#sometimes i think it's because as social outcasts get older and find their people

[funishment-time]

as i've gotten older i've prized sincerity in fandom/content spaces more. i find it harder and harder to watch, for instance, Let's Players who are clearly trying to find reasons to shit on a game and pretend like they're not invested. i used to think it was funny in a schadenfreude kind of way, and now it's just kind of sad, especially if those content makers are Middle Aged. if you're like 40 and making videos where it's apparent you're hiding your excitement over FNAF Lore and using slurs to refer to anyone who does dare to get excited, that's, i think, way "cringier" than just being 40 and openly into FNAF. why do we police ourselves like this

[moltensmusings]

Honestly, I hope Ruben is related to Professor hopclap by being his Nephew/son/cousin or whatever. Because the idea of the Rat grinders building up thoughts that the bad kids have unfair advantages when all the advantages the bad kids have mirror the Rat grinders would be so juicy. Kipperlily being a rich kid matches up with Fabian already. It would make their arguments petty and superficial, which completely tracks for teenagers.

Teenagers get emotional and reactive. This isn't me saying that teenagers are terrible people and that they're wrong for their feelings, but more so that teenagers tend to be incredibly hormonal and impulsive, which high school doesn't help. Their jealousy makes it so that all of their arguments about how unfair it is that the bad kids get preferential treatment far outweighs the sensible thought that the bad kids are just as privileged (maybe even slightly less so depending on how supportive the parents are) as the right grinders.

Sometimes, hatred you have for people doesn't make complete sense. The bad kids largely are very welcoming and friendly. Some of them can be knuckleheads, but for the most part what they do is always to help others. They're the cool kids in school even if we as the viewers don't always notice it because we see them for the dorks they are. In freshmen year they got arrested for murder charges, broke out of prison after a few months, and saved the day from the vice principal who they'd been actively investigating for months.

In sophomore year both during spring break and summer they save the world 2 more times when their spring break quest unfolded into something bigger.

They're legends at Aguefort and that means all of their classmates probably get incredibly overshadowed.

They see the accomplishments without the sacrifices. They don't think about Kristen dying in the nightmare forest and having to revive herself because no one else could or how tough it's been for her becoming disillusioned with her faith that told her she deserved to burn for who she was. She's the lesbian cleric who broke away from her faith, started 2 religions, weight lifts now, and is chill enough to run for president and jump into a pool of sauce on the back if a flaming motorcycle.

They don't think about Fig finding out she was a child of an affair leading to her father saying she was unwanted and her having to find who she was, something she's still doing. They see fig as the Rockstar revolutionary girl who befriends the outcasts, is the arch devil of fhe bottomless pit, daughter of Gorthalax, and person willing to smoke at any opportunity regardless of whether she'd get in trouble for it.

Fabian isn't a guy unlearning his ingrained toxic masculinity after killing his dad and being raised to believe money, intimidation, and brute strength were how you get through life. They see the captain of the football team who hosts parties at his massive mansion, rides a demonic motorcycle, has a mom dating the vice principal, and is a world class dancer.

Riz had to work through the death of his father at a young age, constant ridicule from peers who didn't want him, and a desperation to do whatever it takes to be wanted that he still hasn't gotten over. But most people see a classmate who has everything figured out and the ability to connect the dots at all times. Plus a nickname from the football team that's said with love.

Adaine with her social anxiety she's now medicated for, parents who never loved her, an older sister she's only barely starting to bond with, and a barely passing grade in her class because she has no money to make ends meet. But she's also the elven oracle, cool party wizard who summons mephits to chill drinks, magically gifted in truly amazing ways, and will always remember your name after speaking to you.

Gorgug who was lovingly raised but always felt disconnected due to his parents not being able to understand him, who had to push against porter for 2.5 years before finally getting a chance to be taught by someone who didn't talk down to him, trying his best but failing so often. But to most he's a football player, rock star, hyper intelligent mechanic, rebellious teen, and now dude who oinked at a fed.

We all as viewers are aware of their flaws and their awesome moments, but the school at large only knows their moments that gained them more attention. Of course the Rat grinders would become jealous and angry when things seem so much easier for them. Of course they'd perceive any instances of the bad kids being friendly as them looking down on others because obviously they're too popular to be genuine. But if the rat grinders can prove the bad kids are the horrible people they think they are and stop them from succeeding, then it just puts things right doesn't it?

[sea-owl]

Did you all know I come up with au ideas in every fandom I've jumped into? I don't always post them but I create ideas. Well now you do! The hyper fixation for one of them is coming back and I thought I share some of these ideas.

First fandom is the How to Train Your Dragon! I will admit pretty much all of these are Astrid centered. I saw so many focus on Hiccup back in my fanfiction.net days, a certain au being very popular that, tbh I didn't care for, for reasons. And that isn't a had thing, I love Hiccup, I just kinda wanted to explore another character.

Hybrid Astrid AU:

I think I posted about this one a little bit, but I don't remember. This used to be my favorite au, and I only ever found two fics of it, both still incomplete to my knowledge.

In my version of this au, Astrid is the by-product of her mother being cursed by a god to fall in love with her enemy for one night. That enemy being a night fury. Astrid's mom left the village after that, refusing to tell anyone what happened. She secretly gave birth to Astrid and then left her for her father to raise.

Astrid has really only known other dragons her whole life. Her older brother refuses to let her get close during raids and has her stay by his side. Being by his side is how she gets tangled in the bola with him the night they are shot out of the sky.

This incident also led Astrid to meet her first human, Hiccup. As the two teens get closer, Astrid is learning about her mother's people. Before Astrid was very distrusting of humans, and even a part of her hated her human half. Her mind slowly changes the longer Hiccup refuses to leave her and her brother alone. Hiccup, trying to get Toothless back in the air and teaching Astrid to read and write, also scored him some huge bonus points. This eventually leads into Astrid confronting her mommy issues when Hilda Hofferson returns to Berk and finds the girl she gave birth to now fifteen years older.

Blind Astrid AU:

This one I've made a few different versions of, but essentially, it goes down the path that Astrid's blindness is permanent. Sometimes, I play with it happening earlier, and sometimes I add other stuff to it like magic.

A current version I've been playing with is that it happens earlier than rtte, and I've been adding magical elements. So basically, how did this version goes down is that Astrid still loses her sight from lightning getting to close, but instead, being on land, she was with Stormfly trying to race back to Berk and get out of a storm. The near hit throws both Astrid and Stormfly into the water where a nearby dragon who lives with Valka finds them. Astrid wakes up in Valka's sanctuary with her sight missing and her magic ramped up to a level she had trouble controlling.

In this version I added magic because fuck it why not. Humans can unlock magic via bonding with dragons. It's usually at a gradual pace, so the human's body can adjust, and they can learn to control it. Severe injuries such as Hiccup's missing leg and Astrid's now blindness can send this magic into overdrive as a way to heal the body and / or compensate for the injury. I also like playing into that everyone's magic has a different feel to it.

Astrid's feels like a hearth. Warm, secure, like home. But if she loses her temper that warm feeling can definitely burn.

Hiccup's feels like electricity. Leaving like tingles if you brush up against his magic, though at full force can feel like a direct hit of lightning during a storm. Ask Snotlout he knows.

Anyway, Astrid becomes a student to Valka as she relearns how to ride and wield her magic. During a mission Astrid finds herself on the Edge and back amongst her fellow riders.

Role Reversal Plus a Baby AU:

This one I know I posted about before, but here it is again. This is basically a role reversal of Hiccup and Astrid where he's the celebrated son of the chief, and she's the social outcast who comes from a disgraced family due to the Flightmare incident. But the plot twist there is an arranged marriage between Hiccstrid. Another plot twist Astrid got banished after the incident in the arena. Third plot twist the story starts during race to the edge, and it turns out Astrid had Zephyr during her banishment.

Selkie AU:

This one is more for amusement than anything else because can you imagine someone trying to take selkie Astrid's coat? She would whoop their ass into next Tuesday. I think a running theme in here would be Hiccup keeps giving Astrid her coat back. He sees someone try to take it while she's out in human form and though Astrid doesn't need it he helps her get it back.

Astrid is touched by this, and over time, she falls in love with Hiccup. She feels like she can trust him with her coat, which is a huge thing in selkie culture. So she proposes marriage and offers him her coat. Only Hiccup doesn't know selkie culture beyond what he has observed from Astrid and what she's explicitly told him. The major thing he does know is you never take a selkie's pelt, it's basically trapping them. So he gives it back.

Astrid is flabbergasted, her selkie friends Ruffnut and Tuffnut, are laughing their asses off, and poor Hiccup has no idea what he just did. Astrid is a determined selkie though and refuses to give up. Ruff and Tuff are ready to cause chaos in the background.

[alexanderwales]

Movie Review: I Saw the TV Glow

Spoilers follow. Content warning: death, transphobia, homophobia

I don't review most things I watch. I'm a writer, not a reviewer, and most things just sort of pass by having been consumed and thought about in a way that I don't feel the need to share with others. I'll be upfront: I Saw the TV Glow did not land for me. I think it's a good movie for the people that it resonated with, but I find the disconnect interesting, because it's perhaps the first time a horror movie has failed to hit me so completely that I'm left thinking that I just don't have the fear button it's trying to hit.

I Saw the TV Glow is a trans allegory. I'm not entirely sure that it can be read as anything else, but I'll try to make some comparisons later on.

In 1999 I was in eighth grade, and was the token boy in a group of girls who had all been friends for ages. I enjoyed hanging out with them, which went on for about two years until they started getting older boyfriends and I drifted toward spending time with other friend groups. There was one particular party where they talked me into dressing up as a girl and putting makeup on me, and when they had eagerly accomplished this they told me what a pretty girl I was. This was pretty much a non-event in my life, something that made close to zero impact on me and my self image. I had no gender feelings about it. I am cisgendered, in a way where I have sufficiently explored my feelings and found this to be true about myself. (Similarly, I have sufficiently explored my feelings to understand that I'm straight: in high school I kissed a few boys during games like spin the bottle or truth or dare, and it just did nothing for me. I've watched gay porn for the sake of science and don't get anything from it.)

The horror that I Saw the TV Glow taps into is idea of hiding your true self and not accepting who you truly are, running away from these realities of your personal identity because you deeply fear either that truth or the consequences of that truth. It's not a fear that I've ever had cause to experience, as much as I have (at times) been a disappointment to my parents and a social outcast. This is almost certainly a form of privilege, but it means that I was watching the movie at two steps removed, understanding what it was trying to get at but not feeling it, trying to run a janky simulation of a main character I did not at all relate to.

In the late 1990s there were a spate of movies about white men who were being slowly killed by working in cubicles, their True Nature repressed by the corporate hellscape. Fight Club, American Beauty, Falling Down, The Matrix, Office Space ... they really had a moment. Most of those movies worked for me, and when I was a teenager, some of them really worked for me. Fight Club and The Matrix came out in the same year, 1999, and both had similar messages of "you are trapped by this bullshit corporate life that demands you be weak and without purpose". As a fourteen-year-old white boy living in the Midwest, this really resonated with me. Fuck the system! Rage against the machine! But neither of those movies was about the how and the why of being trapped in a life that doesn't suit you. The Matrix has its own refusal of the call, but it's very brief, and not central.

There's a recurring theme in tons of movies about being an outsider and an outcast and hiding your true self, but eventually you can't keep up with the lies, and it all comes spilling out, and the people who you thought would hate you have to confront their prejudice or whatever. Sometimes the protagonist isn't even hiding it, it's just out in front for anyone to see, but I think that's gotten a little less common over the years. We got Luca and then Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken and it's really all over the place. I genuinely think that "I am different and no one understands me" is one of the stock experiences for teenagers. But the lesson imparted by those movies (and shows and books) usually starts with the premise that our protagonist is clearly and obviously different, and the message of "shine your light" can only really work if you've accepted that there's a light to shine.

Owen refuses the call over and over. Uncharitably, he's a coward. If I'm to be charitable, I think I would have to make a case for cowardice. It's scary to defy social expectations. It's scary to have this truth inside of you that demands you leave everything you've known behind, which is the explicit thing being asked of him during that first refusal of the call. I can relate to the fear and self-doubt. Owen has more to lose than Maddy, at least at that point. Later on, there's another refusal of the call, this time with more excuses that are transparently denial, and it's less easy to understand, though the imagery is that of death: buried in a hole in the ground, the burial of the old self to become the new. And at the end, it's just sad brokeness, understanding yourself and deciding that it's too late, even if the street chalk says that it's never too late.

(The character's name is Owen, who I have seen referred to with she/her pronouns as Isabel by some people, but I'm going to go with what the end credits say rather than attaching an identity to a character who has explicitly rejected that identity multiple times.)

In 1998, a year before The Matrix came out, a year before I would be dressing up like a girl for the pleasure of my friends, Matthew Shepard was beaten and tied to a fence, later dying of his injuries. I feel like I'm old enough now that the name Matthew Shepard has been replaced by other names in the collective consciousness as "the face of anti-queer violence", but at the time it was huge in the news and deeply affected me. This is the era of nostalgia that I Saw the TV Glow is harkening back to, and I think if you're hearing about a gay man being beaten to death in Colorado, watching something with ambiguous queer rep like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Xena: Warrior Princess would easily be a lifeline, much more than something that's explicitly queer. That's my guess, anyway, at what the movie is trying to model. The Matthew Shepard thing has always stuck with me as one of the news stories that defined my teenage years, and I cannot imagine how much more it would have affected me if I were gay.

Even in that context I find Owen to be awkward and unsympathetic, and I don't necessarily feel like this is an unendorsed reading of the film. If there's a lesson that the film wants us to take, it's "embrace the you inside", and if there are two lessons the second one is, "it's never too late". The reason it's a horror/drama is that the protagonist teaches us these lessons by suffering for not embodying the lessons. They're lessons I generally endorse. But the horror doesn't land for me because I've never been in that situation of holding back from some personal truth I wasn't willing to accept. I've always freely probed at the edges of my identity.

The other major theme of the movie is finding yourself by way of media, and sometimes artistically questionable media. Here, I think the movie works a little better for me. The show-within-a-movie is The Pink Opaque, which we get to see a lot of, and which represents ... probably a few things, but I think the major one that fits best with the overall themes is "queerness". Maddy escapes the world the film is set within, which is actually Mr. Melancholy's "midnight realm", and comes out in The Pink Opaque, which is then inferred to be the "real world". Maddy comes back for Owen, trying to help him escape, and the metaphor here is someone openly queer trying to help someone who's still in the closet. (This is also the subtext of Maddy leaving Owen behind.)

