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djsherriff-responses · 1 month ago

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https://www.tumblr.com/djsherriff-responses/767076096159137792/httpswwwtumblrcomdjsherriff-responses7668862

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I think it would be nice if Ray was taken under Eden’s wing when he was around 18, it would be a very small but good parallel of how Dolph escaped Eden when he was barely 18 and then being immediately lured by Alex (aka escaping from an abusive environment but immediately getting screwed over) 😯～

I think that the Board only pays attention to Rayman’s mental issue if it’s something they can take advantage of. For C-PTSD, they manipulated it so he would view them à la saviour (and thus less likely to betray them because “they saved his life”). And if it’s thought that he has BPD, they don’t treat it so he gains an unhealthy addictive relationship. Therapy is an absolute no-go, since either the mental state will get better (and so he’ll become less vulnerable), or Rayman might start realising the abusive signs and the mental state quietly worsens, and not in a way the Board likes.

If it were to be believed that one of the prescriptions that Rayman is taking is benzodiazepines (just a theory I really like, as seen from here), it turns out that benzos are highly addictive. The chances of addiction becomes higher if the user has a history of drug/alcohol addiction or live with a personality disorder. Also! Benzodiazepines only slow down the messages between the brain and body, meaning they don’t actually treat any underlying issues (it’s like as you said, they only give things that numb the pain!). If you want to be theoretical, you can say this is symbolic of the Board pretending to give help to Ray, which was really only surface-level.

Don’t get me wrong, benzodiazepines do help a lot of people in some way. But the thing is, they’re only supposed to be taken for the shortest amount of time possible (alongside CBT, which the Board definitely isn’t putting Ray on).

Ah, I saw that post too!! They both work in the entertainment industry, and have to fulfill other people’s desires, so it’s nice to have someone you can be real with, so I quite like this idea too (as seen from my profile hiahiahia)(ヾ ;￣▽￣)ヾ There’s this manga called Tomorrow, I’ll Be Someone’s Girlfriend, which follows the viewpoint of mostly rental girlfriends, and highlights the suffering of changing from the real you into the you that fulfills other people’s desires～ I really like this a lot too～～

Bullfrog isn’t someone I constantly rattle in my head, so I can’t immediately say things, but I’m very curious about this too 😯. If his theme doesn’t fit with that trinity, I want to be mindful of other characters that he might fit with… Also, I’ve been headcanoning that Jade is Asian for a very long time, so I’m really happy to hear this🥺 Even if the mission was different and didn’t have Asian themes, I would’ve still thought of her in that way～It might be that Sarah forced Jade to play a Dragon Lady role, but it failed horribly because that just isn’t who she is. I wonder if it was intentional for the mission to be Asian themes-focused so it could strengthen that connection... In my heart, I feel like it could be a commentary about how people usually saw Asian women as only one of two things back then (submissive or aggressive, Lotus Blossom or Dragon Lady). Pey’J saw her as a Lotus Blossom, and since he knew her since she was a kid, it affected her developmental process. And then afterwards, Sarah tried to make her be a Dragon Lady. It was only Dolph and Bullfrog who saw who she truly was, and it wasn’t either of those stereotypes. It’s also good to note that Pey’J and Sarah were the ones holding power over her.

Something very interesting to me is that Jade’s outfit while playing Femme Fatale is very leggy, which is an attribute that a lot of Dragon Lady outfits had! I’m pretty sure the dress that Jade wore exists in real life, but her outfit also reminds me of the ultra sexualised qipao Dragon Ladies were dressed in. Also, it’s worthy to note that usually at the end of Dragon Lady movies, the Dragon Lady is killed off, so... 😬. I’ll be really happy if this is intentional～ I’m really fixated on (S)EAsian themes, so I hope my perspective is helpful hihihaha |ω・）Jade’s themes are really full of Lotus Blossom, I know I made a post about the Lotus Blossom Stereotype already but since it had a Ray focus there are some things I didn’t mention, so hopefully I can fully describe how Jade’s character fully fits into these ☺️

I also felt this way 🥺…! My heart was broken when I saw how little interest she has. I know the time spent with her was short, but I’m the type of person to also get fixated on background characters, so that really doesn’t matter to me～ Abusive situations are really hard to come out of, and especially if you have little to no connections. I felt as if Pey’J is the type of person to contact her connections, and also snoop around their areas to see if they are lying and hiding her😥 It’s even harder since Jade assumingly only has 2 connections, so things might turn out violent 😬… Police reporting is shit since Dolph is Dolph and Bullfrog is Bullfrog (I’m not familiar with Jade’s relationship with the police, except that Jade definitely won’t rely on them in the slightest), so, if there really is a saviour in Eden, I hope they can strike Pey’J down so suddenly and he dies a horrible long death (≖͞_≖̥)

I think Rayman would’ve been a bit older when the Board made him a celebrity, since he mentions being Bullfrog’s age when he went to college and Bullfrog seems older/more mature than an 18/19 year old in the show (mid 20s is my guess tbh) but Rayman could’ve still be very young when he left his home dimension and having no one to support him, would’ve still been very vulnerable when he was approached by Eden

yeah it’s important to make it known medications aren’t evil, but they have to be taken in the proper doses or else they could do more harm than good, which the Board wouldn’t care to do for Rayman

If Rayman did request some kind of therapy, the Board would probably postpone it indefinitely (probably filling his schedule so he simply didn’t have time for it) or getting someone to only do the very bare minimal of help to ensure Rayman didn’t seek out a way to end his own life. Though it was probably easier to just shove booze and drugs up his system

Ahhh I should check out that manga it sounds cute, and yeah I think Rayman and Cow girl would have a lot in common

I actually theorise that Bullfrog’s backstory is gonna be a parallel to Sarah’s, since his the last Assassin and Sarah is (presumably) the Last of the Board/Templars. I think it’d be particularly interesting if he became an Assassin due to his mother (and Sarah a Templar from her mother) but that’s admittedly wishful thinking for more badass ladies in this show. The first season had a strong theme of father figures (Sam,Pey’J and sorta Alex if you want to count him) so I thought maybe the second will have more mother figures

See I enjoy various media from Asian countries (mainly anime) but I’m a white woman from the UK so I have limited experience with those stereotypes compared to someone who’s Asian and had to actually live with them. Still these are all interesting stuff you’ve brought up and I appreciate you sharing!

Hopefully I can do more stuff with Jade, wanna do some shippy stuff with her and maybe an AU where she not not survives, but makes Eden into her own Alien garden 🪴

#asks #ask me #captain laserhawk #Tw abuse

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tildeathiwillwrite · 7 months ago

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Whump Prompts VG Edition 👀

Victoria and Sonic the Hedgehog please

(I have an unhealthy obsession with Victoria)

(in reference to this prompt game)

It's ok love I have it too

Sonic the Hedgehog: Chased

Forsaken: The Doomed City Masterpost

Fandom: Original Work

Words: 2,500

CW: guns, gunshot wounds, blood, captivity, running, chased, lying, deception, death, swearing, guilt

