#is good projection fodder; i won't lie

[lapisllong]

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a very small person trapped in a world run by a violent and mercurial giant. You could walk out the door but the whole world is populated by other giants and monsters both known and unknown. You have no allies, resources, or means of escape.

How do you cope, let alone thrive, in this environment? You get sneaky, manipulative, resource hoard, and lie; you listen at doors, learn to blank your face and, later, to project whatever you think they want to see. You distrust everyone and everything and assume no one will ever be trustworthy so you use them to get what you can while the getting is good, considering other people cannon fodder or tools depending on the context of the situation. You learn to divorce your mind from your body and deny the needs and complaints of your fleshy prison.

None of that even touches the triggers, fears, and rages; the way you learned to lash out and abuse those smaller and weaker than you because you're both filled with rage and shame for having been the weakling in the past, and fear that if they don't toughen up they won't survive.

Your emotional growth was stunted and twisted, your mind was planted in bitter cursed ground and bears deadly fruits that look strikingly like those you were subjected to as a child.

This is just one version of childhood maltreatment and one set of skills that enable someone to survive it. Every iteration of abuse requires a slightly different set of skills and traits so it's no wonder to me that personality disorders are the end result.

What I find incredible is that there aren't MORE traumatized children trapped in adult bodies working their past out on the world around them. That anyone can come away from that with any softness or love left in them, with the capacity to be gentle and kind, is a wonder.

I'm not saying excuse or forgive the damage done to you by someone who never worked their shit out. They should absolutely be held accountable for their actions. You don't have to and shouldn't just soak up the damage and should always do what is right and safe for you. I am saying do it with grace and understanding that they probably got here along a terrible road and will likely need professional help forging their destructive skills into constructive ones.

Finally, it's not about you, love. Nothing you did deserved the hurt done to you. I wish the whole world a great and powerful time of healing.

Childhood maltreatment does not only result in PTSD or C-PTSD. It is tied to many personality disorders, including extremely demonized ones such as NPD and BPD.

Yet for some reason people don’t really seem to think of people with personality disorders as simply traumatized and in need of help, but as incorrigibly broken or inherently evil.

This is especially true if the disorder in question is associated with low empathy, even if not all people with said disorder have that symptom in particular. Having low empathy means that a lot of people will get explicitly genocidal about your existence.

[merryfortune]

Thanks for your Spectre HC you just posted, I love reading people's thoughts on him! Do you have any other thoughts about his character?

I have a lot of thoughts, actually. here are my other Spectre metas that you might be interested in (earth ignis!Spectre) and (water ignis!Spectre)

And I’ve also got a lot of unpublished fics involving him. Some of these are unpublished because its not the right time (stupid rare pair week being in December and not now) and others are unpublished because they’re unfinished (more earth ignis!Spectre and some naughty stuff)

my main philosophy with characterising Spectre, and I admittedly have a lot to perfect, comes from reading Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro and that is, Spectre is the inverse of the titular character. He is Neuro, if Neuro was a masochist. 

also, i’m a huge revspec shipper so revspec is implied below frequently, I am also intrigued by polyamorous shipping with him and all the lost kids because i feel like its inevitable (like in a5 with the yu-boys and b-girls, its a similar sort of thing. lost kids squad need to bond ok). 

but i do dislike some ships involving him (him and pl.aymaker as well as him and sou.lburner but the former is slightly bettered by a threesome solution involving revolver) and then I loathe some ships involving him (him and bl.ue an.gel)

So here is like the comprehensive list of things I think about him either in general or in tandem with other characters

fluffy/general

The best art tropes are when he’s portrayed with long hair (like waist length) or with earrings (specifically Ryoken’s)

he is a huge green thumb; his room is just overflowing with plants. that being said, it is rather messy because he absolutely can’t prune to the level that is needed

he likes classical musical and instrumental covers of heavy metal music best

of the lost children, i think he was the eldest. looking at how yusaku and takeru are portrayed as children, spectre looks closer to how ryoken was portrayed. so i think he was 8 at the time of the incident; not to mention, when he first appeared, I thought he was 20+

loves androgynous fashion and is open to dressing femininely but chooses not to because he’s worried it looks unprofessional

he makes the best teas and cakes. he also cooks a lot and is very good at it. he’s very, very domestic in general.

