#long term trauma

[furiousgoldfish]

being around abusers:

high alert: you never know when the abuse is coming

hyper-focusing on the abuser's mood, you're only allowed to feel relief if the abuser seems to be in a good mood, distracted, or focused on somebody else

constant vigilance because they might decide to focus on you any second and you need to be ready

unable to focus on your tasks because you're tense and waiting to see if they'll want something from you, want to do something to you, or start to verbally abuse, provoke, insult, taunt, criticize or humiliate you

always aware of the physical distance between you and how much it would take them to cross it; reaction of panic if they turn your direction or show intent of approaching

quickly forced to think of an escape plan or a fight plan if they do keep approaching you because it is already an intimidation and likely to escalate in violence

anxiety if you're prompted to speak; you are not allowed to say anything positive about yourself or it will be challenged and mocked, you are usually asked to volounteer information and you will be attacked if you refuse. But if you do give info, it will be used against you.

constant effort needs to be put in controlling the amount of rage, or alternatively, helplessness you feel in their presence. You are not allowed to show any symptoms of it, or symptoms of panic

desperate use of logic and rationality in the face of senseless and cruelty of the abuse; you're trying to explain why the abuser should not say and do horrid and cruel things to you, and why you don't deserve it, only for them to do it worse and insist that they're 'saying the truth' or 'listing the imaginary reasons you do deserve it (you are not a person to them)'

attempts to defend yourself from the abuse or exploding and attacking back, only to immediately be accused of abuse and cruelty and 'lack of self control' while the abuser is not even affected by your attempts

the abuser getting anyone in the vicinity to side with them and to participate/enable the abuse, making you feel like your entire environment is hostile and dangerous, and like you are not a person to anyone

All of these can feel normal when you're used to living like that, or if you've grown up in this environment. Having to constantly defend and prove yourself and to have be hyper-focused on those around you and anxiously anticipate their every move, can feel like a normal experience if you haven't experienced any other home environment. This is not normal. If this is how you live, you are living in abuse. None of this should be inflicted at you.

[johnconstantinesdick]

Jeanneil fake besties of all time. Kings of committing to the bit. Neil could say whatever and Jean would (rightfully) assume it’s part of a scheme to keep them alive and would corroborate immediately.

[rustedhills]

Disney, releasing Wish: "so it's all about legacy--the new generation surpassing the old, overcoming the evils perpetuated by them, relinquishing singular power... and there's an old man in a tower, uh... animal sidekick, i guess..., ah... magic...?

Miyazaki, just out of frame, sledgehammer raised:

[thedomesticanthropologist]

I present to you: at no point in the game is Astarion actually ready for a romantic relationship

Tav is the first person he drank from

The first person he has consensual sex with after 200 years

And he says to them: no one is like you. You're YOU

He genuinely believes that Tav is the *only* person who would be this way, even if it isn't true. He does fall in love with you, he does want you, but I present to you the idea that if things hadn't gone down EXACTLY as they had, Astarion NEVER would have initiated a partnership/romantic relationship for YEARS after escaping Cazador for good.

The man is coded for survival, for self-preservation, and is inherently selfish by nature. It is only because Tav gives selflessly and determinedly reinforces wanting to be with him that he caves in and allows it, but if you try to leave he's thrilled. This is for the best he says, you don't deserve this facade from me he says.

"I don't know how to be with someone even if I want to. I want this to be real but I don't know what real is. I need to not have sex right now"

In act 2, if you break up with him, he agrees with you. He thinks it's the right thing for you because hes not ready. He won't say this unless you initiate a break up but how could he possibly let go of the best thing that's happened to him in his entire undead life? He wouldn't toss out the treasure of you even if he didn't feel ready.

It really does take a patient, calm, supportive Tav to get him in the end, and he DOES want you, I'm not arguing that

I'm arguing that that man is not ready for a committed relationship, doesn't know what a healthy relationship looks like, and in an ideal situation if he thought he had time and options in his life and if he felt safe he would have focused 100% on himself first for a VERY long time.