There's a bit later in the movie where Owen finds The Pink Opaque on a streaming service and finds it to be much more childish than he remembered it to be, and what we're shown of it also conflicts with earlier depictions. I don't know what this means from within the logic of the movie (probably that Mr. Melancholy's plans are working), but within the metaphorical logic of the movie, it's a comment on how the thing that was real was the way it made them feel and what it revealed to them about themselves. I think that's sort of neat, and there's definitely formative media that I haven't gone back to specifically because I worry that it won't hold up to what I created in my mind. My guess, from reading a few things, is that Buffy was the main inspiration, but I think for a lot of teenagers who grew up around the same time it might have been something else: something with subtext rather than something gay. Xena, maybe. There's probably something about the deniability of it that helps people who are questioning: when you're at the point of watching every season of Queer as Folk on DVD as it comes out, I think you're past the point where you're pushing down these feelings. (Note: I did watch every season of Queer as Folk on DVD as they came out, it was a high school ritual with a friend of mine.)

I thought the movie was interesting, but I didn't like it. I think it's personal in a way that some media is, not just personal to the people with the creative vision, but personal to the people it's meant to speak to. It's not a movie for me, and I'm left trying to engage with it by reconstructing some of the emotions from first principles. There are probably bits of imagery and dialogue that will stick with me, and it was cause for reflection, which I think is the mark of a good film, even if I didn't enjoy myself or feel any kind of personal impact. Some of this is just privilege on my part.

If you've struggled with identity issues and self-acceptance ... I don't know. I can't imagine that watching this movie would would feel good, given the ending, but that seems to be who the movie is squarely aimed at. I recommend it overall, even if I think the hit rate will probably be low.

[avatar-thewayofincorrectquotes]

metkayina kids modern!au headcanons

Ao’nung:

he/him pronouns

gay(?), potentially unlabeled

definitely captain of the swim team

he swims for a club team outside of school and does school swim team during the winter season

he’s super fast

he makes states every year for high school

he also made nationals in the 200 IM and the 100 butterfly

I see him being better at short axis strokes but specifically butterfly

very good at surfing

like Lo’ak he does well enough in school to make sure he can still do sports

mostly b’s

Ronal would also probably kick his ass if he was failing any classes

probably good at social studies/social science

like current events, government, and psychology

extremely protective of Tsireya

he doesn’t like when people mess with his sister

hates that Lo’ak and Tsireya are dating but puts up with it bc his priority is ‘reya’s happiness

starts out high school with piece of shit friends

they’re all assholes

eventually realizes that they’re all assholes and starts hanging out with Rotxo and the Sully’s

was a bully in middle school

he got his shit together in high school

loves to spend time in the ocean

always going to the beach to surf or just open water swim

being in water lets him clear his head

constantly smells like salt or chlorine

(coming from someone who swam for 13 years, you cannot escape the smell of chlorine. it follows you and you just have to accept it.)

is always eating in class bc he often has morning practice

closest with his father

got Tā Moko (the tattoos) in his senior year

chose to get his first tattoo across his shoulder and the left side of his chest

(technically because the tattoo is on his body instead of his face, it is defined as Kiri Tuhi instead of Tā Moko which is traditionally reserved for the face only.)

in public, he has the same music taste as Lo’ak (rap), but secretly loves the same kind of music as Neteyam

started dating Neteyam junior year

worships the ground Neteyam walks on

Tsireya:

she/her pronouns

although i could see her using she/they pronouns so whatever floats your boat

honestly, i'm kind of in my pansexual Tsireya era bc i feel like that fits her vibe

she for sure does cheer

i'm thinking she probably did swimming when she was younger but quit in middle school

does competitive cheer

goes to that comp that's at disney every year

probably a flyer

bodies backflips

also surfs bc her whole family does but isn't as into it as Ao'nung

she's super good at school and gets all a's

Ronal is so proud of her

prefers her elective classes and her best subjects are creative writing and sociology

she loves her older brother so much but definitely thinks he can be an idiot sometimes

(especially when he had feelings for Neteyam. oh lord she was so annoyed with him for not confessing.)

has really amazing friends

super nice to everyone

i swear, everyone she meets loves her immediately bc she's such a sweetheart

started dating Lo'ak freshman year

at first, everyone didn't really understand why she was dating the 'outcast' boy, but once they saw how well he treats her, they immediately understood

puts on lipgloss constantly

loves kpop and will force everyone around her to listen to it

thinks Tûk is the cutest kid ever

is absolutely getting into crystals and astrology bc of Kiri

Lo'ak keeps finding rose quartz in all of his hoodie pockets

(he also found three in his backpack. he knows why they're there and every time he finds one, he gives Tsireya a kiss to remind her that she doesn't need crystals for him to love her.)

very close with Ronal

only lets her family and close friends call her 'reya

(Ao'nung is the only one allowed to call her 'ray of sunshine' which was his childhood nickname for her.)

she has so much love to give

(i just love Tsireya so much.)

gets her Tā Moko before she goes to college

Rotxo:

he/they(?) pronouns

possibly he/him pronouns

definitely not straight but idk what his sexuality is

(i feel like he doesn't either which is a mood.)

has major bi wife energy

does basketball with Lo'ak

definitely did swimming as well but quit in fifth grade bc he saw the basketball team practicing at the YMCA and thought it was so cool

also surfs

lives with his grandmother for sure

i also see him as having older sisters who are 10 or more years older than him

like at least two bc he gives off the 'i'm a man who's been raised by only women' vibes

also v good at school

i'm thinking mostly a's but a few b's in his weaker subjects

people may find this surprising, but i see him being good at art

he's the best when it comes to sculpture and pottery as well as other 3D art

loves making bowls

also good at making jewelry

sweet as hell and everyone was always wondering how he was friends with Ao'nung in middle school

definitely a gentle person

good with kids

he falls in love very easily and when he does, he becomes very lovesick for that person

it was so obvious that he had a thing for Kiri to the point that even she knew

he didn't have the guts to confess until their junior year tho

close with Ao'nung and Tsireya's family bc there are no kids his age in his family

has nieces and nephews that he sees very regularly

got his Tā Moko with Ao'nung

(they're in the same grade and Kiri and Lo'ak are the grade below. just to be clear for this headcanon series.)

decided to get his tattoo over his shoulder and chest as well

(to reiterate, this would technically be considered Kiri Tuhi in the Māori tradition as Tā Moko is traditionally reserved for the face.)

Rotxo is a wonderful guy

he's just so pure

i want to give him a hug

[scamanderishredmayniac]

Newt Appreciation Month Day 4: Something Newt and you have in common!

I think a lot of us taking part will probably have similar thing in common with Newt. The most common one being that Newt is socially awkward and struggles in social situations. I have to say that is something I can relate to. I’ve never really been all that great when it comes to socialising. As I’ve grown older, I’ve improved a lot, and have come out of my shell a lot more. I’m getting better at saying the right things I guess, but I still have those moments of saying the wrong things and offending or upsetting people without really meaning to. Newt mentioned that he annoys people, sometimes I annoy people too I guess.

I think I see more of the younger me in Newt. I don’t do this anymore, but when I was younger I used to find talking to animals a lot easier than people. Because they didn’t shout at you, and you could say anything without saying the wrong thing or hurting or upsetting them. They never made you feel like you were wrong. It was just easier to chatter away to animals that’s all. I grew out of that though, so don’t do it now. I talk more with people these days. But I can totally see why Newt would prefer to keep company of animals after being damaged and outcasted by people.

The friendship he and Leta had, was very similar to a friend and I had when we were kids at school. Neither one of us fit in, we didn’t have any friends so to speak, but we clicked and became fast friends. We did eventually make more friends as the years went by. We were both seen as weird, him more than me maybe, but our friends kind of liked our weirdness. I think they just found us both funny. In a way Newt’s own quirks are kind of funny in a way. Part of what I like about Newt. I feel better seeing Newt do things slightly differently. It kind of helped me accept that being what others considered strange isn’t all bad, and helped me accept my own weird personality.

There’s probably a whole load of other stuff we share in common, but I won’t list everything. I’ll leave you with one more. I always thought everyone did this, but apparently not. But when I go to new places, if the place is full of colour, and lights, or just seems fascinating, like Newt in one of the first scenes in New York I’d be staring and looking at everything in what people describe as child like wonder. Doesn’t a new environment make you do that?

This is me, especially during Christmas time, even in familiar places, when there are colourful lights everywhere. I don’t know how people can just walk around and not be interested in their surroundings.

[a-flaming-idiot]

Ok so I’ve been thinking about a BNA Swap AU a lot recently(Clearly). So I thought I might as well put my rough take on the swap characters out there.

Michiru <--> Shirou

Shirou: He’s a stubborn, grumpy little seventeen year old high school boy. He dropped out after suddenly transforming from human into a wolf beastman and is now traveling to Anima City in hopes of finding Barbara Rose after he lost contact with her after she left on a research trip. He travels with Kuro who constantly pokes and bothers him in a very Hunter and Flapjack from The Owl House way. 

Even though he acts like he knows everything and can’t be wrong he has a habit of getting in over his head, needing Michiru to save him. He also is stubborn as hell and has no ability to admit when he’s wrong or that he can’t solo the world. He’s a little piss-boy but that’s why Michiru loves him.

Unknown to Shirou he is actually a sort of reincarnation of Ginrou. The previous Silver Wolf was killed and to keep his power out of people’s hands it hid itself away as it passed on to a child. It remained dormant and hid Shirou’s beastman traits till both were finally awakened by his worry for Barbara.

Michiru: She’s a bubbly, free spirited, kind beastman social worker in her mid to late thirties. Though her kindness masks a tendency to cold rage and hatred mixed will ruthless efficiency when provoked. Along with Michiru’s own traumas from her past she disguises with her outward appearance. 

She ends up helping Shirou after finding him in Anima City after fighting the terrorists and decides to find him a place to stay at the Co-Op. Especially since she has silently taken up the roll of Anima City’s protector after the death of the Silver Wolf. After spending time in the Co-Op, Michiru and Shirou form a more familial relationship a lot like canon, just with the roles reversed.

In the past through a series of bad events Michiru is hesitant to disclose, she ended up orphaned and alone in Anima City in her early teen years. Till she eventually met an older wolf beastman who was willing to help her. As it turned out this was the original Silver Wolf. The pair grew closer through the years, forming a very father-daughter relationship. Unfortunately through still mysterious events, Ginrou was killed while saving Michiru in her early twenties, an event she partially blames on both Nazuna and Alan.

Pinga <--> Alan

Alan: A suave, put together beastman agent masquerading as a human while charged with investigating the strange happenings going on in Anima City. Specifically after he discovers information about the living Silver Wolf. Michiru hates him since she partially blames him for Ginrou’s death. Though he’s not evil he understands to keep his distance from her since he does see he did play a part in her father figure’s death. Still he tries to continue his work which may include some less than savory choices to get his information and objectives. (A bit of a secret agent type)

Pinga: A war hero who after he encountered Ginrou on the battlefield made it his life’s mission to find him again. He seems to have lost it a bit to his obsession with finding the Silver Wolf. Now he uses his fame to attempt to manipulate people to help him find Ginrou. He completely denies any information pointing to Ginrou’s death. 

He specifically took advantage of Barbara Rose to help him research more about the Silver Wolf in hopes of finding where he now hides. He uses her due to her fantastic skills of reasoning and research that has helped Pinga make more progress recently than he has in the last seventeen years. 

Rose -> Nazuna -> Marie -> Nina -> Rose

Barbara Rose: Barbara is a wide-eyed, seventeen year old, nerdy beastman girl. She often is so lost in her own world that sometimes she doesn’t realize how much of a social outcast she has become. Her closest friend is Shirou Ogami who has become rather protective of her because of her social status.

She has recently left on a research trip that she hasn’t returned from in over a year. Specifically the trip lead by Pinga. This was all under the promise that if they do find proof of The Silver Wolf’s existence than she can take full credit and gain all the praise and fame that she truly deserves. At the cost of people like her friend Shirou, who Pinga assures will only hold her back from making the discovery of her life. 

Nazuna: A beastman con-artist who hides her true intentions behind a coy and playful façade. She has a habit of constantly eating hard candy as a continued part of her less threatening presentation as she pulls her schemes on others in and around Anima City.

In the past she was close with and dating Michiru but after a series of events she became estranged from Michiru. Specifically because Michiru silently places some blame on Nazuna for the death of Ginrou. Because of the mental toll that event played, Nazuna had to give up on her dream of hitting it big in the music and performance industry, leading her down the road that eventually led her to work in the Anima City underworld. 

She truly does feel awful for what happened and wants to fix it but knows there’s not much she can do to heal Michiru’s broken heart. She ends up falling into a sort of mentor relationship with Marie as the young mink tries to forcefully create a place for herself in the world.

Marie: She’s a spunky, aggressive, barely fourteen year old mink who comes from a rich, influential family. But because of the stuffy lifestyle Marie wants to escape her family’s shadow and carve her own place in the world. Specifically she wears cheap sunglasses and tries to wear rougher, more middle or lower class clothes to force more visual separation form her family. Or at least what she believes them to be. Winds up with a little bit of a rivalry with Shirou just because of their shared spunky crossed with hardheaded personalities. 

Marie ends up meeting Nazuna who takes the mink under her wing to help her find her place in the world. A place Nazuna was never able to find herself. 

Nina: Nina comes from a crime family that has plagued Anima City for years. But after all the damage her family has caused, Nina has chosen to instead actively help the city as Anima City’s mayor. Unfortunately she is a little over her head. Often she acts a little frantic and in lost fighting to keep the city running while keeping a sweet, happy face to the public. 

She is helped along a bit by Michiru who often comes around to act as somewhat of an advisor. The two have known each other since Michiru ended up in the city alone before meeting Ginrou. Michiru herself respects Nina’s attempts to right both her own, and her families wrongs and tries to support her in that effort. 

[softcallofdutyimagines]

The crew with their soulmate headcannons

Ok, to make it up to y'all for the angst yesterday, here's a response to the death by broken heart post 😌

This one goes out to @smokeywhalee since I've had her crying for the past like three posts 💀💀😂 I also snuck in a little something to the Weaver one for @direwolfspostsrandomshit and I specifically 😌💅🏻

No warnings, just a very long post and lots of fluff lol

Adler

You two met when he was still young, before he even joined the CIA

Back when he was a goofy, carefree kid who didn't know better

You've been with him through so much by now, that he knows he can always count on you when something's bothering him

There's no one he trusts more in the whole world

Adler knew you were the one around the time he got his scars

He thought for sure you'd leave him, thinking he looked like some kind of monster with half his face bandaged and bloodied like it is

But when he came home from the hospital, you were so overjoyed to see him again, it's like the bandages weren't even there

You kissed his face and helped him clean and dress the stitches and cuts everyday until they healed

With you there to give him all that affection, he's never let his scars make him feel any less then handsome

Of course, it doesn't hurt that you remind him often

Even now, he never tires of you kissing his scars

Hudson

You and Hudson met in college, back when he was a shy, nerdy outcast

It's not like you were exactly popular, but you at least had some social circles to run in

He never thought someone like you would even look twice at someone like him, but...

