#place constantly like it’s understandable why they struggle as they specifically complain about the whole lifestyle while the other famalie

[dykedvonte]

Ok so we know you love Benny (rightfully so, I mean look at the man) but do you have any thoughts on the other Chairmen? Swank and Tommy specifically?

I have so many thoughts on the Vegas families but even more on the Chairmen just because of how unique their position is.

Like to start off, I have mentioned and still fully believe the Chairmen are the most paranoid and distrusting of all of the Vegas families. You can get sucked into many personal dramas and plights when it comes to the other Vegas Families; Quest-lines that get you super involved with their inner workings and pasts, ergo, quest-lines like Beyond the Beef and How Little We Know. Other than the very little side quest we get from Tommy, where you don’t even out in a good word for the Aces Theater for the talent recruits, your very boxed out with the Chairmen.

While the other families are more curious and intrigued by the NCR and Legion tensions rising, House being killed and other things, the Chairmen are always paranoid, concerned and negative. They mention wanting to leave like in the old days but can’t drop the act. They don’t mention anything that isn’t in a way that relates back to them and it tells how little they wish to or do interact with those outside the family. Swank mentions how he doesn’t trust the other families and the sentiments are shared with Tommy who discourages you from seeing the other sights. They are probably not purposely isolating themselves but they keep to their own. I only think this is extrapolated by House favoring Benny as a successor and possibly more restrictions on them. They were the first family and likely the prototype of whatever is detailed in their contracts. House was not as lenient as he is now, taking Swank referring to House’s rules into account.

Specifically about Tommy and Swank is interesting. Tommy feels like he’s older to me, not like more mature but he’s been around to see how far the Boot-Riders changed into the Chairmen. He’s not like an old guy either but older than Swank and Benny. I like to think he’s a middle ground to Swank and Benny, where Benny is the idealist, Swank is the nihilist and he’s there realist. You gotta real with people when you work in entertainment. He has a keen eye and can tell when things aren’t right but doesn’t jump out of his lane, not without provocation that is. In relation to Benny, I think Tommy’s like a snide older brother type guy. He rips on Benny cause the guy is so obsessed with not being seen as a tribal anymore but Tommy of all people can see when someone is playing too much into a bit. Benny keeps him close cause he keeps him real.

Swank is described in universe by House as being dependable but unimaginative. I don’t think that’s fully the case but he isn’t the person to push things in my eyes either. He has complaints but he does what he’s asked of and is loyal. More of a “Are you sure” Man than a “Yes” Man. I don’t think he sees the best in the people around him but prefers to see them as static. I take this with how hard it is to convince him that Benny is a traitor and how he seems shocked you are so ready to kill him. Things run a certain why and it’s why he likes that. It’s why he’s so good a managing The Tops. He wants things to run smooth and easy and everyone to be having a time. He’s the type to struggle with a shift in change at first but then forget why when the new song and dance start to come naturally. He plays the part just like Benny but also reminds him of what they came from. He’s his most trusted advisor and friend keeps him in focus.

This is all personal opinion and just a quick run down of it. But I hope I answered at least some of what you asked:p

[alectology-archive]

TPoD chapters 7, 8, 9, 10:

I’m done! and this was the worst fucking experience of my life! I’m never rereading any of Perrin’s plotlines, sorry. It was far worser than I remember it being.

consensus is still out on whether or not perrin is interested in berelain. I understand his noticing her perfume - he can’t help that. I don’t vibe with him saying she needs to dress a certain way or deliberately trying to pick out hints of flirtation when she’s literally just discussing their next course of action. 

- It is so weird to see perrin talking about how he only gets along with and trusts grady and neald and doesn’t trust any of the women in his group. partly because they have differing opinions about how to go about accomplishing certain tasks. it’s also really weird that this happens on the heels of dumai’s wells where the asha’man brutally slaughtered the shaido, too. the gender essentialism in this series really brings down its overall quality. Another point to note is the fact that perrin gets along with the the two guys who’ve been taught (by rand) to cultivate no personality apart from being soldiers + he avoids any actual interaction with people who have strong opinions. 

- I think I don’t like reading about faile when she’s around perrin sadfjkdhf - it’s like perrin’s default mode is managing to push some trigger that manages to piss her off. I like her and think she could’ve been a great character if she’d never interacted with perrin though. And although I complain about the shaido plot a lot faile’s POVs in it were fantastic - partly because she’s divorced from Perrin’s presence - and were such a treat to read.

- honestly this section of his POV is kind of pointless. I don’t think there’s any need for faile, seonid + wise ones and berelain to fight for the right to approach alliandre - rand specifically chose berelain to approach her with annoura! But narratively it does do a very good job of establishing the fact that there are many power dynamics at play here, which I think that was what RJ might have been trying to establish.

seonid is so gay

He’s fully making shit up at this point. Just let her exist, oh my god. Why is he looking for a flirtation in every gesture??? Literally it’s hard to not believe that Perrin fully encourages Berelain to keep hitting on him.

evidence not found. this is a telling more than a showing so far.

- Morgase is another female character who gets caught up in this useless plot ugh. It’s just trauma sequences after trauma sequence for Morgase and I pity her so much.

This is with reference to morgase just because she was very mildly rude to him despite his insisting that aram not call him a lord moments before - also I don’t like the way perrin talks about women yeuch

- I think RJ being a “discover as I write” sort of writer does affect how he writes a lot - there are some clarifications for plot that don’t necessarily always make sense later on. there are also introductions to things characters struggle with without any real basis for it and sometimes manages to be all over the place - mostly perrin and his relationship with violence and responsibility was done very badly (the show does better on the front but it obviously had a whole established canon to work with already which is always an easier task).

- masema & the cult plotline is integral to exploring the various facets of how the dragon reborn affects the cultural and religious landscape in the continent, just like how the seanchan are important narratively to explore how a flipped power dynamic between channelers and non channelers would look. rand is not a saviour - RJ hammers that point in constantly - but he plays a role that’s very closely associated with saviourism since a) it’s so tied up with the struggle versus good and evil b) has a history of false dragons fashioning themselves as saviours, so cults are naturally a very interesting angle to explore. but also like every other plotline perrin touches, it fails to be dealt with in any interesting way. I genuinely enjoyed what we saw of it in TFoH and I hate that it eventually deteriorates into a mess.

where is the struggle against violence. I just don’t get it. why is killing with a hammer better than killing with an axe? I still don’t get it.

perrin: killing? violence? I don’t care. I’ll do it all for faile. 

ugh. I guess that is the point of the whole shaido arc but I still can’t bring myself to care about it.

and yet.jpg. why is it that perrin is obsessing over his followers not following his orders to the T while he’s disregarding all of rand’s instructions? I hate him so much. 

Well! my earlier point stands! why the fuck does perrin get along with them better than with the women. lol.

- I hate SO much that the mantheren plotline was passed on to perrin. I hate it!! on principle I can’t stand the thought of a dead nation being resurrected in that fashion because it falls back on uncomfortable ideas of (mostly) autocratic rulers using history to justify their rule and manipulate people into accepting it. I also hate that it gets rid of the semi-democratic rule the two rivers had. but there were ways in which it could’ve been executed well - I really liked how the band of the red hand was sort of resurrected in the same fashion (although that was mostly a symbolism thing, obviously). in conclusion: give the plotline back to mat!!

- Arrela! hi! she’s described as “tall and dark” and masculine. one of THE canonical lesbians. 

I mean at least Faile looks out for the people who follow her. Perrin has exactly ONE guy who’s super attached to him and he manages to let even him down.

- TBH a plot mostly focussed on convincing Alliandre to join them and seeing the women do politics in Ghealdan - and also potentially dealing with a more whitecloack/amadicia focused plot - would have been a far more interesting plotline than Perrin wandering around the countryside trying to save his kidnapped wife.

- ohhh now that perrin mentioned them I’m sad we didn’t see more of the algai’d’siswai! they were just as fascinating as the prophet plotline still was back in book 5 but RJ just kind of forgot about it. 

- Faile convinces perrin not to inform rand about news of seanchan in amador because ‘maighdin’ tells her that messengers and pigeons were carrying the news anywhere. Hand Of The Author, I see you. Rand needed that news! How long would it take an asha’man to inform him and hop back to ghealdan? why is travelling never used to the extent it should be in the books?

here’s a suggestion! stop smelling her all the time! A person’s thoughts on a matter will never necessarily reflect what they’re feeling because emotional responses are at the very best knee-jerk reactions and can’t be controlled or modulated the way logic can be!

- I can’t emphasise this enough but their ‘romance’ is non-existent. They make terrible partners! They’re too different to make things work. (This is not to say people who’re unalike can’t get along - but Perrin and Faile are no Elayne and Aviendha).

- I do like Lini as a character but I think my fondness for her dropped significantly after she tried to have morgase and tallanvor forcibly married. I hate it so much, and I don’t really like that she’s so rude and forceful with morgase after everything she endured in amador - I do get that she’s concerned that their cover will be blown, but... I refuse lol. I don’t like this plotline. morgase should’ve gone back to caemlyn - faile would’ve still shone in her shaido plotline even if morgase hadn’t been a part of it. I hate powerful women suddenly being shoved into servant-master dynamics!!! it happened with siuan once already! why aren’t the men forced to do such things?

- I do genuinely believe RJ enjoyed writing his women a lot but I don’t like his choice to make women inflict shame on themselves as a form of punishment in order to repent their actions. It goes hand in hand with a lot of (evil) female characters ending up enslaved & the female forsaken being abused to be taught a lesson. 

- ‘Tallanvor was too young’ sir, you literally paired moiraine and thom & gareth and siuan & morgase and thom 😭

(with reference to seonid and masuri being apprentices)

I think. I think brandon sanderson came up with the idea that an apprentice should just Know when they’re fit to be a wise one. I definitely got that feeling while I was reading the books because it was such a Brandon Sanderson thing and kind of nonsensical, honestly. It was just a ploy to keep aviendha away from rand in the gathering storm. ugh, I’m going to blame him for min and aviendha not bonding too. 

- If a man uses the word ‘wench’ he goes down on my shit list! so elyas is on my shit list! if he wasn’t already, for being the source which delivers the news that saldaean women like their husbands to take a firm hand with them or whatever.

- was I always predisposed to disliking perrin because I hate werewolves? possibly.

- alliandre!!!!

WHATEVER WAS NECESSARY TO SECURE THE ALLIANCE, BASICALLY??? What else would berelain tell alliandre -

- honestly shout out to alliandre for making the best of so many terrible situations. she had to deal with the prophet, the threat of the seanchan, the threat of rand once he conquered illian, and then perrin trying to ‘raise manetheren’ and the shaido.

and yet he gets mad when faile is less subtle when she’d trying to guide/influence him.

- worldbuilding notes: perrin can apparently smell desperation but not guilt, lol.

lmaoooo I actually did enjoy this faile POV a lot since perrin wasn’t in it! even if she and berelain sort of bickered! but it wasn’t annoying at all, and was kind of fun, actually.

- Berelain supports faile when she’s discussing politics with alliandre even if faile just technically insulted her! I love her.

faile, that’s gay.

- Berelain is very pleased with one of faile’s manipulations of alliandre!

[Total count for the number of times berelain tried pursuing perring romantically in the path of daggers: 0]

Yeah, I think I’m going to stick with the line that perrin never gives berelain a firm no. Would this have stopped her from pursuing him? It’s hard to say because she’s angling for political advantage, but faile mentions that perrin conducts himself as if he believes he’s a prize that berelain and faile have to struggle over. And he’s constantly using his enhanced senses to predict what faile is feeling instead of asking her what she’s thinking which are two very different things! I just. I honestly don’t know how RJ could have enjoyed writing any of his POVs, lol, they’re so boring and full of contrived conflicts. He should’ve killed perrin off in the middle of the series because it would’ve done a good job of building tension (although he probably would have never done that even if he’d considered it since he’d established that perrin and mat would play integral roles to secure rand’s success in the last battle).

[nicknellie]

For months I’ve been saying I’d write a fic where Alex starts counselling because this fandom is in desperate need of good therapy representation, and I’ve finally got around to it! This follows Alex deciding he wants to get therapy, having his first assessment, and having his first session. Most of it is pulled from my experiences so far, but bare in mind that not all therapists/organisations will function the way this one does. Also I’m very tired and I didn’t proofread so I’m sorry for any errors, I’ll fix them at another point.

TW: anxiety, therapy, mentions of depression, mentions of homophobia, mentions of OCD

The Right Decision

It was another one of those days where Alex felt exhausted from the moment he woke up. Not exhausted in that he needed to sleep longer (although admittedly that was probably a part of it), just exhausted because here was another day he had to get through, another challenge he had to overcome, another stressful sixteen hours of endless worries and things to do. Sometimes Alex felt like there was no escape, no rest, no pause in his life. He had to keep going no matter how drained he felt.

It was exhausting.

Everything felt like too much nowadays. Between going to school and sitting exams, playing with the band, and keeping up with his friends, Alex felt as if he had no time to breathe. He couldn’t slow down for longer than a moment or two before along came the next thing and the next barrage of anxieties that accompanied it. He couldn’t catch his breath, he couldn’t keep up, and it was dragging him down.

What he couldn’t understand was how nobody else seemed to feel quite as worried as him. He had always been more anxious than his friends, that was nothing new – but when everyone he knew had mostly the same stresses as him, it struck him as impossible that none of them seemed too overwhelmed. Perhaps every now and then Luke would complain about an exam at school or Reggie would mention that he was having trouble sleeping, but none of Alex’s friends ever mentioned weak legs, trouble breathing, clouded thoughts, needless panic that stemmed from nowhere, the feeling that nothing they did was really worth much at all.

Recently, Alex’s days had been muddled, his mind occupied with each new worry that he thought up. He was finding it hard to focus on much at all. He’d find his leg bouncing whenever he sat down or his fingers scratching at his knees, little repetitive movements that he wouldn’t notice until somebody pointed them out. He struggled sleeping at night, his mind racing at the speed of light, every nonsensical thought keeping him awake like the world’s most pessimistic firework display. When he was around his friends, his mind snagged on what they thought about him – he began acting the way he thought they wanted him to rather than the way he normally would have.

It felt like he was constantly pretending to be coping better than he was. If he carried on the way he was, he knew sooner or later he would break.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said that morning, sat on the opposite side of the sofa to Willie. He had stayed the night at Willie’s place, vastly preferring it to his own – his strained relationship with his parents wasn’t exactly doing him a world of good either.

“About what?” Willie asked, kicking their feet up onto the sofa and resting them in Alex’s lap.

The question was strangely hard to answer. Where was he even supposed to begin answering it?

“About me,” he ventured slowly. It seemed like a good start, he just wasn’t sure how to carry on.

“I think about you a lot too,” Willie said, beaming. “It’s one of my favourite pastimes.”

Normally, Alex might have blushed, but he was so caught up in his own head that the flirtatious nature of Willie’s comment flew right over his head.

Willie sat up, looking concerned. He took Alex’s hand in his own, dragging Alex down from his addled thoughts. “What’s going on, hotdog? What have you been thinking?”

“I’ve not been finding things easy recently,” Alex began. He hadn’t expected tears to fill his eyes so soon, and yet there they were. His voice wavered, his words interspersed with sniffles. Frustrated, he sighed and wiped roughly at his eyes with his sleeve, annoyed that this was all getting to him so easily. “I… I can’t explain it.”

Willie reached up and gently pulled Alex’s tight fists away from his eyes and instead wiped Alex’s tears away softly with his thumb. “Take your time,” they said. “It’s alright. I’m listening.”

“I just… I feel so nervous. All the time. About every little thing. And it feels like it’s getting worse. I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

One of the things Alex loved most about Willie was that he was never pushy. He always let Alex talk as and when he needed to, getting everything off his chest the way he wanted, even if it took hours. They did it now, just holding Alex’s hand, their eyes fixed on him attentively. From someone else, the unbroken eye contact might have just unnerved Alex even more, but from Willie it felt reassuring. He knew he was being listened to and heard – he knew he was safe.

“I want to get help,” he breathed. “I don’t want to carry on the way I am. It scares me.”

“If you want to get help, then that’s exactly what we’ll do,” Willie told him, threading their fingers together. “And Alex – it might not feel like it, but you’re so brave for telling me that. It can’t have been easy, but I’m proud of you for telling me instead of just struggling through by yourself.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Alex asked apprehensively. Willie was always supportive of him, but it was such a drastic change from the way his parents treated him that sometimes he couldn’t help but check it was all real.

Willie smiled gently and cupped Alex’s cheek with his hand. His eyes fluttered shut and he leaned into the touch, so he couldn’t see Willie when they replied but he could hear the honestly in his voice. “I think it’ll be really helpful for you. And if it’s what you think you need then it’s worth trying no matter what.”

“Thank you,” Alex whispered, barely audible, throat clogged with suppressed sobs.

“Anything, Alex.”

The two of them spent hours researching different therapists and counsellors. Willie carried out extensive background checks on every one of them – at first Alex thought that maybe it was a bit much, but Willie was adamant that only the best would do, that he didn’t want anyone with a chequered past or a dodgy record.

Eventually they came across a charity that offered free counselling. The sessions would take place at the same time on the same day each week and they could go on for as long as Alex needed. He would be assigned the counsellor deemed most fit to treat him after completing an assessment, and the organisation appeared to have very good reviews and success rates.

“We don’t have to sign you up today,” Willie explained, “not if you think it’ll be too much too soon. But it’s worth keeping in mind that this place is probably a good one to go for.”

Alex thought for a moment before making his mind up. He knew himself – if he kept putting it off because he was nervous about it then he would never get around to doing it at all.

“Let’s do it now,” he said resolutely, trying to sound confident in the hopes that maybe he’d believe he wasn’t so nervous himself. “Get it out of the way. It’s now or never, right?”

Willie just kissed the top of his head and clicked the application button at the bottom of the webpage.

*

A week or so later, Alex received an email informing him of when his assessment would take place. It seemed like a very informal thing – someone from the charity would phone him, they’d have a casual chat where they would ask him about himself, and they’d offer him either a space on their waiting list or suggest somewhere else that might be able to help him better.

Despite how friendly and casual it all sounded, Alex couldn’t help but feel nervous. For one thing, he hated talking to strangers. He’d never been good at it and the whole idea made him feel sick with worry. Though, he supposed, that was why he was going through with this whole thing, to make that worry stop.

But the other issue was that it was a phone appointment. Inexplicably, one of the things guaranteed to cause Alex anxiety was phone calls. The thought of picking up the phone when somebody rang was enough to make his head spin and eyes water. Just the notion of it made him want to lock himself away in a lonely dark room and not come out until he felt he could breathe again. It was painfully ironic – he had to do the things that made him most anxious in order to get help with his anxiety.