Taglist: @fourwingedsnake @whumperofworlds @pigeonwhumps @mr-orion

A/N: The saga of the superhero squad continues! Victoria, having just cut ties with feared telepath Whisper, delivers a message to atmokinetic Blizzard, the woman who currently holds Sam in custody. When we last saw Sam, she was recovering from hypothermia, and ominously told to "save her strength for the arena." Will Victoria rescue Sam from Blizzard's clutches, or will she become a prisoner herself?

~~~~~~~~~~

“I wish to speak with Blizzard. I have a message from Whisper.” Victoria waved the note at the woman who’d opened the door to the building taken over by Blizzard.

“I’ll see to it that she receives it,” the woman said, reaching for the paper.

Victoria snatched it out of reach and shook her head. “The message must go from my hands to hers. Whisper’s orders. Or are you suggesting I disobey him?”

The woman paled. “N-no… of course not.” She stepped aside, and Victoria slipped past her into the building. “Julian will escort you.”

Victoria thanked her as Julian, a man in his late twenties or early thirties with dark brown hair, approached as the woman waved him over. He appeared unassuming, but Victoria knew better than most that appearances could be deceiving. Something about the way he carried himself, however….

She’d seen him before.

Very briefly, and in passing, but he was unmistakably one of the people guarding the old vault when she and her friends had broken in seeking a specific part for the device. He’d had a hand in capturing Sam. What is he doing here?

If Julian recognized Victoria, he didn’t show it, nodding wordlessly to the stairs before setting off. He didn’t check to see if she followed him. Perhaps he has enhanced senses like Ollie? Or maybe he assumes I won’t wander off….

Her mind was a whirlwind of possibilities as she followed him into the stairwell—in surprisingly good condition given the derelict state of the building’s exterior—and she almost ignored when he started to descend the stairs, instead of ascending as she’d expected. The vault had been halfway across the city. The only reason Victoria knew it belonged to Blizzard at all was because of Ollie’s detective skills pre-raid.

They descended deeper into the lower levels of Blizzard’s building. It went further than Victoria had first assumed, yet the lower floors were still in use. The number of people passing them on their way up from below was enough of an indicator.

The location and contents of the vault had been difficult to dig up. Which meant Julian was in a particularly trusted circle. Which in turn meant his powers—and Victoria was certain he had powers, her particular situation was just a fluke—were not something to be underestimated. She wracked her brain, trying to recall if she’d seen him do anything that would count as such powers.

No use. She’d only gotten a glimpse of him. Not enough information to form a proper threat analysis.

Julian led her down ever deeper until they reached the bottom of the stairwell. Before them was a door marked LL4. Four below-ground levels? What kind of building had this used to be? And what did Blizzard use it for now? For that matter, how did Blizzard afford the sheer amount of electricity required to power the lights on these floors? The only available electricity since the city got cut off came from those with the power to generate lightning. It wasn’t a rare ability, but it wasn’t exactly common either, and the cost to keep the lights on in her team’s apartment alone was as high as the dome around the city.

“Why does Blizzard have her office so deep underground?” Victoria asked as Julian pushed open the door. It swung open to reveal a foreboding hallway, several doors branching off into unknown rooms or further hallways. The hallway ended in what appeared to be… a metal blast door?

“She doesn’t,” he said, motioning for her to enter first, “this is just where she is right now.”

Victoria slowly nodded as she moved past him, half-expecting him to slam the door behind her, locking her in.

He didn’t, but that didn’t lessen the uneasiness coiling in her stomach as he softly closed the door and moved to take the lead again. Victoria half-expected him to head for the blast door, but he instead gravitated towards one of the side doors. As Julian reached for the handle, however, the muffled sound of a crash came from inside.

Victoria jumped at the sudden noise, and Julian froze, expression caught between shock, fear, and concern. The moment passed with another crash, and he sprang into action, opening the door and charging in.

The interior room was chaos. It was once a neat hospital room, but now it was a swirling mess of wind and snow, any furniture knocked over and in pieces. Two people struggled in the center of the room: a woman with long, white hair who had to have been Blizzard and a younger woman with short blonde hair matted with blood and dirt.

Victoria couldn’t make out the younger woman’s face from her angle, but with the amount of cuts and bruises and blood covering her, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Wind whipped around the pair, howling in Victoria's ears as the younger woman gained the upper hand, throwing Blizzard to the floor and punching her in the face.

Victoria reached for her guns, but Julian reacted faster, raising both hands, not in a fighting stance, but as if he was trying to lift—

The younger woman was suddenly lifted from the ground and thrown across the room by an unseen force, slamming into the far wall.

Telekinetic!

“Are you alright, ma’am?” Julian asked, his voice almost lost in the noise of the wind as he focused on keeping the younger woman pinned to the wall. She thrashed against the force of his powers and screamed incoherent words to no avail. Victoria frowned. Why does her voice sound so—

The wind immediately vanished, the snow falling to the floor, covering everything in white. Blizzard slowly picked herself up off the floor, staring daggers at the younger woman. She sported two black eyes, one partially healed, and several bruises marred the skin of her cheeks and forehead. She angrily wiped away the blood trailing from a split lip as she faced Victoria.

“Who is this?”

“Messenger from Whisper,” Julian said softly. At the mention of Whisper’s name, the younger woman went silent, eyes on Victoria. Her stomach churned as she stepped inside the room, broken glass crunching under her feet, as she held out the folded piece of paper, as she slowly realized why the blonde woman was so familiar. She was covered in blood, bruises, and cuts, the skin of her knuckles had split and her hands were stained red, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

Sam.

Blizzard snatched the paper from Victoria’s hand and unfolded it, sour expression growing darker as she scanned its contents. “The hell’s this? A threat?”

Victoria shrugged with feigned nonchalance. “I don’t know. I’m just a messenger.”

“‘Just a messenger’, hmm?” Blizzard cocked her head, piercing eyes scrutinizing, searching. “I can see the look in your eyes, the way your fingers are twitching, itching to grab those guns of yours. You have another mission, don’t you?”

It took all of Victoria’s willpower not to look at Sam. She swallowed, mouth dry. “Yes.”

Blizzard clicked her fingers. Julian raised his eyebrows, but obeyed, lowering his hands. Without warning, the force holding Sam vanished, sending her to the floor. She groaned in pain and curled up in the fetal position. What did they do to her?

Victoria didn’t have time to dwell on the state of her friend, because not one but both of her guns rose out of their holsters and floated inches from her head, safeties clicking off as one. Two scalpels and several shards of glass added themselves to the arsenal of weapons, darting to the doorway behind her, cutting off any chance of escape.

Judging from the look of intense focus on Julian’s face, this was the extent of his telekinesis. Not that the information would be helpful at the moment.

She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and looked Blizzard in the eye. “Yes, the message is a threat. Yes, I have my own mission. Why else would Whisper send me, instead of his preferred messengers?”

“What you have is a death wish.”

Victoria watched from her peripherals as Sam slowly pushed herself to her knees, breathing heavily but otherwise silent. “No. I was planning to bargain with you, exchange information, or work, for something I want that you have.”

Blizzard chuckled. “And what is that?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Victoria replied, heartbeat hammering in her ears as Sam rose to her feet, her eyes brimming with uncontrolled rage. “Because you cannot be reasoned with.”

“‘Cannot be reasoned with’? Ha!” Blizzard laughed, a harsh sound lacking in true mirth. The paper in her hand crumpled as she dug her fingers into it. “That’s rich coming from someone who broke into my vault.”

Victoria’s heart skipped a beat. She frowned. “A vault? What vault?”

Blizzard smirked. “Don’t play coy with me, Victoria. Your friend insisted you’d do anything to get her back. Guess she was right. Although…” She made a show of checking behind Victoria. “I don’t see either of your other friends here. Are they skulking around upstairs while you play at messenger? Whisper wouldn’t take too kindly to impersonating one of his own.” Behind Blizzard, Sam stiffened and glanced at Victoria with a quizzical look.

Victoria almost wished she’d kept the mark just to wave it in Blizzard’s face. No. No more ties with Whisper. “They’re currently taking care of… business… upstairs.” For the first time since she’d handed the message over to Blizzard, Victoria made eye contact with Sam. “And it’s high time we join them.”

Understanding dawned on Sam’s face, followed by an uncharacteristically twisted glee as she turned and charged, catching Julian by surprise and tackling him to the ground. The weapons, no longer suspended by his focus, plummeted to the ground.

Victoria snatched her guns from the air and turned them on Blizzard, firing as soon her fingers touched the triggers. The first bullet tore through her throat in a sickening spray of blood, the second embedded itself in her stomach. The combined force of both bullets flung her back, and she crumpled to the floor, scarlet blood bubbling from her lips and pooling from the wound in her neck. It hissed as it made contact with the snow on the ground.

Julian screamed, a raw, guttural sound, and Victoria looked up just as Sam collided with the far wall again with an audible thud. The telekinetic’s expression was contorted in rage, and every sharp object in the room rose from the floor, every last one pointed at Sam.

Victoria didn’t hesitate, re-cocking, aiming, and firing in almost a single motion. She'd aimed at his heart, but Julian noticed it at the last minute and tried in vain to deflect it. The bullet hit his shoulder instead. He cried out and stumbled back, the broken glass shattering on the ground once more.

She considered shooting him again, but logic forced her to notice the shouting from nearby and how far they were from the nearest exit. And given the way the telekinetic was trying and failing to raise a nearby glass shard for more than a moment, he was no longer a threat.

Victoria slipped one of her guns into its holster before crossing the room and pulling Sam to her feet. “You okay?”

Sam hissed through her teeth. “I feel like shit, but it’ll heal. The others are upstairs?”

“No.”

“Then where—?”

Victoria glanced over her shoulder. “Not here. I need you to trust me, and not ask questions. We need to get out of here. Is there any way out beside the stairwell?”

“The hell would I know—?” Sam began before cutting herself off. “That’s a lie, I think I do know.”

“Another way out?” Victoria nervously bounced on her toes as the shouting grew louder.

Sam moved past her, ignoring Blizzard’s corpse as she stepped out into the hallway. Victoria followed and blinked in surprise as Sam headed for the blast door. Muffled shouts and screams echoed from behind it. Victoria expected to see a keypad or something similar on the door, but there was only a switch with two buttons.

“What’s behind the door?”

Sam ignored the question, placing a finger over one of the buttons. “I’ll explain later. But when I push this button, an alarm’s gonna go off, and then we’re gonna run. Got it?”

Victoria holstered her other gun. “Got it.” At the back of her mind, she remembered Whisper’s warning. As someone who’s been to see her recently and seen her thoughts… her mental condition is deteriorating. Sam certainly didn’t look like someone whose ‘mental condition was deteriorating’. Then again, that kind of thing wouldn’t necessarily be visible on the surface. Perhaps Whisper was lying.

She held onto the slim hope as Sam pressed the button. As the alarm began to blare, loud and shrill. As the blast door began to rise. As Sam sprinted down the hallway, seizing Victoria’s arm and dragging her along.

She only got a small glimpse of the people on the other side before she was forced to turn and run.

But it was enough.

Victoria’s heartbeat pounded in her ears as she tried to keep up with Sam, who had an iron grip on her arm. Sam had always been the strongest, the fastest, but this was different. Victoria remembered that Sam had always held back, afraid that if she pushed too hard, someone would get hurt.

Not so anymore.

The stairs were the worst part. Victoria’s thighs and calves burned with each flight, her chest heaved with each agonizing breath, and the coppery taste of blood was heavy in her mouth.

“The gladiators are escaping!” Sam shouted at the first group of people they came across, heavily armed with weapons and powers. She pointed down the stairwell. “We gotta block the door before they get up here!”

The one in the lead paused, confusion and suspicion on his face. “What? Where’s Blizzard?”

Sam looked him in the eye, grim expression made stark by the blood dripping down her face. “Blizzard’s dead.”

The leader stumbled back, tripping over the previous stair in his surprise, but Sam didn’t give him or any other member of the group time to process. “The rest of us will be too if we don’t get that damned door barricaded! You hear me?!”

Victoria stared, wide-eyed, as the group straightened instinctively and retreated up the stairs. “...the hell was that?”

Sam hurried after them, still tightly gripping Victoria’s shoulder. “I’ll explain that when we’re out. After you explain why the hell you came here alone.”

As soon as they exited the stairwell, the group’s leader commandeered every article of furniture in the lobby and sent messengers to the upper floors to block them too. Victoria and Sam didn’t stick around to see if the barricades worked, instead slipping out the front door while everyone was distracted.

The moment they left the building, Victoria took off running again despite her aching legs. She knew a place they could lie low and recuperate… but she also dreaded the moment they arrived, dreaded the questions that Sam would ask. Questions where she would be forced to make a choice: lie to one of her closest friends, or drive Sam away with the truth.

It would have to be the truth. Victoria was done lying.

Even if it meant she would be alone again.

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chained-to-the-mirror · 2 years ago

Text

Here I am again, with my thinky thoughts about where I am now when it comes to body image and suchlike. Will put this under a cut so I won’t disturb anyone who doesn’t want to read about stuff like that.

It’s been a few months since I last wrote about this… I just read it to remember where I was then. I had just dodged the calorie counting bullet, and the weighing bullet. I think I was getting back to a good place with my eating. And I was doing really well for a good while. Then Christmas season happened, and so did my moving house crisis. It has thrown my eating a bit off tracks, which I guess is common enough. Lots of snacking, less substantial eating. And, as a result, feeling off and crappy in my body. Which is why I’m writing this now, I guess.

The fact is that I have been snacking on unhealthy stuff lately. Not nearly as much as I have done at my worst, in the past, but a lot more than since last summer. I’ve been able to stick to the fasting schedule really well, and with no trouble. But the quality of my food intake is not ideal. My downfall is sweets, mainly chocolate. And it’s crazy, because I KNOW I feel physically better when I eat well - but still I keep snacking if the opportunity presents itself.

All this has led me to believe I have gained some of the weight back. I feel very fat and uncomfortable. It’s not about clothes - they feel the same on me as they did before, not tighter. But the mirror seems to tell me that I look hideous and BIG. I know I am still big, and that will never change, because I’m just built like that. But the thing is, I didn’t feel as big before Christmas. I didn’t LOOK as big in the mirror.

I saw my hairdresser friend a week ago or so, and I hadn’t seen her since early December. She said I had lost more weight since then. And she’s not the type to just say that to be nice. But that didn’t help me feel more secure or less fat. I don’t know what would, to be honest - except getting back to a diet that feels right to me. I also saw the dietician a second time last week (I think) and she went over my two day food journal. But those were days when I ate well, because I was keeping a journal (obviously) - so it was not really a true test. But she said that for the most part it looked really good - all she wanted was for me to eat a bit more bread, and fish if possible. She was still wondering whether I eat enough, but it was better now than last time. I had incorporated some changes she suggested during our first meeting, and I’ve been able to stick to them. That’s something I’m proud of, because it meant adding food to my day, and definitely adding calories. In the past I would have had trouble with doing that.

Today I have not snacked much, mainly because I don’t have sweets in the house, but also because yesterday was really bad in the snacking sense. I hope I can start over now. Maybe I shouldn’t buy chocolate for a bit, since that obviously seems to be something I can’t have around currently. Anyway, it has felt really good to eat proper food, and decent amounts of it. What I see in the mirror remains the same, BIG. But at least I don’t feel as off as I did yesterday.

Something I did just now was take a pic of myself in the dress that gave me the most good vibes feeling ever when it comes to looks. The picture on the left was taken in late July, and the picture on the right is from right now. I will say that the dress feels quite a bit looser… but I think it felt looser before Christmas. I wish I had a pic of that too so I could see if that helped. I am none the wiser now.

