#they could fix him (ie make him so so so much worse) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

phantomrose96 · 1 month ago

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(A Breach of Trust)

[I am putting the rest of the ask under a ReadMore because it IS long [and now super-long with my responses added] but I am biting and chewing this ask I am biting everything it has to say I love this ask I have things to say]

But yes responding to this first chunk! First THANK YOU second I loved writing just the inherent comedy of each chapter being like "[Scene 1] Ritsu spitting blood: I have to save my brother. He's dying. [Scene 2] *Happy domestic montage of Mob petting a kitten and maybe drinking some hot chocolate*" It was a great way to keep some emotional balance in each chapter and also. Funny.

I was crawling the wallllls getting to the makeshift reveal. I think it was about 5 years between coming up with it and getting to the reveal. So I just had to bite my tongue and dodge any suspicion in Makeshift's direction leveraged in the ABoT discord (ABoT discord! BTW! If you want)

I ended up making this to channel the energy somewhere

[Rest of ask under the cut!]

i was nervous for a hot second early on (around when reigen first takes mob in) that it was gonna be the kind of story that would get frustrating because "oh if the characters literally just told each other anything it would all be fine" but i didn't end up feeling that way at all? like yeah a lot of the plot relies on characters not knowing things and technically a lot could have been solved if idk all the characters decided to meet up and sit in a circle to politely explain everything to each other but it never feels like that should happen. even besides them all generally having reasons for lying or not explaining things or not talking to each other it's like. all their decisions feel very natural even when they're bad or unreasonable, and also crucially when the characters do learn things or w/e it usually doesn't fix things (ie when reigen learns mob's real identity and tells mob the truth and it kind of fixes some problems but also adds a host of new ones). in general despite it being a story that hinges on all the characters making bad decisions it rarely gets aggravating bc all the choices they make are understandable and make sense for them -- it doesn't feel like anything is happening simply because the plot demands it. everything is constantly getting worse but that's because the characters are making it worse it's not just Happening. and then the characters have to confront and deal with the consequences of all their actions and learn from them and it's very satisfying

YEAH!!! YEAH YOU GET IT!!!!!!

It is VERY important to me that the story in ABoT is character-driven. There should virtually be no "it happened because the plot demanded it." If it happened, it happened because a character's choice caused it. And if a character made a choice, it was due to their own motivations and not because the plot demanded it.

So, YES, there is this scenario where so much of what is happening comes as the result of each character having, at most, a 20% understanding of what's going on. But the withholding of information, CRITICALLY, cannot be because of Idiot Plot reasons.

Reigen "could" just ring up the Kageyama's and send Mob home, cutting short the first like 2/3 of his and Mob's arc. But he doesn't. And not because he's an idiot. He tried. Mob freaked out. And that was a good enough reason to just delay this until tomorrow, surely. But we watch as Reigen gets to experience was feels like genuine accomplishment, genuine joy, genuine meaning, by helping this kid experience life again. From the very start that's what Reigen wanted--to feel like he mattered. At the beginning this is what drives him to take up the Tetsugami case, despite knowing it can get him killed. (Because maybe Reigen can do something, this time. It's not just another doomed marriage or unsolvable missing person. Maybe he can make a difference. Maybe he can matter.)

And it manifests in what looks like heroics, but in the case with Mob, it drives Reigen to stall... more and more. He knows on some fundamental level it's wrong to be keeping Mob this long, but he can justify it in how this IS what Mob wanted.

And the same extends to the other characters... Tetsuo doesn't tell Reigen about Shigeo Kageyama's link to the Mogami case because he can't bear to admit HE was probably Shigeo's captor. Mob keeps secrets about Mogami because Mob knows he "killed" Reigen's "friend." Ritsu withholds information because it's the only power he has, and giving up information allows other people to stop him. Gimcrack and Slipshod keep quiet about Mob's location because their free lunch would end if they told.

And when these characters make bad decisions instead, it is CRITICALLY important to me that those decisions were the organic result of that character's complexes, goals, misunderstandings, and absent information. It's a train wreck and God Dammit I do everything in my power to ensure each character is their own conductor.

and the Themes. okay first of all i am a huge fan of stories that are like "no, heroic sacrifices are Not the answer, please stay alive so you can actually get better and fix your mistakes and be there for the people you care about", so obviously i adored that. i loved reigen confronting ritsu about this and urging him to stay alive, and i'm also obsessed with how reigen immediately Does Not Take His Own Advice. reigen's self-sacrifice plan makes a lot of sense with his character and given the circumstances it's definitely understandable why he and teru would be willing, however reluctantly, to resort to that, but of course it's not that actual solution because that's the whole point. (shout out to mogami being the one to save him. congrats on accidentally doing one (1) good thing.) reigen, ritsu, mob irt to being imprisoned rather than death -- none of them can just sacrifice themselves and expect that to fix everything and everyone to be fine without them, because that's not how this works. (also i can't wait to see ritsu inevitably be pissed at reigen about him trying to do exactly what he talked ritsu out of and reigen having no excuse except "yes i know, i am a hypocrite, please do as i say not as i do.") the story is dark but it's also so full of hope -- you can live, you can heal, you can move forward from all of this, no matter what you've done or what's happened to you.

YES!!! ANOTHER RESOUNDING YES!!!!

I've talked in the ABoT discord about how Reigen's sacrifice didn't work because it couldn't work. Because, if Reigen intentionally killed himself in order to end Mogami too, and Mob was saved and went home, then that means you DO save what you care about by sacrificing yourself. Which would be fine in other stories, but not this one.

ABoT's message has pretty loudly been "you don't save things by sacrificing yourself. you save them by living long enough to fix what you've broken." And even when Reigen is the one SAYING this to Ritsu... he doesn't believe it for himself. And he does not get to get away with not believing it for himself.

In earlier planning stages of the Reigen sacrifice scene, my plan was to have Reigen's knife slip before he could slice his throat (palms sweaty, grip slipped, parallel to what happened in the struggle-for-the-knife in the original chapter 8 Reigen-vs-Tetsugami scene).

But I thought about that and I said "No, actually." If Reigen fails because his palm slips, that suggests this COULD have succeeded, and Reigen just botched it is all.

So instead, the scorching fire around them (the blaze Reigen set) has dehydrated him to the point that his sweating has stopped. He is salty dusty skin and dry lips and his grip on the knife handle is perfect (anti-parallel to the first struggle for the knife scene). His execution is perfect. Reigen sacrifices himself perfectly.

...And then it's Mogami, who is well-practiced at controlling a maimed possessed body, who snatches back control and cauterizes the wound shut. Mogami (the antagonist of this story) cannot be defeated by self-sacrifice.

There is no "if only Reigen did it right" ambiguity. There is an absolute statement about where the themes stand.

(And yes, I'm sure Ritsu will have only positive emotions about what Reigen tried to do once this is made clear to him. :))

one of the other themes i found most interesting was the theme of lies and people trying to act like something they're not, and how that factors in to all the characters' stories. of course mogami is right there (and the parallels between him and reigen in how they both lie to mob for different reasons are super interesting) but i was particularly thinking a lot about reigen, teru, and ritsu and the different sorts of false lives they live -- reigen the con man playing the part of the confident, powerful psychic, constantly lying about his abilities and his accomplishments; teru keeping up the appearance of being totally in control and untouchable, surrounding himself with friends he can't stand and a girlfriend he doesn't care about; ritsu trying to maintain his reputation as the perfect, model student and constructing increasingly elaborate lies to convince his parents that he's doing fine.

i was thinking especially abt the parallels between reigen and teru -- their identities as liars are both emphasized, literally having teru saying "i was lying. i lied to you. i'm a liar" and reigen saying "i lied to you. i've been lying the whole time. i'm a liar" in the same chapter. both of them have grown accustomed to being alone and having a life that's more an expertly crafted facade than anything with substance, but both find in their respective kageyama brothers someone who they genuinely care about -- and they both doom these relationships from the beginning because they can't let go of the facade they're used to keeping up and their desire to feel important/superior. teru continues to be the same smug, uncaring asshole he's designed himself to be even after he starts to see ritsu as a friend, and because of this ritsu remains antagonistic towards and distrusting of him; reigen pretends to be the "21st century's greatest psychic" with mob even when he's starting to care about mob and want him as a permanent fixture in his life, causing things to fall apart when he reveals the truth. they both say the right things to point mob/ritsu in the right direction, but the way they act does the opposite: teru tells ritsu the dangers of what he's doing and reigen tells mob that they should call his family or the police, but at the end of the day, no matter their good intentions, teru likes feeling superior to ritsu and reigen likes having mob depend on him, and so they're not actually going to do anything that would upset that balance. (and, of course, they reassure themselves with the knowledge that it's not their fault, ritsu and mob just won't listen to them! which isn't technically untrue, but nonetheless frames the situation in a way that ignores their own role in it.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaa honestly I don't even think I have anything to add here because your analysis is already so 🤌🤌🤌. They are Liars they are Liars living through a Mask they are Liars who Say one thing and Do another they are Liars who convince themselves this Lie is fine.