i love… precocious kid Spectre and dumb childhood friends to lovers tropes like “I’m going to be the one who marries you when we grow up” and pinkie promises type thing (though, if spectre broke a pinkie promise, i’m certain he’d break his pinkie finger too)

he’s also quite affectionate due to being touch starved which is really at odds with the fact that he hates people and he wants to maintain a level of professionalism with the one person he does (or had a history of) want to be affectionate with

spectre has a photographic memory and remembers every single detail of every single day, however, he is (more or less) lying about remembering those things from infancy; those’re coping daydreams. they did happen/similar things happened but he’s dreamt up most the details

angsty

He needs a therapist really, really badly and I’m of the hopeful belief that he will eventually get the opportunity to work through his issues in a professional environment

he often wonders how different his life may have been had he been born either a) a girl or b) a more ‘attractive’ child.

Dr Kogami would not approve of Spectre having romantic feelings for his son

Spectre had so many mixed feelings about the death of Dr Kogami 

the Kogami family situation is so fucked from this perspective because Ryoken is so loyal and his father is Like That

I think there was at least one couple who attempted to get to know Spectre; maybe he was the most physically similar child to them or they were intrigued by how intelligent he was and he probably scarred them for life.

other

Spectre doesn’t wear a mask. All the other members of Hanoi wear masks but Spectre doesn’t. I still don’t quite know what to make of this but it does, I think, speak to how low he might perceive himself since he is so subservient to The Cause

I really hope he gets a re-design. I think, other than Ryoken, he is probably the most pressing character who needs a redemption arc. after all, he is a Lost Child. but also because he has a kinda boring design?? like, it isn’t as eye catching as the others, you know?

related to the one above, I think that if any character gets a more permanent death, especially of the lost kids, it’s Spectre with his head closest to the chopping block unless he gets redeemed - unless death is redeeming but fingers crossed he’s still alive by the final episode otherwise I might go into some hardcore denial

also ya girl is a dumbass because she incorrectly thought that Spectre and Go’s orphanage was the same one but no, they’re different places altogether lol

his English VA is spot the fuck on. I really, really enjoy his dubbed voice

I am certain that Spectre will recruit his Ignis and he won’t kill it. I think his Ignis is Earth but I kind of really want it to be Aqua too purely because mixed gender Ignis/Origin pairs intrigue me and the fact that the silhouette of the girl from the lost incident is shown having twin tails ending up with Earth is hilarious

I hope we get more Spectre backstory because its one of my favourites in all of yugioh tbh because it’s just so balls to the walls with W H A T 

i’d love to write more gen fic of him but he just pushes the right effing buttons for me so nsfw under the cut jsyk

smutty

bondage, collars & leashes, tentacles, dendrophilia, body worship (if he’s doing it to someone else), sadism/masochism play: all things he absolutely enjoys. 

he’s probably down to try anything so long as it’s like hygienic or whatever

has accidentally (or not so accidentally) called his s/o mummy during sex

he is a VERSE. stop erasing his identity people. this man is a switch and proud

he’s one of those people who doesn’t talk about sex but you can absolutely tell from a mile or a million away what he is high key into and that is rather far from ‘vanilla’

his biggest kink is being loved and appreciated and making his s/o feel the same though, lbr

revspec smut fics i wanna write

bonus category because i wanna talk about the kinky things i wanna write involving him

dungeons and dragons inspired au where he’s a dryad and instead of having conventional genitalia, he has a flower Ryoken can penetrate but there are also tentacles and a lot of nectar which kinda acts like nice tasting cum and aphrodisiacs are a Thing too 

post-canon or mundane au fic where he and rev more or less get married, Spectre brings the wedding bouquet into the bedroom and either a) puts on a ‘show’ for Ryoken involving it or b) Spectre takes it up the ass from Ryoken whilst masturbating/humping it 

another dnd/fantasy world au with dragon!Revolver and human sacrifice!Spectre. you can probably tell where that’s going. Spectre gets devoured in ways he hadn’t expected :eyes:

ok this fic won’t ever happen but it still came to me in a dark, dark time: post canon fic where he and rev have outdoor sex in the presence of Spectre’s tree mother;

either a fic where ryoken threesomes with irl!spectre and vrains!spectre or spectre foursomes with irl!ryoken, s1!revolver, and s2!revolver because I’m a slut for surreal sex like that

i feel like i’m forgetting something bUT YEAH