All this makes it seem like I care a lot about the weight. I don’t. I care about how I feel… I want back the feeling I had in the autumn when I felt balanced. Looking at those pics now, I look much better in the left one. I hate my brain sometimes!

Anyway, this is some of what has been in my brain lately. I don’t know if this is of any use to anyone… maybe someone has some advice on how to be more objective about your image in the mirror - and how to eat sweets in moderation. A big one, that. Imagine if someone actually figured it out!

Will tag this with some ED tags - as always, just let me know if you want me to add a tag. Thank you for reading my ramble! ❤️

#tw eating disorder #tw eating issues #tw food #tw calories #tw weight #tw body image #personal

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sarahdogoc80 · 3 months ago

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I do plan on making a longer post about addiction specifically in late 90's till the opiate crisis in 2015 and how doctors, business and money led to the epidemic/ tragedy. And what it was like on the ground floor rather then just hearing about it form the news/ propaganda but it will take me a few days to get everything in order.

But because Lily is stupid here is a quick note. Weed can't kill you like say heroin or meth can. Say if you have asthma and smoke it and die of an asthma attack. You can't blame weed specifically because the smoke and your medical condition is what did it. Any smoke would have set off your asthma so it can't be blamed on weed specifically. Especially because you don't even have to smoke weed anymore you can ingest it through gummies, candy, or any bake good that requires butter. And if they'd had done it that way they would most likely be fine.

The way heroin kills you is because it's a depressant which means it slows down the body. And what happens when you OD your brain just doesn't remember to breathe/ perform it's basic functions. Weed isn't strong enough to do this in really any form. Unless her uncle was part of some super experiment run by the CIA to get him higher then he's ever been. Then a human just can't consume the amount of weed to kill you by themselves. Your body breaks weed down decently fast. Another less common way opiates kill is by over loading the kidneys and liver causing those to shut down. Thought this death usually takes years to build up to and your more likely to die from the first way. Alcohol, Xanax, and other downer usually also kill you by making you forget to breath or overloading a vital an organ.

The other way drugs kills is the speeders. Which weed definitely isn't but for arguments sake speed kills you usually by rupturing your heart or putting you in cardiac arrest. It's not at all a painless or quite death if your around other people and dying of a speeder over does is pretty painful from what I've heard.

Then there is other drugs like psychedelics I guess. But I've never heard of someone dying of that. Honestly I've never even seen a claim of that. But while I'm sure there is a way it's not at all common knowledge. Nor do I know how you could. My grandpa used to say it has it's limits to how well it can work then hits a wall and can't do anything else. Plus if you wanted to eat like 5 lb of magic mushrooms good luck with that. They taste like literal cow shit and if there is too much your body will just make you throw it up.

Also just as another side note I grew up with a hippie grandfather and stoner grandmother and stoner parents and non of them have died from weed dispite some of them smoking for longer then Lily has even been a twinkle in her daddy's eye. And if you have beef with a stoner Lily then that is literally on you. They usually don't want negative people around who makes them feel like shit because they are smoking weed. They usually just want to hang.

Edit: the Adderall Lily takes even as percriped is more unhealthy then weed. They had to start testing my brother's heart and a couple other organs because Adderall has a risk of damaging organs even if taken as percriped. If you've been taking it for years you should know this. Unless you just didn't listen to your doctor and just smiled and said "yeah totally" till they give you your script.

If Lily went to collage (especially for a therapy degree) she should also understand addiction and why just telling them to stop. Then blaming them when they don't is exactly how the company that owed Oxycodine tried to weasel out of the lawsuits. So atleast Lily is consistent with bootlicking as long as she benefits from it.

Good to see you're not hiding just how much of a cruel, callous, ignorant, lying piece of shit you are these days, Lily.

"I look down on junkies. I have no sympathy for them." Way to display you have no fucking understanding of why or how drug addictions even start, you rancid bitch.

"Weed killed my uncle" so now we're just outright peddling reefer-madness era bullshit. It's impossible to OD on weed. Whatever happened to your uncle had nothing to do with fuckin weed.

The reason you haven't met any of the majority of normal ass chill weed users is because your vibes are a black hole and nobody wants to be around that when they're trying to chill out and relax.

#lily orchard #drug awareness #lily orchard critical #Weed killed my family they beat me up and took my money and house.

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fleur-de-femme · 2 years ago

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From the Circadian Rhythm, Time Lives in our Cell Tissue

After many days, I am back. It has taken me a while, but I am finally coming back to my senses. If it wasn’t for the lexapro, I would have freaked out over how fast and numbingly mindless these past three days were. One could ask me what I did just 24 hrs ago and I would just shrug. I’m trying not to overthink and consider it as a sign to relax my body and take things at ease.

Self-awareness Time!

My body tends to move in cycles, there is a calm period as I am experiencing as of right now that lasts a couple of days. A grasp for knowledge is all I care about. Nothing infiltrates my mind except for the microbiology of our brain or the quantum physics of our reality or psychological factors of our appearance as para-social creatures. This is my favorite period. An actual anticipation for the future, the planning, the getting my shit together from the hot mess that I have experienced in the past week. I get so excited that I start taking on everything at once, and this where the danger lies...

Can I do this photoshoot? Yes! Can I go to a museum with person A and then get dinner with person B an hour later? Of course? Can I do my job, travel for a week, while simanteanousouly trying to balance my 3 budding hobbies? No problem!!

I exceed limitation in every sort of a sense, flying through the my days without a care in the world, like I no longer feel fear, just a rush to my goals and success: my only desire.

My mind races so fast, that I don’t even remember what sleep is (In this moment I realize that this sort of sounds like BPD lol). I am THAT bitch, everyone around me wants to be me, consume my energy. I am living life to the max.

Then one day I feel a twinge of fatigue, so subtle that I think of it as an inconvenience, not as a warning, but more so as a test. I keep burning through the days.

I begin to snap more, get more quiet, become slower in my pace. I don’t understand why this is happening? I’m getting some amount of sleep and nourishment why can I not get back to my peak? I continue to ignore these feelings. Please one more hour! One more day! I promise I will rest then!

Nope. The circadian rhythm waits for no one. I crash. HARD. Not into a deer or a car, I would say, but right off the curb into the forest at the dead at night. I feel and see nothing but black, my existence becomes numb and I can’t even find the strength to reach out my arm for support.

Slowly, I make my way out of the destroyed car and up the hill as dawn creaks through the reflective horizon and lagging trees.

---

It is a hard pattern to break. I tend to always ignore my body, and I do it to an extent where I just go completely blind and deaf, I am not truly here. It’s so funny because I always forget that I am just a biological being. Why do I believe that I have the power of a God when I am merely flesh, bones, and have a literal nicotine addiction. I don’t know what comes over me, maybe it’s just capitalism or it really is BPD, but I’m coming to face myself in a mirror that I am not the epitome of my reality or human experience but just a by-product of the physical world’s experience.

I cannot live without you or her or him, I am not even an I. Just an it of a that. Maybe I am not explaining this realization to the best of my abilities, but the more I read of Kant, the better these excerpts will make more sense. He said “the only world we can know is the world created by the innate structure of our minds and thus reality as it is in itself is unknowable”. The way I see it, I am chasing and chasing and exerting myself to unhealthy measures for a physical realm that has no measures; no end but self-implosion. Evolution is a mere reference, not to a more perfect being but to a better understanding of the physical world. We think that we are heading into the right direction, but there is no right without left, no good without harm. There is always a sacrifice.

It is truly hard to conceptualize that our consciousness is only a reflection of the patterns of our world; my mind is a biological database, that had millions of years to gather and sync data. These flowers across from me are incredibly beautiful in my highly filtered sense of sweet fragrances and colorful visuals, tuning in to the sole guidance of our kind-fear of death. I have wondered what the world would be like without the constraints of our fearful perception, but I guess it would just look like nothing in the limited definition of what I believe nothing is (which is very terrifying).

Thinking of my mind as a projector or even a tea bag strainer is something that I can’t actually wrap my brain around. How does a relative feel like a relative when their absolute is the relative? Kant would probably just shake my head at me, and say “that’s the whole point”.

This is the peak of my limited time here in the biological sense. After these next couple of years, my brain will begin to deteriorate, my hips grow stiff, and eye sight become weak. I try to not think of it as an actuality, and I think that is what saves me from the worry. But my constant restlessness to learn and do everything may be an indication that my brain is telling me that my time here has an end.

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bubbles-and-feathers · 2 years ago

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Hello, my dear Tumblr users!! Never thought I'd be doing this, but here goes...

If my blog has been uplifting to you, if you are able & willing, if you just feel like helping a stranger out- it would be super amazing if a few kind souls could donate a few dollars to my bank account.

For a little context, I just got myself out of a really unhealthy relationship/living situation last year, left with essentially nothing & lost my job, and I'm just starting to pull myself back up on my feet. (On top of that essentially everything I had was stolen bcs I've been kinda couch-hopping and bringing my bag of belongings everywhere I go, left it in the wrong spot at the wrong time. :/) Having lost my ADHD script and dealing with recent depression have contributed to the struggle of getting my life together and starting over. I got hired this week, but I have a very very little amount of cash on me to get me through to my first paycheck and most of that needs to go to transporting myself to work. And I'm tryna feed myself so I can be on my feet 9+ hours a day and be okay. (Eating disorder can go fck itself.)

Also semi-related rant but do you guys KNOW how hard it is to seek treatment for your ADHD while you're struggling with untreated ADHD, on top of a million other things in your life??? Like if I could just get that taken care of. I swear my life would be so much more smooth and functional instead of this hodgepodge of somehow being in 12 mental states at once while simultaneously feeling brain-dead 24/7.

Anyway!! If you have Cash App or Google Pay and feel inclined to help out & are able to, please DM me for my info! Even if it's only like $5, that could get me an extra meal or two and/or some coffee for a day (I work overnight lol). Or reblog if you still wanna help out but can't afford it!

I'm really excited because in a month or so I'll have enough saved for my own apartment for the first time!! It's gonna be so good for me you guys. :') Just gotta survive these first couple weeks first.

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adrianasunderworld · 2 years ago

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AND ANOTHER THING (I'm so sorry this AU is living in my head rent free and I can't stop thinking about it)

I remember at some point a sort of... Arranged marriage/relationship situation was set up by Madame Rosehearts in a sorta 'branch' of this AU...

Imagine how Yuu and Riddle react to Headmistress Rosehearts speaking about an arranged marriage between the two of them - be it due to an arranged marriage potentially making it easier for her to control her son, or because of it being a convenient way for her to gain a good amount of control over Yuu as well, or some other reason.

And, like, while Riddle and Yuu are trying not to panic due to the discomfort of something like that being chucked upon them so suddenly (and potentially even the fact that their relationship was solely platonic with no intentions on pursuing romance if you want to choose that route for their relationship) Madame Rosehearts is just speaking about all of the plans she has for the wedding (obviously with no input from the others)

Stuff like that just tends to. Make my brain run in circles. Idk, it's something akin to the horror of having the control/autonomy over yourself and your life ripped from your hands that catches my interest lol.

-----

(last one unless my brain freaks out at me again lol)

🐝✨

My only thing is that, Mrs. Rosehearts would maybe not adopt Yuu but just have custody/guardianship of her. Because adoption would make her and Riddle siblings, which would not work out if the intention was to marry them. But I digress.

As I've said in other asks, I think in this au, in her own unhealthy way, she sees a bit of herself in Yuu, and by extension she sees something she can mold into the perfect addition to the Rosehearts family. Because Mrs.Rosehearts wouldn't just marry her son off to a magicless, poor, orphaned girl unless there was something to gain. As I mentioned in a another ask, what makes Yuu valuable is her connections and ability to make them. When you have the like of Malleus Draconia as a loyal friend, there is something useful about you. Opening all those doors to Riddle is worth their weight in gold.

As for whether or not Riddle and Yuu are platonic or one has a crush on the other, I doubt it matters all that much because Mrs.Rosehearts has essentially ruined that relationship prospect by forcing the matter. Lets go with Riddle likes Yuu. He knows logically, his mother approving of and planning a wedding with the girl he likes should be a good thing. But neither he or Yuu consented to this. Yuu isn't happy and is uncomfortable around him with the forced engagement hanging over their heads. Suddenly being with Yuu isn't something Riddle wants for himself, it's something his mother wants for him. It's another thing she's tainted. Another friendship ruined. Another choice of his taken. And Riddle doesn't know if he can take anymore.

#twisted wonderland #miss yuu #twst yuu #riddle rosehearts

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neurodivergientqueerthoughts · 3 years ago

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Introduction

Have you been wondering what ADHD is really like? This will not be biased towards one minority of people who have ADHD. It will be focused on the big picture.

This document will explain the seriousness of ADHD and everything that may come with it. Make sure to do more research into ADHD, as I am not an expert (although I, myself, have ADHD). In this, I go into detail about different aspects of ADHD and why it should not be taken lightly.

What is ADHD?

(Note: Not everyone with ADHD has these symptoms. They can vary from person to person.)

Constant activity going on internally (Hyperactivity)

Hyperfixations

Hyperfocusing

Depression (Co-occurring)

Anxiety (Co-occurring)

Sensory Processing Disorder

Executive Dysfunction

Auditory Processing Disorder (Co-occurring)

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

Insomnia / Sleep issues

Inability to focus

Difficulty switching tasks

Inability to stick to one task

Mood swings

Difficulty regulating emotions

Choice paralysis

Problems with focusing

Poor impulse control

Trouble recalling things, such as commonly used words

Exhaustion levels

Imposter syndrome

Overwhelm

Overstimulation / Sensory Overload

Understimulation

Memory issues

Motivation issues

Time blindness

Poor sense of time

Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (Co-occurring)

Extreme boredom

Going into Detail

Executive Dysfunction/ADHD Paralysis:

A feeling of constantly ‘waiting for something’, without knowing what or why.

Confusion as to how to start or do a task.

A feeling of being completely overwhelmed, even by mundane tasks, to a point of being unable to do the task or function.

A very good description of how this can feel is “a fuzzy-restless feeling when you need to do something but your brain won’t focus on anything… you’re silently begging yourself to just do one thing but instead you’re [sitting there] even though you don’t even want to be. It’s like your head is filled with heavy electric cotton… you’re both uncomfortable and unable to stop.”

This is not the same thing as procrastination or laziness. This occurs with tasks that the person is afraid to do, does not want to do, or even wants to do. Laziness means that a person does not feel like doing something, but they could if they wanted to. Executive dysfunction/ADHD paralysis can be described as something a person has been trying to do for [insert amount of time between minutes and months/years], but they physically cannot do the task and end up feeling like a failure because of that. It is debilitating.

