#most of what I think about is related to them

[sharoo]

Self-knowledge as a theme in STP messes me up so bad, bros.

This all starts with how little the Princess can tell you if you ask her about herself. How little you can say about yourself, more often than not. Most of the time Quiet doesn't even know what they look like!

The Narrator makes it a point to make the Princess' cluelessness, her lack of self-knowledge, into deception, but really, both the protagonists don't know themselves. How could they?

The concepts of bounds, of something that isn't you, the distinction of "self" and "other", "you" and "I", the concept of something being not like yourself... this is the first time this deity which is now two has ever experienced it.

The Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet did not exist until the Narrator tore a whole into parts.

Now, this deity in twain has to reorient. It has only begun existing, it's not yet known itself. A toddler has to develop a self-concept, and the concepts of others.

Now imagine, for the first time in your solitary existence, that there is something that you are not. Unknowable, foreign.

What are they like, you think? Are they a friend? Should I get to know them? Are they a foe? I do not know them, I cannot trust them... Or can I?

This brings to mind, of all things, Contrapoints' video on Twilight, where she speaks about the concepts of Union and Division in relation to love. And while she speaks of it in terms of eros, it can apply here just as easily, romantically and platonically.

Love is the union of two beings. We love because something outside of us allows us to be more than ourself. In others, many seek that which they lack. We seek out people so that we may develop through our similarities and contrasts with them, to change an be changed.

We seek out people because there can be no I without a You. To exist in a void is not a fulfilling experience.

We cannot discover ourself if he have nothing that allows us to compare ourself. The mirrors elude us throughout the game, always leading to the princess - she is the only way we may know ourselves, the mirrors tease as they disappear. And at the end of the route, only then, can you see yourself, now that you have a complete knowledge of yourself in a given scenario, with a given persona.

Was the princess someone you decided to trust? Or to betray? Was she a foe? A friend? A nightmare? A victim?

You both try to find out who you are through your relationship.

The princess assumes many faces and attitudes in response to you, you assume voices and attitudes in response to her. You're two batches of clay shaping each other at the same time. It's almost like knowing someone your entire life, seeing them go through different phases as they try to find out their identity in the world, their place. The 5 routes, whatever they be, are your "adolescence".

And growing means you will hurt each other, intentionally or not. There will be fights, disagreements, there will be heartache, and comfort and love.

And everything will pass.

Shifty, before she's complete, before she discovers her godhood, makes this point so clear.

How could she not be kind to you? You are the only thing in this place that is not her. What reason could she have to hate you? To make the only friend she could have into an enemy?

That's why, at the end of every route, all hurts are forgiven. All the heartache is acknowledged, understood, and then she moves on. So that you may continue being together, so that she may see what else you do.

Even godhood can become a phase. The Shifting Mound recognises what you both were, but it need not be you unless you accept it. Because self-knowledge is unending. You are always changing, and you can always change.

You can accept being a god, and that becomes you.

You can reject being a god, and that becomes you.

You are by that point an "adult". The figure trying to dictate who both of you are is gone, and you can decide for yourself.

I think this is partially why I love the Leave with Stranger ending the best of all the endings. You begin it by avoiding knowledge of yourself and of another. The self can only exist as far as it is not like the others.

And you meet the Stranger, this being who knows so little about herself, because she too has been deprived of another. The route is quick. It really cannot amount to much, because if you don't know yourself, it's so hard to build a relationship.

But at the end, they've matured. You gave each other time to become fuller beings. You met this person again and they seem so much happier with themself than they were in youth.

I love how they say "We're just a stranger.", and the voices point out how it needn't be sad that you don't know her, unless you make it out to be. You can get to know them, the real them, and they can do that with you.

The way the Stranger speaks if the position of a God only underlines how much the heart of the Shifting Mound can understand self-knowledge.

They speak of how they feel themself be pulled towards taking the position of godhood, of being everything, yet find it confining. Restricting.

"We want more. We want whatever might be on the other side of this door. Something new, that we'll experience together. With someone who exists outside of us. Someone who can see us in a way we can never see ourself."

Self-knowledge through relationships and reflection on how you impact other people.

[impactrueno]

Beetlejuice clearly wasn't interested in Lydia when they met, so when do you think he actually fell for her? Was he so impressed by Lydia defeating him that he developed a little crush?

i think this might be the biggest thing i've been turning around in my head since the sequel dropped. how did bro get to this point. i need to know. you weren't like this where we left off, what happened during that huge time gap????

this is where canon ends and conjecture begins, you just have to theorize and fill in the gaps yourself with whatever makes the most sense to you, which is what i've been trying to do this whole time. so please bear with me here.

i don't know how much i want share or save for my comics because i don't know how much he would actually reveal about this but whatever we ball

edit: ok so i scrolled back up to this after finishing writing this and as it turns out i have no self control and i ended up sharing everything that crossed my mind. craziest stream of consciousness i've ever written down. strap on and keep your limbs inside the ride at all times. whatever. we BALL.

let's review their first encounter from his point of view:

you're hired to scare the deetzes, right? so you do just that. excellently you might add. just when you're about to terrorize their teenage daughter, barbara banishes you and the party is over. what fucking losers right? you get the sense that adam and barbara care about this girl so you make some remark about her and it pisses them off. haha. also whoa where did this place come from? damn adam, who could've guessed he had it in him. you forget about everything else and dance your way to dante's inferno room.

after spending a respectably tasteful evening with those ladies, you're chill now. relaxing under your little sun lamp to work on your tan.

someone walks in looking for adam and barbara. don't they know they're dead?

"are you a ghost too?"

"i'm the ghost with the most, babe."

hold on a sec, who's even—

...well hey. it's the girl.

the girl who can see ghosts, and she's talking to you.

target acquired. this one's your ticket out of this hellhole.

"you look like somebody i can relate to," you tell her. relate how? doesn't matter. you're ensnaring her with your affable demeanor like you always do, make people feel like you're pals with them first and foremost. she seems like a nice girl, so this should be easy. you tell her upfront that you want to get out of there and you need her help to do so.

"i want to get in," she says.

whoa there.

what? she wants to get in? she says that in response to you saying that you wanted out. she really has no idea what it's like on the other side, huh. but shit, that kinda stops you in your tracks a bit. this girl wants to die. this young? that's not right. makes no sense.

"...why?"

she just looks at you and says nothing. jesus. ok maybe it's none of your business so let's back it up. you're losing control of the conversation and you're on a mission here. you figure if she helps you get out, you might as well talk her off that ledge or show her how shitty it is on the other side or somethin'. frankly, you can't afford to care right now. you're not entirely sure why she thinks things would be better on the side you're so desperate to get out of, but alright. doesn't matter, right now you gotta get her to summon you. so you begin your little game of charades.

after she correctly guesses your name and almost says it a third time, she recognizes you as the snake that terrorized her family. god fucking dammit. you're losing her. you're getting impatient. your affable act is over. "nah...i want to talk to barbara," she says and now she's REALLY getting on your nerves because fuck barbara, fuck adam, you're SO CLOSE to getting out and you're not gonna let this go now, go go GO GO SAY IIIIIIITTTTTTT

adam and barbara walk in because of course they do. womp womp

ok well that didn't work, but you're not gonna give up so easily. sooner or later another opportunity will come and soon you will be free.

wait why are they moving the model— where are they taking it—

ooohhhhh. business meeting. get a load of these yuppies, trying to turn winter river into a town-sized Ripley's Believe it or Not. a talking marcel marceau statue? and you thought you were a con man. no wonder the deetz girl wants to die, it's bleak as hell here too. but if you get out...you can fix that. hell, you can fix anything.

these bozos are here to see some ghosts, but the girl says they're not going to show up unless the fleshbags stop making a mockery out of the whole thing and that maybe they can all live happy together in the house. ain't that sweet.

of course no one's taking her seriously. she's a kid, what does she know, right? they'd rather listen to the most obnoxious guy in the room (besides yourself) who has no idea what the fuck he's talking about, but somehow, he's got his hands on the handbook.

the girl panics, then immediately says completely deadpan "wait, what am i even worried about, otho, you can't even change a tire" and you're surprised they didn't hear how hard you cackled at that.

despite all that, they seem to have started a séance with their old wedding clothes. bad news for the maitlands. they're about to be dead-dead. the girl cries for them to stop, and these guys are just sitting there scared shitless. you're hearing everything. you knew a new opportunity would arise, so you wait, because this is the part where people remember how good at your job you are. they always do.

she knows you can help. you're the only one who can help. so here she comes. those wedding clothes give you an idea. plan B is now in motion.

well well well.

look who came crawling back.

she asks for your help, and you're happy to oblige, under one condition of course. after all, you don't do anything for free, and she's the only one who can help you with your problem. how serendipitous.

once again, you lay it on her, straight up. you want out. and a way to do it (thanks adam and barbara for the reminder) is through marriage with a fleshbag. you need to get married. a green card marriage, if you will.

she's immediately disgusted by the idea. you don't take that personally, of course, because it doesn't matter. she's just a kid and it's not a real marriage. she just happens to be unlucky enough to be the only one around who can assist you with this, the poor girl. it's a marriage of convenience—or rather, inconvenience—and you're not planning on sticking around because you will get the hell out of there as soon as you can. so there shouldn't be a problem, right? besides, does she know how many women would kill to be in that position? she gets to brag about it to her friends, what's not to like? it's a totally even deal.

the clock is ticking and the maitlands aren't getting any younger. she agrees to the deal. you win, at last.

she already knows what to do, so you sit there patiently with a shit-eating grin on your face, awaiting the three little B words. gloating.

Beetlejuice........Beetlejuice...........Beetlejuice.

it's showtime.

this is your favorite part. you love a dramatic entrance. you decide to show the deetzes and their greedy friends the circus they so wanted to turn this town into. horrible as you are, you're also pretty damn good at calling out other people's horribleness, and you do love an ironic karmic way of dealing with someone. for example tubby here thinks he can escape, but not before you change his sleek black suit into a tacky white leisure suit. the horror! this is why you're a professional at this.

you effortlessly end the exorcism and the maitlands are saved. a little pruney right now but they'll be fine. everything is taken care of, you have fulfilled your end of the deal like you promised. only one thing left to do.

