#i love my traumatized war veterans very very much

[psdrawsthings]

once I'm like hmm the concept of "protecting someone's sleep" sounds cute and now the thought that he stays awake at night because of anxiety or a habit left over from the war years and just watches them sleep for a long time kills me (brutally)

[ixiot-ghostrebel]

hello!! um I really liked the whole Military Creator you've written!

I'm wondering how would some of the boys/men react to that!

for example, Zhongli/Xiao as they have fought in wars before or Childe for his bloodlust. Feel free to add anyone you want too!

Headcanons: Zhongli, Xiao, and Childe Reacting to Reader being a Veteran Military Soldier.

Ah, I see, Anon! Here y'all go :) I hope you enjoy it!

Click Me For the Women Version!

Disclaimers: Might be OOC, Implied Violence/Battle, Mentions of Scars!)

Zhongli

This man. This old immortal man that is a dragon. He knows war like the back of his hand. Kinda quite literally, since once upon a time, some people hailed him as the God of War (Sorry Murata).

To hear that Reader was a former Military Officer for a nation you didn't run nor found, you just increased Zhongli's respect by a HUGE amount. There's no denying it.

"If you don't mind, Your Grace, may you tell me a few stories of your past experiences in battle?" Very attentive listener. He won't push if you leave a few details out, even if he is curious.

Honestly loves to listen to you and your stories! He commends you for your victories, and solemn your lost of the cherished ones. Zhongli is all too familiar with war, and it's very relatable.

Your tea talks with him are now more and more interesting, to say the least. You might be invited from Zhongli for tea instead of the other way around!

Xiao

General Alatus himself...the Vigilant Yaksha doesn't take war all too well. You can say that he's got extreme PTSD from it, and really—that's pretty much an understatement alone.

Won't push the topic much, since this boy does not want you to be stuck in a traumatic time, but he is curious about your military days, since you don't seem all that bothered of what you experienced.

However! This doesn't mean he won't want to check up on you. He may not be...good with emotions, but he's certainly going to try, for the Almighty Creator's sake!

"Your Grace....forgive my prying, but are you...okay?" He cringes just listening to himself ask the question. It felt like he was trying to make your achievements an understatement or a cheap byproduct.

Constantly remind this guy that what he asked hadn't upset or hurt you. This man is notorious for self-sacrifice and self-blame.

Overall, spending time with Xiao is probably good therapy for the both of you, in a way. keep up the tea time, because this man will eventually open up and actually relax and enjoy tea with you!

Childe

A little too thrilled to hear that the Almighty Creator has gone through war.

Immediately pounces on the matter. No cap.

"Your Grace, care to share some battle experiences with me?" Has an absolute gleeful and menacing smile on his face as his dead eyes shine brightly at you, boring into your soul.

Of course, he won't push for details—boy just wants to know the battles and fights you were in.

However, that doesn't mean he's heartless. He'll share your sentiment if a battle brought loss to your loved ones. Childe himself can't imagine losing one of his siblings. Ever.

Tea time with Childe is basically verbal sparring. You both are fighting by comparing your battles with one another. And it never ends.

And that's it! I hope you all like it :) Sorry for being so inactive these days—motivation keeps killing me, I swear. See you all around soon!

Ghost Rebel Side Notes: If you're waiting for The Lost Shining God of Celestia or Forver In My Hold finale part—It's coming, don't worry! My brain isn't just motivated just yet, but it will be it out!

✦ Check out The Ghost Rebel’s Blog Description & Info Page to See if Their Mailbox is Open! ✦

[layviyu]

PJSK CHARACTERS WATCHING THEIR S/O DIE OVER AND OVER

short desc: kinda like the madoka magica plot where homura becomes a traumatized war veteran because madoka always dies

type: bulleted hcs

characters: hinomori shizuku, mochizuki honami, kamishiro rui, shinonome ena, aoyagi toya

genre: slight angst

note: i wrote this on january 2023 and i dont remember anything so it probably sucks

@ hinomori shizuku

shizuku was completely exhausted, to say the least.

she couldn’t bear the feeling of losing you and having to start over every time. having to turn the both of you into strangers again. her loving you with all her heart, and you not even knowing who she is.

even shiho, who’s not the closest to her sister, notices her sudden mood drop, yet, uncertain of what could be troubling her, she decides not to ask.

whenever shizuku sees you for the ‘first time’ again, she wishes she could tell you what to do to avoid your death, but she couldn’t — that would only make things worse, and she’s very well aware of that.

as much as it pains her, she can only do small things to try to change the future, for now.

“I promise you, one day, it’ll be over. And when that day comes, I can finally spend my so-desired time with you.”

@ mochizuki honami

what was honami doing wrong?

she did everything, everything, to avoid that terrible fate. but it couldn’t be helped — it would still happen, no matter how much she tried.

she gave her all, she devoted herself to saving you. she was trying her best, her all, to keep you safe and alive. apparently, it wasn’t good enough. it was never good enough. every time, you’d end up dying in her arms. over and over.

whenever she sees you for the ‘first time’, she feels her heart ache. knowing that she’ll have to go through everything again and again, only for a false image of hope that maybe, maybe she could save you.

she never had the chance to tell you the words she was dying to say. even in your last moments, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. ever since the first tragedy, you’ve never heard the words ‘I love you’ from her ever again.

“Once I can finally let my guard down, then I’ll allow myself to soften at your touch. I love you. Evsen if I’m not ready to say it, I hope you know that.”

@ kamishiro rui

as much as he wanted to, rui couldn’t give up. not yet. not until he saved you.

why him? why you? why did you both have to be disturbed in such a manner?

in the beginning, he thought himself to be really lucky, to have the opportunity of being with you one more time. but as more time passed, he started to believe this was not a blessing — but instead a curse.

waking up, knowing that he’d try his all to save you but being aware that it all would go to waste, was extremely exhausting.

whenever he saw you for the ‘first time’, he could feel himself relaxing at the thought of being together with you again. having your hands run through his hair, having you laugh at his cringey pick-up lines... he yearned for that, even if he knew he couldn’t have it, at least not at that time.

he watched you die over and over. eventually, death was not a new concept to him. but every time, even knowing it wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last, watching your lifeless body always gave him a feeling of despair.s

you always called him a genius, then, why? why couldn’t he come up with a brilliant plan, as you’d say, to save you? why couldn’t he save the one person who stood by him at all times?

“I want to be with you so bad, but still, I’m not able to keep you here long enough. What am I doing wrong, my love?”

@ shinonome ena

this wasn’t fair. this wasn’t fair at all. why did they have to take you — ena’s favorite person?

she’d give 110% of her to keep you, even knowing that she couldn’t be with you, knowing that you’d die again, she still chased after your life as if it’d be the last thing she’ll ever do.

sometimes, she couldn’t help but being irritated. if only she didn’t love you, this wouldn’t be happening to her. she was very well-aware that this was one selfish thought, but she thought about it every now and then. despite being mad, she could never say that she regretted loving you.

whenever she saw you for the ‘first time’, she knew it was important to keep her distance, for your safety. despite that, she glanced at you quite often, fighting the urge to go after you.

having to be emotionally distant from you frustrated her. she watched you talk to a lot of people throughout the day, knowing that she wouldn’t be one of them. after all, you were still her significant other, even if you didn’t know it.

“Why won’t you simply stay?! Damn it... I want you to be safe, be alive, be mine! And I’ll make sure it happens, even if it takes a hundred... no, a thousand times.”

@ aoyagi toya

the only thing toya wished for was for it to be over.

it was extremely tiring. he’d never do something that pains him, but he couldn’t give up on you just yet. even if he has to go through the same feeling of emptiness every time, he’s willing to do it, if it means saving you.

not only that, but even his bandmates notice his sudden lack of motivation. every time, akito confronted him about that, but he never answered. he couldn’t tell him the truth, he’d never believe it. it was awful to avoid his best friend, but he couldn’t help it, rescuing you was his top priority.

whenever he saw you for the ‘first time’, you merely looking at him already made his heart flutter, as if it were before the tragedy. he loved to see you so... lively. yet, he knew he shouldn’t let his guard down, as he was already aware of what would happen.

he tried his best to keep you away from danger, directly or indirectly, but none of his actions seemed to help. in the end, he always held your lifeless body, never having the chance to confess his undying love for you once more.