When the time of the appointment came, Alex was sat on Willie’s bed by himself, staring at his phone, waiting for it to ring. Willie had kindly offered to be in the room with him, but Alex had declined. Even though Willie was the most supportive person in his life, having them in the room while he had his assessment would have made it a thousand times more difficult.

The phone rang and for a moment Alex considered just not picking up. Was it worth making himself even more worried over this? Maybe he could learn to cope with his anxiety alone instead of getting all worked up over receiving help. He’d managed just fine in the past.

But you’re not managing just fine right now, Alex, he reminded himself. Pick up the phone.

“Hello?” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice level.

“Hi,” came a voice on the other end. It was an airy, soft-spoken lady, and though Alex couldn’t see her he could imagine her sat in her office, surrounded by motivational posters and dreamcatchers, wearing far too many scarves. “My name is Elizabeth. I’m calling for your mental health assessment. I just need to confirm who I’m speaking to.”

“Alex Mercer,” he said, glad he could answer that first question right at the very least. And sure, maybe the other questions he would be asked didn’t have specific right or wrong answers, but he still felt as if he had something to prove with them. Here at least he knew what he was doing.

“And your age and date of birth please, Alex,” Elizabeth asked. He could hear the faint scratching of a pen on paper.

“I’m eighteen and my birthday is the first of August.”

A tiny voice in the back of his mind questioned him, but he pushed it away. He wasn’t going to overthink so quickly. He knew what his own birthday was.

“Great, thank you, Alex,” Elizabeth said. “So I’m just going to talk you through how this will work quickly, okay? I’ll try not to take too long with the whole assessment, I know sometimes talking on the phone or talking to strangers can be tricky. All that’s really going to happen is that we’ll have a little chat, I’ll ask you about your life and your mental health. Everything we say will be confidential, the only other person who’ll find out is the person we assign as your counsellor. All I need you to do is be as honest as possible when you answer the questions. Is that all okay?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. His throat felt tight with worry but he did his best to ignore it. Elizabeth sounded like a lovely lady and the whole point of this was that he would stop being anxious, or at least learn to manage it better. Maybe this bit was hard, but it would only get easier as time went on. “That’s alright.”

“Fantastic,” she said. “Okay, Alex, we’ll start with the most obvious question: why do you want to come to us for counselling?”

He told her what he had told Willie, just with fewer tears. He could feel them stinging the backs of his eyes, but he refused to let them fall. His voice stayed level but only because he forced it too.

From then on, it seemed like fairly quickfire questions. Elizabeth didn’t linger on any one aspect of Alex’s life so long that it made Alex uncomfortable, as if she was just sizing him up rather than trying to properly inspect him.

“Who do you live with, Alex?”

“My parents and my little sister, but I don’t spend a lot of time at home.”

“Do you not get on with them?” she asked. Her tone made her sound curious rather than concerned and somehow that was a lot easier for Alex to respond to. She just wanted to know – she wasn’t worried about it.

“My little sister’s fine, but not my parents.”

“Where do you stay instead?”

“My boyfriend’s apartment.”

Pen scratching on paper again.

“How’s your relationship with your boyfriend?” Elizabeth asked.

It was one of the only questions Alex felt confident answering. “My relationship with Willie is the best thing in my life.”

He thought he could hear Elizabeth’s smile as she said, “I’m very glad to hear that, Alex.”

She asked him about his friendships and he told her that they were strong. When she asked who his best friend was he momentarily panicked because he didn’t know which of his friends to choose – they all meant the world to him in different ways – but settled on Carrie. He explained that he was in a band with most of his other friends and that it was one of the only things that made him feel relaxed.

Elizabeth asked about school and Alex told her about his exams, how the stress of them definitely wasn’t doing his mind any good. She asked about his grades and he told her that they were high but he worried about keeping them that way. She asked him if he was part of any clubs or teams and he said he was on the cross-country team but didn’t find much enjoyment in it anymore.

It was odd, he thought absently. As he spoke to Elizabeth, he not only found himself being open and honest with her but also with himself. Half the things he told her were things he hadn’t thought about until she brought them up, and realising that he worried about grades more than he’d thought and that he didn’t want to be on the running team was more of a surprise to him that it should have been. He noticed more and more things about himself as he went on, things he probably never would have realised otherwise, and it sparked a little flame of hope inside him that maybe this counselling was already being beneficial to him.

The assessment was over much more quickly than Alex had thought it would take. Elizabeth told him that she was happy to put him on the waiting list and that she would be in touch when a counsellor became available. After a friendly goodbye, Alex put the phone down and took a few minutes to collect himself before heading out into the living room of Willie’s apartment to tell him how well it had gone.

*

It was a month or two before Alex heard from the charity again. He got another email, this one telling him the time and location of his first appointment. He showed up on the day, Willie by his side, feeling the worst he’d felt in weeks.

“Hey,” Willie said gently as Alex just stared at the door, his stomach flipping at the thought of even pressing the intercom. “Just remember you’re doing this to help yourself. I believe in you, hotdog. You’ve got this.”

Alex pulled Willie into a brief hug, but disentangled himself quickly and pressed the intercom before his adrenaline disappeared and he had another chance to dwell on it.

“Hello,” came the voice of the receptionist inside. “How can I help?”

“My name is Alex Mercer, I’m here for my counselling session,” he said. He wasn’t sure how much of his sentence actually sounded like words, the entire thing having been rushed out on one breath, but the receptionist seemed to get it. The lock on the door clicked open.

“Come on in, you can sit in the waiting room and your counsellor will come and get you soon.”

Alex took a deep breath and pushed the door open, Willie following close behind him as the two of them walked into the building. The waiting room was on the left as soon as they walked in so they took their seats beside each other. There was hardly anyone else in there – the receptionist was sat behind the desk in the corner, there was a lady flicking through a magazine on the other side of the waiting room, and a young man was sat with a toddler, trying to keep the little boy still when clearly all he wanted to do was run around. The walls were covered in posters, most of them either with motivation quotes on them or symptoms of different mental health issues. Alex had to tear his eyes away from the anxiety one, his hands rubbing together in his lap restlessly.

They weren’t sat there for very long when a kind-looking man poked his head into the waiting room and scanned it. When his eyes landed on Alex and Willie, a small smile grew on his face.

“Alex Mercer?” he asked.

Alex stood up and wiped his sweaty hands down on his trousers. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Nice to meet you, Alex,” the man said. “I’m Graham, I’ll be your counsellor. Is this your boyfriend?”

“Yeah, this is Willie,” Alex said, gesturing vaguely in his direction.

“Hi,” they said, “great to meet you.”

“You too,” Graham said. “Alex, Willie can come in with you for a little bit if you think that would make you more comfortable, or he could stay here in the waiting room and it’ll just be you and I in there. Whatever you prefer.”

Alex cast a glance at Willie who just gave him a reassuring smile. Your call, their expression said, I’m here for you no matter what.

“I’d rather go in alone,” Alex decided.

Graham nodded, smiling genially. “That’s alright. If you’d like to follow me then.”

Sending one last look to Willie (who gave Alex a thumbs up and mouthed ‘you got this’), Alex followed Graham out of the waiting room, up a flight of stairs, and into a smaller room on the second floor. There was hardly anything in there but a desk with a laptop on it and two chairs positioned opposite each other, a coffee table between them with a lamp and a box of tissues on it. Graham sat down in one chair and gestured for Alex to sit in the other.

“Alright, Alex,” Graham said, donning his glasses and picking up a pen and paper. “How are you feeling about being here today?”

“I’m a little nervous,” Alex told him. “But you know… it’s something I’ve got to do, right?”

Graham nodded. “Looking at your assessment, I think you made the right decision in coming to us. I just want to briefly explain what will be happening in these sessions – I’m going to be doing CBT. Do you know what that is?”

Alex shook his head.

“CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy,” Graham explained. “As people, we have thoughts. Those thoughts influence our mood, which then influences our behaviour, which influences our thoughts. It’s a cycle. When our thoughts or our behaviours turn negative, it can lead to mental health problems like yours. What CBT aims to do is change the thought processes and behaviours that lead to things like your anxiety. With me so far?”

Alex nodded.

“We aren’t going to start that today,” Graham said. Alex breathed a sigh of relief and Graham chuckled at it, but not in a way that made Alex feel like he was being made fun of. “Today we’re just going to get to know each other a bit, we’ll go over the information I’ve got from your assessment in a little more detail, and then I’ve got a questionnaire for you to fill out. Sound good?”

“Good,” Alex said. Well, he supposed, getting one word out was better than none at all.

Graham pulled out a few sheets of paper and the two of them spent the next half hour or so going over the assessment Elizabeth had conducted. It was a lot more detailed, a lot more personal, and Alex needed to think about himself a lot more than he would have liked, but it was made easier by Graham’s easy-going personality and the fact that Alex’s knew it was all necessary. He wasn’t being judged for any of it, he was just helping Graham help him.

It just felt like a chat with a friend. When they talked about Alex’s parents and he explained they weren’t supporting of his sexuality, Graham said, “When I told my folks that I’m bisexual they had a similar reaction. I understand it – you’re not alone, Alex.”

And as he said that, Alex really felt it was true. He was understood here. He wasn’t alone.

They talked about Alex’s trouble sleeping, how he worried about the little things rather than anything really important, how he was a picky eater, and every detail that seemed insignificant but clearly meant something to Graham. It felt a little invasive, but the environment was comfortable, so Alex didn’t really mind sharing. It was ridiculously easy to say everything on his mind and so much more freeing than keeping his emotions bottled up like normal.

“Alright then,” Graham said eventually. “All I’ve got left is this questionnaire. It’ll take you through forty-seven questions and all of the answers give you a choice between always, often, sometimes, or never. Sometimes it’s quite obvious what the question is getting at – there’s one about repetitive routines that’s obviously about OCD – but I want you to answer as honestly as possible, don’t even think about what it might do to your results. Alright?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, “that’s fine.”

Graham led Alex through the questionnaire, selecting the answers on his laptop. Alex tried to answer quickly, not giving himself time to overthink it, but a few of the simplest ones stumped him. He’d never thought about how much he thought about death, he’d never paid any mind to his specific behaviours. But still, he answered as best he could and the questions were over relatively quickly.

“Looking at your results,” Graham said, pushing his glasses further up his nose and squinting at the laptop screen, “you answered most highly for general anxiety – you got twenty-nine for that. Then social anxiety, you got twenty. Depression and low mood, you got sixteen. For panic disorder you got fourteen, eleven for OCD, and five for separation anxiety. Does any of that surprise you?”

“Not in the slightest,” Alex told him, laughing at himself a little. It was exactly what he would have expected from himself – he wasn’t quite sure what the numbers really meant, but having general anxiety at the top wasn’t a shock to him.

“So what we’ll do each week from now on is fill out a smaller one of those, but it will be more focused on general anxiety, only eight or nine questions long. And we’ll start your CBT next week so these little questionnaires will be very helpful to track your progress. But that’s it for this week! You’re done, Alex, you made it!”

Alex felt himself smile. He’d done it. It hadn’t been nearly as difficult as he had thought it would be – it felt like there had been a weight lifted from his shoulders and he could breathe easily. His mind briefly wandered back to how anxious he’d been to even press the intercom outside; now he felt the lightest he’d been in as long as he could remember.

He and Graham said their goodbyes and Alex made his way back down to the waiting room to see get Willie. When he saw the bright smile Alex wore, Willie’s face lit up and he beamed.

“How was that?” they asked, immediately slipping his hand into Alex’s.

“Really good,” Alex told them. Willie’s face softened – there was a definite look of pride in their eyes and Alex knew it was for him. “I’m glad I’m doing this.”

Standing up on his tiptoes, Willie pressed a featherlight kiss to Alex’s cheek. “I’m glad. I’m proud of you, hotdog.”

“I’m proud of me too,” Alex said. For the first time in a very long while, he actually meant it.

*

Taglist (if you want to be added or removed just let me know): @ace-bookworm @williexmercer @boggie-brainrot @itstiger720 @the-reckless-and-the-brave @that-one-newsie @bluedarkness @lookingthroughmirrors @tmp-jatp @salty-star @julieandthequeers @lmaohuh @sunnysbright @sylphrenas @callmeontheleyline

[yandere-sins]

Be safe (Atsumu)

Summary: You are to marry the fox spirit Kita Shinsuke after you accidentally agreed to become his wife by signing the deed to your new home. A contract is a contract, he says, but is there more to this marriage than you know? Will you be whisked away by one of the foxy twins instead, or have to marry Kita after all? Can you be with a creature that only seems tender on the surface, or will you try to run even if it might cost you your life? Choose your route carefully, you never know what these foxes are up to!

Characters: Kitsune!Miya Atsumu x afab!Reader

Rating: Explicit    

Warnings for this chapter: Yandere, Forced/Unhealthy Relationship, Manipulation, Mention of blood

“But if you leave, they’ll find you.”

Again, you couldn’t argue with that. You couldn’t argue with anything he said; not, when he was so right about it.

It had been days now, perhaps a week since you two left the village. Time passed quicker when you were hunted and always had someone on your heels, so you lost track of it. It moved especially fast if these someones had long jaws and big teeth, trying to maul you no matter if you were awake or asleep. If you didn’t see them while you wandered the forests by Atsumu’s side - stumbling and failing to keep up with him no matter how hard you tried - then they’d come to you in your nightmare-filled hours of sleep. You weren’t sure if you were cursed or ridden with remorse, but you had never been so constantly exhausted in your whole life before.

No matter how safe your current location was, you caught yourself looking over your shoulder all the time, double-checking your surroundings. Sometimes, subconsciously, you held yourself back from touching trees or kicked away your footsteps when there was time for it. Paranoia was a constant companion, and it wasn’t any better than the person you actually were traveling with.

There was no hiding it how bad of a travel companion Atsumu was. His constant picking on your abilities, the insults, and trashing wasn’t only going on your nerves but even deeper, down to your confidence and strength. When you two were talking, it was mostly arguing with each other or you telling him you couldn’t take another step without collapsing. The few times that you stood up for yourself, Atsumu made it crystal clear there was nowhere to go. 

“But if you leave, they’ll find you,” was his new go-to sentence whenever you dared to defy him. As if he liked to remind you that the choice between pest and cholera you made wasn’t going to guarantee you freedom from the other. Atsumu might be the pest in your life at the moment, but there was something just as or even worse ever-present, ready to lash at you the moment you distanced yourself from the fox spirit.

Perhaps Atsumu wasn’t the prince you wanted, but you came to realize he was the fox you needed.

You couldn’t keep count of the times you two had been attacked on your journey, not specifically by other foxes, but there had been many other creatures that seemed to want to pick a bone with your protector. Whether it had been because of you or simply because they seemed to have a specific interest in Atsumu, these fights always were more gruesome than your innocent, human heart wanted to see. One or two times, there had been a critical amount of blood lost after a fight, but so far, you two had managed to get out of it every time. Those were nerve-wracking times, and you had thought about simply leaving Atsumu where he hid himself to recover, so you could run away. Perhaps it would have saved both of you some trouble if you separated, and maybe you would have been safer on your own, hiding and dodging the things that came after you. 

But were you really? Thoughts flooded your mind almost instantly about the things that could happen when you were on your own. Most of the time, you didn’t even know where you were, stranded in the middle of the forest, and even if you knew, where would you go? You couldn’t go back to your’ home’ as it wasn’t a safe place for you anymore. And if you asked for help, the best anyone could do was bring you back there, where ultimately, you’d be found. You didn’t want to think about what would happen if another person tried to interfere with this particular situation you were in. What would happen to them.

Somehow, seeing him wounded and whiny, you couldn’t bring it over you to abandon him like that. Of course, there were more factors playing into why you’d stay by his side instead of leave, but you were still struggling with accepting them all. Even if he probably would have survived without you, you made yourself believe you felt indebted to at least try to help him, perhaps tend to his wounds amateurishly. In the end, you rather endure his grumbles and moans than to really leave him, and that should have told you everything right back then. 

It should have told you what kind of coward you were.

You were scared of the marriage, having wanted nothing more than run away. But now you were scared of the consequences - your life, even. To some degree, Atsumu was scary too. You saw him - his real from - and you watched him fight. If he wanted, he could kill you in one bite with his giant maw, and so, staying with him was scary. But he didn’t. Quite on the contrary, and even more so, against his harsh words, he still held your hand gently, warmed you at night by laying down next to you so you wouldn’t get cold, and brought you food. You stopped asking where he got it, checking the freshness date on the packages only to find them being practically new. Yes, you were curious, but he had his ways, and he never got you the same thing twice, and especially not if you seemed to have disliked it. 

This journey wasn’t quite what you expected your life to be, but every day, it was taking new paths and let you experience more things. Even if civilization was close, you began to forget and yearn less for it, the longer you spent time with Atsumu outdoors. Of course, there were things you absolutely missed, like normal baths and, well, fridges to open even if you aren’t hungry, but Atsumu’s drive to move forward was stronger than your desire to go back to normality again. And really, there was less and less to complain about because if you did, he’d take care of it. He’d run and fetch you new clothes or yarn to fix small holes in yours. If you were cold, he found you fur to wear, and if you two crossed paths with a river, he let you wash up even without looking - you hoped.

Over time, he was less and less an annoyance as he was a caretaker. Though his walking pace never slowed to something you could match, he still stopped ever so often to wait for you or even offered to carry you on your worst days. Riding a gigantic fox wasn’t comfortable, but efficient, and holding on to him tightly, the wind never won over the warmth coming from him. 

Still, and you assumed Atsumu knew this as much as you did, this arrangement you two had wasn’t something meant to last.

“I know they’ll find me,” you whispered, thoughtfully dragging your hand over the arm he laid around you, spooning you from behind so you wouldn’t be cold. The makeshift dip in the ground you two used as a bit of a cover for the night was anything but comfortable, but having something breathing and warm lay beside you and hold you did a lot for you. “But… this life… I can’t live it either.”

He grumbled something into the back of your head, his voice lost inside your hair. Surely, it was just another complaint, but you understood what he wanted to say. To him, you going back and living a relatively everyday, human life was out of question, Atsumu always insisting that you’d be found and killed if you left his side. You offered for him to come with you, to live a ‘normal’ life with you despite your gut telling you he would be the largest annoyance you ever encountered. Still, he shied away from it. 

From what you had found out, he and his brother - Osamu - only recently joined the other foxes who, against what the two were, lived relatively civilized even though they kept themselves hidden from the public still. Meaning, the brothers were actually fox spirits much more feral than the others and not used to humans or how they behaved. Atsumu explained that with a stern expression, unlike his usual chipper one. Personally, he’d rather describe himself as ‘fun’, but apparently, even he knew the differences that separated the two from the clan. 

Living like humans didn’t seem like an option for him after centuries of being wild. But to expect the same amount of enthusiasm he had for nature, slowly but surely, seemed to also dawn on him as impossible. It became evidently clear that it wasn’t just your state of being that collided with each other, but generally two wholly different worlds that just didn’t fit. If you liked the day, he liked the night. You preferred warm water, and he cold - he the mountains, rather than the beach and warm sea. 

