#so i try doing my part and manipulate the world into becoming kinder and more tolerable every day

[destiel-wings]

People always underestimate just how much a little kindness can do. It's an invisible force, soft yet so powerful.

I know that very well, and to know that i was able to create such an impact on someone across wherever side of the globe fills me with so much joy and pride 🥹

I can't wait to see your concepts and ideas here on tumblr <3

Dean Winchester & hug dynamic analysis

I was thinking about how whenever Dean hugs someone he's almost always the one hugging the other and how this links to his psychological trauma of always being the caretaker of people, making himself bigger to protect them.

Because that's how Dean sees himself, as a shield for others, and then I thought about how Cas actually is the shield, and he's HIS SHIELD, specifically, the only one who's really there to protect HIM, which is why it hits so much when we see this:

The way Cas wraps his arms around him, trying to protect him with his whole body--that he'd use as a shield and give up in a second if he could spare him from any pain and save him.

(for context: Dean was about to go use the soul bomb on Amara there, it was a suicide mission)

Bobby is another one that hits, he hugs him as the big hugger because he's his father, he loves him and he's actually here to protect him (and Dean LETS him -barely, but he lets him *and Cas* - in a way that he doesn't let Sam)

I watched a compilation of Sam & Dean hugs to check if i was right about it, but it's almost always Dean the big hugger with Sam, except when he's about to die or Sam sees him alive again after losing him.

Even then, Dean mostly tries to hug Sam as the big hugger anyway, with at least one arm, like a way to comfort him, making him feel protected, like his body language is saying "I'm here, I'm okay, I'm still strong, i can still protect you" (because their real father failed and Dean thinks it's his job).

He rarely lets himself be the little one hugged with Sam, unless he's barely conscious. Which is why it kills me so much more now that in this moment (s14, when Dean was going to lock himself in the Ma'lak box cause he was possessed by Michael) and Sam has a desperate breakdown and punches him (to stop him) he forcefully hugs him as the little hugger, the way Dean always kept him, like a way of saying "I still need you to protect me, please don't do this to yourself".

In the scene below he gives Sam his blessing to do a dangerous (possibly suicidal) mission, and one of his arms is down, but the other one tries to stay up--he's forcing himself to do it and he struggles because he still wants to protect him, but (as the seasons progress) he slowly becomes more prone to let go.

So in this view the hug dynamic becomes an indicator of how Dean sees Sam (and himself) and his protector role, how adult and self sufficient he considers Sam, and how much he lets people around him take care of him, lowering his walls and letting himself be hugged.

This is also why i think hugs from characters like Garth or Charlie are so special, because they're just like us: they see Dean and they just know that he needs to be hugged a lot, and that he's not used to it, so they just go for it-- and it's so normal and kind and spontaneous that Dean's just not used to it-- he doesn't know how to respond (especially with Garth, at the beginning, but as the seasons progress, he learns to, and he even initiates the hug eventually).

I love the hugs where they're 50/50 (one arm up, one arm down both), feels like they're equals, both taking care of each other. I feel like with Sam and Dean, this indicates a healthier dynamic, because Dean lets go a little of the role that was imposed to him and manages to see Sam as the strong individual that he is. But the same applies to 50/50 hugs with other characters, like with Cas, where I feel like it testifies how equals they feel in terms of being fighters, there's a show of respect of each other's strength that transpires by the gesture (which is even more astounding considering that Cas is literally a powerful angel).

And just to end on a destiel note, I'd like to note the possessiveness and protectiveness of Dean (rightfully so) whenever he finds Cas after he thought he had lost him, and how that translates into his body/hug language:

[nqmonarch]

Red Flags in HSR Characters

I have a problem of simping for the most red flagged characters except I can't handle red flags. Like violence makes me nope the fuck out of any relationship, I am so scared of getting hurt in any way, shape, or form. In real life I'm fucking terrified of being manipulated into being dependent on someone because I've experienced that shit and it isn't fun. Hate being insulted, degraded, all of that.

But the red flagged characters are just too cool???

Like Dr. Ratio, sure he's a pompous shit and would probably end up degrading you which I hate but he's so cool?! So I need to find some way to make him into this weird yellow flag without making myself into some super genius because no way is that gonna happen.

So instead put him in like a tutor AU, he's teaching you and when you get something wrong he gives you such a side ways insult. Like it takes a minute to realize it's an insult, it's worded in such a creative peculiar way. The second it registers you begin doing ten times worse on every question. It doesn't take long for him to realize that being told you're shit isn't inspiring to everyone. So he takes a... kinder approach. He's still a hard ass and strict but he's actively trying to do better and you can tell, when he starts a sentence suddenly stops and then brings that sentence in a completely different direction. You both end up learning. You end up learning the material and he ends up learning how to be somewhat better at dealing with people whose ideal day isn't being insulted.

Then there's the aeons. i simp for all of them, like how can you not??? Especially Nanook (using he/him pronouns for Nanook), Yaoshi, IX, and Aha. Now first off IX isn't a red flag IX is a lovely little black hole who I will defend with my life. But the other three??? They're as red as a stop sign.

Like sure, Nanook would probably destroy you the first chance he gets. Maybe Nanook is the destruction because he wants to be destroyed. I, I don't know man. Like he's so beautiful but how the hell do you even write romance with him? That isn't just like destroying the love interest.

Maybe he's had an insatiable urge to destroy everything ever since the dawn of his existence and he can't remember why. He's always been filled with rage, hatred, toward everything that's existed. Then he sees you and it all comes rushing back toward him. Your death, the hole it filled, the only thing that could really be blamed was the universe. It was everyone and everything's fault. So he would destroy it all to protect you.

Still a red flag but man I'm trying my best, no matter what Nanook will always be a red flag. Yaoshi on the other hand... surely there's a way I can make Yaoshi into a yellow flag after all they just want to help.

Yaoshi who would save your entire planet, heal every individual part of the ecosystem and every person, just to see you smile. They would ask nothing in return and instead remain by your side, enjoying the beautiful of the world. Then the mara strikes, people begin to lose their minds and themselves and you're left to beg them for a way to reverse this. But this is the price of life.

Yaoshi assures you that this is natural but they still watch on in horror as you inevitably succumb to the mara as well. Only then do they try to figure out how to fix it.

The further I get the more hopeless I become. Then there's Aha...

They probably found you entertaining at first, a human full of surprises and excitement, someone that could survive any trial. Then you grew on them a bit more and they found himself becoming attached. Aha wasn't supposed to be attached but this of course just makes an opportunity for more entertainment! Now they're actually invested and can experience the nail biting tension of all this drama!

Just another form of entertainment, it'll be a shame when you're gone though.

Then there's all the other beautiful red flags Ruan Mei, Jing Liu, Blade, Luocha, and Aventurine and Sunday seem like red flags as well even though they're not out. Like if bad to date why do I want to date?

Their red flags are a part of them and it's hard to work around it, so sometimes you just gotta embrace it. Life's rough man. In the end it's my fault for liking red flags. I'll just stick to Jing Yuan for now, peak husband material.

[hssprimefan]

Originally written for reddit here

Max Photo booth Essay

This arc builds dread so well.

Julian: Man, I still don't get it... but okay. You always know what you're doing.

You look across the pool patio to where Max is pouring you an iced lemonade. He grins warmly at you... and, in that moment, all you feel is confusion.

MC: ...yeah. I know what I'm doing.

-The Bad Boy

Everyone knows this is a bad idea, and even Max and the MC seem more stressed out than usual throughout this story. Yet the player can still see why they're trying to make it work.

Intro

I told you I'd be back with an essay, u/OkObligation4508

I'm using "you" to refer to the main character, "the player" for whoever plays this quest, and "I" for myself, the writer of this essay.

You believe in people, often before they believe in themselves. Your kindness, resilience, and assertiveness inspires those around you to become better.

Class President: Hey, I'm just trying to follow your example.

MC: What do you mean? I haven't started any clubs...

Class President: I mean by doing my part to make this school a better place! Your reputation precedes you, MC! You help out every student who needs it...So I want to be as helpful to this school as you've been to me!

-Hail to the Chief

And you're discerning enough to recognize when someone is ready for a second chance. You were the first person to trust Wes because you saw how worried he was about Autumn. You're almost always the first to trust and forgive. And you're almost always proven right.

You would think you can change him. Because you change people all the time.

The Formula

There's a certain way this always goes. You meet a character who lives under high expectations, and acts in damaging ways to live up to them. How much they've questioned their box varies, but on some level they know they don't want this. It could be as harmless as hiding their real smile (Phoebe) or as cruel as manipulating someone for weeks just to humiliate them at a fancy party (Chase). But it always goes the same way.

You're very perceptive to insincerity. You won't press them for answers, but you point out when their words don't match what they seem to want from life. You may be lightly mocked when they mistake you for naive, but they also trust you enough to tell you what they actually care about. Then you introduce them to some of your friends. In game mechanics, you send specific classmate types on this quest. In story terms, you look for the people who's lives and perspectives will challenge this person's worldview.

You've shown them proof (people might accept them/the world is kinder than they thought/they don't have to put up with bullies/they don't have to be ruthless to succeed/failure doesn't make them worthless). Once you've shown them people who aren't what this cynic imagined, you're really able to encourage them.

In the end they're faced with a choice, between the safety and regret they've always known, or kind and perilous hope.

This is not that story. Max isn't some sheltered stranger who doesn't know another way to be. He knows your friends already. He knows the cost of freedom. Mia is right there,paying the price every day, fighting with both him and their dad, defying the family to do what she knows is right. And that's a huge transformation from who she used to be.

Kara: You were always such a pushover, Mia.

-Road to the Playoffs

Mia: I admired her, and her opinion meant everything to me! I would've done anything for her. And she knew it. She used me like a pawn.

-Cheer Camp

Her life is harder, but she has real friends and real courage now.

Winners

At first "loser" might not seem any more significant than other pg insults like lame, dork, or dweeb. But both Mia and Max make it clear that a loser is the worst thing a Warren can be.

Mia: In this house, we're WINNERS. What do we train for? To WIN. If you want hugs and cuddles, go live with your mother!

-The Final Challenge

Max: What gave you that idea? It's all about winning, MC. Just like my dad always says. Doesn't matter what you're doing, you gotta be the best, and be ready to prove it.

-The Bad Boy

The Warren name isn't as restrictive as it would seem at first glance. Max is actually quite a silly, attention-seeking, theatrical person. He pretended to be southern for no reason in mock trial. He convinced your school to carve an ice sculpture of himself. He tied for first in a beauty pageant. For his audition, he got on stage and barbecued.

But he mocks theater because Nick is very talented, and if they acted together, everyone would know Max isn't the best at something. It's anti-curiosity. It's cowardice. Max and Kara talk like being a loser is contagious.

Max: Nick, my man. What are you doing slumming it with these ~dweebs?~

-Drama King

Kara: Why am I even surprised? You guys are total losers. Of course you'd hang out with someone like Ellie.

-Who's That Girl?

Max: Whatever. Nice costumes, losers. I guess dorks like you just gravitate to each other, huh?

-Monster High School Story

And this was Kara's experience of their relationship.

Kara: But YOU'VE changed, too! You may have always been a jerk, but you were never a jerk to ME. WE were a team! We made fun of people TOGETHER.

-The Victory Banquet

They put themselves on a pedestal then made fun of all the losers beneath them. Similar dynamic with Lacey. He relates to other status obsessed bullies and that became his whole life. Hearst enables all of his worst behaviors.

But Max hasn't been a winner since you got here. I think Max saw Mia's growth and decided he wanted to be a hero too. We see it in moments like this

Max: I'll save you!

Max picks you up in his arms!

MC: Um... I'm already saved.

Max: There's no need to be afraid! I got you.

MC: The water is literally three feet deep and totally calm.

-Rapid Romance

and the dialogue in other quests that changes if you've completed his date quests.

Max: And?

MC: And... I'd be grateful.

Max: Then it's Max Warren here to save the day.

-Mutual Enemies

If winners must surround themselves with winners, then heroes must be around other heroes.

So he asked out the most heroic person he knew. You.

Playing the Part

The tricky thing is, when he says he just wants a chance, he really does mean it. It's not insincere, it's just shallow. Giving Creatures and Caverns a chance is something the old max never would have done, but he's only doing it for you.

MC: Still... maybe I'm rushing things. Probably wasn't the best idea to drag you to something geeky with my friends.

Max: I think it ~was~ a good idea. I'm never going to care what people think of me, but... if something's important to you, it's important to me.

Max: Look, you know me. Since the day you got here, you've known what I'm all about. But I know you, just as well. I know what you care about.

Max: And I knew what I was getting into when I fell for you.

-The Friend Test

MC: But seriously, I liked it better when you were sharing stuff with me, not just trying to impress me. Like when we were looking at those baby pics.

Max: You like it when I share stuff? Hmmm...

-Rapid Romance

There's no real difference between when he stopped revving his car engine because it bothered you and when he came back to this game. No difference between getting you flowers and showing you the bioluminescent cave, because you said you liked seeing this side of him.

Max: Just so you know, I'm not going to stop trying to impress you, MC. That's just who I am. I ~want~ to impress you. If anything, I'm only going to try to impress you even more now.

-Rapid Romance

You think it's sweet, but that's actually the problem. Until you break up, Max is willing to do anything but ask himself a question.

Max: Look... MC, from the moment you came to this town, you changed everything, just like ~that,~ and made it fit your picture-perfect world...

Max: Everything but me. You can't fix me.

-Falling For You

And that is the most honest Max has been. That's why the formula fails. When you facilitated change in other people, you listened to what they cared about, and showed them proof their life could be different. But at the end of the day, they were willing to look at the consequences of their actions and decide this isn't who they wanted to be. They become better versions of themselves, and live according to their values and interests.

But Max is playing a part. He couldn't be a winner, so he tried to be a hero. Couldn't get his dad's approval, and tries for yours instead. He tried to fit into your picture-perfect world. He didn't want to change, he wanted to be fixed.

[justmybookthots]

The Cruel Prince

4.5/5 stars

This book ruined me for fae books and I'm not even sorry. It also doesn't help that this was my first literary introduction to fae (Midsummer Night's Dream doesn't count). The prose is so lyrical and beautiful and had me feeling as if I were utterly lost in Elfhame / an otherworldly, fae-filled realm. (Also funnily enough, I read this series while I was down with COVID, so maybe the delirium added to the otherworldliness of it.)