“I’ll do everything for things to go back as they used to be. Even if it takes thousands of times, I won’t give up, not until I make sure you’re safe.”

layviyu — do not repost my work on any other social media

posted on: 01/03/2024 — last edited on: 01/14/2024

[lewis-winters]

"what happens when the only person you want to go back home to is on the frontlines with you" took me OUT big time 🥺 it's also SO winnix. just like kitty is harry's only family, dick is lew's. and they're both out there together or going home together, there is no in between (aka "was thinking i'd drag you with me" and "i can't let him go by himself. he doesn't know where it is")

(here's a sneaky lil plug of the excerpt of the Harry/Kitty Kitty-On-The-Frontlines AU for those wondering! I've revisted it after reading the Welsh files and now it's all I think about)

You get it!! They literally have nobody but each other!! Lew has no one who loves him back home like this! Dick has never loved anyone else like this, how could he ever want anyone else? And they're both forced to deal with the fact that, unlike straight couples, they both have an equal chance of dying!! How fucked up is that!!

Furthermore! There's that extra layer of their very existence and love for each being basically illegal!!

I mean. Outside of being queer myself, that's the other thing that really snags my attention when it comes to queer love stories in this era, ya know? Like. Though the military definitely promotes homosocial behavior-- that is, male bonding and brotherhood, they still very much punishes homosexual behavior and relationships. What, then, does that mean for the queer men who find each other in the service, and who, in a time of suffering and strife, find something as fragile and beautiful as romantic love for another man? Your fellow soldier? Who is on the same front line as you? Who has just as much chance of dying by the same guns and bayonets and mortars as you?

And who, if he does, you are NOT allowed to mourn, lest your whole life be ruined? That's a different kind of grief, I think. One I think about a lot.

There's a musical called The Bandstand about a group of veterans and one war widow who come together to form a jazz band. Every one has lost someone or something in the war, and every one gets a chance to talk about what they've lost, what traumatized them. Except for the one queer coded character, who is only ever IMPLIED to have lost someone and refuses to ever talk about who he lost because if he does! he will!!!!! get arrested!!!!! he will be punished for his grief!!!!!!!! so all he can do is have a jazz saxophone solo during the climax of act 2 where he pours all his grief, and we as an audience are left aching with all the things he is NOT saying.

They're not allowed to be a family on the frontline. They're not allowed to be a family when they go back home. And yet they persist, they continue to love each other. Even if it guarantees death, both via guns, mortar, or bayonet, or the social death of getting found out!!!!

How fucked up is that?!!

[soullessjack]

i don’t think there’s anything new I can add to the performative-jack studies because it’s like..very cut and dry, guy who’s constantly perceived as a threat does his best to seem innocuous and friendly..but there is an underlying layer of exactly how jack tries to present himself to others (that I’ve definitely already posted about but whatever).

soo like. take this outline for example:

Jack: “He still has to be killed.” Cas: “Doing that might kill Dean as well, so [I] doubt any of [us] would be willing to do that.” Jack: “I would.”

‘Cas is a little shocked by how calmly Jack says this, and Jack says he knows what Cas is thinking; that this is Lucifer’s gene pool talking. It’s not. “I’m not my father. I’m not my mother. I’m me.”

“You’re all so focused on saving Dean, but Dean is Michael’s vessel. There’s a good chance Dean isn’t even alive. Is Jimmy Novak still alive?* Could anyone save him? It’s Michael. And Michael has to die.” ‘Cas stares at Jack, who looks coldly collected.

post-war jack is straight up traumatized and jaded by everything he’s seen and experienced in apocalypse world, still making efforts to be kind and sympathetic of course, but with a bit more edge to him now. for six months he’s been fixated on killing Michael, and he’s way more willing to do the Hard Thing (kill Dean) than he might’ve been before to do so (which actually reminds me a LOT of the chicken/snake story from ouroboros but we won’t get off subject).

obviously he still cares about/loves Dean, we’ve seen that in the rest of S14, but he’s also seen what Michael did to another world and wouldn’t put anything before preventing that. *he’s also very willing to hit Cas where it hurts with the Jimmy comment

but the thing that sticks out is Castiel immediately assuming that Jack’s calm, cold collectedness in the way he talks about killing Dean/Michael is somehow evidence of Lucifer’s influence or heritage; that Jack couldn’t possibly feel this way by himself. even Jack refutes it, stating that he’s neither of his parents (ie, it’s his own decision to kill Dean if it’s necessary). I think it’s also interesting he mentioned not being his mother, because I think that’s why Cas is so surprised by his demeanor and jumps to attribute it to Lucifer.

from day one Kelly’s heritage was the only argument Sam and Cas had against the idea that Jack would be evil. to be fair, Jack does take after Kelly a lot; he even looks like her to some extent. but treating Kelly’s heritage as the It-factor that makes Jack good, treating him as basically an extension of Kelly who must be good and kind because she was good and kind (literally an inverse of how Lucifer’s heritage is treated) is still just dehumanizing.

the distrust he faces is understandable coming from AU Bobby and people who are being actually displaced and exterminated by Michael, but the fact that Jack is subject to the same scrutiny from his own chosen father as well adds to why he represses these parts of himself so much, why he puts on that naive nuclear-son personality and basically butters everyone up all the time.

I think the only times when Jack has actually unmasked himself were at points of extreme low empathy, because most of the time his facade is put on for the sake of other people and the fear they feel towards him. he obviously wouldn’t have to worry about that while he’s human, but like I said, he’s literally a war veteran/criminal by this point. he’s gonna have a little more edge to him than before, and a little less empathy for the small things.

the second and probbaly more obvious one is his behavior while soulless, completely lacking the empathy required to care about keeping up his facade—so much so that he just bluntly tells Mary that he’s annoyed by everyone eggshell-walking around him like he’s a time bomb again. then, *checks script* like a flip switched, he goes back to that facade and reassures Mary that he knows they’re doing it out of love. He’s blatantly performing his emotional responses now.

jack is still soulless for like…three (?) episodes in S15, and still incapable of really feeling any emotion despite being able to logically process them. like he is literally so empty inside that he resorts to binge eating to feel some kind of sensation. but he’s consistently playing up the happy-go-lucky shtick when he isn’t just depressed and withdrawn (especially the church basement scene where he immediately gets the dumb Bambi look when he sees Cas after his failed cannibalism attempt).

got a headache while writing this so I’ll just leave it here but like. A Lot of the reason why Jack performs so much is because specific traits he shows are not only taken as threats, but are also associated with Lucifer and treated as signs of his “true nature” <- click that link it’s important for context

Mk that’s all byeeee (*´ -`)

[kaledya]

hey there!

I just want to say that I adore your artwork and have been following it for a while, and i am obsessed with your character Serenity. I had a couple questions about her, if you don’t mind answering.

How did she feel about WW2, since she was alive when that war happened? Since she was a doctor, did she volunteer to join as a war physician? i know in the united states women weren’t allowed to go to the front lines, but they were allowed to serve from home as doctors and nurses.

I guess i just am wondering if that war had any affect on Serenity and her personality, maybe as a way of cementing her feelings about humanity and the evil humans are capable of. I mean with the Holocaust in Germany and then the Nuclear Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that was a dark moment in history.

I also wanted to ask how Serenity feels about herself as a person, especially in the present while she’s in hell. Does reuniting with Alastor make her look back on her life and reflect on the person she has become since his death? Does she have any desire deep down to actually be redeemed?

Last one, i promise-

Does Serenity confide in Constantine at all once they become better friends about her insecurities. Does she trust Constantine?

idk sorry these have been bouncing around in my head for a while. Serenity fascinates me as a character, and after your World’s Greatest Actor animatic I haven’t been able to get her out of my head.

anyway your art is beautiful and i hope you have a wonderful day 💚

HOWDY!!! First of all, I'm so glad to hear that you like my work!And thank you for loving Serenity🌸🌸

And thanks for your questions! It's my pleasure to answer!