It seemed impossible that you two would ever get on the same level of understanding, and you were painfully aware that one of you would have to cave in if you two decided to stick together for a better chance of survival. Your mind began to buzz as you thought over all the possibilities, making you fear that there was another night of restless dozing incoming. 

“So you want to leave me… too.”

His whispers barely reached you while your head was focused entirely on different things, but his voice made you listen up. “What did you say?” you mumbled, slurring your words as you felt the heaviness of the drowsy half-sleep that you had already been under. Atsumu’s hold around you became tighter, and he pressed himself right up to you, almost as if he was trying to melt into you and hide, but your stirred, feeling alerted by the change of moods, making it impossible for him.

“If you go, I’ll be all alone…” he mumbled softly. Meeting his gaze head-on turned out to be an unfortunate action, your heart feeling a throbbing pain. For the better portion of the time spent with him, you had cursed Atsumu under your breath, wished for him to leave, and especially keep his potty mouth shut. But right now, he looked like a baby animal, with wide eyes and puppy gaze. A being you’d rather protect and coddle instead of the monstrosity he actually was. 

Perhaps he was uncomfortable, realizing you could see his feelings, so he quickly hid his expression in your shoulder, putting on a fake laugh as he spoke. “I can’t go back either, and my brother didn’t want to come. So if you go… I’ll be truly alone.”

Biting your lip, you felt an incoming headache press on your brain. The sudden change of feelings inside you was raging war against the ideas of the future you had been building in your mind and thought over. It was true, so much you knew, Atsumu left a lot to break you out and run away, no matter how much he seemed to think humans were worthless beings. Maybe that was the reason that he kept insisting on sticking around with you and tried to keep you satisfied even if his words were as harsh as bites. 

In some ways, that made him the same as you. Both of you only had the other one left and nothing else.

Even before realizing this, you had noticed how Atsumu was treated by other creatures. If he wasn’t fighting someone, even spiritual beings seemed to want little to do with him, huffing and leaving with a scowl. You couldn’t know if there wasn’t at least one other friend he had, but currently, it didn’t seem like he was very much liked by others besides his brother, who he spoke fondly off most of the time. Though you wondered why, you didn’t voice these questions, instead trying to think of what to do.

Happiness clearly looked different to you, but Atsumu’s taunts aside, he wasn’t as bad as that he’d deserve being robbed of it too. Even if separating seemed like the best way in the long run, it broke your heart knowing he’d be in this predicament just because of you and because you made the more selfish decision. Perhaps if you two knew each other longer, he would become gentler in his choice of words? Maybe he’d be more considerate and kind once he got to know you as not just the ‘human’ but actually as an individual? There was still the possibility he’d change, right?

“I’m…” you spoke up, not having thought about it twice. “I’m not leaving.”

“You’re not?” he immediately chimed up, pushing himself up and peering over your shoulder. “You’re going to stay with me?”

“Y-Yeah…” you stuttered, deciding to keep the idea of leaving at a later point in time to yourself. “I’m staying.”

His face suddenly was too close again, warm breath caressing your skin and messing with your head. Your heart picked up the pace as you didn’t know how to respond to the broad smile and delight in his shining eyes. If you turned your head a tiny bit more to the right, you could have kissed him without any more effort. There was something nudging you in your head to do it, but curse your reasonability - or bless it - that you figured that would set more things off than you could handle. 

“Forever?” he asked as innocent as a child, and you gulped, immediately feeling like you were caught in a lie. There was no plan of sticking with him longer than necessary, and ‘forever’ seemed awfully long for some time. Atsumu waited for a reply almost angelically patient. Instead, you felt his face nuzzling against yours, like an affectionate pet would. He genuinely seemed to be happily anticipating your response, and you wondered if it meant so much to him to not be alone anymore. There must have been more loss than you could imagine in his life that he’d be satisfied to be by your side despite him always making it seem like you weren’t up to his standards. 

“Forever is awfully long,” you eventually contemplated out loud, and though you couldn’t see it, you heard the disappointment and frustration in his voice as he spoke up again. 

“And I am supposed to endure it all alone?” 

Of course, it wasn’t fair, you understood it too. You knew he lost a lot too by helping you, and if this was his only requirement, maybe you could fulfill it. It wasn’t like he asked you to serve yourself on a silver plate, and no, he did not need to remind you what the pros and cons were of staying with him. 

With him, at least, you’d be safe from whatever was coming your way. 

He had proven himself more than once to you.

Slowly, you sat up, even though Atsumu’s body followed as if he was an extra limb on you. His touches and closeness never ceased, and you didn’t have the strength or even will to fight it. “I can’t promise forever,” you stated firmly, deciding to put a foot down in this conversation, even though you knew it was time one of you caved in to the other. And it seemed it would be you.

“But for now, I will stay. You’re not alone if I’m around, right?”

For a solid minute, and with the time stretching out the longer it was quiet, you two merely stared at each other, neither of you budging to the other’s stare down. If everything in this world was scary, it might be true that you underestimated Atsumu, but he was the least of your concerns now. He’d yap and snap, but you found some trust in yourself that he wasn’t going to bite you. 

“Pinky swear?” he required softly, being calm once more. With how close he was, only a whisper was appropriated to not burst anyone’s eardrums, and from the corner of your eyes, you saw his hand lift to the height of your head, pinky stretched out in anticipation.

You thought for a second. There was a nudge in the back of your head about supernatural beings and promises, but it was late, and you were tired and your memories fuzzy. Something in you didn’t want to promise it; after all, who could know how long this promise was going to last, and you didn’t want to think of the consequences when breaking it. But if it would end the conversation, and positively too, then who were you to deny him? 

Linking your pinky with his, you felt the fingers curl around each other tightly as if it strengthened the bond you just made. Once he released you again, you sunk down, back into his arms, wondering if you had made a mistake just now. But when you laid your head against his chest, you heard an enthusiastic rhythm coming from it, and it made you almost believe that it was the right choice. 

“Tomorrow, let’s search for a home,” he mumbled. These were words meant for you, but they sounded incomplete as if there was a hint you missed in them. Your eyelids became heavier as you listened to Atsumu’s heartbeat, his warmth lulling you into sleep, and you heaved another deep sigh as you wondered if the feeling of being safe in his arms was justified or just another illusion in your exhaustion. The last thought that crossed you before falling asleep was if this was any different as staying with the clan you tried so hard to escape from. But your mind gave out before you could think about it any more thoroughly.

Little did you know that Atsumu would never ever let you go again. Even if you had told him ‘no’, it wasn’t like it was actually your decision, and with a wagging tail, he looked forward to the new future with you he’d build. One that you couldn’t run from, unlike what awaited you in the past. 

After all, Atsumu was the only one that could keep you safe, and he’d make sure you’d never forget it.

a/n: I can't lie, this chapter was a bit of a struggle for me as I was lacking a clear direction for it, but I hope I was able to make Atsumu's yandere personality in connection with his more real struggles that I think he'd experience, shine through! Do let me know what you thought in the comments or asks and thanks for reading ♥ Next up is Osamu!

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[palmett-hoes]

per your post "every single one of the monsters is autistic and/or adhd" will you elaborate on that?, if you do i will love you forever (not that i wont if you dont do it)

oh boy i would love to!!! unironically nothing brings me more joy than writing long, convoluted character analysis posts

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okay so i’ve written several posts before about why andrew is autistic. his moral code, the roundabout way he communicates, his body language, his stimulation-seeking behavior, his strict adherence to transactional deals, the emphasis on honesty, and a dozen other details. at this point i just take andrew being autistic as fact, not just an interpretation

h o w e v e r  i also hc that andrew is dyslexic, which is also a neurodiverse condition

- - -

similarly, i’ve seen more than one person interpret kevin as autistic, and i absolutely agree that it fits. not just the hyperfocus on exy but mostly the way he communicates. he’s very indirect, especially in his affection but very direct with his opinions. he tries to be helpful in a material way to the people he cares about, even if he comes off as negative. he wants the people he cares about to be safe and successful so he pushes them to work hard and reminds them in measurable ways how to stay healthy. he doesn’t factor in a lot of room for emotions, so instead he focuses on quantifiable things that he can improve. i personally act very similarly. approaching someone emotionally is hard for me, so when the people i care about have problems all i can think to do is try offering solutions, check up on their well-being, etc. practicality instead of conventional sentiment is extremely common with asd

- - -

so now let’s talk about neil. i had to think on this one for a WHILE but ultimately came to the conclusion that neil is adhd, probably hyperactive type. 

like obviously neil is high energy. i would say he probably does the most exercise of anyone on the team. morning run, morning practice, afternoon practice, night practice with kevin and andrew, plus he doesn’t have a car so he runs to class (on a BIG ass campus), and goes for an extra run when he feels stressed. that’s... insane, honestly.

neil reminds me SO MUCH of this post that goes:

“Was just informed by my mom that I do in fact have ADHD and the reason I thought I didn’t was because ever since I was seven whenever I got super energetic my mom would have me go chop wood so now when I’m feeling The ADHD I go chop wood”

(phenomenal post) and that’s neil to a t. tell me this isn’t exactly how neil handles his problems and also exactly what mary would have had to do to keep her unmedicated and very energetic son focused on the task of staying alive

neil also definitely has that ADHD on/off switch with his interest. the obvious being exy which is like the definition of a hyperfixation, but you can see it in other things: the way he runs totally hot or totally cold with people, his complete disinterest in his schoolwork, the way he can’t seem to sit still long enough to follow movies. but then there’s also the hyperfocus. doing the same drill for hours on end. watching exy game after exy game. staring at andrew until time falls away

what’s more, neil on many occasions shows racing thoughts, both in an anxiety way (and anxiety often goes hand-and-hand with adhd) but also as a way to quickly and accurately take in details about people to build a character profile of them. this is what allows him to connect with the foxes, how he manages to get through andrew’s puzzles, and even how he knows what to say in order to knock riko down a peg. his brain just works so fast and it takes in a lot of very specific details and disparate information to make connections.

but also like,, neil has a HUGE problem with time blindness. like the instant he didn’t have his mother around to manage and direct him anymore he lost all sense of time. he stayed in Millport for a YEAR. and what did he keep telling himself during that time? basically “i really need to move on, but not just yet.” for a YEAR! then he gets to palmetto and he’s like “i’ll cut and run in a month or two” then he doesn’t “i’ll be gone by halloween” wrong again “i’ll leave by the raven’s game” nope. like,, the boy just has NO sense of time and he can’t seem to make himself DO anything outside of an externally enforced schedule. and even then,,, HE HAD 48 FUCKING DAYS TO FIGURE OUT SOMETHING TO DO TO NOT GET MURDERED! 48 WHOLE DAYS. he didn’t make a plan, he didn’t write down any letters with goodbyes, he didn’t GO TO THE FBI LIKE HE’D INTENDED TO THE WHOLE TIME! nah he just made out with andrew and when he finally got to zero he was just like “ah shit, that was fast. oh well guess i’ll die” and that’s time blindness, babey!

---

let’s move on to nicky. 

now i think it would be really easy to say nicky is just adhd because he’s high energy and forgetful but tbh,, i don’t think that’s all of it. like if you really look at nicky’s character and especially at his problems, he has asd problems just as much as he has adhd problems.

so nicky is dual diagnosis asd and adhd. also nicky reminds me a lot of a girl i used to know who was autistic/adhd

so, adhd:

very generally speaking, ppl with adhd will struggle with sitting still, listening to and following instructions, planning/organization, following a schedule, and some social boundaries like “appropriate” times and topics of conversation

i would say you see hints of this with nicky. he’s definitely a rambunctious personality, constantly on the move, constantly stimulation seeking. he’s very tactile. he likes to dance, he likes to party, he complains about it but he’s an elite-level athlete. he’s also decidedly very chatty, and doesn’t seem to really pay attention to what he’s saying. he distracts himself and the people around him have to keep him on track. he has some trouble with boundaries. he’s a little all over the place. he’s almost a bit of an adhd stereotype

also one thing i find interesting is that when neil sees him in the library doing work neil is surprised to see he’s capable of that, especially bc when we see the upperclassmen doing work they generally do it in their dorms or on the bus and/or with other people around. that hyper-social nicky would be alone in a quiet place is weird. but this is like the most common tip for dealing with adhd. don’t do it in a familiar space. have a designated space and time to do work. limit distractions. just a lil detail

so now, asd:

in all honesty, most of nicky’s actual problems in the narrative could be viewed as stemming from asd symptoms. his number one issue being that he has a lot of trouble with nonverbal cues (and tbh, verbal ones too). the twins are mostly quiet. andrew especially (when he’s sober) communicates primarily nonverbally, and nicky seems to have a lot of trouble with this. despite knowing them for the longest on the team, nicky honestly seems to have the least insight into the way either of the twins actually thinks or processes things. he loves them, and he’s very forgiving of them, but he fundamentally doesn’t understand them. 

the twins, andrew especially, put up a LOT of nonverbal boundaries, and nicky sort of inadvertently keeps trampling all over them. he’s touchy in a way they don’t like. he talks a lot about their personal lives to other people. he treats them like they’re joking when they’re serious. etc. and like,,, you kind of get the sense that the upperclassmen feel similarly about him. beyond the homophobia, beyond the fact that he’s loyal to andrew, the upperclassmen still treat him with this sense of,, bafflement, i suppose? it’s clear that they don’t really understand him and he doesn’t really understand them. although, nicky IS curious about the upperclassmen, while the upperclassmen are pretty dismissive of him. it reminds me of when my sweet, floppy dog tries to play with my cat. their body language is different; they’re each receiving different signals than they believe they’re sending out

only,, nicky loves people!! he likes being around them, he likes talking to them. he’s interested in their lives and stories, but it’s very clear that he can’t read between the lines on people. he has an incredibly hard time with people who expect their actions to speak for them, which is most people, but is especially his cousins.

actually this is very much also an issue that i have: things need to be spelled out for me. the way i deal with it is i ask a lot of questions. ‘how do you want me to react to this potential situation?’ ‘what are specific things that make you most comfortable?’ ‘please explain to me exactly how you feel and what has prompted those feelings?’ and i’m always communicating vice versa like that with other people. a lot of specifics in both questions and answers

and the interesting thing is, when i was skimming through the books reviewing dialogue styles for another ask, i noticed that, actually, nicky DOES do this. with neil and the upperclassmen, nicky asks a LOT of quick, clarifying questions. things that ask after tone, that ask after intent. it’s kinda sad that he does this for communicating with acquaintances, but with the twins, the people he’s closest to, he makes a lot more assumptions. and i’m really proud of nicky for having this coping skill, because i can’t imagine it’s something he grew up doing. there’s no way he was raised in an environment that fostered this kind of open communication so it must have been something he learned about much later, probably in germany with the kloses, which would also explain why he’s a lil imperfect about it

---

now last but not least, aaron

this is another one i had to think through for a long time before it felt like it fit

much like how i felt that it would be easy to read nicky as simply adhd rather than also asd, i think it would be easy to say aaron is autistic simply because he is quieter, less rambunctious. however, i actually think he’s adhd, likely primarily inattentive type

in all honesty, aaron’s #1 character trait for the first two books is basically that he’s disconnected. detached. separated both from his family and his team. not in the same forcefully apathetic way that andrew is, more,, spaced out. he’s just kind,, there. not really paying attention to what’s going on, tuning in every once in a while only if something really catches his eye/ear then tuning right back out again. just sits in his corner and plays on his phone. and the thing is, from the moments when he does tune in, you can tell that he actually does care. he backs nicky when seth insults him in tfc, and we know he cares deeply about andrew even if he’s become disillusioned with their fraught relationship. he even hangs with his family, doesn’t seem to really try and slip away to other friends besides katelyn, he’s fine spending his leisure time with the monsters. so it’s not totally apathy, he’s just,,, tuned out most of the time

and, yea, that sounds like adhd. it’s not the type that most people are familiar with, and for a lot of people this causes it to slip under the radar. it can make it hard to get help or a dx because it doesn’t fit with how adhd “should” look or how someone “should” act, but difficulty focusing your thoughts and staying in tune with the current moment is absolutely part of adhd

addiction is also a huge problem for people with adhd. a lot of stimulants affect people with adhd very differently than neurotypicals, especially in small doses, and an adhd kid who’s struggled their whole lives with the disorder might try speed or god-forbid meth or fuck even coffee and suddenly find that things are a lot easier for them. they start to self-medicate, they don’t actually know what they’re doing, and then they’re addicted, and everything spirals out of control. we don’t know too many details about aaron’s addiction other than that his mother enabled him, but wouldn’t this fit? it’s also an explanation for aaron still taking drugs at eden’s, given that cracker dust seems to be a mild amphetamine. (aaron talk to betsy about the neurocog and get an actual prescription please)

(total throw away but aaron plays videogames and videogames are like,, adhd culture)

[zevlors-tail]

Retail Therapy

A/N: If you work retail like I do and get frustrated with your job on a weekly/daily basis, if you’re just fed up of all the crazy at work, this one’s for you! Covid has made it extra garbagey to work retail so here’s a little vent. Also, me writing soft Bakugou content? Yes.

Characters: Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugou, Shouto Todoroki

Warnings: Mentions of Covid in Bakugou’s part. Cursing. Customer invading your personal space (also in Bakugou’s part), tiny mention of anxiety in Todoroki’s scenario.

Summary: You’ve had the most infuriating day at work. Lucky for you, he knows just how to fix it.

Izuku Midoriya

Oh my god this gif is so bright i love it

“Hi baby!” Izuku greets you as you haphazardly toss your shoes on the floor, not caring where they land. One ends up under the dining room table and the other ends up somewhere among the chairs, but you could care less.

You’re pissed. More pissed than you’ve ever been, but specifically with work. You constantly feel like you’re babysitting your coworkers, and they never listen to anything you have to say, even when you’re put in charge of your department- if only for the night. Every time you turn your back, they’re pulling some sort of dumb stunt; how are you supposed to get work done like that? You can hardly focus on your own task when you’re trying to clean up after everyone else. Picking up slack is something you’re used to by now (unfortunately), but it shouldn’t have to be. You shouldn’t have to do your work and everyone else’s work too. Not to mention, you were tired of being the middle man whenever there was drama. Why did everyone feel the need to tell you everything?

“Ughhhh!” You just groan in response, half a smile on your face while a wild look enters your eyes. Izuku knows that look. He can tell you’re frustrated after a long day of work, that you’re at your wits end with your job. “I swear, Izu, I came this close to rage quitting. I mean I wouldn’t, because I’ve got bills to pay and stuff, but, just- this close.”

“Oh yeah?” He gives you a trademark smile despite your woes and invites you to follow him to the dining table where he sits down with you, taking your hand in his. ��Tell me all about it.”