What I Ioved about fae was that they couldn't lie. And Cruel Prince really does work that in parts - seeing Cardan use wit and cleverness and lies by omission to sidestep that "weakness" in him. Even until now I haven't quite seen a book execute that to the degree Cardan displayed. Books like ACoTaR just eliminate the inability to lie in their fae, which is a huge step down, in my opinion.

I also adored Jude, which is very rare for me because most heroines in fiction annoy me or they're either too bland for me to care. But Jude - JUDE - she was hardworking, ambitious and determined without being a special, overly snarky Mary Sue about it. She actually showed her smarts, imo best demonstrated when she outwitted Balekin (that exchange with the poison made me SCREAM).

Speaking of poison - she poisoned herself everyday, trying to build an immunity to poison. It was painful, and I cringed for her, but she did it. And throughout it all, she never had any special ability until the third book, which barely showcased said ability. Jude got through the trials and tribulations by being clever and cunning and human. She wasn't half-fae; she wasn't given special gifts in combat like Feyre - she was just herself in a world of immortals, and she worked her ass off to compensate for it.

But what makes the book for me isn't really Jude, though she's a big part of it. It's Cardan - whom I fell so deeply for; cruel, pathetic drunkard Cardan.

Was he a little too weak for my tastes? Yes. Was he a little too drunk, to the point that I found it repulsive at times? Yes. Was he kind of sucky in bed? Yes, though that's more because it's YA and they weren't going into detail about the spice.

And yet the way he spoke - how he could wax poetic and make it sound like a dagger or a kiss - OH MY GOSH. I also just love a boy who was able to be socially adept when he needed to, and manipulate people to his advantage. I loved how he had to teach Jude at the end of the first book to win allies over, and how he once (very exasperatedly, might I add) told her that murder (brute force / violence) wasn't the answer to everything.

I loved how cruel he was at the start and how he slowly became kinder, more trusting, more willing to love himself and accept that he loved Jude. And if there is one trope I hate in books, it's trauma-bonding, but there wasn't that. Jude's past was nowhere as wretched as his, and they never once felt like (... for lack of a better term) edge-lords pretending they were more special than the world because of their childhood histories. Cardan slowly came into his own without needing Jude to "fix" him.

I don't often feel my heart beat for male leads in books anymore, not for a long while. I've become very jaded, or something. I don't know. But I did for Cardan.

Shut up 😭😭😭😭

That's not to say this series is perfect. I have my gripes with it. The last book was meh and too short and could have done with more Cardan instead of him as a snake. I think there was a lot of potential wasted with that book. The first and the second are much, much better, though I still reread the third the most because they were far more certain in their love then. Also I do wish Jude was a little weaker just to seem more human, and Cardan a bit stronger.

I'm still mad at this series because it put me in book slump for a good bit. I couldn't get over it. It wasn't until some time later that I finally managed to start reading and enjoying books again. Even until today, I haven't read any books that portray fae as wonderfully as Holly Black did, and that is a problem because fae are everywhere, which makes my Cruel Prince hangover even worse.

Also, Holly Black can write her fucking ass off. She's one of the prettiest writers I've read. If there is one thing I hate, it's modern slang in a fantasy setting (to be honest, I just... despise modern slang in any setting... lol), but she nailed the prose for this book. It was so pretty and enchanting without it being too purple.

I need to get to Stolen Heir and I don't know why I haven't. I thought Oak was really cute in the Cruel Prince series, though I heard he becomes a real piece of work in the new book and I am very, very scared.

- Read in April 2023

[juniperhillpatient]

jet and azula both are manipulators and leaders, one uses fear the other love(?)

jet is all about liberation, azula about control

azula is a colonizer, jet is an anti-colonizer

okay... (for blog organization, in reference to this)

Jet & Azula are both manipulators & leaders. Notice how you used the term 'manipulator' there?

Merriam Webster under 'manipulate' okay - 'to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means, especially to one's own advantage.'

Look, I love Jet because he's a bit of a flawed asshole - most of my faves are. Jet & Azula both 100% included. I often get bored with characters that are too perfect, fiction is about conflict. Jet is a manipulator & can be cold & calculating, just like Azula, but for different reasons.

It's not a condemnation, it's part of his character. Jet uses his charisma & good looks to trick Katara into being part of a plan she would never have agreed to. Sure, when confronted with someone who doesn't like Jet I'll jump on the "Jet's never done anything wrong in his life actually" train because I love him & want to defend him & I DO think his behavior in the context of the war is sympathetic. But also, in terms of honestly analyzing his character, he's morally gray & far from a saint. Jet has a lot of anger & a tendency to try & solve his problems with violence. This is part of what makes him a compelling character, denying it is boring.

While I DO understand your argument about Azula being a colonizer & part of the nation responsible for Jet's trauma, by that logic Zuko, Mai & Ty Lee also should've never become friends with the gaang. Maybe you feel they shouldn't have, I don't know your full opinion, but if that's the case we're losing a common thread of where to connect because Zuko's redemption arc & eventual befriending of the gaang is pretty core to the narrative of the entire show. Not saying it was 100% perfectly written, but it is a core aspect of the story.

Avatar as a story is big on forgiveness & healing & capacity to change. To an extent, I understand why some fans are frustrated by the sympathy given to characters like the fire siblings. I actually strongly agree that Jet should have been portrayed more sympathetically by the narrative & that he deserves healing & forgiveness too. I just think (& this part is almost definitely about to get me cancelled by some people) that sometimes when the Fire Nation characters are so harshly condemned by a portion of the fandom that even the idea of someone traumatized by the war reconciling with any of them is abhorrent, we're losing the thread of the fantasy world & the narrative of the story. Zuko & Aang learning to work together is a huge part of the story & Aang is the last survivor of a genocide committed by the Fire Nation. Zuko rejects Fire Nation ideology & his father's ways (there are no comics in Ba Sing Se ok) & learns to be a kinder person working toward a new age of peace.

Why shouldn't Azula be given that same chance?

Anyway, Azula & Jet's complicated dynamic is, can't emphasize this enough, part of why I love them. You're exactly correct. Azula is a colonizer & imperialist & Jet is an anti colonizer & a rebel fighter. He has a pessimistic view of the war effort overall & a violent hatred for the Fire Nation. Azula has an unfavorable view of people she considers below her & considers the Fire Nation perfect. In canon, could they ever reconcile? Post-war, I think perhaps if Azula learned to change her ways like her brother did. I tend to write alternate universes but these two would still have vastly differing opinions & it would lead to conflict. In every fic with a focus on their dynamic that I've ever written, they have a rather contentious friendship with a lot of arguments. Because that kind of dynamic is interesting & fun to me.

TLDR: Sure, & this would create conflict but also pretending Jet is morally pure isn't true to his character either & also I just think Azula & Jet have a lot of similarities that would make it interesting to see them interact

[itsclydebitches]

I am briefly pausing my normal RWBY content to talk about something completely different: Kang Soo-Jin. 

I binged True Beauty recently. As in, “I haven’t managed to watch anything new in half a year, discovered this drama, and promptly marathoned 14+ hours of content,” so to say I’m enjoying it is an understatement. I might do another post sometime about why I think the show works so well, but for now, like many (drama only) viewers, I’m specifically grappling with Soo-Jin’s descent into antagonist territory. At first I was just as shocked and disappointed as others seem to be, but upon reflection I don’t think this is badly written in the way many fans are claiming. To frame this as, “I can’t believe they would make wonderful Soo-Jin suddenly OOC and bully Ju-Kyung over a guy!” is ignoring core parts of her character. I’m as sick of the girl-hates-girl-over-guy plotline as the next viewer, but in the interest of acknowledging that there are exceptions to every rule, I think this is one of the times where that choice makes perfect sense. 

Soo-Jin has been abused throughout her life and I’m not simply talking about the fact that her father hits her. Though that’s obviously horrific, what I think is more pertinent to this conversation is the intense competitiveness her parents have instilled in her. The physical abuse comes about because Soo-Jin fails (in their eyes) to be the best, which is where Ju-Kyung comes in. The Soo-Jin we knew in earlier episodes wasn’t faking. She isn’t an inherently evil person who was just waiting for the right time to show her true colors. Rather, at the start of the story Ju-Kyung—crucially—was not in competition with Soo-Jin. Or rather, Soo-Jin did not perceive her as competition. She’s after the best grades in the school and Ju-Kyung is notoriously at the bottom of the class. All she has going for her are her (new) looks and her easy-going personality that makes her popular, two things that Soo-Jin isn’t interested in. Even if she were, those things already come naturally to her too. She’s already friends with Soo-A and, as is commented on multiple times, naturally beautiful without any makeup on. Soo-Jin has been taught—literally had it beaten into her—that she must be the best and in the beginning of the show she pretty much is: popular, mature, confident, smart… just not the smartest in her class. Ju-Kyung doesn’t threaten any of that, so friendship initially comes easily for Soo-Jin, the sort of friendship that allows her to chase perverts off busses or hide her friend’s real face. 

This changes once Soo-Jin’s “perfect” mask begins to slip. They’re heading towards college, she’s running out of time, and she still hasn’t managed to take the top spot in the class. Worse, she drops out of the top ten. This exacerbates the abuse to the point where, as we see, she’s constantly in the bathroom trying to cope by washing her hands. Any tiny deviation from that “perfection”  — like, say, leaving your tutoring session when you realize your lifelong friend just got devastating news — results in the sort of yelling/physical abuse she can only escape from via a locked door. While things get worse on her end, they get better on Ju-Jyung’s. Her grades go up some and she becomes even more popular, attracting not only school-wide attention, but the attention of the two hottest guys too, including Soo-Ho. For a while this is still fine from Soo-Jin’s perspective, but things really take a turn when Ju-Kyung changes Soo-Ho. Meaning, she helps him come out of his shell and teaches him how to be a kinder person… which includes being a better friend to Soo-Jin. The Soo-Ho who suddenly lies and announces that they have to go study just to get Soo-Jin away from her father’s insults, all of it stemming from a small tick he paid attention to, or comforting her while she sobs over the abuse… that Soo-Ho didn’t exist at the story’s start. He was too wrapped up in his own grief and has been that way for a long time. They may have known each other since childhood, but Soo-Jin and Soo-Ho don’t appear to be particularly close in the past—all Soo-Ho’s flashbacks are with Seo-Joon and Se-Yeon. But that starts to change once Soo-Ho himself changes. Soo-Jin’s ability to keep it together is unraveling, Soo-Ho is opening up and becoming more emotionally available (something Soo-Jin even comments on), then her whole class starts eagerly talking up how good they would be as a couple… so Soo-Jin sees a lifeline. Soo-Ho will care for her even when no one else will. Of course he will. She’s already seen him be that person multiple times. 

The problem is that Soo-Ho has his own life and his own problems to grapple with. Between grief over See-Yeon, panic over telling Ju-Kyung how he feels, and the initial rush of dating—what couple doesn’t want to spend all their time together at the start?—he doesn’t have much energy for Soo-Jin. Which from his perspective is fine. They don’t normally hang out together outside of study groups, so yeah, he can put off a conversation with her… not realizing that Soo-Jin is now putting all her emotional eggs in his basket. By the time her feelings are coming to light, Soo-Jin is actively sabotaging her own attempts to get attention and compassion from Soo-Jin. By manipulating them—here’s a new scrunchy to remind you that you’re my best friend and you can’t ever betray me, here I am showing up unannounced at your apartment and guilting you into not spending more time with me, etc.—Soo-Jin has put Soo-Ho (rightfully) on his guard. He’s wary of having a private conversation with her about something she won’t name when he knows Ju-Kyung has been a mess over losing her friendship. He has no desire to listen to her confession of love after she’s just tossed Ju-Kyung’s beloved necklace into the fire. In her efforts to ensure that Soo-Ho pays attention to her, she only succeeds in driving him away. 

All of which makes Ju-Kyung the enemy in her eyes. The new competition. To her mind, friendship and love cannot co-exist because Ju-Kyung stands in the way of that love, therefore one has got to go. (In contrast Seo-Joon, coming from a loving family, is in time better able to accept that he can be friends with Soo-Ho even though he likes Ju-Kyung. We can discuss the problems inherent in giving one plot to the girl and the other to the guy, but as they are, these characters have concrete, in-world reasons for their different reactions to what’s essentially the same situation.) And why does love (“love”) win out over friendship? Because Soo-Jin has latched onto Soo-Ho being her boyfriend as the way to finally “win” at life and fix all her problems. It’s fine if she’s not the best provided she’s dating the best, just look at how much Dad fawned over him. Second place academically is suddenly an option provided the top student is on her team, so to speak. The fact that Soo-Ho is also one of the most handsome, a great athlete, super rich, and one of the few people to provide her with feelings of safety certainly doesn’t hurt matters. And the only thing that stands in her way of securing this life-saving “win” is Ju-Kyung. Who is she? No one compared to Soo-Jin. Her grades are terrible. She’s not wealthy. She’s pretty… but oh, only with her makeup on. 

Soo-Jin doesn’t need makeup, so why not win this competition by showing the whole school—showing Soo-Ho—what a fraud Ju-Kyung is? 

From Soo-Jin’s perspective she’s done the math and come out on top. Everything that (supposedly) matters she either has equal to Ju-Kyung, or is superior, therefore it’s obvious that Soo-Ho would choose her in the end. She says at much: If I had confessed first you would have loved me first, so now that I have confessed you’ll break up with her. Hell, even Ju-Kyung believes this. She has the nightmare about Soo-Ho learning that Soo-Jin has feelings for him and immediately, publicly breaking up with her. After all, if he suddenly has both as an option the winner is obvious, right? It’s all about competition, what they’ve been taught to believe is a competition: Ju-Kyung through her bullying and Soo-Jin through her abuse. The difference is that Ju-Kyung has had the whole series with Soo-Ho (and others) helping her slowly unlearn this mentality. Soo-Jin had the rug pulled out from under her in an instant. 

