is a certain shade of fear behind a person's eyes when they know they are about to die. 

When there is a gun levelled at their heads, and the wrong thing spills past their mouth, even the most psychotic of God's men will see a second of fear before there is tranquility. Survival instincts kick in, and no narcissistic, smug facade can ever deny that specific human brain's worst fear is dying. 

Is it not most? 

Fear of what dying feels like. Does it hurt? When every organ in your body shuts down, is it slow, and the most agonising of feelings? Or is it quick; painless? Does your brain shut down first and therefore render you unable to actually register the agony you're in? What happens after is an entirely new rabbit hole to delve into. 

Where does our conscious actually go after life? A permanent state of nothingness sounds lonely. Heaven implies there is a celestial being behind everything. Reincarnation means you have to live through this doomed from the start world all over again, and you won't even know it is your second, third, hundredth time on Earth. 

Guilt. 

An annoyingly human emotion that will eat at you from the inside out, chewing its way through organ and bone, consuming you so wholly you stop believing you are worth anything to anyone. You can nurse your own brain back to a faux sense of health, rocking back and forth on the cold wooden planks of apartment flooring, but you can never erase the guilt that takes over your body. For when it is this strong, it is more than just a mere pit churning in your stomach.

It's cold on your side of the bed.

He's pretty sure it's what prompts him awake at the glaring hour of two forty seven in the morning. 

Rumpled sheets provide him the needed comfort that he didn't imagine you going to sleep with him only mere hours earlier, but the lack of warmth left on the fabric frightens him into thinking you've been awake for hours. He pats it down anyway, seeking any inkling of body warmth left within the fabric. Proof that you are still nearby, and haven't had enough time to run too far. 

You haven't. 

By the time his eyes adjust to the blackness of the room, he can see the shadowed outline of your body sitting at the end. Head just visible from your balled up position on the floor, rocking yourself as a desperate attempt to comfort whatever is going on inside your brain. 

He says your name quietly, voice a barely there whisper as he shuffles across the bed to lower next to you. It sounds crackly to your ears, and he's in dire need of water if he wants to fix the hoarseness of it. But you are also as quiet as you hum in response, wiping your eyes with the backs of your hands and turning your head to look at him. 

He doesn't say anything as he coaxes you into his welcoming arms, fingers brushing against your scalp, and accepting your heavy hearted emotions as they are. He lets your walls crumble, and holds on as you sob into his chest, dampening the fabric of his shirt in a way he doesn't particularly like, but he will ignore it for you. 

There's a layer of distaste for the position you are in that almost wills you to rip his arms off of you. Guilt coincides with self loathing more often than not, and he is holding you as if you are soft. 

You are not.

"Do you ever think about dying?" you whisper.

There is silence in his apartment that follows your question, and your eyes transfix on the glow of the moon through the sheer curtains on his windows. It blurs with the fabric, the illusion of a fuzzy circle. You wouldn't know it was the moon if you weren't holding onto its existence with a vicelike grip. 

"I do," he finally provides you, predictably so. "A lot."

"I didn't," you reply, clasping your fingers with his own hand, tracing circles over his knuckles to focus your mind. "Not intensely. Did you know being shot can sometimes feel like nothing?"

"For the first few moments, yes," he nods. Of course he did. "It's due to the nerve networks being our receptors for pain, as opposed to the tactile sensors. Signals move slower between the brain and the nociceptors, which are our pain receptors."

"Do you think he felt nothing when he died?"

A question weighing tonnes. He's silent for a few crucial moments, and you slowly come to your own conclusion of what the answer would be. Probably yes, for you had located where the bullet landed after you'd fired it, and you knew whatever pain receptors he had still functioning would never get those signals to his brain. He was brain dead before he'd even hit the floor. 

"I can't tell you what he felt for absolute certain," he replies, gently shaking your body out of its frozen position so he could lift your limbs atop of his own. He lets you finish the movement of climbing into his lap, face burying into his neck, his arms encircled tight around your waist. "You'll drive yourself crazy thinking about this."

"I feel crazy."

"Honey," he places his palms on either side of your head and pulls it back so he can look at you, thumbs collecting the tears that fall from the movement. "Why is this overwhelming you?"

"I killed someone, Spencer," your voice wavers as you speak, cutting in and out, and you were already so quiet. 

"You killed a man who killed a lot of people," he reasons. "Do you think he sat awake each night and pondered how they felt dying?"

"No, but—"

"—Then why are you?"

You stare at him in bewilderment for a few moments. You're aware there is a point within his accusatory words, but it does not communicate entirely, and you do not like the disdain for the man in front of you that wells in your chest. 

"Because I'm not a psychopath," you murmur, fingers beginning to fidget with the hem of his own shirt. 

He lets out a puff of air that hits your lips signalling his slight frustration, but he nods his head. 

You call him out on it anyways.

"You're angry with me."

He offers you a small smile. 

"I am not angry with you," his fingers poke your sides, and you squirm. "I'm watching you disappear in front of my eyes. I'm concerned."

Reasoning with him is futile. 

Reasoning with him had been futile. He had his forearm wrapped tightly around a nineteen year old girl's throat, and a gun indenting into her temple. Morgan still tried to, and you'd watched nearly helplessly as the bullet clicked into place in the chamber. 

Car crashes move time slowly, it's said. Watching a girl nearly die has the same effect, you suppose. Everything was so clear. You could map out every ridge on the gun, down to its tiniest, minute details. Every engraved line, the rest for his palm roughened from excessive use and sweat eroding at the metal. He was strong enough to manage both the sobbing and writhing girl in his arms and the less than light firearm, and you knew even if you had more than half a second to stop him, you could not without your gun. 

The gunshot reverberated off the concrete walls, and a loud ringing followed you weren't used to. You'd heard gunshots before. You were inured to the sound of them ricocheting around warehouses similar to this, or the safer environment of the academy's firing range. 

It's a different feeling when it's your own gun.

It's an all encompassing feeling when you catch the eyes of the person you are shooting at milliseconds before the bullet hits them. Fear in the eyes of a killer about to be killed. How stupidly poetic.

Perhaps there is a universe out there where humans are able to die in blissful ignorance.

"I used to think I'd be okay with killing an UnSub if I had to," you're staring at the threads fraying from his sweater's neckline, and he makes no move to return your eyes to his. "They're bad people, right? Killed a lot more than me for much less. But I'm—I'm not. I don't know if I ever will be. Where does that leave me? An agent who can't even stop a serial killer without having a breakdown."

"Do you think you're the only one?"

That catches your attention, and you can see the small specks of light in his otherwise dark eyes even in this shadowed room when you catch them.

"No. I know I'm not," you croak. Warmth covers your hands, and it's only then you recognise the movement of your own body. Gripping petulantly onto his sweater were your hands, his own providing a comforting blanket. "You never talk about it, though."

"I can. Do you want me to?" 

Hesitantly, you nod, and he settles his leaning body against the bed. 

"I killed a man named Phillip Dowd when I was twenty-four," he says. "He was an L.D.S.K. Long distance serial killer. How is unimportant, but it was a hostage situation. Like yours. I felt... nothing. For weeks I continued on as if I didn't have somebody's blood on my hands."

"Must be nice," you mumble. 

He chooses not to acknowledge your words. "Gideon told me on our way home from the case that this would all hit me eventually. It took longer than it's taken you, evidently, but by the time it did came around, I let it control my life. It took taping photos of his victims to my walls to let him go."

"I don't want to do that," your knuckles wipe more falling tears, and you watch his lips turn up into a gentle smile. 

"You won't have to. Crying about it is actually much healthier than what I was doing."

You're not sure if he's lying to make you feel better, but you lean into it regardless. 

"Guilt is normal," he adds, quietly. "You're allowed to feel whatever you want to feel about this, but know that anger with yourself is displaced. You did what you had to do, and a lot of good people are alive because of what you did."

"Are you reciting a book to me?" you ask, and there is a warmth that blossoms in your chest when he huffs out a short laugh. 

"Regurgitating the very advice I got when this happened to me, actually," he tilts his head and brings it in closer to yours. "The third was, I'm proud of you."

"For killing a man?" you whisper. 

"For being brave enough to do the only move you had left."

"Is there really nothing else I could've done, though?"