And you do. He listens diligently, nodding and getting into the gossip playfully, asking about certain coworkers and making silly comments to get you to laugh. Things like, “But they would never!” and “Oh my god, no they didn’t!” along with your personal favorite, a very dramatic “No!�� He even makes over the top facial expressions to go with his comedic comments, and he has you laughing with him in no time, the stress of the day melting away under his electric green gaze. Your vent turns into more of a fun story than it does a bad experience. Izuku is a good listener and he’ll always be there for you.

“It was just ridiculous! Man, I can only take so much in one day. Usually I don’t let them get to me, but I couldn’t take both of them coming up to me every five minutes and complaining about each other. You know, as much as they like to talk about each other not doing their jobs, maybe they would get more work done if they just stopped talking and got back to work in the first place!” As you tell him your story, he hums a response, nods, and gets up from the table. He pats your head as he passes by you on the way to the kitchen, and you follow him with your gaze, questioning him silently.

“I’m still listening, love. I can hear you from here, promise! Do go on.”

You continue, not paying much mind to what he’s doing since you’re so engrossed in your tale of idiocy and annoyance turned silly. And he is listening to you, still making eye contact as he moves about the kitchen, still putting his two cents every once in a while. But before you know it, a savory smell hits your nose, and you realize he’s not only started dinner but that he’s practically finished with it by the time you’re done talking. He wastes no time in making two plates and bringing them over, setting one in front of you and the other in front of his usual spot.

You’re extremely grateful to him for taking the initiative to make dinner while you de-stressed after the day’s events, and you make sure to tell him that as you both dig in to his cooking. He learned from the best (bless mama Midoriya). You’re reminded that no matter how bad your day has been, you get to come home to your favorite human being on the whole planet and love him, and be loved by him in return.

“Thanks for making dinner, Izuku. You’re truly the love of my life.” You say it in such a manner that makes your partner laugh, bits of food falling from his mouth as he struggles to swallow properly. “That’s attractive,” you tease, but you’re laughing too. It’s a happy moment for the both of you.

“Good to know you only love me for my cooking!” He jokes. He eyes your plate before not so subtly reaching over and stealing a piece of food. You gasp in mock surprise, but save your revenge for later. There are plenty of ways to get even with him. But for now...

Izuku: 1

Y/N: 0

Katsuki Bakugou

soft bb

“Shit, fuck! God, I hate today!” you exclaim as you slam the car door shut. Bakugou had been kind enough to pick you up from work, and you were glad that it was him driving and not you behind the wheel. You were shaking in your seat, your hands trembling in anger and teeth grinding in frustration as you glared out of the window silently for a moment.

“Bad day?” Bakugou asked gruffly, foot gently pressing against the gas peddle as you took off on the drive home.

“Yeah, you would not fucking believe people. You’d think everyone would listen to directions and stay home since it’s like, oh, I don’t know- the middle of a fucking pandemic?”

“Oh, believe me, I know. People are stupid. Don’t let them get to you, baby.” 

Maybe those words were odd coming from him considering he used to be so angry all the time himself, but Bakugou had really mellowed out since his days at UA, and he knew how to hold his tongue. Unbeknownst to him, however, this was more than a bad day for you. Bad days you could let go of, but this- this was something else. Not quite the worst time you’d ever had at work, but much more than a bad day. Today had been somewhere in between the two, and you weren’t sure what to call it. You’d been yelled at, berated, understaffed, and blamed for pretty much all the problems going on in your specific area even though you were trying your best. There was only so much you could do yourself, and even though you knew it was better to just let it go, you couldn’t. Especially not after what that wretched customer had done to you.

“I’m trying not to, but it’s really god damned hard not to fucking smack a bitch when they invade your personal space and tap on your shoulder. In a fucking pandemic. Actually, I don’t even think she was wearing a mask now that I think about it. How considerate of her.” The words are like venom spitting from your mouth, your fists clenching as you vent to your partner in confidence.

“They did what?” Normally he’s good about keeping his anger in check. Normally, he could handle you venting to him about anything. But someone else touching his Y/N? No way in hell. And during a period of time where touching people was especially rude and inconsiderate? Fucking no way in hell.

“Yeah! Tapped me right on the damn shoulder and didn’t even say excuse me. Words exist! Just tell me you need something and I’ll get it for you! I hate people who do that shit, it’s so unnecessary and rude! And it violates my personal space and creeps me out. I feel disgusting. If you touch me at work, then I’m not liable for anything that happens to you! You get slapped? Then that’s on you, bitch! Don’t fucking touch me!” You finish up your speech with a wild hand gesture, your head shaking in disbelief while you try not to think about too much.

It takes Bakugou everything he has not to just slam on the breaks right then and there and put the car in reverse to drive back to the store and find that piece of trash. If he could give them a piece of his mind, he would. But he can’t, so he settles for the next best thing: comforting you and making sure you’re okay. You did just have your personal space violated after all, so it’s understandable you’re pretty shaken up and angry about the whole thing. He would be too, honestly. 

The rest of the short drive home is mostly silent, save for the small talk you make with each other and the quiet background noise of the radio station that he let you pick. His general rule of thumb is that the driver picks the music, but he knows you’ve had a hard day, so he doesn’t argue when you change it to your preferred station and start drumming your fingers to the beat. He’d rather you wind down this way than keeping it all bottled up. When the two of you finally arrive to your shared home, you let your shoulders fall a bit and sigh as you trudge to the couch, not even bothering to take your shoes off before plopping down and face planting into the soft cushions. You listen as Bakugou wanders off to the bedroom and returns a moment later with a shirt in his hands.

“You said you felt disgusting earlier, so I brought you a new shirt to change into. Figured you probably didn’t want to stay in your work clothes.” His tone is softer, a little more careful since you’re home now and he knows you don’t like to fall apart in public. Home is where your true heart is, with him. If you’re feeling any sort of negative emotion, it’s more likely to come out here. And he wants to offer his help, but... “Do you want some help with it?”

You shift so that you’re sitting up on the couch and raise your arms slightly for him. “That would be nice, since I’m utterly exhausted and worn out. I’d really appreciate it,” you reply honestly.

He hesitates a bit, unsure of something before he asks you a question. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

Your response is immediate. “Of course it is; I trust you. I never mind your touch.”

He smiles at that.

He helps you get changed into the ultra comfy shirt he brought you, and after that the two of you heat up some leftovers before cuddling up in bed together, the worst of the day washed away by Bakugou’s soft fingers running along your side as you lay your head on his chest.

“Thanks for always taking care of me. You do an amazing job at it.” You yawn into his shirt and snuggle your face against it, the soft cotton making you feel safe and secure.

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you too, Katsuki.”

Shouto Todoroki

I’m feeling extra soft for Todoroki recently

“Hi, Y/N. How was your day at-” 

Before Shouto can even finish his sentence, you’re flying into a vent about work, passing right by him on your way to the bathroom as you start to pull of your work uniform angrily.

“Oh my god, it was an absolute disaster!” You’re still breathing heavy from all the stress, eyes darting around wildly and face flushed from being mad and under pressure all night.

“What happened, love?” Todoroki coaxes gently. He comes to stand in the door frame of the bathroom and leans against it, his hands in his pockets and hip cocked out to the side. He has a sympathetic look on his face as you explain all your troubles of the day.

“Everything, Shouto. Everything happened. I mean, not everything, but it sure felt like it! Our delivery showed up late, and we didn’t have product all afternoon, so our customers were really angry and I kept getting yelled at! It’s not my fault it showed up late! If I had the product to put out I would! It’s complete and utter bullshit!” You make your way to the bedroom to pick out pajamas, not really caring about the pair you take out of the drawer or anything else for that matter. Your mind was focused on one thing and one thing only: your day at work.

Sometimes you had a hard time winding down from work, especially on days like these, and Shouto knew that. You usually were able to separate work from home fairly well, but occasionally you just needed a little reminder that it didn’t have to follow you home to bed, and he knew how to help with that. He’d seen you like this before, had witnessed your break downs and freak outs over your job and the stress that came with it. Retail was not for everyone. Todoroki always told you that you had the patience of a saint, though everyone had their own limits, and you must have hit yours tonight.

“I don’t appreciate being called names and told that I’m practically useless. Customers can be real fucking snobs all the time. And I was trying so hard too, but even after the delivery showed up, it was busy as hell, and every time I put something up on the shelf they just kept taking it down! I think I sold through at least three boxes of something I normally have to throw away at the end of the week. Seriously! It was a mess, and we didn’t have enough staff because one of us was still suspended, and our normal person who works the backroom doesn’t work weekends, and even our supervisor called off, so it was just me and this other girl. It was awful. I can’t even- ugh! It’s not fair!”

You started to work yourself up, your anxiety skyrocketing as you thought of everything that went wrong earlier. Rationally you knew there wasn’t much you could do about the situation, but that didn’t mean you felt the same way. You should have done more, pushed yourself harder, but you also didn’t want to stay and work overtime on an empty stomach and not a lot of sleep the night before. Shouto must have seen the guilt in your eyes, because the next thing you knew you were being moved to the bed where he wrapped you in the softest blanket he could find, and then he was telling you he’d be right back as he slipped out of the room.

You sat there, a little confused for a while, before you heard a beeping noise from the kitchen and the door to the microwave open and close. Todoroki returned with a steaming mug in one hand and a book in the other, and he said nothing as he set the book and cup down on the nightstand before working around you, positioning a few pillows against the headboard of the bed. He fluffed them up a few times and grabbed the giant comforter, pulling it up over your lap and practically swaddling you. Finally he sat down behind you on the bed and pulled you into his lap, and you rested your head against his chest as he petted your hair softly. Slowly, you felt all the tension from earlier on in the day ebb away into drowsiness and exhaustion.

“Alright, blanket burrito,” he said, referring to your form all wrapped up in soft cotton, “I warmed up a cup of your favorite drink and brought us a book. Do you want me to read to you, or would you prefer to play a video game or movie?” He gazed down at you with a brow raised in question, a look of amusement on his face at the sight of your head just barely peeking out from the blankets.

“If you don’t mind, could you read to me? I like your voice...it’s soothing.” You melted into his touch, work already forgotten about and a wave of calm washing over you. 

“Of course, dear.” He gave you a precious smile and kiss on the top of your head.

Todoroki always knew how to fix your bad days, and he always did so without hesitation and without you having to ask. He handed you the warm mug first which you took gratefully, and then picked up the book and began reading to you.

How did you get this lucky?

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

I got lectured a lot today, I feel like. Nothing malicious or ill-intended but with people I know irl I tend to keep things close to the chest when I’m around others-- tumblr tends to be my outlet due entirely to the relative anonymity. I value and cherish each and every one of my friendships here, but I still maintain some semblance of anonymity simply due to the nature of the platform (except for a select few who have become irl friends along the way). We’ve all heard that it’s easier to say something via text than it is face to face, and that’s true. 

What I’m saying is that I complain a lot on here. You’re welcome.

(Reading this post back, some of this is going to sound like bragging and it might be, I don’t know. Just let it happen.)

In person, I usually don’t talk much about my personal struggles unless I’m really not doing well and past the point of emotional stability to hold it in. As such, people sometimes tend to think that I simply... don’t know or understand things, I suppose is the best way to put it. 

I get told a lot that my job is simple and that it’s something I’ve simply accepted because I “don’t think I can get anything better”, when in actuality I love my job, it’s a miracle I got it in the first place, and I have held over 15 jobs across various mediums and industries including but not limited to childcare, healthcare, food service, sales management, professional writing, and financial advisor. 

Specifically with regard to the professional writing gig, I got asked by several people what “luck” landed me that job, since I’m “not a writer”. When I explained that I had submitted a portfolio, been interviewed, and had in fact submitted 3 trial pieces before being accepted, they were shocked. The writer part of me is something I consider deeply intimate and personal, so I don’t share it with many who know me in real life. I certainly don’t let anyone read my work; I value the relative anonymity of fanfiction, and my side projects I keep to myself. 

I get told a lot that I should really “do some research on” things like OCD, anxiety, depression and the like when I have been diagnosed and attending therapy for these things since I was 12 years old, and spend quite a bit of my free time researching and seeking to better understand them. 

People tend to lecture me on these things until they suddenly require advice, and then they presume that I’m the expert-- but they rarely take my advice or listen to what I have to say. They just decide that I’m wrong because they don’t want to hear it. 

I get told a lot that things that I feel aren’t valid or don’t make sense, and that I’m being intentionally stubborn or imbecilic when in actuality I guard my words very carefully because not many people know of my mental health struggles/situations in real life. 

A friend told me today that “some life experience” would be good for me, and when I said I have more life experience than they are aware of they said, “yeah sure, ok.” 

And I finally got a little fed up and said, “If there is ever something about me that you don’t understand entirely, that is ok-- and if you disagree with a choice I make or the way I think about something, that’s fine, too. But please don’t presume that you understand why or how I come to conclusions unless we’ve explicitly discussed it in depth.”

And when they asked for clarification, I shared a little bit of some of the trauma I’ve been processing lately and they were shocked and apologetic because they had assumed I was being intentionally difficult or shutting down suggestions they were offering me that would have made the problem worse.

And I’m a bit frustrated because I hate the whole “having to share trauma to make people believe you” thing, and I’m constantly working at convincing myself that I’m allowed to have secrets and it is not inherently bad or manipulative. 

But I’m so incredibly tired of being ignored or invalidated or spoken down to like I have no idea what I’m doing. I struggle sometimes; by the look of my tumblr feed, a lot, lately-- I’m processing something right now, as I said. But I am not incompetent. I am not unintelligent. 

I don’t want to be underestimated, but I don’t want people to have expectations of me, either. I just want to be. 

[twilightofthe]

Aight, one last serious post for a bit. After that I think I might back off on some rants and stuff that I’ve been doing because I created this blog to be a positive place, and tbh, discussing stuff I don’t like just makes me upset, especially since I feel like I’m just shouting into either an unhearing void or at an audience that is watching and is distinctly unimpressed

Basically though, I wanted to apologize for the slightly salty posts I’ve made recently (and one like, yesterday lol) complaining about how people portray Anakin’s intelligence. I realize I came across as critical and accusatory of people who are just having fun and likely mean no harm, and it wasn’t fair of me to be all snappy about it. So yeah, I’m extremely sorry about that. I likely hurt people and that was not my intention. Please have fun and headcanon Anakin as anything you want. I love and support you and even if we can’t agree, we can def still be friends!

But, I will take this opportunity to kinda ramble a bit about my own personal experiences with this, and why I view Anakin the way I do, what his character means to me, and why it’s kinda exhausting sometimes to engage in fandom because I have the misfortune of having the unpopular opinion regarding a character, and how hard it is to respect other people’s takes when it seems that every time I give my own takes, it’s like I’m immediately shot down for them and refuted for the popular opinions, like I’m not allowed to believe this thing myself. Why I sometimes just gotta rant a little bit, and why no one should take it personal or as a criticism of them.

This below all delves very intricately into my own personal mindset and life experiences. It’s personal. Please remember this is a very personal post.

Now, to me, I totally understand Anakin has made every mistake in the world. I know he turns into a monster and hurts/(in)directly kills everyone he’s ever loved. I know that. I’m fully aware that he makes mistake after mistake after mistake. I know he’s a flawed character. I’m not saying he’s perfect. He’s far from it.

But at the same time, I can relate to parts of his character. His anxiety, his upset at not being able to live up to the standards he feels everyone’s putting on him when really no one is but him, the feeling of being constantly on the edge because you feel like your entire life is in a spiral and you don’t know how to stop it and every choice you make out of desperation makes things worse, how everyone around you just keeps making so much better choices and it’s like, why can’t I do that? What’s wrong with me? Why are they always right???????

And I love the fact that canonically, despite his utter disaster-ness, he has the potential to be good, to rise. That he is a canonical Gifted Kid, mega-intelligent but just totally unsure how to direct that so he flounders more often than not unless it’s in relation to his few specific interests, giving the feeling like I’m a fake and really there’s only one thing I’m good for. The need to do ANYTHING for validation from others because that’s what feeds you.

I’ve suffered this same insecurity and anxiety and self-hatred I can see in him my whole life, the same inability to properly manage my life like I’m supposed to and that everyone else seems to have figured out, how I could be so much more if I actually knew how to rise to the occasion instead of constantly crash and burn

I love Anakin so much because he is enough like me that I can sympathize and feel for him, but also different enough that when I see him tear down the path of self destruction, I can feel relief that I’m never at that point, and also sympathy that he fell that far (amidst my anger at him for hurting my other faves lol)

I LOVE that he has that ability to be smart and capable but just doesn’t know how to apply himself all the time, love it so much, and that’s why it’s a struggle sometimes when I feel that every time I try and say something showing off that side of him, like comment on something smart and creative he would have done, or something he HAS done right, immediately there’s people responding to me like UH NO ACTUALLY HE IS NOTHING BUT A PURE DUMBASS :) :) :))))))))))) HE DOESN’T HAVE THAT ABILITY/WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO DO THAT BECAUSE IT’S TOO SMART/SENSIBLE/GOOD FOR HIS POOR FEEBLE MIND, PERHAPS YOU MEANT SOMEONE ELSE MORE CAPABLE?

I’m not kidding about this. I said Anakin was a good cook once? I immediately got a response saying no, he can’t be, he’s a feral gremlin who eats bugs. I tried to start a convo about him having an emotional/meaningful conversation with one of his loved ones about something because he notices something wrong with them? Someone instantly refuted me because “nah he’s too clueless and oblivious to have that kind of emotional sensitivity ever”. I write something in a fic that shows Anakin doing something cool? In comes a guest commenter passive aggressively with something along the lines of “oh your Anakin is SO MUCH smarter and capable than he should be it’s almost OOC, but I’ll believe it for now haha”

I’ve got more instances I can recount, but I’m stopping here. I totally respect people’s headcanons, and right to have fun, I do. I cannot stress enough that people can and should write what the want. But to me, when it feels like people don’t always want to ever consider my takes on his character, when it’s like fandom is constantly churning out reminders of how much they believe he doesn’t have a brain, well, like

It’s like, when you relate to a character like that and keep getting your opinions and ways to relate shut down by the majority no matter what you do or say, it just feels like everyone is telling me “SMART PEOPLE don’t ever fail at things! People with REAL gifts and talents don’t ever waste them or make mistakes. If you’re struggling, if you crash and burn, if you don’t quite have your life together, it can only mean you’re just plain stupid and a failure for the rest of your life. As a Fool, you can’t ever be considered successful or do something right— because that would be doing something Smart and you have Proven Yourself Dumb. All of your accomplishments and thing you’ve done right can either be attributed to someone else deemed More Capable, or could have been done better by something else, so those good things don’t mean anything. Since you acted the fool once, a fool is all you’ll ever be.”

I’ve struggled with that kind of talk from other people and especially from my own insecurities my entire life.