Hyperfixation/Hyperfocus:

An extreme obsession over something. This can be creating something, finding out everything about something, or just something that creates extreme emotions in somebody.

This obsession can easily become unhealthy as the person may forget to take care of themselves due to it. However, these hyperfixations cause extreme joy or curiosity in the person.

Difficulty switching tasks:

“When you have ADHD, task switching can often be difficult. You might feel like you're stuck in a gear. It might be you're trying to start, and your gears just keep on grinding. Other times you may want to stop but the gear just stays in place because you're hyper-focusing on whatever you're doing.”

Inability to stick to one task:

People with ADHD often have issues with motivation, which leads to many unfinished projects.

If a task does not give a person with ADHD dopamine, they are often unable to complete the task (i.e. homework; chores).

Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome:

Instead of having a regular circadian rhythm, with sleeping hours from 11 pm to 7 am, people have an irregular pattern of 2 am to about 10 am.

These times are flexible. However, this means that people with ADHD tend to have issues with falling asleep at a “normal time”.

Extreme boredom:

People with ADHD have issues with dopamine and serotonin.

There are moments when boredom can be painful. People with ADHD can be bored to tears due to extreme emotions and a lack of dopamine.

Time Processing:

If somebody has to leave at 8 am and they wake up at 5:30, they will think that they have two hours or less to get ready. Time seems to pass without a pattern or rhythm.

“Today is Monday, but tomorrow is Tuesday and I have class. After that is Wednesday: I’m having lunch with my mom. Then on Thursday, I have a night class which means it’s basically already Friday and this week is already over.”

Time Blindness:

Not knowing how much time has passed based on their ‘internal clock’; they don’t have one!

Being completely unaware of how much time something will take.

Memory issues:

With ADHD, memory can be greatly affected. Some things will be forgotten very quickly, and some things can be over-remembered.

Difficulty regulating emotions:

“Processing emotions starts in the brain. Sometimes the working memory impairments of ADHD allow a momentary emotion to become too strong, flooding the brain with one intense emotion.” -Thomas Brown, PhD

Brain imaging shows that delayed rewards don’t register for people with ADHD. They are more motivated by the instant gratification that strong emotions deliver.

As a result, a person with ADHD may struggle to deal rationally and realistically with events that are stressful, but not of grave concern.

Motivation issues:

People with ADHD have much lower levels of dopamine than those without ADHD. This causes the brain to constantly crave dopamine.

If a task is not providing the dopamine the brain wants, it will make a person with ADHD less motivated to complete the task, or even start it.

Overstimulation / Sensory Overload:

Information reaching the senses feels like an assault of competing stimuli.

Understimulation:

Outside stimuli are dulled, as if a shade has been pulled over the environment, muting sights, sounds, and touch. These people crave extra stimulation to feel alive.

Exhaustion levels:

Feeling fatigued and tired all the time can actually be related to ADHD. Due to low dopamine levels, people with ADHD can feel exhausted even after getting ample amounts of sleep.

Ironically, people can get bursts of energy from ADHD as well. This can be from hyperactivity or high amounts of dopamine.

Imposter Syndrome:

Feeling like a fraud and doubting your own abilities.

Somebody who is intelligent and who has ADHD can have imposter syndrome towards both. They are not related to each other, but the ways they are portrayed in media causes imposter syndrome.

Auditory Processing Disorder:

Things can take longer to process when somebody hears them than when they see/read them.

The amount or complexity of noise around somebody can affect how they hear things.

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria:

Extreme anxiety towards being criticized or rejected by others, despite their relationship with the person.

Extreme pain or emotional sensitivity is caused by a sense of ‘rejection’.

Hyperactivity:

This is not always visible, if at all. There is constant activity going on inside of a person’s head when they have ADHD.

This creates difficulty with sleep and relaxation.

If visible, it usually takes the form of fidgeting or stimming.

“Dealing” with ADHD

ADHD cannot be fixed, but some things can help people work with it. The coping mechanisms vary from person to person, and they aren’t always going to work. Getting diagnosed with ADHD is the best step to take before anything else, as trained professionals can help with ADHD symptoms.

It is important to understand that ADHD is a learning and doing disability. It affects every aspect of life, but it isn’t a bad thing! Many things with ADHD can be positive as well. Hyperfocusing can lead to a lot of productivity! Additionally, people with ADHD are known to be more creative and inventive (according to numerous studies). Empathy and compassion are higher in individuals with ADHD. People with ADHD even have a stronger moral compass!

#actually adhd #neurodivergency #neurodivergent #research paper #adhd post #adhd symptoms #adhd things #living with adhd #adhd problems #info #writing #research

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jjheejz · 3 years ago

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About Internet Water Army in the case

This is an ongoing update about the case from start to development. List of all related posts can be found on this blog's pinned post (link provided at bottom of each post as well).

19 August 2021 update: Added the scale of his success for reference, before bonus below

18 August 2021 update: Added timeline of events, orange title in post, found out the official English term for Immoral Media = Internet Water Army)

Major updates since first draft: Added bonus, added disclaimer, certain info details

Originally posted on 16 August 2021

[The purpose of this post is to provide a perspective as to why the Media is raised/blamed regarding the issue. Especially for international fans, as all the encounters happened on Weibo. Also, those who were on weibo, do read through if you will. So although it's lengthy, do try to read all, at least if not the last two parts].

The Media referred by most, is not the common perception of the Entertainment Industry (celebrities, directors, shows, channels, staff etc), but the dark side of the Entertainment industry: Antis, toxic fans, toxic marketing accounts. They are called Internet Water Army💧.

Toxic Marketing Accounts is one of the things they do, these accounts on Weibo has millions of followers, each of their post likes are in the hundred thousands (buyable) to give credibility to passer-bys. Some use similar names to Official accounts, some use similar logos. Their posts are usually subjective or aims to steer view points of a certain celebrity/movie/show. Before the latest update of this post (18.08.21), I just group them all together and term them as Immoral Media*.

*Below is my original post using my original term because at point of first draft, I did not know the official term (so have changed/added the term from Immoral Media to Internet Water Army in content below but retain the content based off first draft).

If you have chased before celebrities, or just simply passed by an article about certain celebrities, recall how some title that caught your attentions were like. Clickbaits is one of the many things they do. If GZ is your first and you do not have Weibo, then this read(link) is good enough.

Just as the term Immoral Media (Internet Water Army), it’s immoral and unethical, but they exists because they are paid to do so. Who pays them? Entertainment Companies, and maybe other Organisations

Normal Media/Marketing vs Immoral Media/Toxic Marketing/Internet Water Army

When a show or movie comes out, the normal Marketing department will generate outreach and buzz so that people know a show is airing soon/know the show exists etc. Official announcements are not enough, because there isn’t much context (limited content to put up as well) so having some other Marketing accounts do the buzz in a planned period to gain awareness through posts, some articles about the casts, the plot summary, the production details etc is normal. This is Marketing, bigger companies will probably have stronger Marketing departments (aka influence) and can hire more Marketing accounts to generate buzz. Celebrities (aka casts) themselves, are also Marketing point.

Then we have the Internet Water Army/Immoral Media, these are what they mainly do:

Create Fanfiction-rumors: Creating rumors about celebrities to shift audience perception of them. [eg. XX was seen with XX leaving a hotel, XX was drunk on Event Y and did ZZZ to AA, XX is dating BB and has been in a relationship for N years etc]

Honing their brain degrading skills: Come up with titled clickbait headings/ trending topics with negative written contents. For articles, exceptionally out of heading content related to the celebrity. [Refer to Baidu, it’s a winner of these, feel free to Google Translate]

Regressing their common sense and understanding skills: Take everything a celebrity does completely out of context in a negative way and create a topic out of it [eg. XX said AA is a ---, “XX raised his finger, a sign of ---?”, XX pushed BB aggressively on Variety Show Y - A competition variety show, XX is in beef with CC because XX was caught giving CC the eye]

Using their fingers to stir shit and bathe each other in it: Escalate all smallest form of possible tension created by fans/themselves into a huge thing by acting as the fandom's fans/lurk in fandom chat groups, and voicing their disguised opinion to spread tension/exaggerate severity of the issue [eg. XX fans mocked AA - in groupchats: tbh I've never liked AA before, AA just gives off a vibe that I dont like and now this? It just disgusts me even more > Yea, i feel this way too. AA has problems / XX Lurkers expressing views on XX about NN, slowly to NNMHFXW - XX did NNMHGT - I cannot accept NNmHfHw, I'm leaving = multiply by 1000++]

Epitome of a self-deteriorate: Creating something out of nothing and react to that something negatively to gain massive attention/reaction [eg. “XX raised his hand on show Y” - dk what XX fans are thinking, are they literally blind? XX fans are tasteless just like XX hahaha / “XX did community service” - they are acting / “XX breathed” - From the start, i thought XX was NN, but I am so ZZZ that XX breathed. Goodbye fandom, i’m leaving. Those who still want to stay I urge you to rethink your life choices] - if I may add, Xiao Zhan’s fanfiction case as well.

Metaphor - Ability to use bare hands to collect paychecks from the urinal/toilet bowl where their boss/client peed in: Doing all of the above.

Apologies for any term offense, but not apologetic of the term context. This is what they do for a living. Any normal human being who do not like anything, will generally not be interested at anything about it in the first place, so to have some antis/toxic fans knowing certain things and inside jokes/references in their posts questions their goal.

On involved in Internet Water Army/Immoral Media 💧

Fans on weibo during these few months witnessed many of the above on GZ. From rumored girlfriend (spammed with articles) to mean and nasty comments on trending topics, to bouts of insults and fake emotional cryouts by certain fan accounts that GZ's office has to release a number of Lawyer’s letter to them.

Aside from WOH there were also a few other BL adaptation films that were actually released this year but they did not reach exponential success like WOH. BL adaptations are so highly followed by because this is the key to wealth. Literally. Successful BLs like The Untamed and Dao Mu Bi Ji saw the amount of wealth fans are willing to spend on the celebrity as compared to say BG or idols (younger fan groups). This is why when WOH shot up exponentially, Immoral Media start to sweat.

Major anticipated adaptations were supposed to air this year eg. Hao Yi Xing(HYX), Sha Po Lang(SPL) etc but was severely held back due to the stricter change in BL adaptations submitting their scripts for approval regulations (WOH manage to submit earlier before the change). Because of this, most final films were rejected and they have to keep re-editing, by then WOH was already months into reaping tonnes of major brand endorsements, shows/movie casting, variety show appearances etc, something that is seen as too successful in the Immoral Media’s eyes, because they have to create buzz for other celebrities, some are specific celebrity oriented and thus circulate rumors about having endorsement opportunities shifted from celebrity X to GZ (think fanfiction-rumors and shit stirrer) causes tension in celebrity fandoms. - A real event just in July:

The Untamed’s cp fandom is called BJYX which had always been in the Top 1 of Cps for 2 years dropped for awhile to Top 2, over taken by LLD. Both of them had a war and hated each fandom, one fandom is somehow not allowed to like the other fandom even casually after everything broke out because it started out with some BJYX toxics photoshopped GZ on of portraits .

Also another case of which he wore the same costume as WYB did in a previous photoshoot and it became a useless comparison of who wore better, who looks better, degrading the other. (Finger stirring shit).

Now apply all of the above things the Internet Water Army do and we have them earning money, while both fandom reacts and hate each other.

In LLD, our own fans started suspecting each other on who is a spy from BJYX and what not.

The first few months of Internet Water Army saw LLDs mostly mocking them because the average age is 30-40s, they know and see through all of their intentions so nothing was big. They were trumpeting and LLDs didn’t even care, what with all the doing tedious stats was not even important to them.

Over time, as the issues they create became more and more serious LLDs did start to care, reporting Toxic Marketing accounts/toxic fans became a daily task, go vote for GZ at certain polls etc, solo fans, and LLD fans also split apart. Solo fans think cp fans use GZ to furnish their fantasies, and cp fans thinks they are the ones furnishing their dreaming-girls fantasy with (aka my boyfriend).

There was also a period where LLD had a habit of continuously mentioning “we are in the 30-40s so we can see through everything about the media, we are all fans for the first time, we are good at spending money (because of purchase power compared to other fandoms)” it was prevalent for so long it felt odd, ‘chasing celebrities the first time’ in particular sounds more vulnerable as a weakness than a strength / sth to be proud of.

Gradually, more secretive/insider confirmed ‘sweets’ were flying around. Fans advised each other to not circulate, and the mindset of “if you know, you know, dont tell.” (This is a problematic mentality, of which fans will still be curious to know and search for it themselves, but this secretive hook is unhealthy. Over the long term, it becomes hard for existing fans to know a lot of things properly to judge for themselves, especially those who knew and publicly reacted, but blasting those who ask and telling those who know to keep quiet, this did not help some to understand why on certain things, even so for international fans, dont know and dont understand, causing misunderstandings. Yes, certain information should not be shared, so why should you react about it publicly in the first place? - Internet Water Army effect)

The last few months (for example the July fan war) created a tonne of seriousness and anger. A period even broke out with a tonne of ‘insider confirmed sweets’ (which is LLD’s daily dose of happiness), it was hard to tell what was real and what was fake. Trending topics became negative and everyone warned each other not to enter because it will give the trends ‘views’ and trend statistics, in reality entering there is to enter an exhibition by the self-deteriorates, collecting the fandom's traffic data (it's a sure lose for fans each time they enter the topic). Everyone even starts thinking that the trend’s popularity was caused by each other (it's true but it can be bought daily and not caused by fans). There was a raise in the number of fans who were getting emotional because they want to protect but Internet Water Army kept coming and got worse, because fans, tbh, not just GZ fans, every other celebrity’s fans are always fighting with an Army, getting played and plotted in that Army's calendar.

Even so, despite all of these, LLD is actually a fandom Internet Water Army may find the hardest to break because they understand GZ so much, they could tell what are fake news regarding GZ, because among everything above, there are still plenty of logical fans to stop many fans from drifting too far and debunking them. Why? 30-40s are grown up adults.

Why 13.8.21 and the Japan issue is plotted?

First of all, in the political climate of China, there are many political dates in a month that is NO-Entertainment news. Because it’s the honoring of certain important political events. It’s like Remembrance Day, thus the sensitivity is higher. On these days, there are usually no news and even the Internet Water Army zip their pants. This year also marks the 100th year of the Chinese Communist Party(link)

Secondly, he had no work schedule on 13 August 2021. A great full day to focus on any other news (because if he had schedules, everyone will turn their attention to his events, what trumpeting outside is just bird chirps).

Thirdly, when the news broke out, especially about the shrine, the reception was actually quite serious within the fandom so the scale of this might be big but to what extent in reality?

Lastly, 15.8.21 marks the 76th anniversary of the announcement of surrender of Japanese in World War 2(link). Also a day of NO-Entertainment news.

Timeline of events:

13.8.21 - [His rest day, Eve of Chinese Valentine's Day, Japan News broke out] His rest day, no schedules = increased attention about him online. Lowered guard among fans because they are getting ready for tomorrow's Chinese Valentine's sweets = Caught off guard = Huge break out of fans' reactions

14.8.21 - [Chinese Valentine's Day, Eve of the 75th Anniversary of the announcement of Japanese surrender] Keep a wishful and happy demenaor to not destroy the mood, suppressed thoughts about ZZH's Japan news