The tadpoles, the adventure, the pressures of the battles, the fighting the revenge the ascension and the ritual he has to fight or succumb to the fact that the sunlight is gonna nerf him again- all of this contributes to the perfect scene where Tav gets him right "out the gate", first by being a mark and a target and then by simply *not breaking it off with him*

And yes he's in love to the best of his ability to know what love is at this point

And yes he wants you very much

But the man is going through the biggest whiplash of his life and I can say with confidence that he's not... *Ready*. And after all is said and done, Tav will have to continue to be patient with many things with him. There are still a lot of hurdles. He may be with them for a long time before he wakes up one day and realizes, really really realizes, that he's ready.

The power dynamics are off, they're imbalanced. How could he say no to a perfect mark that gives him everything ? Blood, sex, waits when sex is off the table, never breaks up with him never leaves no matter how he rails against them? He can't. He won't, and he doesn't want to, but that doesnt make him emotionally ready for what a genuine relationship is.

He has to learn it, with you, over time, but I don't think he'd jump into learning that and going for it and seeing it as worth it if the situation were in any way different

Without the perfect storm of events, I don't see Astarion jumping into "commited relationship" to be clear, I'm not saying that he isn't capable of feelings or doesn't want tav it's just

It doesn't *seem* to match his character or his struggles to me. For a man that is completely self serving, he accidentally catches feels and then doesn't have the strength to cut you loose even though his act 2 confession is practically him asking you to leave him. If you take the Araj route in particular, he VERY plainly lays his shitty behaviour on the table as if daring you to punish him for it... Or maybe just expecting.

In his spontaneous scene it's softer, it's I love you but I don't know how to do this. And still if you say "I don't think you're ready to be in a relationship" he immediately agrees. In act 3, if you've stuck to him the whole time like glue, he never wants to let you go. Again, I think this level of connection is impossibly rare and everything had to happen as it did to get you there, but the power balance is off still. He says partner, equal, and he wants that. And he WILL get there

But he not only has to struggle with his past, his issues, his trauma, he has to struggle with the power imabalance that you're his Savior. YOU defeated Cazador. YOU protected him in camp and didn't stake him on sight. YOU fed him from thinking creatures for the first time. YOU are one of "a very few select people" who have had sex with him and not been slaughtered immediately afterwards.

You're everything to him

And by the end of the game you already see him trying to shift that power imabalance because HE SEES IT. If you say you'll protect him he WINCES and disagrees, he doesn't want that. He doesn't want to be below you, but he sees himself that way anyway. And to me, that's the sign that he wasn't ready, he still isn't ready,

But he will be, one day. And I think that makes it a better written romance than thousands I've read, because it's not perfect. There's grey areas. There's things that can make you uncomfortable. There's parts of it that aren't healthy and won't be for a while. Who knows how long until he feels like he's your equal? Until he feels like this relationship is something he ever would have chosen if things were different?

But he does choose you. He does. He wants you. He'd just never have gotten the chance to if it hadn't been "right place right time" imho

[lotuslate]

a little comic about post canon wangxian and coming to terms with some things!

[possamble]

Like take for example how she treats healing Laios leg!! We *never* see someone who was healed have lasting symptoms from a heal. It *itches* terribly — Laios looks like he will scratch it raw. The itching implies an incomplete heal — you only itch that bad when something is being regrown or scabbing like when you get tattoos. There’s something that needs to finish healing. This scene always stood out to me— because Falin notices and *heals* it. And that brought up a ton of questions for me (We see her cast magic, was it to soothe the itching? A phantom pain? Why was it itching in the first place? Didn’t Marcille finish the job? Why was he having after effects we never see someone have any before?) and i’m breaking my brain over it because is this an sign of Marcille’s engagement with healing in general? Perfunctory—a means to an end? Morals? I feel like there is something there for us because that scene wasn’t necessary to the plot so why did Ryoko Kui add this interaction? I think how Marcille engages with healing was telling us a lot more than I previously realized because she was in a medical researcher position before coming into the dungeon however when we see how this was practically applied by her was really interesting!! She’s so divorced from feeling empathy for the pain of healing and i think that’s some sort of self-preservation instinct. Idk i just feel like her engagement with healing is so fucking fascinating when juxtaposed with her beliefs on death pls share thots if any

I think what gets hidden in the details about Marcille’s healing is that no, she’s not a talented cleric and healer in the way that Falin is. But Fantasy settings tend to relegate healing towards “holy” and “good” magic that never causes harm—

and Marcille is what you’d get if you put a doctor and a surgeon with a modern, more realistic approach towards medicine in a genre that doesn’t usually allow for that. 