He's been wrong before

One day you decided to give him a chance, maybe just see what his story is, and you've never looked back since

Hudson's life path calls for the utmost secrecy for nearly everything, and you've lost contact with a handful of people because of it

But you've never complained

If anything, you consider it their loss for losing you

That's how Hudson knew you were the one

You have an undefeatable, never give up attitude and can find the silver lining in just about everything you put your mind to

And of course... You indulge him in his love of head rubs

It's you and his best kept secret of all

Lazar

You've known each other since you were just kids

For him, it was puppy love at first sight, and he was crushing hard before he knew it

But... He was always insecure about his weight, being a bit chunky as a kid and all

He was afraid of rejection because of it

A shame really, since you would've loved him no matter what

But as fate would have it, you stayed friends all the way up until highschool where sports had him shedding weight like crazy

All the fluctuation has left him with stretch marks, some loose skin, and a belly pouch, but luckily growing up gave him enough confidence to make up for it

He asked you to the senior dance your last year of highschool, and later that night you shared your first kiss behind the bleachers outside

You were his first kiss ever

Lazar always knew you were the one

You've been his closest friend and biggest supporter since you were kids on a playground

He just wanted to make himself feel worthy of you first

No one else makes him feel as comfortable in his skin as you do, and only you are allowed the special honor of touching his body

A gift you exercise frequently when you cuddle him at night

Mason

Alex didn't meet you until after Vietnam and the whole... brainwashing business

After trying and trying for years only to end up with an ever growing list of failed relationships, he just assumed he was too damaged to love

Besides, he's getting a bit older now... Maybe he's just not meant to find someone

Or so he thinks

He meets you randomly in public, on an ordinary day in an ordinary place

You two happen to hit a conversation and it just keeps going and going...

Until finally you exchange numbers and begin seeing each other more frequently

And that's when Alex knows you're the one, he can just... feel it deep down

But it isn't until one, vulnerable night, when he tells you about his past and the war and.... Well, everything, that he knows for sure

With so much fear being pushed about the Russian threat and all that, he thought for sure the knowledge that he's been a brainwashed sleeper agent once would scare you away

It was a shock for sure, but... You aren't afraid of him, in fact, you feel sympathetic for his plight of anything

Alex doesn't need your sympathy, mind, but he is thankful for the empathy

That's all he wants, really

That, and someone who'll hold him through the nightmares at night

Looks like he lucked out there too :)

Park

She met you as a fellow agent through MI6

Things were purely professional for a looooong time

But she must admit though, you're quite charismatic, cunning, and frankly?

Adorable

Helen's not quite sure when the joking, friendly flirting turned serious but...

She's glad for it

You ask her out on a date first and things go well

More then well

She doesn't kiss and tell, but let's just say... She knows you're the one

You always have her back on the field and off

You're her closest friend and confident

She's breaking the rules by cluing you in on the goings on with the hunt for perseus and all, but there's no one here she trusts more for feedback and brainstorming

But it's probably a good thing you're not in the safehouse, considering you almost killed someone after the skyhook debacle

She rolls her eyes at your fussing, but you swear to never let her go again

And you know what? Park may not show it, but she loves how much you care for her

Perseus

He met you back in the ussr, when he still looked like his picture

You two grew close in your service to the government, and you were one of the first people he trusted to try and recruit for his operation

When you didn't even hesitate to say yes, that's when he knew you were the one

You've already proven yourself and impressed him with your wit and integrity in your service to the ussr

In fact, few have ever stood out to him in such a way as you have

All he needed to know was if you trusted him and truly believed in a better future

Many are jelous to see you running around with the exceptionally handsome man, but perseus was never one to get hung up on looks

However, he's glad you enjoy his appearance as much as you do his mind

Together, you raise hell for the capitalists, bringing a true biting edge to the cold war threat

In return for your loyalty, he does all he can to keep you a secret, both as his lover and his accomplice

If anything happened to you like what happened to Bell...

He would take the fight to your captors himself

And they wouldn't stand a chance...

Weaver

He met you through working in Requiem

You're one of the strike team operators, but you spend a fair amount of time talking with the consultants and himself back at base

Weaver finds you a little intimidating, but in a good kind of way

Sort of how he use to be back in the day

When he realizes he may or may not have a little thing for you, he suddenly becomes very shy

He's afraid to try and make a move on you because surely rejection would be the only outcome?

After all, he's way too far past his prime by now, missing an eye and slowly letting himself fall out of shape

It's a mess

So why haven't you just moved on from him yet...?

Doctor Grey seems strangely invested in this little one sided romance, so with a bit of help, he manages to ask you out for coffee

The last thing he expected was for you to say yes

It's not until the day that you almost don't make it back to base that he realizes how very much you mean to him

Weaver stays with you as frequently as he can while you recover and can often be found cuddling you in your med bay bed (bc why the hell not?) or at home

He has to pull back a little on visiting you in the med bay however

He's starting to get teased for how much he loves all the head pets, jaw scratches, and tummy rubs you give him while you're bored and resting

Carver has now begun addressing him as "Fido" with no end in sight

Woods

He meets you out at the marine base he spends all his time at

It was one of the many occasions that he was doing target practice at the range, and he today he's caught you watching him

At first he honestly didn't think much of it, but of course he took the opportunity to show off a little

He succeeded in managing to lure you over with his skills, where you came to stroke his ego a bit

For that, he offers to show you some pointers and before either of you know it, target practice together becomes a regular occurance

From there, anything more social is up to you to initiate

He's a bit taken aback when you invite him out to do something off base sometime, but... He accepts

Once out of his element, he's like a whole other person

You're surprised to find that he's a lot more shy and little more warm towards you

You find it adorable

That starts the slippery path to how he knows you're the one

You're the only person he truly feels like he can be himself with

Everyone else expects the hardened sargent, and while that is still him...

He never feels like he has an opportunity to share his softer side

You can never complain about being cold or lonely with him around

Frank loves nothing more then cuddling with you whenever and wherever he can

Not only is it just, well, nice, to have the human contact, but it makes him feel like he gets to protect you

And nothing makes him happier then to see you safe :)

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

Five years ago, the women on this site who treated me like trash over loving Labyrinth and shipping Jareth/Sarah were almost always obliviously consuming Radfem propaganda, or were out and out Radfems/Terfs themselves.

They were the types of people who casually threw the word “pedophile” around against grown women who shipped an adult Sarah with Jareth, aka literally one of the most popular ships for women in fandom for 30 years.

Pretty much invariably, these women had serious sex-negative anxieties, which included a severe paranoia about any and all kink and fetish, and porn in general. I saw a lot of shocking, fear-mongering propaganda surrounding sexual expression. Pretty much invariably, their method of approach involved immediate personal shock-value attacks on anyone they perceived to be “bad.”

Today, you can look at the way some people react to other popular so-called “problematic” ships and recognize the same toxic, fear-mongering rhetoric coming from women who consider themselves regular, trans-inclusive feminists. Sometimes it even manifests in the words of very well-meaning people (including myself here), who feel the need to talk about specific issues that pertain to their own experiences of trauma and oppression.

The people who shit on Labyrinth often seem to not really be able to comprehend that the Goblin King, like the film itself, is canonically a representation of a teen girl’s psyche, a soup of fears and anxieties and desires and dreams. He’s not a literal human adult preying on a literal child, and to read the film that way seriously undermines the entire point of the film. 

When I (and people of many fandoms) say “This is fiction, calm down,” I’m not just saying it’s not real so it cant hurt you and you can’t criticize me. I’m trying to call attention to what fiction actually is - artistic representations of feelings and experiences. The Goblin King is Sarah’s fiction. Therefore, he can be anything she or any woman who identifies with her wants him to be, including her lover when she’s grown and ready for such a thing.

I once took an alarming dive into Beetlejuice fandom to see what content was there (the cartoon was a favorite when I was little). Chillingly, what you’ll find is an extremely wounded fanbase, with a sharp divide between the older women who had long been shipping BJ/Lydia because of their love for the cartoon series (and whom were previously the vast majority of the Beetlejuice fandom), and a massive amount of young people riding the wave of the musical fad who had decided that the entire old school Beetlejuice fandom was populated by literal pedophiles. 

I saw death threats. Suicide baiting. Constant, constant toxic discourse. It did not matter how the BJ/Lydia fandom dealt with any particular issues that would exist in their ship, in fact I’m certain that the people abusing them cared very little to even consider if they were trying to handle it at all. The only thing that mattered was that they were disgusting subhuman scum asking for abuse. If you have at any time reblogged recent Beetlejuice fan art or content from fans of the musical, you have more than likely been engaging positively with the content of someone participating in toxic fandom behavior.

Nobody is really sticking up for them, either, as far as I saw. It’s really hard to imagine how painful it must be to have such a large group of people explode into into your relatively private fandom space to tell you that you are evil, vile, and deserve constant abuse, and also you are no longer allowed into the fandom space to engage in it’s content. But I think there’s something very alarming indeed about this happening specifically to the BJ fandom, and I’ll explain why. 

The pop-culture characterization of Beetlejuice, which is heavily influenced by the cartoon series to be clear, has always in my mind been a vaguely ageless being who matches with the psychological maturity of whatever age Lydia is supposed to be. He’s more or less like an imaginary friend, a manifestation of Lydia’s psyche. In fact, I would argue that i think most of us who grew up with the cartoon or it’s subsequent merchandizing before the musical ever existed probably internalized the idea as BJ and Lydia as this ageless, salt-and-pepper-shaker couple beloved by the goth community, similar to Gomez and Morticia. In each version of canon he may be a creepy ghost in the literal sense, but any adult who is capable of identifying literary tropes (even just subconciously) would read cartoon!BJ as an artistic representation of a socially awkward outcast girl’s inner world. Lydia’s darker dispositions and interests, which alienate her from most others, are freely accepted and embraced by her spooky magical friend. BJ/Lydia in the cartoon were depicted as best friends, but to my memory there was always an underlying sense that they had secret feelings for each other, which I identified easily even as a small child. In fact, their dynamic and behavior perfectly reflected the psychological development of the show’s target demographic. They are best friends who get into adventures and learning experiences together, who have delicate feelings for each other but lack any true adult romantic/sexual understanding to acknowledge those feelings, let alone pursue them.

Though I haven’t seen the Musical yet, I’ve read the wiki and I would argue that it embodies this exact same concept even more so for it’s own version of the characters, in that Beetlejuice specifically exists to help Lydia process her mother’s death.

This is not a complicated thing to recognize and comprehend whatsoever. In fact, it looks downright blatant. It’s also a clear indicator of what BJ/Lydia means to the women who have long loved it. It was a story about a spooky wierd girl being loved and accepted and understood for who she was, and it gave them a sense of solidarity. It makes perfect sense why those women would stick with those characters, and create a safe little space for themselves to and imagine their beloved characters growing and having adult lives and experiencing adult drama, in just the same ways that the women of the Labyrinth fandom do. That’s all these women were doing. And now, they can’t do it without facing intense verbal violence. That safe space is poisoned now.

Having grown up with the cartoon as one of my favorites and been around goth subculture stuff for decades, I was actually shocked and squicked at the original Beetlejuice film’s narrative once I actually saw it, because it was extremely divorced from what these two characters had evolved into for goth subculture and what they meant to me. It’s not telling the same story, and is in fact about the Maitland's specifically. In pretty much exactly the same way two different versions of Little Red Riding Hood can be extremely different from each other, the film is a different animal. While I imagine that the film version has been at the heart of a lot of this confused fear-mongering around all other versions of the characters, I would no more judge different adaptations of these characters any more than I would condemn a version of Little Red in which Red and the Wolf are best friends or lovers just because the very first iteration of LRRH was about protecting yourself from predators.

I would even argue that the people who have engaged in Anti-shipper behavior over BJ/Lydia are in intense denial over the fact that BJ being interested in Lydia, either as blatant predatory behavior a la the film or on a peer level as in the cartoon (and musical?) is an inextricable part of canon. Beetlejuice was always attracted to Lydia, and it was not always cute or amusing. Beetlejuice was not always a beloved buddy character, an in fact was originally written as a gross scumbag. That’s just what he was. Even people engaging with him now by writing OC girlfriends for him (as stand-ins for the salt-and-pepper-shaker space Lydia used to take up, because obviously that was part of the core fun of the characters), or just loving him as a character, are erasing parts of his character’s history in order to do so. They are actively refusing to be held responsible for being fans of new version of him despite the fact that he engaged in overt predatory behavior in the original film. In fact, I would venture to say that they are actively erasing the fact that Musical Beetliejuice tried to marry a teenager and as far as I’m aware, seemed to like the idea (because he’s probably a fucking figment of her imagination but go off I guess). The only reason they can have a version of this character who could be perceived as “buddy” material is because...the cartoon had an impact on our pop cultural perception of what the character and his dynamic with Lydia is. 

We can have a version of the Big Bad Wolf who’s a creepy monster. We can have a version who’s sweet and lovable. We can have a version that lives in the middle. We can have a version who’s a hybrid between Red and the Wolf (a la Ruby in OUAT). All of these things can exist in the same world, and can even be loved for different reasons by the same people.

I’ve been using Beetlejuice as an example here because it’s kind of perfect for my overall point regarding the toxic ideologies in fandom right now across many different spaces, including ones for progressive and queer media, and how much so many people don’t recognize how deeply they’ve been radicalized into literalist and sex-negative radfem rhetoric, to the point where we aren’t allowed to have difficult, messy explorations of imperfect, flawed humans, and that art is never going to be 100% pure and without flaw in it’s ability to convey what it wants to convey.

This includes the rhetoric I’ve seen across the board, from She-Ra to A:TLA to Star Wars to Lovecraft Country. We don’t talk about the inherent malleable, subjective, or charmingly imperfect nature of fiction any more. Transformation and reclamation are myths in this space. Everything is in rigid categories. It is seemingly very difficult for some of these people to engage with anything that is not able to be clearly labeled as one thing or another (see the inherent transphobic and biphobic elements of the most intense rhetoric). They destroy anything they cannot filter through their ideology. When women act in a way that breaks from their narrative of womanhood (like...not having a vagina), then those women must be condemned instead of understood. Anything that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable is a mortal sin. There is an extraordinary level of both hypocrisy and repressive denial that is underlying the behavior I’m seeing now. Much like toxic Christian conservatism, these people often are discovered engaging in the same behaviors and interests that they condemn behind closed doors (or just out of sheer cognitive dissonance). As an example, one of the people who talked shit to me about Labyrinth was a huge fan of Kill La Kill, which to my knowledge was an anime about a teenage girl in like, superpowered lingere (hence why I stayed the fuck away from that shit myself). Indeed, they even allow themselves plenty of leeway for behavior far worse than they condemn others for, and create support systems for the worst of their own abusers. 