all the characters are so good but my favorite has to be ritsu his whole storyline is fantastic. from the start i was enjoying the fic a lot but it was when it started to really get into ritsu's story and his whole deal that i started being like "oh yeah this is the good shit." seeing him go further and further down his self-destructive spiral, constantly digging himself deeper as he hurts himself and the people around him more and more, is so fascinating and painful. and then seeing him get better and start actually wanting to live as he talks to reigen and later teru! and then in the confrontation with mogami when he decides once and for all that he wants to live and remember and try to find a way to fix his mistakes rather than forgetting them or giving in to them! just. he is thirteen years old and he just has all this rage and grief that he's been holding onto and repressing for so long and he finally gets the chance to do something with it, something he can do to find his brother at the low low price of bleeding himself dry, and so he throws himself into that, tearing himself to pieces and not caring who else gets hurt in the process, until he reaches rock bottom, what should be the point of no return -- but it isn't, because teru saves him, because reigen convinces him to try to stay alive, because mob is waiting for him, because he has people who care about him and he's just a desperate, hurting kid and no matter how badly he's fucked up he can still come back from it. just Such a compelling and painful and beautiful character arc

Thank you for stating exactly the reason I loved writing Ritsu's arc so much 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭🥺❤️

When I was about 13, I got really into Naruto and I really liked Sasuke's character. Even seeing him now makes some inner part of me point and go "It's Sasuke!" Brooding, stoic, over-achieving, entrenched in family trauma, is swayed over to the darkside because of the rage and grief he's been sitting on.

And because it's Ninja Fantasy World, Sasuke gets to do this and be really cool the whole time.

Ritsu is... actually just a 13-year-old, with psychic powers which he didn't even want after his brother vanished. He IS smart and he IS a model student and he IS powerful but... he's scared. He's scared, and he's 13. He NEEDS to be smarter than everyone (he's not, and he knows this, and it's scary) and more powerful than everyone (he's not, he knows, he's scared), because he knows that anyone with power over him can control him. And he's at his wit's end being controlled.

So he needs to be COMPLETELY in control and have COMPLETE power. And every instance that proves to him he's actually weak, actually clueless, actually being taken advantage of drives him to panic.

And he finds antagonism on all sides... Teru who loves to pick apart and mock Ritsu for every weakness he has. The spirit horde who eat him within an inch of his life. Isa trying to shut him down. His parents trying to control him.

No one is helping him with his grief... No one is finding his brother... No one is saving him... He does not want to keep living like this. And "no longer living" isn't even an option with how heavily his parents rely on him.

So what does he do. He's so alone. He doesn't have a single soul on his side. Every day is torment. ...And then he has this opportunity that shows up like "if you hurt yourself real bad, kill yourself doing it maybe, you can solve the very thing that ruined your life"

So of course he does it. He grabs onto it like a hot stove or a live wire because he's been wanting to hurt himself, and now he can do it in pursuit of the very thing which will save his brother and fix everything. The risk of dying isn't even a risk. It's an escape. He can do this and he can BECOME more powerful and he can GAIN control and he can USE and MANIPULATE whoever he wants (namely the people who've proven again and again they'll hold him down and force obedience out of him).

Of course he spirals. Of course he hurts people...

And then he finds rock-bottom. Teru chews him out and abandons him. Ritsu flips on Gimcrack and exorcises him out of paranoia (Teru turned on him, Gimcrack probably betrayed him too.) He NEARLY kills Reigen under that same absolute fit of paranoia and fear. ...And then he finds his brother. His brother. Alive.

And grabbing his brother shreds his hand. It does not fix him. It does not save him. It maims him.

And now Ritsu is nothing. Not powerful. Not in control. Not certain. He's someone who just hurts people. He's someone who destroys. He drives everyone away and they're RIGHT to leave him because of how horrible he's been. He can't save his brother, and his brother won't save him. ...So Ritsu wanders back to Reigen. The only person who seems to have a semblance of direction in this whole thing. Broken and beaten, Ritsu joins Reigen because he does not know what else to do.

But there is an up from rock-bottom. As much as Reigen and Ritsu are just The Worst to each other, it's actually that childishness in Reigen that starts to work on Ritsu... This is not a typical adult, using adult-speak and adult-authority to make Ritsu comply. Ritsu can't even fall into his typical masked-up behavior against an adult because Reigen is a fucking nuisance and an irritant and Ritsu, for all his "maturity", riles easily.

This is... really just Some Fucking Guy. A loser, at best. But it's someone Ritsu's brother cared about, and who Ritsu knows gave kindness to Mob where Ritsu couldn't. And it's someone who isn't forcing Ritsu to do anything. Reigen is, in fact, letting Ritsu make these decisions to change on his own. Teru comes back with an apology. Ritsu is staring at the chance to do better, and the chance for some future that doesn't involve killing himself.

And he gets to make that decision against Mogami.

And--here's the thing--Mogami was WITH Ritsu for so much of Ritsu's spiral. He knows what sort of kid Ritsu is. So he "knows" Ritsu will accept what Mogami has to offer...

But when "makeshift" vanished was exactly when Mogami got Mob back, aka exactly when Ritsu went to Reigen. Mogami did not get to see Ritsu's healing. So he got to be blindsided by Ritsu's ultimate decision.

and ritsu's dynamic with teru is just. so good i adored every single scene they had together. first of all they are so fucking funny. they're just these two psychic middle schoolers who both suck so bad and just cannot stop trying to murder each other on the soccer field and i love that for them. ritsu's terrible decision-making reaches new heights every day and teru's just standing there watching him and being right about everything in the most annoying way possible. literally the worsties ever <3

I have, consistently, referred to them as "the two worst middle schoolers ever". Like "you're a horde ghost and you're stuck doing the bidding of the two worst middle schoolers ever."

With huge consistency, the scenes I find funniest end up being Ritsu Teru scenes. Because they are, in fact, The Worst.

but more importantly on a serious note i am obsessed with the complicated mess that is their relationship and the way it and the reader's perception of it change as the story goes on. when they first meet things are seemingly pretty straightforward (mostly. i have thoughts which i will talk abt in a second): teru is the one causing the conflict between them by being shitty, and ritsu's just responding to it relatively reasonably. ritsu's the protagonist, the good guy, whereas teru is a morally gray asshole. them working together is a matter of necessity, with ritsu only going along with it because he needs teru's skill and power on his side and teru presumably having his own secret, self-serving motivations. standard stuff; we all know how this goes.

except then the story keeps going, and it gradually becomes apparent that things are far from this simple. it slowly becomes clear that despite teru's arrogance and callousness, he does have ethical standards and lines he won't cross -- whereas ritsu gets more and more unfettered as time goes on. it also gradually becomes obvious that teru does genuinely care about ritsu and see him as a friend (probably the closest thing to a genuine friend teru has), even if teru himself is pretty shitty at being a friend -- leading to the incredibly striking moment when ritsu himself realizes this, and his main takeaway is just that he has power over teru. by the time they have their second soccer field fight, teru has proven himself the more morally upstanding one, which is pretty wild considering the first thing we ever see him do is beat the shit out of a near-defenseless thirteen-year-old for annoying him. of course, he still isn't supposed to be fully in the right -- one thing i really appreciated about the story in general was that the conflicts between characters are rarely as simple as "this character was Right and this one was Wrong," but rather a matter of all the characters making mistakes at one time or another and then having to deal with the consequences and make amends. ritsu and teru's relationship is a prime example of that with how "ritsu made his own decisions and those decisions were Very Bad" and "teru treated ritsu poorly and never actually did the work to make himself someone ritsu could actually trust or would want to listen to" are facts that coexist and both get addressed. the second fight is a masterpiece of a scene in basically every way, but one of my favorite aspects is how teru is desperately trying to reach out to ritsu but is hit with the truth that it's too late for that, that he should have been doing this the whole time, that all this is partially his fault. and in this scene, he fully accepts that, gives in and decides that ritsu is right: it's too late to make amends, it's too late to save ritsu. but it doesn't end there, because this is not a story in which things are simply unfixable, and so instead teru comes back, decides to make the hard choice and try to fix things instead of turning his back on ritsu for good. during the fight, teru says he wants to help ritsu, to sacrifice for him, and ritsu scoffs at him and rejects the idea -- but then teru actually does it. he puts his money where his mouth is and reaches out to ritsu and offers his own psychic energy to save ritsu's life, along with apologizing to him and offering his help to find mob. like i dunno what else to say that's not just summarizing every scene they have together but god i love their dynamic and its arc. i really hope they manage to become actual friends now because god knows they could both use more (read: any) of those. the text exchange they have at the end of the most recent chapter is delightful i love that they bond by insulting reigen i think that's great for them.