Soo-Ho says no, I wouldn’t have loved you if you had confessed first and I’m not going to date you now. It’s important to realize that this shatters Soo-Jin’s entire world. It’s not about a girl being upset that she can’t get the guy — not even about Soo-Ho as an individual, really —  it’s about an abused girl not knowing how to grapple with the fact that she finally did everything “right” and still couldn’t “win,” coupled with losing the last bit of security she had. Soo-Ho broke the unspoken rules Soo-Jin’s father beat into her and she doesn’t know where to go from there. She literally has no one else to turn to. So she falls back on the only way she does know how to handle a situation like this: by still trying to win. If Soo-Ho won’t admit that she’s better, she’ll force him to realize that by plastering Ju-Kyung’s “ugly” face all over social media. Which, to be clear, isn’t an excuse. This isn’t meant to be a way of absolving Soo-Jin of her absolutely horrific actions, only a means of explaining them. Her descent, while shocking to those of us who loved her initial character, is well written because it’s a nuanced look at what can happen when you abuse a kid her whole life and teach her that competition is everything. Oddly enough, she’ll apply a competitive outlook to everything and deal with her stress in unhealthy ways. Ju-Kyung is a victim of Soo-Jin now, but Soo-Jin is a victim too. Her home life has ensured that she does not know how to accept failure—or what true failure even means—so it was inevitable that when things got bad, she’d  try to fix it in ways that hurt both her and those around her. It’s all she knows how to do. 

So far less “Perfect girl goes ooc and abandons her friend over a boy” and far more “Abused girl falls into a terrible, but predictable cycle that the other stressed high schoolers around her are not equipped to break.” Soo-Jin’s story isn’t bad writing, it’s tragic. Thanks for coming to my three page TED talk ✌️

***

2/4/21 FINALE UPDATE! 

[whump-whump-baby]

So your Fictional Universe has Horses in it

Alternatively: People Ride Horses in Your Fic, and you’re Not Sure What to Do About It

horse rider/owner and baby writer here, throwing you an infodump that will maybe help with the whole ‘There’s a Horse in the Background here but I Don’t Know What to Do With it’ thing I sometimes see in writing!

Inside this infodump: Horse riding, horse care, horse tack (equipment), falling off a horse (and what usually gets injured), horse lingo, and behaviour.

1. Tame that beast (aka, riding the horse)

a couple things here: Getting on the horse, getting off, steering, etc

Honestly, I’m only including this part because I find that a lot of people skip past the whole ‘getting on the horse’ bit and I find it hilarious. It’s not a weird thing but it can be weird to describe. I get it!

Getting On

Experienced riders will always mount from the left side of the horse. It's a weird tradition that doesn’t really make sense anymore, but it’s still followed because most don’t really see a reason to change it. It supposedly dates back to medieval times and has something to do with where a sword would traditionally be hung on a person’s hip- mounting (Putting your foot in the stirrup, grabbing up high on the saddle, pulling yourself up and over while using your foot in the stirrup to help yourself) from the left means you wouldn’t accidentally poke your horse with your sheath. Not sure if this story has any validity to it, but we all still follow the left rule unless we’re specifically getting a horse used to mounting from the other side for whatever reason.

Getting off

I have a bone to pick with this. Nobody gets off their horse by swinging a leg in front of themselves, over the horse’s neck in front of them, and hopping down facing away from their horse. It’s not the safest bet to attempt because 1. It actually requires a lot of hip strength to swing your leg like that without kicking your poor horse in the neck, and 2. It doesn’t give you a legitimate way to hold onto your horse after dismounting, which is inherently unsafe. Even if you are in possession of The World’s Best Behaved Horse Ever, you always want to be holding onto the reins. Riders usually dismount by leaning forward, swinging a leg behind them and over the horse’s butt, pivoting sideways on their stomach, and sliding down off the horse- keeping a hand on the rein and one on the saddle to slow their descent. That way you always have a hand on your wild beast, who may decide at any given time that the nearby grass is more important than standing still for your dismount. Plus, swinging a leg like that is basically impossible in saddles that feature a saddle horn, like a western saddle.

It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but Geralt’s saddle definitely has some kind of high pommel to it- so he’d most likely dismount the normal way. It’s just easier!

If you tried to dismount like that in this western saddle you would definitely bruise something.

In this saddle (a Dressage saddle) you could probably pull it off.. but why?? All that struggle just to slide down on your butt and land funny, sprawled away from your horse. It’s just not worth it.

Steering and Etc.

Believe it or not, most steering movement actually comes from the rider’s weight in the saddle than their grip on the reins. If we’re looking at this from the realm of something like The Witcher (which is probably going to be my go-to media example because it’s still pretty recent) a relaxed turn is going to look like Geralt isn’t doing too much with his upper body, because he’d be weighting his seat bones in the saddle. Despite his saddle looking a little bulky, Roach could definitely feel it and respond accordingly- horses are pretty sensitive little friends and can feel most of what you’re doing up there, including looking down. (Protip, if you’re learning to ride horses, don’t look down- it’ll unbalance your upper body and make you pitch forward, unbalancing your horse and making yourself more likely to fall off)

A good way to have a character look experienced with riding is to describe someone relaxed but upright, shoulders back, hands closed but relaxed on the reins. They don’t have to be bolt upright, but at ease. A good way to describe a character with little to no riding experience would be to describe them as tense, probably hunching forward a little; hands too high or low and reins too long. See the lovely photos below:

A Dressage rider: she’s looking pretty evenly balanced, is sitting tall but not bolt upright, hands are low, elbows relaxed. Wonderful!

A Beginner: Absolutely no hate to beginners! We all have to start somewhere, But there’s definitely a difference in body language between this rider and our dressage rider. (Side note: PLEASE always wear a helmet on a horse, especially if you’re a beginner, good grief)

2. Horse Care

I don’t think too much needs to be said here, but there’s a couple things that are worth noting.

Grooming

Most horses love a good brushing. They’ll even lean into it if you find an itchy spot!

 If your character has a ton of experience, grooming their horse makes a lovely backdrop for conversations. Riders usually brush their horses before and after riding, to remove dirt and mud and sweat. Manes and tails are brushed if you want to be detail oriented, and feet should always be picked out (A good chance for Character B to oogle Character A’s butt, if thats the kind of story you’re writing) to remove dirt and stones. 

When Not Riding

Your furry partner-in-crime should be untacked and eating grass somewhere. Untacked means all gear removed and put away for the day- in stories like The Witcher, tied to a tree branch or a rest area in a halter is fine. As a horse person it wouldn’t make sense to leave their tack on all night- you’d leave it nearby, but not on them. If your characters are just pausing for a break or something, it’s totally ok- but done for the day? Nah. Let your pony be naked.

Injuries

Horses, like most prey animals, will hide injuries and illness until they physically can’t anymore. Small cuts and scrapes, dependent on where they are, will probably not give a physical response unless you manipulate them somehow (cleaning, applying antibiotics, etc). A horse may show discomfort by a number of signs, but if it really hurts your horse will probably shy away from your touch or may lash out at your hands to keep you from touching it. Signs of discomfort can be pinning their ears back against their head (aka Ow Ow OW, DON’T TOUCH IT, I’m UPSET) to straight up trying to run from you if they think you’re going to attempt to touch it (a more severe reaction for a more severe wound, like a deep cut/laceration/puncture etc). If a horse is in very dire straits you might get no reaction at all- your horse might be hanging its head low, not really responding to your voice or touch, appearing bleary eyed or dull eyed or sleepy. Generally that kind of severe behavior change is considered Very Very Bad and definitely grounds to call a vet for, especially if there’s no sign of physical injury.

3. Horse Tack (Equipment!)

Here’s a quick rundown of horse tack.

All these pieces make up the bridle, reins included.

*Side note- Bits are not cruel, and riders choosing to use them with their horses are not abusive. Bits are a tool riders use to communicate with their horses and there are hundreds of metal finishes, textures, shapes and sizes to fit a horse with a bit that makes them happy and keeps them comfortable. There are some horses who refuse to take bits, and their owners usually turn to a bitless bridle to keep them comfortable- however this is not “kinder” just because of the lack of bit. These bridles are just designed to exert gentle pressure to tell the horse to slow or stop instead of the gentle pressure on the bit. Different horses prefer different things, and none of these things are harmful to the horse if used properly and with care.

This is a diagram of a close contact or Hunter saddle, but the terminology generally applies to all different kinds of saddles. Girths are considered their own piece of tack and not as a part of the saddle. 

Riders who are riding consistently usually at least wipe their tack down with a wet cloth after finishing with it for the day. Because tack is almost always leather, well cared for leather lasts a lot longer if cared for. This is also a great thing to have a character talk over in a fic- have them clean tack while having a hard conversation, or maybe show how quick and not-great of a job they do on their tack if they’re angry or trying to get away from another character closeby. Lots of opportunities! (If you really want to get detailed, cleaning usually looks like: a damp cloth to wipe dirt off and then rubbing a leather conditioner into the tack, which may smell lovely or a little weird depending on the brand)

4. Falling off

I see you, whump writers. (and I love you.)

So You Want your Character to Fall Off:

Falling off is rarely graceful. It can be caused by anything from an unexpected trip to your horse spooking at something, to a jump taken at the wrong spot/speed/angle... opportunities are endless. I have fallen off my horse at the walk because he startled at a dog and I slipped to the side, and I have fallen off over jumps, because my horse actively tried to get me off, or because I just wasn’t paying attention and Oops, how’d I get in the dirt? Generally if you’re looking for a reason for your character to fall off, they are endless. If the one at fault is the horse common reasons are the rider becoming unseated and slipping back/forward/sideways by the horse startling (at legitimately anything sometimes, depending on the horse.. let your imagination go wild!) changing speed or direction suddenly. All of these things will affect how your character comes off and how they’ll hit dirt with what body part. IE- pitching forward will probably land you on the top of your shoulders, if you’re lucky- if not, you’ll land on your head. Most people will land on the tops of their shoulders as the instinct to protect their head kicks in, but sometimes gravity is a bitch. It happens.

This is where experience comes in, too- Experienced riders will usually react quicker and will try to save themselves, either grabbing onto their horse’s mane or neck or even just keeping a death grip on the reins as adrenaline kicks in- all of which keeps your upper body higher than your lower and can lead to landing on your bum/side/feet instead of your head. Beginner or inexperienced riders might not react that quickly and end up landing roughly. This is not to say that more experienced riders will always come out less injured than beginners, but that experienced riders sense of self preservation will kick in faster frankly just because they’ve fallen off more. This is also why you see more beginners breaking arms in riding accidents- as you learn to ride you are taught (if you were taught like I was) to NEVER throw your arms out to catch yourself during a fall- it’s more likely that you will land on top of your straight arm and give yourself a wicked compound break. Your instinct changes from trying to save yourself to trying everything you can to staying in your saddle. Self preservation is a wonderful thing!

If Your Character is Sick/Already Injured:

The motion of the horse, even in walk, is going to make them feel worse- especially any injury to the lower stomach area. That’s where the body absorbs most of the motion from the horse’s gaits, especially in the hips/lower abdomen. So if Character A has a stab wound in his stomach and Character B has gotten them into the saddle to bring them to help.... Character A is gonna be in some pretty decent pain until they can dismount. For head injuries the same motion might make them dizzy or nauseous. But, good news! If your character slumps forward completely while keeping their arms on either side of the horse’s neck, they will probably manage to stay in the saddle for a decent amount of time. Their lower body and leg (hopefully still in the stirrups) will keep them in the saddle unless jostled out of it. (This, of course, only making sense if the saddle in question doesn’t have a horn, because otherwise your character won’t be able to slump forward far at all. )If they manage to slip off the horse in this position, they’re going to land head/chest/upper body first, especially if only semi-conscious due to previous injuries. 

If dealing with any other injuries, getting on the horse might be nicer than walking but will definitely not keep anything still- any motion the horse makes will make the rider’s body move and jostle the injury, no matter where the injury is.

5. Wrapping it up: Horse Lingo and Behaviour

Horse terms are easy to find and but a google search away, but here’s some of the main terms:

Gaits: A horse’s movement. Walk, trot, canter and gallop with gallop being the fastest.

Aids: what riders use to communicate with the horse. This includes your hand (on the reins) your leg (squeezing to ask for gaits) and your voice.

(Riders talk to their horses! all the time. Even if just to say good boy/girl. Commonly we say things like hoooh, whoa, easy, no, etc. Sometimes just talking to your nervous horse helps calm them down)

Green horse: Inexperienced horse, usually new to being ridden, usually young.

Mare: Female Horse.

Stallion: Male horse, not neutered. Stallions can have a reputation for being hotheaded and sometimes hard to handle, but not all are like that.

Gelding: Male horse, neutered. Most people who have male horses will refer to them as geldings on paperwork.

Pony: a small horse. Not a baby horse. Just smaller.

Colt: Baby male.

Filly: Baby female.

You can probably use google for anything else without concern that you’re using a term that's unnatural.

Behaviour

My rule of thumb for writing behaviour is this: If it seems like a disney dog in a movie would do it........ it’s safe to say a horse wouldn’t. Writing a horse like a disney dog is too unnatural and will definitely make any horse people reading your story give an eye roll.

An example:

Your character has just dismounted their horse after a long ride.

A horse would: maybe sniff your pockets for treats (especially if you had some before you got on) stand next to you as you talked to someone, try to rub their head on you (scratches!! especially if they’re sweaty) maybe perk up at something in the distance if distracted enough

A horse would not: Shake their head at you, whinny at you, prance around and “smile” at you... roll their eyes at something you said... point like Lassie at something in the distance... etc. 

Horses definitely have personalities! They can be affectionate and snuggly, nervous or brave, flighty or stoic... but they don’t emote the same way a cartoon character would. The best example i’ve seen of horse interaction in media would probably be the horses in Disney’s Brave. If you pay attention to the way horses interact with each other and react to events in the movie, it’s pretty spot on!

Follow your gut. You can still have a horse with a personality, but if it feels too cartoony, it probably is!

This is a great infographic that explains body language as well.

I hope this helps anyone who wants to include more horse interaction in their writing!

[strawbabysimp]

Adult Trio as Yanderes HCs

Chrollo

He's so lonely traveling around for jobs, it's an unstable life and he doesn't have any real motivation for doing what he does. But you? You were so interesting. He made obtaining you a sort of game, except this was a far more exhilarating game than he'd ever played before. It was a new sort of mission that required a different way of going about things and that sparked something in him. Something he had been missing and craving this entire time unknowingly.