15.8.21 - [75th Anniversary of the announcement of Japanese surrender, Official announcement of ZZH's boycott and all China social media account ban] NO-Entertainment news day, Solemn day, not allowed to voice anything so the fandom can only wait for tomorrow to start voicing out/debunking but before they can wait out, the boycott and social media ban happened, every official accounts about him was gone overnight, fans had no time to react

17.8.21 - [All official fandom accounts related to ZZH and JunZhe were locked/removed]

Forced to be silent since the day his matter broke out, over the course of official news release with everything taken down in a day because of the Japan correspondence, his accounts banned overnight across the Chinese media and the overnight cancellation, fans could not speak anything about it. Overnight cancellation like this scale happened for the first time in China, leaving no time to react by the fandom, by the time they can, they are silenced.

When the period of events occured within a set of special dates, it’s not coincidence.

Conclusion

Because he was too successful and had many actually honorable past things, and a hard to influence fandom, Internet Water Army view him as a huge threat enough to want to destroy him, because it’s hard to defeat. With a chance they have, they will hold it till the end, bringing up this issue to the Government during this period also shows a sign of how scared they were of him and perhaps his fandom to plot something like this.

Updated on 19 August: Here's a screenshot of assumed calculation on the scale of GZ success for reference while chatting with a fellow fan, assuming GJ also has 27 brands, and there are 1000 brands. Rationale of numbers used: Only big brands can hire big celebrities.

Bonus

Mentioned in the first post, will mention again in case. After the news broke out within 2 days, there was a drop on his weibo followers from 18.9mil to 18.7mil. 200k+ drops, if the politics was such a big national issue, there should at least be a huge drop, even at least a million right? Because weibo is a China-Chinese majority right? Nope, we get a puny 200k drop.

What's funny? The self-deteroriates:

Translation: "Are his fans bought? Why didnt he drop fans? Those people got brainwashed to this point?" / "I've never entered his weibo and today i feel like having a look yet it showed I've followed him. All his fans were bought right? It disgusts me, i immediately unfollowed. This kind of process is worse than WYF..." / "i dropped fans because of him...no...I just reposted 2 posts and I've dropped 4 fans?"

Isn't the tone and regressing brain cells, all too familiar and same?

Added above, will remind again to read this link. It has an even more in-depth knowledge on who are paying them.

So what should we do? Link here

Related posts 🛏️:

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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Daisuke’s background with his family

We don’t really know a lot about the Motomiya family compared to many of the others in the Adventure and 02 narrative, only getting a few glimpses here and there, and ultimately Daisuke (by his own self-admission) turns out to not really have any deep opinions or hangups about them, but it’s still interesting to see how it has an influence on his background!

We learn in 02 episode 14 that Daisuke and his family actually lived in Odaiba back in 1999, with Daisuke as a (probably honorary) member of the soccer club under Taichi, Sora, and Koushirou. It’s hinted here in Daisuke’s face, but the Adventure novels and Spring 2003 confirm that he was extremely frustrated at his inability to protect his family (with Jun “gently comforting” him), to the point where ��becoming strong enough to protect everyone” became his motivation thereafter.

So, really, when it all comes down to it and serious things are happening, this is a family that does have a lot of love for each other -- Daisuke outright admits in the Character Complete File that it gets lonely when even one person’s out.

As it turns out, even the Motomiya parents have really dramatic personalities (the Animation Chronicle calls extra attention to Jun’s personality having been something she got from her mother), to the point where they suddenly get over-the-top excited when Ken comes over in 02 episode 35, and Daisuke’s irritated reaction makes it clear that this is expected behavior from them. (I promise you that Daisuke’s dad’s statement doesn’t come off as nearly as harsh or cruel in Japanese as it probably does in English here; it’s not any worse than him calling Daisuke a little silly.) In the end, Daisuke’s tendency to be over-the-top with all of his emotions and get ridiculously dramatic about everything is just something that came straight from his family.

Actually, when you think about it, Jun isn’t really that different from Daisuke either, right down to losing a ton of brain cells when things start involving a crush -- she’s only slightly more in-your-face about it (and only via goading Yamato on a “date” in 02 episode 7, but this is “date”, singular, basically just convincing him to spend a day with her and take her somewhere, not actually being in the illusion that he returns her feelings or expecting a long-term relationship). She’s simple-minded, airheaded, fantasizes about the idea of Yamato returning her feelings without ever actually doing anything conclusive about it, and then, the moment she realizes that Yamato’s taken, mopes about it for one in-universe day before immediately switching her affections to Shuu like nothing had happened. So, really: it runs in the family.

(This also means that Daisuke’s probably not in for that much trouble if a day ever comes in which it turns out he’s conclusively rejected by Hikari for real -- his current relationship with her is based off him never making any firm statement and thus her being able to smoothly dodge everything, but if things ever truly get conclusively to the point where things won’t pan out for him, it’s not hard to believe he’d actually get over it quickly after an initial bout of disappointment.)

In 02 episode 4, Daisuke makes an accusation of Jun for constantly talking badly about him, and, if the Animation Chronicle is to be believed, he’s not actually wrong -- apparently “spreading bad rumors about him wherever she goes” is a habit she has. Given what we learn about her and the siblings’ relationship later in the series, though, it’s unlikely she’s doing this out of conscious malice -- by “rumors”, basically just trash talking her little brother the same way a lot of people reading this post probably love trash talking their siblings when they’re out of earshot, much like her calling Daisuke “not cute at all” earlier in this same episode. It’s a world that Takeru and Yamato (who had only seen Jun at her “best” earlier in the episode) are completely unfamiliar with, and Daisuke’s attitude of “hating” her causes Yamato and Hikari to get upset at him, but many a Digimon fan commenting on this episode has pointed out that a lot of sibling relationships are more like this than the ones between the Ishida-Takaishi and Yagami siblings -- a lot more ostensibly “vitriolic” and not as unequivocally admiring.

On top of the fact that Daisuke and Jun aren’t in need of overcompensating with their relationship due to a rift like Yamato and Takeru, or one party having unhealthy repression problems and requiring extra care, Daisuke and Jun are also a whole six years apart, which is even given extra attention in the Animation Chronicle. Which means they’re not very close in perspective; Jun’s all the way in high school, dealing with a baby brother who’s still in elementary, and so it’s rather understandable that they’re not really going to see eye-to-eye very much.

We get an example of a “fight” between them in 02 episode 35, but...

Jun: I really envy you, Daisuke...All you do is eat, sleep, play and you don't think about anything else, do you? Daisuke: I think about lots of stuff! Jun: Lots of stuff like what? Daisuke: Like...Lots of complicated stuff. But if I think too much, my brain freezes so I need to take a break sometimes. Jun: I'm sure it's nothing serious. Daisuke: Shut up! What about you?

It’s not really a serious fight at all -- just a lot of banter, the sort that a lot of real-life siblings would attest to also having been in a lot of. Perhaps, just the natural result of having a household where everyone seems to have the same slightly rough-around-the-edges, somewhat messy, overly dramatic, simple-minded and straightforward personality -- which also means they end up bouncing off each other and getting a little “crowded” (Daisuke very clearly not following Jun’s warnings to not use her soap bottles written all over them in red pen in 02 episode 15). But for all Daisuke had used the strong word of “hate” to refer to their relationship back in 02 episode 4, it really just seems like he’d been his usual dramatic self about it, and it’s all banter and occasionally being quick to criticize. Moreover, whenever Jun criticizes him, he’s actually less angry about snapping back at her or getting genuinely offended or sad the way he might with anyone else -- all he does is just fling a few quips back and move on, and doesn’t take it all that personally, so you could say he’s conversely rather comfortable with this status quo of getting to bicker with her.

But, really, banter is just banter; even something as little as “Daisuke (seemingly) laughing to himself in the bathroom” is enough to make Jun worry that something’s wrong with him in 02 episode 15, and Daisuke’s father also personally thanks Natsuko for helping Daisuke out and waxes cheerfully about his son and friends having a fun Christmas party together. In fact, considering the context that Daisuke seemed to be pretty friendless prior to the series, the above scene carries the added implication that he’s probably pretty happy to see his son finally making some proper friends and going all the way to Tamachi to be part of a party.

And, eventually, as things get much more serious and the exact truth behind what Daisuke’s been up to is revealed to his family in 02 episode 50, they take this with the exact amount of grace and worry that a proper supportive family does.

Hence, why Daisuke can make a statement like this in 02 episode 49. Even if his family isn’t ostensibly full of hearts and affection, they’re supportive when it really comes down to it, and it’s not like Daisuke himself even really takes the surface bantering between himself and his sister all that seriously, so he doesn’t feel the need to ask for anything different -- and what he really wanted since that day three years ago was to be able to protect his family, and that’s exactly what he’s going to do now. Other than Hikari, the others had gotten “illusions” related to deep-seated issues involving their personal lives, but it’s not like he really would want it to be any different at home -- arguably it’d be outright weird to him if Jun suddenly got lovey-dovey with him or something -- and now he’s surrounded by supportive friends and his own partner. Sure, he has some tendencies towards being a bit on-edge and insecure every so often, but right now, in the midst of this very serious situation when something has to be done, and after a whole series’ worth of bonding with his new friends and gaining a sense of purpose, that’s more than enough for him.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #motomiya daisuke #motomiya jun #daisuke motomiya #jun motomiya #shihameta

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nevertheless-moving · 4 years ago

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My actual point writing this here is that a year into the war when Obi-Wan (36) starts really bonding with Cody (14/28) he feels super weird about it on a bunch of levels because its Cody who’s loyal and hot and smart but does this make Obi-Wan a creep? Or is it more offensive not to sleep with him? (Not to mention it’s easier to think about consent in terms of numbers then the insane command structure and slavery thing because they’ve got a pretty healthy relationship all things considered and he’s already promoting the man as fast as possible anyway but clones have no legal rights)

Obi-Wan sleeps around with various terrible choices, sexual tension builds. FINALLY after two years of war they get stuck in a cave, naturally huddle for warmth, things escalate positively and Obi-Wan’s like WAIT I CAN’T

There’s some horny exasperation, but they care about each other, and don’t want to sour what they have with regrets. Eventually Cody (15/30 at cave time) and Obi-Wan agree to wait another 3 years so they’ll both be at the legal human age of consent and the age difference will drop to just 4 years. By then the war will be over anyway, right? So the whole jedis-own-the-clones thing that’s really underneath all this will HAVE to be resolved.

They spend the rest of the night cuddling with uncomfortable boners.

Another year passes. Lots of longing glances, lingering hand touches, tender bandaging of wounds, suggestive lightsaber holds...you know. YOU K N O W. Plus a little private teasing about the jailbait thing because they’re literally running a war together

Order 66.

When asked, CC-2224 can’t believe he ever considered himself close to a traitor. He doesn’t think about it the rest of the time.

Obi-Wan has plenty of regrets. This is probably the easiest one to bear, and the only one that makes him smile to think of.

Things could have been left at that, but once Fulcrum disseminates the knowledge on exactly why the clones turned, a number of early rebellion task-forces dedicate themselves to de-chipping/disabling the chips. Beyond the whole sentient rights thing, its good tactical sense. They’re a well placed MAJOR military asset that could quickly start providing immediate returns if suborned. Worst case you’ve just activated a number of extremely effective suicide bombers

It takes over a year and a lot of good men die, but a desperate rebel cell manages to infiltrate purge trooper barracks. They go undiscovered just long enough to plant a few extremely well-calibrated electrical devices. Bomb sweep fails to register them. The whole terrorist group is wiped out of course, but the EMPs activate overnight as planned. Massive damage to Imperial Military resources and overly hasty brain surgery follows.

Like I said, a lot of good men die.

But Cody, now that his head is more or less his own, has a little more hope than the average CC (not a lot, but enough to stave off going out in a blaze of glory). General Kenobi’s body was never found after all. He knows- he looked.

He quickly joins up with the Onderran campaign- he can’t go on many imperial raids- he understands that his brothers would rather die than live as they are but that doesn’t mean he can pull the trigger. But black ops? yeah. Rumour is they’ve even got a Jedi on the next mission- he’d be irritated at the bad operational security but that specific rumour passes around so often its essentially useless to spies anyway.

Team members are independently directed to assemble at a safe house, their arrivals deliberately staggered. Cody steals and ditches two different ships, not to mention spends a week in a sewer, before finally arriving. Organa himself had stressed that one of the crew is taking time off of a top-secret long-term protection detail for this and no chances are to be taken with being tracked.

He arrives late at night, with two days left to spare.

Two unknown near-human fighters (Guerra trained by the looks), a Mon-Calamari smuggler, and a Gand mercenary who he’s fairly confident used to work for the separatists greet him cordially enough at entry; his reputation proceeds him. If anything, the former Marshall Commander of the 7th Sky Corps is overqualified for this sort of mission. He’s vaguely pleased to find another trooper present- a heavily scarred arc commando wearing 187th colors. The commando is actually smiling, seated across from and deep into conversation with a robed figure,

Cody’s heart jumps to his throat. Their conversation halts. Everyone watches. And General Kenobi slowly turns to face him. The air’s too heavy with tension for the others to think about leaving discretely, even if they were willing (the chips are a poorly-understood open secret at this point, and the five bystanders are well trained enough to brace themselves for the worst case reunion).

“Cody,” Obi-Wan says softly. “It’s good to see you.”

The Jedi looks terrible. In the two and a half years since the end of the war and the start of the empire, the man seems to have aged faster than a botched clone.

He’s using his stupid earnest voice where he means what he’s saying and its important that Cody know that. Like he’s actually, truly happy to see Cody even after what the clones did to their Jedi. Even after what Cody tried to do to Obi-Wan. Cody’s had plenty of time to think of what he might say if he ever saw the man again, but he hadn’t used it- it was too painful to imagine anything personal anymore. What apology could be enough? What right did he have to express grief in the face of Obi-Wan’s unfathomable loss? To Cody’s absolute horror, what comes out his mouth is

"I’m not jailbait anymore, you know.”

The words hang in the air, and Cody is now ready to die. Maybe if he moves suddenly enough one of their captive audience members will reflexively shoot him.

Sure, after their long talk in that cave, Cody had spent an unhealthy amount of time daydreaming variations on ‘I’m a real man now we gonna fuck or what’

but that was before he became a kriffing PURGE TROOPER what the actual hells was wrong with his brain

Obi-Wan...Obi-Wan blinks rapidly. Then grins. It was honest delight mixed with Negotiator smarm crossed with an about-to-get-laid-leer.

Cody’s heart starts back up with a vengeance.

“I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about it,” Obi-Wan drawls. He shifts in his seat, straightening from a weary hunch to lean back cockily, hands behind his head and legs spreading even wider than their customary sprawl.

“Oh, did I miss your 18th decant day? I’m ever so sorry my dear, I do hope I can make it up to you somehow. Incidentally, have I ever mentioned that contrary to popular opinion, the Jedi Code doesn’t actually require celibacy?”

Cody let out a strangled noise at the pickup line that had, almost impressively, become even less tasteful since the last time he heard it. He must have moved forward somehow, because the next thing he knew the General’s chair was toppling back and his legs were wrapped around the Jedi’s waist and Obi-Wan’s tongue was doing incredible things to the inside of his mouth. There's a sense of hasty movement, the slam of a door, then a bed.