And I know that’s not what people really mean, I know fans are just sharing their headcanons. I know no one wants to hurt anyone, they’re just making a joke and having fun! I call Anakin a dumbass all the time! SW fandom is 99% good people who just wanna play with their own toys and gush about things that they love! I know this is like 90% good faith!

But it gets harder to believe sometimes the Dumb Anakin headcanons are just innocent headcanons and not genuine beliefs when people Will Not let me have different ones without playfully— or not so playfully —reminding me of how wrong they think I am and what they think about his intelligence level and abilities.

And because my own personal history with anxiety and self-destruction, being overwhelmed with that talk really just hurts, and I will never be able to make that hurt response go away, no matter how irrational it is.

But yeah. That’s how I relate to Anakin. That’s why I see him this way. That’s why I cannot resist complaining sometimes. I’ve been at a very low point recently and these negative thoughts have just been worse so I’ve been more cranky about it, but I promise I won’t bring it up too much.

Thanks for listening.

I’m probs not gonna post anything “rant”-related on here for a very long time— or do my damned hardest to try not to.

[mbtiofwhys]

Persona 5 and how MBTI can expose writing (in)consistency

Disclaimer

We’re studying writing and narratology as self taught, we are passionate about narrative in general and we believe in MBTI as a tool to analyse things and frame both reality and fiction in a different way. These are our opinions on the matter of how MBTI can be useful in approaching plot and character consistency, but don’t take it as a scientific paper;

We’re writing this article after a good 3 runs and various hundred of hours spent in this game per mod. We’ve already analysed the whole main cast and tried to explore everyone of them more in depth, so please don’t take anything in this article as an attack to a certain character or the game as a whole. We love P5 and P5R wholeheartedly - for this reason, we can’t overlook problems when they arise;

Big huge enormous spoilers for both P5 and P5R.

Premise

Characters are the most important element of a story - yes, even more important than the plot. Especially if you consider that a plot is, basically, characters doing stuff to reach a goal. Lots of stories revolve around a particular event or atmosphere, a fictional world to explore, or an issue, but there will always be characters in them because, as human beings, we’re attracted to people, their flaws and their problems.

So, if characters are the basis of a story, going deeper we see how fictional works tell us about how and why people overcome hardships and become a better person in the process (tragedies surely exist, but they aren’t the norm). That’s what is called the transformation arc.

That being said, how do we use MBTI? Since cognition is essential and behaviors mean nothing, we tend to look at characters both from a narrative and metanarrative standpoint. This means putting aside what characters do or what they like, and focusing on how they gain information, make decision and what are their motives. Since stories tell us about people and their struggles, it’s interesting to understand why characters act in a certain way, what really moves them forward. 

This approach, inevitably, must compromise with the fact that fiction is made by people, and people can make mistakes. Works of fiction aren’t flawless and sometimes, trying to find what type a character is, is a way to bring light to those problems. Rules are a social construct, they’re fluid and constantly change, but they also provide useful tools to analyze stories, discovering their strength and their flaws. So, stories aren’t defined solely on strict rules, however MBTI can push one to better understand what is a good story or a well-written character and, vice-versa, why stories can fail to amaze us.

Why Persona 5?

Because it’s an excellent case study to show both how our typing process must adapt to face different situations, and what means to analyse a wide cast of characters that aren’t always perfectly written. The cast, though, is diverse enough that you can have characters with similar or opposite types that interact for 100+ hours, and this creates a very interesting setting for comparison and conflict.

Moreover, the confidant system can be a golden source MBTI-wise, because, if properly developed, a confidant can give us great insights about the character, or show other sides of them outside the main plot. 

Tropes and typing

Persona 5 offers really great examples of what means to differentiate between typology and tropes when typing. Since we’re talking about fictional characters, we must acknowledge that sometimes there is a correlation between certain tropes/archetypes and certain types (mbtinotes on Tumblr talks about this more in depth here: https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/spotting#fiction ). This, though, isn’t a rule and mustn’t become a limitation when typing, because cognitive functions work regardless of tropes, exactly as they do regardless of behaviors. P5 has both types that follow the tropes they are often associated with, and types that are completely different. 

Ryuji is one of the main example belonging to the first case. He matches the Book dumb and Dumb blonde tropes, alongside with the Hot-blooded and Idiot hero ones. Those traits are usually linked to Se doms: always hungry and with lots of energy. In Ryuji’s case, though, he’s not an ESFP (only) because he’s loud and reckless, but also due to his approach to life and general cognitive process. That being said, it’s also true that he embodies the most common conception of what an ESFP looks like.

A similar example also applies to Akechi: he’s presented as the smart ace detective (The Ace) and later on as the mastermind traitor. He possesses many traits often linked to ENTJs, especially when they’re the villain, antagonist or anti-hero of the story. This doesn’t serve as a limit to his character though, and Akechi shares the majority of a young ENTJ’s cognitive process, alongside with some of its tropes.

On the other hand, P5 also offers characters belonging to the second case, for whom only looking at their tropes and role in the plot can be misleading typing-wise.

It's the case of Futaba: she’s an INFP according to our typing process, however the game always stresses her quirky and antisocial side, something so strong it defines her as a person even after her narrative arc. This is why many people type her as INTP, since those traits are often linked to Ti doms, high Ne users or rationalist types.

Another example is Yusuke: we typed him INTJ even though the community often refers to him as an ISFP. Our main complain regarding Yusuke as an ISFP is about how this type is justified only using the tropes he’s associated with. Since Yusuke is a bizarre artist and a weirdo, he must also be an ISFP in love with painting, art and beauty, right? Well, this is true, but not because he’s an ISFP. His behaviors don’t stem from an ISFP cognition, rather from the one of an INTJ, in our opinion.

Narrative arcs

Narrative arcs define the plot, but (following a shonen structure) they also sadly tend to be too much stand alone in the game, especially when it comes to character development. This leads to a situation where characters shine in their narrative arc, but then just sit in the background for the rest of the game, as a part of the Phantom Thieves. This isn’t entirely a bad thing, since Persona 5 revolves around a large cast of characters and tends to focus more on the group as a whole, so this structure suits the game’s leitmotif appropriately. However, narrative arcs surely enhance what we said about tropes and stereotypes, not always in a good way. 

There’s also the problem of characters following the plot/comic gags instead of the opposite. A story may undoubtedly be full of gags and fanservice without it compromising its characters and their purpose inside the narration, but problems arise when said characters must adhere to rules set by the plot, rather than being realistic people freely taking actions and making mistakes.

More specifically, we’re referring to:

Ann and harassment

This, in our opinion, is the most emblematic case about narrative arcs and how they tend to be isolated from the rest of the game. Ann’s arc doesn’t revolve around a big issue, differently from others later on where the Phantom Thieves face threats against the entire Japan. However, Kamoshida feels like a real villain and the pain inflicted to his students isn’t less relevant than other issues. The firs arc tells us a story about harassment, how it may lead to victim blaming, social exclusion and extreme actions like Shiho’s attempted suicide. So, the game surely starts with a realist and captivating take, but what lies after it? Sadly, not much. From that moment on, Ann still remains the most sexualised member of the group and is often the one whose body is used as a tool to gain intel or other useful things - Yusuke’s modeling affair and the second letter of recommendation on Shido’s ship are just two blatant example.

And while Ryuji’s confidant is simple and straightforward yet still works properly, Ann’s one can be dull, revolving around characters less interesting and engaging than the ones we see during Kamoshida’s arc. Moreover, her confidant takes place while Shiho is still recovering, so we see her mentioned only few times.

Makoto and duty

Every awakening in Persona 5 is thrilling and moving but, speaking for us mods, we think that Makoto has one of the most galvanizing. Her arc embraces the leitmotif of rebellion and it works even better than the others since she always appears as a diligent and polite student. But is there something more after her awakening? Sadly, as we saw for Ann, the answer is no. Makoto’s confidant is plain, a simple solution placed by developers to show her personality while introducing new characters. It works, but it doesn’t give a further twist to the premise the game showed during her awakening. Not to mention that, despite her decision to less blindly follow the rules, Makoto is often relegated to the mom friend/dutiful student role, reminding others of rules and schoolwork and stuff. Yes, she has a relevant role in Sae’s arc, but we still find her confidant lacking what is shown during Kaneshiro’s arc.

Futaba and self growth

Futaba’s arc is interesting on many levels, especially because we see how a hikikomori undergoing severe traumas can overcome them, thus becoming a healthier person. Even though her arc is one of the most emotional in the game, Futaba quickly resets to a stage where she’s more of a comic relief than a vivid character and she often kicks in just to mock the other thieves or to solve problems tied to computer science and technology. Yes, this is coherent to her character, at the same time it often closes her in stereotypes since Futaba is limited by those roles rather than showing her new and mature side.

Kasumi and Sumire and the lack of closure

Sumire’s arc and confidant deal with finding acceptance and a new balance between her old and new self, since Sumire slowly accepts her sister’s death. Or, at least, this is what the game tries to convey to the players. We love what Persona 5 Royal added to the main game and we played both versions for hundred of hours, however we must admit how both of us mods found lack of proper character development throughout Sumire’s confidant. Her arc does a great job in showing how much pain she had to endure and how she begins to live with her sister’s death. But at the same time her confidant doesn’t give her a new starting point, in our opinion. Why? Because reaching rank ten with Sumire means that she just finds a new way to be tied to Kasumi, and not in a completely healthy way. Sumire admits how gymnastic was a way to be together with her sister and how she loved accessory activities tied to the sport, like eating ice cream after training, more than the sport itself. So, Sumire never really cared about the competitive side of gymnastic and, at the end of her confidant, it seems like she sticks with it just as a way to be tied to Kasumi again. Yes, this is surely a healthier way than the one she took with Maruki’s help, and we know how our opinion regarding Sumire can be controversial, at the same time we don’t think her confidant truly ends her arc properly.

What has typing every character highlighted?

After 3 playthroughs, two platinum trophies and many hours spent discussing this group of punks, we used MBTI to give a structure to our articles and, unexpectedly, we often had to slightly change our approach in typing the main cast. It’s been a huge project of analysis, research, reading online discussions and further learning. In the end, we’d like to write down our own conclusion about these characters. This specific section might be a bit more about our personal opinions, though.

Protagonist (ENFP)

Typing the protagonist was the wildest part of this project. Since he’s mostly an avatar controlled by the player, we knew everything had to be taken with a grain of salt. We separated canon from player’s choices, as a way to find what makes the protagonist a real character (sadly, not as much as he would have deserved). We also tried not to rely too much on gameplay mechanics in typing. In the end, we progressed by process of elimination, discarding the option that surely didn’t fit. We agreed on ENFP for him, but ENTP isn’t a bad match either. Even if a character so malleable by the player can’t be associated to a single type so easily, we do believe that a starting point somehow exists. Our hope for the future is that in new games we’ll get to play a real character, though.

Morgana (ESTJ)

Morgana was pretty hard to type, especially regarding the perceiving axis - which is a pity, because he’s not the stock ESTJ type of character. But since he’s the mascot of the Phantom Thieves, Morgana is often even more stereotyped than the other characters. He decently shows his dominant function during the game, but way less his auxiliary and tertiary ones, since his personality gets subdued by his function as the sidekick of the protagonist.

Ryuji (ESFP)

We talked above how tropes aren’t always detrimental and Ryuji is the perfect example of this concept. He was the easiest character to type, due to his simple (yet defined) personality. Ryuji demonstrates how a character doesn’t have to be complex or multifaceted to be interesting and loveable.

Ann (ESFJ)

Ann is the opposite case of Ryuji: a character driven by plot rather than by being a vivid person. We aren’t saying we dislike Ann (honestly there isn’t a thief we properly dislike), but we must admit how typing her was really difficult, and not because she’s too complex. It’s safe to assume she’s a Fe dom, however the game doesn’t give any solid clue about her perceiving axis - we traced down Si only by elimination and because her confidant show a clear FeNe loop, but otherwise the game offers nearly no clue of her Si (or Ti). Ann’s personality can’t shine properly in a game where, outside her narrative arc, she often has to follow the role of the ‘attractive/supportive character’ assigned to her. 

Yusuke (INTJ)

Yusuke is an interesting case: typing him wasn’t easy, but, contrary to Ann, just because he’s more complex than he may appear. Under the ‘artist’ trope (that misled the majority of the community towards ISFP) there’s a character with less predictable sides and a well-written arc. Also, a very nice example of a non-textbook INTJ, since these types are often associated with science and/or greater battles in life. Yusuke was a nice surprise to find.

Makoto (ISTJ)

Typing Makoto was a bit of a slow process, since there isn’t a popular type assigned to her by the community. At the same time, identifying her cognitive functions wasn’t too hard, so we can at least say she’s a relatively solid character, meaning that even if she’s mostly a textbook ISTJ, she still shows the development process of her inferior Ne and tertiary Fi in her confidant. Her growth is pretty linear, and the problem lies precisely in the lack of a proper twist in her personality, since she could have been far more interesting and less predictable.

Futaba (INFP)

Futaba was hands down the hardest character to type, since she’s tied to all the stereotypes of being quirky, asocial and nerd, usually associated with INTPs. Futaba perfectly shows how a theoretically well-written character can’t shine under specific circumstances: she has an emotional and complex arc, which was in fact our starting point in typing her, since it’s a pretty clear example of a FiSi loop. Yet, she acts more as a comic relief or as a source to solve IT-related problems, and her functions aren’t properly shown.

Haru (INFJ)

Despite the meme of Atlus hating her and not giving her the proper screen time (which isn’t untrue), Haru was pretty easy to type. She’s a nice example of how a character doesn’t have to follow his type’s tropes to feel real. Haru isn’t the typical daydreaming INFJ with a saviour complex, and in fact she gets sometimes mistyped as INFP. Unluckily, as for Ann, the game doesn’t do a good job in giving her a well-rounded personality, and in fact finding evidences of her third and fourth functions was pretty hard.

Goro (ENTJ)

Akechi is probably the most multifaceted and complex character in the game, at least in P5 vanilla - we believe Maruki lowkey stole that record in Royal. However, since he’s a well-written one (even if he still lacks a proper narrative arc, to a certain extent), Akechi wasn’t hard to type. The most interesting thing is that he may seem the classic ENTJ with a psychopath/killer personality, but in reality, he probably doesn’t suffer from any mental illness, and his character revolves around what happens when functions are used unhealthily, or are excessively underdeveloped. For this exact reason, though, we find a pity that the game doesn’t properly address the consequences and aftermath of a teen that had to commit severe crimes and murder people to find a place in life.

Kasumi (ENFP) and Sumire (ISFJ)

There’s a lot to say about Kasumi and Sumire, especially regarding their role in the plot and their confidants. Typing them wasn’t easy, since we only see Kasumi through Sumire’s actions, and both of them have a half-confidant instead of a proper one each. So, with both sisters we had to proceed a bit by process of elimination, since they appear for a relatively short time and without super strong evidences of their types despite a few functions. Sadly, they highlighted how writing characters for plot’s sake rather than by making them vivid may lead to incomplete narrative arcs.

We’ve come to the end of this article. Thank you for reading!

This officially concludes our journey with the P5 main cast - it’s been a wonderful experience to learn more about both MBTI and the characters of the game we loved so much. If you want to discuss things with us, we’ll gladly listen. You can reach out here on Tumblr in comments, asks and dms, as well as on Instagram.

(And, if you’re interested, we’ve also wrote about Maruki, Sojiro and Tae).

[irwen-s]

pregnant omega wendy getting taken care of by alpha Irene?

(interpreted this as sfw) i decided to do headcanon format because i had so many ideas to write about wheeze; this ended up become really long. this prompt is like, my excuse to bust out all my abo pregnancy ideas. 

seungwan during her pregnancy is composed and bubbly as usual on the outside, but an overthinking, anxious mess on the inside. she’s cheerful, keeps a positive attitude so as to not worry the people around her, and because she genuinely is really happy about soon having a pup. she’s done all her research too, has read through pregnancy and parenting books, consulted older omegas who have had pups, and eventually takes classes with joohyun in preparation for when she does give birth. 

but seungwan has a lot of thoughts as well as a tendency to overthink, and combined with the usual anxiety every person experiences when pregnant, it means seungwan has more things to worry about and more chances to do so. her nervousness stems from many different things—the state of her pup, her bodys health, her nest, the house, joohyun, her job, being a parent, her pup’s expected due date, the actual delivery . . . its a lot. and seungwan worries. 

so joohyun unsurprisingly ends up being the person who helps keep seungwan calm, soothing her anxieties to the best of her ability. its not just because of her scent and her physical presence, but also her personality in general. joohyun is naturally a nurturing, caring person. during seungwans pregnancy, her maternal instincts are basically at home, making her perfectly fit for the role of caretaker—to both seungwan and their pup. 

—

massages, belly rubs

one obvious example: joohyun jumps on any opportunity available to make things easier for seungwan. as seungwan’s baby bump grows, she ends up experiencing lower back and feet pains, once in a while swollen ankles as well. joohyun takes to giving her frequent leg massages and belly rubs, even without seungwan having to ask.

they’ll be in the living room or bedroom, seungwan resting back against soft pillows as joohyun props her legs in her lap, her hands gentle yet firm as they knead and rub at her sores. seungwan closes her eyes as all the tension leaves her body, and she practically melts with each of joohyuns touches, letting out pleased little huffs and sighs that make joohyun smile quietly. sometimes theyll take turns talking about their day or just random little things, like seungwan recounting an interesting fact she learned from a documentary on tv, and joohyun will listen attentively as she continues her massage.

joohyun also gives her belly rubs. those are much more frequent, the two of them dont even have to sit down with it in mind for it to happen. half the time its just casual touches on joohyuns part. 

during seungwan’s first trimester when her belly isnt as large yet, joohyun loves to hold her from behind with her hands resting against seungwan’s stomach, sometimes gently rubbing, sometimes just feeling. having seungwan nestled against her is always something joohyun enjoys of course, but theres something so right about being able to cradle both her mate and their pup in her arms at the same time. seungwan spends much of her first trimester with joohyun glued to her back, nosing against her nape or her mating mark while her hands wander around the soft swell of her belly, which can be pretty distracting sometimes when seungwan just wants to bake some muffins or something. but its endearing, and seungwan enjoys the extra back hugs too much to really complain. 

planned belly rubs happen after joohyun helps seungwan lie back in bed. she settles down next to seungwan then, hands carefully massaging and rubbing the round, warm skin of seungwans baby bump, making sure to also give attention to the stretch marks near the underside of her belly. honestly, any belly rub feels really good to seungwan when shes pregnant, but its just so much nicer when its joohyuns hands gently touching her. sometimes joohyun cant resist moving closer to rub her face against seungwan’s belly too, making seungwan laugh as she noses along her skin and breathes in seungwan’s scent (which is a lot sweeter and calmer during her pregnancy) while at the same time releasing her own.

sometimes, joohyun offers to give her a massage right when seungwan is beginning to feel more sore or achy than usual. she has no idea how joohyun just seems to know, but her alpha’s always been a person with ridiculously sharp instincts, so. either its that, or joohyun knows magic. 