There probably were a thousand things you could've done. You could've ran into him earlier in life and saved him from impotency. You could've been a childhood best friend that brought him out of a shell. You could've been his first kill that set the FBI after him immediately and stopped him from hurting anyone else. But his series of life events, and your own, ran parallel to each other until you were in that room with him pulling the trigger. A frustrating realisation that you can only let life run its course the way it's been meticulously threaded out for you, and the impacts you make on people's lives will be specific and forever preplanned by the fates. 

"No," Spencer tells you, anyways, and you accept his one worded answer as the summary of your own spiralling thoughts. "Let's get you back to bed, yeah?"

"Yeah," you mumble, absentmindedly. 

Your consciousness is outside your body as he helps you up, and you crawl inside the covers next to him. You can barely feel the cotton of sheets against your skin, nor the ghost of his hands on your hips as he pulls you close enough to him. 

Distantly, he says goodnight to you, and reminds you he loves you. He doesn't press for a response, and you don't remember to give him one.

your reblogs and replies are always appreciated ♡

[whetstonefires]

My personal take on how we're supposed to understand the role of Wei Wuxian's alternate cultivation method in fucking him up so bad is that:

It's deliberately ambiguous; he never actually does anything that's so utterly out of character it has to be attributed to Evil Energies. And at each stage of deterioration, he always has exciting new traumas precipitating the decline. I think we're set up to expect him to have been more explicitly Corrupted By Dark Magics than he ever turns out to have been, because that's a very standard trope that's being played with. But like, he went into Tunnel Vision Murder Mode just fine on his own, during his effort to get Jiang Cheng back right after the massacre; Wen Ning really struggled to talk him down enough to accept help, and he remained a paranoid mess all the way to Yiling. That's all trauma, no dark magic yet! Equally, a lot of stuff from the Burial Mounds on could be driven in part by direct contact with ghosts and ghouls being bad for his mental health on a spiritual pollution basis. But a lot of it is very definitely PTSD, and the isolating effects of having to keep his disability secret, especially from the person he should be most able to lean on, but can't.

A big part of why it wasn't fucking him up worse was that he'd lost his core. You know how Nie Mingjue died? How the Nie sect leaders usually die? Qi deviation, due to corruption from the resentful spirits of dead animals. Well, actually due to Jin Guangyao, but it followed the expected pattern, and resulted in him losing his mind to the point of killing anyone he could reach. This is a cultivator-specific problem, something that arises from having a cultivation base that gets warped out of true. And the stronger they are, the worse it gets; the more inevitable and extreme the dissolution. The details of the Nie problem are secret, but its underlying principles are common knowledge. Wei Wuxian was uniquely positioned as a talented, experienced cultivator who no longer had a cultivation base to fuck up. Being able to push the corpse path as far as he did without going into a fatal qi deviation or otherwise blowing himself up was due to this special circumstance--normally, anyone with the expertise to operate at that level has built up their cultivation to a high enough level to be vulnerable to corruption, and anyone without a cultivation base to send into deviation has no way to have developed the necessary skills with manipulating energy and so forth. (And probably doesn't have a sufficient background education either, and if they do have the education and yet no cultivation to speak of, they probably lack talent.) Even apart from his unique genius, no one else could have done it. He should have gone crazy and died, years earlier. A cultivator would have. Which was a big part of the reason he didn't really engage on the subject at all, and just focused on deflection and stonewalling everyone, rather than trying to make a case for himself. And why he wasn't taking outside opinions about the risk seriously, because they didn't know what they were talking about, and he couldn't afford for them to think too hard about why they were wrong.

So when he ultimately had the massive murder breakdown, everyone understood it as a purely personal thing that was happening inside of him due to his personal choice to live a self-destructive lifestyle, validating the righteousness of everyone who didn't make that choice. Rather than the result of largely-systemic external forces acting on him and his loved ones to the point that he broke. And society didn't have to assume any responsibility whatsoever.

[scoobydoodean]

dean would be the most dedicated boyfriend/husband & i hate the way people talk about him like he’s a player who could “never settle down”.. please he just needs a moment of affection 🥲

People love to rewrite literally every single fucking thing that happened with the Braedens into various made up stories passed on as fact, but when Dean was with the Braedens, he treated Ben like a son. He taught him how to work on cars. He cooked Lisa and Ben breakfast every morning. He contributed to the household. They specifically wrote a scene where a pretty waitress passed her number to Dean while he was out with a neighbor and Dean disposed of it without a second thought (6.01). He didn't leave the Braedens so he could go fuck someone else. He left because his presence put Lisa and Ben in danger and then soulless Sam (who had ulterior motives) convinced him he was going to ruin their lives and probably get them murdered and his PTSD went haywire and 6.01, 6.02, 6.05, and finally 6.21 reinforced all his fears about them being hurt because of The Curse Of Loving Dean Winchester, and it left him feeling so upset and scared of them being hurt that he thought it was better for their safety if he cut ties.

Long before all that, Dean was so in love with Cassie that he told her about hunting after just a couple of months and then he was heartbroken when she rejected him and he was willing to be vulnerable enough to tell her so directly. The idea of Dean as some kind of suave playboy who could never settle down because he likes to fuck and suck too much is just ???? Like quite arguably, Dean seeks out casual sex as a substitute for the affection he wishes he could share with a life partner, but liking sex and having casual hookups isn't a crime and doesn't preclude a person from being interested in a long-term relationship and/or a stable home (something we know Dean was actively aching for at various points from episodes like 1.13, 2.20, 3.10, 5.12, 5.17). It was that he felt he couldn't have those things because of the circumstances of his life, and the narrative repeatedly reinforced that belief, and Dean eventually settled into peace with the fact that he has a family anyway despite everything!! It just isn't a traditional family. And he also gets a stable home and his own room!!! It's just underground and warded so he feels safe and cosy. People not recognizing that Dean DOES have a family and a home carry the same confusion as John in 14.13 (who also—btw—always knew that Dean wanted a home THE MOST).

JOHN My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you – you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would… get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family. DEAN I have a family.

HE HAS A FAMILY. It just isn't the traditional family!!! And Dean is very loyal to that family and he takes care of that family he is the hearth of the house!!!

[tigersharkapologist]

Caracalla was, understandably, simply having a mental attack because the people were calling for their heads—but I like the little detail that Caracalla literally cannot think of one bad thing his brother did to him other than “trying to strangle him in the womb” lol. Which implies that Geta was that good of a brother to him.

_______________________________________________

bonus because I think there’s way more to it than just being Ha Ha Funny Gag to Lighten Tension and because I have a hyperanalyzation for hyperfixations problem:

TW: mentions of physical and emotional abuse, child abuse, bullying and murder

That or the darker undertone being that he cannot remember anything bad Geta did because of his memory loss from neurosyphilis (a disease that can cause memory loss). Which also implies that he probably doesn’t remember any of the crude specifics of the abuse they had to undergo in their childhood—only how it made him feel. Which is why, if you look really closely at his facial expressions during his episode, he hesitated only a little at the mention of that, but still didn’t falter entirely.

An even darker undertone being that he was experiencing so much of a specific kind of stress that his brain assumed it was being attacked by the same assailant that he had dealt with as a kid, Septimius Severus. So much so that it went into fight or flight. Caracalla was shouting “you lie!! You always lie!!” at his brother. From what we can tell with the little screentime we got of them, Geta has never shown to have any malicious intentions towards his brother, he had quite the opposite actually. He never lied to him. Like ever. But you know who probably DID lie to them constantly?

Their. Despicable. Sleazebag. Narcissistic. No show. Parents.

What if the neurosyphilis combined with the onslaught of the immense stress he was experiencing (so much so that it threw him into a fight response) made him believe Geta was Septimius? Think about it. Caracalla is under the full influence of an injured brain, and that same brain is being influenced by a hyper aggressive disease; neurosyphilis. What if he was so affected by the lies told to him in his childhood, that the minute he figures out something is a lie, or suspects of lying, it causes him to snap. Look at how he got with Acacius when he found out that his loyalty was basically a lie.

Lies cause him that much stress, they have to be connected with abuse. Look at him!! Lies are definitely his PTSD trigger.