"shall we?"

there's really no need to make a whole show out of this, but you're a showman first and foremost and as a 𝒥𝓊𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒾𝒶𝓇𝒹 𝒶𝓁𝓊𝓂 you'll be damned if you're not gonna let yourself have a little fun with this. everyone looks terrified. this is why you're a professional at this.

witnesses and reverend in place, you can finally begin the ceremony. you're having fun, yes, but let's try to pick up the pace a bit, okay? the closer you get to your goal, the more impatient you get. the girl isn't finding any of this very funny at all and she protests. the maitlands butt in and are now kind of twisting your arm a bit, but you deal with them harmlessly, until they get on your last nerve so you send adam to the model and barbara to saturn. all of this after you honorably fulfilled your end of the bargain and saved the day. jesus christ, are you the only one with some integrity around here or what.

you forget the stupid ring. shit. you're pretty sure you have it on you somewhere, ever since you chopped up delores into pieces for poisoning you. you kept her ring finger as a trophy and as a reminder to never get married again, and yet here you are, but desperate times call for desperate measures. finally, you find the ring (still on her severed finger) and hastily tell your new bride-to-be that delores meant nothing to you. in case she even cares. she doesn't seem to. not even a chuckle? oh well.

almost done with the ceremony. almost there. you're holding the girl's hand with an iron grip to keep her in place as you're about to put that ring on her finger. "i now pronounce you, man and—"

a tiny car crashes against your foot and it catches on fire. you scream. a fucking sandworm crashes into the room through the ceiling. everyone screams. you scream LOUDER.

you're sent back to the afterlife waiting room.

not your first rodeo with a sandworm, but that doesn't make the experience any less shitty. the real annoying part is being in the waiting room again. this could take ages. you're number 9,998,383,750,000 and they're serving number 3 right now. you trick the guy next to you and steal his ticket (number 4) but he's not too pleased about that, so that didn't work.

a long time sitting here it is, then.

movie ends, credits roll.

for reference, that was 1988. winona ryder was 15 when they were filming in 1987 so while lydia doesn't have a confirmed age, i think we can safely assume that she was the same age as winona at the time.

36 years later, it's 2024. or 34 years later, it's 2022. we don't know the exact year because while bob's in memoriam credits scene says 2024 and all the interviews talk about how 36 years have passed in universe as well, there's this other one tiny detail.

jeremy's death passport says he died on march 11, 1999. jane butterfield says he died "23 years ago," putting the movie in 2022. they did film it in 2022 so the math is mathing correctly there. given that the in memoriam scene was more of a joke and jeremy's passport is a canon prop in the movie, i'd say 2022 is the canon year the movie is set in. (small sidenote; the passport also has the roman numerals DCLXVI which is 666. cute detail i loved it)

in the sequel, beetlejuice says lydia has been ignoring him for 30 years. i always thought that was curious because outside of this claim, they always specify how many years exactly have passed since. he doesn't say 34 or 36, he says 30. and for his degree of obsession (and the fact that he remembers exactly how many times he's watched The Exorcist) i think he would be counting even the days so i think he did really mean 30 years. so this would mean at least 4 years passed between getting sent back to the waiting room and the beginning of his stalking.

AND NOW that we established all that, we are finally getting to the answer to the question, "when and how did this all start?"

so okay, he spent a while in the waiting room. a lot of time to think. probably replaying the events at the deetzes' in his head over and over, how he got here, where he fucked up, what's he gonna do once he gets out. cursing the maitlands for ruining his plan when he was soooo fucking close. wondering what ever happened to lydia deetz.

lydia deetz, the young girl who told him she wanted to die.

...

is she alright?

i don't think he's capable of feeling guilt, but we can probably argue that he's not entirely heartless. what she said about how she wanted to "get in" must've stuck with him from the way he reacted when she dropped that bomb. she never showed up in the waiting room so he knows she didn't follow through with that. still, he used a vulnerable young girl for his own selfish gain. ironically enough, he knows exactly how that feels, because he also got tricked into marriage and got used for someone else's gain. the difference being that he dealt with that shit with an axe.

much much much to think about for mr. juice.

after years of ruminating in that waiting room, he's finally out and back to the regular day to day afterlife. definitely gets chewed out by juno, maybe forced to do community service or labor or what have you, he basically just needs to clean up his act now. this freelancing shit is becoming more trouble than it's worth anyway.

he's still wondering about lydia deetz. should he check in on her? maybe he should, he's too curious now.

at this point, lydia is now about 19-21 and in college. maybe he manages to sneak into the model one time she's back home for the holidays or something. and oh my god would you look at that, what a beautiful young woman she's grown into. she's radiant. she's happy. she's no longer that gloomy suicidal kid he met in the attic. seems like what she said about the deetzes and the maitlands sharing the house did come true after all.

that's nice. very sweet. good to know.

maybe he wonders if she remembers him and tries to get her attention somehow, give her a little scare for old times sake or whatever. for a brief moment it seems like she saw something and her expression changes, but she shrugs it off and continues on chatting with her two sets of parents. no such luck.

oh well. curiosity sated! and beetlejuice goes back home and doesn't return.

until the next time he returns.

and he keeps coming back to check in on her, telling himself he's just making sure that she hasn't killed herself or something. and he's not above admitting that with every year that passes, she keeps getting more beautiful. and to think they almost got married, huh.

he constantly tries to get her to notice him somehow, and sometimes she almost does, but ultimately he never really succeeds beyond making her do a double take. very rarely she does catch a glimpse of him. he's seen her mutter to herself that she's just seeing things and she seems a bit frightened every time this happens, but there's nothing to fear, honey, it's just good ol' beetlejuice. he won't lie, he gets a bit of a rush every time and it makes his dead heart beat faintly. he's gotten this far, he can't just stop now. in his mind, this has become their little private game of cat and mouse, where the mouse ignores the cat. but aren't they cute? he thinks they're cute. this is not creepy at all!

before he realizes, he's already learned everything about her. he knows about richard and even watched their wedding from afar like a loser. he knows she gave birth to a healthy baby girl named astrid. he knows they have a blast on halloween. halloween is lydia's favorite holiday, and his too. sometimes he can't help but see the three of them happy together and think it could've totally been him. even if he and richard are nothing alike (in fact could not be more opposite) and the circumstances of their unholy wedding were nothing short of grim and a farce. but in his mind, he's starting to convince himself otherwise.

maybe it's his jealousy speaking, but lydia doesn't seem to be that happy with richard despite everything. even though richard is like, the perfect guy. then one day his suspicions are proven correct: neither of them knows why it happened, but after having a long and emotional talk (that he watched with a bucket of popcorn) they decide to get a divorce. he pumps his fist, feeling victorious for some reason. sure he's a little sadistic at times, but why is this giving him so much glee?

the divorce is hard on lydia's kid, who was always more attached to her father, but they still spend a lot of time together. sometimes the three of them, since richard and lydia kept things amicable after the divorce. lydia tries to move on and see other people, but each relationship fails before it even starts. mostly because she keeps holding back and so fails to connect with anyone else, but also sometimes because, well, he can't help himself but to scare them away from her from time to time. it's fun. in his mind, he's just being protective of her, as a gentleman should for a lady.

then richard dies. fell into a piranha infested river from the looks of it (he saw him at immigration one day, don't ask what he was doing around there, force of habit after constantly making sure lydia hasn't killed herself yet.) it's devastating for both lydia and astrid, straining their relationship even more for the next few years as they both try to cope with the loss. the shock proves to be too much for lydia, so she goes to a survivors retreat to work through her trauma, both from richard's death and "unresolved feelings."

then lydia, at her most vulnerable, meets rory.

beetlejuice was able to clock him immediately. a textbook manipulative opportunist, he himself knows the tactics very well. swoop in to "help" someone in a vulnerable position, pull the wool over their eyes and begin taking control so you can get what you want out of that person.

he wouldn't admit it, but this really irks beetlejuice. you know when you see someone who reminds you of the worst parts of yourself, so you despise them? yeah. he's been there, and he's also been him.

but rory is somehow even worse than beetlejuice. see, rory is her manager, and boy does he manage to get on his nerves. he takes her phone. he controls what medication she takes. he blames and guilt trips her about every mishap that HE causes, making himself look like her benevolent savior and making her feel like she would be lost without him, confusing her with his psychobabble. on top of all that, he's forcing her to do this hacky show called Ghost House where she "hunts ghosts" or whatever. the houses he's been helping newly-deads with in his day job as a bio-exorcist (now with a fleet of employees,) she's "hunting" those ghosts now. it's so dumb. it never works. beetlejuice doesn't even know what the hell she's doing, she's phoning it in most of the time and she knows she's become a sellout. what happened to that "strange and unusual" girl who stood up for her ghost friends when those suits wanted to profit off of them back in winter river?

he needs to bring that back. he's the only one who can.

in his mind, beetlejuice has already rewritten the events that transpired. in his mind, lydia has been his wife this entire time, it's just, y'know, one of those open long distance relationships and she doesn't always remember him, but that's okay. in his mind, they share a psychic bond that allows her to sense his presence or see him in her dreams from time to time. he's got nothing to be jealous about, because other men can't compare. no one else can match what they have.

sure, part of him knows he's lying to himself a little bit. but he's already clung to this idea; these past 30 years wouldn't make sense otherwise. he's in love with lydia deetz. this isn't insane of him to say at all. and if it is, well, you know what they say, love makes you do batshit crazy things.

it's not that complicated, no matter what they say you'll never meet another me it's not that difficult to get my head around i'll never meet another you

the end

don't trick me into writing a fanfic again

[reasonreblogs]

Same for both. The thing with explaining the reasons with an apology for me is part of the “I recognize how this action was wrong and how I ended up doing this thing that hurt you. I will be making an effort to stop this behavior. I hope you feel okay calling me out on it going forward. I want to assure you that I am aware of what I did, why I did it, that I am going to be working on it, that this hurt you, and that I’m sorry I did this.”