You quickly became friends with the new charming man in town, he asked you out a few times and it was all going well. He brought you flowers and candies, showering you in expensive gifts that you didn't have to even do anything special to receive. You said he didn't have to do these things but he made it clear he was glad to do it.

It's a very gradual progression as he gets more and more possessive. He'll want you to wear everything he's given you, especially when you go out in public. The way he turns your head to meet his gaze even when you two aren't talking, as if your attention had to be directed at him for fear that your outside surroundings would somehow taint you.

When you bring up cutting your hair differently or trying a new look he's quick to panic, telling you in a breathy voice that that was a horrible idea and you were perfect just as you are. He wants to keep you the same as you've always been since he first met you, only allowing you to change to his wishes, never your own.

"You belong to me just as you are. Nothing will change that. I won't allow it to." His gaze is gentle but his words held an unspoken threat that both of you were very aware of. You were his rock. The only constant in his life and after gaining such a thing he would destroy anything that could possibly take that away.

You come along with him for all his jobs, no point fighting someone when there was no chance of getting away. You had to admit the life was somewhat entrancing; traveling around with a man quick to give you anything you so desired, only having eyes for you, a precious gift. He's never cruel, always so tentative, the darkness only fills his aura when directed at others for you could never do wrong in his eyes. The world was what was corrupt and ever-changing. He was a clear example of that.

Hisoka

Hisoka is the king of manipulation and while some part of you respected his skill, when it's directed at you it's an entirely different story. When it happens it just seems like jokes, small things he says that plant these cruel ideas in your mind, and they just keep building up. When you bring up his comments he laughs you off, saying if you are overthinking things perhaps there is a good reason for it. That was the start of it all.

Your idea of your friends was tainted, the way they smiled at you became a reminder of the horrible things Hisoka said a smile could hide. Your own family made you doubt your worth, thinking you'd never reach their standards. When you walked with Hisoka those harsh thoughts remained in your head but the presence of the magician made you happy, the way he had said you were perfect for him and that he didn't have expectations for you. He simply wanted you and everything you were willing to give. Only he didn't tell you he would have you give everything you had to offer and make it seem as if it was all your own choice.

You went on about your insecurities, voicing the fact that the world could be such a confusing and unfair place. It made him angry. The card would slip from his fingertips, blood rushing to the surface of your skin as the sharpened edge brought about a twinge of pain. Your eyes widen but a guilt fills your stomach. Hisoka had said you were perfect so why did he hurt you? He remains quiet as he walks towards you but his calm demeanor does nothing to calm your nerves. He explains in the sweetest voice a blood-thirsty man could provide - which was the equivalent of honey in vocal form for this gifted performer - that he was not mad at you but your words. To stop putting yourself down and instead direct your hate at the world. Your mind quickly twists things, Hisoka seeming to have had a sweet reaction. He wasn't mad at you. He loved you. He just wanted you to be happy and the fact you weren't stirred something in him. He cared and the world didn't.

He shows you off to the crowds like you're some divine thing. Something to be proud of. You're happy and he gives you a tender smile whenever he finds you in the stands of the arena. He'll dedicate the following bloodshed to you and call out in your direction his words of dedication. It was violent yet loving, a perfect description of the man who you cared for.

The death didn't stop at the stage, however. You'd find him coming home with clothes stained red from a person he never tells you the name of, going on about how he loves you so much sometimes he just can't help but express it. How he makes the last words those people mutter be your name as blood spills from their lips. You grimace. This isn't what you wanted. But what can you do? He loves you.

He lets you go out on your own, knowing you'll always come back. If you don't? That's not even a possibility at this point. Everything you are is his. You placed the very value of your existence in this beautiful man and he eats it up greedily. Without you, he'd starve. You didn't want to be cruel after he helped you accept the world as it is and yourself. The killing never stops but you do learn to accept it. Eventually, a smile finds its way onto your face as he drags a bloody finger across your cheek, leaving a red streak he kisses gently before dragging you to the shower to wash up with him. If the world is already cruel then isn't he just a byproduct? An adapter? Simply someone who has learned to love in a place where even love can't remain untarnished?

Illumi

You're getting kidnapped right off the bat. This man takes you the second he finds any sort of special interest in you as a person. He has this urge to protect you, the same as his own blood, that's not something he can just ignore. He won't be like his father. He won't allow you to rebel against his wishes or run off with another. He'll keep you to himself until you yearn for nothing more. Your cries fall on deaf ears as he looks on at you emotionlessly. This is for the best.

You'll be walking one day, there won't be many people around or none at all, and then he'll just appear. You hadn't met him before, he had wanted to study you to see if the two of you were compatible before he actually moved forward with his plans. One moment he's standing before you and the next you're out cold, a needle placed perfectly in your neck causing you to fall limp in his hold. He cradles you gently against him as he quickly makes his way to a secure home for the two of you. He wouldn't allow his family to have a taste of you. He didn't need their help. They always failed it seemed and he wouldn't have you suffer the same fate.

You wake up in a home straight out of your wildest dreams. You think you're still asleep as you first take in your surroundings. It's simply perfect. Your dream room. Your feet find the floor and as you put yourself upright a voice calls out to you asking if this setup pleases you or if you'd like something different. You're stunned and the ground beneath your feet suddenly feels all too real. The long-haired man comes to face you, his speed inhuman as he soon stands before you. You're scared and you're confused but the night before comes back to you and the explanation is clear. This man had taken you and it doesn't seem as if it had been the first time he laid eyes on you.

As time goes by he stays at your side, quietly observing you as you go about your day in the confines of the home. You'll walk to one room only to turn around and find him relaxed in a different spot only a few feet away. You were never out of his sight. You began to become curious about his intentions, why he was acting so nice - albeit a bit creepy - after taking you away like this. "My parents attempted to make the perfect family through what most would deem as cruelty. It didn't work out in their favor. I thought I had turned out quite nicely but they did not think the same. The closest thing to perfection for them is my brother but even he is not right yet. They treated him far... kinder than me you could say. Perhaps if I treat you even better you will be good for me."

With no way to escape, having witnessed this man's own abilities the first day of your "stay," you adapted to the situation. Becoming docile yet not overly submissive. You were still you and it seemed he was content with your occasional minor defiance and own personal wants or needs. It seemed he only wanted your presence and something about that was far easier to accept. He doesn't force you to do anything but rather encourages your interests and even becomes curious about them himself. While he wasn't much one to talk in the beginning he became more comfortable in your presence. You both had to adjust to the other despite him being the one in control of the situation.

Being with him is a reassuring thing, the little gleam in his eyes as you show him something new or express your gratitude over something he does/brings you has your heart beating loudly in your chest. You had begun to care for him. You missed the world and the new adventures and life you used to live but there was no fighting to be done. You knew what the result would be. In the back of your mind you knew this was wrong and an inhumane thing to do to another person but he seemed so tender with you. You watched him grow into himself and what's wrong with making the best out of a bad situation?

[fire-emblem-drabbles]

Precious Time and Little Lies

Pairing: yandere Xander x reader

Description: Once, when he was a different man, you had loved him. But now, Xander was a manipulative, terrifying monster of his former self, one you had no qualms running away from when the time came. However, you doubted how much he adored you-- and the atrocities he would commit to getting you back by his side.

Rating: sfw

Word Count:

Content Warnings: general yandere behavior, emotional manipulations, mentions of blood

Notes: Another commission for the ever so lovely @modern-zervis-lovemail! In addition, a friends helped me beta this one too, so thank you to @khaenruin for helping me figure this hot mess out. Also would you believe me if I told you I was listening to Kakusei from Promare the entire 5ish hours in total it took me to write this? Because why would I lie about that...

~*~

Today shouldn’t be a day spent on the battlefield. But fate had other plans for you, devious ones that wouldn’t be undone so easily. How long had you been running, escaping his grasp only to find yourself in the midst of his bloody desires? Xander may not be king of Nohr yet but defying still met certain death; or, it would have, had the crown prince of Nohr not held an unhealthy obsession for you…

In better times, kinder, gentler ones, you might have relished in his affection, may have even returned it and been something… more with him. But there was no going back on this choice. Not after you had seen the lengths he would go through for you… that he still continues to do. You can’t think about the lives tolling up in your wake because of him-- that’s just what he wants, for you to think this was all your fault, to break down and lean to him for support. To trap you in his grasp and cradle you there, coddling you and fooling you into thinking he wasn’t a monster with his sweet smiles… You wouldn’t fall for it any more.

Today was the Day of Devotion. You knew, he would be more motivated than ever to find you. You could hear his words now, feel them plaguing your very skull; how sweet it would be, to be reunited on the Day of Devotion. It was sickening. But you had to had to remain strong, Graciously, the Hoshidian’s had allowed you refuge in their country, even letting you travel with their army for a short amount of time to Cyrkensia, where you would hopefully be able to flee the continent altogether, right under Xander’s nose no less. Azura’s performance would be the perfect distraction for you. The fight that would inevitable follow was merely a bonus.

“I can’t thank you enough for allowing me to travel with you this far.” You turn to Corrin and Princess Sakura, as well as Prince Takumi, and bow your head. “I wish I could help you further, but even my mere presence here now is a danger to you all.” Corrin shakes his head, while Takumi just huffs.

“The information you provided is has been immensely helpful. It’s thanks to you we even know Xander will be here today. We can be prepared because of that.” Corrin offers you a small smile, which you return with one of your own.

“You’re absolutely sure they’ll be there?” Takumi isn’t as convinced. For the few days you’ve been here, he’s been on his tiptoes around you; you can’t blame him for his behavior, though.

“Positive. King Garon loves the shows here and…” You heave a sigh, shaking your head. “...had I still been by his side, this would have been the day Xander proposed.”

“Goodness, really?” Sakura gasped. “In front of all these people? How do you even know?” Her face is flush from the mere thought.

“It was the day he wanted to go public with it. We… were engaged far before that. He knew I couldn’t deny him in a front of a crowd of people who adored him…” You clenched your fist tightly.

“Xander…” Corrin looks troubled. Xander was his older brother, after all. The rejection of his younger brother, and now you, his beloved fiancee… Perhaps there was an explanation for his behavior but never an excuse. “I’m sorry this all happened to you _____, I can’t help but feel part of this is somehow my fault.”

“Corrin…” You sigh softly. “It’s no ones fault but Xander’s own. We made our choices, and though they were in opposition to him, they were ours to make.” You take his hand in yours, surprising him before you continue. “But if we fault in the paths we’ve taken, everyone, from the people in your army to Xander himself, will suffer for it. Stay strong.” With one last squeeze of his hand you drop it.

“...Right.” He nods, and you can see him steeling himself. “Today, we’ll end this…”

“The shows about to start, we should hurry.” Takumi sends a look to you over his shoulder, ushering his siblings closer.

“Stay safe everyone. I believe in you.” You send one more smile Corrin’s way before heading off on your own to the ports. If things went okay, they would be able to defeat Garon, and maybe even stop Xander…

You knew little about the world outside of Nohr, Hoshido, or even Nestra, but anything was better than the war that countries faced and the terror that followed you here. It wouldn’t be easy start anew in a foreign place… “You should catch a nice price though…” From your pocket, you produced a ring; casted in white gold, and gilded in the finest of amethyst, any woman would have been proud to where it on their finger. But these engagement ring would be a new start for you in a different way.

“…You kept it?” You gasp and snatch the ring close to yourself, surprised to find yourself cornered by none other than Xander himself.

“W-what? How did you…” Your words died on you tongue as he approached you. You were frozen in place, malleable to his touch as he carefully opened your hand and once more slipped the engagement ring on your right ring finger. His silence, and the lack of any signs on anger on his part made you apprehensive.

“Why did you have to leave me?” He held your shoulders, preventing your escape. His ruby gaze was inescapable, his apparent sorrow scalding.

“Why?” You frown, willing yourself not to fall for his tricks. “Look at you! You’ve become a puppet of your fathers will, Xander!” You wrench yourself free from his grasp, surprising yourself. “Once you were a kind prince, someone the people looked up to; someone who I looked up to.” You take a step but to distance yourself from him. “But you’re just as mad as him now. You’ve taken away my rights, treated me like a child, chased me down the realm and back, and for what? Will you drag me back to your side? Will you prove yourself the craven beast I know you to be?” You glared up at him now, trying your best to read his mood, to not be affected by the hurt you saw in his eyes. He had already done far worse to you.

“Who has fed you these lies, dearest?” Xander approaches you, finally acting on his desire, lies spilling forth from his lips as he stocked towards you. “Who has fed you this poison, that you are so freighted by me even my face before you has you trembling?” You hadn’t even noticed it before, but you were; your hands were shaking and the familiar feeling of adrenaline was beginning to course though your veins. Fight or flight was beginning to over take your mind as he merely got closer, spoke a little more softer to you. “Won’t you tell me who I need take care of?” He got close enough to caress your cheek with his gauntlet only for you to flinch away from his touch. He faltered, if only for a moment.

“You’re too blind to realize it was you yourself who led me to this. I would sooner forsake my homeland and take up arms with the Hoshidian’s than return to your side once more!” You tried to be fierce, to show Xander you weren’t afraid of him. “I won’t go with you.” He was frowning now, lurching forward and taking your arm in a gasp that wouldn’t easily be shaken off.

“Why don’t I take you to see the show? To see what happens to traitors.” His voice was even, his face turning dark as you tried to struggle. His grip was bruising, and you were willing to cause a scene.

“Corrin is your brother!” You argue. “Why are you willing to show lenience to me and not him?” You cry. His shock is enough for him to drop you. You pull back dramatically, gently rubbing the spot on your forearm where he caught you.

“You’ve yet to totally betray me.” His eyes linger on the ring you let him replace on your finger. You hold it protectively to your chest.

“That’s… this is different.” You huff, scowling at him. “There’s nothing left in me that cares for you as I once did.”

“Don’t be foolish.” You yelp, looking back to find Xander’s backed you up to the a large crate near the docks. “You just listened to the same lies those rotten Hoshidian’s fed to Corrin, didn’t you?” He shakes his head softly. “I won’t let them take you from me as well _____.”

“You’ve listened to nothing I’ve said!” You cry. “Xander, stop this! Actually listen to me for once in your life!” You beg him, hands finding place on his chest.

“You must be so confused… And scared…” He sighs, as if some great sorrow was just discovered, as if you really were as scared and confused as he claimed. He was clearly delusional, at least when it came to you and your thoughts and feeling; you really had to escape him now, lest you be stuck with this man who could not see you for what you were the rest of your life.