As you said,Serenity did not go to war because they did not send women to the front lines at that time.But she tries to help the war veterans, the wounded, or the soldiers who are traumatized after the war, as much as she can in her region.

Even though she could not take part in the war, she helped soldiers who still needed care after the war.After all, war leaves mental wounds as much as it leaves physical wounds.

And the Second World War included evil and inhumane crimes beyond human comprehension.

-

Certainly, as you say, World War II is a very dark page in human history and

Serenity was also affected by it. She saw how evil humanity in general could be.I don't want to go into detail here, but you already know, whether it was experiments, genocide or mass murders, World War II showed what kind of evil humanity is.

And Serenity was someone who had heard a lot of the stories of the soldiers she took cared of.(Some soldiers were choosing doctors to talk to because they really couldn't handle this burden and didn't want to say anything to their families.)

And these stories really disgusted her with humanity to some extent. She knew humanity might be disgusted, but such war crimes? There was no mercy for anyone, not even children.

As one of the rare Doctors in that area at that time, Serenity took care of so many people and heard so many stories, sometimes these stories kept her awake at night.

--

Serenity doesn't think she good person.And she has a lot of regrets for the things she did in the past.

I write the story of Serenity in detail, I will try to include a piece from there, but I will be clear.

At night, Serenity was killing criminals who could not be punished before justice, she was neither providing her own justice, she thought what she was doing was right, until some events showed her this.

What if not all of the people she killed were as pure evil as she thought, maybe they did what they did because they had to, because they had no other choice? What does it make you when you kill people who would stop what they were doing the first chance they got?How many different children felt the pain that she felt when she felt she had lost her father? Because of her?

And Serenity found and killed the hunter who killed Alastor.Seriously, was that guy a bad man? Did he deserve to die? Or had Serenity's anger blinded her? Did she killed an innocent person. Maybe it was an accident? Who knows.

"No, No no I've made the right decision, but am I the monster here? No, no, seriously, there were bastards who deserved to die. If they lived, they would harm many more people.But other than them, the people I killed was it all as bad as I thought? Were there any chances of being rescued with help?"

+And Serenity hated killing people, she was really disturbed by the blood on her hands and she was tired, sometimes she couldn't recognize herself when she looked in the mirror.And she was tired of the wounds she received. She was a someone who hated pain, but every part of her body hurt.

And Serenity lied a lot to keep what she did secret, even to her loved ones.Being strong she suppressed and repressed her personality to continue what she was doing When she finally killed someone and feel nothing, she felt disgusted with herself again.Okay, the people she killed were vile people, but after all, she killed someone, shouldn't she have to feel something?

----The part I talked about------

"Serenity is a light gray character who does not intend evil in her actions or actively do evil just for the fun of it.

She does what needs to be done.

Serenity was confident in what she was doing because the people she killed were members of the crime orgazion and they had killed people and done some really awful things, so she had no regrets about killing them.

She felt like he had to do it, and the thing that affected her the most was when things didn't go as planned on a hunt, and she got into a hand-to-hand fight with the other guy, and Serenty was really about to lose, and at the last minute he stabbed the guy in the lung and ran away until she recovered. It bothered her a lot to watch the man slowly die, but it was nothing yet. While looking for any valuable information on the man, she found a letter with a photo in it. The letter was sent by the man's daughter and the daughter asked when her father was coming home and that she missed him.

and in it they sent him a photo and he replied with half a letter saying that he would come back when he had earned enough money and that he missed them very much.

Serenity felt really awful when she saw this, she researched the man, he was someone who had been involved in a lot of crime, but he had done it to make money, he had taken this path to support his family and he wanted to get out of this path at the first opportunity, and Serenity killed this man. Was she really doing justice, she gave those children the same pain she had experienced, she had taken their father away from them, was she justified in what she did, did she have the right to decide who died and who lived, could she blame them if someone tried to come and kill her for revenge tomorrow?

She set out on this journey to kill monsters, but now she's a monster herself. Were the other people she killed besides this man completely evil, yes, maybe most of them were, but not all of them.

This was one of the events that affected Serenity deeply and she really hated herself and the work she did after this event.

---------- end-----------

But Serenity didn't stop what she was doing, because there were still people she had to destroy, so it didn't matter how disgusting she was anymore.It wasn't about her, there were countless people who would be harmed if she didn't do what she did. And it had already begun, there was no way to turn back. And if there was hell, she had already reserved a place for herself there.

In short, Serenity helped many innocent people in her life, but she also harmed some of them.she is not proud of everything she does, but she tries to live with it.

SHe thinks She totally deserves to be in hell. Yes, she may have done good, but she affected some people's lives badly and she thinks it is good that she is punished for it.

-

As for the meeting between Alastor and Serenity.There are reasons why Alastor doesn't recognize Serenity, other than Serenity's appearance changing.Serenity is someone who has changed a lot since Alastor died. Alastor last saw her when she was 17 years old, and although the person in front of him now has similarities with the person he saw before, they are just as much Different

So, while Serenity was trying to reconnect with Alastor, she realized how much she had changed.

Serenity thinks she doesn't deserve to be Redeemed. She's already used to Hell and she thinks she definitely doesn't deserve Heaven. And there are people in hell that she love, she dont want to leave them.But still want to try if it is possible. She is there not for himself but to watch those around her and maybe help them on their journey. The reason she went to the hotel was to get to know Charlie and help her achieve her goal. Help someone who is trying to do something she couldn't do while she was alive.

---

Hell is a terrible place to trust anyone, and Serenity knows this. The only person Serenity trusts is her clan,but she is the one who raised them.

But over time, Serenity began to trust Constantine.

Constantine is different from the others in hell Serenity knows that Constantine is true to his word and knows that he will not betray her.Because Constantine has no reason to do such a thing.

The two currently have a 7 years-long partnership and a friendship that has been slowly building, and they both respect that.According to Serenity, in his own way, Constantine seriously showed Serenity that he cared about her.

In short, Constantine is now one of the rare people outside of Serenity's clan that she trusts and calls him friend, and she really cares about Constantine and loves spending time with him. And she trusts him because she knows Constantine will not betray her.

---

First of all, thank you for your questions and I hope I answered well! (Sorry for the length) And I'm so happy to hear that you really like Serenity! And the World's greatest actor animation is my favorite too It beautifully summarizes the identity crisis that Serenity is experiencing and her contradiction with herself and her relationship with the people around her.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!❤️❤️❤️ And wish you a good day too!🌸🌸

[theerurishipper]

https://www.tumblr.com/jacquesthepigeon/731353272698486784/you-know-it-must-be-said-as-someone-whos-only?source=share

Of course this is said from someone who has never seen the show. God forbid folks favorite character, is THE SECOND MAIN CHARACTER AND IN THE TITLE OF THE SHOW.

God forbid abuse survivors find Adrichat’s story relatable and react negatively to people who salt on him for, checks notes, being a rich white boy? Because being rich and white protects you from abuse lol okay

Someone go tell Kesha that the horrific abuse she endured for years doesn’t count because she’s rich and white.

Someone go tell Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes that they deserve their conservatorships because they’re too volitile and emotional and need someone else to control their entire lives. Also they’re rich and white so they should be thankful for their privilege.

Also as a fandom veteran, I’m also baffled that this anon says they’ve never seen fandom go this feral over a white boy so I guess the whole Superwholock thing doesn’t exist in this person’s universe. I’m getting war flashbacks…

I really hope this doesn't come off as rude, but I just have a small request for any anons in the future: if y'all want me to comment on someone else's post, please send it in a separate ask. I just don't want to post someone else's post and start an argument or something.

That being said, I do agree. My detailed thoughts under the cut.

"Adrien stans are white people who get unhinged over a white boy," say the Marinette stans and Marinette stan observers, not realizing that they espouse disgusting abuse apologism on a daily basis and victim blame a character who is a victim of abuse for being traumatized all because he made a few decisions that weren't about Marinette and her well-being alone.