To me the reasons and why it happened shows that they understand and how likely they are to keep doing the same things or if thy ran it, that kind of thing. I’ve had someone who was basically overdosing on Xanax day spent the most horrible shit to me, hitting every insecurity I had about our friendship and after the fact *not* apologize and just said something like “I didn’t reply mean it, I just said crazy shit because I was prescribed a higher dose of Xanax than a person should be.”

Like… okay, I get that… and… it would mean something if you said “I’m sorry, I know it hurt you and I said a lot of things I knew would hurt most. I didn’t know I was prescribed higher dose than I should’ve been until recently and it really fucked with my head in a way that I wasn’t myself.” Instead, I wasn’t sure if she actually meant what she said looking back or if she’d do it again only without her mind being fucked up.

She gave the reason without the apology which made it an excuse and a “so you can’t be upset with anything I said” when she could scroll back and see exactly the things she said to me even if she didn’t quite remember. However, with an apology, I would be able to believe she didn’t mean it and was in a state of mind where she was actively looking to be as hurtful as possible rather than actually believing hat she said. It’s kind of like how some people go turn out to be suicidal try to make everyone around them hate them before going through with it under the notion it’d “hurt less” when it happens. I think of one or two popular youtubers who did exactly that, posting outrageous bigoted shit before disappearing and after hearing they killed themselves, it clicked that’s what they were doing.

As for the telling a story for how thy relate (as I did above actually lol) it’s like… “listen here’s a thing I went through… to me it sounds like what you’re going through, so I hope what I did to get through it helps or if talking to someone who might understand better makes you feel okay talking about this.”

It’s like… it adds some weight or legitimacy to what the person you’re talking to is saying for me. I’d be more likely to take their advice or reflect on how I handle or perceive it vs how they might have. When someone isn’t grasping at all what you’re saying, it turns into defending why you’re feeling and going through rather than being able to just… talk about it.

Idk, been thinking on the nuance of this for a while. I like reasons, I like getting an idea on if this will happen again or not. There’s just a lot of “depends on the person/situation” tho.

[bonsiii-art]

*point out my water gun at you* this's a robbery ¯¯̿̿¯̿̿'̿̿̿̿̿̿̿'̿̿'̿̿̿̿̿'̿̿̿)͇̿̿)̿̿̿̿'̿̿̿̿̿̿\̵͇̿̿\=(⌐▀͡ʖ▀)=o/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿¯̿̿¯̿̿

I dmand all your cute Longan HCs or else.../j

Took a while to answer this one bc I wanted to illustrate some of my ideas! I thank you for asking me uwu

Has a natural, booming voice. Doesn't need to try at all to make themselves heard over a raging storm. Also, rarely blinks as part of their intimidation towards others. Towards someone they care about, Longan will naturally blink more and even make an effort to speak more softly to them.

Big thing in my artworks of them is that they're super tall compared to regular cookies. This, of course, gives them a larger stride when walking. They won't slow down, even for their precious weak one. Though, they'll look over their shoulder now and then to watch them struggle to keep up; it's amusing to them :P

DEF NOT THE PERFECT PARTNER. Even if they gain a companion, they'll still be fixated on their goals. If their weak one's interests lie in anything cookiekind-related, Longan will be completely tuned out of it. EVENTUALLY, they'll try to see what all the fuss is about. Just to learn and form their own opinions about it.

Something angsty- if their weak one is a normal cookie and not a dragon, their mortality will become a constant thought in Longan's mind. They'll get more and more attached over time but in turn, put up a stronger aloof front. They have the power to bring back the era of dragons, but they can't bring back a cookie once they're gone... ...unless they can preserve them in some way. cutely petrifies their beloved into stone.-

You know the two NPCs in one of the stages of the Longan Palace Map, Longan Shaman and Longan Lancer? I imagine they would be bit more friendlier towards their master's new partner. :> At least one of the two would be assigned to them to watch over them when Longan's busy. Which means plenty of time to get acquainted!

After looking at their sprites a lot when drawing, I believe that Longan is able to move the spines on their back freely, as those are the most flexible of their horn structure. TBH, I think Longan is almost freakishly flexible, overall. In addition to stretching in any position with ease like a cat, they can also turn their head almost 180 degrees, just for the added creepy effect.

More on the cat thing actually, Longan absolutely does the eye thing where their pupils get wide when they see something they like. Also, purring- *gets shoved off stage*-

Has a tail similar-looking to their dragon form's. They just like having it hidden under their robes, since it tends to show more of their emotional state than they like.

I've been drawing the ears on charas more often and I think that compared to the rest of the dragons, Longan's would be pointy but slightly on the droopy side.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 166 thoughts

As of chapter 166, Oshi no Ko has finished a roughly four-and-a-half year run started back in 2020. While there's some speculation about an epilogue or some extra content in volume 16 when it drops, this is where the main story ends. And you know what that means!!!

OSHI NO KO HAS OFFICIALLY ENDED WITHOUT ADDRESSING OR ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT RUBY KISSED HER BROTHER IN CHAPTER 143

please understand that this is FUCKING BOGUS

I'll probably do a longer post on this subject specifically, but my main critique of 143 when the chapter dropped was that while I liked the individual beats in it and I was really glad to see Akasaka finally addressing this tension bubbling underneath Aqua and Ruby's relationship, the immediate swerve away from showing us the aftermath of that kiss felt to me like an admission that the story was going to needlessly draw this out even more. Now that the story has ended and we can see that moment had literally no impact on the plot or even the character dynamics, I'd like to revise that statement - it feels like an admission of compromise. It feels like crumbs thrown to AquRuby fans to tempt them to keep reading and to stir up the waters of the ship wars, so people would keep reading and stay invested in the manga right to the very end. But most of all, it feels deeply disrespectful to both Aqua and Ruby as characters. Rather than exploring their feelings and giving both of them interiority and complexity in relation to incest or even just fucking acknowledging that the kiss had happened and letting their dynamic evolve, the series just memory holes the entire event and asks that you do too. Rather than letting Ruby have any development whatsoever as pertains to that relationship or, god forbid, let a female character move on romantically from the male lead, the series ends with her feelings so up in the air that I literally could not tell you what she thinks of Aqua by the time he dies.

ANYWAY… FINAL CHAPTER. BREATHES OUT VERY HARD.

I really can't believe it's taken us until the final chapter to actually deal with Ruby's grief over Aqua lol. We got a snippet of it last chapter but it was so brief that it really just felt like a tease. I also just think it's kind of bizarre that we're spending this little time on Ruby having feelings about Aqua's death to the extent that I have no idea how or when she found out about it.

It's also kind of hard to feel particularly strongly about Ruby's grief when the chapter doesn't really bother to explore it all that much. It's just a montage of Ruby quite literally Screaming, Crying and Throwing Up while Akane dispassionately narrates it all. The art also doesn't really help in terms of connecting with the emotions at play - I usually really like Mengo's expression work and the way she depicts extreme emotions but this all just felt like of… I don't know how else to put it. Goofy??? Is that an insane thing to say about Ruby grieving her brother???

Idk, something about both the panelling and just the extreme on-the-noseness of Ruby, again, literally Screaming, Crying Throwing Up while she's wearing a Burning cosplay Just In Case You, The Audience, Didn't Get It only for her to abruptly be done crying with no exploration or insight as to what's going on in her head that allows her to move forward.

Honestly, this is kind of the issue with everyone in the cast. The resolution is just sort of "Aqua died and we were sad about it but then we stopped being sad". I know what the story is trying to go for here - it's trying to express that even when you're in pain, life goes on and so you have to find a way to go on with it. But the result is that we spend all this time oogling at their pain without spending equivalent or even meaningful time on their recovery process.

It feels both excessive and undercooked at the same time and I'm left with the same icky, voyeuristic feeling I got from Aqua's funeral last chapter. This should be the point in the story at which we empathize with Ruby the most, but she remains a frustratingly distant figure right to the final pages. Part of this is an unfortunate consequence of Akane's narration directing these final chapters meaning that we're hearing about Ruby from an outsider's perspective and thus don't really see what's going on in her head… but if I can be frank, this has been an issue of Aka's with Ruby in particular basically nonstop since chapter 123.

As others & myself have noted, despite the absolutely catastrophic downward spiral Ruby is in at that point, Aqua revealing himself as Gorou basically flips it all off like a switch. There's some mild lipservice paid to the idea that Ruby is just using her dependency on Gorou to prop herself up and it's pointed out that the issues that contributed to her breakdown haven't actually been resolved - but none of these issues are ever even acknowledged again, let alone resolved. So, functionally, that reveal does fix all Ruby's problems in the space of a single chapter and the result is, again, that we spend multiple chapters gourging on depictions of Ruby's absolute rock bottom only for her to ping back to normal like a lightswitch. As such, the depictions of her pain feel less like explorations of Ruby's interiority and more like voyeuristic oogling at Ruby's misery and trauma and the effect is that the resolution to it all is both unsatisfying and a little gross. The result is that it feels like Akasaka is just indulgently mining the imagery of cute girls suffering because it causes simple thoughts neuron activation but doesn't respect these girls enough as characters to build them back up.

It doesn't help that this is basically the in-universe excuse for Ruby's career further skyrocketing. Instead of Ruby becoming a star on her own merits as the story keeps insisting she was supposed to, she's artificially buoyed by the public's morbid fascination with her tragedy. If I was feeling charitable towards the story right now, I would say this is an avenue of intentional critique but… well, I don't feel super charitable about the story right now lol

I WILL say that the one part of this chapter I did just uncomplicatedly like was the beat of Mem trying to suspend activities (presumably in the wake of her grief for Aqua) only for Kana to basically immediately explode into her room and help her get back on her feet. It's a beat that would've been much more effective if we'd, you know, seen it, but I otherwise enjoyed it and I thought it was sweet.