Quite frankly, I’m tired. Instead of talking about theoretical problematic shit, we need to start talking about quantifiable harm. Because as far as I can tell, the most real, immediate, and quantifiable harm done because of anybody’s favorite ships or pieces of media seems to consistently be the kind that’s done to the people who experience verbal violence and abuse and manipulation and suicide baiting and death threats from the people who have a problem.

[soukokuwu]

Hi there, I really love your writing. Can you write a scenario where Dazai's black fem s/o who works at the ada and is encountered with a racist client who makes it pretty obvious that she doesn't want the s/o there because of her skin colour and s/o is feeling pretty down at it. Something similar recently happened to me so I kinda just wanna read some damn scenario about it, thanks.

HOME IS NOT A PLACE.      genre; pairing. fluff; dazai x reader      word count. 1,675      synopsis. dazai comforts you after an unnecessary hardship.      warning. brief discrimination      author notes. i’m so sorry to hear that happened to you (& i know i took very long with this, i apologise.) i’ve had similar discrimination inflicted upon me too so i hope you don’t have to experience it again & that you’re feeling better by now. <3

The nerves of some people.

A pair of chocolate beads observe silently, intensively, as the callous words spill out of thin, dry lips.

“I don’t want someone like her to serve me.”

Sip.

The old woman eyes you top to bottom.

“I demand someone else, someone... normal, at least.”

He catches the disdain in her voice. He’s sharp as a tack. Beside him the weretiger watches, cowering as he feels the ominous energy emanating from his superior. He’s seen Dazai angry, furious, but never like this. Never... silent. In this moment, the brunette is absolutely livid.

Dazai’s hands are placed on the table, balled tightly into fists. His eyes are trained on the client you’re trying to appease — she’s too wrapped up in her own head to notice him glaring. As he expects. People like that are often ignorant.

Normally he’d hate to get caught up in things like this, prefers to leave it to Kunikida, but the blonde isn’t around and it’s you she’s speaking to. He’s not going to keep mum when it comes to you. How dare someone insult his girlfriend for something that shouldn’t even matter?

Dazai loves you, he knows you’re way too nice to stand up for yourself, and Naomi is already killing herself trying to appease this witch. He notices the way your nervous fingers are fumbling with each other, the way you press your lips together to stop them from trembling, even the way your feet are tucked under the table brushing against each other. You’re scared, and your head is hung so low... you’re ashamed?

The line has been drawn a while ago. But now he absolutely can’t stay still. Not when it’s leaving you feeling so horrified.

He stands up, forcefully kicking the chair back against the wall with his knees as he does, and everyone in the room goes quiet.

All eyes are on him. His bangs are messy, covering his eyes, and lucky they are, because whatever expression lay under there it isn’t for everyone to see. Even the usually chirpy Kenji is stunned into silence, a wave of fear flashing across his features.

“Oh? Has the whiny granny finally shut up?” Dazai hums.

He’s fully aware that everyone in the room feels even more uncomfortable than before. As they should be; he doesn’t use this tone much, if at all, around them. It’s a tone most associated with who he used to be, a tone that incites a flashback to his port mafia days.

But in the midst of everything, you snap out of your seat and scurry off, your head in your hands. And Dazai watches as you run out of the office. Should he deal with the lady first? Or should he get to you? He doesn’t much know the ‘right’ ways of a relationship, but a nudge comes in from Naomi.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of this,” Naomi assures him, a newly invigorated motivation after seeing his strong reaction.

Dazai mumbles a “thanks” before he excuses himself to find you — shooting one last warning glare at the old lady — and he knows just where you are.

Something cold is pressed against your cheek and you jolt. Dazai pulls it away with a chuckle and waves the cold can of juice in your face.

His features are much softer now than it was before, and you ease up a little when you realise he must be so worrried to have come up here to find you. When you take the can from him, he settles down quietly beside you and looks out at the view, and you two sit there wordlessly.

You are on the rooftop of the building right beside the ADA office. This is your hideout, a safe, convenient space for when you really need an escape from anything. And today is one of those days. Rare as they may be, you expect some people to react that way. Because sometimes humanity is flawed in the worst ways possible.

In an ideal world you wouldn’t be feeling this way. In an ideal world, everyone here would be able to accept you for who you are — not what you look like, not where you’re from. In an ideal world, you’d be free from the judgemental, free of the discrimination.

But this isn’t an ideal world. This is earth. This is life. What can you do but accept it? What else can you do other than tolerate what’s thrown at you? You think back to the harsh words spewed by the woman before — the one targeted at you because of your skin tone.

A rush of memories flood your mind.

Unwelcome looks from classmates. Sneers wherever you went in school. The way your name was associated with the sentences “why is she here?” and “she looks weird”. It was like sentencing you to be a social outcast over something you couldn’t control. You’d been forced to spend most of your schooling days alone, project groups being the bane of your existence. Where you thought it’d be an opportunity to make friends, it just gave the other kids additional chances at mocking you. The worst part was you couldn’t even talk to anyone about it. You had your doubts talking to school counsellors, they could easily be one of them. You didn’t even dream of telling your mother either, being a single mom was hard enough, you didn’t want to pile on more problems.

But it lightened up as you got older and people got more mature. Didn’t mean it stopped completely, though. You still had to welcome several unwanted glares and finger-pointing. But at least the name-calling stopped. And what you didn’t hear wouldn’t hurt you. It got better when you finally stepped out into the adult world. People were generally more accepting now, and you didn’t once feel left out in the ADA. They were all kind, for the most part, and never once did they discriminate against you. All they cared about was your work ethic, and they all generally accepted you for who you are. They didn’t give a damn what you looked like.

They accepted you for you, and that was the greatest gift they could have bestowed upon you. To the others it may have been nothing, but to you it meant everything.

There had never been a day where you were forced to confront your old fears. Until today. When that lady ever so subtly insulted you. It was like every doubt that ever crossed your mind since you were a kid came flooding back to you, the questions of whether you really belonged here, whether you should just give up and move away. But where? This is your home, for as long as you can remember.

“I love your eyes.”

Dazai’s sudden declaration stuns you, and you tilt your head towards him with a curious gaze. He isn’t teasing you, you knew that much. If he was, he would wear that wide, silly grin of his. No, this time his smile is… endearing, comforting.

“I love the way your smile reaches your eyes.”

A pair of hands reach out to cup your cheeks, and you can feel yourself getting nervous. He usually never speaks his feelings. Why is he doing this now?

“Look at me, belladonna,” he coaxes, and you listen. You’re met with earnest chocolate eyes, and you keep looking into them, even as they inch closer and closer towards you. He stops the moment the tip of his nose touches yours, and you feel your breath hitch at your throat.

“You are a beautiful person, my love,” he assures you, voice low and steady. His eyes are still staring straight into yours, and you can just make out his beautiful hair flowing in the breeze. “I’ve thought that ever since the first time I laid eyes on you.”

You chuckle, remembering the first day you stepped foot in the ADA office. Dazai had stumbled over all googly-eyed and took your hand, already confessing his future love with you. And he was right, because look at you now. And all the sounds muffle together as you continue gazing at your boyfriend as he lists down all the things he loves about you. From things as small as how your hands feel in his to the way he absolutely loves how he can be completely himself (or as much as he can be) around you.

“Shut up.”

Without even thinking, you find yourself tilting heavenward, pressing your lips onto his. It’s something he welcomes, by the way, his hands moving from your cheek to your neck and kissing you deeper.

You know exactly what he means by saying all of that. And you find it cute, how his way of comforting you is quite a roundabout, yet why does it still work? But you find the answer when you pull away, that first moment when you open your eyes — really open your eyes — and meet his. He’s right.

That lady’s opinion didn’t matter. It hurts, you know he’s not invalidating it, but he just knows talking about it further would just frustrate you more. Besides, he’s been with you long enough to know; if you want to, you would talk about it, and he would listen. As he always does. Even when it’s about things you considered trivial or stupid, he always gives you the time of day, always tries to make everything better.

He’s right — she doesn’t matter. To you, the one that matters most, is him. And you’re grinning silly just thinking of just how much he loves you, and how easily he makes you feel better with just his words. The lady and her biting remarks are well behind you now, as he envelops you in his arms, giving you an important confirmation: Dazai would always have your back, would always protect you.

Because you can have a myriad of doubts, but one thing is for sure.

Dazai is your home.

tags. @yokelish @gogolparadise @fyowyn-writes @smoochi-dazai @animatedarchives

[collisiondiscourse]

Ok i'll bite what's a homestuck ~ra✨

oh!! you said the magic words, ra <3 so! without further ado...

let me tell you about homestuck.

ok i never really expected this day to come but holy shit it did and now i am incredibly stumped for words.

homestuck is... a lot. its a webcomic, for starters, that ran from April 13 of 2007 to April 13 of 2016. it was made by andrew hussie, his magnum opus from his series of MS Paint Adventures which is named such due to the art... being made in MS Paint.

the whole hubbub and reason why every 4/13 homestucks come crawling from the pits of hell with grey paint and apple juice is because it is the most significant date in the series. Aside from it being the literal start and end points of the webcomic itself, April 13 is the birthday of homestuck’s main character: John Egbert.

The series itself revolves mainly around four teenagers: John Egbert, Dave Strider (my beloved <3), Rose Lalonde, and Jade Harley. They play this game called SBURB and are essentially... sucked into it and undergo lots of crazy shit within it. I don’t want to get too into it, but its... certainly interesting. For reference, remember they are called the Beta Kids.

At some point in the series, our four protagonists encounter twelve new characters (known as the Beta Trolls) notably themed after each of the zodiacs. These characters are known as trolls. They have grey skin, yellow eyes, and candy corn-esque horns, which is why youll often see many people with those features in the tags of homestuck. They are also major characters in the series and are fan favorites of MANY.

Hussie created an entire culture for these creatures. buckets are known contraceptives and the world they live in is hierarchal. Their worth is based on the color of their blood (candy red being the mutant outcasts, to fuschia being royalty), and each troll of these twelve is denoted by their zodiac symbol.

they also have a different social structure.

of the troll romances, there are four kinds. this isnt super relevant, but most people are confused so here is a breakdown of Quadrants that is grossly oversimplified. also note that these are usually portrayed as monogamous (i.e. you can only have one of each quadrant)

- Matesprits (♡) are your typical lovers--translated as romance to humans. noun: matespritship

- Moirails (♢) are your best friends. they also have the task of being your pseudo-therapist because alternia (troll world) is fucked up like that. noun: moirallegience

- Kismesis (♤) are... hate fucks? essentially they’re your sworn enemies but also you care about them and have sex sometimes. enemies to lovers but you never stop being enemies personified. noun: kismesissitude

Auspistices (♧) are like self designated referees or marriage counsellors. They usually find antagonistic troll pairs and work their problems out, basically feeling nosy because they want their friends to get along.

i really dont have any excuse for why these are so complicated, but the common excuse is that trolls are incapable of feeling like, love as we know it? a lot of their base feelings are pointed towards lust or pity. idk. my homestuck knowledge is rusty. also all the trolls are canonically pansexual i think?

ANYWAY.

Homestuck is typically lauded for its both amazingly chaotic vibes (search Dave Strider quotes or dancestors character designs for reference) and interesting storytelling medium. it doesnt tell a story like any other piece of media ive ever consumed, thus making it interesting to go through. The whole thing also began on a poll system wherein fans actually CHOSE the actions taken in the story before it got too big and hussie simply wrote it by himself. all of the music and animation was made by FANS in collaboration with hussie, leading to AMAZING sequences, [S]Cascade (which is up on youtube!) being one of the best examples. 

the whole series is beset on all sides with lots of inane and colorful ideas. Some may call homestuck too “”busy”” and cramped to be good, which i dont totally disagree with. Amid the already colorful cast and dialogue, homestuck also touches many things like time travel, parallel universes, and even existentialism at a few points.

The timeline for each character is absolutely whack beyond comprehension, and most characters in the series have died at least TWICE (Dave and Dirk at the lead with at least 8 deaths each). There are even further amounts of mindfuckery with alternate sets of characters like the Alpha Kids, composed of Jane Crocker (also born 4/13), Dirk Strider, Roxy Lalonde, and Jake English. 

Among these characters, I’d like to say that Jane is technically John’s grandmother while John is Jane’s father, Dirk is Dave’s older brother/father and Dave is ALSO Dirk’s older brother and father, Roxy and Rose are each other’s moms, and Jake and Jade are somehow each others grandparents.

Confused? We are too.

...and psst, there are Alpha Trolls aka The Dancestors too. One’s themed after Dante Basco.

Moving on from that, there are guardians and travellers and even more troll ancestors--basically so many characters that if i listed them all i think tumblr would crash this post. They all die and live and fight and die again over and over, but I think that getting into it would reveal a few too many spoilers and also just make my fingers hurt.

Definitively? I don’t think there’s any way for me to tell you all about homestuck and my deep feelings on it in a single sitting and one ask. The webcomic is a vast and deep experience that I don’t want to ruin you experiencing for the first time with too much babbling, but just know that it is something i think is simply brilliant. People definitely shit on it, and most homestucks will tell you themselves ironically or unironically that it ruined their lives, but as a final note--i just wanted to end my 4/13 ramble with one final reference.

you can’t fight the homestuck <3

-

p.s. even if you aren’t gonna get into the series, at least listen to john’s theme song. its really nice. also you can’t fight the homestuck is a classic

john’s theme

[artistictiliqua]

Please.... Keep speaking about your stranger things AU

AIGHTY YOU HAVE ENABLED ME

Despite taking Eleven's role, Zim (15) has a polar opposite personality. Yes he has a lot of trauma and doesnt know how to interact with people, but hes still a major asshole. He gradually softens up around the other kids but hes always gonna be a bit of a dick. The kids call him Z sometimes as a nickname.

Dib (15) and Gaz have no problems keeping their asshole psychic friend hidden because their dad works overseas. Dib sometimes regrets taking Zim in at all because hes just such a douche but his hero complex outweighs his annoyance.