Roping it back to Geta’s death. ,, Caracalla’s amnesia and panic response from his PTSD very well could have made him confuse Geta with their father. Though not all, it is not unheard of that survivors of immense physical abuse (in Caracalla’s case—being constantly punched and beaten up by a grown man when he was like?? 10??) attack someone close who they’ve confused with their abuser when an episode strikes. (keep in mind these are rarer cases but Caracalla is a rare and extreme case himself). It could be a huge possibility that Caracalla mistook Geta as their father and, he (understandably sick of Geta standing in between his father and taking those blows for him) decided to take his father head on and strike back—ultimately killing who his brain confused as Septimius. Another reason I believe this is because he literally reverted back to childlike tendencies and hid under the table when he felt this stress. Trembling, crying, whimpering, a very sore sight. It was as if he was taken back to the time where he felt this kind of fear before-- because that's literally what happened. I genuinely do not think Caracalla would ever kill Geta, his brother, his closest and only real friend. Even if he wasn’t in his right mind. Those two have lived through hell together, those trauma bonds are the strongest bonds Ive ever seen. They could fight, they could get real disgusting towards eachother, but I know nothing could break that sibling trauma bond, and I speak from experience. You could hate that man but he will always be your ride or die. Geta and Caracalla were TIGHT. He had to have confused him with his father during his PTSD episode. I highly doubt thats what the directors were going for but UHH idc lol that's what aus are for.

I want to know more about Septimius Severus. Was it just beating up his kids? I'm not undermining the grotesqueness of those actions, I want to know what else he did. It was clear he was a liar, it was clear he was a physically abusive "father” (he doesn't even deserve that title), but if it was so easy for him to hit his kids, than that opens up a whole new possibility of things he did. Like if it was so easy for him to punch a child, what else was easy for him? Did he refuse to feed them? Did he refuse to give them any gifts or luxuries? Is that why the twins are overindulgent to the point they suffer from it? Did he lock them out of the house to freeze in order to assert dominance? Did he publicly shame them as punishment? Did he shame them for the way they looked? How they were an embarrassment to the family name because of their appearance being too similar to the barbaric northern tribes they were conquering? Were plates thrown at them? Were they bullied by other children in their age group for having unloving parents? Did anyone worry for them? Did any bystander care? Did anyone ever intervene? Did they cower in fear of facing that same wrath that those children were forced to endure? What was the twins reaction to the death of their father? Were they overjoyed? Were they hollow? Were they, in a twist, mournful? Did they ever have real friends? Like friends that they didn't need to change themselves to feel accepted?

_____________________________________________

To pivot off that last sentence (not really related to the main point at all but I NEED to say it),

I don’t think so on that last one. I think they had to change themselves entirely and put on this fake persona in fear of being disliked. They did everything to follow the Patrician crowd, everything that made their lives even worse. And I bet you they thought they were making friends.

Nah. They were making temporary fragile alliances. For every 10 “friends” they’d make, 1000 enemies would be formed. And I bet you further that the Patrician didn’t respect them at all. Those blue bloods know when there’s blood in the water and they know that the two changed and rewired themselves just for acceptance. In their eyes, Caracalla and Geta are weak emperors (unfortunately they are. Conquesting counts do not equal to strength in oneself); easily replaced. And if Macrinus was thinking it, you can count on the rest of them, too. Remember in that deleted scene where Caracalla forgot he killed his brother? EVERYBODY knew about the murder but him and NOBODY batted an eye. Either they were scared of Macrinus (which I doubt they even knew he was apart of said murder) or they DEAD AHH DID NOT CARE ABOUT GETA LIKE AT ALL. THEY DIDNT LOOK EVEN SLIGHTLY UNCOMFORTABLE BRO 😭🙏. It was the SENATORS. SENATORS. That looked shocked. They weren’t even going to say “ave Dondas” out of pure shock until Macrinus said it first to pressure them.

Enough of my prattling. In conclusion, Caracalla is so far off the deep end he literally thought his own brother was his father DURING the height of his episode let me be clear (which isnt really the biggest stretch to be dead honest—it’s caracalla bless him my poor baby), is pretty much permanently ruined and scarred because nobody is going to help him—no one cared enough, and he is never EVER going to live a normal happy life. Geta tried so, so very hard to give him that, but in the end, the two were born hated, born broken, and the world reminded them that until both of their untimely ends.

[goodnightbuckos]

I haven't posted any meta or much of anything on this side blog but let me put in my two cents that no one asked me for.

Firstly, yeah, there is gonna be a B plot. It was directly related to the A plot, because it was straight up, not even subtlely, about Athena coming to terms with Bobby's death. The denial and the hope that even if you think is foolish, especially a death so sudden. It also gave us a little glimpse of the impact Bobby had, on these people we've never even seen, that reminds us that Bobby had a whole life, and used his pain to feed his empathy and compassion. It also is just like, the thing about grief is that life doesn't stop. It can't stop, that's not possible. Things keep happening. Time keeps moving. The show has said that repeatedly, from Chimney after the rebar to Eddie dealing with his PTSD to Bobby's literal entire storyline. The characters still exist. They're still moving. They have to learn to live with that grief as they move forward.

Secondly, the episode wasn't solely about Bobby specifically because it was about his impact and his absence. He's gone. There's a Bobby shaped hole now. They could've gone for a full flashback "best of" episode, but the thing that this show has been clear about, to the point that Chimney even says it to Hen, is that funerals are for the living. This episode is about the characters still here. About the anger and unfairness and love lost. That's part of why the hallucination of Bobby acted a little strangely, too - it's not him. And it's not about him. It's about Athena. They didn't do more Bobby-centric flashbacks because that's the past, and the characters have to move forward.

Thirdly, yes, the episode focused heavily on two of characters: Athena and Chimney. They were the ones this narratively hits hardest. That's not to say that the grief felt by any other character is less important; they're all devastated. But this is still a continuation of the story from the two parter, this is the first ripples felt from that.

Athena’s lost her husband, she's angry and so filled with grief and she's distracting herself. She was letting herself hope, because if this kid isn't dead, maybe Bobby isn't either. She's going to be feeling this for a long time, but she's found her footing again. She's got her kids and friends to lean on. It's actually an interesting foil to Bobby’s story, because whereas he lost his wife and kids and ended up alone until Athena, this time around he's the one gone, leaving behind a wife and two kids. It's heartbreaking! It's supposed to be! It's a tragedy!

Chimney, on the other hand, is angry at Bobby for not even giving them a chance, even though he still hasn't come up with a way they could've changed anything. He's probably remembering that he asked Bobby to look after Maddie, and realizing that that's the moment Bobby decided he wasn't saying anything, because he says, "I won't let anything bad happen to your family." Bobby worded that very carefully, and Chimney knows why now. And he has to sit with that. It's not his fault, and it's kind of messed up for Bobby to have done it, but he purposefully took that choice away from them because he knew they would never be able to make that choice. Chimney hasn't accepted that yet. He's not talking to anybody yet. He's drinking, which could either be self harm or maybe, even deep down, he's doing it because he wants Bobby to come back and make him stop, or in a really fucked up way to punish either Bobby or himself, most likely both. It's ironic, in a way, because Bobby’s accidentally put Chimney in a similar headspace to season 1 Bobby.

Of course other characters deserve their time to grieve. It's one episode. Bobby's impact is gonna be felt every day for these characters. There's two episodes and entire 9th season to get into it if they want. Give it some time, there's only so much they can put in an episode logistically, especially with an ensemble cast. You can stop watching if you want, no one's making you watch, but if you're gonna keep watching, you gotta understand that.

[syzthefrizz]

Tips for writing dream sequences (from someone who has really vivid, weird dreams on a frequent basis)

My biggest pet peeve with fictional dream sequences is that they make too much sense!! They're too relevant! There's not enough random crazy stuff! That's not always unrealistic per se, but you are missing out on some of the fun ways you can reveal information about your character's mindset, fears, struggles, and future.

Most of my dreams have a goal or objective driving the plot, and it's usually urgent. Ex. "escape the huge storm on the horizon", "find a place to sleep for the night in an unfamiliar town", "find a bathroom". This is especially true of stress dreams.

Everything going on in the dream makes perfect sense to you during the dream. It doesn't feel like reality per se, but you think it is. You're living in a house full of vampires that could eat you at any moment? Seems legit.