The next morning, Cody stares intently at the briefing’s logistical diagrams, carefully avoiding everyone else’s eyes. There was next-to-no-chance that their moaning and thudding had gone unheard. But they were all professionals, not to mention used to people letting off tension in high stress environments.

He does, however, desperately hope that everyone somehow missed the hours of incoherent crying that interrupted and followed otherwise fantastic sex.

Plans are finalized, weapons are loaded, and comms are distributed. Two more rebels arrive. Pre-mission banter stays fairly tame, even after claiming one of the two bedrooms for themselves for a second and not significantly quieter night.

All things considered, when it comes time to establish operational codes, they don’t really have it in them to put up a fight against their unanimously designated callsigns.

They are a little less gracious on future missions when the code names repeatedly return.

Nearly two decades later, at the physical ages of 72 and 58 respectively, Cody and Obi-Wan have more or less resigned themselves to being officially introduced as 'jailbait’ and ‘cradlerobber.’

#star wars #my au #starwars au #star wars au no 36 #fanfic #codywan #crack #cradlerobber au

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andromedasstarship · 4 years ago

Text

in the stars - chapter 5

pairing - aaron hotchner x reader

warnings - canon-typical criminal minds violence, stalking, unhealthy coping mechanisms, drinking, angst

summary - “Please,” he said, staring you straight in the eyes. “Don’t go.”

a/n - i really love this chapter! cant wait to hear what yall think :DD also for reference i aged jack down just a year so hes 3 when haley passes away, about to turn 5 when reader & aaron get together. i dont claim any dialogue straight from Emma as mine! (emma dialogue is in italics)

masterlist / series masterlist / read it on ao3

chapter 4 / chapter 6

-----

You were hyper-aware of the new way the team was looking at you as you entered the conference room. You shot a very anxious glance up towards Aaron, grateful for the very brief- but soft- glance he gave you before the business side of him took over again. You could feel the ghost of his hand hovering over that protective spot on your back again as he led you up towards the table.

It felt like your eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, upon seeing the seemingly endless piles of photos in front of you. Your brain was struggling to process everything that was laid out in front of you and you felt your heart rate start to pick up; seeing it in person was worse than anything your mind had created in the drive here.

“Y/N.”

Your eyes shot up to meet the voice and you saw Spencer looking down at you with a look that was just on the edge of pity. “We tried to sort the pictures into piles of time relativity. Would you be able to go through them and help us create a firmer timeline?”

You nodded at that, vaguely aware of Aaron pulling a chair out behind you. You gladly slid down into it. Seeing Emily start to pick up one pile and push them towards you made you nervously laugh, the stress of the moment and how uncomfortable you felt forcing it out. When the entire team gave you a weird look you said, “Sorry, it just reminded me of last time.”

You gently picked up the stack of photos, trying to hold them as lightly as possible. The knowledge that the unsub had packaged these himself sent a shiver down your spine. You knew it was silly, but you somehow felt that by touching the photos you were somehow also touching the remnants of the unsub.

The first stack you easily dated as around four years ago, just from your hair; you’d drastically changed it for a role. You thumbed through the photos and could feel the knots in your stomach growing even tighter. Most of the photos were blurry and relatively distant from you, as if the unsub was still getting comfortable with what he was doing.

“This was four years ago, I had to change my hair for a role and I’ve never had it like that before or again.” You said quietly, pushing the pile back to Emily.

She nodded, giving you a gracious smile before pushing the next pile towards you. Your face fell immediately; something the team equated to how much more personal these set of photos seemed to be. You fanned the stack out in front of you. There weren’t many, as if even the unsub could recognize the inappropriate- ha!- nature of capturing you like this. In all of them you looked worn down, as if a cloud was following you everywhere you went.

“This was about two years ago.” You said flatly. It took a moment, but you could see everyone connect the dots in their head and suddenly the room felt very small.

Thankfully, the next pile was rather average and you guessed that this was just an ‘extra’ pile of photos that didn’t really seem to fit into a cohesive timeframe. As you scanned over them, one caught your eye and you pulled it a bit closer to you. You pointed a finger at the sign behind you.

“This is an exclusive club house, it’s difficult to get into. Security’s intense and everyone that enters has to sign in.” You informed the team. JJ reached out and grabbed the photo, putting it to the side for later.

You turned your attention back to the pile, making sure to give each photo a proper amount of attention, desperate to notice something useful.

“This one,” you said, pulling a blurry photo of yourself out of the pile. You were moving too fast for the camera to properly capture you, but you recognized the outfit. “I was wearing this the day Officer Reynolds told me you all were coming, isn’t this the outside of the station?” You said quietly.

JJ moved that photo to the ‘save for later’ pile as well. You gently re-stacked the pile and passed it towards Emily, waiting for the next one.

You watched as Emily seemed to be literally holding her tongue as she pushed the next pile towards you, a certain playful glint in her eyes. Once you were able to look at it, you couldn’t help but snort. You could feel Aaron tense up besides you, but you could find the humor in it. The ‘Aaron’ pile.

You fanned the stack out like you had done with the others, giving special attention to the details behind you. These were much more difficult to place and a much smaller pile, considering how careful the two of you had been.

“These must’ve been in DC?” You questioned, not really expecting an answer. You looked up towards Aaron, raising an eyebrow as if to give him the opportunity to share his thoughts. “Whenever he came to LA, I had an iron grip on our security but it was a whole different field in DC-”

Your sentence fell flat as your eyes went wide, nearly surging out of your seat up towards Aaron. He gave you a worried look, unable to place the sudden anxiety that had taken over you. “What about Jack?” You asked worriedly, “if he knows about you he must’ve found out about Ja-”

Aaron stopped you, putting a very gentle hand on the top of your shoulder, “He’s okay, I promise.” He said, using his hand to lightly push you back into a seated position. You nodded at that, eyes still wide, but your body seemed to deflate, the tension slowly leaving you.

The rest of the team was quiet, recognizing the personal nature of the interaction. But it was impossible for them not to notice the way your bodies reacted to each other. The way your body’s natural response to a stressor had been to move closer to him and the way he angled himself in a protective stance around you near simultaneously.

Emily pushed the final pile in front of you and you couldn’t help the corners of your lips pull up in a soft smile. You fanned out the stack of photos, taking a good look at all of them. They all seemed to either be promo photos or film photos of your time filming Mamma Mia in Greece.

“This is definitely from Greece. But some of these are definitely promo photos, it’s why I’m ‘posing’ in a few of them.” You said, pushing out one that visually made your point.

“What about this one? It feels a lot more intimate than a promotional piece.” Emily asked, pulling one out from the stack. In it, you were standing on the dock, face close to the camera. You had a big smile on your face and your thumbs up.

“On set, we had a handful of little disposable cameras that everyone could use.”

“Do you have any memory of who owned the cameras?”

“I…,” you paused, eyebrows scrunched tightly in thought, “I don’t know. The studio distributed all the photos after the movie came out. They’re pretty public at this point, it was five years ago.” You said weakly, feeling really disappointed in your lack of help. “I’m sorry.” You added.

Morgan stepped up closer to the table. “Don’t be okay? Now we know that the unsub has connections in Hollywood and we know he must be wealthy enough to fly to DC on a whim if he thought you were there. That helps narrow things down.” He assured you.

“Are there any specific photographers that you’ve noticed? Or any guy you feel like you’ve seen too many times and it’s no longer a coincidence?” Spencer asked.

You shook your head quickly. “I’m really used to cameras flashing in my face.” You said impishly. “I can remember a lot of fans that I meet, but if it’s just someone behind a camera I don’t think I’d really notice it at all.”

You felt Aaron move away from you and towards the computer at the end of the table. He clicked a few buttons and suddenly a woman's face popped up on the screen. You recognized her immediately from all the stories and photos you’d seen. Penelope.

Aaron brought the computer closer to where you were and her mouth dropped open for the second time today.

“Oh my god! Hi! Wow! I am, I am such a fan. I just-, you’re always so-”

“Garcia.” Aaron interjected but you raised your hand at him, giving him a ‘shoo’ gesture. The rest of the team had to stifle their laughter.

“Hi, Penelope right? I’ve heard so much about you.” You said sweetly, leaning a bit closer to the camera.

“Wow! Okay, I can’t believe this is-”

“Garcia, I need you to pull up visitor logs from a clubhouse that Y/N used to visit. I want you to cross reference it with other visitor logs of recent film sets she’s been on and her housing development. She’ll be able to give you a more comprehensive list.” Aaron interjected, and this time you let him.

You turned back to the screen, giving Garcia another smile. “The clubhouse is called Royal Blue, the picture couldn’t have been more than…, I think three years ago? But I’m not sure.”

“Alright…, okay the visitor logs seem to be locked tight, but never too tight for me. What are some of those movie sets?”

“The earliest photo is what? Five years ago?” You asked, looking around at the agents for approval. “Yeah, five years. So Mamma Mia, to start, Little Women. I’m working on Emma right now.” You droned, listing various movie sets you’d worked on in the past five years.

“Oh my god! I have so many questions about Mamma Mia. Like what was it-,” Garcia’s question trailed off as she caught sight of Hotch giving her a firm stare from behind you. “Right sorry, alright. I will break into the clubhouse and cross reference all of these lists to see if anyone comes up more than once. It was so nice meeting you, I hope we get to-. Alright, hanging up now!” Garcia said in a rushed voice. You watched her click a button on her end and the screen went black.

You leaned back into your chair, staring up at the rest of the team . “So…,” you said, drawing out the word, “what now?”

-----

“What are you doing?” Aaron’s asked, voice coming out from behind you.

You comically froze, hand just short of picking your keys up from the table. You slowly turned to face him, straightening your tote bag over your shoulder. “Oh! There you are, I was just on my way to come find you.” You said lightly, trying to diffuse some of the tension in the room. Aaron didn’t say anything, waiting for you to go on. “Johnny and I have plans tonight.” You said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world

On your part, you’d already forgotten about the whole ‘I’m on a date’ aspect on your earlier phone call with Aaron. In your mind, there wasn’t anything inherently suspicious about you going to spend time with him in the evening.

Aaron was viewing the entire situation in a very different light. When he had first come around the corner, he noticed how nice you looked. When the two of you had finally returned to your place you immediately went up to your room, disappearing for quite some time. He had originally thought maybe you were upset, the cognitive interview hadn’t revealed anything and even though he knew you didn’t really believe in their accuracy, he also knew how badly you wanted to be of ‘use’ for the case.

In your time upstairs, you had changed your outfit and styled your hair just enough to give it that ‘unstyled-styled’ look. It’s not like you were glammed out or anything, the only reason you’d put on a nice outfit was on the off chance you were photographed- hopefully not by the unsub-, on your way into Johnny’s apartment.

“And what is it that you’re supposed to be doing?” Aaron asked, trying to keep his voice as nonchalant as possible.

“Um, nothing much,” You said with an awkward laugh, when he was still looking at you expectantly you tilted your head. “I’m supposed to go to his place and we’re gonna run lines for the scenes we’re filming this week.” You explained.

“I can’t endorse you going out at night. Especially to someone’s home that we don’t have eyes on.” Aaron said firmly.

You rolled your eyes at that, picking up your keys. “Johnny’s fine, he’s been in the same place as me when nearly all the bodies were discovered.” You argued, putting one hand on your hip.

“With the recent development in the cases, I can’t let you do this.”

You started to walk towards him, intending to go around him. “Aaron-”

His hand shot out and gently grabbed you by the arm, stopping you from getting past him.

“Hey!-”

“Please,” he said, staring you straight in the eyes. “Don’t go.”

Your mouth fell open slightly in a mild form of shock. ‘We’re just running lines, I really need-”

“I’ll do it with you.” Aaron interjected hurriedly. “We’ve done it before, I’m not too bad at it, huh?” He said teasingly.

You pondered that for a minute. You and Aaron had run lines together plenty of times in the past, it was always something you got a kick out of, seeing Aaron try and morph into whatever character he was reading for. And while it wouldn’t be as productive as running them with your actual co-star, you reasoned it’d still be good enough. And as much as you hated to admit it, Aaron probably had a point about you not going out, especially in the evening.

“Fine. I just need to go call Johnny and tell him something came up.” You huffed, pretending to be more annoyed than you were.

“Here,” you said, reaching into your bag and pulling out your script, “I already have most of my lines memorized, I’ll just need you to fill in if I miss any. I have a pink sticky note denoting the scene we were going to start with. You’re reading as Knightely. I’ll meet you in the living room, alright?” You said, pushing the script into his hands as you walked around him towards the kitchen, pulling your phone out at the same time.

----

“No, I’m just saying I think it’d be more believable or whatever if we did a few more like nonchalant meals before like, running errands together or something, ya know?” You said lazily into the phone, holding it between your ear and shoulder as you used your hands to mix up a drink for yourself. Out of the corner of your eye you caught sight of the Dalmore. You reached out with one hand and carefully pulled it down, still remembering exactly how Aaron liked to take a drink.

“What meal really screams ‘we’re dating’? Dinner? That’s like the longest meal of the day, that’s gotta show some sort of commitment.” Johnny asked.

“Hm…,” you droned, “well we just had a lunch. If we want to kick it into high gear, we should do breakfast. Perfect ‘just spent the night’ remedy.” You said with a snort.

Aaron cleared his throat behind you and the sound made you jump. You pulled the phone away from your ear and saw you’d been blabbering for nearly half an hour.

‘Oh. Sorry.’ You mouthed to Aaron, before pulling the phone back to your ear. “Hey Johnny gotta go, but we’ll figure it out later! Yeah…, for sure, bye!” You hung up and placed your phone on the counter. Then you grabbed the drink you had poured for him, holding it out.

“It’s Dalmore.” You said plainly.

“I’m working.” He responded.

You rolled your eyes at that and held it out more aggressively. “Take it.”

You watched happily as he begrudgingly took it out of your hand, though you knew it wasn’t too difficult for him. You picked up your own glass and tucked your phone into the waistband of your pants. “Ready? Sorry, got carried away.”

While the two of you walked back into your living room, it was obvious something was bothering Aaron. You briefly wondered if something had developed in the case that he wasn’t telling you.

‘What is it?” You asked.

He looked down at you, confused. “What is what?”

“Don’t play dumb, you have a tell.” You explained, stopping to look up at him.

“I do not have a tell.” Hotch replied annoyedly.

“Yes you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“If you want to be a baby about it, fine you don’t have a tell. Tell me what’s wrong anyway.”

“I’m trying to understand why you lied about not having a boyfriend nor seeing anyone recently. We’ll need to fully vet Johnny and look into his files, even if you don’t see it becoming serious.” Aaron near spat.

You snorted. “What do you mean lied?”

“You very clearly told me you weren’t seeing anyone, yet today has proven those claims to be false.”

“I know that sometimes, I like to be a huge pain but I’m serious, what are you talking about? I’m not seeing anyone.”

“Your co-star, Johnny? You told me you were on a date with him today. I just heard you on the phone make plans to stay with him overnight. I saw the pictures of-”

“Stop! Oh my god, I can’t believe you actually believed that.” You said, unable to hold back the laughter that bubbled out of you.

“Believed it? You’re the only who told me!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have assumed you read through the lines. Johnny and I have been going on publicity dates. We’re just friends.”

“What were you supposed to be doing tonight then?”

“We were legitimately going to run lines. Maybe get ice cream, we’re trying to determine the best ice cream in LA.”

That’d explain the outfit, Aaron thought.

“And the phone call I just heard?”

“We were debating which meal screams ‘dating’. He thinks it’s dinner. I think it’s breakfast, ya know, cause it implies you spent the night.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that, before.”