This is ridiculous on so many levels. First the assumption that all Adrien stans are white people. Second, the assumption that we must be Adrien stans because he's a white boy and we don't care about POC characters as much as we do the white ones. Which is actually quite insulting to me.

Maybe these people should actually read what Adrien stans have to say. Maybe they should actually understand why we love Adrien so much. Maybe they should understand why we get so heated over him.

Know what? I'll tell you why. It's because Adrien is despite the writers' best efforts to undermine him an interesting and likeable character. He is a canonical abuse victim, and he struggles with his self-worth and his identity, which is a relatable story to many people. He's an entertaining and interesting character. He's the deuteragonist of the damn show. People are bound to love him. There's more to him than being a white boy and it's very insulting to imply that people obsess over him because he's white or because his fans are white.

And about how Adrien stans get "unhinged" about Adrien and not about other characters... we're literally Adrien stans. Which means Adrien is our favorite character. Naturally, we're going to talk more about him. This is basic common sense. I don't understand the problem here with liking Adrien more than other characters. Are we not allowed to have faves anymore?

And you know why Adrien stans get "unhinged" over him? Because the show treats him badly! Why shouldn't we get mad that a character whom we love is being treated poorly by the writers? Why can't we get heated about that? Marinette stans get heated about their fave being victimized by the narrative all the time, so why is it a crime if Adrien stans get upset if Adrien gets the same treatment? Adrien's story in the show ended with him being reduced to an object and a prop for his girlfriend so that she could side with his abuser and start controlling him instead. Why can't we get angry at that?

Marinette stans will talk about how both Adrien and Marinette are written badly but only Marinette gets criticized and how that's racist and shit, and will ignore the fact that our criticism has nothing to do with race and everything to do with Marinette siding with Gabriel to lie to an abuse victim, and how the show frames this as correct. We criticize Marinette because she's making an awful mistake and doing bad things! This is like, the worst strawman I have ever seen. At some point, it really feels like they are being willfully ignorant.

And about how Adrien stans treat other characters, riddle me this. Who has a proper tag dedicated to bashing them on AO3? Who was the character who was salted on so much when Syren aired? Who was the character being raked over the coals when Chameleon aired? Who was the character who was salted on in Season 4 for breaking a damn fucking chimney? Who was the character whose struggles in Season 4 were overlooked by Marinette stans who criticized him for "being entitled to Ladybug?" Who was the character who was relentlessly salted on whenever he did anything that didn't completely attend to Marinette's needs? Who is the character who was labelled a "sexual harasser?" Who is the character on whom these "fans" rain down their victim blaming and abuse apologia? Who is the character who has the longest history of being salted and bashed by the Marinette stans?

And I will laugh at the audacity of Marinette stans to argue in favor of POC characters and blame Adrien stans for "obsessing over a white boy while not giving the same treatment to characters of color" while their legacy includes salting Alya for not being Marinette's perfect emotional support BFF. Who has their own salt tag apart from Adrien on AO3? Alya does. It's laughable to me that Marinette stans harp on about how Adrien stans prefer the white boy over the POC characters when they spent the better part of the last few years bashing Alya and even devolved into outright racism against her. To say nothing of how they treated Kagami after Frozer dropped.

And these people accuse Adrien stans of showing preferential treatment to white characters? Marinette stans have no leg to stand on when it comes to calling out other people's treatment of POC characters. And I'm not saying that the anon or OP of the post are racist or that they personally contributed to this. But if they are going to make sweeping statements about Adrien stans accusing all of us of going unhinged over a white boy and treating POC characters unfairly, they should maybe take a look inwards at their own community.

Marinette stans have spent years bashing every other character for the smallest perceived slight. Marinette stans created a whole new genre of Miraculous fanfiction dedicated to propping up Marinette like their personal goddess and punishing other characters for not being her devoted slaves. Marinette stans have contributed greatly to the racism in this fandom. Look at all this and tell me: who really seems unhinged here?

So yeah. Ice cold take imo. Also, obligatory disclaimer: Not all Marinette stans are like this! Most of them are nice and sweet, but there are also plenty of bad apples who have been responsible for a lot of toxicity in this fandom.

Thank you for your ask!

[the-golden-vanity]

💚 for the Terror. 💖🧡 and 📖 (but chapter(s) instead of entire book(s)) for Moby Dick

💚: What does everyone else get wrong about your favorite character?

Ooh, it's time to make some enemies.

I really, really dislike the popular fanon characterizations of James Fitzjames. Depending on what particular flavor of queer a fanwork is depicting him as, the kind of... shallow femininity that gets forced on him makes me MASSIVELY uncomfortable. It often comes across as somewhere between homophobic and misogynistic caricature, personality stripped away and replaced with a pretty dress.

I can see where this started, though—the pre-Carnivale dress scene is something that's very important to a lot of Terror fans, and perhaps something that endeared them to a character whose Empire-loving, glory-hounding, "the atrocities I've committed are fun table conversation"-believing ways are (hopefully) unsympathetic to a modern audience. Still, I'd like to see more fanworks engage with that side of James Fitzjames—the tool of an empire that can never love him back.

This isn't to say I don't love queer or trans readings of Fitzjames! I just want to see the character still be a glory-hounding veteran of an imperialist war, and someone I can still believe would shoot rockets at bears.

💖: Already answered here!

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

I had to think about this one for a bit. I'd say it's the take that I see floating around on the Internet a lot that Moby-Dick is cosmic horror. If we're taking cosmic horror to mean the horror of the incomprehensible, the impossibly alien, the Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, then there is exactly one chapter that fits the bill—"The Castaway", which includes maybe my favorite passage of the whole book.

However, almost the entire rest of the book is our narrator-protagonist making sense of the whale, as if knowing everything he can about it is his way of coping with the devastating trauma of losing everyone he spent two years of his life living with.

It's almost reverse cosmic horror—rather than a sane man going mad from coming face to face with an incomprehensible monstrosity, our mentally ill (traumatized/depressed/bipolar/open to interpretation) protagonist makes meaning for himself by learning to comprehend the monstrosity.

📖: If you had to remove one chapter from the book, which would you choose?

Ooh, that's a good question. And a hard one.

Moby-Dick is, rather famously, full of chapters upon chapters of whale facts, some of which are even true. I will not be getting rid of any of those. Those are load-bearing whale facts. You pull them out, and the book collapses into a respectable revenge tragedy, rather than the earth-shattering psychological epic that it is. The whale facts represent both the fact that for long stretches of a sea voyage, nothing particularly exciting is going on, and you have time to contemplate things like the immense scarred brow of the whale, and also that this story is being told by a traumatized man who's going off on tangents because he really doesn't want to get around to the part of the story where he loses everything and all of his friends die.

If I had to get rid of one chapter, it would probably be "The Town Ho's Story". Of all the ill omens and tales of woe that the Pequod's crew encounter on their fateful final voyage, this one drags out longest and (to me) was one of the less memorable. However, I'm sure it's probably someone's favorite chapter. Many of them are.

Thank you so much, @georges-chambers/@alienmythologist! You gave me much to think about.

Ask me for my unpopular opinions about boat stories!

[moltengoldveins]

molten i have minimal marvel knowledge (only watched like 10 of the movies) but if you have the patience to explain how you think techno and steve roger's friendship would develop/work, i would LOVE to hear about it

( i would ask more about the DC side but unfortunately i know a grand total of Nothing about dc )

OK SO (sorry I took so long to respond I was moving) LET ME TELL YOU THIS HOT NONSENSE. (Fair warning, this is a VERY long post)

SO. First off, I’m gonna quickly establish the Techno im working with since I think you already know who that is (/lh 😉) and then I’ll Explain Steven Grant Rogers.