Yes yes yes yesssss. It definitely felt like the most ambitious thing early on in ABoT, where I had early-story Ritsu and early-story Teru, and I wanted, somehow, to pull off "they basically swap moral grounds by their second fight."

It's easy enough to just SAY "Ritsu spirals and does progressively worse things. Teru starts to take objection to these more and more until he's the one who thinks this whole thing has gone too far."

And, harkening back to earlier, this kind of plotline has to be deeply rooted in their characters. There is no "Ritsu becomes evil just because" and there is no "Teru becomes good just because."

So they needed to be consistent in their own characters, but evolving under the pressures of the story. Ritsu I talked a lot about early up, how deeply he fears not having control, how much repressed frustration he has over the ways everyone in his life has failed him. And he's never allowed to speak up, or god forbid lash out, because it is his JOB to be the surviving child. Perfect, mature, composed.

Ritsu takes this WILD leap into something insanely dangerous which he has no understanding of, nor power in. Teru IS his first big painful wake-up call with how summarily Teru curbstomps him. Ritsu goes home desperately wanting to quit.

He pushes through it, afraid and knowing he has so little power and control. Then there's Teru, exacerbating this. Because he loves to point out how weak, clueless, and not in control Ritsu is. He jabs and he teases and he chews Ritsu out and he knocks Ritsu down because Teru cannot pass up the chance to prove he's better.

So... of course Ritsu eats up the first opportunity he's given to improve his power over Teru. Gimcrack offers to train him--Gimcrack who's far more supportive of Ritsu than Teru ever is--so of course Ritsu accepts. Every single tick of power in Ritsu's direction is security. And Ritsu is consistently rewarded. He learns to manipulate, and it rewards him with control. He pushes Teru away and it rewards him with independence. He lets the whole horde possess him and it rewards him with power.

And then there's Mezato in all this, threatening to rip away his control. But he can beat that out easily with possession. And if he possesses people, why should he care? Possession feels nice, to him. That's not even a fraction of a fraction of the pain he's been through. He can do this to other people, because possession is POWER.

And, ahhh, possession was such a great thematic vehicle to spin the Ritsu-Teru face-heel-heel-face turn around.

The first cracks we see in Teru's demeanor are all, subtly or not, around possession. When Ritsu almost blasts the possessed woman (Ritsu, panicked, uncertain how to handle things) Teru tackles him and screams at him. (Killing a possessed woman? Teru oh Teru why might that terrify you?)

So Teru DOES have morals. He does have limits. But of course, his first exercise of this is tackling and SCREAMING at Ritsu for fucking up. Just another tick mark in Ritsu's check list of feeling powerless and antagonized.

And the next time, when Ritsu offhandedly mentions he's had his parents possessed for the night while he and Teru were at the meat warehouse... well it's out of focus, since Ritsu is our POV character and he doesn't notice, but Teru freezes. Teru questions this. Teru, instead of letting Gimcrack phase him through the wall (and he was resistant to letting Gimcrack touch him to phase him in in the first place) Teru instead blasts a hole through the warehouse wall.

But... Teru has a plan. When Isa catches Ritsu in the call center, Teru confiscates Ritsu's spirits and (behind his back) blackmails them into never accepting a command from Ritsu to possess someone. (Teru is also a control-freak, and rather than try to talk to Ritsu directly about not possessing people, he just uses manipulation and threats to make it happen).

So now, Teru can relax, surely :). He invites Ritsu along for the movie. He's mocking and insufferable and cruel to Ritsu but, hey :), that's just Teru proving his place in the hierarchy. He... actually does want Ritsu there. He actually does help Ritsu (cauterizes his wound without asking). (It's still power-plays. Still power-plays all the way down which Ritsu hates.)

And Teru... incorrectly... starts to entertain this idea that Ritsu also thinks what they have is friendship. And after the ice cream thing, is when Ritsu leans into Gimcrack's offer to learn how to start being manipulative like Teru is.

So Teru notices NOTHING is wrong for a long time, because now Ritsu is faking it. He doesn't notice until it is much too late. And, frankly, it was ALWAYS too late for Teru to take the moral high road. And some part of Teru realizes this because what he sees in Ritsu, he realizes, is what it looked like to watch Teru from the outside. Teru was ALLOWED to be manipulative and horrible because Teru, himself, always knew he would stop before crossing a real moral line. (Not that Ritsu knew this.) And now he's staring at Ritsu, a true threat who won't listen to reason and who CANNOT reliably be expected to back down before a line is crossed.

And... to THROW this in Teru's face in the FORM of Ritsu letting every spirit from his own horde possess Ritsu during the fight, giving Ritsu the upper hand.

I always knew, for this second fight, the tables would need to be a lot more evenly matched, with Ritsu coming out ahead more often than not. But I also don't like "some character is morally questionable now, and for some reason that's made them stronger than the master character who pulverized them earlier."

But POSSESSION. The motif that all this conflict is hanging upon, used as a boon on Ritsu's side to smash Teru into the ground, to physically and MENTALLY rattle him to the point that he's lagging on Ritsu's attacks and incapable of subduing Ritsu until Teru puts aside his psychic powers all together...

AND JUST... Teru all the while being forced to realize he IS not blameless in this. That every horrible, callous remark he made to Ritsu was not directing Ritsu to the right path or proving himself cool and powerful. They were all instead only cementing Ritsu's hatred of him.

And Teru does not want to accept this at first. He wants to think he did the right thing, ultimately, and it was RITSU who rejected him. And this is where the scene with Slipshod comes into play. Slipshod, who is shown again and again being good at pressing people's buttons. Slipshod is the one bully bigger than Teru in all this, and behind his dumb demeanor is he really really good at knowing how to get a rise out of people. He does it to Reigen while possessing Mezato. He does it to Ritsu while possessing his mother. And he does it to Teru, for fun, because he loves to rub Teru's face in the mess he created.

Which, on the plus side, was the wake up call Teru needed to recognize how consistently horrible HE had been. How much of Ritsu's spiral (and now, imminent death) happened because Teru gleefully pushed him toward it.

Teru's one and only friend.

After Teru swore off friends and loved ones, because they can be used to hurt him.

So it is a big moment, and a big decision Teru makes, when he chooses Ritsu. chooses apologizing. chooses making himself vulnerable (VERY LITERALLY, with how the power transfusion drains Teru to nothing). Teru chooses to care.

And ultimately, it's not even that Teru went from the bad moralless one, to the moral one. He always had these morals. He had these uncrossable lines since day one. But he hid it behind his horrible antagonistic demeanor and the cracks did not come through until he realized he lost control of Ritsu. Teru's ACTUAL heel-face turn comes in him realizing how awful his demeanor was and making amends for that.

i'm actually not done talking about them though because it's finally time for that tangent about teru and ritsu's first fight on the soccer field now because i just reread it while writing that last section and it's so interesting actually. like okay, like i said before it does set teru up as the problem -- in that scene teru is very much the aggressor; he's being a complete asshole for no goddamn reason, with absolutely no compunctions about beating the crap out of some random kid, and ritsu is the scrappy underdog determined to fight back despite not really having the means to. but then there are the moments hinting at more complexity to teru -- him literally stopping the fight to teach ritsu to use his barrier, giving ritsu the makeup after the fight, and of course his decision to spare ritsu in the end. and then on ritsu's side, he almost actually kills teru -- the only reason he doesn't is that teru manages to break free. (awful awful au idea: ritsu actually does kill teru here. would that be fucked up or what) something that stood out to me when rereading it is that despite teru repeatedly saying he'll kill ritsu, and ritsu's internal monologue being very convinced that he's in mortal danger, teru's reaction to ritsu actually almost killing him -- "you really are trying to kill me. we're done", etc -- seems to imply that his threats were more him just talking a big game, expecting ritsu to give in and surrender eventually, and he didn't actually intend to kill him until ritsu gave him an actual reason to. especially interesting to me is the bit where teru asks ritsu if he really meant to kill him, because ritsu's narration and teru's actual actions are kind of at odds -- ritsu tells teru he meant to do it because he thinks him scaring teru is what's making teru hesitate, and that he needs to make teru think he's dangerous in order to get him to leave ritsu alone, but teru's actual response is the opposite, attacking ritsu more fiercely because "there's no reason for [him] to hold back". in general the scene very cleverly sets up the core difference between them: teru is pretty awful but does have firm moral standards, whereas ritsu is desperate and willing to do just about anything if he thinks it's the only option. also the parallels and contrasts with the second soccer field scene are excellent -- the role reversal with the strangling but also how when ritsu does it both the initial act of starting to strangle teru and the fact that he doesn't end up killing teru are both unintentional on ritsu's part, but when teru does it it's a very intentional choice both to do it and to not go through with it; "we're done" said by teru the first time when he's preparing to kill ritsu and then the second time after he's decided not to. have i mentioned that this fic is good because this fic is good. i'm running out of ways to say that

YES!!!!!! ANOTHER RESOUNDING YESYES YES.