Like, you’ll see surgeons or doctors secretly being incredibly efficient serial killers in TV thrillers everywhere—but a fantasy series with a cleric or healer that’s secretly great at killing is a bit more rare to find(though not nonexistent, admittedly). Healing magic tends to be painted as either a religious discipline that’s not accessible to those who don’t have a tie to a deity or some ineffable force in the universe, or a matter of accessing some natural “life force” that exists in all living beings. 

Dungeon Meshi, of course, loves bending fantasy conventions in the most incredible ways, so that’s not how it works here. The series allows itself to contend with the fact that healing a human body requires extensive and painstakingly detailed knowledge of that body.

The reason that Falin might appear to be a much more talented healer than Marcille is because Kui dresses her up in all the archetypal traits of a Caring Cleric, and that immediately clicks with readers expecting fantasy conventions in ways that Marcille's expertise doesn't.

This isn’t to discredit Falin, obviously. She is a talented healer, as attested to by Marcille herself:

But the interesting thing is that she does it all on instinct, so it’s not an exact knowledge. Furthermore, she uses the gnomish system of healing, which is implied to rely more on the judgment and knowledge of natural spirits (and therefore takes less mana). So it’s not hard to imagine that she would have less exact knowledge of how the human body operates than Marcille does as a medical researcher. 

And that in and of itself raises questions: In a world where magic can immediately re-attach a limb, why would medical research be necessary? But Dungeon Meshi makes it clear that healing magic isn’t perfect, nor “holy” magic—it’s simply magic, like any other, carefully tailored to operate within the confines of what a human body needs in order to keep living. It’s not able to cure everything, and it especially seems to have gaps in terms of being able to treat illnesses that aren’t immediately solvable injuries.

And that all ties into Marcille's attitude towards it: It's a scientific and magical discipline like any other that requires careful study. There's nothing inherently good or bad about it—it was made by people, for people, and what matters is how you use it.

So, Marcille was at the academy, studying the ways that illness happens in a body, and carefully writing new magic to counteract or at least mitigate it.

(How I interpreted this was that she was likely part of research teams dealing with complicated things like autoimmune diseases, cancer, and other things where the body isn’t technically injured by a foreign element, but erroneously harming itself due to internal reasons.)

For me, this kind of explains her approach to pain in healing:

Honestly, what this immediately reminded me of was that a friend of mine had to have surgery on their throat when they were younger, and part of the procedure was waking them up without anaesthesia right after the surgery to make sure that they could still feel everything. They told me it was the worst pain they’d ever felt in their entire life—but from a medical perspective, it was necessary to make sure that none of the critical nerves in the neck had been affected. 

Sometimes in medicine, pain is necessary because it’s not some uncomplicated and bad thing—it’s a response of your nervous system, and sometimes the only indicator that your body is still working the way it should. And I think this is the mindset that Marcille has, which is why she seems so blase about it—she doesn’t think that she’s actually hurting people, it’s just a necessary part of the healing process. 

And in some ways, she just sees it as a realistic downside of the fact that you have to recover quickly in dungeon situations:

Normal recovery would take months. Healing magic shortens that to a few seconds. The pain is a result/tradeoff of forcing something that would naturally take a long time into such a short timespan. This all makes sense and is Right and Correct and Normal in Marcille's mind. It's not that she lacks empathy and doesn't care enough about not harming her patients: she doesn't think that it's "harm" at all.

Not a shred of guilt in that face before causing extreme pain. Contrast this to her constant fussing over Izutsumi on the smallest things—it's hard to believe she wouldn't even be a little apologetic if she actually believed this would be hurtful in a way that matters.

I think this is overall, less indicative of any lack of empathy so much as her incredibly stubborn and sometimes ridiculous way of compartmentalizing things to her own internal rules. I’d even argue that this mindset is preferable in surface situations, where people have the luxury of time. Dungeon healing hurts because it has to be fast and instantaneous—but if you're just treating a broken bone that can be put in a cast with slower healing magic to help, wouldn't you prefer that over an instant heal with the chance to cause brain damage, no matter how minuscule the chance is? Shouldn’t your long-term health matter more than short-term recovery and some pain?