—

food

joohyun also takes over their cooking. they can both cook pretty decent dishes, but joohyun basically bans seungwan from being in the kitchen alone some time near the end of her first trimester, since she doesnt want seungwan to somehow overexert or hurt herself. she’s only okay with seungwan cooking if joohyun is home with her to supervise (seungwan rolls her eyes while grumbling that joohyun is being too overprotective, but she does follow along, if only to keep the huffy person clinging to her back from fussing over her even more).

also yeah, joohyun does a shit ton of grocery shopping during seungwans pregnancy. as the weeks pass, the frequency of her shopping trips fall inversely proportional to the amount of food she buys—fewer trips, bigger mountains of food each time. usually joohyun would be able to buy only as much as they need, meticulous and precise as always. but seungwans random cravings and the necessity of stockpiling food during the last few weeks of seungwans pregnancy force joohyun to overshop on purpose. 

—

sleeping

 when theyre sleeping, joohyun of course spoons seungwan from behind. she presses her lips to seungwans warm nape while her hand curls around to rest against seungwans baby bump, cradling her close protectively. sometimes she just lies awake, not falling asleep yet, filled with overwhelming love as she listens to seungwan softly breathing, her slow and calming heartbeat. feels beneath her hand the gentle rise and fall of her tummy, the occasional, faint kick from the life thats growing inside her.

—

relationship dynamics

although joohyun is a clingy person, its different from the stereotypical stifling, neck-breathing alphas. she definitely becomes more touchy with seungwan during her pregnancy, but nothing drastically changes in how they treat one another. 

the way joohyun scent marks seungwan is oddly peculiar, but very specific to her. its through their laundry: being a ridiculously sensitive person to smell, joohyun is very, very particular when it comes to how their household’s clothes smell, and a large factor of its scent ends up being joohyuns own scent. every article of clothing seungwan owns and every fabric that ever touches her or makes it into their house goes through joohyuns meticulous examination, laundry, and scenting process first. shes only satisfied when its smells the way she wants it to: distinctively hers, a cool, soft lavender that never fails to soothe seungwan and make her feel at ease. 

its why joohyun doesnt have to always cling to seungwan with the purpose of constantly smothering her in her scent—controlling their laundry is her way of scent marking her omega, oddly enough. 

(around the middle of seungwans second trimester, joohyun comes home to find seungwan having done their laundry as the result of a random spike of energy and nothing else in the house to clean. they get into a petty squabble over it because joohyun is huffing about the detergent and her very precise laundry process, and she ends up making a bigger fuss about it than seungwan, who learns to never try and touch the laundry again. 

“are you sure you aren’t mated to our washing machine instead?”

“darling, you can’t just pour a cup of detergent and fabric softener into there and call it a day. there’s a whole process involved and—”) 

but anyways. joohyun is still a clingy person, and during seungwans pregnancy,  she’s always finding a way to keep at least one part of her touching seungwan. if she doesnt have her arm hooked around seungwan’s, she has a gentle hand resting against seungwan’s lower back, a shoulder brushing against her or fingers clutching onto her hip. joohyun generally tries not to constantly touch seungwans belly when they’re in public so as to avoid coming off as an overbearing alpha. 

that also means joohyun makes sure to give seungwan her own space. even though shes protective and worried about seungwan, her clumsy omega thats constantly tripping over things—to which joohyuns like, someday youre going to give me a heart attack—she knows better than to try and stop seungwan from doing everything. 

seungwan will go around the house, cleaning or organizing and rearranging their furniture, sometimes cooking or baking, maybe just randomly pacing in thought. sometimes she takes walks outside in their neighborhood to clear her mind or for the change in scenery. its a little endearing because while seungwan is moving around doing these things, joohyun is usually trailing after her a few paces behind, attentive and alert as she follows her tiny, bustling omega around the place. wherever seungwan is, if joohyun isnt attached to one of seungwans body parts, shes almost always a distance away, tailing her like a quiet shadow. 

—

relationship dynamics with others

when theyre with close friends, joohyun isnt all that on protective with seungwan and behaves pretty normally. seulgi is a beta, yerim an omega. the only issue joohyun ends up having is with sooyoung, their other alpha. even though joohyun rationally knows sooyoung is someone completely trustworthy around seungwan, her alpha instincts constantly cloud her attempts to make logical judgments. the few times seungwan ends up being in the same room as sooyoung during her pregnancy, joohyun is struggling to keep her alpha instincts from lashing out.

(its understandable, though. seungwan and sooyoung get it. throughout seungwans pregnancy, seulgi and yerim visit more often in person, but seungwan frequently contacts sooyoung through video call or phone call, and their group chat stays very active with texts.)

joohyun is basically restless whenever seungwan is near any alpha that isnt her. although she isnt physically crowding close to seungwan or possessively holding onto her, she’s visibly tenser and more alert, pupils darkened warningly in the direction of other alphas nearby. during those moments, seungwan usually has to be the one to pull her close and let joohyun latch onto her, soothing her alpha with her own scent until joohyun relaxes a little and comes back to herself, nuzzling back into seungwan. 

also, the two of them kind of mellow out during this time. theyre not as crazy (or horny) as before during seungwans heats and joohyuns ruts, being noticeably calmer and more domestic. naturally. theyre already considered the parent line in their group, but its become very apparent how much theyve truly grown into the title. 

—

nesting

to joohyun, seungwan nesting is pretty cute even though her tiny omega takes it very seriously. she gathers all their blankets and cushions and pillows into an elaborately complex pile on their bed, and joohyun often comes home to her arranging different parts of the nest or sorting through their drawers, sniffing and picking out specific clothes to add. 

its a little messy, because seungwan is an omega on a mission and hence has single minded focus on nesting; unsatisfactory clothes get tossed over her shoulder while other items lay scattered about the bedroom. joohyun quickly joins in to help, obediently following seungwans directions while also trailing behind her picking up anything left stranded in the wake of seungwans nitpicking.

joohyun also definitely runs out to buy more pillows and blankets, of course filtering them through her personal laundry process first so theyre all perfectly scented by her in order to be usable to seungwan—who is so used to having all her things smell like joohyuns mix of alpha and laundry lavender that she’s only comfortable with this. 

seulgi, sooyoung, and yerim had offered their own assortment of cushions and blankets, but joohyun is really picky about smells and about what things belong to who, so she doesnt want seungwan to borrow other peoples things at all. 

as for the actual nesting process, seungwans nest undergoes a lot of reconstruction and rearrangements. its not just because of the characteristic omega necessity to make the nest as satisfactory as possible, its also because seungwans personality is that of a perfectionist. so she just keeps scuttling around and fixing different parts of her nest, adding and removing shirts and blankets, and joohyun eventually begins to realize that seungwan is just looking around for more stuff to add, even though the nest is perfect already, because nothing is ever going to meet her standards. 

joohyun learns to pick up the signs then, to catch on to when seungwans fussing over the nest goes from genuine need to reorder things to anxiety over achieving perfection. its then that she gently coaxes seungwan to relax and nestle into her arms, guiding her nervous, tiny omega into her nest as joohyun rubs her baby bump and soothes her until she settles down. tummy rubs especially come in handy to help seungwan both calm down and sleep because she absolutely melts and mewls whenever joohyun does them. 

by the time seungwans second trimester comes to an end and she enters her third, the bedroom has basically become the living room—all the cushions and pillows have been hoarded inside, and seungwan spends almost all her time there now. there are also parenting and pregnancy books and guides scattered all around the place, and seungwan is usually in her nest reading or researching while rubbing her belly. joohyun ends up using the tv in their bedroom more so she can be with seungwan, curling around her and nosing into her skin.  

(also, seungwan is practically always playing music aloud in her nest, and if she isnt engrossed in research, shes organizing her playlists or sorting through her music collection for the right songs. joohyun realizes somewhere along the way that she can gauge what kind of mood swing seungwan is in the midst of through what kind of music shes playing.) 

—

other headcanons

joohyun is the only alpha in her family—everyone else are betas. so her protective, nurturing nature has been something shes developed ever since she was young. 

seungwan starts to sleep a lot more during her second trimester, so joohyun often comes home to find her dozing off while curled up in her nest. it melts her heart every time, and she quickly ends up crawling in to nestle against her back, arms coming to rest over her belly as she cuddles close and breathes in seungwans familiar, soothing scent.

joohyun eventually has to help bathe seungwan. seungwan is a little flustered by the ordeal because even though theyve been mated for a long while now, shes always been independent. so she feels bad about joohyun having to do this for her. not to mention she sometimes gets a little self-conscious about her baby bump. but joohyun tells her that if seungwan were in her place, she would do the same for joohyun. and that to joohyun, seungwan will always be perfectly imperfect in her beauty, stretch marks and swollen belly and all. 

during doctor appointments, seungwan takes notes and asks questions while joohyun listens quietly. she usually lets seungwan take the lead when it comes to the health side of things, since she doesnt want to get in the way of seungwans need to gather information and understand everything related to her pregnancy. joohyun comes along as . . . emotional support at this point. for when seungwan starts getting panicky. 

joohyun is protective of seungwan and will face anything. anything except spiders because killing them is still seungwans designated job, even four months into her pregnancy and joohyun is running screaming from the kitchen into the living room to latch onto seungwan in fright. seungwan nearly trips over her own feet from laughing when she sees joohyun trying to hide behind her baby bump. 

theyre both light sleepers and joohyun clings to seungwans back like a koala in her sleep. so whenever seungwan has late night snack cravings and crawls out of bed, she ends up dragging sleepy and tired joohyun along with her. sometimes seungwan wants food outside though, so joohyun ends up driving them around at like three in the morning while seungwan keeps changing her mind about what she wants  to eat. she falls asleep at some point and joohyun just sighs grumpily, but with obvious fondness as she drives them back home.

[omegangrins]

A Treatise On the Doctor

I don't know how to start this. Because I think of Peter Capaldi's words when he said that the only thing required to be a Doctor Who fan, is kindness.

I like 13 and think Chibnall is doing his best job writing the show.

So I struggle to write this because I am engaging against that very unkindness in the Doctor Who fandom, and trying very hard not to be angry back. "Allways try to be nice but never fail to be kind." But I've begun to wonder more and more if those who speak so loudly against the show really know what the show itself is about.

Enough of talking about other people though, cause frankly they're only important as set-up for this conversation. And again, I'm working kind.

So here's what you're gonna learn from this lifelong fan (and the best Tl;dr you're gonna get):

1. The Doctor sucks. From the very beginning. People complain about character traits now that have been around as long as the show.

2. Due to the Doctor's suckage, they tend to do more harm than good. (And because of this, most of the Doctor's "friends" along the way have been, well, let's leave it at the air quotes for now cause it's a damn big list of "BOOOO!!!".)

3. All of the showrunners and writers and actors and editors and everyone else has allways knows this and has played it this way.

4. And last but not least, since this is a time travel show. If you wanna know what and why stuff is happening now, look it up. Everything that happened before is allways in play.

5. None of this is bad, and in fact, it makes the show morally grayer. It's about kindness at all costs. Even your own.

A. First things first, the hard thing. The Doctor is not grrrreat. I mean, sure they try, but they fail a lot more often. In Extremis, a majority of those fatality index counts come from people the Doctor failed to save. That's why it's worded so specifically as "cause of death". All the death's caused by the Doctor's very interaction with time and lack of saving those around them. And part of it's not their fault, but more often than not, the Doctor says I can save you, and can't, won't, or chooses not to.

And that would be alright, but it took them over 1000 years to realize they should start letting their companions lead lives outside of theirs so THEY DON'T DIE. A bit too long as someone who claims to be better.

Not to mention how many times the Doctor is dismissive of their companions and the people around them only to use them for their help and just bug off again. If they truly cared and wanted to help, they would stay and listen in between adventures. Their lifespan is near infinite anyway. What's a few extra Earth hours with some friends you made along the way. You know, maybe fix some of the psychological and emotional damage created by encountering things behind a human's original scope of reasoning. But nope, we gotta go adventure more, byyyyeee!!

So when people talk about these qualities in 13 in a negative aspect I have to laugh because I'm not sure if they understand the joke. Cause we're talking about an alien that grew up around a species calling themselves Time Lords. I try not to blame them too much for it. 1 had to learn how to be hospitable to humans and it's been a bit of a slow learning curve ever since.

B. After the Doctor survived the horrors of the Time War and happened upon a human companion they felt worth connecting to, what did they do? They took Rose to watch her planet burn in front of her eyes. Great, first date, amirite?

And that's a little bit of companion damage. Do you know that the Doctor is responsible for the almost complete genocide of the Silurian race across multiple occasions. I am legitimately surprised there are any left after all of the ones the Doctor has killed. Like before, they cause destruction either purposefully or accidentally or simply by force of being there.

Remember before how I said that the Doctor just flies away. Yeah, they leave a lot of problems behind when they do (something that I can see Chibnall is planting the seeds of). If you had a time and space machine and practically unlimited capabilities and you choose to just leave after a situation and not check up on them from time to or see if there are any other underlying crises to be solved. But oh no, "gotta follow that rule of time and keep going even though I stopped in the first place because of how interested I was.". This is why 9 has a great arc about this. He thought he killed all the Daleks. They came back. He thought he'd gotten rid of the Slitheen. They came back. He thought he saved Satellite 5 from aliens. But opsies, they came back. And look! They're Daleks. Which he "finally" got rid of.

The Doctor just bounces around all carefree and without an ounce of care for themselves, their companions or consequences unless there's consequences for themselves or their companions. Then they get indignant.

Is that really kind of the person you want flying around fixing things in time and space? Who knows. But at least they are trying. Most of the time the T.A.R.D.I.S. lands somewhere and the authority figures are the most pretentious bull-headed pigs you can find. To me, I laugh cause it seems like both sides end up getting a taste of their own medicine. Usually with the bull charging to death in a sad glory while the Doctor wiles on metaphorically about not being as good as them.

But again, as a "superior" alien with "advanced" technology and "culture" you'd think they'd just know better already. But that's all part of the character. The Doctor may be in flux, but true change is difficult. The real hero of every story is the other people BESIDES the Doctor.

Cause the title is Doctor *Who* . The Who being half of the title, despite having less letters. It's the constant question of "What and why and who is that crazy person that's trying to help?" Why do you think they keep flying back to Earth? (Besides set construction reasons.) They've grown as attached to us as we have to them. And at this point, a lot of their saving us is guilt and embarrassment at having a hand in our timeline.

This is also the same reason the Doctor dumps companions in a fluff. Baggage. Every time a companion gets too heavy to carry the memories of... off they fly.

Except for 13. She's stayed. To this end, we can see how the Doctor changes. Not on our smaller, human timelines, but on the timeline of a god with way too much power.

D. With that in mind, we go Classic. It's the Who you need to consult if you wish to make any critique on what's happening now. Because how can you know how a part operates inside of a whole without seeing the whole part?

Cause I don't know if you've watched it but it can be rough, and I don't mean in the sense of production value (which admittedly they do a fairly decent job of using what money they had. A problem the BBC plagues to Doctor Who to this day.). The 3rd Doctor shits on every one they call friends constantly and then turns around expecting help. 4 did the same. Then 5 masked that contempt with a plucky face and a cheeky word. But it was still there, bubbling out of 6 and 7 as the inability to suffer fools gladly and using their own righteousness to enact change in their companions. A trait that kept going til an entire war and regeneration was used solving the question of "Doctor Who?" Only for them to try and forget twice more by putting on their pretty grinning faces and running away from it.

And I'm only talking from a companion perspective. Each of the Doctors has enacted their own form of genocide on countless species. Sure, it's to "save humans" but at the end of the day you'd have to ask yourself if we're really worth that blood. And this is all in the Doctor's history. As much as they claim better, they're hands are still gushing red.

The Doctor left Jo because she fell in love. They drove Adric to put their life on the line in order to feel adequate. The entirety of the Silurian race has been wiped out fivefold under their watch, with one time by their hand itself. Same for several other singular and unique species you won't be able to find elsewhere in the universe. 7 used time travel to enact a personality change in Ace while simultaneously using her as a pawn in an interdimensional war. The Time War itself. Sure it got erased but the Doctor still did those things ("War" Doctor or whatever nonsense titles they feel necessary to delude themselves). The entirety of Amy's childhood was destroyed by their presence, and Rory got erased. Twice! Sarah Kingdom. We know the list. Hell, the Doctor whisked Barbara and Ian away because they wanted to teach the snobby humans some lessons.

They may have a time machine, but we have the bill of their actions. This is where 13 excels. Because they're trying to be better than themselves. They've learnt the lessons of all those years traveling and the failures they wish they could reverse but don't as a way of keeping a scoreboard of pain. It's not perfect by any means, but look at 12 needing cue cards to understand and react to human grief under duress. They've come a helluva long way. After 50 years, I'm inclined to believe better. After all, it's what the Doctor would want.

E. You know how people like the ASOIAF series because it offers up morally complex characters existing in a morally complex world where black and white are harder to define than grey? Have you ever thought of Doctor Who as the same? Strip past the fairytale and adventure and "wibbly wobbly timey wimeyness and it's just people reacting to situations. We're just harder on the Doctor because they're hard on us. You could go round and round on who's the bigger killer, but at the end of the day Time Lords and humans fight and feel about the same things. It's allways been a joke to pretend otherwise.

That's why I love the Timeless Child. Not for making the Doctor anymore special but for saying that even despite having all of their specialness ripped away and repurposed to create a lie of a society then having the memory wiped of said event, the Doctor broke out of their mold, stole a TARDIS and told the Time Lords to fuck off. That's not a Captain America/Superman hero. That's Batman in space with a society of Lex Luthor's. Gotham and Gallifrey. The Doctor saw what they were a part of and broke free, without even knowing the more horrifying truth. Cause it's the thing I see many fans missing because they're so preocuppied with the Doctor being special. The thing that made the Doctor different was their ability to know the difference and walk away to find better. Now, the Doctor has a reason to go back and find out why they never stopped running.

The Time Lords might be the greatest monsters in the universe. It is in the name. "Lords". Those who would lord over us and impose their will with a banthium fist.

And this is a children's show.

C the thing is, the people who made and make this show all collectively rail against one thing: Hate. Kindness is the way of Doctor's. Even if they're sawing off your leg, it's to do the kindness of saving your life. This is because the people who make this (United Kingdomers) have seen centuries of war and conflict and oppression enacted by their own country in the name of progress. And they want to see it no more. Look no further than any of the Doctor's adventures with UNIT. Allways advocating for peace and being ignored for the comfortable war-cry. It's why it's hard to blame the Doctor when we do very similar and often worse (though we don't have time travel.... yet). The creators of this show know better, see better, and wrote better, to know that the powers that be nipped would nip their creations and sanitize them. So they wrote their messages so strong that you can feel them from the future. They're powerfull enough that even across eras they have all collectively moved me to write this.