Gaz (14) doesnt get jealous of Dib spending so much time with Zim, but she does get angry with Zim because having him around keeps putting Dib in danger, and Dib is essentially her only family she has a strong bond with. She does eventually warm up to Zim and see him as a friend though.

GIR (13) is a wildcard. Nobody knows his real name or where he came from, but hes surprisingly capable. Hes homeless and mainly eats whatever he can find, and somehow he keeps evading social services when they go out to find him. Strangely enough hes never underweight, he has money to buy food, and despite being in a few fights with the local raccoons, hes never caught anything worse than a minor cold. The gang jokes about him being an escaped government robot. He usually hangs out at the Membrane house and sleeps on the couch.

Keef (15)is a happy go lucky kid and the sunbeam of the gang. Hes always super cheerful and loves making his friends happy. He has an older sister who's also a ray of sunshine but shes labelled as the weird kid in town and unfortunately has very few friends.

Chammy (21) is Keef's older sister and a social outcast for her very loud and unabashed middle school fujoshi and serial killer obsession phase. Shes gone past that now but the effects of her obsession still haunt her. When Keef goes missing, people start spreading rumors that she killed him. Loves photography. She has a huge crush on Zita. She makes up the combined role of Jonathan and Joyce in this au.

Zita (22) is Dib and Gaz's babysitter. She does her best to protect the kids but Dib and Gaz are feral and more often than not, she ends up having to drive out and drag them back home. Also thinks Chammy is cute.

Mr. Dwicky (45) was a bright-eyed children's counsellor in his early twenties but switched careers after the tragic death of one of his young patients. He's now a very tired private investigator who specializes in children's cases in the hopes that he can prevent more tragedies from happening in his little town.

Miss Bitters (74) is a sour old woman who's the gang's homeroom teacher. She desperately wants to retire already but spends her off time trying to prevent Dib and his friends from causing mayhem at the school. That may include letting them use the top of the line radio system in the AV room.

Red and Purple (both 32) are the joint CEOs of the energy plant that created Zim. They caused the accident that opened a rift to the Upside Down, consequently leading to Zim's escape and the Demogorgon's string of murders/kidnappings.

Tenn (16) and Tak (17) are two more subjects that were created by Red and Purple's company. They don't appear til after the Demogorgon is defeated and Keef is rescued but they DO come in eventually.

Thanks for letting me infodump! I've only seen season 1 of Stranger Things so far but I did make my own little changes to the characters and stuff

[angryhausfrau-writes]

I Travel Troubled Oceans: Chapter 19 - In Which Jack and Charles Secure Planning Permission and Max Micromanages

Mary had liked several of Charles's photographs of Jack and the workroom and the half-finished fashions enough to post them to Instagram. And she'd liked the photograph of Charles all decked out in silk and countless jewels enough to use it as the title page for a more formal press announcement of the upcoming fashion show. The word “DECADENCE” is emblazoned across a glossy version of the picture in a stark, masculine font.

And then, in slightly smaller font underneath: Jack Rackham – Fall/Winter 2009.

His name. His name. Not quite in lights, but there, for everyone to see. For everyone to know that he is the one who did this. That these accomplishments are his.

Not that he did it all himself, of course. Mary's role is obvious. Christine is indispensable. And it's Charles's face on the cover of his press release.

The may have called Charles his muse as a joke. It seems like the sort of thing a flamboyant fashion designer would call his favorite booty call. Just the right side of pretentiously obfuscating for the older guard who might not be ready for the party boy persona they've both adopted.

But the honest truth is that Jack's come to rely on Charles in a way he hadn't quite expected for this con.

It's not exactly in Chaz's wheelhouse, is the thing. But he's worked hard to learn skills outside bashing skulls, just as Anne has.

Not that he doesn't do plenty of that as well. And gotten some good information out of it. But he's more than the street thug he'd been for so long. And Jack can't say he misses those days – not when the days they have now are so much easier.

So much less full of fear and strife and poverty.

It's almost like an extended holiday, the way they live now. All getting to pretend they're rich and soft and genteel. Getting to walk among the special, the exalted, the beautiful people. The ones with titles and money and pedigree. The ones with names that mean something.

Well now Jack's name means something too.

And not through an accident of birth. Through cleverness and planning. Through luck, of course, but also through plain hard work. Something those gilded, pampered elite would never understand.

--

Charles has been given a slight reprieve in lugging armoires around. The old Hennessy house has been emptied of all the furniture, finally, and Mary's light rigs have all been installed. All the walls repainted and all the pictures of grand empty rooms taken.

But then Max sees the reaction the upper crust have to those pictures. All the ruined grandeur on display, just to be knocked over to make way for progress, for new ways of making money – they fucking love it, the rich brainless investment fuckers.

So now Max wants to take advantage of that greed she's awoken in the elitist twits in thousand pound suites. That desire for wealth, for faded grandeur, for a past of riches and glory and conquest. But brought into the future. Brought into the now. So they can pretend England isn't just some pretentious backwater with delusions of grandeur, with visions of glory (that was never all that glorious) long past.

So Mary decides, yeah, it would be a fucking great idea to do a little promotional photo shoot of all the models for Jack's fashion show in the house, before it gets demolished. Jewel bright clothes, sparkling gems, enough gold to sink a fucking warship, all juxtaposed – that'd been the word she'd used - all fucking juxtaposed against the backdrop of the ruined townhouse.

So Jack'd worked like a fiend to get the clothes ready. And Charles's break is over.

Now he gets to lug around garment bags and makeup trunks and jewelry chests and even more light rigs – all to be placed precisely where Mary dictates, and moved with the changing light or her changing whims. All that shit's fucking heavy. And Anne's no help this time because she's been set to wrangling all the models and making sure they're properly primped and preened and posed for the photos. All under Max and Mary's watchful eyes.

Cuz Max has apparently decided that she wants to have her hand in things personally.

Not that she hadn't kept things well in hand with Jack's other fashion show – finding the models, organizing the behind the scenes contracts. Setting Idelle up with Featherstone.

But now she's actually telling Mary how she wants the pictures to look. Or more specifically, that she wants some big fancy painting in all the shots. Not the whole paining, though. Just pieces of it. Enough to tantalize, to excite, but not to show the goods.

There's even a picture where the models are holding it at the front of the shot, but it's covered by a lacy black cloth, all except for one corner, which pokes out like a whore's ankle in some repressed 1700s pin up.

Charles thinks the whole thing's fucking unnecessary. Who gives a shit if there's a painting showing too much or too little in the shot? Why does he have to be the one to move it over and over again – sometimes millimeter by fucking millimeter – until Max deems it just right? He's got other things to do with his day, thank you very fucking much.

Like pretending to be Jack's ditsy muscular boytoy, and all the hours in the gym and gossiping by the pool that takes to maintain. He better get another fucking break when all this shit is over.

--

With investors sniffing at Max's skirts like rabid jackals, ready to rip each other apart for a chance at the Hennessy townhouse, Jack broaches the topic of planning permission to Councilor Featherstone. And he does it over dinner in a private room at a restaurant where the esteemed councilor could never have gotten a reservation – and especially not on such short notice. Because for all that he has power. For all that he attends all the right clubs – the same clubs Jack himself attends. Well, the councilor's a bit of a social outcast. A bit of a dud in the personality department.

Whereas Jack is all glib charm and meaningless flirtation. Jack knows how to play the sort of high society games that result in the private table on nearly no notice that the councilor is currently enjoying.

What is it they say? Always come to the negotiating table with the outcome already certain? Well, Jack's doing his damnedest to stack the deck in his favor. And if a little show of how well connected he is, how much more he belongs in this world of high-society fops and casual displays of obscene wealth, is what it takes to get Max her planning permission, then Jack will wine and dine Featherstone at the goddamn Ritz if he has to.

Although the slightly less-upscale, though no less entrenched in British upper-class hegemony, restaurant he's chosen for tonight seems to be doing the trick well enough. Councilor Featherstone is looking around with ill disguised awe.

If he were slightly more uncouth, Jack imagines his jaw would be actually agape at all the gilt and velvet and fine linens and sparkling crystal. As it is, it's more than obvious Jack has introduced him to a style of dining out that he's never experienced before. Perfect.

The entire point of this little excursion is to underline to Councilor Featherstone what a... fruitful... relationship they can have. All Jack's connections and wealth at the councilor's fingertips – and all he needs to do is pass the occasional planning permission for a project that otherwise may have languished in limbo for years. And to that end, Charles is doing his considerable best to bring the conversation around to where Jack needs it to go, namely planning permission for the Hennessy house.

A conversation that demonstrates that Charles has become considerably more subtle than Jack ever believed him capable of.

And perhaps that is an oversight on Jack's own part. Him never deigning to look past Charles's rough and unpolished exterior to hidden – really very well hidden – depths. Known for a straightforward style of smash and grab, Charles has really developed a mind for strategy of late. And something of a silver tongue, though it doesn't come close to rivaling Jack's own.

At any rate, Jack appreciates his efforts. Lord Hamilton may have been willing to come right out and ask for little favors, so assured of his power and his place in the London hierarchy he would eschew subtlety entirely - but there's such a thing as being too forward.

Jack finds that method rather gauche. And the last thing he wishes to be is gauche.

Plus, Jack would rather have the councilor's regard – his friendship, even if it is a tad one-sided – than his fear purchased compliance. Because fear may breed deference in the short term, but it leads to chafing at the yoke in the long run. And Councilor Featherstone didn't get to where he is today by being a complete pushover.

So Charles is sitting in this opulent private dining room, as the councilor sips champagne and enjoys expensive hors d'oeuvres, chatting to Idelle about a spa he went to with some of his “friends” from the health club. Which isn't even a lie. Charles had in fact attended a quote girls day unquote at an upscale spa courtesy of one of the women who lounges poolside and looks over her designer sunglasses at the tanned skin Charles is so very unconcerned with putting on display.

The fact that it was a nude spa may have had something to do with Charles being invited. But it sounds as if Charles had a nice enough time. Or at least he's talking it up to Idelle, who makes suitable sounds of impressed jealousy as the story unfolds. Commenting that she'd rather like to be taken to something like that – perhaps on a date?

Personally, Jack would pay enormous amounts of money to not see Featherstone in the alltogether – but Idelle is a consummate professional and lets no sign of displeasure at the idea show. Maybe Max ought to consider giving her a raise. Jack resolves to raise the issue once planning permission has been secured. Speaking of -

“The only thing,” Charles says, voice measured to ensure that Councilor Featherstone is paying the utmost attention. “The only thing I didn't particularly care for was how crowded the spa was.”

“Indeed,” Jack butts in, “that hardly sounds relaxing. Being surrounded by all the teeming masses.”

“Oh, the actual spa part was lovely. So relaxing after a long, hectic week...”

Jack can see Councilor Featherstone's scoffing disbelief that Charles could have anything resembling a hectic week – his schedule filled with nothing more than lounging in various decorous poses on various expensive surfaces, as far as the councilor is aware. But he has some long, hectic weeks at work...

“But as soon as you're back in the more public areas, all that work at relaxing and destressing – gone!”

“Oh, how terrible!” Idelle exclaims with just the right amount of dramatic disbelief.

“And it was supposed to be one of the more exclusive spa packages as well. You think money would go a bit further nowadays, is all,” Charles finishes. And now all that's left to do is set up the pitch...

Right on cue, Idelle chimes in with, “Too bad there isn't a more private spa. Someplace intimate.” The last is directed at Featherstone, who's blushing and looks primed for the sell.

“Funny you should mention that,” Jack says causally – but not too casually. That's the key. They have to think you're playing them a little so they won't look too deeply at how you're actually playing them. “I happen to have a friend who's looking to start up a little boutique hotel spa. You know where the Hennessy townhouse is?”

The councilor nods, although Jack doubts he was ever actually invited there.

“Well, my friend got it for a song. They were looking to move to warmer climes, you know. And she got an excellent deal for the whole package – house and furniture and everything. Which turned out to be a good thing! The whole place was falling apart, if you can believe. Just completely structurally unsound.” Jack says the last part as if it's the most boring thing in the world.

“So anyway, she's looking to rebuild. Plenty of investors already lined up around the block, of course. And there's mixed zoning, you know. And she doesn't exactly need yet another house to sit empty and eat up heating costs. Plus the cleaning service – you know how much they'll gauge you.”

Pretending that the councilor has a maid service – when Jack knows for certain he doesn't, which is why he doesn't entertain at home much – is another stab at just how different he is from the upper crust.

“Yes, of course,” Councilor Featherstone responds. “They'll take an arm and a leg.”

“So she came on the idea of the hotel and spa. For the country set, or celebrities, or whoever wants a little privacy when visiting the city.” Rich men with mistresses. Government officials with less than acceptable girlfriends. Whoever.

“That sounds lovely,” Idelle chimes in. “Perhaps we might do a spa day there sometime, dear.”

“Oh. Oh I don't know,” the councilor responds, obviously thinking of the enormous price tag attached to something like that.

“We could do a double date,” Charles gushes. “Oh, Idelle! What an excellent idea!”

“Oh, I'm certain I could arrange something like that,” Jack is quick to assure the increasingly panicked looking councilor. “Given that the proposal comes from a close personal friend. I imagine I can talk her into pulling a few strings with whoever purchases the building so we get first crack at it.”

A delicate pause. Calculated to be just enough to let the councilor experience euphoric relief that his problem has been solved - that Jack has been the one to solve it – before bringing it all crashing down.

“Of course, that's assuming the project moves forward any time in the next decade. You of all people know what London real estate is like.”

“You said the lot was zoned for mixed use?” Featherstone asks desperately. He's so close to giving Idelle her heart's desire of the current moment and he can see it slipping away.

Jack nods.

He's not even lying. There are several businesses on that street dating to just after the Great London Fire that necessitate the designation. Plus one unbearably posh cupcake bakery charging upwards of a tenner for a single cupcake.

“Well, then it should be no problem. I can even take a look at everything personally - just to make sure it's all in order, of course.”

“Oh, darling!” Idelle exclaims rapturously. “Would you?”

“Of course, dear. Anything for you.”

Perfect.

Charles grins at Jack, wolflike. And then steers the conversation to other idle gossip about the rich and famous.

Best not to let the councilor dwell too long on what just happened.

[theschizoidblog]

Snape, the Schizoid

Blog 4: 30/07/2020

While I usually write about how Schizoid personality disorder affects me, I think there’s a lot to be learned from drawing comparisons to fictional characters. In fact, before I got my diagnosis, I was writing fanfiction in which I poured very large portions of my soul and very being, often without realizing I wasn’t really writing about other characters, but I was exploring my own inner self. I loved writing about outcasts, about recluses and sometimes I didn’t know if I just was in a sort of love with the characters I wrote about, or if they were me.