Emotions and situations from the dreamer's life can/will find their way into dreams, with varying levels of subtlety. The dream could be about the stressful event itself, or it could be some sort of exaggerated metaphor. Ex. I was worried about whether I was a competent CS major while I was still trying to find a summer job/internship, and I was worried about what my professors must think of me. Such a good student on paper, still without summer plans. I dreamed that I ran into my professors all having lunch together at a restaurant (during a dream with a completely different storyline), and I was wearing my pajamas. They judged me.

Certain things are very hard to do in dreams. This could vary from person to person. For me, it's always driving (the brakes never work right), flying (I can't stay off the ground for very long), and running (it's like trying to run through waist-deep water).

People with PTSD may dream about the traumatic event happening differently than it actually happened. (Take this one with a grain of salt - I don't suffer from PTSD, I just research it sometimes so my blorbos can suffer accurately).

You can have a string of loosely connected or disconnected dream sequences back to back, each with an entirely different plot, setting, etc.

People can have reoccurring themes or plotlines in their dreams, which are often connected to their lives/psyche somehow. I frequently dream about running away from tornadoes and being in situations where there's some catastrophe coming but I'm the only one who understands that there's a problem and nobody will listen to me.

It's common for me to have a dream setting that I KNOW is someplace I'm familiar with, but it doesn't actually look like that place at all. Ex. "I dreamed that we were at my house, but it didn't look like my house..."

Dreams can end in cliffhangers. Sometimes I wake up right before I'm about to eat something delicious.

Sometimes people have dreams about doing things that they would never, ever do in real life, and they wake up feeling disgusted. This is Not a manifestation of their secret desires (*glares at Freud*).

Images are the most memorable parts of dreams. I forget the specific plot points, but I can still picture dozens of liminal spaces my brain has created, even years after I dreamed about it.

Dreams will fade from memory very quickly unless the dream had a strong impression on you, you write details about it down or you tell someone about it before you forget.

If you realize you're dreaming during your dream, sometimes you can control the dream going forward. This is called lucid dreaming. I've done it accidentally a couple times, and it's really hard to "hold on" to the dream and control it. I usually wake up soon after starting. With practice, you can get better at it.

Sometimes a normal/good dream can turn into a nightmare, and vice versa. Most of my dreams aren't really good or bad, they're something in between.

Your subconscious brain is CRAZY intuitive. We can argue over the existence of prophetic dreams (I've heard so many crazy stories), but at the end of the day, your subconscious brain knows things that you don't consciously know. If your character is in love with someone, their subconscious brain will know even if the character doesn't. Relationship problems? Deepest darkest fears and insecurities? Your brain knows. A dream predicted the downfall of my first relationship eight months before it happened, down to the reason why we failed. You can absolutely foreshadow this way. A character might subconsciously know what the consequences of their or other people's actions will be, understand things about the situation they're in, know things about the people they're interacting with, and more, despite their conscious realizations.

There are plenty of ways to make a dream sequence relevant to your story, but don't forget to add in some fun, random details. Character A is secretly in love with Character B? Have Character A dream about Character B confessing feelings to them while in a Vine Nostalgia themed restaurant over a plate of mac-n-cheese. The details are the fun part, and you can get as weird as you want. I once ran into my aunt in a dream, and she was wearing a backpack with a bunch of (fake?) hands sticking out of it, making a fan that rose above her back behind her head like some sort of peacock feather costume piece. I was so freaked out that I woke up. I dare you to get weirder than that.

Not everyone's brain works the same way. I have vivid, random, detailed, memorable dreams on a frequent basis. When I describe them to people they often ask "what were you on?". My roommate only remembers her dreams when they're nightmares. I have some friends who say they don't dream. Other friends have really boring, mundane dreams about their normal lives. Some people have weird dreams but only once in a blue moon. It's a good idea to decide off the bat what kinds of dreams your character has, and how often they remember them.

That's it for now, but I might make a part two if I think of more things to add. Feel free to reblog with your own personal dream expertise!

[gtwscratch]

so I just realized I’ve never asked an ACTUAL question for this blog which is WILD considering I’ve been here since joel so here!

1. does scar have like heavy ptsd when he gets a bit *too* jumpy and accidentally kills some of the scientists? if so, does he feel guilt at all? yk, considering they ruined his and his friends lives.

2. where did that scar on martyns leg appear?

3. what *are* some of the tests these scientists do? if that can be revealed rn lol. (if so, you can just list one character and the experiments done on them. would be cool to know!!)

4. was grian captured first? how did his feelings change overtime if so? (if a different person was captured first, how did they feel?)

okay I’ve done my part to actually contribute to this au let’s gooooo 💥💥

1.) Yes, he’s 100% got PTSD. Every time he’s killed someone, it’s been an accident. And he feels absolutely horrible every time it happens because they’re people. Sure, they’ve treated him and his friends absolutely horrifically, and none of them will recover from the shit they’ve been through, but those are still people with families and friends outside of the facility.

2.) I assume you mean when, and I have no idea. I just thought it looked cool and wanted to reference some of cherrifire’s art. :)

3.) Uhhh I have no idea. This is goi bc to come as a shock, but I’m actually really squeamish with like.. needles and doctors and stuff. If you start talking about going to the doctor’s, I’ll immediately start feeling anxious. Luckily I have friends who aren’t squeamish with all that, and they’ve agreed to help me when I get to that point. Some of it does have to do with things like needles, and blood tests, and endurance and stuff like that, but others are more specific to what their powers are. So, for example, they’d test how far Impulse can teleport. They’d see how long Lizzie can make her shadows last. They’d test how far Martyn could hear and at what frequency he could hear at. You get the picture.

4.) Yeah, Grian was the first, but not by a very long period of time. Everyone was taken within a couple of days of each other, the whole process of their “collection” taking about a week. But for the few hours that he was the sole subject, he was scared out of his mind.

Thank you for such a variety of questions!

[cocogum]

The Great Wave - Chapter 15 Review

‼️SPOILERS FOR THE CHAPTER‼️

This was....very unexpected.

But I can imagine how many joris fans went crazy over the reveals in this chapter 💕💕💕

At first, when we all saw the locked 15th chapter cover, we all assumed that Grougalorasalar had been quick enough to find Joris and possess him. The idea mainly surfaced around because of the face Joris made on the cover.

But when we actually read the chapter, it turns out that Joris was actually just doing that face because he was listing all the excuses Kerubim and Atcham had been making to not help around the shop lol

Joris fans got worried for no reason 😝😝

Now this is where shit gets weird cuz the second Joris is distracted, he catches a thief on time and....

Uh....

I don't know what to think of this.

Joris literally caught some heavy PTSD flashbacks all in under a second just by looking at this girl.

Is this supposed to be Lilotte??!

What the hell???!! Since when??!

She died like a long time ago. Didn't she grow up and have a family?? She even ended up having grandchildren when we look at the games.

She looks EXACTLY like Lilotte! Even her eye has a black mark like hers. The only things missing are her bell on her head and a black dot on her right cheek. The similarities are really uncanny....

I was actually caught off guard when I saw this because I genuinely thought that the thief was going to be a new character or whatever. I never thought in a million years that it could end up being one of Joris' old friends!

Unless this little girl is one of four possibilities: 1) a current descendant of Lilotte who bears a strong resemblance to her, 2) Lilotte herself reincarnated for some reason, 3) someone unrelated by blood who just happens to look like her, or 4) as suggested by @ducks-and-teapots, she could be the creature featured on the cover of chapter 17. This cover, to be exact: 👇

We do not know who this character in the 17th chapter could be, but based on what @ducks-and-teapots theorizes, there's a chance that it's a creature with shape-shifting abilities.

I believe in the first and fourth possibilities, as they both make the most sense. However, there could always be an answer that is none of these options.

When she runs away and leaves a scarred Joris behind, why do Kerubim and Atcham react differently? They have both seen and spoken to Lilotte before and remember their past lives. The only explanation I can think of is that they must not have clearly seen the girl's face. This would explain why they are worried and confused by Joris freezing up.

My god it's been centuries for this guy...Can you imagine seeing someone who identically looks like your closest friend from a few decades ago? You'd be traumatized for life cuz honestly wtf-

Joris decides to run after the girl while Atcham and Kerubim are thinking that he's very committed to catching the thief lol

But while this is going on, the second thing that shocked me about the chapter happened.