“Don’t you remember when I had kinda the same thing with Timothee during Little Women? They made us hang out a bunch so the tabloids could just do their thing. I just assumed you’d fill in the blanks.”

Aaron was staring at you as if you had two heads. It was almost like you could see the gears turning in that head of his. Internally, he was more than embarrassed for how upset he’d gotten over the idea of you with someone else.

When it seemed that Aaron had nothing else to say, you started to walk again, not stopping until you were both back in your living room. You plopped down in ‘your spot’ on the couch, playfully patting the space a few cushions down that Aaron typically sat in.

“Crack open that script, I hope you looked through it. If you’re making me stay home, you better be useful!” You said pleasantly, trying to change the atmosphere into something more playful.

Aaron awkwardly sat himself down on the couch next to you, picking the script back up. As you watched him flip the script open and further acquaint himself with the lines you couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang in your chest. It was such an unavoidable reminder of the way the two of you used to run lines together when you were still dating. You had learned early on that Aaron best showed his affection through acts of service and he actually wasn’t that bad at delivering a line. Since the two of you were rarely together in person- it’s not like you’d let him waste a visit with you building a shelf or running an errand-, running lines with you was the easiest way for him to feel useful.

-----

Four Years Ago

“Okay Jack, you ready?” You asked, smiling down at the young boy standing across from you. He was dressed up in his winter clothes, despite the blazing heat of the summer. You and Aaron had tried to talk him out of it, but he demanded it’d be the only way for him to fully get into character. And who were you two to deny him? The sweet boy nodded, barely being able to contain his excitement as he bounced up and down on his feet.

“Alright, places everyone!” You yelled out, holding the diy paper clapperboard Jack had made for you. You held it out from your body and did a very exaggerated clapping motion. “Action!” You said, quickly throwing the clapperboard to the couch.

“Carrots!” Jack said, his voice more than enthusiastic for the role.

“Huh?” You said, heavily overselling your voice and reaction. Even with the one simple word, Jack was already in giggles, struggling to keep it together.

He leaned in closer to you, standing up on his tiptoes. “Behind you!”

“Oh! Right, excuse me.” You said, stepping to the side and gesturing to the ‘carrots’ behind you.

You made your voice really low to play the next part. “Woh, a real howler in July, yea? Where ever could it be coming from?” You asked, placing your chin in between your thumb and pointer finger.

Jack kept giggling at your ‘deep’ voice, he held his ‘script’ up to his face to read his next line. “The North Mountain.”

You jokingly ran a hand in front of your face, signaling a character switch. “North Mountain.” You stage whispered. You ran your hand in front of your face again, going serious. “That’ll be forty.” You said, holding your hand out with a ‘gimme’ gesture.

Jack smacked your hand gently to ‘give you’ the money. But after his face fell ever so slightly. “Can we skip to when Daddy gets to come in??” He asked, giving you those big eyes you couldn’t possibly say no to.

You stood back, putting your weight on your back leg with one hand on your hip. “Hmm.., I think that could be arranged.” You reached over to grab the clapperboard. “Alright everyone! Back to places, but let’s start at ‘Hi everyone’, okay?”

Jack nodded excitingly and turned back to where he knew Aaron was standing, partially hidden by the hallway. “Places daddy!” He urged, pointing to where he should come stand.

Aaron came out from around the corner and you quickly covered your mouth with your hand, trying to hold in the laughter. Aaron had a big white hat on his head and had let Jack put a small orange dot on his nose. You and Jack had definitely double teamed poor Aaron, dragging him into your little ‘movie game’ as Jack liked to call it. The three of you had started doing this a few months ago, Jack loved ‘running lines’ with you and you were more than happy to oblige him. It had started when a sleepy Jack had stumbled into the living room one night when he couldn’t sleep and he saw you and Aaron running lines for one of your other movies. Jack had taken to it so much you ended up ‘hiring’ him to help you with your more child friendly roles.

“Alright, alright. Quiet on set!” You said, making a big deal of you bringing your index finger up to your lips in a ‘shush’ motion. “Action!”

“Hi everyone. I’m Olaf. And I like warm hugs.” Aaron recited robotically , very clear that he was reading directly from the paper. You smacked your hand back over your mouth, unable to control the giggles. Once you started laughing, Jack fell into his own fit of laughter; both of you fueled off the others amusement.

Of course, when you finally pulled yourself back together, a quick look at the way Aaron was standing with fake annoyance across his face and his arms crossed tightly against his chest sent you back into fits of laughter.

“Are you two done?” Aaron asked, no true malice in his voice.

It was rare that the three of you all got to spend time together. He’d been wary of introducing you to Jack. It wasn’t really a ‘you’ thing, but it was more of how Jack would be able to deal with it. There were the typical worries, what if you and Jack didn’t get along? Or what if you two did get along really well but then you and Aaron broke up and it hurt him even further? While you never intended to try and replace his ‘mom’, you still worried that your chaotic schedule would somehow hurt him, skewing his perception of yet another ‘parental’ figure. Not to mention the issues with him being able to keep your identity and presence in his life a secret; he wouldn’t even be able to tell people like Uncle Rossi that his dad was seeing someone.

But now, you’d been with Aaron for over two years. And Jack had known about you for about a year now. And everything had been going perfect. Jack was a stellar secret keeper, the unfortunate events of his childhood maturing him faster than any child deserved and he was able to fully understand the importance of the situation. The two of you had taken to each other quite quickly and every night the three of you would have a ‘bedtime’ call; even on the nights when Aaron was busy with a case you’d still call Jack on your own. You loved spoiling him with whatever hot new toy was popular among kids his age or getting him special early copies of movies before they came out. Aaron used to get on you about it, saying it wasn’t necessary, but you argued it was the most necessary thing in the world.

And now here the three of you were. Nestled away in Aaron’s apartment in DC. You had just flown in after wrapping up a shoot abroad and were just in time for the start of summer. Even though your career was at a seemingly new high, you had managed to secure a relatively empty summer. After long consideration and planning you and Aaron decided it’d be a nice treat for Jack to go spend a month or so with you in LA. You’d consulted heavily with many of your friends who kept their children completely hidden from the spotlight and had hired an airtight security team to assist you the entire time. Aaron was supposed to come out when he could, but you were all aware of how turbulent his poor schedule could be. Schedule permitting, you all would spend the next three days at Aaron’s apartment before you and Jack took off.

“Daddy! You sound like a robot.” Jack said, scolding Aaron. His voice brought you out of your thoughts and you looked down at him with a big smile.

“Daddy’s just no good at this huh?” You asked, shaking your head. “He’s no match for our talent, Jack!”

“This is really hot.” Jack said, holding up his arms. He must’ve been sweating his butt off in all those winter layers.

“You’re kidding me! I wonder who could’ve seen that coming.” You said sarcastically, reaching over to pull off his big hat and zip down the first of multiple jackets he put on. “I’ve heard that ice cream cools you down…,”

“Ice cream!’ Jack exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. He didn’t even look to his father for ‘permission’, knowing by now you had the most sway in the house.

“Go put on some normal clothes okay? Wouldn’t be fun if you passed out in your ice cream bowl, huh?” You told him, ruffling his hair before he dipped under your arm, making a mad dash for his room.

“He hasn’t even had lunch yet, you know that right?” Aaron asked, giving you a fake stern look as he walked over to where you were standing.

You rolled your eyes at that, reaching up to snatch the white hat off his head, letting your arms fall loosely around his neck. “Does it upset you that I’m always the cool one?” You asked teasingly, reaching up on your tiptoes to press the gentlest kiss on his lips.

He gave you one of his small smiles, reaching down to press a second kiss to your lips. “How was your flight in?” He asked, one of his hands wrapping protectively around your waist as the other one found its way by your hair, gently stroking down it the way you liked.

You let your head relax against his touch and pretended to think for a moment. Instead of answering you reached up again, pressing your lips against his, pressing yourself closer to him. You both thought you could stay this way forever; it being the first time you saw each other, in person, in nearly two months.

“Gross!” Jack’s voice seemingly cut through the two of you. Aaron was the one to pull away first, quietly laughing so only you could hear.

“Later.” He promised in a whisper.

You loosened your grip on him, turning to face Jack. “Oh Jack! Funny seeing you here, ice cream, right?”

-----

Present Day.

“Page 103, right?” He asked, skipping to the bright pink sticky note you had used as a place marker.

You jolted out of your memories, feeling the heat rise up your neck as you prayed it wasn’t too obvious you had just completely zoned out.

“Yep!” You squeaked out, “page 103, line 19, you start.” You said, waving your hands.

“And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my enemy, you will not ask me why, you are, you are determined, I see, to have no curiosity but I cannot be wise-” He started, keeping his eyes near glued to the page.

You frowned, shaking your head a bit. “Stand up.” You ordered, already getting to your feet.

“Excuse me?” Aaron asked.

“Stand up,” you repeated, motioning upwards with your palms. “This,” you said, motioning between the two of you, “doesn’t feel right if we’re seated, we’re supposed to move around in this scene, it’s supposed to be painful.” You explained.

He slowly stood up, looking at you for permission to start again.

“From where you left off, please.”

“I must tell you, Emma, what you will not ask! Though I may wish it unsaid the next moment-”

“So do not speak it.” You cut in. “If you wish to speak to me, as a friend or to ask my opinion as a friend I will hear whatever you like.”

“As a friend, Emma. That I fear is a word, tell me Emma. Have I no chance of ever succeeding?” He asked, looking up at you for further approval, you nodded and he continued. “My dearest Emma, my dearest, you will always be my dearest most beloved Emma, tell me at once. I cannot make speeches, if I, if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more-”

“Let’s do a different part, yeah?” You interrupted, voice incredibly tight. You ducked from his gaze, reaching to bring your glass to your lips.

“Isn’t this the scene you have to practice?” Aaron asked, raising his brow at you.

“It doesn’t matter,” you replied, taking a long sip, “any practice as the character will be helpful.”

“If this is the one that’s troubling you, we should go over it.” He pressed.

“Page 56, start at line 9.” You ordered, throwing back the rest of your glass. “Read it over, I’ll be back.”

Before you could fully turn to go and refill your glass, Aaron lunged forward and grabbed your arm, pulling you towards him. The sudden movement caused you to stumble, throwing your hands out to steady yourself against his chest.

“You’ve been drinking a lot.” He stated, repositioning his grip on your arm.

“Am I not allowed to have a drink or two in my own home?” You challenged.

“What are you running away from?” Aaron asked, his voice so gentle it made your knees weak.

“You.” You whispered, after a long pause. You looked up at him with sad eyes and only found confusion in his. “I can’t, I-, don’t you see how funny it is? Your character is desperate for mine to be with and my character is the one to deny yours.”

Your confession pulled sharply on his heart. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, not sure there were any words to appropriately apologize for how he had treated you.

“Why didn’t you ever call?” You asked, voice so quiet he almost didn’t hear you.

“I, I-” He stuttered, unable to think of an answer fast enough.

“I waited for weeks,” you said, looking up at him with a look that nearly brought him to his knees. “I waited so long and you never called.”

He brushed the hair out of your face, letting his hand fall gently against your cheek. His thumb caught a stray tear that had started to fall, softly brushing it away. “I don’t know.” He responded, his voice as quiet as your. “I don’t know, you didn’t deserve that.”

You pressed your face into his hand, closing your eyes as you felt more tears managing to sneak past you. He was finally admitting words you had dreamed of hearing for years, but yet you were unable to find any joy in them.

“You didn’t deserve that.” He repeated, sliding his hand towards the back of your head, pulling you firmly against his chest, while his other arm wrapped tightly around your waist. You let your body relax into his, slowly bringing your own arms up loosely around his neck.

You felt him gently press the faintest of kisses to the top of your head. “I’m so sorry angel.” He mumbled into your hair.

You pulled your head out from under him, looking up at him with big eyes. The two of you were silent, basking in each other's presence. Your eyes flickered down to his lips multiple times; something he duly picked up on. Just as you began to push up on your toes, nearly pressing your lips to his, eyes half closed in anticipation, his phone rang out.

You froze, falling back onto your heels with a small sigh. “Answer it, I’m getting a refill.” You said, pulling yourself out of his grasp. He gave you an uncertain look, as if he wanted to pull you back in and ignore the call completely.

You wagged a finger in front of him, shaking your head. In on fluid movement, you grabbed your glass and nearly ran out of the room

-----

It took you ten minutes to calm yourself down and another five to hype yourself up to return to your living room. And that was after you had made yourself a new drink.

When you entered the living room, Aaron’s back was to you; still locked on the phone. The tension was clear in his shoulders and your eyes drifted down to his free hand that you knew would be clenched in a fist. It was.

“Thank you Garcia, tell the team we’ll be there soon.” He said, pulling the phone away from his ear and hanging up.

“Aaron?” You asked.

He rolled his shoulders back, trying to loosen some of the tension from his shoulders for your benefit. He slowly turned back towards you, his face pulled in frustration.

“LAPD just reported another body.”

-------

taglist - @mac99martin @iwaizumiee @kylorendrip @hqtchner @lieswithoutfairytales @ssahoodrathotchner @midsummernightdream @weasleylovers @evans-dejong @itsmytimetoodream @yoshigguk @28cnn @cuddlyklaus @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @yallgotkik @sunflowersandotherthings @averyhotchner @kimmy-k-k @uwu-sebastianstan @ivebeenthinkingboutu

a/n - if youve sent a message asking to be tagged and dont see yourself here, let me know!! im so bad at remembering to move names to my taglist form!! tysm for reading! <3

no permission is given to copy or republish my writing on any other platform or account. if you see this story outside of my blog or my ao3 it is stolen work. i do not own nor claim to own criminal minds or any of the character involved in it.

#aaron hotchner x reader #hotch x reader #aaron hotchner/reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hothner/you #aaron hotchner x y/n #hotch x you #hotch/reader #hotch/you #aaron hotchner #criminal minds #aaron hotchner fanfiction #'stori writes #in the stars

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cirillafionaelenriannon · 3 years ago

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skulduggery pleasant is just soooo tragic and like i have spoken about this before in depth. continuously! over and over! but its like mould in the corner of my Mind.

skulduggery and valkyries relationship is unhealthy and this is apparent from the moment they meet. there is no other way to frame their friendship. valkyrie is 12 years old and skulduggery is a 400 year old skeleton who doesn’t take on the role of father, or mentor or anything that could make their relationship acceptable BECAUSE he takes on the role of friend. specifically BEST FRIEND.

and like. this is it. because like auwhahgaugh the author sucks and blah blah blah i cant really get into the ummmm morality of this situation because

a) there’s a certain amount of like UHHH who cares because it’s a childrens novel and this is not at all uncommon in childrens novel about adventure and like it’s just a cool concept like woah! best friends with a 400 year old skeleton! and this would not be an issue if it were not for point b which is

b) that the author wants the story to be regarded as more adult-like than originally intended which leads to the downfall which is that

c) we must then as the reader regard skulduggery and valkyries relationship from the pov of an Adult with the Morals And Fully Grown Brain of an Adult

which screws the entire thing because the entire time you’re reading it you are then going. well what is this 400 year old grown man doing with a 12 year old girl.

which then gets further into the deeper parts of their relationship. because despite all of this, there is so much charm, and love and friendship to be found between them, and even if it wasn’t a grown man taking a child on very, very dangerous, life threatening adventures there’d still be some element of unhealthiness to it all because they are above all else co-dependent and this really starts in book 4 when valkyrie spends like what ? 8 months doing everything she can, everything within her power to get skulduggery back ALIVE from the faceless ones dimension.