But. pbbbbtttt. I guess I can't talk around it any longer… let's get into the Dome concert.

To start things off on the immediately worst note possible, Akane describes Ruby performing at the Dome as being 'everyone's dream', including Aqua's. I'm reminded once again of the strange turn the story took in insisting that um, actually, performing at the Dome was totes Ai's dream all along (even though she literally didn't give a shit even a week before she was due to perform there herself) so Ruby performing there is fulfilling that dream for her!!! and I can't help but wonder if this abrupt shift in focus is an attempt to make readers forget what Ai's actual dream was - to see her beloved children grow up happy and healthy. Hell, it wasn't even really Aqua's dream, until the story suddenly had to try and convince us that his entire purpose for existence was to kill himself so Ruby could be an idol for slightly longer than she would've otherwise. The only people whose dreams she's textually fulfilling are Ichigo and Miyako and Ruby herself, but…

Honestly, is this really Ruby's dream anymore?

Who is Hoshino Ruby? What does she want? Why does she want it? These should be the very least of what we can concretely say about not only a protagonist but a character who has become a central figure of the entire story as Ruby has, but with the way Oshi no Ko has warped and distorted her, I find myself increasingly unsure of what the story wants her to be or how I should answer those questions.What does Ruby feel about Aqua? Was she still in love with him? Had she moved on, romantically? Was she still waiting for a response to her confession? Did she finally realize it was probably kind of shitty to respond to her brother going "lowkey wanna kms" by sticking her tongue down his throat? I Guess We'll Never Know.

This extends to whatever the fuck Ruby's relationship with idols and being an idol is. Almost the entirety of Ruby's time in the story has been spent reiterating over and over that Ruby cannot just be an idol who imitates Ai and that to truly shine, she needs to step out of her mom's shadow and shine in her own way. Ruby even literally tells Kana in no uncertain terms in 137 - "I'll be a star in my own way. I won't be like Mama."

While this has always been the text of the story, as I've pointed out before, the actual art with which Ruby's idolhood depicts her basically just as Ai 2.0. It relies so heavily on mining the imagery of Ai's charisma and personality as an idol and using them as the measure of Ruby's success as an idol that Ruby essentially has no visual or conceptual identity of her own as an idol. She's just Ai, But Arbitrarily Better, For Reasons The Narrative Fails To Actually Establish But Hopes That You Just Accept Anyway. This was always kind of annoying, but now that friction seems to have been resolved by… just making her Ai 2.0, But Arbitrarily Better (etc, etc) in the text as well. The fact that we're given no further insight as to Ruby's feelings and continue to just have Akane Explain Ruby's Character Arc to the camera also doesn't help.

All this combines to make the Dome concert and the final few pages feel exceptionally cold in a way I really don't think was intended by Akasaka. Yes, that splash page was nice and flashy but… I just felt nothing. I have no idea if or why Ruby cares about this. And even though the Dome concert has been hyped up through the entire story as the peak of Ruby's achievements as an idol, I feel no sense of accomplishment in her finally being there - not just because her journey to it was basically sneezed at us across two panels, but because it just feels hollow as a victory lap for Ruby. Again, she feels so distant and abstracted as a character that I can't bring myself to feel very strongly about her good or bad.

I think the perfect encapsulation of this are the final four pages of the story. Ruby's words here are very clearly intended to be a callback to Ai's words to Gorou in chapter one but as @all-of-her-light pointed out in our initial discussions of the chapter, Ruby very much does not have an equivalent to Ai's conclusion that she nevertheless wants and values the opportunity to find personal happiness and fulfillment outside of being an idol. Are we supposed to believe that simply being an idol is all that Ruby needs to achieve a similar degree of happiness and fulfillment? Is there no more to her than that?

I've seen a lot of people interpret this ending as exceptionally bleak and, as usual, gleefully predicting Ruby's immanent suicide because her beloved oniichansensei isn't around but this is indulging in, if you'll allow me to be frank, some pretty transparently ship-motivated flanderization. Despite what certain sections of the fandom would like to believe, Aqua and Ruby's lives, past and current, have never revolved around each other to the exclusion of every other relationship in their life. Ruby has a massive support network of people who love and care for her and actively want her to get back on her feet. I can one hundred percent believe that she does not need Aqua in her life to be happy and content.

The issue is that we don't see enough of Ruby to understand that ourselves. Again, she has become such a distant figure with so little insight into what she's thinking and why that this ending is basically a Rorschach test in which you can interpret basically whatever the hell you want or assume because we have so little canon basis to support or debunk our assumptions.

and yes. don't think i didn't see them. it IS both grimly hilarious and weirdly tonally appropriate for this ending that ruby has a bunch of oshi goods of ai and aqua including their fucking autographs set up to say goodbye to every day.

AND…… WE'RE DONE!!! THAT'S OSHI NO KO, BABY!!!! well, technically, there's going to be a 20 page extra chapter in volume 16 but I don't see it being big or substantive enough to meaningfully change my feelings about the ending so… I guess we're leaving it here. Damn. Feels crazy to be done with it.

I'll probably do a bigger post down the line about my thoughts on the ending as a whole but in terms of just How This Chapter Made Me feel, I guess the word is just… meh! It's definitely not an ending I like and I think the execution is sloppy and rushed but I also just don't really have the energy to feel angry about it. Maybe that's sad in its own way but tbh… I still really love Oshi no Ko! I still find it engaging and I find the characters I enjoy rewarding to talk about. I like the artistry of the anime adaptation. I don't blame anybody else for being so turned off by this ending that they're done with the series but for me, I like what I like about OnK too much that this ending could retroactively ruin it for me. Whatever else happens with the OnK franchise, whatever directions the anime and live-action take, this will always be the series that gave me Ai and the Hoshino family and. look at me. look at what she's done to my brain. could I really ask for anything more than that?

That being said, I'm definitely not done with discussing the series! I have fics to write (including a VERY exciting large scale project lined up with some friends), my Ai analysis post to finish and I also want to do a re-read of the series and finish my anime rewatch. I'll be here to discuss Oshi no Ko as long as I have things to say about it and as long as you guys will have me! Despite how the series ended, I've had a genuinely wonderful experience in the fandom and I really don't want to let go of the little community we've built together just because the series is done. I'm Ai's fan for all eternity!!!

[my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction]

Can you do the Moon Boys with a reader who has a massive amount of knowledge about true crime and how various criminals often behave and common MOs of killers. I'm a criminal psychology major who's working to be a criminal profiler, so I tend to have a lot of knowledge like this. But people always find it weird that I know all these things and joke about why i might know all of these things.

I think it would be interesting to hear your take on how Marc, Steven, and Jake would react towards a partner who's basically a true crime and criminal psych encyclopedia. Maybe having someone like that helps them hunt down bad guys better.

Ooo this is such an interesting idea!

Moon Knight Boys x gn!Reader • Rating: 18 + pals Masterlist• ao3• want to be tagged? | request info • buy me a coffee? • ask-travaganza masterlist •

Warnings: Murder, Khonshu, hit of sexy times, not beta read, please let me know if I have missed a warning!

Word Count: 405

Steven Grant

Thinks it’s super interesting. I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again - Steven loves listening to people who are passionate about a subject, doesn’t matter what that subject is. If you’re interested in it, he’s interested. 

Definitely will ask your opinion about Ancient Egyptian murders.

Asks you to teach him some of your expertise so that he can help him figure out some of the drives/mindsets of the people Khonshu sends them after.

Makes a whole space in the shelves in the flat for you to store papers and books.

Will watch true crime shows with you if you want and complain with you about any inaccuracy.

Marc Spector

Playfully calls you morbid.

But listens to true crime podcasts all the time, doesn’t tell Steven or Jake about it, but finds some of them quite soothing for some reason. He doesn’t want to think about why in too much detail, but he’s pretty sure it’s to do with hearing how awful some people truly have been and that what he’s done under the direction of Khonshu (basically getting rid of these people) isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Doesn’t want you to help them on anything Moon Knight related, “that’s what he’s for.” *Gestures vaguely in Khonshu’s direction*.

Khonshu calls your work, “Interesting.” And Marc nearly throws hands.

Steven fronts only to tell Khonshu that he will find a banishing spell for the flat so that the god can’t step foot in there if he keeps this behaviour up. 

Jake Lockley

Basically gets you to do criminal profiles for him. But doesn’t like for you to be out in the action if you have no training. 

(Even if you do have training he’s a bit unenthusiastic. “I have the suit, amor, yes? Why don’t you get a suit from another god and then we’ll talk.” Marc: “Do NOT do that.” Jake (100% teasing): “They could be Ra’s, then we’d have a sun and moon thing going on.” Marc is about to burst a blood vessel.)

Ask you to analyse horror movie characters for him. Is very serious when you ask and utterly delighted when you do.

Threatens Khonshu very quietly if he brings you up when Marc and Steven aren’t around.

Has a bit of a thing for you explaining things to him and has to fight with himself not to jump your bones most of the time.

Thank you for reading!

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[ardenchambres]

Yeah, I’ve read some books like that too. Thing is, I think that fanfiction writers are more aware, if that makes sense? Like, I haven’t read any of a specific popular contemporary romance author’s books, but all I’ve heard of it is “Condemning physical abuse while denying the existence of emotional abuse by making the main character get into that kind of relationship and glorifying it.” However, if an author on AO3 were to do the same, I feel like they would at least put more warnings ahead of time. That may, however, just be a byproduct of the demographics on AO3.

I think my idea comes in part from the tagging system on the site itself. All you get from books is a short summary of the events in the first hundred-ish pages, one that’s meant to make people read (because the primary goal of publishing a book is to make money). However, when you write and publish for passion and already know your characters, you can go more in-depth with what to expect from the story. Things such as the BAMF tag or fix-it related tags, and important themes and warnings. So if someone wanted to skip over things with alcoholism, they’d simply exclude the “alcoholism” tag. Meanwhile, in a real book, they would have to scour the internet for people’s reviews who’ve already read it or find list of warnings made by someone else to see if there’s mentions of alcoholism.

