#self hating humans

[virovac]

I have really come to dislike Dragon Prince

Making humans the victims of pogroms but then go “oh but humans are still worse and elves are more enlightened now.” I think a lot of human-hating and writers wishing they weren’t human, or holding humans to higher standards than other characters because they feel more real to writers...often makes a mess.

I see this sort of thing quite often (worst case was a sci-fi story where an alien race that communicates with meteor bombardment is treated as being in the right and humans wrong for defending themselves after many of them were killed)

[raddestrose]

Shoutout to Shen Yuan the only man who actually read porn for the plot

[mocndu]

KILL HIM NOW

[theballadofmars]

I think that we, as a fandom, should talk more about the fact that sqq thought at one point: "Thank god lbh is not a demon who eats decaying corpses because kissing him would be a bit uncomfortable" at the beginning of VOLUME 2!! My man is not "down bad" for lbh he's straight up admiting that he would kiss him even if lbh was a cannibal he has zero chill.

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species

[drawing-kitty-ckristal]

Oh god ever since i read nyoomerr's ficlet about OctoBinghe it's been stuck in my mind and i just had to draw it!

Nyoomerr's post

[spirk-trek]

"Thank you for helping me and I-Chaya."

"It was my duty, Spock."

"Mother says you should always say thank you."

"The lady Amanda is known for her graciousness."

"You followed me. Why?"

"I suspected you would go. You are worried about the kahs-wan ordeal."

"I had to see if I could do it. A personal test. I cannot fail."

"That is your father's wish?"

"Yes, and my mother's. They- they confuse me. Father wants me to do things his way, and Mother says I should. But then she goes-"

"She is a human woman, with strong emotion and sensitivities. She embarrasses you with those traits, and you are afraid when you see them in yourself."

"How did you know?"

"There is some human blood in my family line. It is not fatal. What you do not yet understand, Spock, is that Vulcans do not lack emotion. It is only that ours is controlled. Logic offers a serenity humans seldom experience in full. We have emotions but we deal with them and do not let them control us."

Star Trek the Animated Series | S1E2

[tubbytarchia]

Sorry for forcing yall to look at a very indulgent cryptid dragon but anyway um. its an attempt!! I'm so iffy on the colors but urgg. I wanted it to be an approximate mix of Grian's various "lives". I wanna draw dragons!!! So bad!! I love dragons!!!!!!! So much!!!!

Some other lifer dragon concepts/sketches below cut

If people still wanna see me dragonify lifers then sure!! These are just quick ideas I wanted to get on paper

[st-hedge]

It wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card that I’d draw V again. Anyway I’ll go ahead ramble in the tags

[james-p-sullivan]

[remyderatz]

How 2021 me would draw connor vs now

[cinnamonsikwate]

"why couldn't shuro have just been honest about what he felt with laios and falin it's not that hard" are you. are you White

[the-sage-libriomancer]

Shigure's relationship with Kyo drives me crazy. he doesn't hate Kyo in the slightest - in fact, he pities Kyo, and not in the condescending "oh you poor little boy, cursed to be a horrible, disgusting monster" sort of way that everyone else does. Shigure pities Kyo for the reason he should be pitied: he's just a kid caught up in a system so inhumane it can't possibly be survived without some seriously unhealthy coping mechanisms.

and it drives me crazy because - listen, Shigure is the only zodiac member who's emotionally aware enough to see the other zodiac members as exactly what they are. he knows Yuki is a severely traumatized kid who projects all of his self-hatred on a single convenient target. he knows Akito is really a scared little girl with a raging god complex (literally) and no concept of a healthy relationship. and he knows Kyo is a regular-ass human being who doesn't deserve to be locked up for the rest of his life just because some arbitrary system says so. he KNOWS it's stupid. he KNOWS it's ridiculous and unfair. and he has to share a house with Kyo knowing that Kyo is living with a sword over his head, hating himself and hating others in perfect tandem because he has no other way of coping with the insane amounts of negativity he's had to deal with his entire life.

but the thing about Shigure is that he KNOWS all of this, and the same time he doesn't really CARE. he feels sorry for Kyo, but an apathetic sort of pity, a disinterested "this is how it is. such a shame." sort of pity. in some ways he's worse than the other zodiacs because he DOES see Kyo as a person, someone he likes being around even, but he still considers Kyo below his attention because all his focus is on Akito and breaking the curse. and sure, once the curse is broken Kyo will theoretically be set free with the rest of them, but that's more of a coincidental side effect than anything. despite being in a much more dangerous and precarious mental space AND comfortably in Shigure's reach, Kyo is about as much a priority for Shigure as Ritsu or Momiji.

and it drives me CRAZY because i think Shigure does start actively caring about Kyo as the series goes on, but it's hard to tell when that happens and to what extent. when Kazuma told Shigure he planned to reveal Kyo's true form and Shigure said he was going too far - whose sake was it for? was Shigure trying to protect Kyo, who would be hideously traumatized/emotionally scarred by such a cruel betrayal? was he trying to protect Kyo and Tohru's relationship, which was still formulating and might, under such severe testing, ultimately end up damaged beyond repair? was he only trying to protect Tohru, who wasn't ready to be burdened by such a horrible aspect of the curse so soon, or perhaps simply didn't deserve it? or was it all for the sake of himself, trying to protect his still-forming plans of using Tohru's positive effect on the Sohmas to break the curse?

Shigure cares about Kyo, but they're not close and Kyo clearly isn't a priority. he treats Kyo like a person - offering him genuine advice, teasing him like he teases anyone else, even speaking up on his behalf once or twice - and yet he's too entrenched in the long game to spare much active interest in Kyo. for a very long time, he doesn't care about Kyo the way he cares about Yuki or Tohru, and it's never made clear when exactly that changed. and the thing that gets me about this whole situation is that right from the start, Shigure is in a position where he can meet Kyo at his level - as equals, just one human being to another - but he doesn't, because Shigure is a chessmaster, Shigure is someone who observes and calculates, Shigure never steps in unless one of his chess pieces makes a wrong move and he absolutely has to.

it drives me crazy. Shigure drives me crazy. this series drives me so so crazy.

[samglyph]

Why did he say this

[cupiidzbow]

For your s/i monkey trouble, you could make a silly AU where your s/i it's the monkey and k0ng and thw others are humans! Idk sounds cool :]!! Maybes

FUNNILY ENOUGH the original reason I made a monkeysona was to do a swap AU! 😭😭 i don’t think i was super comfortable with my art style yet when i thought abt it originally but after u sent this ask my mind was racing with thoughts of it so I couldn’t help but to doodle a couple of things 😭😭

[stealingyourbones]

Gotta love when folks write Superman incredibly anti-clone even though he had good reason in the beginning to Not Like Superboy (HES A WINDOW INTO WHAT CLARK WOULD HAVE BEEN WITHOUT THE KENTS) and decide that forever on he’ll be spiteful towards clones even though he literally Does Not Care if you’re a clone unless you’re Superboy.