and like unfortunately i enjoy the unhealthy co-dependency of two horrible people, because yeah they’re both pretty bad.

i think really there is quite a bit of focus on valkyries interpretation of their relationship because she is the main character and we see everything through her eyes, so there’s not much of a lean into skulduggerys pov on it but even then i would say he is the more co-dependent on the two for the amount that he is just fucking crazy about saving valkyrie at every chance he can get and i think a lot of this is motivated by the fact that she is the only person alive and very very likely the only person who will ever exist to fully understand the monstrosities he has committed and the weight of the identity he took on, (darquesse and lord vile) and there is far too much comfort and home for him to be found in their mutual suffering for him to ever be willing to let go of her. now to say this is his only motivator in keeping her alive would be WRONG of course theres years worth of friendship there but the thing that deepened their relationship...was the darquesse and lord vile stuff.

and this is the tragedy in their relationship, because skulduggery, in some way, played a part in darquesse becoming who she was. at least in my interpretation of it! because no he didn’t sit around going omg become darquesse! but he was a violent, angry man and the book made this apparent to us MULTIPLEEE times that he was dangerous, that she should not be around him. again he did not directly say become darquesse! but he did lead her into that life, he did not force her to leave. he has not once, ever, ever taken accountability, responsibility, etc. for the influence he’s had over her her entire life and he never will.

in fact a lot of the tragedy lies in his INACTION. skulduggerys INABILITY to be the ADULT. which i don’t necessarily dislike because again i enjoy that they’re fucked up best friends? but i’m talking about tragedy here sooo. it’s just like. it’s very! it’s very...skulduggery unintentionally turned her into the very thing he turned himself into, and because of this, they cannot escape each other.

like there’s very little they could do to escape the metaphorical chokehold they have on one another. though it was and wasn’t skulduggerys fault, for dragging her into that lifestyle and for letting her stay (”because shes her own person! im her partner not her mentor/father!” well shes 15 u idiot) there’s nobody either of them can blame. they can only recognise the darkest parts of themselves in eachother. in order for skulduggery to live with the monster inside of him, he had to make a monster in someone else. a monster that could love him, and be his best friend.

#text #skulduggery pleasant fans if u r out there do NOTTT TOCUH THIS POSTTT #i do not want 300 ppl going nOOOO its not skulduggerys fault that valkyrie became darquesse #like YEAH I SAID THAT 30 TIMES..i know its not LITERALLY his fault #but theres so many layers to it and so many like #i am BEING very METAPHORICAL ABT WHAT I SAY HERE #BECAUSE IM LOOKING AT IT ALL THRU THIS VERRRY SPECIFIC LITTLE LENSE #that is suppose to skewer the story a bit to fit the Deeper meaninmg #which is very clear. that they are both monsters caught in eachothers orbit #because they r the only ones alive. who understand...what it means...to be a monster #and 2 live w tht guilt #and skulduggery REGARDLESS OF WHETHER sp fans want to ADMIT IT !!!#was a direct influence on val that encouraged violence with no guilt #and while that doesnt MEAN she became darquesse bc of that #it is smthing that encouraged it as well as like #the fact he introduced her to magic #i mean how many times would he have been like. shes darquesse bc i turned her into it (in his own head..)#valkyrie.txt #posting this knowing none of my mutuals know what i am on abt #just know i get an inordinate amount of joy #from posting meta 4 my future self on the inarnet #soo

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep22

All of this ‘the culprit’s motives are super shallow and they’re just unhealthily obsessive’ discourse is giving me war flashbacks to . . . . basically every other part of the entire When They Cry franchise, lol.

Thoughts under the cut. [Plus spoilers for Umineko]

I feel like at the end of the day we’re all just gonna have to agree to disagree about how we feel about how Ryukishi is handling Satoko as the culprit here, since I don’t really think any amount of social media posts detailing our interpretations of her character are gonna change anyone’s minds, lol. But I’m still gonna give my thoughts on her anyway because it’s fun, even if I’m basically just preaching to the choir.

To be honest, this feels pretty much in line with how Ryukishi already wrote characters like Takano and Beatrice, in terms of them having unhealthy obsessions that lead them to mass-murder. The amount of violence Satoko has caused is arguably worse than either of them, but they’re all pretty awful if you think about the reality of what they all did as villains.

Sorta like with how a lot of the old-school Umineko discourse went, I think people are too focused on the whole idea of Satoko hating studying, and ignoring everything else about her character and her circumstances. Although even then I feel like people are being kinda unfair toward Satoko about how strongly she feels about academics, but maybe I’m just biased because of my own history with schooling and the intense levels of anxiety and self-hatred that can go along with it.

Plus the fact that Satoko already has a long history of sever abandonment issues, and has basically always had HS that amplified her feelings of paranoia and persecution. It’s pretty obvious at this point that she never really got ‘cured’ in the first place, though it’s less important to think about HS as an in-universe fictional disease with it’s own rules, and more important to just think about it as a representation of real-life mental illnesses which aren’t bound by the rules of made-up brain-worm parasites and aliens or whatever.

Also, the Satoko that started all this looping in the first place was one who never dealt with Teppei returning to the village, and thus never went through her whole character arc related to that. The series is kinda ambiguous about how it handles the idea of people’s character development carrying over between loops, but it explains a lot about Satoko’s attitude here if you go with the idea that she never really had to overcome any of her trauma or coping mechanisms in the “good ending timeline”, and this is the consequence of that taken to it’s logical extreme. The idea of her view of the world being skewed by the fact that she only remembers the “good ending timeline” is also kinda lamp-shaded by the part where she hears about Rika’s looping and is like “oh yeah, that’s the month where we had that cool action movie stand-off with the Mountain Dogs :)”. By the time she really got to understand exactly what was going on beyond the specific timeline she had experienced, she was already way over the edge.

I get why people don’t like the idea of Gou ‘tainting’ the VN’s happy ending, but I honestly like the idea that it’s examining the consequences of how Matsuribayashi was such an overly-specific timeline where basically nothing bad happened and everyone just banded together to beat Takano. It kinda glossed over a lot of the personal problems that the main cast had in the rest of the series, and this really goes to show the effects of some of that stuff not getting properly addressed. It also reminds me that Minagoroshi is a timeline that even in the VN, Rika completely lost her memories of, so I can see how even post-Matsuribayashi she might have never let Satoko know about the details of that one timeline where she overcome her abuse.

I also feel like it only really got to this point because of Featherine’s meddling. In the original Matsuribayashi timeline, Satoko just started drifting away from Rika and ended up wandering into the Saiguden and meeting Featherine before anything actually serious happened in that timeline. I think that if she had just been left to her own devices and that timeline had just kept going, Satoko probably would have either found a way to reconnect with Rika, or they would have just slowly drifted apart for good. But then Satoko got given the power to time travel, and only started going off the deep end after going through another five years of identical suffering.

And on that whole note, it reminds me of how in Umineko, Lambda had a whole conversation about the idea of an abused person becoming an abuser themself if they’re given the power to lash out. Which is basically what’s happening here. Satoko is being given the tools to completely detach herself from reality and try as many times as she likes to get what she wants.

Which also reminds me that this episode in particular REALLY lays the Umineko parallels on thick, lol. Particularly the whole ‘Satoko is turning into Lambda’ thing, which feels just about 100% confirmed now. They straight up have Featherine bring up the exact same ‘monkeys using a typewriter’ analogy to explain Rika’s situation that Lambda uses in Umineko to explain Bern’s situation.

I know a lot of people don’t like the increasingly blatant Umineko tie-ins, and that a lot of people still think it might just be misdirection, but considering how much stuff in Gou has been surprisingly straightforward and predictable, I think it’s pretty much exactly what it seems to be.

Though to be more specific, this is probably more about the start of Lambda and Bern’s relationship, and their appearances in Umineko, rather than the very first origins of them as individuals, if that makes sense. Obviously the concept of Bernkastel as an identity has been around since Higurashi itself, and we’ve known for a long time that Lambda was the one who originally gave Takano her blessing of certainty, but we’ve never known the full details of how those two started their relationship, and Featherine’s whole series of name-drops in the last episode makes it seem like Lambda as a meta individual more or less already exists, with Satoko being an iteration of her. So I think they both technically already exist, but this is how the two of them come into contact and start their whole unhealthily obsessive relationship.

I guess it’s still possible that, even if she’s already existed for a long time as a meta individual, she hasn’t actually come up with the name ‘Lambdadelta’ for herself yet, and this might be where she does so. Even with the list of names Featherine referenced, she didn’t technically bring up Lambda’s name directly. So in that sense this might be ‘Lambda’s’ origin story, even if she already exists.

Considering how basically the entire story at this point seems to be acting in service of setting up the whole LambdaBern relationship dynamic no matter what, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this will end with Satoko and Rika fully embracing their codependency and mutually ascending to the meta plane so they can stay together once and for all. There might still be human versions of them that stay behind in the real world and continue living normal lives, though.

At the very least, it feels like that’s the logical outcome of the whole Chekov’s Sword Fragment plot device that’s been hanging in the background for ages now. I think it’ll just be the in-universe explanation they use to show the mechanics of how exactly that process works. It’ll probably be used to ‘sever’ Satoko and Rika’s meta consciousnesses from their physical bodies and allow them to basically become witches.

Mainly I just can’t really see this having a ‘happy ending’ at this point, aside from the whole idea that maybe the severing process leaves behind ‘normal’ versions of the two of them who stay in Hinamizawa and go back to their normal lives. I dunno if that’d make people happy, but it’d at least be a way for Ryukishi to have his cake and eat it too, lol.

I just don’t think that there’s any real chance of this ending with them just talking to each other and agreeing to put an end to all this, though. For one thing that’d just feel kinda anticlimactic and honestly make Gou’s story feel even MORE pointless, if it just ends with literally the exact same ending as the VN with nothing really being changed. But I also feel like Featherine wouldn’t be willing to just let Satoko ‘give up’ without having one of them definitively win their current game. In general I just feel like Ryukishi should just commit to the story he’s setting up at this point, instead of just backing out at the last minute and circling everything back to the same ending we already had like nothing in Gou ever happened. If we’re gonna have this whole new story to begin with, it should at least have some lasting consequences.

Anyway, I think in the next episode we’re finally going to loop back to the Damashi arcs and see how they played out. At this point I don’t care too much about getting answers to the ground-level mysteries of those arcs, and I doubt the story will spend much time on that, but I’m curious to see how it progresses Satoko’s whole development through these loops, since I think she goes through some changes with her motives and methods over the course of them.

Specifically I think that the actual experience of being physically present in her own set of loops and causing so much pain and suffering started to get to her, and she might have almost given up in her own way during Tataridamashi and wanted to just stay in that arc, but things went south anyway. Maybe, if that’s what happened, Featherine basically let her know that she won’t let her give up, and will force her to keep looping until one of them ‘wins’ no matter what. Either way, I think that arc was a turning point for her. Like how she asked Featherine to arrange things so that Satoko can make sure that she and Rika’s loops are synced up, she probably asked Featherine after that arc to change the rules again so that Rika will start remembering the details of her deaths. At this point it’s pretty obvious that the Hanyuu fragment Rika was talking to earlier in Gou was more or less just Featherine putting on an act and manipulating her, so the scene of Hanyuu giving her the power to remember her deaths was probably just Featherine telling her about the rule change.

And going by how the Nekodamashi arc went immediately afterward, I think that rule change was related to Satoko becoming increasingly desperate to put an end to the loops as soon as possible. And considering how she was willing to spend so much time reviewing Rika’s hundred years of looping just to prepare for this, it’d make sense to me if she becomes desperate because she basically gives up, but realizes that she isn’t actually allowed to give up, so she has to try and make Rika give in as fast as possible. Either way it’s pretty obvious that Satoko’s methods start becoming more violent in that arc, and she basically tries to brute-force Rika into submission, leading up to the loop where she just spawn-camps her and straight up starts screaming at her to just stay in the village while tearing out her guts. It’s still possible that her attitude in that loop was just one big act, but I think that was the result of her being genuinely desperate to just have Rika give up once and for all, and her starting to crack under the pressure of doing all of these things with her own hands across so many loops.

So now we’ll just have to see how the confrontation between them at the end of Nekodamashi plays out once we get back to it. In the long run I just think it’ll lead to the ending I talked about before, with them using the sword on each other. The exact nuances of how that sorta ending might play out are up in the air, though.

Either way, I think there’s probably enough time to wrap up all that in two more episodes, but there’s still reason to believe that there might be some kind of sequel in the works. I don’t really want to bet on it, though, so I’m just gonna assume that there’s two episodes left and base my theories on that. In which case I think the next episode will go over the Damashi arcs and end with Rika and Satoko’s confrontation at the end of Nekodamashi, and then the final episode will wrap everything up. Considering that they both more or less know exactly what’s going on with each other by that point, there isn’t really that much that needs to be wrapped up. I think that will be the final loop we get, so it’ll all just come down to how their confrontation plays out, and what decision they come to about how to handle each other.

I honestly don’t really know how I think a full sequel would go, if it’s at least one cour long. Assuming that it’s not just a new Umineko anime that more or less continues Rika and Satoko’s arc via Lambda and Bern, but is a straight up ‘Higurashi Gou Season 2′. It just feels like there isn’t really that much that needs to be done to wrap things up, now that everything’s being laid out in the open, and Rika and Satoko are both aware of each other’s looping. They might switch it up so that they both end up teaming up to take down Featherine, but I kinda doubt that’ll happen.

I’m still hoping this is leading into some kind of new Umineko anime though, lol. That feels like it’d be the main reason for putting so much effort into this whole elaborate LambdaBern origin story we’re getting here.

I’ve heard rumors that there’s been listings for a 25th episode of Gou, so it’s possible that rather than another full season, there’s just one extra episode at the end. I’m not exactly sure what the point of doing one extra unannounced episode at the end would be, though. It might end up being a bridge between Gou and a new Umineko anime.

At the very least, if it’s just ‘Satokowashi Part 8′, it makes me wonder why they haven’t announced it yet, and why they didn’t just split that arc into two BD volumes with four episodes each, instead of having it be one big volume with seven episodes, and one random episode at the end for some reason. But if it’s more of an epilogue or a bridge of sorts between Gou and something else, with Gou’s story concluding with episode 24, then I guess it’d make some sense to do it that way.

We also know there’s gonna be a panel for Gou at a convention around when ep24 comes out, so if anything gets announced it’ll probably happen there.

Anyway, this whole episode can be summed up as “Satoko does a gay little psychological torture that pisses Rika off”, in the most morbidly entertaining way possible, lmao.

#murasaki reblogs #higurashi #higurashi gou

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