There’s also the fact that when you already know your characters, things hit harder when something happens to them. I cried when a character sacrificed himself for the rest of his found family, or when the happy-go-lucky immortal dog character was brutally murdered by an obsidian blade. Meanwhile, the only book I’ve cried about is The Hunger Games during everything with Rue. (I would like to note that The Hunger Games is one of the most masterful dystopian novel’s I have read, and I consider it an exception to most rules of actual books.)

TL;DR: Fic authors are forced to be more aware of what their writing includes due to the tagging system and are less likely to glorify abuse (or will tag Dead Dove) because of that awareness. Fanfictions also make you care about everything more, simply for the reason that they’re all already characters you know.

reblog if you believe fanfics are as valid as books that were published and sold by authors who write as their main careers. I'm trying to prove a point

[dreamer1084]

Natsuyuu Anime S7EP6 VS Manga Vol22 SP.19 & Vol19 Ch.77

Sensei's "tsk" was changed to "hum" Matoba's "おや" was deleted.

Matoba's laughter was deleted.

Matoba's dialogue when explaining the content of the commission was greatly simplified, retaining only the most basic knowledge without details.

Deleted the scene where Natsume was suspicious of "Why did he keep me here?"

Natsume's description of things that the audience can directly see has been deleted as usual. By the way, we cannot see the youkai in anime as clear as in manga.

Anime deleted a lot of monologues and dialogues here explaining why he went to Hakozaki's house.

When they saw the Youkai, they were still outdoors in manga, but they had already entered the house in anime. That's why the dialogue where Beniko thanked them for coming was also deleted.

Anime changed Natsume's straightforward statement about investigating his grandfather here to be more tactful. First, anime moved the dialogue forward, saying that although he didn't know if he had the ability to help, he would look around the house. Then he use "speaking of" to bring in his grandfather's matters.

In terms of dialogue, manga Natsume seemed to be talking to himself, so he later apologized for being rude. In anime Natsume used more questions, thus a more sense of communication.

Youkai hided behind this tower in amine. It is different from the manga in which Beniko answered the phone and left so Natsume could discuss the situation with Sensei.

Anime deleted Natsume thought Matoba sneaked into the house, and Matoba smiled and said he had permission LOL

Deleted scene where he said "かじん(家人) will not be harmed" (The "家人" here in Japanese does not necessarily refer to the family, but may also mean something like a servant. It may be an attempt to ridicule the identity of Sensei. But it may also mean people in this house. )

Manga's Natsume chose not to speak when faced with Matoba's request, and than delivered a monologue to the readers. In anime, he said, "I am (helping you) only for Beniko-san and Sensei."

Deleted Motoba's line "Do you want to hear it? Okay" and Natsume was again speechless.

His dialogue explaining the Youkai was again slightly simplified.

Deleted Motoba's "そうですね" (more like a modal particle for thinking than recognition) Matoba in manga just stared at Natsume, and Natsume asked him unhappily what was going on. Anime included a strong wind that made Natsume close his eyes. At this time, Matoba looked at him thoughtfully.

Anime simplified Matoba's instructions to Natsume into simply telling him to look to the east.

Deleted Nanase said "We meet in a strange place"

Deleted Nanase said, "It's so convenient that Youkai will come close to you when you are here."

The dialogue here was split into Natsume first asking if there was a mirror, Nanase responded that it was part of the spell, and Natsume said that the mirror was broken.

Animation added Natsume says "わかりました"(Got it) And Nanase also said "頼んだぞ"(I am counting on you)

Sensei in anime did not have the arrogant tone from manga, but he clearly complained that "forbidden techniques are really troublesome." Anime Natsume asked "Even Sensei can't exorcise it?"

Deleted the dialogue where Matoba asked Natsume not to tell others and hoped to have a good conversation with him (Because the content was similar to the summary part of the abandoned station later.)

Anime also deleted the sence where Beniko said that she only let them in because Matoba-clan agreed not to charge. She also promised Natsume again that if she discovered anything related to his grandfather, she would inform him.

[sleepymccoy]

Per one single request (and that is all I need to carry on) here is an expansion of my tags on this post

What even is dementia?

Basically, it's an umbrella term. It describes a set of common symptoms, primarily worsening cognitive loss.

It's kind of like saying you have a cold. A cold is not a diagnosis, it's a grouping of different illnesses, like rhino virus (the most common), influenza, covid, the list goes on.

So, you can have dementia and Alzheimer's, but you wouldn't describe yourself as having both. You'd say "I have a type of dementia, Alzheimer's disease." In the same way you'd say, "I have a cold, I think it's just a rhino virus but it's a whopping my ass."

So why'd you pick Alzheimer's for that example?

Well, Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia. It's where all the stereotypes you'd know about it come from. This is gonna be a text heavy post, so have a graph

University of Queensland

Before I talk about them in more detail though, what's a brain?

Your brain is made up of segments that control different specific bits of your body.

I always knew that if you hit the back of your head you might go blind, cos the eye and sight stuff happens at the back of the head. This is true.

I love a copyright warning on a photo. This post constitutes personal use

Alright! An important thing about dementia is that it moves through the brain steadily, going piece by piece. It doesn't do it all at once. So you have a starting spot, and a progressive loss of cognition as it kills your neurons. We figure out the dementia type by the symptoms, cos the brain is so defined

So if you hit the back of your head, the green occipital lobe in that picture, you mess with your sight. If you lose cognition in the back of your head your eyes are seeing fine, but your cognition loss makes you process that sight incorrectly. What you see can be completely different to what other people see. This is posterior cortical atrophy, and I bring it up because we know someone who died from it, this is Terry Pratchett's dementia subtype

It's not on the above graph cos it's quite a rare type

Where's Alzheimer's start?

In the kinda middle bit, the temporal lobe. Memory, ya know. And once it takes your memory it'll move on, but it's not always the same, so people living with Alzheimer's disease will developed varying symptoms as the disease progresses, which takes many years. Sometimes people get a diagnosis of mixed dementia cos it's doing a few lobes at once. Or they have another quite different type of dementia at the some time

I'm not gonna talk about Alzheimer's much cos if you know anything about how dementia goes, you probably know it from Alzheimer's disease.

Let's go through a few others

Vascular dementia is the next biggie!

It's a curious one, this is stroke related. So, when you get a stroke you often lose cognition in the affected area of the brain. That's not dementia, that's a stroke!

But if you get lots and lots of strokes, constantly, that's a type of dementia. Cos you're getting steadily cognitively worse

(this is a good time to remind people that dementia is not a diagnosis or even a type of illness like cancer, it is a descriptive umbrella of common symptoms. The underlying causes can be wildly different)

Vascular dementia doesn't follow our moves steadily though the brain model, cos the strokes can and do happen anywhere. It's rough

What am I talking about, they're all rough. It'll get rougher

Lewy bodies dementia

Often cross diagnosed with Parkinson's disease dementia, it just depends if you get the physical or cognitive symptoms first.

Lewy bodies doesn't tend to have any memory loss. I know, no one thinks that's possible! But this is a dementia without memory loss! Cognitive loss is not the same thing as memory loss, theres other cognitive thing you can lose. That's why they're different words I guess

Of course, in all dementias eventually everything goes. Cos it's progressive, it keeps progressing

Lewy bodies is more likely to cause physical impacts like shaking and shuffling gait. You'll also hallucinate, have delusion, sleep badly, and experience mood swings.

From a care perspective, the people living with Lewy bodies disease are vastly more likely to be violent than any other person living with dementia

Robin Williams had this one, but he never knew. They confirmed via autopsy. So I'm gonna add a fun gif of him cos he was lovely

There's a lot of other disease/illness induced dementias

Huntington's turns into dementia eventually. HIV too. If you have down syndrome you have an extra gene that will always turn into dementia if you live long enough (that's one of our few 100% rates). Alcohol related dementia. So on and so forth. There's a shit tonne of types

Anyway, thats enough about disease progression. I'll talk out a few more common misunderstandings and then post

Is dementia fatal?

Sure is. Most people will die of something else while they have dementia, cos age often comes with comorbidities, but if the only thing you have is Alzheimer's disease it will still kill you. It's taking out your brain cells, eventually you'll forget how to swallow and choke.

Honestly tho it's more likely you'll die 'by accident' due to doing something you didn't realise was dangerous, like going for a walk wearing nothing at night and developing hypothermia. That is a dementia-caused death, I think we can all see that, but it'll be written down as hypothermia. So reported deaths are lower than what's true

Alzheimer's takes 10 - 30 years for the neuron loss to be extreme enough to kill you outright. Lewy bodies is more like 5 - 7 years. There's a range and the ranges are poorly defined, quiz your GP if this ever comes up in your life

It's an old person disease, right?

Overwhelmingly yes. It's considered younger onset if you're less than 65. But from the graph above you can see that's a big enough proportion to get its own slot

But kids don't get it

Sure they do, childhood dementia is a whole thing. It's awful. People are born with it. Again, dementia isn't an illness type, it's a symptom grouping. Kids can be born with progressive, worsening cognitive loss. So while it's not Alzheimer's disease, it is dementia. It's like 1 in 3000 kids have some kind of childhood dementia, and most die before they reach adulthood.

It's untreatable

It is incurable (but they keep researching!) but we have treatments for the early stages. If you or a loved one is experiencing confusion and memory loss, get moving early and you might be able to delay the worsening of symptoms for a few years. It's not a cure, but it's better than nothing. And it's all we've got

How do you, op, know?

I have a master's degree in dementia, and I work in the field. Not naming my job cos I'm not speaking for them rn, I'm just presenting what I know personally

Gonna end the post there. Send me asks or questions or whatever, I'll try and answer. If I get enough asking the same thing I'll do another post expanding on that ❤️❤️❤️

[girlcowboy1]

I think gen z ultimately lost the war against mental illness when they decided to adapt the older generations rhetoric of "mentally ill ppl who have noticeable symptoms are bad and evil and must be avoided at all costs, they deserve to be alone and die alone" which... most people are not saying that outright, but that IS what they're saying, whether they realize it or not, when they choose to discuss these issues based on personal concepts of morality and punishment instead of approaching it with a mix of empathy and an understanding of science, and how the brain operates.