To touch on Laios’s leg injury—we actually do see this kind of reaction to healing magic later on in the manga. When Marcille is teaching Laios how to heal, she ends up bowling him over because her cut gets super itchy:

but then she reacts positively and tells him that it's supposed to happen, before trusting him enough to try it on Senshi.

So while yes, it was an “incomplete” heal, I don’t think it was particularly telling about her approach to healing. And honestly, judging by the fact that it only distracted him when he was relaxed enough to be cleaning his armour before bed, it looks like she connected all the major muscles and nerves enough not to cause pain or risk re-injury by moving, but just left superficial stuff for Laios’s body to naturally heal. 

Her mindset makes sense in context: She also had to heal Chilchuck and Senshi, while conserving enough energy to immediately start digging for Falin’s body and potentially do a very taxing resurrection spell as soon as possible. 

After that, Falin healed the rest of Laios’s leg injury in a situation where it wasn’t needed, but there were no other high stakes to discourage it. Also, she can’t bear to see others in pain. ambrosiagourmet already did an incredible analysis of how this empathy doesn't really signify perfect altruism so much as Falin's deep discomfort with having to witness pain, so I won't go into that too much—but the important part is, Falin isn't inherently a more caring healer than Marcille. They are both making decisions for the patient based on their own approaches to healing—it's just that Falin's approach is preferable for dungeoneering overall.

(In Marcille's defense, it seems that dungeons are an incredibly specific environment that falls way outside the realm of what's actually taught to mages in most schools. Being a combat-oriented mage actually seems pretty frowned upon.)

So, in a lot of ways, Marcille is both realistic about dungeon healing (mana conservation by not doing full heals when not necessary, thinking about pain as the condensation of the time it would have taken to naturally heal, etc.) and very unrealistic about it. What she doesn’t realize is that the pain matters: In a dungeon, people have to be up and ready to continue right away, over and over. If it hurts every time, that makes them very averse to being healed, stressed out about getting injured, and affects their performance as dungeoneers.

All that to say… I personally believe that Marcille is very passionate about healing people. Not healing magic necessarily, but medicine as a whole. It’s not just a means to an end—it’s her main area of study only second to her research into ancient magic. And sure, she might have gotten into it because of her fear of death—but what I think people don’t give enough credit to is that her motivations changed from when she was a child. 

You see it here, when she’s laying her dream outright to the Winged Lion: 

She might be kinda racist herself, hypocritical, and short-sighted (mostly out of ignorance, I’d argue), but at heart, she hates that people hurt each other. She hates that long-lived races look down on everyone else just because of lifespan. She has—arguably very correctly—identified the disparity in lifespans as one of the main causes of interracial strife, and she wants to get rid of it so that everyone can fully understand and relate to each other as equals. 

And in some ways, it’s not even that insane of a dream. 

Knowing that people used to live as long as she’ll have to, and something changed in the eons since, is it really that weird for her to want to change it back somehow? 

But all that aside—the most important part of this to me is that… originally, she wasn’t actually that hung up on completely equalizing lifespans. She got into medicine because she wanted to, at the very least, close the gap as much as she could in her very long life. 

She was realistic about it at first. She thought that, by studying ancient magic’s ability to pull from the infinite, she could harness that infinite energy in tandem with medical knowledge to give more life to the short-lived races. 

But as she says it herself, it changed when she realized that she doesn’t have time to gradually unravel it on her own. 

So, yes. She got desperate. She got crazy. In light of all she did as dungeon lord, it’s easy to assume that she never cared much about healing as a profession, and is just a self-obsessed little girl caged by her trauma and trying to change the entire world to make sure she doesn’t have to be hurt. 

And… she is all that. She's my blorbo supreme but I'll be the first to insist that she is very much a complete hot mess. But my point is that these were very extreme circumstances, and Ryoko Kui has given us all the understated evidence we need to know that she’s actually a very passionate doctor otherwise. This is the girl who freaks out if she’s not useful to other people and not allowed to help:

Did actually get excited about making safe dungeons for helpful purposes beyond just learning more about ancient magic to fulfill her dream: 

And in tandem with her own personal trauma—not in opposition to it or to obscure it—cared about making life more peaceful and equal for everyone in the world. Not to mention, she had to have done some insane work to be acknowledged as the most talented researcher at the academy and be allowed onto teams that were researching new healing magics.