At the age of 18, we’re talking about 2001 here, I got into Harry Potter. And with that I mean: I got into Severus Snape. Described as an ugly git and a mean bastard, I still loved him to pieces. (And Alan Rickman portrayed him beautifully, RIP)

And here might be the reason why he lured me in straight away: Snape is a schizoid, like me. And that only clicked when I got my diagnosis a few months ago. 19 years after first encountering the character. And after rereading some of my own fanfictions, I started realizing that what I’d described as Snape’s problems and needs in those stories, were my own. Strange how that works!

In this blog, I’m going to run over some traits of SPD (schizoid personality disorder) and explain how Snape fits into the criteria.

This post serves three purposes:

To people who have no idea what schizoid personality disorder is, this is a means to familiarize yourself with the disorder by exploring the traits while you imagine a character you already know.

To people with schizoid personality disorder, this is just meant to be a fun little blog where maybe you can recognize some traits of yourself. No worries, I have not forgotten we’re all on a spectrum and each schizoid is different.

To fans of the Harry Potter novels, I hope that you come to realize that people can identify with flawed characters for very personal reasons. Don’t be mean to fictional characters (unless they’re Umbridge I guess XD), because you never know who identifies with them. Your rejection of a character can feel like the rejection of a person who struggles with the same things. Anti-culture, in all fandoms, has to end. It’s not adult. It’s not wise. It’s mean. It’s exhausting.

I also feel like I need to make a statement about JK Rowling’s intent: I doubt she knew what SPD was when she wrote Snape. She said she based him off of one of her old teachers – no idea if that man had SPD or was just generally unpleasant. The way that Snape matches SPD is eerie though, just like Luna matches schizotypal personality disorder rather well. (More on that later.) An actual psychologist might disagree with me and say “No he’s not schizoid because….” – and hell, I’d love to hear it. I don’t mind it if this post, written by a schizoid but not a psychologist, starts a discussion that will help people understand the disorder even better, even if I’m wrong in assessing Snape. Or if we can learn to understand Snape better because of me being wrong, that’s also a win-win situation.

Ready? Let’s dive into it!

Cause

SPD is said to be caused by a combination of genetics and environment – as is the case with many other personality disorders. But ask around in schizoid groups, and most will tell you that there were issues in childhood with abuse, lack of warmth or understanding at home, or the presence of a “bad parent”. According to webmd: “Some professionals speculate that a bleak childhood where warmth and emotion were absent contributes to the development of the disorder.”

We all know that Snape’s early childhood was not a happy one. He had an abusive muggle father and grew up at Spinner’s End, the opposite of what you could consider a happy childhood home.

When you grow up in a loveless home, it ruins a lot of your own enjoyment of life. You get trust issues, you become awkward, and so when Snape finally arrives at Hogwarts, he gets bullied. He’s already rather isolated (he only had Lily), and they picked on him because kids can sniff out weaknesses and he was an easy target.

The bullying did nothing to stop the disorder from developing further. Many schizoids have gone through bullying themselves, and it does nothing to help you grow closer to human beings as you get older, quite the opposite, a bond of trust is broken and it’s incredibly hard to heal that. You’ll be suspicious of everyone you meet once that sort of thing happens. The more bullying you receive, the more you hate the world as you grow up. Maybe that’s not true for all people or all schizoids, but I bet some can relate.

You might say: “But Harry also got bullied at the Dursleys and he turned out fine!” Well, I guess he did. That’s the thing with many heroes – their tragic backstories make them poster boys of “look what they overcame and how he saved the world!” – but it’s not that realistic, and if you’ve got a genetic predisposition to develop a personality disorder instead, you’re screwed. Let’s also not forget that Harry’s first year in life was a very loving one. The very first year in a child’s life is crucial, and if things go wrong in early childhood, that leaves scars that most people carry with them for the rest of their lives. Snape never had that steady sort of home, not even for one year, or if he did, there’s nothing to indicate he did.

Diagnosis Criteria

Okay, time to get digging! According to the DSM-V, you need to display at least four symptoms in order to be diagnosed with SPD. Also keep in mind that these traits need to be present for longer than just a few months or a year or so. You might recognize some of these traits as something you’ve gone through yourself if you’ve ever been depressed – it’s when these traits last for what seems like your entire adult life, that a diagnosis with the disorder can be made. (I’m also not familiar with every other trait of every other disorder in the DSM-V, so as I stated in the beginning, it’s possible that other personality disorders are even more fitting of Snape, but that I just don’t know them yet.)

The seven criteria are:

Lack of desire or enjoyment for close personal relationships

Always chooses solitary activities

Little or no interest in sex with other people

Experiences little pleasure from activities

No close friends other than immediate family

Indifference to criticism or praise

Emotional detachment and lack of emotional expression

➤ Emotional detachment and lack of emotional expression

While this is usually at the bottom of the list, I want to put it on top. This is what they also call “flat affect”. You can give us a present, and it might seem like we’re not truly grateful. We may laugh with a joke, but the light never reaches our eyes. Emotionally, it doesn’t seem to an outsider like there’s a lot going on, and if it is, it’s going on so deeply within our souls we’re hardly aware of it ourselves. Think of Snape’s monotonous voice when talking. Now Alan Rickman is a brilliant actor and emotes with very very small signs sometimes, and it’s not like when talking to me, you’re talking to a wall. (But my empathic mask makes me appear rather normal to most folks.) (I don’t think Snape has a mask like that.) Other characters that have schizoid traits are, for example, Mai from Avatar the Last Airbender or Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher. If you know and visualize these characters, you may understand better what I mean with the “lack of emotional expression” then. Also, Snape being a great Occlumens? It’s because he’s the reigning champion in suppressing his emotions, like all schizoids are. We would make wonderful Occlumens, I think. XD Snape being mean? Not all schizoids have a good amount of empathy, they’re too emotionally detached for that. (Others are very empathic to some causes, but might be picky in what they are empathic about. For example: they can be empathic towards animal cruelty and Black Lives Matter, but don’t give a shit about other causes.)

A lack of empathy is what makes plenty of people an easy prey to fascists. Without empathy, what moral compass is going to stop you from becoming a bigot? (And I also want to state that within the disorder you’ll probably find people of all political leanings – many schizoids also seem to have a thing for the underdog, and thus seem to often lean towards the left instead of the right side of the political spectrum. But as with ‘regular’ people, you’ll find people swing both ways.) But here, in Snape’s case, his hatred for his bullies and his father (a muggle) pushed him right into the Death Eater’s arms, and they were glad to welcome a man of his skill, maybe even giving him the illusion, for a while, that he had found a new family. It didn’t last, and eventually his eyes opened to what the Death Eater’s really were. He was too young and naïve to see what they wanted of him (and the one person he loved), and it basically ruined his life. He was a teenage fool, and after losing Lily’s friendship, he had no one left to keep him out of that bad group of friends.

  ➤ Lack of desire or enjoyment for close personal relationships

Does Snape strike you as the social type that’s trying to make new friends all the time? Have you ever seen the man enjoy the company of another character in the books? Not just tolerate, not just need, but ‘enjoy’? Even when it comes to Lucius or Karkarov, it seems he is just keeping an eye on them, observing them rather than offering true friendship.

Maybe McGonagall might be an exception. He seems amiable towards her, in a competitive way. He might get a kick out of their arguing. She’s certainly an intelligent woman so he might enjoy her company for intellectual reasons.

  ➤ Always chooses solitary activities

We see Snape engage in a few activities at Hogwarts, such as going to Quidditch matches, or being present at the Yule Ball. Death Eater meetings and gatherings in the staff room might be social activities, but let’s not pretend Snape has a lot to say about whether he attends those or not. As a teen he already excels at potions, a solitary activity, and when we are given a glimpse of his “summer” lifestyle at Spinner’s End in Half-Blood Prince, he’s just reading. He certainly doesn’t entertain a crowd in his spare time, like, for example, Slughorn does.

  ➤ Little or no interest in sex with other people

I hear you coming now. “BUT LILY!” Schizoids are often asexual, but not necessarily sex-aversive. When asking around in a schizoid group, about a third of the schizoids seem to be in relationships or are even married, perhaps even more. And many of the others have had sexual relationships in the past. Many have tried to make relationships work, only to realize at a later point that that sort of life was not for them and that they would never be truly happy in a relationship. Other schizoids are happy in relationships – so it exists! It’s not impossible! (Remember: you need 4/7 traits, not 7/7 to be schizoid.) Also keep in mind, if Snape really was interested in sex, why would he pine after a dead woman for 16 years? He’d be over her way sooner and into someone else’s pants way sooner too. Lily was the first person in his life that gave him any kind of warmth, so him pining after her is not strange or inexplicable behavior. She offered what he craved, what he lacked, and he mourned her for the rest of his life, because he feared no one would ever give him that warmth. (And he kind of turned that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by being such a recluse.) He dreamed of love, but we have no idea what it would have been like had he actually ever had his affections returned. Maybe he’d have enjoyed a relationship with her for a long while and she would have been the only person he could have tolerated, or maybe after a year or so he would have thought “this is suffocating” and ended the relationship.

  ➤ Experiences little pleasure from activities

Can you recall Snape laughing in any scene? Smiling, even? I can imagine him to feel rather content when brewing potions or studying the dark arts, and he does have passion for what he does. But to a schizoid, passion and pleasure are not necessarily the same. We experience emotions differently. In some ways we don’t experience them at all, in other ways, we might feel like there’s a wall around our emotions, and we have no idea how to get over that wall and check what the currently active emotion is. But with logic, we can determine “I guess I’m happy now that I’m doing this thing I like doing.” Intellectual pursuits are fun too – like solving a puzzle, it gives a little boost of dopamine when you make it to the next level, so it’s not surprising he excels at Potions.

  ➤ No close friends other than immediate family

Basically, Snape only really had Dumbledore, and that bastard only used him to win the war. (I have beef with old Dumbledore, okay?) But Snape confided in Dumbledore, and the other way around, and so I think it’s safe to say that there was a true friendship between the two. When Dumbledore died, Snape was truly alone. (Which is incredibly tragic and heartbreaking when you think about it – in the last year of his life, Snape had no one, really no one, as he tried to keep Hogwarts ‘safe’ and eventually died. And everyone hated him for killing Dumbledore, not knowing the truth about his allegiance. Everyone who had once spoken kindly to him, like the other professors at Hogwarts, now considered him arch enemy #2, behind Voldemort.)

➤ Indifference to criticism or praise

Compliment or insult a schizoid, and it’s not like they won’t give any response at all. They might say “thank you” or they might get a little defensive about the insult, but they won’t always lose a lot of sleep over it. It kind of depends on who the praise or criticism is coming from. I can imagine that it did mean something to him if it came from Dumbledore, whom he cared about. I don’t think it meant anything to him what his students thought of him, since he didn’t give a personal level of shit about them. There’s also a moment where Umbridge shrieks “You are on probation!” and it’s described as “Snape looked back at her, his eyebrows slightly raised.” Then she says that she expected better after how highly Lucius Malfoy always speaks of him and she dismisses him. Snape then gives her “an ironic bow” – he really doesn’t give a rat’s ass and I love him for it.

These are the 7 criteria that you need to fit 4 of to be diagnosed with SPD – I managed to link all 7 to Snape – so I think it’s not unlikely that Snape is truly a schizoid. Now, for the next part I would like to highlight some other comorbidities which many schizoids also have, that seem to appear in Snape as well.

Comorbidities

➤ Depression In about half of all schizoid patients, depression is or has been present. How do you notice that in Snape? The greasy hair, among other things. Bad teeth. Always wearing the same outfit. If you’ve ever suffered from a bad depression, you know how difficult it suddenly becomes to shower at a regular interval, how you can go days without brushing your teeth, how wearing comfortable clothing is more important than looking fashionable – how it is absolutely meaningless to look fashionable because who the fuck cares anyways. Snape doesn’t seem to give a hoot about himself or his appearance, which strikes me as a sign of depression. And what does he have to be happy about? He knows Voldemort is going to return and he’ll have a cursed job as a double-spy. He knows he’s probably going to die. I wouldn’t be happy either.

➤ Anger Outbursts/PTSD Not all schizoids have this, but it’s something I have myself and which I’ve written about extensively in one of my previous blog posts. I look at it as a way of my inner self breaking down the walls and coming out to say “I know that I’ve been quiet for the past 37 years but what the fuck I’m really angry about this and have been for a while and I’m not going to contain it any longer” – and then the anger comes out disproportionately. It’s hard to impossible to really control such an outburst. And often, there is a very obvious cause to the outburst. Sometimes it’s PTSD related. For Snape, while he does not emote often, you see a few outbursts – like when he is face to face with Sirius Black in the shrieking shack, his childhood bully. He seems mad at that moment, not at all composed anymore, the sign of a real anger outburst. (I think it’s PTSD helping that anger build.) A few moments later, he thinks he has turned in Sirius Black to the Ministry, Sirius, who he holds responsible for the death of James and Lily (and it’s especially the latter’s death he can’t cope with), so when Sirius escapes, he loses it again. Then the next time he gets really angry is when Harry enters his “worst memory”. That’s a few years later, during the Occlumency lessons. While he’s no longer shrieking, he’s white with rage. My pro tip: don’t impose on the privacy of a schizoid, we get mad. XD In Half-Blood Prince, he’s got a moment where he’s like “Don’t call me coward!”, looking ‘inhuman’. I too can get anger outbursts over false accusations, and this one must really hurt, because at that moment, he’s trying to save Harry’s freaking life while the boy is all like “lemme at you I’mma kill you like you killed Dumbledore for fun!” – Snape was probably grieving the loss of his only friend and confidant and knew he was on his own from that point onwards, and then you get this bloody teenager trying to drag you into a wizard’s duel you’re not in the mood for, calling you a coward, which is the last thing you are. Man it has to suck to be Snape. I also want to state that there are many moments when things go wrong in class, but Snape never loses his temper like that. He’s not pleasant and he punishes students, but he doesn’t get mad – he gets even. That makes it all the more interesting to analyze the moments that he does go bananas.

Random Thoughts

Before I finish this blog, there are still a few small things I’d like to get out of my system about Snape and SPD.