“I’m not confused! And the only thing I’m scared of is what you’re planning to do-- Xander, Xander stop!” He takes you by the arm, as any prince and gentleman should, and begins leading you over the performance hall. “Let me go!” Though you are loud and vigorous in your attempt to not be lead away from him, the grip he has on you is stronger than anything you could put up a fight against. There isn’t hardly anyone on the streets to see you struggle against him, everyone has gone to the hall to watch Azura preform… You know once you’re in there, it’s too late for you. People will recognize you, hanging off the princes arm. And if his siblings are there, they’ll only reinforce their brothers delusions…

“Everyone’s going to be delighted I found you once more, _____. Elise is even here with us… I dare say she missed you as much as me.” He laughed softly as he lead you inside, as if you weren’t fighting like a rabid animal to be free of his hold.

“...Elise?” You stopped your struggling at her name. You couldn’t let the young Princess know just how twisted and vile her dear older brother had become in your name… if she saw you…

“Xander! _____!” As if on cue, the young girl appeared before the two of you as you entered the building. Barely, you managed to catch her in a hug as she barreled towards you. “Ohh, I missed you so much! I was so scared for you.” She looked at you with big doe eyes, and your heart beat painfully at it. So, this is how he planned to keep you in line…

“Hey sweetheart…” You gently smoothed down her hair as she snuggled into you. “I’m sorry to have worried you, I just…” You pause, looking to Xander as he frowned softly.

“Xander said you didn’t love us anymore, is that true?” Her eyes were watering. You hushed her gently, moving to sit on your knees to better be at her level.

“I could never stop loving you, you know that.” You gave her a smile, a genuine one. Elise’s innocence was something to be protected… You couldn’t let her know the true nature of your relationship with Xander. “I just… had some business to attend to before our big day here, that’s all.” You sigh softly.

“Big day!” She gaps. “Are you two--” You hush her by placing your finger over her lips, and winking.

“It’s a surprise! Don’t ruin it for anyone!” You manage a smile for her.

“Come on you two.” Xander is smiling as well. He helps you to your feet and you can’t help the looming sense of dread that lingers in you as his hands leave you. “The show is nearly over now, and father is expecting us. We’ll get to announce the news after that.” With the joy only a young girl could bring, Elise bounds over to the stairs that lead to the balcony over viewing the stage. Once alone with you, he speaks again. “You even remembered what today was, didn’t you?” You hate how… in love with you he looks. It looks genuine; it brings up old feelings you would rather forget…

“The Day of Devotion.” You frown, looking away from him as you ascend the stairs.

“Today is the day we first say I love you to one another… Was it really two years ago?” He sighs softly and you falter for a moment.

“I said that to a man you no longer are.” He’s silent as the two of you finally make it to the terrace. Elise is there, as is King Garon. You’re greeted with the usual dismissal and nod he had given you in the past; you doubt he even noticed you absence. You look past him, to the crowd gathered on the boats and docks below. You note, its not yet Azura singing… She must not have preformed yet. You can’t see any familiar faces in the crowd, so perhaps Corrin’s army is more well hidden than you thought… Maybe, there was still a chance for you to escape.

“_____…” The songstress’s words are dying in your ears as you meet Xander’s gaze. It’s nothing but tender gazes and bygone feelings that twist around in your stomach. Oh, gods above, he’s kneeling-- Elise is gasping and even Garon has shifted his attention to the two of you, an unreadable look on his face. It’s nearly too much as your stomach turns and shifts inside you. “We’ve been through so much together-- I’ve proven to you I would do anything to keep you at my side. I’ve found you at the ends of our shores, and brought you back where you belong. Please, I can’t bare to be without you-- do me the honor of being my wife, and give me the privilege of being your husband.” He’s so serious. You know you can’t refuse him. Not here, not now. But still, words hesitate to leave your mouth.

“X-xander… I…” You stumble over your words, staring down at him as he gazes adoringly at you. Faintly, you can hear someone else has begun to sing. Their voice is familiar, and even the words they’re singing… Its not until you notice Garon in pain that you gasp. “Azura!” You drop Xander’s hands, much to his dismay, and turn to watch her. Her performance is breath taking and amazingly, its affecting Garon. He looks as if he’s about to burst or something, and things quickly devolve after that.

You can hardly keep up with it; someone is telling Xander the Hoshidian’s are here, Garon is quickly taken away to recover, and Xander is gearing up for battle as Corrin and his army show themselves. Xander, though it all, looks more than angered; you can see through his crimson eyes that this is something that cannot be forgiven.

“They dare ruin our moment?” Xander won’t even let you leave his side, hoisting you up on his horse to fight before you can think twice. “I think it’s high time I show them, and you, just what happens when you betray the kingdom of Nohr.”

“Xander wait! There are still innocent people here!” You beg, gripping on to his back as he rode into battle. “Please, let them escape! It’s not as it if Corrin knew what you had planned today! It’s not worth innocent lives to try and stop them.” You beg. “You have me now. I won’t leave, I promise. I’ll marry you if it means no one gets hurt here today.” Your desperate for Corrin and his army to make their mistake. A battle where they can get away is a battle they might be able to win in the future and that means a future where you might escape Xander.

“_____, dear, had you so easily forgotten what happened when you defy me?” He sighs softly, shaking his head. “These lives I take-- the blood I shed, its all on your hands as well. Perhaps, had you stayed by my side… we wouldn’t be here today.” You hide your face in his back as you feel warm blood quickly rush over you. He’s charging straight for Corrin and the other Hoshidian royals, you know. It’s all you can do to remove yourself from the situation and try not to internalize his words. Still, you can help but wonder… would things be like this had you stayed with him, so long ago? Would there really be no blood on your hands?

[softer-ua]

I have no idea what Bakugou would have done if Izuku died in the sludge Villain accident. They had a lot of strong unresolved emotions, I just can't fully visualize it, the only thing I have clear is him trying to latch onto anger, but that would burn out fast because the Villian was trapped and the heroes did their thing (Winning, which at that point he believed everything was) so I don't know what would he do. Sooo...could you please give us your insight? Please :D

I’d love to give my insight! Thank you for asking!!!🥰

It would depend on which sludge incident, the one where Deku ran to save Katsuki or the one where Deku was on his own? 🤔 I’ve got ideas on both lol

Buckle up this is gonna be a long one, and it’s not a fun ride

For the first I think Katsuki would latch onto anger and be a self hating righteous little monster for the rest of eternity. Because obviously he’s never getting therapy.

If he can blame himself for AM’s retirement and his parents can blame him for getting kidnapped than I have zero doubt the Entire Bakugo family would blame Katsuki for Dekus death. That family loves to victim blame, and Mitsuki would have a field day with chart topping world’s lowest blows like

If Katsuki hadn’t been hanging out in an alley and had gone straight home the villain wouldn’t have got him

If Katsuki hadn’t just been randomly blasting the heros wouldn’t have had to divert their attention to the fire

If Katsuki hadn’t been so weak(what’s the point of that flashy quirk if you can’t even save yourself)

Going with him to make him apologize to Inko (trying to imagine this feels like my brains touching a hot stove, it would be a thousand times more horrible and scarring than being forced to apologize to his Idol and teach for being kidnapped)

If hs Katsuki didn’t have the tools to block out his mother and broke down over a 50 year old man retiring, then poor ms Katsuki doesn’t stand a chance against being forced to bare the blame in someone’s actual death, especially not Dekus. Plus whatever destructive aftermath Katsuki created.

Did you have to blow up the entire alley way??

Katsuki would also never stop blaming those heros, even if the villain was captured they lost what really mattered, Dekus life.

They should have stopped the villain before Deku ever showed up

They should have never let Deku cross the line

They should have saved him

I think his fear of being weak would have been magnified by 10000. And it wouldn’t be a stretch for me to believe that witnessing that kind of hero failure so personally would be his villain origin. But even if it wasn’t, I think 10 months of stewing in grief, rage and self hate at such a young age would leave some very permanent scars

He’d habitually train to the point of self harm(reminder to check in on your fitness bros)

He’d never ever let someone close to him again (he didn’t want Deku close to him in the first place and look at how bad it hurt anyway)

He wouldn’t give a shit about any heros opinion anymore, if it’s not about how he can get stronger than any would be mentor can fuck off

His ego would have taken a massive hit, he’s no longer trying to prove he’s the best

Instead he’s insuring it because he’s never losing anyone again

Even with that in mind I think the sports festival actually would have gone a lot calmer because he no longer gives a shit about showing off, he’s just fighting to test himself and Dekus the one who pushed Todoroki to the point anyone even knew he had a fire side(I always wonder how much longer Aizawa was gonna let that go on for) so he’d except his medal quietly so it’s possible the lov would never have tried to recruit him

I think he’d be a lot more proactive in helping his classmates get stronger

Just not in a cute tsundere way anymore, but in a “if you can’t keep up with me I will keep attempting to murder you until you drop out” way, because B List heros are not allowed to be a thing anymore

Eventually he would grow up to be the top hero and he revels in that victory by hating himself, his job, his coworkers, his family, and everyone and everything else. The best part of his days are the adrenaline highs and that’s not even a happy high, in a bad headspace it just makes you ansty and aggressive, still better than being a hallow husk of resentments

I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually did kill a fellow pro for not meeting his standards. Depending on what the hero did to earn his ire would shape wether he went on to be the new hero killer or simply stopped being a hero himself in custody or more permanently

Now if the villain had instead been captured after being caught hiding in Dekus flesh suit things would have been very different than the above

Katsuki would definitely be traumatized at this news, so would most of their class and they’d probably do some kind of memorial deal, and over the course of a couple of days Katsuki would slowly descend into madness at watching his class act like they have ever given a single fuck about Deku

Then he would speedball into it, because how dare they grieve over him, non of them deserve to especially not him

He’d be angry for as long as he could, at himself and everyone else, but eventually that’d putter out without anyone stoking the fire, no one else blames his class for feeling sad and no one blames the heros for not existing on every single possible street corner

Maybe he makes it through UA. He’s not as hot head, not as naive, but teens hold grudges like no other, he can be mad at the world a little longer.

Throws himself into the work so he doesn’t have time to think. He’s going to be the best because Deku always believed he would be and if he’s not allowed to be sad than this will be his only way to honor the nerds memory.

But the thing about pain is that it demands to be felt.

Eventually his regrets and grief would come for him, in a year or in ten years doesn’t matter they will eventually claim the time and space they need with interest.

He’d probably meet his regrets first so that he can be mad at himself for a little longer

He should have let Deku be

If he hadn’t held Deku up after class maybe he’d have made it home

His last words play on loop growing distorted and more malicious as the years go on(fun fact about memory ! It’s easily manipulated because each time you remember something you’re actually just remembering the last time you remembered the thing! Basically your brain reconstructs the memory completely each time! Fuck it up once and it’s all down hill)

He regrets not ensuring that he’d have more than his flimsy memories to hold onto Deku with, he never realized he’d want to, never could fully conceive that he’d actually have to.

He should have been kinder

He should have been less of a coward and faced his own insecurities

He should have talked to Deku about so many things

He can’t just focus on what he did and didn’t do forever tho, eventually he’ll have to recognize the hole Deku left behind, his regrets will paint the picture of his grief

Maybe he forgets the exact date of Dekus birthday but he knows it was in the summer, he regrets not going to his last one and grieves never going to a next one.

He regrets not going to the funeral, of course he was sad, he’d been an idiot to think he couldn’t be

He regrets not visiting Dekus grave, and grieves over how long he’s been gone now

He regrets that he had to learn what the value of saving is by having lost, god how he grieves that loss

Without Deku Kaminari never hears that nickname, Kacchan died with Deku. He grieves over never hearing it again

He wonders if Dekus hanging out with Kacchan wherever he is, he wonders if this makes him crazy.

He grieves over Deku dying so young, so alone, so horribly. It gives him nightmares, he can’t imagine the pain of having all his organs crushed down from the inside, and yet he’s some how intimately aware of its possibility. He debates looking for the autopsy results, maybe if he confirms it was asphyxiation and not internal blunt trauma the nightmares will stop. But you don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.

He grieves over the dreams Deku never got to chase, and regrets ever playing a part in taking away the happiness a dream is supposed to have

He grieves over the Deku shaped hole in his life that seemed to grow with him despite only ever getting to know the knobby knees version, he can’t help but think with every achievement and milestone “you should be here”

He doesn’t hate his life, it just feels half lived.

Without Deku pushing his buttons and no god complex shaped alarm bells people were slower to reach out to him.

Without Deku to vouch for his good qualities people were a lot more hesitant to see them.

He still did make friends it’s just a shallower connection and he doesn’t make time for them

He becomes top hero but the victory feels hallow like there should have been more of a fight for it. Maybe he is crazy but it feels like it should have been Deku fighting him for it.

His saves are legendary and numerous, he’s never able to shake the feeling that there’s someone out there who needs him just around the corner

Between the nightmares and the anxiety clocking off gives him he probably gets less sleep than any hero before him, even Aizawa.

It was a short career

[lassieposting]

Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying. 

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas.  There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

[rrickgrrimes8]

Normality is Death

Chapter Thirteen ~ Philippians 1:29

masterlist

"C'mon baby lets go back to our room," Lori said to Jacey, Carl already holding her hand. Jacey nodded following a part of her family down the halls. 

"What's happening, mom?" Carl asked as he watched Lori go to the air vent feeling no air come out, "Mom? Something wrong?" 

Jacey watched her apprehensive mother, "Uh, nothing. It's just... just the air conditioning stopped." 

Lights went out soon after that too which agitated Lori more as did the disappearance of her husband. Sitting at the foot of her parents' bed, she watched as she left the room to talk to Doctor Jenner as he passed quickly. "What's wrong, Jacey?" She heard Addie call to her. 

"Please leave me alone," her hands found their ways to her ears once again seeking to block out any noise. 

"Jacey? You're scaring me... what's wrong?" Addie called to her again, causing her to look up only to see her younger brother worried, "What's wrong, Jacey?" 

"Uh... nothing, squirt. I'm fine," She stuttered, paralyzed by her shock, "Where's mom?" 

"Went after that Doctor. Sent me back to get you," Carl smiled, still perturbed, "You coming?" 