I have slightly pre-emptively answered this question by mentioning it above but Teru demonstrates this hypocritical "rules for thee but not for me" because, internally, Teru knows HE will always stop before the line is crossed.

BUT RITSU DOES NOT KNOW THIS. THERE IS NO REASONABLE EXPECTATION FOR RITSU TO KNOW THIS.

So Ritsu, and we the audience, do NOT know this during the first soccer fight. Teru is going to kill Ritsu is a very reasonable conclusion to draw from the way Teru goes all out on Ritsu. Ritsu is terrified. Out of his depth. He's panicking. This kid is going to kill me and he has every reason to believe it.

We don't know, unless (like you) you look at the smaller details, that Teru is not intending to kill Ritsu. He's talking big. He's trying to force submission in Ritsu. He's not trying to kill.

But Ritsu does go for the kill. Because it is the single break he gets and it's perhaps his only chance to survive (he thinks), and he does, IN FACT go for the kill.

Teru breaks free and he does... even give Ritsu the chance to clarify if that was an intended kill-shot. Teru is giving the chance for Ritsu to essentially say "Sorry, accident, don't escalate to trying to kill me." But Ritsu misreads the room, like you point out, and this is when Teru gets serious.

Strangulation, in the first fight and in the last fight. Exactly as you say. Accidental, by Ritsu, the first time, and accidental in letting Teru live. Intentional, by Teru, the second time, and intentional in letting Ritsu live.

"WE'RE DONE" ECHOED. TWICE. In their first fight and their last. With entirely different meanings.

okay those were my big points but i also had a bunch of smaller thoughts so here's just. a list: - i just think it's really funny that teru saves ritsu by punching him in the chest with psychic power on not one but two occasions. literally their dynamic in a nutshell. (also. the way during the time at the mall ritsu responds by being like "did you cauterize me" really gets to me for some reason. he sounds so offended. like you can't just cauterize someone's wound maybe he liked bleeding all over the place you don't know!) (actually wait that thought is also very funny considering what happens with mogami and reigen later. you really can't just cauterize someone's wounds that's very rude. they worked hard to be that grievously injured) - okay so the burger scene. first of all generally a great scene second of all obviously it's a parallel to the scene with mob and the milk (reigen saying "have mine too" and all that) but also i love the parallels to the scene with isa in the coffee shop (also a great scene btw. have i mentioned this fic is good). they're both scenes in which ritsu has a loud emotional breakdown in a public restaurant (love that that happens twice. ritsu honey can you maybe not) with a major focus on ritsu's insistence on letting himself suffer and refusing any kindness he's shown, but they show ritsu at very different points in his story and have very different outcomes -- isa can't manage to get through to ritsu, but reigen can. ritsu refuses the croissant till the end, but he eats the burger. (sorry to add another side note but i love that that was a very serious sentence i just typed about a very emotional character arc.) also the symbolism in the fact that in the coffee shop scene, ritsu's explosion of psychic powers freezes and then spills his hot chocolate, rendering it undrinkable, but then in the burger scene when he blows up the ceiling the dust explicitly doesn't get on the food, so he can still eat it. good shit - i'm trying to avoid going through every single line or joke i liked one by one but i will say. the "this--" "reigen." "reigen" jokes were both incredibly funny on their own but the fact that they're like 30 chapters apart is what really kills me. the dedication. i saw the second one and was thinking "didn't that joke happen before. when was that. wait was that literally all the way back with tetsuo". countless plot events and several irl years may pass but reigen will never catch a break - the "FUCK OFF" tag reigen made being the one that they exorcise mogami with. perfect - love that ritsu is indirectly responsible for teru's girlfriend breaking up with him (good for mei honestly. sure teru wasn't actually cheating but his ass deserved to get dumped) and i like to imagine that teru never lets this fact go. he's not particularly upset about the breakup but he WILL bring up that ritsu ruined his relationship at every possible opportunity purely to annoy him

I THINK YOU MAY PERHAPS BE THE FIRST PERSON TO RECOGNIZE THE DOUBLE-CAUTERIZATION, and the intentional joke in Ritsu, the first time, declaring "Don’t… perform psychic medical procedures on me without my permission, okay?!" Like sorry bud, this is not the last unauthorized psychic medical cauterization Teru's gonna perform on you.

But not every unauthorized medical cauterization can be a win. Turns out when Mogami does it it's kinda mean >:(. But also necessary, for a not-dead Reigen, so actually thanks Mogami.

ABSOLUTELY THE "HAVE MINE TOO" INTENTIONAL PARALLEL BETWEEN THE MILK SCENE AND THE BURGER SCENE. I'm always glad when someone notices the repeat phrasing that ends both those scenes.

And aaghhhhh I could write a whole other essay about the symbolism that food plays with Ritsu's plotline, but in the smallest nutshell how it tends to represent someone reaching out with care and how often Ritsu rejects it. One public restaurant psychic outburst rendered the offered food unconsumable and the other one intentionally points out the way the food (burger) avoided the destruction :')

THANK YOU YES. "This--" "Reigen." "Reigen." as a repeat joke tickles me so much. Just Some Guy energy. Could've played the most pivotal role all night but he'll still end up somewhere next day where someone needs to figure out who he is. Reigen is here too, btw. His name is Reigen, btw.

Fuck Off tag was delightful... It started as an inside joke for a very early comic that @sandflakedraws drew (and then later redrew), of the (chapter 5 or 6) Reigen Tetsugami confrontation. The ineffective tag Reigen sticks to Tetsugami's cheek has, in katakana, "fuck off" written on it. Hilarious enough joke for me, years later, to incorporate it into the story.

Re: the girlfriend thing. I've joked before "if I had a nickel every time evil spirit possession was mistaken for an affair in ABoT I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice." But yeah, Ritsu, you asshole. You cost your bro his girlfriend.

i could just keep going but at this rate i'm going to be going back through the entire fic and just talking about every single scene so i should probably stop before this gets any longer. basically what i wanna say though is that the fic was very good, thank you for writing it, it has given me brainworms. once again i am so sorry for the length of this ask

THANK YOU!!! I think I just spent like 2 hours writing this response because, as you can see, I REALLY LIKE talking about this stuff haha!!

#ABoT #A Breach of Trust #it's a super duper long post under the cut haha I had a lot to say. as did the ask #thank you i love this

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jon-snows-man-bun · 1 month ago

Text

By Turns Aside

These delights thy mind may move

Masterlist

Summary: Azriel takes care of business, alone in his room.

Takes place during chapter fourteen.

Rating: E (for Everybody’s naked in Azriel’s imagination)

Warnings: Explicit smut. Male masturbation, choking, forced-but-consensual oral sex (he's into it), very brief mention of his childhood abuse, implied voyeurism (ie using his shadows to be a peeping tom), misogynistic language, masochism, Azriel is a loser and a perv. Benign sexism and white knighting, then non-benign sexism and degradation. The verb tenses don't make sense because I got confused - please just accept this, the idea of fixing it gives me a headache.

A/N: Features Azriel x Mor (mentioned briefly), Elain, Aisling (OC), and Eris. This isn’t about the female characters - they’re a vehicle for him to get dommed by Eris.

By request, the scene I cut because it's 2.4k of Azriel jerking off to fantasies that make him feel dirty and ashamed (he loves it, the little rat boy). I'm actually sad I had to cut it, it's got all the Sauce: his character motifs, the major symbols of the story, and a bit of plot development. You don't need to read By Turns to understand this, but it does feature an OC briefly. Not tagging this with That Ship because it isn't, really - it's implied his understanding of her is pretty wrong.

Title is from "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe.

Azriel had drunk slightly too much wine, he decided as he opened the door to his chambers. It was that frustrating conversation with Aisling – he’d drunk the first glass to draw her out, the second at her behest, then the third and fourth because the things she said left him with such a sour taste and a worse feeling.