So, the Techno im working with is fundamentally a lawful neutral character. He believes in freedom, in the moral obligation of someone who is capable of preventing evil to work to the fullest extent possible to prevent said evil. He believes that tyranny dictatorship is wrong and that there should be as little government as possible, and said government should be as democratic and free as possible. He jokes about anarchy, but his actions don’t quite line up with direct anarchy so I’m pretty sure it’s mostly for the bit, but he’s very anti-establishment. Techno is not, however, necessarily concerned with what is Good, so much as what is True. Violence does not necessarily equal evil, and he doesn’t seem to have much of a category for civilians when it comes to controlling the damage war causes, though he does quite firmly distinguish between “people who are my enemies” and “people who aren’t involved.” He is motivated by Justice, not mercy. This doesn’t mean he isn’t merciful: it means he doesn’t believe that he is obligated to be merciful. It means that any act of his mercy is, according to him, an exception to the rule, a kindness the people around him don’t deserve and should not take advantage of. He is unflinchingly loyal and viciously protective, as well as shockingly paranoid and proactive in preparing for any eventuality. He’s also a traumatized veteran and a victim of long-term institutionalized racism and speciesism on account of the Piglin thing, a fact that actually ISNT a headcanon! That’s not even made up! He CANONICALLY was concerned that people treated him like an animal and a weapon as opposed to a person and reacted to conflict and confrontation with the assumption that human characters were more likely to treat him poorly than nonhuman ones, like Ranboo or Philza. (I’ve got a whole other essay in there I won’t get into) ANYWAY

If that’s Techno, Steve Rogers is what you do if you take the same solid gold core and raise him poor and catholic in New York in the 1930s. Steve is religious, but it’s unclear if he’s practicing. His faith is an important core to his worldview and the choices he makes, but he’s not preachy. He’s lawful good at first, but I think his character pretty quickly looses that fundamental foundation of “I am righteous, because I know what is right, and I am doing it.” after he loses Bucky, his kinda maybe love interestchildhood friend and gets yeeted popcicle-style into the modern day. He’s loyal as a dog, stubborn to a fault, and, like Techno, completely and utterly incapable of allowing injustice or ‘wrongness’ to exist in the same space as himself. Before the serum he threw himself into fights with enough regularity that Bucky apparently would just… walk around Brooklyn in the vague area he knew Rogers should be and check alleyways for either a brawl or an unconscious Steve. He also believes in freedom, and in the moral obligation of someone who is capable of preventing evil to work to the fullest extent possible to prevent said evil. However, Steve is Captain America. He’s not an idiot: he’s portrayed as incredibly progressive for every era he’s in, but he fundamentally believes that the US is a good system, or at least the best system possible. He believes in the ideal of the American dream and said dream’s ability to inspire people to do good, even if he doesn’t believe in the reality of that dream. He’s also blatantly unwilling to take orders and follow commands unless he knows the reasoning behind the decisions and has been fully convinced that his actions won’t be furthering evil without his knowledge, and considering his history with Nazis and with SHEILD (the government agency that founded the avengers) being a front for the same Nazi organization that got him and Bucky killed originally? It’s totally understandable for him to be VERY wary of his superiors. He’s a good leader, but he’s quick to make moral judgements of other people’s characters and will stick to them until he’s been beaten over the head with how wrong he is, which is really just a subset of his “you find what is True and Right and then you stick to it to the end and you Make the rest of the world move instead of you” mentality, which is a very helpful mentality for a paragon hero! …. Until they don’t have all the information, or that stubbornness is used against them, or they meet someone who has a quality they think is repulsive or immortal. 

So all this being said…. Holy crap I wanna put these two in a box and shake them around like a stim toy. 

They’re both paragons, by the firm definition of the word, but in completely different ways. They’re both loyal, vicious, guard-dog coded characters, but Techno chewed through his leash and chose his own path (Philza) centuries ago, while Steve was just beaten and dumped in the river by masters he thought were kind, and is now snapping at any human who resembles them. Steve still wants structure above and around him, he still wants to work For a government, as long as it’s a trustworthy one. He’s just not sure how or where to find one, or if he’ll ever be able to trust one again. Techno is absolutely uninterested in that. They’re feral in different ways, and they’ve got very similar opinions about government except for Steve’s uncertainty as to how far exactly he thinks he should go and when, and Techno’s blatant non-regard for things like collateral damage.

They’re both the strongest non-augmented melee fighters of their respective worlds and they’ve both got a signature weapon that, despite actively being a Weapon, is meant to symbolically represent peace and protection. They both have rebirth imagery and close semi-platonic relationships with right-hand-men who are snipers/long distance fighters. They’ve both got a history with being made to perform, Steve with his propaganda and Techno with either his Chat or, in some headcanons, his time as an Emperor or a gladiator. 

They’ve both got (I’m taking some liberties with like, crossover X-men comics and Steve’s hatred of Nazis here) problems with people treating other people as non-human, but Techno is living it, while Steve is working from a place of privilege.

Techno, on the other hand, would not necessarily have the same experience as Steve when it comes to his early life: Steve is still, fundamentally, a small, disabled, asthmatic kid from Brooklyn, and the disconnect between Him and The Body is at absolute best a struggle he works his way through after the first few Avengers films and at worst something that haunts him for the rest of his life. 

Steve might feel his body is not his own but he has no experience with his MIND not being his own. He’s frighteningly intelligent. Techno is smart, but the Voices are another huge difference between them I think I’d find fascinating to explore. 

Steve is not the brains of the Avengers, but he is the mind. He is their compass, their engine, the one making judgements on and off field for the team, but he’s not alone: in good avengers media (Avengers Assemble) he’s working alongside Tony, and he has the whole team at his back. Techno and Phil are alone. They are entirely self-reliant and have been for aeons. There is absolutely no reason for them to understand or comprehend how the Avengers work as a team without some significant work to bridge that gap. Philza is a whole other can of worms: the hardcore worlds might be a form of long-term enforced or self-isolation, the hardcore life system might be shared by both Phil and Techno or be just Phil, they might assume the team can die more than once and be shocked to learn everyone on earth has only one life, they’re so old they carry scars from things they can’t remember anymore and traumas the Avengers are not equipped to handle. 

Literally everything about this dynamic is fascinating to me. How would Steve and Techno fight together? What parts of their political ideals would clash and why? Would they help own another grow or make one another worse? Are we getting post-Bucky-returns Steve, where the Avengers is splintered and Steve is truly disillusioned? Or will Emduo be present for the events of Winter Solider? If they are, how would they influence those events? Techno would take one look at Steve’s reaction to Hydra and know Exactly how much they needed to be wiped from the face of the planet, but how would that go? Would he bring Steve with him? Would he clean house without Steve even realizing and come back like “.ey yo I polished ur government for u. Hope you like it, it’s freshly de-Hydrad. Also half ur entire chain of command is dead they were evil my bad.” Would Philza have enough influence and wisdom to pull Tony away from the idea of Ultron? How would either of these characters interact with Peter Parker (Tommy but… a spider?) or Nightcrawler (That is an Enderman Hybrid. Why is there a normal enderman hybrid in this universe?) or Venom (ah, you fool. I’ve already got someone living in my brain rent-free, bold of you to assume you will survive this mistake). Literally everything about this is amazing and there are ONLY TWO FICS ON AO3. Infuriating. Literally the worst. 

[jellazticious]

JELL YOU CANT JUST DROP THIS RANDOM LORE ON THE FLOOR AND RUN AWAY!! TELL US MORE PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU

If this is about the Peppino clone theory then alright, buckle up cheesebags

First of all it's a theory and a headcanon, not lore, I don't want anyone acting like what I'm saying is canon 😭

BUT ANYWHO

I just thought it's weird that Peppino supposedly has never seen the tower in his life before or he has but he gets no association with it BUT he is plastered all over the posters, graffiti, boxes, etc in the background like he was part of the team. There's even like toys and robots designed after his scrumptious physique.

Next there's his malleability. I know this is a cartoon world with cartoon logic but alllll I'm saying is why doesn't Gus have that same whackiness? It's all mostly Brick doing the comedy. The most we have to Gus deforming his body was during the double jump where he turns into a ball. Peppino on the other hand? Turned to cheese, turned to a pizza, turned to a puppet, able to handle being in the front of a rocket, his body contorts during exaggeration of poses, way faster on foot than a rat etc.