"Yep, Let's go, squirt."

The two younger Grimes' entered the hysterical room, passing their frightful mother on the way out, "Mom what's happening?" Lori didn't respond though, as she continued to run down the corridor and back to the room. Jacey caught wind of Jenner's words about how the French were the last ones to hold out. Well, that was until the fuel ran out. It sunk in deep with the child, there was no cure and there never will be - everything is gone.

Jacey, grabbing the hand of her brother, ran into the room eyeing the now sealed doors. "No. Did you just lock us in?" Glenn panicked, "He just locked us in!" Carl held her hand tighter, the loud noises and consternation becoming at once too much for him. Jacey saw Edwin take a seat at his desk and begin to talk to a camera. 

Bold lettering violated her eyes as the screen switched to black with the red-lettered words of '30 minutes to decontamination'. "Carl! Jacey!" she heard her mom bellow, quickly finding them. Dropping her bags, she wrapped her arms around the two children, kissing both of their heads. 

Daryl endeavoured over to the man in a fit of rage, yelling at him something Jacey couldn't quite catch but was quickly stopped by Shane. She watched as her father pleaded with the stubborn man to open the door, to which he refused. "What happens in 28 minutes?" Rick yelled to the man after he had ignored him the first time. 

"Come on!" Daryl encouraged threatening him with a glass bottle. 

"You know what this place is?!" He snapped, "We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" Jenner stops to breathe slowly, "In the event of a catastrophic power failure - in a terrorist attack, for example - H.I.T are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out." 

"H.I.T's?" Rick asked. 

"VI, define," he ordered. 

"H.I.T's - high impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist," VI continued but Jacey just blocked it out. They were going to die. They were all going to die. Rick walks over to his family joining in on their hug, mortified by the news. Jacey, however, felt okay, fine really. It didn't bother her that she was about to die - her death never seemed to scare her. What did bother her though was that her family would die too. Carl was too young to die she thought to herself. 

"It sets the air on fire. No pain," Jenner told them after VI had finished, "an end to sorrow, grief... regret. Everything." Jacey smiled through her tears, she was almost looking forward to it as dark as that sounded but she just wanted some peace, a rest. She watched as many grew angry - and in Daryl's case - violent with the doctor. 

Shane and T-dog stayed by the door throwing any and everything they had at it, but none of it making a dent. "You should've left well enough alone... it would have been so much easier," Jenner lent back in his chair, unbothered by the chaos he had created. 

"Easier for who?" Lori spat, clearly angry with the man's decision yet still a great amount of sadness in her words, knowing her children were about to die when they're lives really had just begun. 

"All of you. You know what's out there. A short brutal life and agonizing death," Jacey understood this and observed as he looked to her, "The people you lost, what was their names?" 

"Mitch and Addie," she replied not entirely sure on how he knew, while Rick looked to the man threateningly not wanting her daughter to have any part in his manipulation. 

"And you? Your sister?" he asked now to Andrea, the following was a quiet 'Amy'. "Addie, Mitch and Amy," He looked between Andrea and the girl, "You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that what you really want for your wife, daughter and son?" 

Now looking at Rick. "I don't want this," He almost cried emphatically. 

"Can't make a dent," Shane shouted to Rick, alarmed. 

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher," Jenner said almost comedically. 

"Well, your head ain't!" Daryl screamed, making his way over to the doctor, axe ready. Dale, Rick and Shane come together once more to hold Daryl and his clear anger issues back, "Daryl! Daryl!" 

T-dog soon wrestled the weapon off of him as Jenner continued to Rick, "You do want this. Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead." Lori's face drops at his words, while Jacey detaches herself from her mother and brother, planting herself on one of the many identical tables. 

"What? You really said that? After all your big talk?" Shane expectorated, almost betrayed at the doctor's words. 

"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" He justified to Lori. 

"There is no hope. There never was." 

"There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here but somebody somewhere-" 

"What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" the younger girl interrupted her father, earning an approving nod from Andrea but a pained look from her family. 

"Listen to your daughter," Jenner advised, "She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event." 

"This isn't right. You can't keep us here," Carol cried, "my daughter doesn't deserve to die like this." 

"Wouldnt it be kinder, more compassionate just to hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run out?" Carol still cries as she holds her daughter, but Jacqui nods her head slightly. 

Much like what happened with Daryl, Shane came to the doctor pointing a shotgun right at his face, but this time Rick intervened, "Out of the way, Rick! Stay out of my way! Open that door, or I'm going to blow your head off. Do you hear me?" Jenner remained emotionless as the officer continued to aim for his head. 

"Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here, " Rick reminded him. Instead, in a fit of anger, Shane begins to shoot at the computer screens randomly, everyone cowering away from the shots. "We all die, Shane!" he reminded before struggling to get the gun away from him, "Are you done now? Are you done?" 

"Yeah, I guess we all are," Shane disputed. 

"I think you're lying," Rick said to Edwin, "You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path, why?" 

"It doesn't matter," Jenner sheepishly said. 

"It does matter. It always matters. You stayed when others ran. Why?" 

"Not because I wanted to. I made a promise," he proceeded to point towards the screen, "To her. My wife." 

"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Lori questioned sympathetically.

"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no?" Jenner paused, looking to Daryl, who continued to use his axe against the door no matter how useless it was, "She was dying. It should've been me on that table. I wouldn't have mattered to anybody. She was a loss to the world. Hell, she ran this place. I just worked here. In our field, she was Einstein. Me? I'm just... Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me." Jacey sighed, feeling the pain of his loss substantially. 

Rick pleaded once more, "Your wife didn't have a choice. You do. That's... that's all we want a choice... a chance." 

"You let us keep trying as long as we can," Lori added. 

Jenner moves over to the desk picking up what looked like a security pad and said, "I told topside's locked down. I can't open those." 

Seconds later, the doors open and everyone begins to rush out of them, "There's your chance. Take it" 

"I'm grateful," Rick smiled, lifting his hand for him to shake. 

"The day will come when you won't be," Jenner said before shaking Rick's hand and whispering something in his ear. 

"You can't go, you know that, right?" Addie says, her voice kinder now, which Jacey was more grateful for. 

"I know. I want to be with you again," Jacey looked to the girl reluctantly, hoping that the walker won't appear again. 

Addie's face - her normal one - came into view, blooming a big smile on the younger girls face, "And you will, love. I'm never going to leave you again, I promise." 

"I love you, Addie." 

"I lov-" Addie's voice was interrupted by a male one "Jacey, c'mon, angel, grab your things. Let's go." 

Jacey shook her head at the man she realised to be her father, "I-I'm not coming." Rick stopped, hoping his ears were deceiving him but then looked at her tear-covered face and realised. 

"No, you're not, baby. Let's go," Lori shouted from behind Rick. 

"Lori just go. Get the others out of here," he ordered his wife, "We're right behind you." The rest of the group stampeded out of the room, Lori and Carl lingering for a short minute, hoping Rick will be able to convince her to join them. 

"Tell him you're sorry, Jace," Addie whispered, holding her hand. 

"I'm sorry but I-I can't." 

"Yes you can, Jacey, please. You're not thinking straight," Rick prayed that she'd see reason and join them, but his heart stopped when she shook her head. 

"I can't anymore, dad. I'm so tired." Jacey looked around the room, seeing that not only Jenner was still here but so was Jacqui and Andrea. 

An arm snaked over her shoulder, squeezing it gently, an arm, belonging to Mitchell, "Tell him to leave, babydoll, and then you'll be with us forever."

 She smiled at his words and then returned her eyes to her father's blue ones, "You have to leave. I want to stay with them." 

"I'm not leaving you here, angel," He cried, tightly holding the sides of her face. 

"Addie was only 16, dad, Mitch was 25. We had children in our camp. I-I should've died with them. I don't deserve to live when they had to die." 

"Listen to me, Jace, you survived for a reason, okay? You don't have to agree with me, but whoever is up there, whatever is in charge made it so you weren't there. So you wouldn't die. They wouldn't want you to die here and now. Your story is not over yet. I won't allow it," Rick wailed, heavier than earlier as he watched his daughter looked to her left and right as if looking at people that weren't there, "Your death isn't going to bring them back." 

"I can't leave them, daddy," She paused, "I already hurt them enough." 

"Who are you talking about, angel?" his voice breaking slightly. 

"Addie and Mitchell," Jacey told him as if it was obvious, "I can't leave them alone again." 

"Addie and Mitchell are dead, baby. They're not here anymore," the man pleaded with his deluded daughter. 

"No," she argued, squeezing her eyes shut, "shut up. You're lying, they're here with me now, they want me to stay. She promised me she wouldn't leave again," Jacey cried, looking at Addie and Mitchell, slowly seeing them morph into their walker forms, "Oh god. No, not again, please, not again. They're going to hurt me, daddy. They're going to hurt me like I hurt them." 

"Hey baby, look at me, only me, okay?" he stopped her from looking to where he assumed she saw them, "No one's gonna hurt you. Addie and Mitchell are gone. They can't hurt you, alright? Now we've got to go, angel, before it's too late." Jacey wanted to nod, to go with him, but the grip that Addie and Mitchell had on her tightened, making her let out a small cry. 

At once, they both turned into their undead self's clawing at her skin instead of holding it, "You can't leave, Jacey. Not when you did this to us." 

"No! Shut up! Leave me alone! I want to live! I don't want to die!" Rick watched the girl breakdown her hands beginning to claw away at any visible skin. The man grabbed her hands, stopping the movement before looking over to the timer seeing it hit the 5-minute mark. 

"I'm sorry, Jacey. I'm so sorry baby," Jacey heard him cry before feeling him move away from her. 

"Jacey, look at me, sweetheart," A kind, shaky voice begged of her. Jacey turned to meet their eyes, seeing a crying Jacqui, "You gotta go, darling, please."

"I can't, Jacqui. I can't keep going on like this," She paused, "I'm not strong enough."

"Yes you are, child. You are one of the strongest people I have ever met, don't ever trick yourself into thinking you're not," Jacqui apprised the younger girl.

"I'm not as strong as you think, Jacqui. Nowhere even close."

"That's where your wrong, sweetheart. You've got a lot of heart and if do say so myself a lot of balls," She smiled at her, "You're gonna survive this world, I'm sure of it." Jacqui stops speaking as she looked at the girl, aware of the mental state, "Look, sweetie, I'm not gonna force you outta that door, as much as I'd like too. I don't want you to die today, Jacey, but it seems like it's going that way so let me tell you something, okay?" Jacey nodded, "And you gotta promise me the moment you understand it you'll leave, you'll survive," she nodded once more, "Philippians 1:29; For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him but also to suffer for his sake." Jacey stayed silent not quite comprehending the meaning of the passage. 

"I don't understand, I don't get it, Jacqui," She cried into her palms.

"That's okay, sweetie, just breathe..." Jacqui refrained, "It means your pain has a purpose, whatever that purpose may be." 

"Do you understand now?" 

Jacey shook her head sadly, "That's okay, take your rest. I will see you once more in another life." Jacey watched as the older woman rejoined Jenner at his computer and observed as she wished that their conversation had gone another way and in some way Jenner also did.

"You have to stay Jace. You said you understood that. Everything will be better if you do," Addie warned, "If you go you will kill every single one of them out there. Do you want that? Do you want them dead? Your dad? Your mom? Carl?" Jacey shook her head manically, her mind flashing unforgiving images of their bodies eaten and unmoving, "So stay with me, my love. Stay, and I'll love you forever." 

Jacey nodded at her before muttering, "I'll love you forever too," causing Addie to smile. Jacey began to move closer to the dark-skinned girl, her face returning back to her natural one. 

"I wanna kiss you, Jace," Addie parted her lips inching towards Jace's. 

"Me too," She replied, shyness shrouding her confidence. 

But before their lips could touch, the masculine voice returned, "I'm sorry, Jacey," following a sharp twinge in her neck. Immediately, she felt a rush of dizziness hit her, Addie and Mitchell disappearing shortly afterwards, "no." She fell off her chair and into a pair of muscular arms, "I'm sorry, angel." 

"Addie," she cried before the darkness took over her. 

[capri-ramblings]

Can I request yandere headcannons for Leona, Jamil, Kalim, and Jade with a s/o who has trust issues?

Let's be honest aside from Kalim and Jade,Leona and Jamil has major trust issues as well lmao but here you go! Thank you for requesting and waiting! ♥️

Please refer to Pinned post for crucial information of my situation.

Jamil Viper

- He enjoys it even if he doesn't say so aloud

- He puts on a 'Sad, conflicting boyfriend' act whenever his s/o starts showing signs of their trust issues, not only to convince people he's doing his best to make the relationship work but also to use it against his s/o whenever his yandere tendencies starts to reveal itself

- The quick shift of emotions in their eyes when they lash out at him for not understanding their problems and seeing how hurt he was by that statement...There's simply nothing that could beat the satisfaction Jamil feels after winning every argument with the same trick

- Sometimes he finds it slightly annoying, simply because it's harder for him to fool them into a few of his possessive traps because they're always filled with questions as to why they have to do what he says

- But it's nothing he can't handle

- Having issues meant he could manipulate them fairly easy once he's figured out the basis of it

- Won't push his luck too far though, Jamil is extremely careful with an s/o who won't openly trust him at times just so he wouldn't push their buttons too far in

- Likes tormenting them by using their lack of trust in his faithfulness. Incidents where they'll call him late at night and ask him when he'll be home is a game Jamil loves to watch them lose at

- The sound of their quiet yet steely voice over the other line, attempting to sound harsh when Jamil already picked up the nasally tone that indicated they'd cried earlier, gets him off more than anything

- The naked feeling of someone being so dependent on him is luxury food for this Viper's ego and the more that swell of frustration in his s/o grows, the hungrier he gets

Leona Kingscholar

- "What the hell is wrong with you?"

- Being one of the most laziest yandere, Leona would be very unkind to an s/o like this,not even caring if how he addressed their issue offended them

- He doesn't mind at all if you didn't find trust in others, in fact, he encourages it. The more people surround you, the more he had to hunt down and kill off pesky free loaders in his territory

- But applying that same mistrust to him?