Right when the little girl hides under the sewers of Bonta and joins the other Ouginaks, she specifically walks up to a shadowy figure.

By now, I just have so many questions.

Why is there a little girl that looks just like Lilotte? If she's a descendant of hers, then why does she live under the sewers when Lilotte's children and grandchildren were not homeless? Why are there so many ouginaks in Bonta's sewers??? Why is she approaching that figure? AND WHO IS THAT SHADOWY FIGURE???

I can only guess that she's walking up to him to make him look into the ring she stole. But other than that, we can't figure out if she knows the shadowy guy on a personal level just yet. It's possible that she only came up to him because he works with jewels and precious stones (based on what's on his work table).

But something tells me that there's more to this than just the figure who's going to check out a random ring that she stole. It could be the ring itself that's important since Joris does manage a shop filled with magic items. The girl did pick out a random ring when she could've stolen anything else after all.

In addition to that, there's also the fact that the figure doesn't look like a twelvian. Like he looks like he's got scales. Like a dragon. And because of that detail, I'm assuming it could be this guy in the next chapter.

I could be imagining things but that's all I got right now.

I'm still bothered by the Lilotte doppelganger though.

Cuz when it came to the Great Wave, I had assumed that I was bound to see Joris and his family. But NEVER Lilotte. Or whoever this girl is supposed to be.

[marshvlovestv]

So basically my Ghosts neurodivergence headcanons at this point are: Sam, ADHD; Pete, autism; Patience, OCD; Sass and Hetty, depression; and Isaac, uhh.... is in Cluster B somewhere (I say vaguely so as not to be misunderstood, but to be clear, personality disorders are really just a collection of deeply ingrained coping mechanisms and the fact that I can recognize this in Isaac is actually something I like about him!). Not to mention, all of the ghosts have PTSD to some extent, if not from traumas that happened in life, then from the memory of actually literally dying.

But the thing I find most interesting has to do with Flower, because her neurodivergence is mythology-specific. She wasn't an addict or anything in life, she just happened to be very, very high when she died, and now, as a ghost, she is permanently under the influence of drugs. Her brain does not work the same way it did when she was alive, and that's just something she has to live with now. It's just a really interesting angle on neurodivergence to me.

It also makes me wonder about Trevor, who died of an overdose. They're not specific about what he took and I don't personally know what kind of shit rich finance bros take, but just based on how he behaves I feel like it's not too much of a stretch to say he's a little more... wired? all the time? than he maybe would have been in life? Idk.

Also Alberta: she didn't seem like she was actually drunk before she got poisoned, but maybe the moonshine worked its way into her system as the strychnine did. Maybe she's a little bit tipsy all the time!

[literaila]

HEYYYY!! It's me again!!

I have two things to discuss today.

Firstly, have you seen those reels where Megumi reminds Gojo of Toji and he gets freaked out? So has this ever happened in the Gojo household? If yes, how dramatic does Satoru act?

Secondly, I have a request, It would absolutely make my day to see Satoru jealous. (Yes, I know we saw a it with Nanami, but can you blame a girl to want more?) Like if the reader got hit on, I am sure he'll pull something like he did to Megumi with Nobara and Yuji.

Thank you for reading this,

You are amazing and I love you.

(I'll do anything you ask me to.)

no doubt, for the first couple of months (two years) megumi lived with satoru, every time the boy woke up in the morning with his hair deflated, or walked in the room scratching his head, or sat on the couch, or went into the bathroom—satoru had to refrain a wince.

it’s not that the likeness was uncanny… but… well, the attitude was.

when megumi had on that evil smirk—usually when one of his many plots against satoru came to fathom—it was clear that the very man satoru had erased from existence had shared some of his more… admirable qualities with the boy.

sometimes it was the way megumi spoke. the tiny little inflections that satoru was probably making up, but were also definitely there. the little sigh when he asked the boy a question or the clearing of a throat when megumi was confused.

and the eyes.

megumi’s eyes were always cold, always hesitant, always moving around, constantly looking for some problem to focus on. and his glares, and his eyebrows, and uuugch.

sometimes satoru had to run into the bathroom just to cower himself away for a moment.

and if megumi happened to knock on the door, already scowling when satoru opened it a crack, really, the gasp that came next was unavoidable.

“what’s up with you?” megumi demands, shaking his head at the older, very immature man. “can you move?”

said man would open the door as little as possible as he squeezed by, trying and failing not to stare at the little boy—who has very dark hair, dark eyes, and dark intent specifically when it comes to satoru.

none of it goes unnoticed.

so if satoru is leaning over the counter, his eyes pleading with yours, you already know what it’s about.

(you’d learned about satoru’s weird superstition about two days into becoming his co-parent).

“no,” you say immediately, going back to making both of the children’s lunch.

“i didn’t say anything.”

“still no, satoru.”

“but, please,” he falls against the counter dramatically, wide blue (alien) eyes basically perfect spheres as he widens them. “just this once?”

“it’s a supply store.”

he shakes his head intently. “that’s not the issue.”

you give him a bland look, unamused with his stupid qualms, and put the lid on a container.

“he looks freaky,” satoru whispers, conspiring. “there’s something off.”

you look over to megumi who is sitting at the table, swinging his legs and chewing on some cut up ginger.

he looks as pleasant (frowning) and sweet (irritated) as always to you.

you raise a brow at satoru, choosing not to argue with him about this. god knows you do it enough.

“do you want me to cry?” satoru asks, pouting. “i have ptsd.”

you roll your eyes. “ever heard of exposure therapy?“

so satoru takes megumi to the store to get markers and papers for a school project, giving him questionable glances from beneath his glasses, and making weird comments under his breath about psychopaths and plastic surgery.

when they get home megumi is annoyed as ever, attempting to slam the door in satoru’s face before he can walk through.

you’re, of course, sitting with tsumiki at the table and watch as this interaction happens.

megumi stomps by and tells you, “please kick him out. he’s being weird again.”

and satoru just opens the door, red faced, finger pointing at the little boy, demanding: “see?”

so, yeah. satoru suffers with the memory of toji, and his biggest ideation (hurting the six-eyes user) comes to life in the form of a little boy who now lives in his home. just two rooms down the hall.

seriously, who really won that fight?

but as the months (years) go on, satoru learns to mostly ignore the resemblance between the two. sure, when megumi wears his hair differently or says anything in that rough, angry voice satoru gets a little freaked, but so what?

(if he has to go sit in his closet for a couple of minutes it’s just because he’s tired, okay? it has nothing to do with being afraid of a six year old or anything of the sort).

still, things slowly begin to change as megumi grows accustomed to satoru’s antics, and satoru becomes accustomed to being called out for them.

(you do it occasionally, but satoru knows you’re mostly joking. you’re nothing if not the benefactor of his schemes.

on the other hand, the only other person to ever seriously call him out about his ego was… suguru.

so. there’s that.)

and eventually, satoru doesn’t even notice if megumi is looking at him with devious intent. he’s well prepared and not afraid of some whiny little kid who can’t even reach the top shelf in the fridge.

(he hides behind you, usually.)

but even satoru can’t ignore the way megumi begins to change as he grows. literally, several inches by the time he’s eight.

and then there’s the way his eyes��his cold, evil eyes—change when he’s talking to tsumiki, or you. the way he softens when you’re trying to tell him something, or when he needs help. the tiny, affectionate grin that grows on his face when tsumiki is bouncing around, so full of energy that she can’t sit still.

satoru looks at him sometimes, and he doesn’t see the gifted sorcerer killer that the boy comes from, but a brother. a son that gets to be adored by the best person in the world (him you)

that is, of course, until megumi looks satoru’s way and the scowl is back, even harsher than before.

and then theres the learned attitudes, the things that you all shared—you, satoru, and the kids—just as a result of being together for so long.

isn’t there something about developing the traits of the people closest to you?

so, even though megumi is a photo copy of his father, satoru begins to see other things in the boy.

like the crinkles by his eyes, matching tsumiki’s.

or the way that his eyebrows go up when he’s trying not to smile, and the eventual twitch of his lip when he can’t help but laugh at something. satoru’s dreamed of that sight since he was seventeen and first set his eyes on you.

and then the eventual pout that megumi develops when he’s giving everyone a hard time. the pout that satoru practices in the mirror, making sure to save for only the most dire of occasions.