That's another point I have to laugh at people saying Doctor Who has never been in your face about progressive politics. The Green Death. Survival. Trial of a Timelord (Yes, all of it. Sit down and power through.) The Happiness Patrol is one of my all time favorite episodes for going there in this regard. People may poo poo but history has its' eyes on you. Doctor Who loves taking potshots at the issues of the day. As long as you don't make the aliens black of course. Make them all the colors of the rainbow but never make them black. That'd be too on the nose (That's something they used to say back in the day! Crazy how far we've come).

So bravoa to Chibnall for continuing the legacy of Doctor Who. From where I'm standing, he's not doing anything different than any other showrunner before him. Cause if you want to argue canon, you at least have to know what created it. This show owes what it is to those Classic eras. And if you think Chibnall is shitting on those years and your childhood.... well, then why did you read this whole thing?

[og-danny-dorito]

Some Really Bad Michael Myers Headcanons, Mainly Done Because I Just Felt Like It

- where do I start with this bitch

- he's a big, angry, no-fucks-given sortof dude with a knife and many mental illnesses, but he's still a person, so he's got some personal preferences deep down under that creepy exterior as The Shape of Haddonfield

- for instance, he generally likes to sleep in his spare time, or listen to people reading to him. he's not sure why he likes it so much, but the sound of someone's speaking to him without depth or meaning in their word was put him to sleep faster than anything

- he can fall asleep in complete silence, but ironically enough it feels...empty without someone or something making noise. although he personally is very quiet, he grew up in the asylum where there was almost always some sort of noise in the room, whether it be distant murmurings of an inmate next door or a nurse walking down the halls, so he's used to falling asleep to whatever noise is going on during the day

- oh yeah, he also sleeps like a rock

- seriously, its a struggle to get him up. he barely wants to move in the first place, so getting him out of bed will have to be with some bribing or very gentle pleading, although he gets annoyed of begging out of the bedroom very quickly. your best shot is to promise making dinner all week (even though you probably already do) and to make sure he gets treated very generously for his fear or getting out of bed

- a good method of giving him praise is to actually give him a kiss. you may be thinking to yourself, ‘but Danny (that's my internet name, or call me Dann), he's a big scary man with basically no emotions and doesn't speak like at all, how can you make him like soft things that imply a domestic and somewhat healthy relationship?’ well dear reader because I said so, and also it basically makes sense. he obviously wouldn't remember much from his childhood before killing his sister, so what he does remember are snippets of his family and household he grew up in

- and to be honest, pretty much all of them are bland and leave a tight frown and sour taste on and in his mouth (respectively)

- the most evident one is of his mother, who he remembers as tired and snappy, hitting him over the head and yelling some slurred words at him for a reason he doesn't remember. he remembers the hatred, the sadness that came with the childhood he had learned to forget, which fuel his desire for blood more than anything after he's had the first taste of what it's like to take a life. he wants to be treated well, but in his mind he believes all he needs is to keep himself satisfied with blood until he's at his end

- but the truth is that he's really just a man, and he needs a bit of affirmation of how he slowly cared about from time to time. he needs someone to take care of him, to wash his hair or even do something's small like curl up in bed with him when he's asleep for warmth. I know that sounds likes he's not a desperate bitch, but he really won't admit how touch starved he is at all, so yknow there's will be pushing you away when you want to juggle him or smthn like that

- sex however?

- he highkey can and will fuck whoever, he doesn't even like have a gender preference. but when he's in a relationship with someone it makes him feel,,,bad? is that the right word? it's not the issue of hurting their feelings though, it's the feeling of it not being really neccissary to fuck someone else when you have someone's waiting at home, if that makes sense. it's saving him time and trouble to just push you against a wall and do whatever he wants

- it's usually just to fulfill urges that are more than just murderous though, like animalistic ones that can only be satisfied by contact that isn't entirely violent, but there's are times when he genuinely, seriously needs physical contact

- Michael on a whole isn't an affectionate guy, obviously, and so he won't outright ask for affection if he feels needy, and that's few and far between. if you catch him in one of those moods though, he'll usually end up standing behind you menacingly until you turn to face him. this usually resorts to him just wrapping his arms around you, holding you to his chest and just,,,standing still for a few minutes

- it's kindof a personal thing to him, validation of sorts. he may not show it, but he loves you, and know she damn well he's not who you deserve. he knows that you're stable, can function, don't have to suffering the burden of animalistic urges on a daily basis, etc. it feels wrong sometimes, wrong in a sense that he doesn't belong, even with whom he should feel the best confidant

- he needs physical affection, even though he doesn't initiate it and avoids it due to not wanting to feel a specific way in your presence. I mean, you're the first person he's felt anything with besides hatred since he can remember, so as a guy who literally kills people he doesn't always feel correct touching you, like you're a holy object or something

- coaxing him eventually gets him out of it, you just need to show him you want to touch him, to be around him

- on that note, I believe he would best be matched with a particularly needy partner. yes, he'd get agitated very quickly if you were too clingy like hanging on his arm or constantly hugging him, but he doesn't mind having his face held or being told that you missed him

- it also gives him a massive hard on when you look him directly in the eyes and say “I missed you today.” or “I’ve been waiting all day for you, you know. You kept me waiting for too long.”

- while all this may seem great, he's not exactly the best at showing his own affection and devotion for you. well, better phrased, he just shows it in different ways

- someone's been bothering you at work or giving you a hard time? expect their head to be on the table as soon as he gets home as proof they won't  be bothering you anymore. some creep keeps hitting on you? ok, no head thing this time, yes he understands it's nasty but this time he'll just scare the person to death. usually he solves things with violence, so anything you complain to him about will be taken care of quite quickly

- you can imagine how easily possessive he gets. he knows that he's not the best, but that doesn't stop him from recognizing that no one else is better for you, at all. just smiling or laughing at a person’s joke when they're obviously trying to lay down something more beneath the veil of politeness is enough to get his blood boiling

- he keeps following you even after you two are confirmed as living together Andy being significant others, meaning you have to rub your temples slightly when you see a pale, emotionless mask emerge from the darkness in a fashion that would scare the shit out of anyone if they hadn't seen it and what was underneath 1,000 times

- when you finally come home, he's already waiting in front of the door and staring you down as if you've done something wrong

- you almost roll your eyes

- “Michael, don't tell me you were jealous.”

- “...”

- “Don't look at me like that! I don't even like them like that, only you.”

- he's borderline kindof a yandere, so expect to feel a little smothered by him if he's not feeling particularly mad about one of your friends but is hesitating to kill the, because you care about them. he's not the most considerate slasher, but he's not a dumbass so he won't hesitate to make sure you haven't been tipped off by a friend

- really random, but in all honesty it would crush him if you grew scared of him for this. he wouldn't recognize it first as rebellion, but after a while he would start to actually become a bit scared you didn't love him anymore. he wants to ask why you're acting like this, what he has to do to be better, but he can't get to words across so you both sit in silence, and he feels more like a monster as the minutes pass, making him more violent

- chances are if you become scared and want to leave you won't leave at all, you'll just end up being chained down to a bed in an empty room with no windows and being constantly given food by Michael as he attempts to get you back, train you like an animal to love him again

- but that probably won't happen, if you decide to see the part of him that truly is human

- he's not scared of anything really, but he does have a fear of being watched without his knowing, like a stalker. he's only ever told this to you, and it was mainly just blank ramblings as a product of his own fatigue in the middle of the night

- although he does sleep like a rock, that doesn't mean he wakes up in cold sweat sometimes, breathing and gasping for air while staring at the ceiling. he doesn't say anything for hours, merely staring and breathing heavily, reminiscing over whatever he's just dreamed of. most dreams are just black, blank canvases with nothing on them, deep and empty

- others are detailed, too realistic to be just dreams, abstract telling of a story that's familiar like a distant, unpleasant thought in the back of his head fleshed out to appear like reality. you scream at him, claw at the air a small he chokes you to death, say his name s on your lips before you turn to dust beforehand his eyes, and then silence. silence as he runs through the house, only door won't open to where they should, like a trick maze as his name through your labored breath echoes in directions he can’t follow. then the house catches on fire, and he wakes up immediately feeling shaken and disoriented as you slowly move from your place next to him to he placing a hand on his back, trying Tommy reassure him of your presence

- he blames you for this, since he never had nightmares so violently Andy so often before he met you, but he's refused to talk about them openly or try to work through them. it doesn't affect his life directly, so he pays it no mind

- and that's pretty much how it work for you two. to be honest you do most of the providing, the work, and the care, but the small moments that he finds himself confiding in you as your lover or feelings intimately close just Fromm looking at you can prove his love, although due to preconceived ideas he may not be the best at being conventional

- but who likes conventional anyway?

[padawanchesha]

Mandalorian Chapter 1 Discussion

Putting this under a read more cus I know these are gonna get long, but basically, I’m going through and re-watching each episode to tide me over until Chapter 8.

I know this show is supposed to mirror stereotypical cowboy westerns, and I love westerns so I really appreciate how Mando is introduced

God this dude talking about the bounty’s glands is so uncomfortable and weird (are the glands a delicacy? like... for perfume???)

Mando didn’t even spill this guy’s drink, he’s just ready to fight

Mando: if I make a dramatic entrance I will surely draw attention away from my bounty

Honestly, from the beginning of this episode that Mando was going to be an extremely quiet protagonist and I’m glad he isn’t

He could’ve absolutely let that guy go and didn’t need to cut him in half but I suppose he’s not quite as forgiving before he meets Baby

PEDRO’S VOICE WHEN HE SAYS HIS FIRST LINE IS FUCKING HHGHGHGHG

“I can bring you in warm.... or I can bring you in cold..... but you’re going in the cold”

When I first watched this episode, Mando saying “no droids” came across more like “I don’t trust droids driving” like he was cool with them but he just thought having a bounty with a droid might be a problem

I also had no idea why the bounty was complaining about Mando’s Razorcrest because I didn’t realize he’s essentially driving a beat-up old pickup truck that’s falling apart

Like the bounty brings up it being pre empire and all, but it still never occurred to me that Mando might not be the best with keeping his ship updated. He wants it running smooth and correctly but in the end its an old ship with old parts and he most likely isn’t the most skilled mechanic

Mando is just so unnerving when he sits there silently while someone tries to talk to him

It dawned on me that Mando’s ship is the way it is (no sleeping quarters, open backtube, tight spaces, different weapons/storage compartments) because it was most likely some kind of war/transport ship that wasn’t meant to be lived in

Ah yes, the first time Mando horror movie stalks his opponent

God, I always loved the practical effects Star Wars did with their characters, even the background ones. All the makeup and costumes for even the background characters are chefs kiss

Mando has no guild friends!

Lmao even Greef knows Mando is fucking dramatic

Does Mando just... constantly take jobs even if he’s not fully aware of how much the bounty is? He goes one after the other with no breaks. I suppose maybe it’s to keep busy because he has no one to go and hang out with, no real home to relax in either

I want to bite the calamari flan

did that jawa have a LEG

Weird observation but I noticed they shoot from that alley perspective several times, whether it’s to emphasize the fact he’s in a slum area or if it’s to foreshadow the fact that Mando will use that passage

I love that this show is making a point to tell the viewers either verbally or visually that by this time the Empire and the Stormtroopers are all but myths/black market people. In the movies, they’re always a strong power but we’re also always seeing it from the jedi/rebellion perspective, here it’s from the perspective of people who were never in the front lines of the war and were never taught what the force was or how it worked

i love Mando’s little orange fingers

Foreshadowing their fucking ass-kicking

So how do these pucks and tracking fobs work? by dna??

I wonder how much beskar the Empire still has. Obviously the Mandalorians are struggling to find it, and much of it is in Imperialist hands so it makes me wonder if other tribes have been more fortunate, or if all the tribes are still fighting to get back whats technically theirs

BABY MANDOS

So is that ram thing a Mandalorian symbol, or specifically the Armorer's signet??

Just how close are the Mandalorians to each other? they’re a tribe but they’re forced to live underground, hidden, and only go up one at a time. They care for each other and the foundlings, but how far does this care extend?

I LOVE THE MUSIC THAT PLAYS AND THE ARMORERS WHOLE LOOK

I hope we learn more about what a signet means

While I want to delve deeper into just what happened to Mando, I’m happy with how they did the flashback montages. It doesn’t feel out of place, it doesn’t slow anything down, and it shows us just enough to understand some of who Mando is and how he came to be where he is

The bluurg’s are such good wrinkly girls

ASDAJHJ I never noticed before but when Mando starts punching the bluurg he makes a weird-ass noise

this also marks the first time Mando gets his ass kicked

When Mando says “thank you” instead of “I had it handled” that's when I started to feel like mando might not end up like all the other alpha male types that are out there

Mando’s sass!

I love how he sits back after Kuiil says “I have spoken” hes surprised and maybe a little confused but he doesn’t try to argue

and then hes thrown on his ass

WHAT IS A MYTHOSAUR AND WHEN CAN MANDO RIDE ONE

why didn't mando try the calm, gentle approach first? It makes me wonder if mando was so focused on his bounty he never really thought through his strategy. Like, obviously its a blow to his pride to be called out for not being able to ride a bluurg but also Kuiil manages to get Mando to step back and try a different approach rather than trying to brute force it

THIS MUSIC FUCKING SLAPS

Kuiil’s speech to Mando makes me sad knowing what I know

the bare wrist folks!!!

Mando: *gets flung into barrels after getting shot* hOW DARE YOOOU

what does a bounty hunter droid do with the credits

the beat of silence before IG tries to get mando to answer kills me

my last two brain cells after I’ve had a long day

really though, I’m glad that the writers chose to make Mando work with someone to get to the baby because we get to see what mando is like when he’s working with someone, he talks more and he’s not super stoic, he’s a bit sarcastic

despite Mando’s feelings toward droids, he still takes the time to ask IG if he’s ok, and i think it’s really telling of who Mando is, or can be, as a person

MY LITTLE SON, MY SWEET BABY, LITTLE GREEN BEANA SDGYAGDSA

I said it once and I’ll say it again: Pedro Pascal does a wonderful job at conveying emotion through body language!

Even before Mando stops IG, we can see him tilting his head at the baby, observing it and taking it in. He’s most likely having multiple trains of thought at once “Should I kill it?” “it's so cute” “its 50?” “what do I do?” etc. And then he makes the decision: he's a man of honor and this is a child. He shoots the droid who he literally just fought next to and asked if it was alright, all while watching the child. His eyes never once leave it, and then his head tilts and he reaches out, wiggling a finger to the baby. He has no idea what he’s going to do, but he knows that this child deserves more than death, and maybe it’s because he gets a bigger reward for it alive, or maybe because he was once a foundling! Either way, Mando is captivated by the child and honorable.

[jadewing-realms]

Voltron S8 Thoughts

warning: there will be spoilers ahead

So, I wanted to give myself some time to ponder this before I threw my thoughts out... I don’t want to just say more of what’s already been said, and I don’t really have the brain capacity for a super long rant right now anyway, but... there are a few things I feel like I want to contribute if I can.

I’ve seen some people claiming that those of us who are upset about this conclusion to the show are only upset because “our ships didn’t happen.” Others seem to defend the “tragedy” of this ending as a positive element from an artistic vantage point. Those are the things I want to address mostly, I guess.

On the matter of ships: I’m a writer myself. I’ve been studying the art of story for 10 years now, so that’s usually the lens through which I view most shows and movies. And while I’m sure some might be upset over ships alone, from what I’ve seen, most have cited most of their problems with this season/the latter half of S7 as being from a story point of view. Which I have to echo.

For example: I don’t hate Allurance. Really, I don’t. It’s not my cup of tea, but I wouldn’t have had a problem with it if it felt... genuine/not rushed/not a rebound/not flat by comparison to the previous canon-confirmed ship that was Lotura. The problem with how Allurance panned out, to me, depends entirely on the context. 

Like, one of the major problems with the ship that I’ve seen is that Lance is a human boy from Earth, who loves Earth and his family there, and he’s never expressed interest in being a diplomat. Which isn’t a bad thing. 

On the other hand, Allura was the princess of a lost race, the last remaining relic of a culture that existed 10k years ago. She had dedicated her life to being a diplomat who would rebuild the universe. Once everything was said and done, she shouldn’t have been expected to abandon that role (this is, for the moment, ignoring the fact that the show did more than have her do just that). Ideally, she would have had to stick with it, lead New Altea, continue to seek peace as any good leader does.

If the Allurance subplot could’ve addressed some of these themes and complexities, I would’ve found that interesting, even if it’s not my ship. It would’ve been intriguing to see how a couple might face those kinds of challenges together. I can get behind any character relationship if it’s done well, has depth, and makes sense.

For me personally, the execution of Allurance (and then of course, Shiro and his unnamed SO that seemed to get tossed in as an afterthought) had none of these things. My distaste for these is not due to the fact that my chosen ships weren’t endgame; in the end, that’s not what it comes down to for me. It’s more about the characters and what feels right for them in context of the show as a whole, and their pre-established character arcs. 

The way it was actually manifested, Allurance felt shallow and rushed to me, Shiro seemed tacked on to the season as a whole, and all in all, I was left with a feeling like the characters themselves were not done proper justice (regardless of who they ended up with). That their potential had been let down hard.

Then in regards to the tragedy element, I’ll start by saying that I LOVE a good tragedy. I live off dark themes, it’s what I love to write myself. One of my favorite shows is Attack on Titan. All in all, I don’t mind seeing things ending horribly for characters, okay? 

But it has to be executed properly, or else tragedy just ends up feeling like blatant manipulation. Like a bid to make the viewers feel something in an otherwise shallow emotional context. 

Viewers of Attack on Titan could never complain about the brutality of that show because it establishes itself as brutal from Episode 1. It sets the tone to tell viewers ‘this is gonna get ugly, don’t get comfortable’. It prepares viewers for a rough ride, so that when we see characters die in horrible, gruesome ways, it’s not as jarring as it might’ve been had we had no warning.

Season 8 of VLD seemed to fish this tragic element out of left field. The show was not built to be a tragedy; up until the end of Season 7, there was no indication that that’s the direction we were going to take. If there HAD been evidence of it, the subtle laying of the foundations of darker elements, it would’ve been fine. But because there was no precedent for how horribly things went, it had all the emotional tact of a freight train barreling down a city street with no tracks (Inception reference, anyone?).

Lotor and Allura both became critical victims of this (though the entire main cast suffered from this ultimately). They both deserved better, and I don’t mean from their universe. I’m talking from a story point of view, as characters, they deserved better from their writers. Even if they both still ended up dying, they were both well-done characters who deserved for their arcs to reach satisfying conclusions. Especially as representative characters.