➤ Snape and Luna

They are my favorite characters, but also because they’re very, very alike and very, very different at the same time. Both didn’t have a great childhood (Luna lost her mother at a young age) and they get bullied as kids at Hogwarts. Snape is called Snivellus and Luna is called Looney. All the suffering they endure, affects them differently though. Snape gets meaner, Luna only seems to get nicer. I see them as two sides of the same coin. One dark, one light, both a little eccentric in their own way. When you look at it from a personality-disorder point of view, then they both have personality disorders that are related to one another. Snape has Schizoid Personality Disorder, Luna has Schizotypal Personality Disorder. Schizotypal Personality Disorder is where you’ll find a lot of eccentric people who believe in conspiracy theories. Both are class A personality disorders. Some people might even have the two personality disorders at the same time. Schizoids seem to be rooted in reality with their thoughts, schizotypals can really start believing strange things if they’re not careful, alienating them from others And, in case you’re now wondering: “So many schizo-personality disorders! Is this also schizophrenia?” No – schizophrenia is when you have delusions and hallucinations as well. Read up on those disorders if you’re interested, because these descriptions of mine are too brief and don’t do it justice.

➤ Snape was a bad teacher

Not fully, and yes, he was. I think knowledge-wise, Snape was way better at Potions than Slughorn ever was. You notice when Hermione can’t keep up in her sixth year while Harry is sailing through Potions thanks to Snape’s book. Snape’s a genius and would have been able to instruct his students to be more efficient when brewing potions. But personality wise? Don’t put a schizoid in front of a classroom. And for that, I kind of blame Dumbledore. Snape wasn’t asking for a job as a teacher, but that’s all Dumbledore had to offer, and thus he put Snape and his unwilling students in a room together where none of them wanted to be. I think Snape would have been better off as some kind of a scientist, just him and his books, inventing spells or potions. But he was not given much of a choice, and he was forced to socialize with teenagers (ew, gross), and that must have drained him terribly. It’s a wonder he was usually roaming the hallways at night because I would have been too exhausted to get out of bed. That makes you realize it’s truly a work of fiction because who on earth has that kind of stamina? :-P (No, in all seriousness it’s probably also depression at work, keeping him up.) Snape was a jerk to Harry and Neville and Hermione on various occasions, and not all of it was to “keep up appearances” to the Slytherins. He seemed to even enjoy a bit of sadism here and there. You could contemplate why he poisoned Neville’s toad. Was it just to spite poor little Neville, or was he hoping his student would perform better under pressure? (Which Neville did.. The toad didn’t die.) It’s a cruel way to teach a lesson, but I think he must have thought the end justified the means. But what a traumatic experience to Neville, who then had Snape become his greatest fear.

➤ Purity culture vs Snape

We’ve seen a shift on both Tumblr and other social media where fandom is about purity culture. Back in 2002 folks were like “We love the baddies, deal with it”, and the people that didn’t love the baddies actually dealt with it and you could joke with people who preferred the Gryffindors and just poke a little fun at one another, but it was fun fandom. But over the years I’ve seen fandom change. Nowadays you can’t even express love for Snape without someone seeing it as their moral obligation to remind you of what a “bad person he really was”. To them I can only say that I like him for his best qualities, and forgive him for his worst. And honestly, I don’t need to justify liking a character to anyone. If I want to put Umbridge-posters in every room of my apartment, are you going to stop me or call the cops on me? Purity policing is weird. Very American, too. (Though I’ve seen some Dutch folks go apeshit as well over purity concepts.) And as a Belgian I don’t have time to put up with that shit. XD And purity policing also is just nasty when you consider that some folks are like “I relate to this character” and the next person is like “THIS CHARACTER IS EVIL AND DESERVES TO DIE!” My response to that part of fandom is: “Just fuck off already, jerkface.”  Personally I was heartbroken by his death, because I feel like he could have made up to the people he’d hurt, I would have loved to see relationships mended between him and McGonagall and him and Harry and such, but instead we were left with him passing on some awkward memories to Harry and then dying. (Tbh I’m not the greatest fan of his crush on Lily, but whatever, I can accept it and understand it. She was the only light he ever knew.) It’s not his fault he didn’t get to redeem himself as a character, not fully - and that’s what makes fanfiction fun. So if people want to explore that in fic, let them. A character like Snape is too much of a treasure to shove under a carpet and pretend he never existed. Write all the things about him, have him have all the adventures! 

I think I’m done now! If you stuck around until now, 10 points to Slytherin or whatever house you’re from. (Probably Slytherin if you’re reading about Snape.) What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment, send an ask, or whatever!

[nigahamyeon]

hearts awakened

i. a man's heart

Yisoo woke with the first rays at the break of dawn. Her eyes still closed, she could feel the beginning warmth of the sun on her face. Slowly, she raised her head, opening her eyes and blinking a few times. The window of her small room was facing east, and her bed was standing right in front of it, so she could feel the first sunbeams on her, everyday.

After a few moments of just looking outside, she raised her shoulders, sat up, and extended her front legs into a long stretch that she could feel through her entire body. Then she rolled onto her back, then onto her legs again and jumped out of bed.

Yisoo was a Gumiho, in Korean legends known as the nine-tailed fox, a kind of shifter. And she always slept as a fox. She could never really figure it out how to sleep in her human form, every position felt awkward, she never really knew what to do with her legs in relation to her torso – she had read about different sleeping positions, of course, but it all just felt so unnatural, and she was never able to relax. As a fox, however, sleeping was intuitive. Just curl up into a ball, tails around you, head on your hind legs. Easy. Sleep guaranteed.

It took a few moments until Yisoo fully transformed into her human form. Right after waking up she had difficulties getting her ears and tails to fully vanquish, especially since she felt herself weaken again. But she had already taken care of that, tonight she'd get stronger again. When her body turned into a slender figure of average height, she stretched out her human arms while standing on tiptoes.

First the fluff brush – she used it every morning to get rid of all her fur that she left behind on her bed when sleeping as a fox. Second, washing up, brushing the hair and styling it into a loose braid. Then clothes, and lastly, putting on make-up. Objectively, she wasn't in need of any kind of make-up as Yisoo was more beautiful than the common Korean girl, but she just loved the way a winged eyeliner made her slanted eyes look, and she could make her face look a little bit less fox-like.

She put on her necklace, a simple golden one with a blue-shimmering bead pendant, also known as yeowoo guseul – just that it didn't hold her powers and intelligence, like in the legends, but her very soul. It was the most important part of her, and if she was separated from it too long, she would die. Well, not instantly, but she’d get gradually weaker until she couldn’t keep up her human form anymore. And if someone were to destroy it… well, she didn’t actually know what would happen then. But she’d probably die as well.

By the time she was finished with her morning routine it was already half past 7, and she had barely time to eat something for breakfast.

“Good morning,” Jongho greeted her as she was rushing into the pathetic excuse of a kitchen that was part of the apartment. He had a cup of coffee in hand, handing it over to her to take a few sips.

“Thanks,” Yisoo mumbled and opened the fridge, just to see that it was almost empty. Not even the yoghurt that she had saved was there any more, one of her many roommates must've eaten it. She hated most of them. Except Jongho.

“I heard Outside Conformist are playing tonight at the Flask tonight, you wanna come?” he asked her, trying to lean casually against the counter.

“I can't, tonight is the night, you know? I already prepared everything,” Yisoo looked apologetically at him.

She really liked Jongho, even though he was a werewolf. Generally, Yisoo disliked all kinds of canines, even though she was, technically, also one. Never, in her whole life (and she had lived for a long, long time), had she had any good experiences with any kinds of wolves, dogs and the kind. But Jongho was different, maybe it was because he wasn't part of a pack (he used to be, but was shunned by them for a reason he never told her) or maybe because he was generally just different. Either way, Yisoo wasn't blind nor stupid, she had picked up on the fact that he showed signs of romantic interest in her. She could smell the pheromones he produced, and she could read the body language. It was more than obvious.

“Oh, I forgot,” he said, “does it have to be tonight, though? The hunters have been really active lately.”

“Yeah, they've been onto me for a while now,” Yisoo sighed, “but it has to be tonight. Can't throw away weeks of preparation, you know.”

“Yeah, I'm just worried is all,” he looked at the bottom of his cup.

“Let's go out tomorrow night, all right? Outside Conformist may not be playing, but we'll find something else to do,” she said and his face instantly lit up. With a look at the clock, she said her goodbyes and see you laters, took her coat and bag and made her way to the subway station.

It was a very usual morning, a lot of traffic and Yisoo made it just in time to catch the subway. It was crowded and it stank after sweat and kimchi. With her nose and ears being more sensitive than those of a human, she had always a hard time riding the subway, or the bus, or actually any kind of public transportation. But she did her best to live a life as ordinarily human as possible. Even enrolled into university and studied some random subject that she found vaguely interesting.

When she arrived at university, she still had enough time to get a cappuccino from the campus coffee shop and got into the lecture hall at the same time as her professor did. He smiled painfully obvious towards her, and she feigned a cheeky smile back at him. Some harmless flirting, but it'd make sure to help her grade a bit. Yisoo scanned the room for an empty seat, and sat somewhere in the middle next to a girl that she already knew. Kind of. They saw each other frequently and maybe they had talked, once or twice. She was a nice girl, very fun to be around and it seemed like she had a lot of friends. Yisoo sometimes imagined being friends with her, with a human. What it would be like, she wondered. During all her years, she had ever really been close to mythical creatures, like herself.

For lunch she went to a ramen shop near the university that was run by a Fae. Yisoo could only wonder why no one ever picked up on the fact that he was so painfully obviously not human. It was nothing she thought about too often, much rather she'd eat up her bowl of noodles and not think about anything.

After that, more university and then she'd go to her own part-time job – an employee at a gas station in a rather shady part of Seoul. She could've gotten a better job, at a better location that paid her better, but Yisoo chose this gas station for a reason. It was in a district that was rather problematic, a lot of humans, almost no otherworldly creatures. Many of the people that lived here were social outcasts, criminals of all sorts and really just the scum of society.

It was perfect.

She did meet a lot of drunks here, sex offenders and abusers. Yisoo was not afraid of them, there really was no human who could ever meet eye-to-eye with her when it came to fighting. But, as she still was a Gumiho, she had to consume a human heart every so often – and she stopped killing just about anyone, no. With the hunters being as active as they were, and Gumihos being classified as dangerous and therefore being actively hunted by them, she couldn't murder blatantly obvious. Also, she just didn't want to. Since she developed consciousness, Yisoo started to just look for her prey in men that she considered the scum of the earth. So, actually, she was doing the world a favour in eating their heart. And, of course, with these types of people it took a long time before someone found out they're missing and start looking for them. Win-win.

Her shift was over at 10pm and her date, or rather dinner, for the night was already waiting for her. He looked like he didn’t even really try, wearing the clothes he usually wore when he went to buy liquor late at night. One might’ve thought that he wanted to impress her in some way, but it didn’t look like it. For him, it was an easy way to get laid, since she planted the seeds for some daddy issues and other things that could make girls potentially go for pathetic older guys. They walked from the gas station to - what he thought - was in the direction of her apartment. In reality, though, Yisoo was luring him into the forest where no one would be at night to hear him scream. 

They were walking at a rather slow pace, he was telling her about his time in the Korean army, she pretended to care and laughed from time to time. He didn’t even notice that they were walking past trees and trees and even more trees, slowly deviating from the path. It was pitch black, and he only realised it when Yisoo suddenly stopped. Manipulating men was just too fucking easy. And yet, even though she was extraordinarily careful in choosing her prey, she still felt bad for him. A little. He was talking to her, and Yisoo felt his pulse rising, his heart pumping faster and faster. Funny, she didn’t take him for someone who was scared so easily. Just a bit of darkness and a mysterious lady inside a forest were enough to trigger his flight instinct. A shame, really, Yisoo thought as she felt her hands slowly turn into claws and her animalistic instincts growing louder and louder. She did like it when they tried to fight her. 

It was over before it even started. With the swift motion of her claws she pierced through his chest, an agonising cry of pain leaving his mouth but before he could finish it she ripped his ribcage open. The heart was still beating for a few moments, and Yisoo transformed fully into a nine-tailed fox before feasting on his heart. She knew of some Gumihos who actually ate the heart in their human forms, and she could never understand why. Human teeth weren’t made for chewing the strong muscle of a raw heart. 

By the time she was finished it was probably around 10:45pm, she thought. Maybe she even got home in time for the new episode of one of the dramas she watched at the moment. And maybe was Jongho also home already, and they could watch it together. Still a fox she was digging a whole with her fore-paws. It was just faster that way. Plus, it was necessary, just because no one was looking for him didn’t mean that no one could find him. Leaving the corpse of a man out with just his heart missing? Not such a good idea. Yisoo grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the hole, covering it up with the dirt and some leaves. Should do well enough.

That’s when she heard the snapping of a twig - followed by the sound of an arrow piercing through the sky. But it was too late - by the time she could react she already felt the sharp pain of the bolt in her thigh - it had gone right through. Yisoo yelped, bit the arrow head and pulled the whole thing out before running for her life. Her leg was throbbing, she felt the blood drooling out and the pain was so strong she could barely put her paw on the ground. As she was speeding through the forest and had almost reached the city, she felt the pain pass and her leg getting stronger again. Once she turned into a side street and hid behind a giant trash container, she quickly turned into her human shape again, hoping they wouldn’t recognise her this way and giving herself a bit more time. For a few moments, she just stood there, back pressed against the cold stone wall, and listened. Nothing.

The hunters were onto her. Never had it been this close before. How could this have happened, she had been so careful all this time. Yisoo felt her heart beating frantically in her chest. Her fingers were closing tightly around her yeowoo guseul - and she took the pendant and put it deep in her cheek pouch. Yisoo felt the cool surface against her teeth and mucous, and the magic of her very own soul pulsating in her mouth. For just a second she wondered what would happen if she would just… swallow it. It would still be with her - inside her gastrointestinal tract, to be precise. But she didn’t swallow it. Once again she listened closely but she couldn’t make out any sounds that might belong to the hunter. Cautiously, but as casually as possible, she started walking out of the side street and nearer and nearer towards the main road. Yisoo scanned every person that she saw and kept her ears on high alert for any alarming sounds. Her heart was still pounding in her chest.

She crossed the street and was now only one block away from the well lit main road. Two guys, all in black, were suddenly just a few feet away, right in front of her. Yisoo could smell blood, and a distinct smell that she never smelled before, but was told of. The smell of not one, but two hunters. It was a gamble. Would they know that she was the Gumiho that they were looking for? Or would they only be alarmed if she changed her behaviour now? One step, two steps. Her eyes followed the guy who was next to her. Time seemed to stand still for the moment that they were passing each other. Yisoo could feel her blood hammering inside of her. In the corner of her eye she saw him moving his arm inhumanly fast, and a sword appearing out of nowhere. Yisoo was faster and leaped away. Right into the arms of the second hunter, who was suddenly behind her, his fingers clawed into her shoulder. 