TL:DR, I think she has a lot of empathy for people and passion for helping them, it’s just expressed in a way you wouldn’t expect in a fantasy because Ryoko Kui doesn’t fuck around with her storytelling and genre subversion. She might not be a good archetypal healer, but she's an extremely knowledgeable doctor with a point-blank and intense attitude towards healing and medical treatment (see: her strictness about physical touch when teaching Laios about healing).

For me, all evidence points towards her going back to what she was doing before the story on top of her duties as Court Mage, kind of becoming a sort of Surgeon General for Melini as the head of health and safety for the country and whatnot. 

PS. I will admit that there's explicit evidence she's not good at healing here:

But this was also like... chapter 3. Written years ago. I personally feel that everything Kui has said about Marcille's background since is enough evidence that it was just a one-off joke before she had an airtight idea about who Marcille was and would be, but I'll concede that it's mostly conjecture.

But again, as I said, I believe that while she might not be the best at the heal spell that's used in Dungeons, she's passionate about being a medical researcher and the field of medicine as a whole.

[sleep-0-deprived]

im not sure if you are taking any requests rn but I NEED to see some male reader Shigaraki heavy, hurt no comfort, gut wrenching angst just cause there is barely any Shigaraki x male reader and barely any angst in general

(you can ignore this request if you want!!)

Things that your dad doesn’t know (Tomura shigaraki x male reader angst one-shot)

WC:. 1.6K

Tags: hurt not comfort, angst, internalized homophobia, past religious trauma, generational homophobia, unspoken feelings, religious AFO au

A/N: I have never written angst before, I have no clue if it’s any good but I think this is the only time I’m willingly trying to hurt my pookies! ໒꒰ྀི˃ ˕ ˂ഃ ꒱ྀི���

Being a villain wasn’t your first choice in life, in fact had you been told that’s what you would end up becoming ten years ago…well you would’ve been in shambles? After all your dream was to be a hero, to help those who needed it most and give comfort/security to those around you.

maybe that was just you wanting to be the person you wished was given to you but that doesn’t matter because it wasn’t who you became anyway. At the ripe age of fifteen you were a runaway, your parents had sent you off to a private academy in Japan. In reality it was just a fancy term for a boarding school for ‘troubled boys’ but those words tasted bitter because that place was just filled with naive boys questioning their sexuality.

That place left you filled with thoughts of things you’ve never worried about before, one moment you’re just a boy who has some silly crush in the boy next to you in class and the next you’re a thirteen year old being told the way you felt was ‘sinful’. You’d never forget the way your mom just stared at you blankly while your dad shouted at you “those thoughts aren’t normal boy, how’d you turn out like this?” God you’d give it all to forget those words, every remembrance of them felt like a puddle pulling you to the ground leaving you to wallow in shame.

By the time you were fourteen you started to fall for the words the headmasters of the school preached to you, you thought “if I could just deny it then it’ll go away” or if you didn’t accept it then it wasn’t there. By fifteen you knew you had to get out of there, you didn’t care how you had to do it but you felt an unwavering hate for yourself every second you stood in line for the daily mass at that place.

When you did finally escape you ended up on the streets, moving city to city across Japan, too afraid to head for the states out of fear for your parents getting you back. Then you met him, All For One was what he called himself, he found you in a dingy alley all littered in bruised and scars from the treatment you had endured from that school.

He took you in and gave you a place to live for as long as you did what he asked of you. He made you use your quirk for his own wants but you’d never tell him your past or where you came from because it was evident with his god complex that he wasn’t understanding, after all how could a man from his generation be.

Life wasn’t all bad, that was what you’d tell yourself but then you met Tomura, you two never clicked in the beginning. All he’d do is stare at you from afar and judge you, but you just accepted it because he was your leaders heir. Eventually by the age of seventeen the two of you had became friends, the league of villains was a new concept with barely five members

You didn’t know what you felt or how to feel it but all you knew was the days felt more bearable to live when he was there. When you two didn’t have tasks to fill or agendas to make you were teenage boys, you watched cheesy shows on his bed or video games in his room, energy drinks and late nights was the routine between you two and their was an unspoken blonde that came of it.