(also, satoru can’t help but think of megumi as the thing that keeps him… humble, in the face of everything. that question that continuously reminds satoru to keep growing, keep getting stronger, just so he can protect everything that matters.

he won’t admit it, but satoru knows that someone had to do it. someone had to be a replacement for the only other person who could ever compare to the strongest sorcerer.

and if suguru could meet megumi, satoru thinks, sometimes, when no one else is around to hear it, they would get along.

they have a lot in common, after all).

sure, megumi might have the same face, and same smirk as toji. he might as well be a literal clone of the man, just waiting to age into his skin.

but, satoru decides, one day a couple of years in, when there’s that innate protective feeling as he observes the boy—one that satoru never thought he had, much less be able to feel—maybe it’s more that toji resembles megumi, and not the other way around.

so satoru doesn’t flinch anymore because megumi’s face brings up memories he’d prefer to keep locked away—he flinches because megumi was waiting in the shadows.

just to scare him.

(secaond idea is here)

[yellowhollyhock]

I feel like both Don and Raph could have helped Leo during his ptsd arc. Raph would be the only one who understands Leo’s anger and Don would understand almost getting everyone killed in his cased killed cuz of SAINW.

super sweet idea! I think it's true that they both would be able to relate to him in different ways, and it makes sense they'd try to reach him on those grounds. To be honest, I think that's exactly what would make it difficult for them to help--or well, not by necessity, but what did make it difficult for them to help

Anyways you gave me an excuse to overanalyze Don's reaction to Leo's ptsd arc, and while I'm here I'm doing Raph and Mikey as well

Okay let's talk about Donny. I've thought about this one a lot. We don't ever canonically see him dealing with what he saw in that alternate universe, other than immediately after when he hugs Mikey and Raph. But we can imagine. He's already someone who puts a lot of pressure on himself (ie Underground City). Now the big threat that's been weighing so heavy on him for so long, the thing that he went to the future and saw there was no way to beat except to sacrifice themselves, is gone.

He can finally rest.

And I do feel like that's the attitude we see. He's eager to take out some aggression on the PDs when they show up at the farmhouse, but it's not Obsessive Mode Donatello. Compared to how we know he gets when he thinks something is his fault or that someone needs him help, he Chillin. Also he immediately develops a crush on Jhanna. I mean that's just one reading, but as a lesbo recovering from severe emotional repression I think I know the face of a traumatized soul seeking solace in the idea of a future and falling too hard too fast for Stronk Smort Gorl as soon as she gives him a bit of attention, not that I, ahem, have uh, direct experience or anything

Anyway

I think he's making a very deliberate choice to stop taking things so seriously--to be a kid for the little bit of time he has left to be a kid. To cling on tightly to his relationships with his brothers above all else, because he knows (and likely has it fresh in his mind) he could lose them. Goofing off with Mikey isn't a distraction, it's a priority.

And then Leo is doubling down on being child soldiers. To Donny, all that work they did was to escape that life. Taking down the Shredder should mean, from his pov, they now get to focus on just living, building themselves a little corner of the world they can just stay in and be happy.

I had a breakdown of multiple episodes demonstrating this but my app crashed and it all got deleted so just trust me ok

Big important example though: Dragons Rising. Yes, Donny understands the mission, he'll play his part to get it done, but even more pressing is to make sure he preserves the light in Mikey's eyes. Now that the Shredder is dealt with that's the next thing on his checklist to make sure that future never happens. They put on silly disguises. He wears a mustache and does an old man voice.

Then Leo doesn't see the exact results he wanted from a planned mission and chews them out for treating it like a game. I can imagine how much that remark would sting for Donny specifically, assuming his brothers know about what happened in that alternate dimension. (do you think old man Leo, listening to this sixteen-year-old insisting that they should go after Shredder again, this time they would win, ever said something, even very gently, to the effect of 'be careful Donny, this isn't a game?' y-yeah me neither)

You can hear his barely contained frustration when he defends himself and the others with, "Leo, we did the best we could."

Which is ultimately what will help Leo. That's the exact mantra that brings him through the battle with himself. But he's not hearing it from Don; to him in that moment it just sounds like an excuse. And Donny, who is also a hurting traumatized teenager, very likely doesn't appreciate his hard-earned wisdom being dismissed as childish and lazy.

Now on to Raph: he talks explicitly throughout Leo's arc about how he can see himself in it, and out of everyone, I feel like we see him most directly trying to help. He's sticking right by his side, supporting his ideas, training harder when Leo asks him to train harder. Back to Dragons Rising: in stark contrast to Donny's almost scolding comfort, Raph waits until Leo leaves and then:

"I hate to say it, but Leo's right."

Everything Leo is saying and doing makes perfect sense to Raph--as far as he's concerned, where it goes wrong is when it gets too extreme. 'Yes we do need to take this more seriously, but he shouldn't yell at us.' 'Okay training more and harder is a good idea, but how much more and harder?' He gets needing to blow off steam--he watches Leo face the rat king, and holds back (which is not an easy thing for him to do) because he thinks Leo needs to work this out of his system.

After all, that's what Raph's always done. Step outside, get some air, find someone to take it out on who deserves it so that he doesn't take it out on his brothers. But you know what else Raph is always doing when he does that?

Finding someone to help.

And that's super healthy and really healing. But it's something he does naturally because he likes to, I don't know if he's connected it with helping to manage his temper (it's easy for us to see because we're watching it, but he's living it. Hard to notice patterns when you're in the middle of them).

Anyway, blowing off steam doesn't work for Leo. Every time he faces something down on his own just further reinforces to him that he's the only one taking this seriously, and he absolutely has to be perfect in order for his family to be safe.

I think a lot about Raph, seeing Leo get mad enough to hurt Master Splinter, and then watching him be sent away. From his teenage perspective, wouldn't it feel like Leo is being punished? Wouldn't he wonder about how far he's allowed to push things, how close he might have come in the past to being sent overseas? I think Leo really needed the time for himself and understood that to some extent. He probably felt it was a just punishment as well, but I think he realized Splinter was doing what was best for him. After all, he asked for his training to go to the next level. And he doesn't want to make another mistake like that.

But for Raph? I don't think he can imagine a worse punishment than being separated from his family, especially if he just hurt one of them. That moment between Leo and Splinter had to remind him a lot of himself and Mikey. Imagine how he would've felt if the answer to that had been, 'I can't train you anymore, go to Japan to meet a man you've never heard of who will teach you how to control your temper.'

Also later on when he realizes how much it did actually help and wasn't meant to be punitive, that absolutely would twist into 'why were Leo's problems that important but mine never were.'

So why isn't Leo receptive to Raph's help? Well he is. But his goal isn't to heal. He thinks he's doing the right thing by spiraling further and further. Leo would have sucked up Raph's loyalty not unlike what Shredder did to Karai. Obviously not to the same extreme, but he would keep expecting Raph to be right behind him and work towards his goals, and Raph would've kept thinking that the Leo he knew, an undeniably down to earth Decent Guy, was still in there and would be back if he just held out and stuck around. Raph is not hard and fast with rules, he'd make allowances for his brother who is clearly going through some things. And Leo would have just kept pushing.

Wow that got dark

Anyway

They love each other very much, and ultimately, the fact that Raph did stick it out for so long was likely a big help to Leo. He just wasn't able to see it for what it was until he first shifted his priority to achieving peace within himself, instead of trying to fix the rest of the world. And I do think when he gets back, he'll remember how Raph stuck by him even when he was being very difficult. Because he really did, more than anyone.

As for Mikey, he and Leo have plenty of differences, but they've always been on the same page about one thing: the greater good.

I think Mikey sees Leo doubling down and assumes it's similar to the last time they defeated Shredder: City at War. During that time, Leo and Mikey were the ones who wanted to go out and fix the mess the city was in, stay involved in gang politics. Raph and Splinter were staunchly against it, and Donny went to support and protect the others, with him and Mikey both frequently trying to gently rein Leo in (not something they normally have to do).

Mikey sees it all happening again. Leo feels responsible for the city's safety, doesn't want to rest on their laurels, going into hyper-vigilance after a big victory as an overcorrection from overconfidence.