His room in the moonstone palace wasn’t that large, but it was silent, with not too many windows. He found some of the rooms unsettling here, the way they were almost totally open. The palace was warded, of course, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of exposure enough to sleep soundly. As he closed the dark curtains against most of the moonlight, leaving the barest sliver peeking through, he was pleased to feel tipsy enough that he was sure he’d fall straight to sleep – a rarity, sometimes.

No. Not straight to sleep. Azriel laid back on his bed, tossing his shirt and trousers to the floor carelessly.

It had been too long since he’d made time for this, too long since he’d had a free night to himself to seek a female out. His eye had been drawn by Aisling’s body earlier, a lapse he could never, ever let either her or Rhys know about – he needed to be focused, to be sharp. He’d just take his cock into his own hands and do it himself if it gave him the clarity he needed to support Rhys.

He just needed something to think of.

Azriel’s hands fisted his flaccid cock slowly, casting his mind about. He could hear his shadows whispering to him – let us show you someone, someone tasty, someone warm and wet and willing – but he didn’t attune himself.

He thought of hands, delicate, soft, manicured hands. Whose? The scent of jasmine and honey, wrapping around him like silk; he knew the scent so well now, he could imagine it perfectly. Soft hands, gripping his hardening cock like he was now.

Elain would hold him firmly, starting at the base and dragging slowly up, soft little hand squeezing so tightly that it was edged in pain just the way he liked.

No – Elain wouldn’t know how to give pleasure and pain at the same time, even a hint of it. She wouldn’t like that. She’d need sweetness and softness, to be handled gently.

Azriel could do that; he’d be soft for her, careful for her. He knew how to work bodies to madness and bliss, he could handle her like the spun glass she was. He’d take his time with pulling her dress off; she’d be shy, so shy… He’d run his hands along her like she was a frightened horse, gentling her. He’d strip her as she trembled and blushed, revealing her gorgeous, full tits, her pouty lips begging to be kissed. He’d stand behind her, his hands on her waist –

He couldn’t take Elain from behind like that, like a dog. She’d want to look in his face, and Azriel would want to see her beautiful, liquid eyes as he slid his cock home for the first time. Her facing away from him, facing the wall, felt too much like rejection, too much like the returned necklace sitting on a pile of gifts. He wanted to be face to face.

Better some nameless, faceless female; someone from his past that he’d taken rough and eager outside Rita’s or behind one of the taverns in Illyria. Someone who’d put themselves on their hands and knees for him, arching their back, presenting their wet little pussy like the prize that it was.

She wriggled impatiently as Azriel fisted his cock harder, admiring her dripping cunt. She was eager, wet for him; he gave her a slap on the ass as she made another impatient noise.

“You’ll get what I give you,” Azriel said lowly, amused; he was hard as stone, but his instinct to torture never really left him entirely. He brought it with him everywhere, and he wanted to torture this female, make her want his cock so desperately that she’d tell him anything he wanted to hear.

“Get on with it, then,” she demanded, tossing long black hair over her shoulder and narrowing dark blue eyes at him.

What? No, he scolded himself. Aisling? Get a grip. It was because of her dress today, maybe, the way she was lying there on the chaise. The neckline of the dress was low, and it was all made of black lace like a corset, just cupping her tits. It was so low cut he could have just dragged it down an inch, a fraction, with one finger and been rewarded with her nipples. They would have been hard as diamonds in the cold air, and he’d lean forward to lick one, sucking it into his mouth, and she’d toss her head back and raise her tits towards him, begging for more.

His hand started working again.

“Please fuck me like a whore,” she’d say, pulling the slit of her dress to the side for him. He already knew she didn’t wear panties, so her bare cunt would be there, ready for him. He liked her better like this, no demands, no glares. “Eris was so prude, so cold. He left me so wanting. I need you to show me what I could have had, how a slut from the Hewn City deserves to be fucked. I want to think about you every time I have to swallow his cock, his thick hard cock, it’s so big I choke on it-”

Cauldron. Azriel grunted, running a hand over his face in frustration, shaking loose that thought. Elain, he decided.

Elain would wear panties. Something cute and pastel, with little bows on, like a present just for him. They wouldn’t be the skimpy, sultry red scraps that Mor would favour, but something big, something girlish. They’d cover her pussy and the round curve of her ass so well, so he’d give them a tug, pulling them up into her cleft.

Her wet little slit would hug them, and she would be so sensitive that she’d moan, already needy and desperate for him. Her human man wouldn’t have done anything for her, she needed him to guide her through it, how it should be. Her first real fuck, from a male, not a man. He’d treat her so well she’d be dazzled, any paltry, poor memories of Lord Fucking Whatever the Second would be cleansed from her mind.

Elain laid back on his bed, wide doe eyes looking at him pleadingly, the sweetest blush over her beautiful face. She worried her lip between her teeth, too shy to ask for what she wanted, but too needy to not ask at all. She needed him, needed him to touch her and soothe this fire only he had awoken in her.

Azriel is merciful. He’ll give it to her. He peeled off her panties slowly, eyes practically rolling back in his head at the luscious scent of her pussy as it’s revealed. Glossy, full, ripe – ready for him. Both of them are drooling. He wanted to taste her so badly, he’s been fantasising about it for months, even through the agonising gut-wound of rejection. That doesn’t matter now, he can give her what she needs even if she doesn’t realise it.

Azriel squeezed his cock at the thought. Spitting into his palm, he worked his cock hard, fully caught in the fantasy now. The room is spinning still so he closed his eyes, tipping his head back.

A hand, broad and hot, grabbing the back of his neck and squeezing.

Azriel’s cock pulsed in his grip, weeping clear precum. He used his thumb to smear it over the head, grunting at the feel, the slick sensation.

“You think you get to look her in the eyes?” A voice snarled in his ear, and the voice was aristocratic and smooth with the accent of Autumn –

What the fuck? Azriel’s hand stilled, his rhythm broken as his mind scrambled to wrap itself around what he’d just done.

No. It wasn’t like that, he decided. Eris, the vicious, sneering snake, was there to hurt him, to give him the sting of physical ache Aisling and Elain and Mor couldn’t. He was the counterweight, the ugliness to balance out the divine beauty of getting lost in cunt. Pleasure felt better when it had an edge, a dark side; he knew this. It went like this:

“You think you get to look her in the eyes?” Eris snarled in his ear, both hands wrapping around his neck and squeezing so all his breath caught in his throat, his heart hammering hard and his head filling only with desperation to breathe – no thoughts, no memories. The female – was her hair black as a raven’s wing, or golden as sunlight on a doe’s coat? Azriel gave up deciding and focused on her pussy instead.

She arched her back on the bed, pinching and rolling her own nipples, skin flushing a lovely pink. Her pussy was glistening in the dim light, thighs parted and lips spread, so wet she was dripping on his mattress, enticing drops running down the full cheeks of her ass like tears. His mouth watered as Eris’ hot, elegant hands squeezed harder for a moment, and just as his brain emptied totally and his vision narrowed down at the edges to only the wet cunt in front of him, Eris released and the female’s legs snapped shut. Azriel groaned in relief and disappointment, agony and pleasure; he’d be strangled if he could look at that cunt again, walk that fine line one more time.

Azriel gasped, chest heaving as his hand squeezed, stroking faster. Precum and spit made his cock slick and sticky now, beading up at the top, dripping down the shaft like sap from a tree.

“Get on your knees and beg her for a taste,” Eris sneered, delivering a hard kick to the back of his legs that made him collapse, catching himself on his hands and knees on the end of the bed. He could practically taste the wet pussy in front of him so close the female could put her feet on his face if she wanted, kick him away like a stray cat twining about her ankles. “You think you deserve it?”

No. That was something his half-brother had said to him once, about a full plate of food before he pissed on it and laughed at him.

“Beg her,” Eris demanded. “She’s wet for you. Beg her nicely.” That was right, being told how wet cunt got for him. Females liked to be begged, liked to be flattered. Azriel liked it too.

“Please,” Azriel said, voice raw and rasping in his throat from being throttled by Eris. The blow to the back of his head made him lurch forward, a supplicant. All he could feel was pain and all he could smell was cunt.

“I said beg, not make a polite request,” Eris sneered. Azriel swallowed, throat burning and raw, furious at the thought of obeying Eris, but he had to do it. The female needed him, he needed her – he’d suffer to taste her.

“I need to taste your pussy. I need it. Let me show you what I can do, I can make you cum so hard you see stars, or you can ride my face, whatever you need,” Azriel swallowed a groan, head pressed against the female’s feet. He gave her toes a little kiss, chaste, so she knew he could be gentle; then he gave the arch of her foot a lascivious lick and laved her dainty toes with his tongue so she knew he could get sloppy, too. Whatever she wanted. He was her dog, her toy.