"Having a mental illness isn't an excuse" is true to a certain extent, but I think a lot of people don't understand that to an extent, it also IS an excuse. The only reason people like to believe that it isn't in any capacity is because mental illness is an invisible disability, and if there's one thing that people love to dismiss the impact of, it's invisible disabilities. Because we can't see what's going on beneath the surface, we struggle to understand the issue, we struggle to empathize with the affected person, whom we may prefer to instead write off as being lazy or malicious, when in reality they are in pain and/or are missing an important tool that helps them function the way they'd like to.

Before getting on medication, I felt and (still sometimes feel) as though I existed behind an invisible glass that separated me from everyone else. I could not understand the point of a lot of mundane things, I couldn't relate to those around me, I felt like my existence was a mistake that should have never happened and the universe was attempting to expunge me by making my life so hard I would kill myself.

And then I got on medication, and suddenly I was able to see things that I had never seen before but had existed in front of me the whole time. I was able to be kinder to people, to be more patient, to talk myself out of bad thoughts I would previously ruminate about for days and weeks. I was able to communicate more coherently, to express my feelings in a way I couldn't before. I wanted to do things again. I wanted to dress up, look nice. I wanted to BE nice.

Of course, these are all still things I struggle with. Like with most tools for disability, medication is helpful in giving me the ability to function in a way that makes life more enjoyable— but it doesn't completely cure the issue. The point is. I tried so hard, time and time again, to change on my own. I tried taking supplements, I tried mindfulness, I tried changing the way I eat, I tried self-help videos/books. But I was a deeply depressed, deeply agitated person whose brain was not wired the way it should have been. So none of what I tried would stick. I would act out in ways I KNEW was wrong, but when you get into a certain state of mind, it's difficult to speak to yourself, to talk yourself down from doing or saying things you know you probably shouldn't. Especially when you feel so isolated from others, and struggle to see the point in anything.

It was only after medication that I made long-term improvements. It was only after my brain chemistry was physically altered in a positive way that my brain could begin to function better, and that my outward behavior improved.

How the anatomy of the brain effects a person is a crucial part of mental health that gets left out of relating discussions too often, I think, and its where I believe gen z unfortunately tends to overlap with gen x and boomers. The brain is an organ like any other, and if it is damaged, or sick, or lacking somewhere in its anatomy.... it will not function properly. The person whose body it inhabits will not function properly.

[rhube]

This is something I think about a lot too. I completely understand why people want to destigmatise mental illness by stopping people using diagnoses in a derogatory manner. But. Speaking as someone who has had multiple mental illnesses for a really long time, the insistence that we never talk about any behaviours as crazy or insane - or sometimes even only tangentially related words like batshit - ignores the fact that there words WEREN'T solely used to stigmatised the mentally ill in the past. There's a lot of behaviours and thoughts that average, basically mentally healthy people engage in that overlap with or ar identical to things mentally ill people do. The difference is degree, proximity to other symptoms, and the extent to which they interfere with daily life. It's actually very useful to be able to say a person (including oneself) is a bit crazy without using the term negatively. But now we have to trip over ourselves to find a word for this overlap area of behaviours and thoughts.

Which is why I usually prefer to differentiate between more generic terms and actual diagnoses. Yes, 'psychotic' as a pejorative is not OK. This extends to things like 'sociopath' and 'psychopath', which a lot of people seem to both think are real diagnoses and OK to use as a pejorative. The terms themselves are not generally given these days as diagnoses and it's debatable whether you can separate out people with empathy disorders into these categories, but there are real people who struggle to empathise with others who, contrary to what you may have heard in a think pieces about CEOs and bad managers, are not typically bad people who do bad things to other people.

There is a problem with some of the language we use about mental health, but I'm not sure the solution is to remove the generic words that are inclusive of behaviours seen in healthy people from circulation.

It is sometimes helpful to say that someone's beliefs have deviated from reality even if you don't think they have specific symptom clusters that relate to a mental illness.

And I also just want to second the point that experiences and symptoms do not belong solely to one diagnosis. This is what's so damaging about these posts that go around being like, 'The uniquely X experience of Y'.

Like, I have depression and have had it most of my life. People with bipolar disorder also experience depression. We have an overlap of symptoms. But our diagnoses are very different. I have never had a manic episode and I never will. That's not better or worse than being overwhelmingly depressed, it's just that there is a very clear difference to the mechanism that gives us some of the same experiences.

See also the way that a lot of the symptoms I see attributed to only autistic people or only people with ADHD are also symptoms you can have from an anxiety disorder or PTSD. And some people have several conditions that can all cause the same or very similar problems. It doesn't help anyone to sort out what's going on with them to say 'only x people experience y'.

That doesn't mean you can't say, 'you might be x if you experience y', you just gotta recognise that there is a harm in saying, 'the uniquely x experience of y'.

Very often it's not unique and you are alienating and hurting people who experience the same thing as you for different reasons.

there's a lot to be said about how the average person indulges in delusions far more than anyone is really comfortable grappling with. every now and again, a poll comes out that reveals some sort of number of people who believe they have magical powers, usually pretty high, and everyone takes turns making fun of it and affirming their own Sanity

this is more observational than scientific, but it really does seem like writing off delusional thinking as the realm of the "insane" creates this valley where the "normal" person's thinking (especially a person who considers themself normal, but that's a whole other kettle of fish) must be more empirical, because, categorically, they are not insane

[castingspellsanddaisies]

Sexy time with Jude Bellingham - BONUS QUESTION | Tarot Reading

DISCLAIMER: Take everything with a grain of salt and enjoy!

*This post has 18+ content, so if you don't want to read it, beat it.

His fans are claiming for a better outcome this time!!!

So we found out little... problems with Jude in the current moment relating to his physical activities with women (look at me, all prudish with words hahaha)

But what about when he is with someone he loves? Is he any different?

the chariot + 8 of pentacles + the lovers + judgement + temperance + queen of swords reversed + the world reversed + the wheel of fortune + 4 of cups

There it is. What a romantic man, huh?

I see a dominant and submissive roleplay here. And I see this happening with both partners, so sometimes Jude likes to be the dominant, and sometimes he like his partner to dominate him. There's physical strength here, like a size kink (he loves to admire how petite his partner is compared to him) and... he'll slap her a lot - but because he loves her :)He'll love to get really close to her, to hold her really close to him all the time. I see him taking his time to learn how to pleasure his partner properly this time, yes. He wants to become ''perfect'' in satisfying his partner (and I see him achieving that). Another kink of his is this ''deep souls connection'' during sex (I think I've seen this before in another reading about him, right?). Is this idea of being ''reformed'' by his partner during sex, being saved. He'd like to explore certain ''taboos'' with his partner. There's an urgency in doing extremes with him. He'll be doing ''the dirtiest'' but then he will be calling her the sweetest of names; a minute later both will be doing the most romantic love-making, then he grabs her mouth, opens it and spits in it (an example).

He can be a bit of a brat during it, again about edging his partner and when she's desperate for release he makes fun of her. Jude has a mouth of his own, alright? ''Dirty talking'' who? I see him liking restraint practice: like pretending to not care about his partner and she has to ''prove'' to him how much she wants him and vice-versa. Also, keep stirring his partner while they're away from each other until they meet again. Lots and lots of role-plays. It's funny, I see all of it done by both of them. When Jude loves his partner, everything that he does and likes to do, he wants his partner do do it to him as well. The perfect balance.

Ps: I looked in the back of the deck and there it was: 6 of cups. *sigh*

Call him a good boy and he will melt in your hands.

That's it, folks. i hope you enjoyed the reading! Take care <3

[hannieehaee]

What do you think about svt members dating a autistic/neuro divergent s/o ?? (Don't havets do all members but maybe woozi hannie and cheol? Tysm I literally love your writing ❤️🎀🍓)

dating a neurodivergent s/o

content: non-specific neurodivergence, established relationship, fluff, etc.

wc: 758

a/n: thank u so much<33 i discussed this with two of my besties on the spectrum, so i hope i did this justice!! neurodivergence is very broad so i kept this a little ambiguous btw<3

masterlist

seungcheol -

he's kind of used to being babied by his family, but he'll flip the script and baby you instead. super nice and understanding, engaging in any of your interests and always encouraging you. he'd literally move hell and earth to ensure your comfort at all times.

jeonghan -

very sweet and loving. he has this personality where he babies everyone around him, and i think he'd use his kindergarten teacher voice a little extra on his s/o. gets familiar with any habits you may have and engages in them wholeheartedly. steals any fidget toys you may have bc he must touch at any and every object in his vicinity.

joshua -

he'll learn everything there is to learn in order to support and love you in the way you most deserve! he's very emotionally intelligent and empathetic, so he'll often just kinda sit there and listen to you rant about whichever special interest you had at the time, even taking some of his free time to learn about it on his own.

jun -

cutie is the sweetest boyfriend alive, falling into any habits or behaviors of yours without even realizing. he's super touchy but if you're not into that he'd just settle for playing with your hands and fingers in a reassuring manner (both for himself and you). does his best to understand and relate to you in order to ensure your comfort.

soonyoung -

i picture him acting very similar to jun as a bf. he may instinctually mimic some of your behaviors or habits without realizing. if you have trouble focusing or maybe any compulsive behaviors, he'd somehow match those behaviors just from how much time he spent with you.

wonwoo -

he's literally the perfect boyfriend in every capacity so i think he'd assimilate to you and your needs without even thinking about it. makes himself fit into your life perfectly and provides you all comfort possible. does his best to understand every aspect of your life and has very open communication with you.