So Mikey leans just as hard into confidence. He's skipping on training, doubling down on the jokes, anything he can to get Leo to lighten up, or, when that doesn't work, avoid Leo whenever he can. No one likes to be constantly criticized. Just like Donny, he gets defensive: they are doing good for the city, they will keep on winning. After all, he's already a superhero, and a Battle Nexus Champion.

It makes a lot of sense he starts bragging about that again--seeking comfort from the past when the present offers none--and is unfortunate for him that Raph and Donny are just as exhausted as he is from the micro management and constant negativity, and do not take the bragging well at all.

It's also something that ends up helping Leo a lot. Directs all that energy and rage towards a goal, helps him look outside of himself by focusing on helping Mikey, balances the guilt of perceived failures (of himself and of his family) with a simple clear-cut victory. And Mikey knows it helped, he gets to see Leo being closer to himself again. It feels like he's close to a much more important victory, so he keeps pressing. He tries talking more positively about Leo, because positive words mean so much to him and are what's been missing in their home.

It helps some. It might've helped more directly after the inciting event. Either way, it's not a solution. Outside praise has never been enough for Leo, if he's decided he's not where he should be he's gonna keep pushing himself until he achieves it.

And this time 'it' is the assured safety of his family, something he honestly hasn't ever experienced before, and as far as he's concerned, takes more than all of them combined have to give

Overall, yeah I do think both Raph and Donny would've had some useful wisdom to share if 1) anyone had noticed and asked 2) they were able to separate the coping/survival skills they used to deal with their traumas from The Way Everyone Should Deal with Hard Things (big ask from teenagers--as far as they're concerned what they've been through so far is how life works).

Those conversations could've been a big help, although I don't think any amount of family talks would solve things. Leo needed the in-show equivalent of professional help. He needed time away from his family, too, so he could see more clearly what he was doing to them and himself.

I also do think all three of them will have cause to think back later on Splinter's comments that they had healed, but Leo hadn't. I get what Splinter meant by this, Leo's response was maladaptive and even immediately dangerous, but my guy, nobody's okay just a couple months after a traumatic event like that. No not even with meditation, no not even if they are laughing and playing video games. Especially considering how much those boys had already been through. Not to mention the added trauma of Leo 1) having such a drastic personality change that manifested largely as aggression towards them, and 2) being sent away. but that's probably a whole other post lsbfksjs

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

personally I don’t think the dod should have opened an academy at all. if they were going to open a school, I dunno man maybe with the fact that they’ve been lied, abused, hurt, nearly killed, emotionally scarred by grown adult dragons, they would have known better to not allow 7+ dragons as students or if anything allow them to be in the same winglet as younger dragons.

sure, dragons like Sora, Flame, Umber. They’re not very old, they need a proper education and are at least closely affiliated with the dod. But then you see Onyx and she’s like?? 19?? Okay, sure! She CAN be enrolled into the academy. After all, she’s lived in isolation and generally in a bad environment and she should have a good education… but maaaaybe the dod shouldn’t have thrown her into a winglet full of 3-5 year olds? Her kidnapping Ostrich (which I shouldn’t even have to explain why that’s a horrible crime) could have been avoidable if they like, gave her homeschooling or some gosh darn thing! I specifically emphasize her kidnapping Ostrich compared to her more heinous acts like trying to overthrow Thorn or working for Vulture because that is a direct attack to the school—to the students. Same for Sora who, yes, I’ve given her a pass, but by acknowledging her age, her committing a terrorist attack to the SCHOOL could be avoidable! And that was a targeted attack! Actually, there should have been more of a reason to seclude her because she served in the war and could very likely (and did) have PTSD from it, whereas a crowded environment of dragons species could make her distressed and have a hard time to learn. I won’t bring up anything about Icicle since the dod wouldn’t have known, but they still should’ve acknowledged her and the other former war soldiers like Carnelian attending the school

Just imagine the amount of dragon lawsuits the dod could be getting if they further continue. By publicly allowing and trusting adult dragons to enroll in the academy, or not putting a system for age groups, their whole academy could be taken down if. Say a princess attends the Jade Academy and she ends up being held hostage by a 7+ dragon student. Reasonably, the Queen and King would be enraged by both the persecutor AND the dragons who allowed the persecutor to attend the school! I know this may seem like an exaggeration, but it goes to show that the dod HAVE TO BE CAREFUL. And this goes to show that they are not, despite everything that has happened to them.

The dod do not set a safe learning experience—it is just as dangerous as outside of the academy. I rest my case.

.

[christinesficrecs]

Slowly trying to catch up. Any help would be appreciated. 🩷

I’m looking for a fic where stiles was an omega and still in high school. There was a lacrosse championship and the players on the team swapped out his pills and caused him to go into heat. I remember Derek had to go to the hotel they were at and the other players put together money to get them a suite.

menxmenxmen found it. Thank you!! Bruises and Bitemarks | 121.5K | Explicit Biologically, Stiles is weak. When he presented as an omega, he knew that to be the truth but that never stopped him from running his mouth as a defense mechanism. However, it could only save him so many times before he ended up pissing off the wrong person. After he's attacked in the parking lot outside of school, Stiles realizes he can no longer protect himself with just pure wit and sarcasm. When the attack lands him in the hospital, his dad forces him to pick between two options, report the alphas who attacked him or join a kickboxing gym run by omega rights activist and alpha, Derek Hale, a man Stiles has been in love with for many years.

specific post void sterek fic where Derek leaves bh for his own good Stiles really struggled with anxiety ptsd and is afraid of doors great dad son bonding between him and John Scott is really not positive character in this but one day Derek comes back and get to know about what's happening in bh and one last thing whole gang went to meet grandma stilinski in Poland she's amazing cook

tin-wufborf found this one. Thank you! The Law of the Jungle by Nutellargh | 75.8K | Explicit After the Kanima fiasco is over, Derek takes his three betas and leaves Beacon Hills. Stiles knows he could contact him if needed, but they barely keep in touch, and only about mundane things. 4 years later, after a steady stream of supernatural issues they somehow manage to deal with, Lydia is the one to contact Derek when Stiles starts looking worse and worse everyday, with no idea as to how or why.

all i remember is a scene where stiles, erica, and maybe allison and lydia, are hanging out at a dinner when they get attacked by peter who’s the alpha (this is a s1 fic) and he bites erica, i remember she was is a wheelchair at the moment because of a seizure, i know it was sterek but i don’t remember anything else

Hi!! I was wondering if you or your followers could help me find a fic I’ve been looking for. It is NOT “electricity in the contact” but it is very similar! The pack goes to some kind of convention in NY and stiles and Derek have to pretend to be mates (so much mutual pining and jealous Derek). A guy flirts and dates stiles and Derek gets upset and eventually the pack (including stiles dad) leaves bc the convention is over but stiles stays before going back to Derek and they obviously end up together.

I’m looking for a fic that I just can’t seem to find. It’s Sterek and it was one where Stiles was having sexual relations with Derek solely for money and stuff but stiles just kinda stuck around since I think he ended up living with Derek. Derek was rich the pack consisted of Erica, Boyd and Issac.I remember one specific thing about the fic which is where stiles was swimming in Derek’s indoor pool and he felt a lil silly and drug Derek in with him then they were having a moment then Erica comes in and the pack has fun and then Erica announces she was pregnant then stiles gets all sad since he himself didn’t see himself as pack and he ended up leaving

[milder-manners]

Dreamy delusions is such an interesting au to me especially because it’s really its clearly its own separate world/story right? But a lot of what we know happened was still the ccs and still /dream/ in some way even if a different one. Like cc!dream is very sweet and soft but he also does get aggressive and angry and all of those things and he very clearly knows how to push people’s buttons. So I can only imagine situations where that overlap might come through. Even despite any real lack of fighting ability or skill, if someone tried to hurt someone I loved I’d probably at least attempt to physically protect them even if I got stabbed or something lol and cc!George and cc!sapnap and /especially/ cc!dream would probably do the same.