He is just as cartoon character as the residents of the tower compared to the human levels of the outsiders like Gus and Stick. I mean yes, Gus can have exaggerated body parts but he is never as exaggerated as Peppino is

Next reason, the WAR level and the very confusing and retconned implication of what Peppino did. Some say it was canon that he was an actual veteran, some say he was technically not a soldier but a pizza delivery guy for the soldiers, and some say he accidentally wound up in the crossfires. Other than the war setting, the level, for zero reason or explanation, transitioned to a laboratory with clones of Peppino and the big ass tube in the bg has Pillar John in it. Cloning is not new to the tower but by god are they SHIT AT IT

Also here's a little intermission because I just LOOOOOVE this one tube in the bg so much

it's so stupid, he looks like he wanna die and he isn't even born yet, that's how you know you're getting a Peppino variant njsngjksrkj

but anwyay back to topic

I'm pretty sure we all think that the WAR level is the tower's last attempt at getting rid of Peppino by making a horrendous cheap move with making him relive his trauma. I love that take so much man, to think that the tower is this desperate because Peppino is SO CLOSE to destroying it that it didn't even have Pizza Time but a constantly ticking timer.

It makes sense with the war part of the level. That is clearly a traumatic event but then it turned to a lab which gets confusing.

I kinda stitched the two together and made them two different memories. The first one came from the original person the clones are based off and the other is Peppino's. I like to think that Faker and Peppino are opposites lol. Peppino has the perfectly structured body but not the mental stability while Faker is smart as hell despite being animalistic with a constantly shambling body. They're sorta the best ones to come out of the lab. but yeah, sorry for putting that tangent there. It's so to give a little context with how Peppino remembers stuff.

His brain is done fucked up that he cannot tell which memories are from him or from Bruno. It's like when you're dreaming and you already have stock knowledge in the dream's universe and it just hurts your brain when you try to pinpoint when exactly you got that information. He'd say some shit about his childhood and full believes he was the kid in the memory, and to Peppino he'd admit that all his memories are hella fuzzy for some reason but he just shrugs it off with "I'm just getting old". Also he kinda gets dreams about the lab and shrugs it off as some weird ass nightmare about the restaurant debt lmao.

(btw, Faker is well aware about Bruno's memories and know how to distinguish it from his own. I really love interpreting him as the alpha of all clones, it's so fun)

But yeah those are my reasons why I formulated and headcanoned Peppino as a clone.

All else that you need to know about this is that Peppino escapes, spends time in the real world, forgets his origins because brains are weird and it does this thing where it forgets traumatic events, and runs the restaurant (instinctual thing???), and seeing that Peppino is thriving on his own, Pizzahead thought how funny it would be to bring his ass back to the tower. Pizzahead is Pizzahead, his choices are whack asf

but all in all, I have always interpreted clone Peppino in all my silly little doodles gbjsbgksrbkj but like no one's gonna ask about it so I never made a peep nor a sound. But now you know lmao, which would raise questions that I'm more than happy to indulge

[tarmac-rat]

Hey hey I need to uuh hum fight you at the back of a Denny's or something over those tags on my cyberpunk post lile wtf? That's such a good analysis of his character I love your work a lot in general but this is doing me in I'm gonna cry, you're so fucking right about this dumb broken man 🥺😠

I will not fight you I will bake you a cake and give you a kiss because you're very sweet I appreciate your kindness 😘

I really love your perspective on Johnny's disabilities and addictions impacting how he sees and interacts with the world-- as someone who herself isn't disabled I tend to overlook the way people view the world through that lens and as a result have realized that I haven't touched upon it much in my own analysis of Cyberpunk, and your insight really was spot-on and spoke to me in a way I hadn't considered before.

I talk a lot about the themes and meta of the game but Pondsmith himself came out and said, like, before the game came out that Johnny is not the hero of the story. He THINKS he's the hero of the story but the way people and even himself idolize him and his actions are in many ways his biggest shortcoming. Johnny is addicted to the image of himself, much like he's addicted to his vices and addicted to his cause. He needs his anchors no matter how detrimental they are to him, but in many respects those anchors were never his choice. Now he's stuck in his place, dug in and unable to move, and that's the way he dies. Alone, unmoored, and stuck in his ways.

He's a very tragic and even empathetic character-- I do understand why he does the things he does and feel for him when he suffers tragedies-- but treating him as a hero of this story is wrong, in my opinion. He's a disabled, traumatized war veteran who was set up in life to fail at a very early age. His flaws are of his own making. They are not of his own design.

[identitty-dickruption]

recovered; present tense

I’m relearning how to be safe; how to be a person in a world where I don’t wake up in the middle of the night with a pounding heart, my hands don’t shake every time I leave the house, and my eyes don’t search for threats whenever something moves in my periphery. Nobody tells you that safety is something that requires practice. That is, nobody tells you until you end up spending the best part of your life in trauma recovery. 

After all this time, “trauma” still feels like too big of a word for what happened to me and around me and through me. Trauma feels like a word reserved for veterans. For people who have returned from war, or at the very least some kind of “real” violence. It doesn’t feel quite right to describe my experiences as traumatic, when so many others have been through so much worse. 

After all this time, “trauma” feels like too small of a word for how shattered I have become. It can’t even come close to describing the way that survival became my entire lifestyle. It’s such a little word for such a massive change in my world. Two syllables, six letters, and a lifetime of pressing my back against the wall so that nobody can come up behind me. It doesn’t feel quite right to describe my experiences as traumatic, when so many others have been so much more fortunate.

I’m relearning how to be safe. Now that many of the physical symptoms are gone, I almost feel a kind of post-trauma trauma. I almost need a new kind of therapist to teach me how to have a personality again. I can’t go back to being the pre-trauma version of myself. They’re long gone. It wouldn’t feel right to reimagine myself as the kind of person who never went through trauma in the first place. I’ve discarded everything from the hobbies I used to love to the music I used to listen to. They were discarded when my entire life became recovery, but even now that I’ve “recovered”, well… That skin doesn’t fit quite right anymore. 

The days seem to stretch out for kilometres. Every moment feels endless when you don’t know who you are anymore. In trauma recovery, I learnt to live a values-based life. But a list of values doesn’t bring me any closer to knowing who I am. I carefully type some words into Google.

How do I know who I am?

List of personality traits

Personality quiz

None of it seems to help. Every question on the personality quizzes seems to beg for a degree of insight that would solve the very conundrum that led me to the quiz. I don’t know if I prefer being around people or being alone, because that decision was informed by trauma for so long. I don’t know if I prefer to be organised because organisation keeps me safe, or because that’s just how I am. Every question opens up a million more questions that I don’t know if I’ll ever have the answers to. 

I’m back to sitting on the outside of my own body. Dissociation. I think through the list of activities I’m supposed to do when something like this happens. Deep breaths. Counting the number of things I can see of each colour of the rainbow. Squeezing my own arms to remind myself that I’m real. Nothing immediately returns my brain to my body, but everything helps a little. Maybe I’m not quite as recovered as I thought. Or maybe recovery means learning how to make my trauma a smaller piece of my mosaic. Maybe I’ll always feel it to some degree, just slightly less sharp with each passing year.

I respond to a meme one of my friends sent me.

I check my calendar to make sure there’s nothing I’m supposed to be doing right now.

I strap my dog into her harness.

We walk.

I’m relearning how to be a person again. Walking through my neighbourhood with my dog provides more lessons than I expect. The sun is bright. The wind is cold. I guess it must be just past three, because kids are hitting the streets from the direction of the local school. They smile at my dog, and I smile back. I let a small group of the kids pat my dog. They thank me, and I wish them a good afternoon. These kids have no reason to doubt that I’m a person. And maybe that’s all that matters right now. 