- You can say he'll act very aggressive about it

- By all means,no one should trust him, this fact Leona acknowledges but this issue makes his s/o more aware, if not paranoid of their surroundings and that usually means they think more which would lead to a lot of unnecessary drama Leona doesn't want to put up with

- Like Jamil he would use it against them,toying with their insecurities about the relationship and where they stood in his life but unlike Jamil, Leona gives little care for the damage it ensues

- He would spend an entire week at Farena's palace without telling them and come back with all kind of scents sticking to him and when his s/o questions him about it, he just smirks smugly

- "I was having fun."

- He knows that look they gave him was of hurt and extreme anxiousness but he doesn't care, you can't build a new bridge over an old one after all, right? You'd have to break the first then build the second.

- Leona's tactic is crude compared to how he'd usually settle for, but only because he's emotionally invested in his s/o

- Long story short, Leona would push the limits of his s/o trust issues to completely have them fall under his weight so he could pick them up by himself and build their new world around him

Jade Leech

- Jade is probably one of the kinder yanderes on this list

- Why? Because he'd have the most patience and the best tactic to flank the issue

- An s/o who can't openly trust themselves with people is simply a sign of social neglect on their part, maybe somewhere in their childhood or during their adolescent years

- Jade will find the root of the problem and from there slowly starts to test the waters with his s/o

- Seeing what would trigger their mistrust towards others and how they reacted to it

- Once that's all put out into the light, Jade will move to the second phase

- He'll play out scenarios,just to see how on point he is with his observation, but then the more he watches the more he starts to accept that this issues of theirs was not troubling to him at all

- They didn't trust people and that usually meant they'd spend less time somewhere they weren't familiar or comfortable with which gave Jade a very stable sense of control over them

- Sure,they tend to be wary with him but then again who isn't? Jade is fully aware of the many eyes that avert his when he and Floyd walks down the hallway.

- All he had to do was simply play the humble game

- Jade's ego isn't starved so he has no problem with adjusting his personality to suit his s/o's mistrustful nature, in fact,he might even admit he likes it

- Seeing how they have doubts over everyone in their life and how that emotionally hurts them makes Jade smile,he's a sadist who doesn't even need to lift a hand to make his s/o come crying to him for comfort

Kalim Al-Asim

- Terrible. This whole issue is a heavy burden on this boy, he doesn't really care if they couldn't trust other people but how could they possibly include him as well?

- He loves them, he wouldn't do anything to betray them

- Kalim is by nature kind, but in his delusional state of possessiveness, he simply can't accept this... disability of theirs

- A long lasting relationship starts with a strong foundation of trust, if he couldn't have that with his s/o, doesn't that mean their love was only momentarily?

- Kalim will try too hard to prove to his s/o that he can be trusted, even going as far as restraining himself from the the usual tendencies of the Yandere he's become

- He gives them more space, decreases the time he spends with them to let their friends talk to them like usual

- He even stops stalking them for awhile, but everyone has their limits, and Kalim's is when his s/o hesitates despite all his efforts

- The wavering look in their eyes when they turn to him

- He hates it. This shouldn't be happening.

- Kalim is a reckless yandere to say the least, unlike some, he doesn't really think things through and often allows his emotions to act out which results in very dramatic trauma

- The last time they hesitated when Kalim asked if they would place their life in his hands, he slipped himself a small amount of poison in his drink and had them tending to him a whole week, not that they knew of course. To everyone except Kalim, it was an almost tragic incident.

- He'd do anything to make them trust him, even when it's not really acceptance that has his s/o listening to his every word. The fact that they're scared for him is fine enough for Kalim

- Because even if they couldn't learn to trust him wholeheartedly, Kalim was very aware that their soft heart wouldn't let him be alone after so many horrible accidents.

[witchofrvnswood]

awwp rant pt. 2: the characters!

oh boy we’re finally back with part 2! 

so in part 1, i discussed plot points that i found troubling and nonsensical. this time, i’m talking about the characters and how they each pissed me off <3

note: am only doing the ones i have beef with, everyone else is cool

let’s start with sophie:

sophie

i’ll be honest, i’ve been conflicted on her character in this book for quite some time. but i think i understand my opinion on her in book 2 much better now that i’ve really thought about it. 

so this is the book where she’s probably at her most vulnerable (book 3 could be a contender too). she just lost her mind, killed many people, and is trying so hard to prove that she is good and deny everything that she had done the previous year. we also see why she behaves the way she does, with losing her mother at a young age and blaming her father for neglecting them. we understand why she goes so far to obtain love and why she ranks true love above everything else.

but her methods with dealing with this is toxic. she sees agatha as a tool for a happy ending, and it seems to come more out of desperation to belong with someone, then wanting agatha herself, as she easily dropped her for rafal and then tedros in book three. she does whatever she can to ensure agatha chooses her and only her much like tedros does in this book.

she sneaks out and follows agatha, makes agatha believe tedros tried to hurt her, comforted her and claimed she had “warned agatha” but also acted super forgiving as if agatha was the one who was in the wrong for doubting her and when the truth comes out, pins it all on agatha for trying to choose someone besides. her. now, agatha is not completely in the right in this situation, but what sophie does is so manipulative and cunning. without knowing her backstory and sympathizing with her, she would easily be soon as a cruel and toxic person.

her time as filip was very humbling for her and she realized what she did was completely wrong and she begans to sympathize with tedros and realize maybe he isn’t the villain of the story like she painted him to be. of course, this goes a bit far and she finds herself attracted to him.... which..... did not need to happen considering how toxic their relationship was in book 1.

at the end, she chose rafal out of desperation to be loved, showing she still hasn’t changed and ended up staying with him as he supposedly was the only person in the world who still loved her. (wrong very wrong he’s awful but we’ll get to that later-)

tedros

bro. broooooo. when i tell you i wanted to throw the darn book when i read his scenes in the first half of the book-

when dovey was explaining tedros’ actions after sophie and agatha left, i could not believe it, i thought she had to be joking because no way does an individual overreact to THAT point.

he literally wanted to murder sophie as revenge for taking agatha away from him?? what?? is he mentally okay? i understand seeing her as a barrier between them because, yeah, he’s always been insecure cause his dad’s best friend stole his mom away from him so that must’ve hit a nerve, but agatha willingly went with sophie. why does he need to hurt sophie over this? it’s up to agatha who she chooses, not sophie. and she chose him! she told him right to his face that she chose him and he’s still like “no we have to kill sophie first-” sir-

not to mention how generally messed up this message is? tedros claims that you can’t be in a relationship and have friends at the same time. what?? why is this in the book? why is this even a theme? of course you should be able to have friends and have a relationship, when did that suddenly become impossible?

 “I let her live last time and she took you! I can’t make the same mistake, Agatha. I can’t lose you again!” (Chapter 12). this is basically tedros trying to cut off agatha’s friendship because he knows she’s close with sophie and is worried she’ll choose her over him and he sees his only solution to this to be killing sophie. honestly, if i were agatha, i would be fucking terrified of him, like when i was reading it i was thinking “run from this relationship please-”

which sucks because i’m a huge tagatha fan but they were undeniably toxic in this book for me.

in the second half though, that’s when i started feeling bad for him because he genuinely thought he got betrayed by agatha too and ugh that killed me bc after her, he had no hope for happiness left and that’s why he turned to revenge, but the moment he freed the teachers, he got locked up, starved, beaten, and tortured which is ??

i wouldn’t wish that on anyone (except aric lawl) and god he did not deserve that i felt so horrible for him. everyone turned against him, the entire school hated him, he fully believed his true love betrayed him, and he got beaten by aric every single night. as much as i despised him before this point, he did not deserve any of that and i’m so glad filip came when he? she? did because yeah it’s tophie all over again (yikes) but he REALLY needed a friend then and i’m so happy he got one.

ONLY TO GET BETRAYED BY HIM AGAIN RIP. sorry that was not needed but ahem

i was so so happy when he realized agatha never lied and ended up going home with her, as much as i hated the ending, i was happy for him and only him, boy’s been through too much.

but overall, i’d say i dislike him as a character in this book but i also felt super bad for him?? book 2 is so complicated y’all i have so many mixed feelings about everyone in this book.

agatha

okay. so. i keep going back and forth between being fucking annoyed at her and feeling bad for her which i feel is an understandable summary of how she is in this book.

her being scared of sophie - i completely understand that. i’d be surprised if she wasn’t. this is a girl who tried to kill her, tore her down, and went batshit crazy just nine months ago and is now suddenly calm but there’s still a bad vibe to her? and she chose her over someone who finally treated her well, finally saw her as an equal, and showed her that she doesn’t have to bear so much burden just to be loved back.

but i honestly felt kind of annoyed at how she automatically, no hesitation wanted to stay with tedros forever and never look back. um. honey. let’s break this down. we’re talking about a boy she has had no contact with for nine months, wasn’t even in a solid relationship with before she left, and said boy probably has beef with her for leaving him in the first place. and she feels completely fine with sneaking into his school and telling him she wants to be with him forever the SAME day she got back.

what??? is??? this???

this is the same agatha who berated sophie for trying to get with tedros the same day she met him without even knowing him well, right? the same agatha who you’d expect to be smart and think through emotional decisions like these, right? did they replace her personality what???

i get the coven pushed her to meet him immediately but this was just so poorly planned out and so tactless i can’t help but judge her sorry hun.

after that she makes herself believe sophie is good and perfect and maybe this is just her lying to herself because she’s mad at herself for choosing tedros but reading about her talking about how sophie is so amazing and perfect and loves her more than anything compared to being ready to bolt at the sight of her was just so fake. can we talk about how fake their friendship in this book? how fake it is in general? i think wbk.

at the end she finds out sophie lied despite the obvious clues (the scim suit (WHY WOULD BEATRIX USE IT), the spirick marks on sophie’s wrist yada yada yada) and she dumps her ass for tedros and decides they’re staying together forever despite barely knowing him as a person not to mention he just tried to kill her um-

(where is the logic in this book please help me i can’t seem to find it-)

the coven

i’ll be honest: they annoyed the HELL out of me in this book. well, specifically anadil and hester. they pressured agatha to choose tedros and go to him on the first day she got back (BAD PLAN) all so they could return to normal,,, which i guess isn’t out of character for them to do anything to get what they want but it really wasn’t their business? or at least they had no right to be as pushy as they were.

not to mention how HORRIBLE they were to dot. oh my god. the way they treated her in this book was disgusting and the lowest point in their friendship. at first i passed it off as them being hurt that dot replaced them and were lashing out because they had no better way to deal with their problems, which is true but also?? let’s not forget they BULLIED dot so bad in their first year and even kicked her out and replaced her with sophie and as far as we know, they never apologized for it. can we really blame dot for wanting new and kinder friends?

but even then they persisted to isolate her from others, shut down her book club which she used to make friends, and ended up forcing herself to gain weight if she wanted to keep their friendship. y’all i don’t even think anyone realizes how toxic the coven can be at times, the books spend a lot of time solidifying their frienship to the point that it ignores how awful it was at first. and not to mention dot is used to this treatment as she’s been physically and emotionally abused by her father, so as much as she dislikes their treatment of her, she still sees them as her friends and she will do anything to keep them.

i’m glad dot has learned to stand up for herself and gave it back to hester in tlea but god was her and anadil’s treatment of her sickiening.

professor dovey

i did not like her scene in the beginning of this book. she was awful to agatha and sophie and kept tossing blame for how the woods changed on them and yelling at agatha for not choosing tedros - um, she had a split second to decide and her friend literally died and came back to life a minute ago, how was she expected to leave her?

i dunno the way she berated them really got on my nerves because they’re just 15 year olds? they didn’t ask for their story to be told or for their personal relationships to affect the entire world? yes, if it had to be pointed towards anyone, it’s them, but instead of comforting them and trying to help them find a way to fix this, she goes all pointing fingers and straight up saying it would be easier if sophie was dead (not gonna lie i had a good giggle when i read this part but if you think about, that’s actually really sickening).

i’ll be honest, i love professor dovey as a character but she just seemed so cruel in book 2 i mean i get she was super frustrated but these children are confused and distraught enough already? she’s their teacher, she’s supposed to look after them but instead she just insulted them and stressed them out.

as for lady lesso, yes she did the same, but that was pretty in character for her. yes, it was wrong of her, but idk it’s something you would expect from her and she’s known to be the type to be tough on her students, while dovey is just not like that at all. and also, dovey was WAY more mean and short-tempered in this mean, i have to say.

evelyn sader

she was... an interesting villain. super cunning super devious i really admired her except for her doing all of this toxic feminism bullshit (which was honestly already bad enough!) for rafal,  A MAN. WHAT. how does that make ANY sense?

evelyn: #kam2020 make them boys your slaves we got this in the bag girls

also evelyn: omg rafal senpai notice me uwu i did all of this for you *gestures towards girls annihilating boys*

anyways her death was um... shocking. rip. or maybe not.

aric

do- do i have to go into this one? killing yara, torturing tedros, being misogynistic, honestly pick one, i just don’t have the energy to rip him apart for the thousandth time.

[c-ptsdrecovery]

Cults and Dysfunctional Families

The techniques of control used by cults (here meaning social groups that exert excessive and abusive control over their members) are also used by domestic abusers and child abusers. I’ve posted before about the commonalities between cults and dysfunctional families. Well, I was just looking back over the notes I had for a talk on cults that I gave in my Bible study group a couple of years ago... and there are definitely characteristics there that sound like my family. So here are some notes with my commentary added.

•      Cults displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader (whether he is alive or dead), and regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. [My dysfunctional family wasn’t quite the zealous, but yes, questioning my parents’ assumptions about the world is not popular with them.]

•      The leadership induces feelings of shame and guilt in order to influence and control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion. [My mom’s major forms of control are guilt trips and passive aggression.]

•      The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members. ‪ The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality. This discourages members from listening to the rational criticisms of the group by their loved ones. [The assumption in our home was that where other families or individuals differed in their practices from us, their practices were inferior. The way we did it was automatically the right and sensible way to do things. This constant, unspoken assumption made me think that kinder, more open families were somehow doing it wrong. This made me not only NOT question my family, but look at healthier families and practices as alien and stupid.]