Obviously they aren’t going to win or really be able to fight back and they don’t know how their lives work there so it’d have to be a pretty perilous situation (not sure how angsty your going for haha) but I can just imagine a situation where cc!dream actually snaps like how we know he definitely can (and knows how to do fictionally based on the roleplaying) and just like absolutely ptsds everyone because they think he’s gone full c!dream or something. Like cc!dream is super empathetic and probably really understands how and why c!snf and the other ended out that way but he also probably wouldn’t be above using that against them if he thought his actual real life family was in danger. (Also then there’s room for cc!snf angst like would that traumatize them?? Probably honestly)

Anyways sorry it’s superrr late here so I’m just spinning this around in my brain because I’m bored haha

Don't be sorry this was a very fun ask!

My thought process in this au is guided by my specific understanding of cc!Dteam, which is probably different from yours or anyone else's.

I know that cc!Dream is a very strategic man, his thought process usually veers into analysis and game theory. I imagine in this au that he quickly realizes the best move for them to survive on the SMP is to befriend or be acquaintances to whoever they meet. He knows that the server are full of casually violent people, and that he and his boys are categorically fucked in the self-defense department. The idea is to disincentivize anyone as much as possible from thinking to hurt them. So for him, friendliness and sociability is a survival tactic and not just his personality.

It's the same logic for why he's so outgoing in the Syndicate; he's incentivizing them to protect him and Sapnap and George.

As for snapping, I think he'd literally only think to do that to be a brief distraction. He knows that his anger will not work to get what he wants because he doesn't have the power to back it, at most it can hold attention. If he's pushed to his brink he'd probably get upset instead.

I think c!Techno would be the only one cc!Dream would be okay with seeing him get angry (as like, venting). He would never be able to intimidate c!Techno after all.

Additionally, I believe, as empathetic as cc!Dream is, he'd prioritize his and friends safety above all else. If he needs to use words to hurt somebody he will do it.

I'm just characterizing him to make the smartest decisions using the limited tools that he got on hand.

[numberonetacostan]

I HAVEN'T BEEN HERE IN A BIT AND I'M SORRY FOR THAT LOOMY!!! a lot of things are going on in my mind and I'm trying to sort of heal the best way I can but your honorary microphone fictionkin has finally come back to your inbox!

psychonauts has me on a chokehold and in this game you can pretty much get inside people's minds! and I am a hurt/comfort lover in the sense I like when characters see their loved ones hurting so much in the most ugly and messy way, every single crack in their armor and mind that they try to keep together until they are unable to anymore and it all explodes and crashes down. I am a hurt/comfort lover in the more psychological 'horror' type of way you know? its just amazing.

So I love to think about how the others seeing taco being unwell would be, or even somehow getting a LITERAL glimpse into her mind, her mind is a garden just like that maze, filled with roses left and center, I'd like to think she keeps the memories with pickle buried somewhere not too deep but not too open either, just enough to keep it out of her mind and for it to not bother her anymore and each time the memories and feelings bubble up it becomes harder for her to repress her feelings and keep them from affecting how she interacts with the world around her. When mic leaves however the garden is completely and utterly destroyed, the roses are even more wilted and damaged than they were the first times, memories are floating around so openly and quickly that it becomes overwhelming- she has lost control of her mind completely and she loathes it. The memories are all scattered and she is unable to push them back again, she is alone and she is unable to hold the raw agony that it brings her. On episode 15 even though she is trying to keep herself together by once more completely repressing her feelings and trying to put them in a place where they cannot bother her (for a while at least) I'd like to think her memories with mic are so important to her that even though they are painful she finds herself completely unable to truly bury them somewhere, she holds them as if it were precious glass and she finds herself hesitating when trying to bury those memories like the others. Mic just had such impact on her, her mind is freaking out and its so messy and scattered that she is just not able to take it anymore and well- we already know what happened on episode 15.

Speaking more of episode 15, I love taco having ptsd and trauma for her living in the woods and dying in general. I imagine she is SO on guard after it, paranoidly checking every corner to be absolutely and completely sure that she is completely safe and- oh mepad its you, what do you mean I am COMPLETELY okay totally not frightened, mhm, definitely.

Taco has a bad habit of trying to repress her feelings completely and I think mepad would just sort of sit gently right beside her and tell her something about how its okay to be scared and frightened and vulnerable, because we already know taco being taco avoids vulnerability like the absolute plague. She is hurt and grieving and lost and those feelings only grow worse when she loses mepad like she lost everything else. She goes nonverbal doesn't talk for like a period of time and I imagine only really leans into mic without talking, mic is warm and safe and it all hurts and she just wants to rest. I love thinking about taco having concerning reactions about very specific things and the contestants picking up on this immediately, is like my AU thing where she scratches with her claws the kitchen counter on instinct when OJ joked around about how ''well behaved'' around mic she was.

This is more things that I thought after psychonauts I think taco has an inner child in her mindscape in the sense of like, no she didn't had a childhood, but she wishes she could have, she yearns what she could have never had in her position, she yearns for the innocent child-like wonder and joy you would get, to have a family to call your own, to have people that loved you unconditionally, to have a home and grow up in a happy and healthy place where perhaps the only real offense was tracking mud on the carpet. Her inner child is more just this rage mixed up with so many sadness over what she is unable to ever have, she tries to bottle it all up but like mepad always told her- it doesn't really help. It just makes the problem much more bigger until you aren't able to take it anymore and explode, I imagine hyperventilating or having breakdowns and knife immediately going to her and calming her down, I think it would be sweet if he just stood right beside her everytime he picked up over when she is frightened because of something (things like the snow for example, you said she had Chionophobia or something right? I am so excited to hear the story about how the contestants figured that one up but continuing) again just a silent solidarity, taco treats his hands when they are all fucked up for punching the walls in frustration, and knife keeps her calm when she is about to freak out. Sort of stays beside her, when there is fear in her eyes yk?

I hope you enjoy all of this loomy! its more a lot of thoughts put together but again I hope you like it regardless :3c

Hi Kiara!!^^ Welcome back, and thank you for sending in an ask!!! :] Please don't worry about time between asks!!! I'm happy to see you all whenever you feel like coming in, no need to push yourselves!!!! <3

I love both hurt/comfort and psychological horror, so I'm game!!

Your description of Taco's mind sounds quite beautiful!! I agree that Taco simply can't repress her memories and feelings surrounding Mic- her heart's been touched and it's too late to go back!!!!

TACO TRAUMA NEURON ACTIVATION!!! She is SO on guard all the time. Always listening out for predators, always keeping her steps soft, eating food as fast as possible, etc. As much as Mepad would be a comfort to her, it would take a short bit for her to get used to something so big that's not trying to eat her.

AUGH Mepad speaking for hours about how vulnerability is okay and how he will accept her no matter what and her feelings are not only valid but incredibly important as she silently sits with him <3. He's a tablet, his throat isn't going to get dry or anything, so he can give her all the reassurance she needs <3.

I so so so agree I headcanon Taco going nonverbal for a period after Mepad dies/bursts into flame because of forbidden battery juice. There are a lot of silent pleas for affection from Mic, and I'd say Mic reciprocates and gives affection quite easily. She strikes me as the physical type, and she can see how much Taco needs it.

Her clawing the counter when OJ says she's well-behaved is low-key funny though. But yeah, the others would start to pick up on her general paranoia after being in the forest/trauma responses/survival mode-ness, and probably try to avoid triggering/upsetting her. Especially after she lashes out for the first time, and especially if it's especially bad. Cherries tries to prank her and she nearly shoots him and then goes straight into hyperventilating. He does not try to prank her again.

Yeah!! Her inner child would be, in a way, the Taco that was left outside for years, yeah? Everyone else had all the food they needed, a nice warm place to sleep, but she was left outside. For years. Even if she'd done a bad thing that resulted in her being left out, she's allowed to be upset about having spent so long living with nothing.

Knife and Taco both having serious issues solidarity!! I think they could bond a bit more now that Taco is trying to change and Knife is fucking dead, though considering he's close with Pickle I don't think he and Taco will exactly become friends. But, there'd be an understanding there that they can't really get from anyone else, yeah?

CHIONOPHOBIA MENTION!!!! I am working on it!!!! o7!!!! Between school and the fact that I'm putting more detail into chionophobia because it's my baby and I love it, it will take a tad bit longer to come out than usual, but it will come out once I finish!!!!! I'm excited to share it!!!!