[kyouka-supremacy]

i wanna hear your thoughts about black lizard <3

S U R E. I love the Black Lizards so much, in my mind they really are the closest to family the pm has. You have these two very dysfunctional traumatized kids made of:

Gin we don't know much about except that they grew up in the mafia and have a brother who literally doesn't know how to express any emotion that isn't raw primordial rage

Tachihara who like. Where do I even start, since childhood had major younger sibling complex™ that evolved into trauma when said brother died in war making him also develop major revenge complex™, was dysfunctional to the point of becoming a thug to cope with his complexes, got caught and recluted by the fucking police that on top of likely body modifications assigned him to be a spy at (makes some very quick calculations) 16, apparently, to the major criminal and most dangerous organization of Yokohama

They both found themselves working in the mafia under pretty similar circumstances, two (by the looks of it) non ability users yet nonetheless exceptionally skilled mafiosi which allowed them to climb the ranks of the pm pretty quickly. Their similar positions and complementary skills made them perfect fit to take part of an accurately schemed, all-comprehensive team that could carry out both long range attacks (Tachihara) and close range assassinations (Gin), accompanied by someone who could fill in anything the other two missed– a pm veteran, powerful ability user with enough experience to handle any escalation, and also pass on his experience to train the next generation of pm high ranks. That's how the Black Lizard was born, a team set up with clinical precision, the perfect cold expression of what the pm is like under Mori. But it was never accounted to be a family! In fact, it probably started off on a rocky start, because what else would you expect by putting together two teens - let's say the Black Lizard was formed about three years after Tachihara joined the pm and one year before the current events, so when both Gin and Tachihara were 18 - who their entire lives never experienced a single interpersonal interaction that wasn't conflictual. Still, somewhat held back from exploding into extreme conflictual outburst by their intimidating senior (who very conveniently is also proficient in handling dysfunctional teens), Gin and Tachihara kind of… Start getting each other. Or at least, start thinking they do. And soon enough their shared experiences and feelings bring them closer than they ever felt with anyone else. Because they're both like, this guy gets it!! They get what it feels like having an older brother that is so distant from you you can't seem to connect with in anyway. They get what it means having to toughen up so to not give any chance to the world to hurt you, what it feels like to hide your soft core. Even despite neither of them being aware of the other's secret identity, that's another thing they have in common and probably got them even closer. I've talked about it before but to me Gin and Tachihara became to each other the brother they always wanted but never had- someone you could take jabs with, share inside jokes, playfully send death threats to - overall, just the warm, genuine and fun feeling of siblinghood compared to the stiff and distant relationship with their older brothers that has hurt them a lot in the past (about that, at this point I truly fail to interpret the Black Lizard scene in chapter 5 any other way. “You're two minutes late” “Creepy ol' Gin's even later than me” “Ever the freak, ain'cha” “Enough, you imbeciles! Or would you prefer to be listed among the casualties?”: in no world the whole conversation between the three of them doesn't sound family-like. I can swear to you the Gin / Tachihara interaction is just the average siblings experience.)

They're so family!!!! They're so family, they make me cry. Chaotic siblings and their exasperated grandpa who loves them very much. The father figure neither of them ever had!! (I mean, Gin never had. Tachihara we can't exactly say, but if anything the little flashback of his family in chapter 73 doesn't look good). I think so much about Hirotsu and Gin specifically, Hirotsu taking Gin under his wing, Gin genuinely holding affection towards him to the point she'd even show herself more vulnerable to him and sincerely treat him as a father; in my headcanon, Hirotsu is the only person in the pm and thus the entirety of Yokohama to know Gin is a girl other than Ryuunosuke, Mori and Kouyou (and Verlaine? How are they related again?).

Idk, in my mind deep deep down Gin is a little more hopeful (or naïve, depends on how you want to see it) compared to Ryuunosuke; not that she trusts people (she doesn't), but she does believe some, very little people can actually be… Good, and well intentioned, which is a low standard but still better than Ryuunosuke believing all people are fundamentally always selfishly fighting for survival and the sorts (actually, I think Ryuunosuke is the exact reason Gin doesn't believe that, because knowing him taught her that even the most ruthless, heartless of people can still hold affection and dedication– and I'm talking about his devotion and utter love for her).

I digress, but you see how they're really this little family. They'd go on family trips and have card games and stay late at night to work on their plan for their next mission and Hirotsu would narrate exaggerated gangster stories to a Tachihara with sparkling eyes and Tachihara would make sure to cook for everyone and make a little more for Ryuunosuke too because one night Gin confessed to him she worries about how little he eats. They're family.

Except they're not. except Gin has her secrets and Tachihara has his secrets and Hirotsu has his secrets nobody can share with the others. And Gin and Tachihara are young and passionate and living the moment, are happy and satisfied with how their lives are now, whereas Hirotsu is highly perceptive and thanks to his sixth sense given from being a pm veteran he can read the signs and he just… Knows something's up with all of them, knows the good times won't last much longer; and yet can't bring himself to voice it because he loves his new subordinates / kids too much and really can't ruin their fleeting happiness, the first time in their lives they feel, more or less consciously, like they finally found a place for them. So it's all so bittersweet and tragic, you see what I mean???

Btw, Gin really doesn't have the slightest idea that Tachihara is a spy. Like, even worse than that, when she'll found out she'll first go through severe denial. She's going to hate him for that, like she never hated anyone before. And Tachihara is going to be so obviously heartbroken!! And it's so sad, because both of them are doomed to lose the closest brothers they ever had– in Tachihara's case, for the second time. It's so tragic.

Chapter 77… Man, chapter 77. Black Lizard is THE pm family, seriously. Just- I don't even know how to describe it: the warm and domestic and familiar feeling to the scene, the image of a family coming together again after having surpassed an hard time, Gin with her guard completely down and so serene, comfortable, ecstatic from the relief that despite all that happened all of them are safe and sound, and nothing else matters. The way Gin and Hirotsu cackle when Tachihara asks them if he's suited for the mafia. For Gin, the idea he isn't is absurd, insane– that's how Tachihara has always been, her mafioso coworker, her partner, friend, brother. For Hirotsu, it's the confirmation of that something is off he's already sensed so many other times; yet, he wants to reassure Tachihara, like a father would do to his son; he wants to keep the family together a little longer, as long as possible, cherish those last little serene moments where they can still be a family. And it's such a gentle, heartbreaking scene, the bittersweet knowledge that Tachihara knows that's the last time the Black Lizard can still be a family, Hirotsu who probably took a good guess on that, Gin being completely oblivious to it. How the image of the wounded bodies of Gin and Hirotsu - his wounds - is going to hunt Tachihara forever. I just love the Black Lizard so much!!! The tragic family who was brought together for one year which is alos probably going to be the only year of happiness the three of them will experience their entire lives which will change all of them profoundly to the point no one will ever be the same after breaking apart really does it for me (╥﹏╥)

[whispsofkindness]

Just Being There for Each Other

“It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn't heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore's stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

"Hello Eeyore," said Pooh.

"Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet," said Eeyore, in a Glum Sounding Voice.

"We just thought we'd check in on you," said Piglet, "because we hadn't heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay."

Eeyore was silent for a moment. "Am I okay?" he asked, eventually. "Well, I don't know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That's what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. Which is why I haven't bothered you. Because you wouldn't want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All, would you now."

Pooh looked at Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. "What are you doing?"

"We're sitting here with you," said Pooh, "because we are your friends. And true friends don't care if someone is feeling Sad, or Alone, or Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are."

"Oh," said Eeyore. "Oh." And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were There.

No more; no less.”

(Kathryn Wallace, after A.A. Milne, illustration by E.H. Shepard)

.

It should be noted that Winnie the Pooh was written by Milne to explain war (he was a WWI & WWII veteran) and its effects to his son, Christopher, and perhaps himself (this scene relating to PTSD).

"The demons of war followed Milne throughout his life. It was noted that when Christopher was little, Alan terrified him when he confused a swarm of buzzing bees with whizzing bullets. The popping of balloons sent him ducking for cover. Milne knew of only one way to explain to his son what was happening — through his writing. A.A. Milne started writing a collection of short stories entitled Winnie-the-Pooh.

It's been theorized by Dr. Sarah Shea that Milne wrote into each character of Winnie-the-Pooh a different psychological disorder. While only A. A. Milne could tell us for certain, Dr. Shea's theory seems pointed in the right direction, but may be a little too impersonal. After all, the book was written specifically for one child, by name, and features the stuffed animals that the boy loved.