Eighteen rolled around for you and Tomura was nineteen by then, it felt like an extension of eighteen for you, nobody but Tomura even knew of your real birthday and maybe it was for the lack of care or the fact you never spoke to anyone besides AFO, Shigaraki and occasionally Kurogiri.

By this point you’ve realized that things aren’t totally platonic between the two of you but Tomura having spent his whole life enduring AFO’s standards and beliefs that he’s pushed onto him, he denies anything and everything. Tomura never had the most stable life to begin with even before he met AFO, his dad was the definition of a bigot, he looked down on him for not being manly enough, for crying when he got hit by him.

Tomura and you were closer than friends could be, the way you two held each other and cuddled in his bed at night, or spent free time locked away in your room away from the other’s gazes. But you were never truly together in the way you wanted to be, it was like being skin close with a thin barrier between keeping you two from fully touching.

The two of you liked being away in private the most, even with all of the denial in your head was better than the hurtful gaze AFO would give to Tomura when he was caught sitting too close to you in the bar. Over time it felt like you began to know Tomura less and less, the boy you once clung to like he was the air in your lungs became a man that hardly spoke to you unless it was about the leagues plans.

You were no fool you knew AFO had confronted and filled Tomura’s head with thoughts of how what he was doing was nothing less than “un-right” and those deep rooted memories of the past that always crept in when you least wanted found you again, reminding you of every word nailed into your mind on how you should feel in no regards for what you did feel.

All you wanted to do was run back to his room, to hug him and cling and not worry about everyone else but that wasn’t going to happen. You watch him become the second AFO knowing you can’t and do anything. Your once close relationship has a wedge in between, it was non existent and nothing you could say would make him accept you.

“What happened to our friendship Tomura?” You’d show up at his door late at night while the others were asleep, his blue hair gone and what looked back at you didn’t feel the same quiet man that used to be. “Nothing has happened, things change and people grow [name], you’re acting as though we were lovers.” You knew that he was only forcing his words but it never stung any less.

“No but we could’ve been Tomura” you manage to spit out, your voice cracks and your whole body feels like lava. “No we never could’ve, you’re a man [name] and no amount of emotions changes that”

“If I can’t be your lover why can’t we just be friends again tenko?”

You’re nearly to tears at this point standing in the entrance of his bedroom feeling your heart being squeezed.

“Because. Being close to you makes life hard, I can’t sit and pretend to be your friend when I know I won’t be the one that ends with you, and don’t call me that anymore, you’re just my subordinate…nothing else and you won’t ever be [name].”

There was the answer you knew would come, he pointed for his door clearly wanting you gone, and you quickly obliged in wanting of him seeing you break down. You hadn’t hurt this bad since you had first been sent off by your family, how were you supposed to be ok with this? Why did life have to be this way? Were you destined to always get close to what you love then have it slip away?

You had more pathetic questions than you did answers and the night was long, you weren’t sleeping anytime soon and you knew it. You’d rather have been his friend if you couldn’t be his lover, at least if you were his friend you’d still be something to him, you’d still be in his life, you’d still be the person he sat around and played video games with.

You were just doomed to a life of watching the person you love become unrecognizable. You and him had planned to stick together, he had promised you’d always be together, he always told you that you were the only person that understood him and now it was all gone.

When war against the hero’s began you couldn’t do anything to stop him. Your pleas fell on deaf ears, AFO was on his shoulder telling him every little move to make and what to do and his plan didn’t have you in it. You were forced to sit on the side lines unable to jump in when his final fight started, seeing his beaten form and his scared body broke you.

You had made Tomura your world, he was your reason to listen to AFO, if he did something then no matter how much it hurt you, you’d do it too. When Tomura started his fight against Midoriya, you were practically running to the fight trying to make way to him and trying to use your quirk to just stop it all.

You were three seconds too late. The final blow had been felt and you were right next to Tomura sobbing like a scared kid watching him decay away. All Tomura does is look up at you, red eyes glossy and you know he isn’t making it. “You can’t leave me Tenko! You just can’t!…you promised me?”

You’re hysteric when the police start dragging you away from his ash’s, you’re feeling your word shatter so fast knowing all the things you had planned won’t happen.