jihoon -

he has a ton of little fidget toys in his studio ready for you to play with. if you have any sensory issues, he'd also have some amazing quality noise cancelling headphones in his studio for you to use, anddd he would also make sure to turn off the lights at the universe factory if they ever bothered you. you'd never have any issue with him changing his lifestyle to fit your needs, he'd just do it w/o question.

seokmin -

he's such a sweet and empathetic guy, he'd be thoroughly educated on whichever part of the spectrum you were in. he'd remind you to take any medications (if needed), cook you your safe foods, keep you out of social situations if you felt like going nonverbal, keep things tidy at home to keep you at ease. he'd basically do anything in his power without you even having to ask.

mingyu -

he's a househusband at heart so he's basically just prepared to mother the hell out of you at all times. takes care of all your needs and keeps track of them at his own accord. needs an open line of communication with you to understand your needs and preferences and adapts his life to fit them.

minghao -

he's so insanely emotionally mature i think he'd utilize his amazing communication skills to make sure he's doing everything he can as a bf to make you feel comfortable and at ease with him. entertains and encourages any of your habits and needs. researches anything necessary to understand you as best as he can.

seungkwan -

if u ever go nonverbal or lose your social battery, he'll take complete charge of it, so dont u even worry!!! he loved and respects you more than anyone, so he does his best to adapt to any habits or necessities you may have. the best person at lending a sympathetic ear when you let him know of your needs.

vernon -

very understanding and subtle with his affections. he's the opposite of overwhelming, so he never pressures you and tries to make you as comfortable as possible, doing his best to understand your habits and levels of comfort in order to assimilate to you and ensure your happiness in the relationship.

chan -

he'll match your energy always. if your social battery is gone, so is his! if you feel a little extra energetic, guess what, so does he! wants you to communicate what he can do to ensure your comfort or to be the best bf he can be.

[starberry-cupcake]

oooohhhh boyyyyyyyy Stuff Happened you folks, this might be obnoxious because there was a lot of exposition, let's hope I can keep it decent. As always, sending you all positive vibes in these trying times ♥

previously, in harrowcita del 9:

this happened

CHAPTER 50

30 minutes for emperor destruction, prepare the champagne

gideon is being taken by yandere twin to meet doctor reverend emperor john

she isn't very into that idea, but doesn't have much of a choice

doctor reverend emperor john is having a very important conversation with someone in the room, so gideon and yandere twin hide to listen in

and the conversation is with non other than not!dulcinea

not!dulcinea is being possessed

by commander wake

I ASKED FOR THIS IN THE PREVIOUS ONE

why did you need harrow, then, you dramatic asshat?

so, basically, commander wake's name is actually a couple quotes and lyrics to eminem's song from 8 mile

her name isn't amanda, it's just awake, etc.

I'd take amanda over eminem but ok

they said they are words that date back thousands of years, so we're in the future

I considered this, but not due to book reasons, just because one time I was talking to @lady-harrowhark about one time a barbie of mine was stolen when I was a kid and it somehow related to tlt, this was A Long Time Ago but I thought "what, are the books in the future?"

I have no idea if my hollywood hair barbie had anything to do with the books directly or if it was just some fandom thing @lady-harrowhark knows and I don't, but that planted the idea in my head

if it's a spoiler, don't tell me

but I didn't pick up any clues from the book until eminem

emperor's last name is gaius, which I knew from an untagged non context dashboard post

doctor reverend emperor john gaius wants to know what commander wake was doing in the ninth, because she landed there on purpose

and also is impressed that she's been a revenant for nearly 20 years and doesn't know how she got there

I think it's the sword

so, in come augustine and mercygirl

because now we're having a party

dr reverend emperor john says "Am I in trouble?" because he's the most punchable asshole in the known universe

and introduces commander wake with an evanescence quote rather than an eminem quote

yes, ok, I much prefer that, thank you

thank you, Fallen by Evanescence (2003) you changed my life

so, turns out that commander wake was in cahoots with these two lyctors

but things turned south and gideon the first was sent to kill her

she went to the ninth to break into the tomb

it always comes down to the tomb

ice cube barbie is very popular

so, I was right when I said that gideon wasn't conceived Traditionally

the eggs were my clue on that bit, the eggs on the notes

they were supposed to 1) use dr reverend emperor john's genes to 2) create a baby with his blood to 3) break the blood ward to 4) open the tomb

CONVOLUTED LYCTOR PLANS

but the eggs didn't work, so commander wake decided to birth gideon herself

when I said gideon was a demigod and used hercules memes and when I compared her to superman or whatever

I was more correct than I thought

commander wake called gideon "bomb"

this song could go into the gideon playlist @lady-harrowhark and I were talking about

because we didn't have enough lyctors at this party, in comes gideon the first

from battling the beast, which is what everyone was supposed to be doing, btw, just putting that out there

gideon the first will receive a lot of very clever, funny and amazing nicknames by gideon that I can't even remotely compete with

I vow to you and your prowess for nicknames, queen

gideon the first comes in, removes gideon's glasses from harrow's body, and slides them on his face

commander wake me up before you go go looks at him with heart eyes

and he shoots her

gideon, things were so much easier when you didn't have a family, girl

this is too stressful

everyone is surprised that gideon the first fought the beast, the beast ran and gideon the first is alive

I am NOT SURPRISED because HE WAS FIGHTING ALONGSIDE MATI NONIUS

and ortus, and protozoa, and martita

BUT, MOST IMPORTANTLY, MATI NONIUS

well done team harrow!!!

so, basically, gideon the first didn't say anything about the whole commander wake situation because he thought gideon was his

which accounts for my doubts the other recap on how I thought gideon wasn't Conceived Traditionally but there were doubts from gideon the first's side

gideon prime, gideon zero, gideon senior (all gideon jokes, not mine) says he was with her for about two years

so augustine starts explaining how they got dr reverend emperor john's genetic material through god apate major

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED

IT'S ALWAYS THE ORGIES, ISN'T IT?

man, I'd rather not know the details, thank you

gideon the first also doesn't want to know the details

the emperor's bolthole wasn't as inexorable as it was advertised to be, turns out

it's basically a revolving door

ANYWAY

the emperor goes "so you killed her and the baby, right?"

IN COMES GIDEON, INTRODUCING HERSELF

"I'm not fucking dead"

and the emperor goes "hi, not fucking dead, I'm dad"

CHAPTER 51

gideon starts remembering childhood things like suffering and fighting with harrow and telling harrow that maybe she is the daughter of someone important and they don't know it

"You remember how the fuck-off great aunts always used to say, suffer and learn? If they were right, Nonagesimus, how much more can we take until you and me achieve omniscience?"

man, this is rough

so, the thing about the eyes

gideon apparently has AL's eyes

whose name isn't only Annabel Lee

it's also Alecto

the alecto everyone keeps mentioning in the fandom

so, this explains why seeing gideon's eyes was like seeing a ghost to these lyctors

also why ice cube barbie had gideon's eyes

THERE ARE A LOT OF THREADS GOING ON IN THIS BOARD

GIDEON IS CONNECTED TO A LOT OF PEOPLE

NONE OF THEM GOOD

the lyctors bring back what teacher said in canaan au, about them asking dr reverend emperor john to kill AL aka Annabel Lee aka Alecto aka ice cube barbie

apparently all of them (except for gideon the first) hated her and were low key scared of her and high key scared of what might happen with her around

they think the beasts are coming partly because of her

and whatever dr reverend emperor john did to resurrect her

the emperor says he didn't kill her, he "switched her off"

not successfully, because she's been sort of roaming around

mercygirl and augustine say that everything about this is very sus because what if he didn't kill AL??? and what is going on with the origin of his power???

dr reverend emperor john goes "you both do tend to go overboard on the foreplay"

mercygirl and augustine figured out that harrow's true cavalier had AL's eyes

but it was impossible for a baby to be born with AL's genes

however, it was very probable that a baby had been born in the ninth with the emperor's genes

because they had been planning on that to happen

albeit in a different way, without the human intervention

so, if gideon has AL's eyes but the emperor's genes

it means AL's eyes aren't hers and the emperor's aren't his

the emperor's weird eyes are AL's and gideon's eyes are the emperor's

because.......

he achieved lyctorhood without having to slurp his cavalier aka AL

I'm very interested in this potential situation if we get gideon alive again

but everyone else is pissed off because they had to slurp their cavaliers unnecessarily

yandere twin also decides to join the chat after this

and, apparently, anastasia had figured it out too

the ninth necro who everyone said was the one who couldn't become a lyctor

the one with a room unused

until harrow

the emperor's version of events is that things went off the rails in the process and he had to kill them both

augustine tells dr reverend emperor john to just stop already with his plan of destroying everything

and the emperor says that the man before his resurrection would have hated him to say that

mercygirl then goes "I'll forgive you if you tell me you didn't mean to kill my cav"

and the emperor goes "yes, I'll do whatever"

so he hugs mercygirl

and mercygirl

FUCKING DECIMATES HIM

SHE WRECKS HIM

SHE MELTS HIM INTO NOTHINGNESS

gideon says she's an orphan again while I'm giving everyone a party hat and a piece of celebratory cake

I'M SORRY THIS WAS LONG but we're reaching the end of this book!!! See you next time!!!

[mesetacadre]

tumblr left liberals are always so snarky and condescending and "let me learn you a thing" with regards to anti-communism but whenever any of them try to step out of the mutual circle and engage with actual communist arguments it's always so embarrassing. I'm not posting screenshots of anything but I've realized this specially with two posts, one where the anti-communists replies to a post about leftcoms with "I don't know if OP is referring to me or not" before typing out a rant, and another where the attempt at an argument is just. pointing out what the post says, and not even really understanding it. This last one was a reply to one post of mine where I collect quotes from Churchill and some fascists without any commentary and the anti-communist just says "looks like he just discovered british colonialism is bad".