Her thighs fell open again and Eris grabbed him by his hair, twisting, pain prickling over his scalp. Eris pressed his face into the wet cunt, and Azriel groaned deep in his chest as he was ground into it, the female panting and keening like a bitch in heat as he got to work.

He worked her clit first, circling hard then licking broad strokes, figuring out what she liked as Eris held his head still. He ground his hips into the edge of the mattress, humping it, trying to relieve the ache. His cock was heavy with blood and throbbing, desperate.

Once he had her cunt leaking all over his chin, he slipped his tongue down, working it into the velvet of her inner walls. The female started writhing her hips against his face then, and Azriel fucked her with his tongue, darting back up to suck at her clit. He gave it the barest of bites and her back arched. She liked pain, too.

“She’s close,” Eris whispered into his ear, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. The same way he’d once whispered into Eris’ ear, the same way Eris had prickled. “Give her your fingers. Make her cum. Do it now.”

Azriel obeyed. The female was so wet he went straight for three, crooking them up and feeling her cunt bear down on them as she rubbed herself against his face. Forced into place, all he could do was drive his fingers in and out and suck on her clit as she tightened, shuddering, pussy fluttering –

His hand moved faster, balls tightening, so close to finishing the job –

Her back arched and she squirted, Azriel’s eyes rolling back in pleasure as her orgasm pulsed around his fingers. Eris’ hands slammed back around his throat and he couldn’t breathe, only take the evidence of her pleasure, and her hands came down to grab his hair and pull his mouth even harder against her cunt to ride it out as long as possible, and he couldn’t breathe –

Azriel grunted as he came, spilling all over himself, breathing hard. It was only when he worked the final spurt out of his cock that he finally stopped, wondering what the fuck he’d just thought of.

It was the wine, or some trick Aisling had played on him – she was in a pissy mood, she would have thought of something debauched like that just to torment him. His cum was sticky, pearly-white in the moonlight; groaning, he wiped his hand off on his sheets. His shadows were lazily swirling about the room now where they weren’t already settled, and he focused on them to soothe himself, to settle the unpleasant lurching in his stomach. What the fuck was that? He wasn’t drinking wine on an empty stomach again.

#by turns #my writing #azriel #acotar fanfiction #acotar fanfic #azriel fanfic #when being Eskimo brothers with your arch nemesis is the closest you’ll get to being inside him 💔😔

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apollosgiftofprophecy · 1 year ago

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What made you fall in love with Copollo and how can we angst this with Hypollo?

I had to marinate this in my head for a bit haha

First - What Made Me Love Copollo?

I don't know if I have the words for it, but I shall try! XD

First of all, I do love me some of that simple, satisfying ships that make you smile - ie, Percabeth - but -

But. But.

There's something about those toxic relationships that are so interesting.

And Copollo has an especially interesting dynamic - Commodus is the more toxic one, but Apollo's the one with all the power. Usually it's only one person with both those things but it's split between them (and note: I said Commodus was the more toxic one - Apollo was also toxic. he was enabling Commodus.)

So the dynamic is one reason. But I also just...love their story.

They relate to each other on a level rarely reached. They had a genuine relationship that was more than carnal, or even just affectionate. They loved each other, and I do think Commodus had just as much of an effect on Apollo as Daphne and Hyacinthus did.

I mean come on.

Apollo gets nervous around trees because of Daphne = Apollo doesn't like water because of Commodus.

Apollo describes Hyacinthus as perfect = Apollo has thought of Commodus as perfect.

It's all right there^^^^

And with Apollo, it's like he's caught in this "I can fix him" / "he can make me worse" mindset.

With Commodus, he's been seeking validation his whole life and clings to Apollo's when it's given to him - and his sanity spirals when he looses it.

They're that perfect mix of "match made in heaven" and "match made in hell". They would have worked but they also could not.

It's just. such a tragedy. which FITS because ya know, Greek Tragedy TM ;)

AND OF COURSE THEIR INTERACTIONS ARNUMNUMNUM!!!!!

How they're so very casual with each other in that flashback. Apollo's bouncing grapes off Commodus's nose for crying out loud THEY'RE IN LOVE YOUR HONOR-!

And then. In ToA. urhhhhhh it's so good. Commodus is That Ex with a picture of his ex on a dartboard. SERIOUSLY. and he THROWS KNIVES AT IT.

LIKE COME ON HOW MUCH MORE JILTED EX CAN YOU GET?

"dear heart", anybody? DEAR HEART? REMEMBER THAT?! I DO!!! LIVES RENT-FREE IN MY HEAD!!!!!

also the two innuendos in TDP and TTT are so good like come on Rick you know what you did there

and then. their final scene together. it's just. ARGHURHMMRM

Apollo reminisces on how he used to hold Commodus's hands with love. Commodus is so fucking eager to take a shot at him. Apollo screams him to death like omfg and the last thing - the last thing - Commodus hears is Apollo's pent-up heartbreak.

May I emphasize Apollo's pent-up heartbreak. HIS HEARTBREAK OVER THE LAST FEW MONTHS YES BUT ALSO HIS LIFETIME. WHICH MEANS COMMODUS IS LITERALLY GIVEN A FACE-FULL OF PROOF THAT APOLLO STILL CARED FOR HIM.

Two people in love, and their love going so wrong when one betrays the other - killing them! - and the other is suddenly hellbent on revenge?

It's all about that lovers to enemies, everybody. Enemies to lovers is good and all but what about loves to enemies.

It's so good armnumnum.

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I LOVE THEM OKAY I LOVE THESE BISEXUAL BITCHES MJHYJUFGH

inhale

exhale

i'm good now. ahem inspects ask angst it with Hyapollo now, eh?

Let's see here...

Well for one Commodus is 100% jealous of Hyacinthus. Like sorry I'm not moving from this hill I will die on this hill you will have to climb up this hill and drag me off it kicking and crying and screaming and clawing you. I'm not moving. crosses arms and sits down pouting

Meanwhile, in the Hyacinthus department, I think Hya would just...not really care? Or well, he'd care about how Apollo took the whole arc but he wouldn't be like "oh no he moved on :(" about it (Poly Apollo is canon y'all i don't make the rules!). more like "bitch you think I give a shit about you?" at Commodus. "YOU'RE NOT WORTH MY TIME!"

I also find it funny if it's this:

this hasn't really turned out as angst but the comedic potential is too good lmao XD

#the oracle speaks #my memes #copollo #hyapollo #apollo #commodus #hyacinthus #the trials of apollo #toa apollo #toa commodus #pjo apollo #pjo hyacinthus #toa hyacinthus #pjo commodus #trials of apollo

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nonbinarypirat · 1 year ago

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Ok, so I have few ideas about Kalego's evil cycle based on the knowledge we have about his mana dogs. It's clear his evil cycle is very violent. While I am sure that it was worse than normal due to a multitude of stressers that exemplified the problem, his whole house was fucked up. His curtains, his bed, his floor, couches. My man is going to need either a repaining spell or just replace everything. So yeah, its clear its exteremly bad

Since you loose control of yourself during it, I imagine it gets harder to control Cerberus thus letting them roam freely. But, espeically in this instance, they feel caged. They are trapped in a fairly small space with no place to roam and full of their master's rage with no outlet. We already know that without strong control and careful handling, the dogs will turn at the slightest provocation. Even at Kalego himself when they were first bonded to him. They bit and clawed at him mercilessly

So, it's possible that because his willpower is low during evil cylce plus having no target to take their fustrations out on, they try to take it out on Kalego. I'm sure Kalego could still fight without his mana dogs, but we have seen its his primary weapon. So it would be a fight for dominance, not mentioning that Kalego would be full of rage and frustration as well. It would be a back and forth anger fest but nothing really being fixed, unless the actual fighting becomes a sort of catharsis activity? but I think it would just anger him more because on top of the stress that led him to having an evil cycle in the first place, now Cerberus is acting up and he has to deal with that. Thus why it becomes SO destructive.

It could also be that the dogs become extra protective of their master causing it to bark and attack at anything percieved as a threat. An evil cycle, while the demon is at its strongest, is also when they are at their most vulnerable. Think about it, sure you can use strong attacks and even have new abilities (ie, Sabro's weapon ability) but it takes a lot out of them, phsyically, magically, and mentally. Your powers skyrocket but your control decreases by a fairly large margin (Azz almost attacking the Dorodoro brothers). The dogs could see it as their mission to protect Kalego at all costs.