It's more likely, in my opinion, that the stories were a way for Milne to explain his own post-traumatic stress to his six-year-old son. Every stuffed friend in the Hundred Acre Woods is a child-friendly representation of a characteristic of post-traumatic stress. Piglet is paranoia, Eeyore is depression, Tigger is impulsive behaviors, Rabbit is perfectionism-caused aggression, Owl is memory loss, and Kanga & Roo represent over-protection. This leaves Winnie, who Alan wrote in for himself as Christopher Robin's guide through the Hundred Acre Woods — his father's mind."

Description of Winnie the Pooh is shared from We Are The Mighty.

[mermaidsirennikita]

In your opinion what are the best and worst novels by your favorite historical romance authors and why?

Hmmm, I've read the full backlist of only a few authors, but ones I've read a lot of....

To get her outta the way, for Kleypas--

Best: Dreaming of You. Defined an romance hero archetype and one she would draw from for some of her other well-done heroes (McKenna, Simon Hunt, Winterborne, the self-made man is her wonderland and Derek Craven didn't do it first but he did do it best).

Worst: I haven't read any of her books set in the South and I suspect those are much worse, but Stranger in My Arms is my least favorite. Does the Sommersby Plot better than Sommersby because the ending is better and they aren't Confederates, but there is some Exotic India Stuff and I felt like the hero and heroine didn't have amazing chemistry. I think that in making the hero a good contrast to the bad husband, he became boring.

Hoyt--

Best: Thief of Shadows. Duke of Midnight is probably a close second, and Scandalous Desires is right up there too. The Ghost of St. Giles arc is the best Maiden Lane arc, Winter and Isabel are amazing characters, that scene where he laughs into her pussy and is like I don't know what I'm doing but I'm gonna find out, the scene where he pulls the pins from her hair and she's overwhelmed, the scene where he tells her would've loved to have babies with her but that's not what it's about, all the Zorro vibes.

Worst: tbh I don't think I've read a book of hers that is dull or bad, but her Four Soldiers series hasn't aged the best because the heroes are veterans who fought in the American territories, and a lot of their traumatic backstories involve this like... prolonged POW torture executed by indigenous people against the British soldiers.... And like honestly, I've read some accounts of this kind of incident and I don't think it was a binary issue morally. And I don't even think Hoyt necessarily thinks that; but I don't think it was executed well, and it is very, very disturbing to read about. Especially in To Seduce a Sinner, which would honestly otherwise be a solid, entertaining book.

Lorraine Heath--

Best: Waking Up with the Duke, because it's the greatest angstfest, and Jayne making Ainsley feel the baby kick and him freezing and being like "it's not MINE, it CANNOT be mine" and having a full emotional break in a garden with dozens of people nearby is glorious, and their goodbye in the middle of the book never fails to make me cry.

Worst: I mean it's gonna be one of her Texas books because as good as they are otherwise, two of the three heroes are actually! Former Confederates! And like, yes, they were teenagers (at least one of them was a minor) when this happened, but it doesn't super matter to me. And one of them calls the Civil War the WAR OF NORTHERN AGGRESSION!!! Which sucks, because otherwise, Dallas is a great hero with a great love story, but I can't look past that. I think Texas Destiny has a heroine whose backstory is that her plantation was attacked by Union soldiers and terrible things happened. But idk, as a Southern woman who's descended from Confederates, I'm a bit "then perish" about precious Confederate Womanhood. Don't know that she'd write that today, though.

Joanna Shupe--

Best: It's a close one between this and Prince of Broadway, but I do think The Duke Gets Even is my favorite because it's enhanced by the leadup and the scene where Lockwood bites Nellie all over her tits HARD and says "I'm going to cover you in bite marks, darling". That was good for my spirit. I also love when Lockwood is like "THIS IS THE LAST CHANCE, ELEANOR (it's a big deal when a hero is the only man to call a bitch Eleanor, btw) DON'T COME CRYING FOR ME" and leaves with great dignity but inwardly is like sobbing.

Worst: I have not ready a Shupe I really dislike, but The Gangster's Prize is probably the weakest; I think she was testing her Mila Finelli style in a historical setting. And I liked it, and I LOVE the Mila books, but the Mila tone doesn't quite fit historicals.

Sarah MacLean--

Best: A Rogue By Any Other Name. The angst, the backstory, Bourne eating Penelope up and going "well you have to marry me now MUAHAHAHAHA" directly after, the scene where her dad is like, screaming at him on the ground and Bourne leans out the window like, "OH WHAT'S THAT??? IT'S YOUR DAUGHTER'S PUSSY. WHICH WAS ALL I HAD FOR DINNER LAST NIGHT OLD MAN." What an asshole. I'd have several babies for him.

Worst: Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing A Lord. It's not bad, I just feel like Nick is not the kind of hero I have come to associate with MacLean. He's too lovely. I think that Christmas novella she wrote about Ebeneezer Scrooge if he fuuuucked is much more her.

Monica McCarty--

Best: The Recruit, because I love a good "man finds out he got a woman pregnant and she tries to hide it but then he feels her baby bump and is like EXCUSE???" And then I thought he was gonna be one of those guys who's like "I can't fuck you while you're pregnant, what if the baby feels it". But nah, he's like a " babies can't feel shit, bend over" kind of guy.

Worst: The Saint, because I was so excited for the Illicit Affairs energy, and instead there's just a lot of waiting.. for them to fuck... There is an excellent scene where it's dark and he thinks she's someone else and he fingers her from behind and then is like "SHITFUCK".

[jun-hug]

I absolutely adore Re:Zero, which is hilarious because I gave it a chance a few years ago and dropped it because I thought that it was going to be one of those anime that treat its female characters like props, but I gave it a second chance more recently and — not only does it not do that, it is legitimately one of the greatest character studies I’ve ever seen. It uses its time travel gimmick super well to explore not just how all sorts of characters react to the mc in all sorts of ways depending on how he acts towards them (reflecting 1) the many facets of their very complicated personalities and 2) the central theme of season one surrounding how his own actions affect how other people treat him in turn, and also how his own initial mindset of the world being an escapist fantasy where he gets to play the hero is harming those he is unintentionally forcing it upon — as well as himself and his desperate desire to be loved by other people) — but also to explore the past trauma that has shaped him into who he is today as well as the new cycle of horrors that is shaping his development in this new and frightening world and how he learns to respond to situations. I have seen both depressed otaku hikkikomori and 40 year old war veterans talk about how deeply they relate to the very complicated layers of isolation and trauma (interpersonal and more generally violence-related) that the show explores, it is done so well. I don’t even really qualify as the show’s target demographic and he is probably my favorite protagonist of all time. (Hell, me not directly seeing myself in him is probably why I lIke him so much. A lot of the ire he gets from the fanbase early on is seeped in how so much of the fanbase openly sees him as a reflection of their own flaws/past mistakes, which in and of itself is a sign of its fantastic writing.) It’s the only anime that has gotten me to finish both seasons and go “alright, time to read the book.”

The main character does act super cringeworthy sometimes (and despite his time travel ability, there are some moments where he messes up BAD and is then forced to live with the consequences of his poor behavior), and it can be hard to watch, but he is legitimately fascinating and also genuinely a really good boy, and the other characters are all hugely multifaceted as well. I haven’t even gotten into how he comes off as the most cishet teenage boy imaginable in the first season before you’re suddenly hit with “MC went to school dressed as a woman for the first three days of high school and being clocked for his voice was the traumatic event that pushed him over the edge to spiral into a deep depression” or how he declares that his ideal self is a woman named Natsumi Schwartz or how the books include narration where he spends paragraphs talking about how the knight he’s constantly picking a fight with has “a voice that a woman would mistake for that of an angel, but for him exists solely to vex” and “graceful eyelashes that make him have to hold his breath to prevent him from losing himself” and “slender long legs and surprisingly supple hips that he can’t help but admire,” and then you get to reread everything and see all his old behaviors in an entirely new light with how he’s acting out of insecurities bred from a mindset seeped in toxic masculinity and the fear of being both a non-ideal hero and a non-ideal man. I am so very thankful that I gave this series a second chance, because it is incredible. Please watch it.

seems interesting:O

I love it when you're like "ehhh nah" to some series books whatever, but later you're absolutely absorbed by it lmao

I'll add it to my watchlist:)