Lotor specifically spoke to me on a more personal level, as a victim of paternal abuse/neglect myself, as someone who’s constantly checking myself and my flaws because I share that fear of becoming the person who hurt me so deeply. It’s always felt like there’s no way anybody could truly understand what it was like growing up in the environment I did. Like I have to bear it alone. 

So to have a character presented with hints of these same struggles was really validating, especially when it seemed like these things were going to be called out. Addressed. Dealt with. Other characters would find out the truth about the depth of Lotor’s suffering and he would find peace and solace in newfound friendships. Such an ending is idealistic, yes. But it’s a nice thought that even if I struggle to find that kind of peace in my own life, it happened to this character. And maybe some day, it could happen to me.

Instead, Lotor is betrayed so wholly and completely by those newfound friends, based solely on circumstantial evidence, that his fragile state of mind can’t take it. Guilty or not isn’t relevant; the Voltron team stuck him in the Rift and FREAKING LEFT HIM THERE TO DIE and that was never once addressed as a problem. The Voltron team was painted as The Good Guys who totally did the right thing, until the very end when Allura (who incidentally was the one previously shown to be the most incensed/angry/bitter over what Lotor did) conveniently acknowledges that Lotor was just trying to do what was right and that he deserved better--which just fell flat coming from her, who up to that point, had not been shown to feel any sort of guilt over what she and her team did to him. Even that acknowledgement was not any sort of admission of fault on her part; only an admittance that Lotor thought he was doing the right thing.

All in all, this does not paint a hopeful picture for me as a victim. It creates a theme of inescapable pain... the idea that my trauma might haunt me so thoroughly, only death brings an escape. Heck, even if Lotor still had to die unfairly (if they had to show us those flashbacks, confirm what a horrific life he’d led, and then show us his melted corpse), the least they could’ve done is dealt with the ramifications of that... show the Voltron team realizing how wrong they were, feeling guilt and shame for their drastic, cruel actions, and THEN admit that even if Lotor had done some horrible things, nobody deserved the fate they dealt to him.

Instead, the message presented is the idea that Lotor, the manifestation of the pain Zarkon caused over the course of ten thousand years, was unable to endure his suffering. That there was no hope for him. He was unable to defeat his upbringing, and was then sentenced to a torturous death for the resulting crimes. And the people who were both betrayers and executioners felt absolutely no remorse for it. And yet I’m supposed to think of them as the Heroes. 

I don’t know... maybe all of this is just circumstantial. Maybe I’m biased due to my chosen field of study and my own personal background. But I don’t see how this season was in any way satisfying on a plot or character level... and I certainly can’t bring myself to see any beauty in the injustice of my own childhood, so it stands to reason I can’t see value in the needless tragedy of Lotor’s suffering. Or even Allura’s death (the necessity of which is debatable, btw; there was literally no explanation for WHY she absolutely HAD to die).

I can’t speak for everyone, but the thing that originally kept me watching this show was the characters. Not the plot, not the space battles or giant robots or weird aliens. I watched for the people--for Lance, Pidge, Hunk, Keith, Shiro, Allura, Coran, Lotor, etc, etc--and how they interacted, how they got to know each other and understand each other and help each other. How they made each other better. Because that’s really all any of us can hope to get out of life, isn’t it? To be known, to be validated, to be understood, to love and be loved. This is what I read/watch fiction for, because if I have a hard time finding those things in real life, then at least I can watch it happen to characters I care about.

In the end, though, this season left me in the depressing state of wondering what the point of it all was, which is probably the last place any content creator should want to leave their audience. What was I supposed to take away from this, if not the idea that this show, which obviously fell in love with itself somewhere along the line, pretended to represent many varied facets of the human condition, only to conclude those facets with pat answers, hasty romance, cheap monologues, and shallow tragedies?

I’m not angry. I am simply disappointed.

[nova0000scotia]

BRILLIANT... Keys to Understanding Violence in the Old TestamentPosted on July 22, 2013 by Lawson Stone It’s hard to imagine anyone today who is familiar with the Bible not being concerned about the violence in the Old Testament. It’s a fashionable bomb tossed by the so-called new atheists, and the easiest way for critics of Christianity to dismiss the Bible. To hear them talk, on every page of the Old Testament cities are burned to the ground, whole populations annihilated. Yahweh, the God of Israel, is in turn portrayed as a wrathful tribal deity constantly calling his people to commit atrocities in his name.The problem of violence in the Old Testament centers mainly around the stories of Israel’s struggle to settle the land of Canaan. These stories center on the books of Joshua and Judges. So establish some starting points by looking in a general way at the question of violence and war in the Old Testament. Then in the installments to follow, we’ll turn specifically to Joshua and Judges.All these presentations will share one important conviction: central to getting the Bible right is hearing it in its own cultural and historical setting. This is not just good scholarship; it’s good listening. That’s why I’m excited to be sharing with you from a place called Bedhat es-Sha’ab, a little-known and infrequently visited site just west of the Jordan river that is possibly one of the earliest places where Israelites assembled and worshiped as they settled in the land of Canaan. Being an outsider in this barren, desolate place reminds me that the biblical characters didn’t live in a world of civilian police, ambulance and 9-1-1 service. Nor did they have 2000 years of reflection on the whole Bible. The Old Testament characters need to be seen and heard in their own time, not dismissed from the perspective of our time.With that in mind, here are seven facts to to help focus the question of violence in the Old Testament:FACT ONE:Jesus and the NT writers never complain about the violence in the Old Testament. That should flash at least a yellow, caution-light on our hasty dismissal of the Old Testament. Are WE more morally sensitive than Jesus and the New Testament writers? Did they see something in the Old Testament that we miss?FACT TWOSecular historians and the Bible itself tell us that the land of Canaan at the time of the Israelite settlement was not inhabited by a uniform, indigenous population. Canaan was a crossroads and a diverse culture of many different groups: You know, all the “-ites”-Canaanites, Amorites, Perizites, stalactites, stalagmites… If you’d asked a random inhabitant of Canaan “Whose land is this?” You’d have gotten different answers. It was a no-mans-land.FACT THREEGenesis 12-50 tells us the Israelites’ ancestors had actually lived in Canaan for centuries before their sojourn in Egypt. They were not outsiders trying to take a land from its original owners. In fact, the Pharaohs of Egypt would have seen no real difference between Canaanites and Israelites. They came from the same place, spoke the same language, had the same physical anthropology, i.e. they looked alike. So there is no parallel between the book of Joshua and, say, the European settlers in North America displacing the earlier inhabitants.FACT FOURThis a biggee. By Joshua’s day, Canaan had long suffered under a harsh political system. Canaan in the time of Moses and Joshua had been ruled for centuries by Egypt. Egypt had been ruled by foreign kings known as the Hyksos, who possibly came from Syria-Palestine. A native Egyptian dynasty expelled these foreign kings, pursuing them into Canaan. To insure they never came back, Egypt annexed Canaan and ruled it with two aims: first, never-ever would Canaan be a corridor for anyone attacking Egypt!Second, Pharaoh exploited Canaan economically. He administered Canaan by appointing rulers in the top 30 or so towns. They managed the country like a giant agricultural plantation, a kind of “factory farm.” They focused on producing a small number of crops valued by the Egyptian upper classes, mainly olives and a type of grape that thrived only in Canaan.This reality had serious consequences.The focus on massive production of a few crops not only risked depleting the land, it also destroyed the locally integrated, self-sustaining economies of small villages and towns throughout the hill country. These  communities needed mix of farming and herding just to survive. The Egyptians also yanked the best of the work force out of these towns and villages to toil as forced labor, emptying the rural hill country of Canaan. Many people from Canaan, not just future Israelites, wound up slaves in Egypt. Settlement patterns in Canaan about 1300 B.C., just before the exodus and conquest, show the central hill country of Canaan was largely emptied out.Under this kind of regime, Canaan was unstable and violent. The city rulers fought each other, hired mercenaries, sometimes cruelly treated the local populace. Bandits terrorized the highways. Men stripped of their land and living gathered around warlords, some of whom were good men, others just thugs or gangsters.So, by the time Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan, the place was dark and bloody ground. It’s just possible that, far from being seen as invaders, Joshua and the Israelites represented the arrival of order, justice, and even peace.FACT FIVEThe Old Testament shows us that, even in the conquest stories, the Israelites were not a militarized nation. While other nations boasted of their weapons and crack troops, the Israelites were not a professional army.  Likewise, the Israelites were not a huge group. The idea found in some textbooks that there were at least 2.5 million Israelites comes from a  misunderstanding of the Hebrew terminology for numbers. Archaeologists tell us that likely weren’t 2.5 million people living in all of Canaan and Syria combined!The books of Deuteronomy, Joshua & Judges stress that, from a military perspective, the Israelites were out-numbered, out-maneuvered and out-gunned. After Joshua, they had no central authority. They were only a coalition of tribes, often divided, often untrue to their own religion. The Bible says they needed miraculous divine intervention just to survive. Hardly the profile of a nation of bloodthirsty, imperialists!FACT SIXWarlike nations, and all of Israel’s ancient neighbors, gloried in their superior weapons and firepower. Images of Pharaoh portray him holding his hapless enemies by the hair and smiting them with a mace or battle axe. Or, we see Pharaoh thundering along in his war chariot, horses’ reins tied around his waist, unleashing arrows at cringing, fleeing foes. The Old Testament, in contrast,  stresses that the Israelites were poorly armed, confronting fortified cities or huge chariot forces on foot. The Old Testament also emphasizes Israel’s lack of metal workers. Again, not exactly a warrior nation.FACT SEVENFinally, the world of Moses, Joshua, Gideon and David was a world of unspeakable violence perpetrated by massive, well-armed professional armies. The kings of Egypt, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia gloried in their brutality and savagery. In countless inscriptions throughout the history of the ancient Near East, the great kings boasted of  boring through their enemies’ bodies, ripping their entrails out, galloping their horses and chariots through the gore of enemy bodies, splashing through enemy blood as if crossing a river, impaling thousands of “rebels” on stakes around conquered cities, flaying the skin off of their defeated enemies in full view of their families, and hideously mutilating the dead. And you know, almost nobody in the ancient Near East found this shocking. Rather, most thought it glorious proof that the gods had favored the king. Compared to the graphic detail, intensity, and sheer mass of these ancient descriptions, the Old Testament looks rather tame, even modest.Whatever problems we might have with the violence in the Old Testament, it was One who claimed to be the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament, Jesus, whose Hebrew name was Joshua, who appealed constantly to the OT witness. Schooled in the Old Testament, Jesus called his people to love their enemies and to be peacemakers, not in spite of his Old Testament heritage, but because of it.That’s something to think about.

[loremonster]

To The Nonnie Requesting Friendship Advice

...

Punch ‘em in the face and be done with it-- this kid is being a manipulative assha--

Dee! What the hell are you doing?!

Uuuuh... givin’ advice? Like the kid asked for? 

Well then, you’re giving shitty advice. 

Oh whatever. Fine, do it your way, but at least give people a read-more before you go into wall-of-text mode. 

Hello, my gray-faced friend. I’m glad you reached out for advice, but I do want to preface any words of wisdom I may pass onto you with this; I am not currently in your situation. I do not know what biases your explanation contains, I do not know your friend’s side of the story, and I have no idea the context of actions taken by any of the involved parties. Anything I tell you is going to be colored by my life experience. I’ll try to suss out my own biases as much as I can, but no human is capable of doing so completely. I am not a professional. I am not a councilor, nor a psychologist, or even a social worker. I am a person on the web... that said, I appear to be a person on the web who you see as trustworthy, so I shall value that trust and do the best I can. 

Before we dig into your friend, however, I’d like to dig into you. I find it interesting that you recognize that your friend deals with both anxiety and depression without qualification, but when it comes to the fact that they’re trans you felt the need to add about four or five sentences of ‘I don’t get it but I’m still totally an ally’, followed by ‘But they’re doing things I recognize as female-coded so I think they’re digging their own grave’. Clothes and make-up are not feminine. They are coded feminine by the world around us. Often when one is struggling with themselves and their lives, particularly when they were born biosex female and encouraged towards that gender performance their whole lives thus far, one of the things that makes a hard day a little better is self-expression and making the effort to feel attractive-- and society doesn’t have a lot of socially acceptable ways for males to do that. You’ve pointed out that your friend is engaging in ‘feminine’ behaviors and then complaining of dysphoria, but part of those behaviors being viewed as feminine is that everyone keeps reinforcing the known status quo. This is less for this specific situation and more for general allyship, but please try to remove the idea that clothing and make-up are gendered things. They’re not, and they only continue to be that way in the mass consciousness because people who are not harmed by that gendering choose not to think about it. 

Moving on,

A great deal of the behavior you’ve described is of someone who his manipulating those around them. I’m going to make a few base assumptions about you and your friends, including your problem friend-- that you’re all somewhere between the ages of 15 and 25, that your ‘friend’ doesn’t have the best home life on the planet, and you yourself are a highly empathetic person who often makes friends with troubled individuals. Working on these base assumptions, let’s parse out your ‘friend’s’ behavior. 

The fact that they constantly dump on you, but don’t really listen or engage when you need someone to vent to, is an inequality in the friendship. It’s one thing to understand that they’re having a bad day with depression or anxiety, but its entirely another to never allow one party in a friendship seek relief because the other is always too wound up to be supportive. That’s unhealthy, and unfair, and something you may want to talk to him about if you decide this is something you want to attempt to fix. That’s a hard fucking conversation, and it’s not just one conversation. It’s many. It starts with “Hey, can we talk? I feel like I’m doing a lot to support you a lot of the time, but when I need someone you’re not really there for me.” It’s hard, but its important to be open, be honest, and have a real discussion about what they’re doing to you without invalidating your own feelings. Don’t let them equivocate, and if he responds with anything along the lines of “Oh, I guess I’m just a terrible asshole who shouldn’t talk to anyone again ever” THAT IS A MASSIVE RED FLAG, DO NOT TRY TO WALK THAT SHIT BACK, THAT IS A MANIPULATIVE TACTIC TO MAKE YOU APOLOGIZE WHEN HE WAS THE ONE WHO WRONGED YOU. Any shit like that, do not let your ‘holy shit I can’t believe I made him feel that way’ instinct kick in-- physically walk away. I mean it. Get up, say nothing, walk away. It hurts, it’s hard, but a real conversation about your imbalance issues can’t take place with that kind of BS going on. 

This is the point where I’m going to tell you exactly what you don’t want to hear. You can’t fix him. I know you want to help, I know you want to make his life better, you want to be that positive person who never gave up on him so when his life gets better he will always remember you as the supportive friend who never gave up-- forget that. That kind of determination is what allows empathetic people to be ripped apart by others, and that kind of over-investment can cause you to insert yourself too far into their lives and make both you and them feel like the world would fall apart if you weren’t friends. That is unhealthy, for both of you. 

You’ve also mentioned he does shitty things, as well as attention-seeking behavior, and pulls away from the group when called out on being shitty. First I would question what ‘calling out’ means-- if you are quite literally going after him in a public setting, I can understand why he’d pull away and be like ‘fuck y’all’, but, if you are taking him aside in a more personal manner and going “Hey, dude, that thing you did back there? That was hurtful to [person x]” or “Man, I don’t wanna put you on the spot but [thing y] was just a not cool thing to do/say.” When it’s just one person, not the whole group, taking you off to the side and being kind but firm about a correction, it can go a long way to helping someone with anxiety figure their shit out... which is what I feel like your friend is doing right now-- figuring himself out. The sense I get is that your friend is a younger person who may be somewhat socially inept, but has held fast to that idea as part of themselves rather than recognizing it as a lacking skill they can practice. They might have grown up in a house where manipulation was the key way family members got each other to do things, or perchance lacking in specific role models from whom he would have learned these social behaviors from. You can help teach him how to be a better friend, but only if he wants to learn, and a big part of learning how to be a better human is admitting you’ve been a shitty one, and that’s not a fun time for anyone. He will get upset. He will get butthurt. He will feel like everyone is against him and he’s losing control of his life-- just like if someone came up to you and told you you’ve been doing it wrong for years and you’ve got to change everything you’ve ever known until now. 

All of this said, let’s circle back to that mention of red flags and manipulation-- because I get the feeling that you’re a younger individual as well. You might even still be in middle or high school. If you are, I’m about to tell you something else you probably don’t want to hear.

Most of your friends are probably abusive to you. This is simply a fact of making friends within school-- your choice of whom you associate with is limited by your school, your grade level, who you share classes with, who you share clubs with, who you’re aware of and how you’re aware of them. Particularly if you’re in a small town, your choices for friends might be pretty slim, but because humans are social animals we’re programmed to simply overlook certain flaws to gain our needed social contact. Usually the unhealthiness of these seminal relationships happen in smaller ways-- a friend who isn’t great at listening, a buddy you only do certain activities with because you can’t stand them outside that context, someone who was great to talk to that one time but turns out to have the shittiest world view and constantly smack-talks everything you believe in... but when someone is being outright abusive in the worst ways, such as trying to isolate you from your other connections, manipulating you into staying when you really don’t want to be part of this shit anymore, making you fear what they might do to harm themselves should you end the friendship, and constantly bringing up how much they need you, but never ever once recognizing that you might need them from time to time... these are ways in which young relationships are unhealthy enough to do real damage to you, and you have the right to walk away. You have the right to cut toxic people out of your life. 

This process is not easy. It is not fun. It will be one of the hardest things you ever do socially if you decide to do it, but it can be one of the best things you’ve ever done for yourself. It will hurt like hell as you’re doing it, but you will be looking out for your own mental and social health. 

At the same time, if you don’t feel your ‘friend’ isn’t being outright abusive to you, and you still care enough to try and help, see if there’s a councilor you can meet with to discuss some of the issues you’re having. If you’re in school, still, there are often resources open to students experiencing social troubles. If not, many communities do have services available for not as much as you’d think. Look for a councilor or social worker specializing in personal relationships, and if you find someone who you trust, see if you can get your friend to go with you to talk to them in a group session. The councilor can act as a mediator, a calm and neutral third party, to get the conversation going and prevent butthurt tantrums from derailing the discussion that really needs to be had. 

Try to foster understanding with your other friends if you’re going to try and stick with this person. Discuss with them some of your fears, and see what their take is on your specific situation with this friend. Getting the thoughts of other observers can put your own experiences into better perspective, and those friends can support you if you decide to walk away from this friendship and let this guy continue on his own path without you. 

Please, remember, you always have the right to walk away. It is not your job to fix this person. If they are making you responsible for their happiness, they are not controlling their own life, and that is unhealthy for both of you. 

You have the right to walk away.

Ooooooor...?

OR you can punch ‘em in the face... but I really don’t recommend that course of action. 

I hope this helped, friend, and I wish you the best of luck.