They have beem bonded together for so long that maybe they won't turn on him specifically but anything around them. Going down this thought, maybe it's less of a protective thing and moreso that they have too much pent up energy and decide to trash the place. I mean, as someone who currently has a puppy in the house and a grown dog, trust me they will mess with shit just out of pure frustration. (Though my grown up doggie only does it sometines, he's well trained, my lovely boy.) Back on track, maybe it's as simple as they are out, have nothing to do, and just chew everything up. But since this is Iruma-kun, i don't know if that'll be the case. I want it to be "oh, silly puppies" but i think there's a strong possibility of it being the "we are going to fuck you up now master" route. But them fighting Kalego does make for a fun if messed up story lore.

Hopefully we will get insight into it later in the series and also witness it!

#mairimashita iruma kun spoilers #iruma-kun #mairimashita! iruma kun #welcome to demon school iruma kun #m!ik #wtdsik #naberius kalego #balam shichirou #oh also im going to try spacing out my posting since ive been going ham #so hopefully it wont feel like im spamming my account #anyway enjoy this kalego focused post

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racfoam · 1 year ago

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I am so fucking against the "cus he was made under the love potion he can't love" take for Voldemort. And yet it's also stated (in the same fucking interview I believe?) that if he had a mom, he would be able to know of love... those two things clash. One says he was destined to never love from the start bcs of his father being under Amortentia during the time of conceiving him, and then next it says he, who was doomed to never feel love could be able to feel love if his mother raised him.

Literally one is nature/internal ie born like that, the other says born like that but if he had his mom it would what... fix his supposed nature?

I mean...okay?

Just, overall that "amortentia=no love' idk why, it just sort of pisses me off. I get it, myb it wanted to get on the sociopath, psychopath, but it wasn't necessary to state Amortentia as a cause of his lack of feeling one emotion or another. And sure we can't pull from any logic bcs MAGICAL POTION but how on earth can a potion affect the creation of the baby and influence it to the point of emotional capacity in its mother's womb? The mother, who was not drinking Amortentia. Most kids who are born with disabilities are bcs of the mother smoking etc during pregnancy, bcs they are connected with the umbilical cord that feeds the child —

FROM A BIOLOGY STABDPOINT IT MAKES NO SENSE. TOM SR WAS UNDER AMORTENTIA, NOT MEROPE.

Or are you telling me Amortentia can affect semen or something? It should have been stated in the warning label, no? Or mentioned in dialogue in HBP?

It's like saying a rape drug — and that's what Amortentia is but worse that you get obsessed with your tormentor — and a child conceived under it is incapable of feeling love.

What. The. Fuck.

There's a difference in not knowing love and not being capable of feeling it. The latter is pretty much a psychological case.

Amortentia is used as a cause instead of brain for the "incapable of love" and I just don't like it. Just say with your full chest Voldemort is a psychopath. Don't use stupid excuses like a potion his father was under while conceiving him.

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toons-and-doom · 6 months ago

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Sprouts twisted form better be terrifying or I quit/j

GLISTEN, imagine his face was shattered and some ichor was leaking out, and if bro could speak he could be slightly heard PANICKING about his appearance and if you get close he’ll yell at your ass saying “DON’T LOOK AT ME” or smth like that. Tryna cover his face and all that.

EXACTLY. I wonder what lil bro is gonna be like.

Hold up Drabble time.

This is most definitely ooc but in my defense glisten isn’t even out yet and he’s not in the right frame of mind (ie, twisted). Also sorry if the writing sucks ass I’m writing because executive dysfunction when it comes to drawing.

Drabble ramble time

Hideous. He was hideous. He needed to fix himself.

Glisten knew that all to well.

A bit of his face falls onto the floor, and he has to bite back a wail. Please don’t break again- not again please- He quickly picks up the fallen peice, reattaching it to his face. He’s momentarily relived when the fragment stays where it’s supposed to. (…he’s pretty sure that’s where that part is supposed to go… he’s been having a hard time thinking clearly…).

The ichor is all that’s keeping his face together now. It flows freely now, dripping down his face and chest onto the floor bellow. Disgusting. It left a faint trail as he wanders out of the kitchen to a sitting area, not daring venture deeper into the kitchen. Glisten was thankful he couldn’t vomit.

He didn’t want to face his other companion(?) in this nightmare he’s found himself in. Razzle and Dazzle, or rather, what was left of them. They were ruined, monstrous. Just like him. They were quite literally half of what they used to be. But there was harmony in their appearance. The two halves made a whole. There was still some beauty in their peaceful face. He HATED that they were so ugly yet so perfect.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the reflection of a machine (…he doesn’t remember why there was so many lying around. Somewhere in his dulled mind he could remember they were important, their purpose was far beyond him now).

Oh god.

It’s worse than he thought.

If he were trying to be optimistic he could say he looked like a Picasso painting. A Picasso painting which was thrown in oil and was recreated from memory a cheap copy of the work of art. Features all wrong and misshapen… some completely gone OHGODHOWWASHEGOINGTOFIXTHIS??? ISHEGOINGTOFALLAPART-?!

He immediately turns his head away from the thing staring back at him through his reflection. He just needed to wake up. That’s all. This was all just some sick joke of a dream and he’ll wake up soon! (…the dull ache in his mind, and the ichor occasionally choking him tell him otherwise).

Of course that’s when he hears the elevator doors closing. They aren’t alone anymore.

oh god their going to look at HIM. They’re going to JUDGE him- they’re gonna think he’s a MONSTER.

He could already hear one coming his way.

His hands shoot up to cover his face. His ichor stained hands which will definitely make the state of his face worse. He chokes back sobs. He prays they will just leave.him.alone.

The footsteps stop. A voice. He can recognize it as a poppy’s.

‘ … hey? Are you alright? ‘

Is she blind??? Does he look fine??? Or is she just stupid- why are poppy’s like this?? He wishes he could just…. He doesn’t know-

… poppys did always have such nice bows… such pristine condition despite the situations they rope themselves into… and glisten needed to replace his bow anyways…. And their teeth? Their straight. Glisten would need to replace his all to sharp teeth soon… the best things about poppys are their eyes… so wide and perfectly round… glisten needed to replace a eye anyways- he doubts it will mind.

….The footsteps resume, much slower than glisten hoped. He moves one finger to see the poppy. It was reaching its hand out towards him, perhaps to reassure him. That was fine. All it needed to do was get a little closer…

He removed one hand from his face, partially exposing him to the poppy. He sinks the claws of the aforementioned hand into the ‘skin’ of the poppy… it didn’t really need its skin anyways, right?.

… it looks horrified. It sees him.

Instinct takes over. This poppy needed to die before it could run off and warn the others- before they can all see him- maybe if gets to them- he could use all their wasted bits to fix himself!

…. That sounds… nice.

(I’m not sure how to close this rip-)

#dandys world #dandy’s world #dandy’s world glisten #dandys world glisten

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alolanrain · 29 days ago

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So regional Dragon type specialists right, youd think that they are the most put together based on their public appearances on TV and online right? Wrong

Lance keeps everything professional but behind closed doors or when nobody is watching he is an absolute menace, regularly spars hand-to-paw/claw with his pokemon (yes even his Hydregon and it thinks its funny whenever it fakes him out) this man also has the tendancy to seemingly teleport behind people especially during his G-Man work (ie Rocket Grunt thinks their safe and the next minute they know theyre being german suplexed by a red haired man in a cape like he's Batman or something)

Drake is an enigma being the oldest acting Hoenn League member but nobody really knows much about him (the man barely makes any live appearances and any League challengers over the past 20 years havent even gotten past his Flygon except for Steven of course) nobody knows where he lives or where he even came from (they ask and every single time they get a different awnser with the strangest being Poni Island, nobody knows how old he is and speculates that he is immortal) Briney knows everything about him and refuses to tell because its both hilarious and also just a straight up cognito hazard and will not elaborate

Draydon is relatively normal until back when he and Alder were young Alder saw him deadlifting a boulder with zero effort (the guy is insanely strong) people do speculate that he and Drake might be related and he refuses to dispute or prove it, the beard however is just gravity defying and what makes it worse is that he doesnt use gel or anything its just like that with no explanation (funnily enough he holds back in all of his battles and if he didnt he could easily become champion, Iris took after that energy and evicerated everything in her path while wearing her magical girl champion costume)

Drasna generally keeps to herself but she likes to piss off Seibold on occasion and sics him on paparazzi when she gets bored (usually in the form of 'oh dear it looks like youre getting review bombed again' followed by very angry mega blastoise noises and the loudest Kalosian swearing you can imagine) she was at one point a poison specialist with her Dragalge but partially moved away from it (she still has an insanely overpowered Naganadel that nobody knows where or when she got it)

Raihan knows just about anything you could ask for, need to know the history of the Turffield Rock Formations? He knows it at the top of his head, where to find a super specific type of phone charger? Wyndon Stadium Kiosk on the 45th floor the red ones suck get the yellow ones, Where to get a Japanese dub of Space Buddies? Spikemuth district apartment complex 3rd floor knock on the 4th door say you want butter noodles and the guy will slide you a copy on a burnt DVD, Where the hell is Leon? Put an air tag on his cape last year Leon is currently lost in a pocket dimension being taunted by a small green onion fairy (Raihan also has several alt accounts that just post anywhere from doing handmade cosplay weapons to baking to somehow a podcast with Clemont and Iono about the importance of RGB gamer light PC setups while neither of them know its him)

Everything about this ask that has graced my inbox is an automatic yes.