[princessamericachavez]

like yes yes eddie needs to choose and buck needs to be chosen but also 

Eddie needs to get over the very big trauma of losing his wife. Last time he dated someone he had literal panic attacks at the thought of her being mistaken for Chris’s mother and as much as we saw him work through in therapy we never?? really?? talked?? about?? that?? So, yeah, Eddie needs to realize that he’s at a point where he’s ready to risk his heart and give love a second chance 

(and maybe realize he already did becase there already is a partner in his life who gets consistently confused for Chris’s guardian and it feels natural to him?? but he still needs to realize he’s ready for love)

And Buck needs to be ready to be in a relationship where he’s loved for who he is, where he doesn’t bend and twist to fit someone else’s expectations. And for that Buck needed to die, and needed to come back, and now he needs to process that trauma and steady himself. 

(and Buck loves so quickly, so openly, so loudly, and he gives so much of himself and he wants to be loved that way, and maybe he’ll realize that he already?? is?? loved?? but he needs to let himself accept it)

so basically, it’s not only a matter of choice... eddie needs to be ready to love and buck needs to accept that he is loved if they are ever going to find each other properly together

and that, my funny little friends, is the point of their arcs were we are at right now

[soath]

the fact that the archheart took selena because he loved her and wanted to give her peace, and in the process left her suspended in an eternal static torment because he doesn't understand how something as fragile as a mortal soul works feels like a summary of the good intentions/bad long term outcome situation with godly soul custody. it makes sense that the gods would end up keeping some of their special followers! the first mortals to get in tight with the gods probably asked for it! the ego death of proper reincarnation is terrifying compared to staying up late hanging out with your buddy pelor. asmodeus and the hells aren't being half as kind about it yet the core motive remains—that hoarding instinct to keep what you love(or hate) and never let it go.

but you and i aren’t meant to be eternal. the kryn use anamnesis to ensure the continuity of self through endless lifetimes and they’re still losing themselves to it. selena was turned into a nighmarish human-faced star because the god she made out of metal thought that they could understand each other and she hung there in his domain burning, her last wish forever repeating on her lips, for a thousand years until he could release her. mortals don’t want to fully die and gods don’t want to let them go but nobody can stay in their frozen crystalline palace of eternity forever. eventually everything in the Real gets to change.

[hauntingofhouses]

(concept art of young taigen - source ; art credit: @abigaillarson)

i cannot get over this concept art of young taigen. god.

just look at this angry bratty boy, too many feelings that he doesnt know what to do with! an abused 9 year old kid in poverty always playing with sticks in the dirt, obsessed with greatness and dreaming to escape his decrepit village—and he does!

he does escape. he runs away. this angry little boy, all claws and teeth and biting words uttered with a lisp, going on the run into a world he's never seen before until he makes his way to kyoto. and knowing him he probably forced his way in to be accepted by the dojo, growling and kicking even as he's thrown out, back into the streets, too stubborn to take no for an answer and never knowing when to give up.

taigen calls mizu a dog, weak, an orphan, a scrawny street urchin. but i can't help but think that he feels so bold to use those words because he had them spat at him too.

because taigen had the idea of "this is how the world is" beat into him from birth. he learned quickly that if you couldn't beat the world you could join it. but that meant losing your way, your values, your principles. and isn't that what true honour is? not just titles and status and glory?

we don't get to see what taigen, as a child surrounded by peers encouraging and goading him on, would've actually done if that meteor hadn't fallen right in front of them at that very moment. would he have really tried to throw that stone on mizu, killing her? we don't know.

but we do see what taigen (his true self, with no one around) does, when presented with the same opportunity. when mizu passes out in front of him, unconscious and near death, vulnerable, the path to restoring his honour lays itself out for him on a silver platter. and he wants to take it, wants to kill mizu, to claim what is his and return to kyoto and get back everything he'd worked tooth and nail for. he feels like it's what he should do. but he doesn't.

and later, again he is presented with the chance to betray mizu, likely offered by heiji shindo to get his rank reinstated within the shindo dojo. and again, taigen doesn't take it. he refuses. "stupidly loyal," fowler calls him later. loyal, like a dog.