I'll stop with the examples but if you ever decide to really look at what the most vocal anti-communists on this site actually argue against communists, it's an apropos of overused cliches and fundamental misunderstandings of the text. Related to this is another trend among a specific subset of the anti-communist sphere, which is that that focuses on the war in Ukraine, figureheaded by 3 or 4 big blogs. And once again, if you really read their counter-arguments, it's clear they're just scanning for keywords and can't, for example, tell the difference between a communist and an honest to god Russian chauvinist. Of course they'll say these two groups of people are the same, all paid by the Kremlin and/or "useful idiots", which is another phrase they repeat, but the differences in speech really aren't that deep.

It's a real shame we only get this kind of fandomite liberal, a type who can't even really articulate the kind of capitalism they favor, let alone begin to understand genuine anti-capitalism or god forbid anti-imperialism. It would be nice if the liberals had better blogs, beyond the 40 year old wannabe writer and the babys-first-election types. They don't even seem to understand the theoretical basis of electorialism!

I'm just ranting. I don't think there's a broader point here or important conclusions. We just get the functionally illiterate, and after seeing the trillionth attempt at a dunk with the "glorious revolution" line, I sincerely wish we didn't

[canidbld]

Dear Wolf Therians...

(Aka, a domestic dog rambles about packs)

Content warnings: none

Word count: 2k

— Day 3 of Sol's Writing Challange

I want to start off this post by saying that I'm pretty confident I'm not a wolf therian. During my awakening, I automatically assumed a potential wolf theriotype (which seems to not be an uncommon experience) I actually tried to think and picture myself as a wolf, just to try out the identity but there was something that didn't feel right and it was sort of difficult to understand why. Maybe it was the large size of a wolf not matching with how I felt my canineness should look like, or maybe it was more of a personality/mental thing.

Either way, I kept trying to work it out in my brain and read the works and experiences of wolf therians. When wolf therians spoke about being a wolf, there was a lot of mention of feeling wild and untamed with an instinctual yearning to be free. They spoke commonly about how disconnected they felt from humans and that they were actually pretty wary of them and felt uncomfortable in humam focused environments, and that's when it clicked and why I was not a full wolf because I felt pretty comfortable with humans and I didn't feel this inner call for the wilds. I was actually pretty chill hanging out and around man-made settlements and cities (which were a wolf therians' worst nightmare, according to a few essays). Basically, I felt pretty domestic.

So then I just assumed I might have been a wolfdog. I went from thinking I could have been a high content wolfdog to a mid content to a low content, but even then, that didn't feel right. I read an article that discussed the differences in wolves and stray dogs that actually really illuminated my perspective on canines as a whole. Wolves were monogamous, primarily carnivorous, and apex predators and functioned under a family hierarchy. The stray dogs in the article were scavengers, eating what they could find on the outskirts of human settlements and didn't have to abide by strict seasons to have pups nor did they feel the need to form packs unless they thought it was necessary. All in all, dogs had a lot more variety in expression and were more loose on the "rules" of being a canine compared to wolves.

Eventually I just realized and came to terms that I was just a domestic German Shepherd (and a proud one at that!) with an emotional and aesthetic attachment to wolves that had no impact on my identity and how I identified no matter how cool I thought wolves and wolf therians were.

So, yeah, I'm pretty confident that I'm not a wolf therian.

But I loved reading about the experiences of wolf therians and what being a wolf meant to them and how they expressed that but I was mostly invested in how their wolfness interacted within themselves and other aspects of themselves. What was the culture of wolf therians? How did they describe wolfhood? What facets of themselves did they relate with other wolf therians?

The writings of wolf therians helped me create a foundation of how I understood caninehood so I could build up my own understanding using their experiences as a framework.

But one of the things I really was interested in is how a wolf therian felt about packs.

A wolf therian I follow (@words-of-wolf) wrote a piece about their experience with wolfhood (and how they felt it was different to the way other wolf therians talked about their wolfness), and it actually inspired this whole tangent about packs in general. One of my favorite quotes from the post was:

"But I will say that all of my deepest, most vivid, and most impactful memories... they're not of the hunt. They're not about territory or conflict or hunger. What I remember most richly is the love I felt for my pack. It's a feeling I can't quite find it in me to explain; sometimes I wonder if the reason I identify as loveless in this life, is simply because no love I've ever felt as a human could compare to what I felt as a wolf."

The feeling I got reading this was profund and sobering. I didn't relate to it on a deep level, but I was enamored by how they described what being in a pack really felt like and how the pack is what defined their wolfness and not so much being perceived or perceiving specific behaviors as violent.

I watched a documentary about a therian pack just recently actually and it carried a similar level of awe within me when I watched how close these therians were with others. They cuddled and played together, exhibited both dominant and submissive behaviors in a playful manner and had sleepovers and bonded with each other over a bonfire and it was nice to watch the way they loved being a pack together.

Wolves in the wild need packs. It's something that is so important to their survival and evolution and identity as a whole. They are social animals. The bond between wolves in a wolf pack is so solid and intertwinied with being a wolf that its pretty much what defines a wolf in pop media (for the most part) The wolf pack structure and culture also has been studied intensely for years. It's been observed and analyzed, hypothesized, and debunked.

What was thought to be the truth of how a wolf pack worked was actually revealed to be an inaccurate representation by the same man who created the now debunked alpha/beta/omega theory since the old study was done on captive wolves. Said man, named David Mech, corrected himself and said that wolf packs in the wild functioned very much as family units, with the father and mother at the head of the pack and then their first litter as their subordinates and their latest litter as the bottom of the pack. Makes sense. That's how families work mostly in human society.

But then what does this study say about wolf therians (and therians in general) and the way they feel about packs?

When reading about their experiences, some share this sentiment of feeling utterly alone. This loneliness was, for the most part, super intense, almost depressing sometimes when I read certain posts. Especially when the wolf therians I was reading about didn't seem to know any other therian in general, let alone a wolf one plus they had an almost instinctual aversion to humans. It was something I sympathized with. These were essays that read like lonely howls calling for non-existent pack mates in my head.

But those were specifically wolf therians who didn't have a pack, I did also read posts and essays of wolf therians who were and have been in packs (in their current lives) before, relaying their experiences that ranged from enjoyment and curiosity to horror and abuse mostly, from what I've read, due to these packs adopting the alpha/beta/omega model and trying to mimic this with other therians. Now there has been tons of discussion on how the alpha/omega model in packs leads often to power abuse and there has been valid criticism against the use of it in therian packs but there's also been equal amounts of therians who actually like the alpha system implemented in their own packs due to the euphoria it gives them as a wolf.

Keep in mind, the study that first introduced the alpha theory about wolf packs, while inaccurate to wolves in the wild, was still something captive wolves (essentially strangers) exhibited and I think that's important to note. I remember reading (or maybe watched a video) that mentioned how human society naturally has a hierarchical structure bringing up examples like work environments (bosses, managers, employers) and even schools (teachers, principals, students) and so packs that use the alpha model weren't necessarily a bad thing and actually made sense under these contexts.

I think the problem was because some of these therian packs were created haphazardly and were open to therians who were mostly strangers to each other and the alpha model didn't really give the neccesery room for these packs to bond with each other that much, something that had also been pointed out by other therians. Their solution was to be more picky on who you make a pack with. They said that packs should ideally be created with close friends and loved ones or even family.

It was interesting to read the different pack experiences, especially from a domestic dog point of view. Just as a canine, I also do sympathize with pack culture in general and while some domestic dogs don't really have a connection to the pack concept as much as wolves (save for specific breeds like the husky), I still think a lot about packs and how I'd function in one when I realized that I have been apart of packs, that I am currently in two packs; one with my boyfriend and one with my blood family.

And I do actually see them as my packmates, especially my boyfriend. I feel a loyalty to him and my family, I feel the need to defend them, protect them, and support them, not from a human perspective but entirely as a canine. My family pack can be dysfunctional sometimes, but my dogged loyalty means I'll always be there to support them despite the dominance problems. And it's funny to think about how I was "technically" born into a family unit and then when I grew older, I dispersed and found a mate to make my own pack with just like wolves do in the wild.

Therian packs, I feel like, have been a staple in the therian community probably since the first howl (not fact checked) due to how much the community traditionally has had such a heavy canine/wolf lean and focus (which is something modern therianthropy is improving on by being more inclusive to a variety of species) but I wish there were more resources that talk about packs and pack safety and what others thought of them, what their dream pack is and if they would abide by a heirachy or if they'd go off vibes or if they wanted a big pack that was friendly or something smaller thats a little more exclusive. What type of beings would they want in the pack? What type of behaviors would they exhibit in a pack? What name would your pack have? Would you consider your family or friends as a pack even if they're not therians themselves?

I wish even more for resources and essays about packs that aren't just canine centered like herds and flocks. How would therians run one? Would they be a leader or something more passive?

I know that this sort of veers on the edges of roleplay just a little but it geniuenly is a fun mental exercise for me. I like thinking about these questions because it does make me feel like a canine.

For me, I'm already pretty much living with my ideal pack with my boyfriend, even if it's just the two of us (plus our cats), which is what I prefer. I like how small and exclusive it is, and there's not really problems with dominance, considering we feel both pretty equal in terms of power in our pack. There's no name yet. It's just pure vibes right now, but that's okay, i feel loved and protected in this pack, and I love and protect my pack back. I have so much time to consider what a pack means to me as a dog.

And while I may not feel this deep connection to pack culture the way a wolf therian would, I still hold a similar essence of loyalty and love towards those who I cherish as a canine.

My fascination with pack society and culture is probably something I got from my German Shepherd theriotype. The concept of loyalty, protection, love, and family definitely appeals to it. Regardless, I just love reading and learning about it from academic studies to introspective essays, really, just all kinds of records that talk about packs. It truly feels like I'm searching for a meaning here and even writing this entire post barely scrapes the surface of what I truly want to say about packs, mostly due to me getting tired and my lack of vocabulary and ability to explain things better.

Just think packs are cool and see wolf therians as cool older siblings.

Kind regards,

Sol, a German Shepherd.

@/words-of-wolfs post about wolfhood

The study of the differences between wolves and dogs