Then she felt the sharp edge piercing through her flesh. And her heart. A deep grunt escaped her throat, her knees giving up under her, her body hitting the concrete ground. Even through the pain, she kept her jaw shut tightly. When he removed the sword, she grunted again. The blood was pooling out of her. And then it stopped.

“What. the. fuck.”

[tommyspeakycap]

out the closet

pairing - shelby family x shelby sister reader

request - Hey! Could y do a Peaky teen sister imagine on her coming out to tommy first then eventually the rest find out and she’s scared since it’s the 20′s and not accepting, set around season 2 ish please?

word count - 3267

a/n - okay so, first of all, i apologise for the long wait, i was just so busy. this ended up being set a little later in the series but there isn't any major spoilers or anything i don’t think! also, i apologise for the sucky title lol and i apologise in advance if this completely sucks :) enjoy x 

When the sun comes over the dewy spring morning in Small Heath, Birmingham, you feel nothing short of exhausted. The entire night you hadn't found a wink of sleep. Your mind has been reeling, too much so for it to be bothered by the counting of sheep, reading a book or any other attempt you made at getting some shut-eye as you lay in your bed. Alternatively, you've been a wreck since four am. Pacing up and down the length of your bedroom wracked with fear, sweat beading on your forehead and wetting your back because what you're going to do today may cost you everything you have and more.

You've known for a while now, your friends always talked about boys with flushed cheeks and giggled laughter, and you couldn't understand it. You never felt the skippy heart or the butterflies when you held hands with a boy, it just didn't feel right. At a younger age, you had pinned that down to the fact you were on edge around boys, always wondering when Tommy would swagger down with Arthur and John to scare boys away from you. But, as you grew older, it became a realisation that maybe it wasn't just dread for your brother's antics.

You just didn't like boys.

You then proceeded to worry that there was something wrong with your brain because there was a lack of any talk of people being gay or lesbian. You thought it you didn't like boys then you must just not like anyone. That gave you great and terrifying worry that you would die all alone with no one who loved you and that broke your young heart. It wasn't until Ada Shelby started talking a friend of hers who was a lesbian. You hadn't known what that was at the time as you were only and 11 and again, there was no talk of things like that much, especially not before the war. She explained to you all about how sometimes, girls love girls and boys love boys. She gave no indication of what her view on the matter was and although you sensed no malice or ill intention behind her words, you still did not know where she lay.

All that you knew was your heart got skippy and your cheeks got flushed and you achieved that giggled laughter for the first time when you were fourteen and a girl you were close to told you she didn't like boys either and then proceeded to kiss your cheek. For the past two years, you've been hiding that relationship under the guise of friendship. Never have you done anything more than kiss her cheek because you are absolutely petrified of a possible judgement from your family is they ever find out. She understood this, she was one of the most gentle and loving characters you'd ever come across. She knew exactly who she was and the only reason she kept her sexual preference was a secret was because she had fallen in love with the youngest of the Shelby clan who just happened to be deathly afraid of what would happen to her if they found out where her heart lay.

But you were 16 now and you were in love.

You had decided, with the sweet girl you'd loved since you were fourteen, that today would be the day that you would tell your family. You knew for a fact you had to start with Tommy as he was the head of the family as well as your legal guardian. You lived under his roof with him, his wife and his son. Though you wondered if you would live there for much longer after your truth came out.

You chose today for many reasons; Ada was home and she was the most accepting person in the family. She had homed social outcasts at her house in London, even a gay man, you had heard. So if she allowed that then you just hoped to God she would accept you as well. You also chose today because you knew Arthur would be without Linda. You chose today because John was bringing Esme round for dinner and that Lizzie had a meeting with Tommy at half two. You chose today because Polly and Michael were also joining the dinner. You chose today because everyone would be here, your whole family and everyone who was important to you would be able to hear your secret all in the one day and you would no longer hold the burden of a secret on your shoulders.

You couldn't do it anymore.

So when your small clock struck six am, you decided to go downstairs for breakfast. This was when Tommy usually ate his because he was always in a hurry to do something in the morning. This morning you assumed would be very different. You could foresee Tommy freezing in his spot and that was exactly what he did.

You had eaten in relative silence. You crunched down on two pieces of toast and jam that make you want to vomit due to your nerves and then after Tommy pressed his lips down onto the side of your forehead and rushed by you while throwing his suit jacket over his shirt and waistcoat, you just decided to go all-in and blurt it out.

"I like girls."

He froze in spot and then turned around with eyebrows furrowed. His breathy "what?" was sharp, body half in his jacket and the other half still fighting with the fabric. "I uhhh-" you swallowed thickly. "I don't like boys, Tom, I'm in love with a girl." Tommy has absolutely no idea how to go about answering this. He isn't mad and he honestly thinks very little differently of you.

And the thing that he does think differently is about how other people will treat you. Your brothers and Michael aren't going to care. Polly and Ada will probably be overjoyed. It's not the family he's worrying about.

It's the horrible, horrible people out in the world who don't think that everyone should have equal rights, very least women who love other women. He worries about the people who are going to target you for this; he worries about you being hurt and he worries for the people who will hurt you because the wrath of the peaky blinders would rain down on them like hellfire. You’re the baby of the Shelby clan.

"Okay." He says, running a hand over his face. "Okay?" You echo, the word coming out with extremely confused undertones. "Okay." He repeats again firmly. He turns around, breathing a shaky sigh that you don't fully hear and you imagine that was the idea. "Tommy plea-" He cuts you off by raising his hand.

That act worries you, not because it's the first time he'd ever done it because you've received the silencing hand a million times, but because you were looking too much into every single movement and sound that escaped his mouth. "I have a million meetings today. We'll talk about all of this when I'm home, alright?" You nod your head slowly, ducking your eyes away from his piercing stare.

You sit there stunned to silence for maybe a good twenty minutes after he leaves.

Then you start to crumble, heart beginning to break down at what you would call a very poor reaction to the head of your family.  You clamped a hand over your mouth to quiet your sobs, quickly finding your feet to run back upstairs to your room. On the way, you whizz past a very concerned Grace. She had taken to you since you moved in with them, Tommy is your legal guardian and all, so she looks after you as a mother might do.

She called Tommy after about an hour of failed attempts to get you to come out of your room. "Somethings happened to (y/n), Thomas." She had said, and her husband had nearly vomited right there and then because he was absolutely petrified for your safety beforehand, but now you've got even more the reason for people to target you as if being a woman in the peaky blinders wasn't enough. He was quick to ask if you were okay and what had happened, the words tumbling out his mouth more incoherently than he had anticipated.

Grace explained quickly that after he left, you had gotten incredibly upset and now wouldn't speak to a single person. "Right," Tommy said strongly, "I'm sending Ada over within the hour. There's a spare key in my bottom desk drawer and just leave them to it. It'll be alright."

About forty minutes later, a gentle Ada pushed through the door and found you curled into a ball on your bed, pressed into the corner of the room with tears still flowing down your cheeks. "Hey, sweetheart," She greets softly, offering a sweet smile and holding a brown bag that you could only assume contained still hot pastries from the bakery on the route from her house in Birmingham to Tommy's.

"You've no need to be upset." You shake your head vigorously. "Tommy hates me!"

She's quite taken aback by this, throwing her jacket down on a chair in your room and kicking off her heels. She crawls onto your bed and scoots right up next to you, wrapping an arm around you to pull you away from the wall and into her side instead. You didn't fight her for a single second, falling into her side with your heart-wrenching sobs. "What makes you think that eh? If anything, I think Tommy's happier you don't like boys, he hates them all anyway!" She assured, her voice soft and sweet and comforting.

"But-but-but-" you chocked out, chest heaving with the sobs in a failed attempt to get a string of words past your trembling lips. "But nothing," Ada soothes, smoothing her gentle hand through your hair, providing the comfort that only a big sister could. "Tommy just realised there would be more people out to hurt you and he was having trouble processing that.” She pauses. “And he was already pretty sure you weren't swinging that way, love." You look up at her, reduced to sniffles and tear-streaked cheeks.

"Really?" you croaked, wiping at your snotty nose. "Of course!" Ada insists, "You could marry a tree and Tommy still wouldn't think ill of you. You're his bloody princess." You nod softly, nuzzling your head into her side. "What about Arthur?" You whimper, "And Linda? Ada she's going to turn him against me."

All of a sudden, you're wailing all over again and Ada has a deep frown set into her features. If Linda ever considered a negative thought about you, Thomas Shelby would be the very fucking least of her worries because Ada would be right at her door with a revolver in her coat. No man or woman, Shelby, peaky blinder or otherwise would dare to disrespect you for who you loved, very least to one of your brothers. "What the-" she begins, "Absolutely not!"

You shake your head though, streams of tears making their way from your eyes yet again. Linda is a very strong Christian and you doubt that her views are going to change for you. She also holds a lot of influence over Arthur and has him wrapped around her little finger. She wears the trousers and makes most of the decisions and that's what terrifies you.

"Oi," you hear from the door, looking up to meet the caring eyes of John Shelby, disguising his concern with a smirk. "What're all these tears about, eh?" He all but launches himself onto your bed, laying on his back on the other side of you with only his head slightly propped up against the headboard. He reaches out and wipes the tears off of your cheeks, moving his hand to then squeeze your knee and entice a small giggle out of you because he knew just how tickly you were in that very spot.

"Overheard you guys talkin' and figured your favourite brother should be involved too." He smirks, a teasing overtone to the slight seriosity underneath. "And also, I know this really cute girl just down the road fro-" Ada cuts John off by slamming a pillow into his face. Finn appears through the door not a couple of seconds later and he too throws himself down on the bed with the proclamation that he was excited to be able to talk to you about girls; to which John teased him and asked why he couldn't talk to him instead, and then Finn flipped him off and you all laughed.

For the next few hours, your siblings spent every moment making jokes and keeping the mood upbeat with reassurances. They try to express how much they loved you and how proud they actually were that you had managed to come out when some go their whole lives hiding it out of fear. You make a quip about not being scared of anything because you're a Peaky Blinder. In said statement they can hear that you most definitely were and still are scared of how this huge bomb is going to go off, but not one of them point it out because fear is perfectly normal in a situation like this, wherein you are changing the whole course of the life you're going to live.

They only left when Tommy came in.

Few words were said between the pair of you. The closest two of all the Shelby Siblings simply resorting to physical touch. It has always been a way of communication for you and Tommy. All he has to do is hold you to tell you everything's going to be alright. He does mutter in your ear how much he loves you, but Tommy has never been outspokenly affectionate. Even with you its always been a physical affection that worked best; a tight hug, a comforting hand rubbing your back or a feather light kiss on your temple. Only behind closed doors though, of course.

Tommy had a reputation to uphold.

"What about Arthur?" You ask quietly as Tommy pulls back, his hands gripping onto yours. He offers you a light grimace. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

Okay, sure. Tommy may have been the fatherly brother, the one who you accidentally called dad that one time when you were a tiny little girl. Tommy might've been the one who took you in. Tommy was your go-to, he was your guardian, he was your protector and your solace. Sure, you had spent the most time growing up with Tommy, spent hours attached to his hip and sure he taught you pretty much everything you knew, including maths and how to deal with money. Tommy taught you how to walk and how to tie your shoelaces and how to dance. Sure, he punished you when you got out of hand and laid down all the ground rules with his ‘don’t fucking test me’ dad voice. Sure, Tommy was daddy-brother.

However, Arthur Shelby was your older brother and he embodied the definition. "A person who is there when you need him; someone who picks you up when you fall; A person who sticks up for you when no one else will. A brother is always a friend." Arthur held you before anyone else did. Tommy taught you to tie your laces, but Arthur tied them for you long afterwards. Tommy taught you how to walk, but Arthur carried you around so you didn't have to. Arthur orchestrated the tea parties and made everyone come with threats of violence if not attended. Arthur was the most protective. Arthur taught you how to ride a bike and kissed the scrapes on your knees when you fell off at the bottom of the street. Arthur taught you more mundane things, wanting you to have that little bit of normalcy. It was Arthur who carved wooden toys out of tree oak, Arthur who built the dolls house from hand, Arthur who sat you on his shoulders or lifted you up onto the horses even when Tommy said no, but never took his hand away from you out of fear for you getting hurt. Your eldest brother got off cocaine for you, stopped drinking heavily because it scared you when he did and would give everything he had if it meant you could be happy.

So Arthur's opinion mattered to you.

And when he came in looking a little worried, you panicked and tears sprung to your eyes again. "Hey, no tears." He says, stepping forward to cup your jaw with his large and cold hand. You would assume he just arrived.

Tommy left through the door Arthur came in and shut it behind him. "Did you speak to Linda?" You asked weakly, your voice quiet. "No," Arthur responds gruffly, without a moment's hesitation. "Billy had a stomach bug, 's why I didn't come before." He lets go of your cheek having wiped away the stray tears.

"And I won't be talkin' to her about it," he states firmly, "It ain't her place. It's my place and you're my fuckin' baby sister. It's only my fucking place to say that I love you no matter what. It's only for me to say that you saved me. If Linda has a problem then she should know she wouldn't 'ave a husband cause I would'a put a gun in my mouth and pulled the fucking trigger if it weren't for you." You smile softly at him and take a step forward with widened arms.

"So long as you are still the person we raised you to be." He says, muffled by your hair in the hug. "Then we'll fuckin' support anything you do, sweetheart."

You loved your family more than anything in this world and you won’t lie; you were petrified to tell them. Because it doesn’t matter how amazing they are to you or how much they love you, it is 1920′s Birmingham and the fact of the matter is that people aren’t all that accepting. They don’t welcome people of all orientations and genders with open arms, they rarely welcome people at all and so your fear wasn’t unrealistic. 

Alas, the Shelby’s have no room for judgement. Most of the have a direct ticket to hell with no stopping at go or collecting 200 of anything. Not only did they have no right or room to judge, but they also had no desire to do so. Where did that get people? What was to be gained? You were this little angel and beacon of bright hope and so what, you liked girls instead of boys? Not a big deal. None of them care who loves who in this world so long as they don’t pose a threat to the unbelievably close-knit family.

You had nightmares of them kicking you with only the clothes on your back - as unrealistic as that was considering Tommy barely even let you out in the rain without being bundled up so you don’t get a cold - or them disowning you and making you change your name before chasing you out of the City. You had a million scenario’s in your mind and not one of even the good ones amount to the joy you felt now. 

You emerge from your room with a happy grin and Arthur right behind you to be met with the smiling faces of all of your family and then are met with Polly speaking loudly first. She links her arms with yours and with Ada's.

"Get the good wine out, Thomas! Us ladies have a good old gossip to get to." She yells over her shoulder as she leads you both down the corridor. "And make it quick." She adds, "We have a fucking world to change."