•      Members are encouraged or required to live or socialize ONLY with other group members. They are required to cut ties with family and friends. This means that they rarely hear any criticisms of the group from the outside, and also means that they have no social support network to help them after they leave the cult.  [While my family isn’t totally isolationist, they ARE very selective about the people they hang out with. For instance, when I was a kid, my birthday parties were almost always with extended family, not with friends. I was not permitted to invite friends to them. A couple of times i managed to get my best friend invited however: because she was a second cousin. If she wasn’t, I doubt my parents would have let me invite her. Also the fact that my best friend was my cousin should give you some idea of my family’s idea of socializing. I rarely went to friends’ houses (except my cousin’s) or had friends over, yet we spent almost all Sunday, every Sunday, with extended family (very lonely for me, as cousins my age were rarely there). My parents rarely socialized outside the home except at church or with a few VERY select friends. I also lived in the country, and almost all my neighbors were relatives, so I didn’t have outside people to play with outside of school. I always knew, as a child, that it was pointless to run away, because there was nobody and nowhere to run TO. Unfortunately, while studies have shown that having even one person in your life that can nurture you can hugely decrease your trauma as a result of childhood emotional neglect, I didn’t have that one person.

The group is often preoccupied with money. [I have a lot of anxiety around money, partly because my parents mocked me for spending any of it on myself as a child. There is definitely an air of monetary preoccupation with my parents.]

“love-bombing”: Potential recruits are overwhelmed with attention which makes them feel special, loved, and an important part of the new group. Aspects of this technique include, but are not limited to flattery, verbal seduction, affectionate but usually non-sexual touching, and lots of attention. Love-bombing can produce a social high.  Recruits can come to feel dependent on this feeling and the safety net of belonging to a close-knit group of people.  It also makes them feel loyal and dedicated, as they now may feel they owe the group some attention in return.[like many abusers, my mom blows hot and cold. For almost a year now she’s been REALLY NICE: it dates from when she found out that I blamed their parenting for my PTSD. She’s clearly trying to convince me she’s a GOOD mom, a NICE mom, and not to tell anybody otherwise. What this has mostly convinced me of is that she COULD have been nice to me all along if she’d actually cared, but she decided she’d rather be abusive.]

In order to keep a member trapped in a cult, the group establishes a threat of some kind.  This threat of death can be literal, but usually refers to spiritual death, loss of afterlife, loss of purpose, loss of identity, or the loss of important ideals and attributes.   [If my family is right and everybody else is wrong, then disagreeing with my family would mean I was wrong  and bad and worthy of contempt. Also, my family worked hard to wear down my self-esteem (see below) so that I believe that if I alienate my family, I won’t be able to handle myself in the outside world and something terrible will happen to me, like failure, unemployment, homelessness, and poverty.]

•      Standards for thoughts and behavior are held impossibly high, so that members are never able to reach the goal of what they “should” be, and as such, they never feel as if they measure up.  The goals themselves are presented as possible to attain, and thus the standards never become suspect, only the member who is not meeting them. Perfectly normal things like the desire for leisure time, the desire to be alone, or the desire to sleep are depicted as evil. Cult members are therefore tormented by their inability to reach the group’s standards, and can be manipulated through their low self-esteem. And just when they can’t stand the emotional abuse anymore… the leader will praise them for something they did well and they’re so grateful that they stay.

Creating dependency: A member comes to depend on the group for physical, emotional, social, spiritual, or other needs. The member has a high stake in continuing to stay loyal to the group. [see above]

•      Cults encourage Black and white thinking: Broad spectrums of thought and morality become reduced to two options: Good vs. Evil, Love vs. Hate, Weak vs. Strong, etc. This stops cult members from seeing other options for their lives. [VERY MUCH THIS. But then if you express criticism of the family using this vocabulary, they can gaslight you by pointing out that “we didn’t do that EVERY time!”]

A persecution complex may exist whereby reasonable criticism is reframed as an attack. [This is a portrait of my mother.]

•      Many kinds of abuse occur in cults. Cults mentally abuse their members by making them doubt their own ability to make decisions or live outside the group. They emotionally abuse members by tearing down their self-esteem in order to further control them. Cults sometimes physically or sexually abuse members. They almost always economically abuse their members by requiring or encouraging them to give most or all of their money and labor to the cult. Cult leaders frequently form cults in order to gain admiration, adulation, control of others, money, and/or sex. [My parents have never physically or sexually abused me, but the rest of this is true. My parents even tried to get me to use up $8,000 of my savings so that I could apply for SSI, which would MAYBE have given me an income of a couple of hundred bucks a month? A program of making me economically dependent on them as well as emotionally dependent.]

Why people don’t leave cults

·         Sunk cost fallacy

·         Fear of reprisals or shunning [yep]

·         Fear of loss of identity [somewhat]

·         Fear of death or damnation outside of group

·         Leaving behind family members who are still in the cult 

·         Practical problems: no support system, no money, no education, no home, no job, custody of children [yep]

·         Poor self-esteem and self-efficacy [definitely]

[jadelotusflower]

Robin Hood Rewatch: 1x08 Tattoo, What Tattoo?

aka Robin wants to do a war crime.

It’s been a while, but I’m back on my rewatch. This is actually one of my favourite episodes of the whole show, so get comfortable, this is a long one. Also, I welcome comments/discussion on any of these posts - I’m always up to talk Robin Hood!

Flashback time! 1191. Now, we’ve had the current date set as 1192 by earlier episodes and this is the story of How Robin Got His Scar - assuming that he must have spent some time convalescing before returning to England, he can’t have been back more than a year at the absolute most.

There’s no point talking about historical accuracy on this show - my approach is that any story ostensibly taking place in our history is that it’s an alternate universe, and this is an easy way to ignore when things don’t square with real events.

Robin fights with a broadsword in this scene, not his scimitar, and we never find out how/why he got the latter.

For plot reasons, Robin neatly slashes through Guy’s tattoo instead of cutting off his arm.

Okay, Richard’s birthday was 8 September. The attempted hanging in the first episode was 26 April, so it’s been less than five months? Actually, I think this works fine.

In an earlier episode I lamented that we never saw the bright green shirt again, but I was wrong, Robin’s wearing it under his hoodie and it had very frayed hems. I do think the show does a pretty good job of using costumes for the gang that actually look like they live in a forest and show significant wear and tear.

This is one of my favourite Marian’s costumes - it’s beautiful!

I never noticed before, but after Guy announces the engagement, Edward takes Marian’s hand and it’s very sweet.

The possessive way Guy holds up Marian’s hand to show off the ring is...yikes. And don’t the guests sound enthused!

Nobody ever brings up that it was Robin ignoring the signal because he just had to stick it to Guy and take the ring is the reason Djaq is captured, and they really should have. That said, I do like him being cheeky and kissing Marian’s hand before depriving her of the ring.

Guy could very easily have freed the dagger holding his sleeve with his other hand - but he wanted Robin to know it was he that almost killed him in the Holy Land. Just like Robin could have easily escaped, but instead waited for Guy in the forest - this confrontation has been brewing all season - so let’s get into it.

Guy starts with saying that the King has enemies because he wants peace, and “there will never be peace with the Turk.” So we assume that his motivations are with the warmongers - to scupper the peace talks with Saladin so the Crusade continues and Jerusalem is conquered. Which...doesn’t really make sense with what we know of Guy, that he would care about claiming the Holy Land, and this stance is actually contradicted later. It makes more sense that they would want to keep Richard in the Holy Land so Prince John can usurp his power while he’s away, and Guy can maintain his position. I think we can assume that is the case, and Guy is just deflecting/pushing Robin’s buttons with the war talk.

And of course, the confrontation is only ostensibly about Guy’s treason, secondly about dick swinging over Marian. Guy gets kicked in the face (for the second time this season!) and only stops his throat getting slit by the timely arrival of the gang.

Djaq is cool, calm and collected the entire episode, despite no doubt being reminded of her time in slavery.

“That’s what you taught us.” Robin told the gang all about the articles of the Geneva Convention, but like many a self-righteous superpower, thinks they doesn’t apply to him if a breach is “necessary.”

I jest, but Robin actually does stay his hand initially and listen to the gang. He does knock Guy out, but I don’t think we can hold that against him. Concussion Count: Guy (Total: Robin x 1, Guy x 1)

It’s kind of understandable that the gang are skeptical of Robin’s claims it was Guy who tried to kill the King - it can’t have gone unnoticed that Robin has war-related trauma, and just that morning a nightmare of that very event. It would seem convenient indeed that he suddenly claims he remembers Guy as the assassin, right after the engagement to Marian was announced.

I’ve said this before, but I really think it’s a strength of the show that it is prepared to Go There with Robin as a deeply flawed protagonist. Because the gang is 100% right, and he is 100% wrong - Djaq’s life should take precedence, and he is in no state of mind to be making life and death decisions. 

Concussion Count: Guy and Robin (Total: Robin x 2, Guy x 2)

Confrontation Round 2 - ding ding!

Robin is straight up manipulative of Much to get himself untied and it hurts to see - there’s a real power differential to their relationship that Robin takes advantage of. Much knows more than anyone else how damaged Robin was by the war, he knows there’s this other, brutal, side of him that can triggered (”earlier...you were not yourself”), but he still loves his friend, he wants to believe in his promises, and he’s spent his life following Robin’s instructions and those habits die hard. He does try to do the right thing - he talks in a soothing voice (”you’ve had an upset” is so Soft), tries to get Robin to sit down and talk it through, but he is too far gone.

“I will kill you whether you talk or not.” Guy doesn’t believe him, and throws his earlier words back (“show me an argument ever settled with bloodshed”) but Robin is deep in his cold rage and when Much tries to intercede we get the heartbreaking “that is because you are also simple” which really, really hurts. Now, obviously we can explain Robin’s behaviour as a trauma response/ptsd episode, but not excuse it, because it really is a cruel thing to say, targeted to hurt Much the most and push him away, and all the “I did not mean it”s in the world doesn’t change that. It’s a disturbing pattern; that Robin will say something cruel in anger or frustration, then immediately take it back and say he didn’t mean it - but the thing is, a part of him did mean it, must mean it, because he said it - it may be a dark fleeting thought, those unkind things we all think sometimes, but Robin gives voice to them and causes hurt, and that can’t be undone.

Again, I give credit that this is a show that doesn’t always cast its hero in the best light - he does screw up, he does say the wrong thing, he does make poor decisions despite his good heart. Robin is such an interesting, complicated character - heroic but with another side to him, a capacity for cruelty and violence that most of the time he keeps in check, but every now and then he can’t stop it rising to the surface, can’t keep that dark side of himself contained, but can only try to push it back with regret.

He then shifts from trying to kill Guy to trying to torture him, and obviously it’s all very thinly veiled social commentary, but this was 2006, and as I’ve said in a previous post social commentary is why we retell stories like this.

As I said above, Guy contradicts his earlier reasoning with “what kind of king deserts his people to fight someone else’s war in a foreign land?” but I think this is more the fear talking, with that red-hot sword close to his face, trying to appeal to Robin’s kinder/protective nature. To which we get another yikes line from Robin - “if you were his people he was right to desert them.” I don’t think Robin believes this, he’s deflecting Guy’s very good point to try and justify torturing him.

But in the end, he can’t justify it, at least not without making it a fair fight. And it’s a good fight! Well acted and choreographed, visceral and emotionally intense - they way they get progressively sweatier and dirtier and more exhausted, the way the music shifts from the jaunty theme to silence to those haunting strings - one of the best sequences of the show, imo.

Guy continues to throw out arguments that I don’t think he holds himself, but rather what he thinks will appeal to Robin - “it’s not England’s war, it’s Rome’s” was the exact point Robin made in the first episode (”Is it our Holy War? Or is it Pope Gregory’s?”). When Robin rightly points out that Guy’s assassination attempt broke the ceasefire, and Guy responds that “there will always be war”  and he wants a King that will fights for England’s gain, not the Pope’s. That, I think, is close to his true motivation.

We get confirmation that religious conviction is why Robin went on crusade, but that it was meeting those of other faiths and realising the Holy Land should be shared, not conquered, that turned his heart. This seems to be the primary cause of Robin’s trauma - that he fought in an unjust war, made under false pretenses, and that he was not a warrior for God, but a murderer. While Much is obviously also scarred from the war, I think he handles it better partly because it wasn’t his decision to go, he was just following Robin, and he didn’t have his faith and understanding of the world shattered like Robin did. Also, he’s selfless, he’s a caretaker, so I think he buries his own trauma deeper and it doesn’t bubble to the surface as much as Robin’s does but comes out in sadness rather than anger.

UTTER EXHAUSTION.

Guy’s taunts become more pointed - calling out Robin’s glory seeking and loss of status, then turn to Marian, and it seems his obsession with her (other than being The Only Noblewoman in Nottingham) is in part to have everything Robin once did  - his lands, his title, and the woman to whom he was betrothed - especially taking into account the backstory of season 3. It’s rather gross the way he speaks of Marian (“do you think I won’t laugh every time...”) although I suppose you could argue that it was a targeted attack on Robin and not how he actually feels.

It’s interesting that at this point, Guy accepts that Marian is sympathetic to Robin and still has contact with her - he’s not entirely clueless.

Concussion Count: Guy (Total: Robin x 2, Guy x 3)

The scene between Robin and Marian is also very good - he does throw her “everything is a choice” back at her somewhat petulantly, but it shows that he listened to her, and took what she said to heart. Marian, like the gang, assumes the accusation against Guy is about her engagement, and they have two tense conversations at once (”you took his ring/you took his ring” is rather deft).

I feel for Marian here, because she’s in a bad situation forced into marriage with Guy, and it would be made so much worse if he’d done what Robin says. She’s trying to make the best of it.

Everyone’s reaction to “I like her/I think I love her” is priceless, and I will defer to this commentary on this excellent post. Also a shoutout to @angel-in-a-big-blue-box’s tags #I also love how marian's stepping back like 'I don't understand. Y'all just voice your feelings like that? #You don't passive-aggressively snark at each other?’ SO TRUE - neither can fathom actually being this direct - Robin snarks that “everything is a choice” about running off into the forest, when he means “choose me” but can’t say it.

Concussion Count: Robin  (Total: Robin x 3, Guy x 3). Both of them about to develop CTE at this rate.

I’ve said it before, but for all his faults, Robin admits when he’s wrong.

Will’s awkward little “Djaq” and Allan’s grin and nod is so cute.

I would have liked a longer conversation between Robin and Djaq tbh, her “and you gave him up for me?” is perhaps a trifle too magnanimous of her, but it’s a nice little coda with the gang all sitting down together and forgiving Robin.