because now, pulled away from the sneering looks and jeering words of people around him, telling him that this is what the world is, taigen had met ringo and mizu, two outcasts who refuse to follow a predetermined path to greatness. and so inside something blooms in him. something like hope. a chance to live in a world that doesn't kick you down every chance it gets, to live in a world where genuine kindness and and love and friendship and even weakness is possible, allowed to simply exist without fear.

because he'd been running away from the very idea of it the whole time. when he ran from kohama, he never looked back, never wanted to remember what it was like to be a child, afraid and hungry and angry and hurting, without the words to make sense of it, desperately wishing for something. something more. he doesn't know what. but he hears stories of great swordsmen and decides, yes, this must be it. this is what i want: glory, greatness. the twisted seed gets planted and thrives in this barren land.

and when he returns to kohama with mizu and ringo, he at last is forced to stop running. he must face the child within him again, and he tells that child to put down the stones in his hand, tells him to stop barking at anything that moves or looks at him wrong.

the child drops the stone, and taigen buys dumplings instead, gives them to mizu. the child within him, wide-eyed at the prospect of friendship, moves him to pick up a hammer and toss it to mizu. he's smiling inside even as he does it; giggling like a kid hiding a silly prank. as soon as mizu drops the hammer after him, he leaps at her, tackling her to the ground and they wrestle and laugh unbridled like two children playing while the adults aren't around to barge in and yell at them.

and then his gaze catches on mizu's lips, he stares into mizu's eyes, a sparkling blue, inviting like the open sea in good weather.

it's a man's desire that takes hold then, the child in him sinking away again, and he curses himself for it, because it ruins the moment.

everything goes to shit from there, and then it's back to being a man, back to putting on his grown-up's armour to play hero.

it fails. the shogun dies. fowler's beatings reopen all the wounds left by heiji shindo's torture. "honour is meaningless," mizu tells him. "nothing comes from being a samurai but death."

the words follow him, and he follows the words.

as everything burns down, he runs, leaving the fire behind him, and sees akemi, as well as the verdure of spring behind her, calling him. he does not hesitate then to hold his hand out to her, inviting her to come with him. "i don't want to be great," he says. "i just want to be happy."

what is happiness to him? perhaps he doesn't know it yet, or perhaps he does. but really, i believe happiness is what the child in him always wanted but never received. happiness is a home.

[furiousgoldfish]

me about the abuse: ah it couldn't have been that bad

also me: flinches at any fast movement, is terrified of people, expects every scenario to end up in harm, torture or murder, can't stand up to people, can't get close to anyone, keeps everything secret, terrified and ashamed of people knowing me, unable to stifle inner rage but too scared to express it, scared to talk about my own experiences, feels othered, unrelatable and outcasted from society, constantly worries about death from lack of resources, can't see a positive future, can't think about the past without breaking down, loses memories, loses ability to do things, is exhausted at all times, unable to reach comfort or a place of emotional safety

me in retrospect: ok maybe it was bad

[ardentpoop]

common problem i have w/ a lot of fanon is that people tend to heavily overestimate how attentive dean is to sam's issues/needs. dean is often fucking clueless abt what sam is going thru lol. outside of the immediate strain it places on their relationship and their ability to do their Job.

[kaysdenofchaos]

Phobias aren’t funny. How would you like it if someone made fun of your phobia?

eh?/gen

[pianokantzart]

Thing I wish was explored more in fic/fanart: Luigi feeling guilt over revealing Mario's name, even if under duress. Once the crisis is over and Luigi has time to think, he realizes how that slip-up could have gotten Mario killed. Him feeling like, had they swapped places, Mario never would have revealed Luigi's name.

This feeds into my headcanon that after he was rescued, Luigi didn't ever talk about his time in The Dark Lands, and certainly didn't talk about the interrogation. Not only is there a lot of fear connected to those memories, but a lot of guilt and shame, not just because of what his brother went through to save him, but the fact that he didn't put up a fight against The Shy Guys and... most of all... the fact that he gave in and cracked during Bowser's interrogation. Like you said, he feels like if they'd swapped places Mario wouldn't have been so "weak."

It is definitely something I'd like to see explored further.

[sunny-sightings]

deeper well is nothing compared to basil’s mind 🌸

[fenrichaita]

Can we talk about how psychiatry has a pattern of using treatments for mental illnesses and disorders that cause brain damage and then labeling the direct effects of that damage as "healing"