Lance having to spend a fortune on clothes and going through wardrobe after wardrobe because his clothes get torn by his play flighting/work out. Also having a little whiteboard on the fridge at the gym-men head quarters or at the elite four castle with “how many Rocket Grunts Lance has suplexed this month.” On it with the score.

The entire Hoenn league begs Mr.Briney to divulge information about Drake and he’s tight lipped. Steven has even worse luck since Drake keeps giving him “my paperwork’s already been filed when I started this position, it doesn’t need to be fixed or filed in any different way.” And said file is so officially redacted by a past Champion that has now sadly passed.

Somehow and somewhere hidden very strategically, there are polaroid photo’s of Drayden doing lunges across a gym with him holding Alders in a fireman carry when they were both young. There might be a video as well that may or may not have been accidentally lost in a city by the Champion and got snatched up off the street later in the day. Sitting somewhere in some poor persons drunk drawer because they saw a cute cam corder that doesn’t properly work anymore.

Drasna is totally scheming when it comes to Seibold. There’s always a little prank she’s writing down on scrap papers during long meeting or waiting for challengers to come through the elite four. Picking on her coworker and getting away with it is her favorite pass time.

Raihan is a walking encyclopedia on almost anything and everything. He gets text messages not only from the other dragon trainers in the leagues but also almost everyone else, including Clemont on the rare occasion, and he always takes time to respond back with either a link to a website with proper information or to craft a well knowledge text message.

#gym leader raihan #elite four drasna #elite four drake #champion lance #gym leader drayden #I responded to this just as tumblr fucking went down earlier this week

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koiifiishy · 7 days ago

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brief eris word vomit b4 i have to scuttle to work today:

thinking about his title & how it changes from younger to older versions of himself: he starts as "The defiant" and later becomes "The erinyes". specifically toying with the idea of his role within the church and him becoming "virgo's fury" (which would be a wordplay of fury the noun and fury/furiae of myth). harkening back to the obvious shadier members of the temple (ie- the ones we saw in the 'kylar's parents' plotline), i think eris' path within the church would veer a bit towards that kind of role vs a frontfacing monk that deals with parishioners.

he'd still be available for things like taking confessions and helping out here and there! but i just think eris' primary function within the temple as time passes would be a bit more 'to the shadows' and delving deeper into the occult. he also has a serious bone to pick with how things have been done, but it's not like one person can bring sudden change overnight so getting deeper and working slowly is probably the best bet for him to try and "fix" whatever wrongs he thinks the temple is housing.

i also think an older eris would be pretty close to jordan! right hand of the high priest style, somebody that jordan can rely on not to bullshit him like a lot of the other members do (at least, to my current knowledge it seems like there are those that are purposefully withholding information from jordan?? and doing things behind his back/"for the greater good"). eris would very much be more of an "i answer to jordan first, not bc of the hierarchy but bc i respect him".

in a tumblr li verse he'd be single for reader/oc/pc insert reasons! in his canon he'd be promised to sydney from the game's timeline and they'd definitely be going strong. thinking about both of them taking a similar role as "the bishop's hands" but instead of the bishop its jordan. realistically sydney would probably still defer to the bishop's word over jordan, and jordan most likely would to, but eris is side eying...

topic pivot! im making it canon to eris his father is in fact bailey HAHA - this is something neither of them were aware of for the longest time. if you looked at them side by side, there's a resemblance but most ppl would just chalk that up to their close proximity. imagine bailey himself would've only found out in the game's timeframe and it shook him but also like... he wouldn't change how he's been acting either. nor would he tell eris or acknowledge their blood relation outside of the initial wtf moment.

thoughts behind why he wouldn't change (outside of "haha hes just like that! what an asshole!") - biggest reason: nothing has changed, essentially. secondly: acknowledging that relation would more likely just paint an even bigger target on eris' back. bailey's an absolute jackass, don't get me wrong! but from what i've read in q&a and stuff, he's not wholly without his reasons for why he's doing what he's doing? whatever end goal he has, if he really wanted to be a sick fuck without morals he'd of been selling those kids waaay sooner than 18. the fact that he seems to have been responsible for setting the pc (eris in my case) up with a few different ways of getting money (avery) or being taken away/being protected (eden), i think on some fucked up level??? he kinda? cares for the pc?? its obviously not uh... a very good healthy way of showing he cares? LMAO,, but i just feel like as much as we rag on bailey, he could be WAY WORSE (like jumping straight to the bad jobs/punishments).

anyways! all that to say, bailey does seem to have his own fucked up morals & i can't see him not caring when he finds out eris is his biological kid, but he's also very set in his ways and has too many plans to drop everything and pretend to be dad of the year: so, acting like nothing has changed is the way to go. if anything, there may be very subtle shows of care towards eris afterwards? tho again - any change in how he treats him would just be detrimental to them both in the end so... eris would also stay in the dark about this information for a looong time.

who's his mom??? :3c tba. . . i need more information about the game first and a certain green eyed lady. . . . . however - if that's a plausible route, i have thoughts. if not - no biggie! (the whole connecting of blood relations has been making me go insane btw LOL bc i also think about that weird ass tidbit about the manor portrait and pc weirdly resembling one of kylar's parents & im like WHAT IF, HEAR ME OUT, WHAT IF-- and then i feel insane like that "ALIENS..." pose guy haha. eris and kylar being unwitting cousins tho.......... im ngl that's a tasty bit of potential drama......)

ciiiircling back to the first bullet points: young eris had already started dipping his toes in the criminal underbelly of the town (tbh mostly out of necessity with working with landry bc OMG FUCK U PEOPLE... FOR REPORTING HIM FOR ASSAULT! AFTER U TRIED TO RAPE HIM/OTHER ORPHANS LMAO!!! his police records are Huge bc of how much """assualt""" and property damage (haha fuck u bus driver u should've pulled over when he told u to) he has to his name AHA) - anyways; to any shady pcs/ocs, there is absolutely a chance for them to cross paths with eris! and those chances would just get bigger n bigger as time went on and he got more into the temple/needing to delve into the underbelly of the town on the temple's behalf. his rep rn in game is "scrappy", and over time i'm sure it gets worse and a bit more closer to his actual role as "virgo's fury" (maybe that's even his underworld title!). definite person of interest that ppl in the know wouldn't wana fuck with (or maybe they would wana! im not the boss of them haha). mob characters tho? they steer clear of older eris.

ok thats it for now! very unorganized and yappy sorry. usually id try to trim my think posts but i gota skedaddle now -w-)/" bye bye

#eris the defiant #fishy ramblings

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jhilsara · 1 year ago

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Everyone knows that all the smto brothers have some kind of baggage. How would you say "I can fix him" and how would say "I can make him worse" for each of them?

Like, for James I would fix him by forcing him to have time for himself but I would make him worse by calling him "My lord"

Erik, I would fix him by giving him the motherly love he deserved but never got and make him worse by letting him call me mommy.

Sam, I would fix him by assuring him that I don't see him as a brute or a monster and make him worse by telling him about my teratophilia.

Matthew, I would fix him by relying on him for things that I could do easily enough but it makes him feel important. I would make him worse by using primarily childish pet names, ie baby, baby boy, cutiepie

Damien... I feel too bad about making him worse.

…. 🫣😳😮‍💨

I have no words.

But I do agree with all of the above statements… so you win.

Especially the Sam one- like I know he’s my fav but if he knew how much of a monster fucker I am. He’d be reconsidering things 🫠

Like I played that game because they were “monsters” then got disappointed at their incubi designs cause they weren’t monstrous enough 😩

Also please feel free to drop some more hot tales in my inbox cause this was great

#seduce me otome #smto #erik seduce me #sam seduce me #james seduce me #matthew seduce me #damien seduce me #also the Erik one…. I 😳😳😳 y e s #asks #anon

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the-heaminator · 1 year ago

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Can the country's limbs grow back?

Yep! Like lizards, i've written it somewhere or the other, but essentially if i will be allowed to get science-ish about it, what i think happens is that nations have stem cells, the same way an embryo has, in an adult human it is difficult to find stem cells save for in ver particular places, like bone marrow cells, and even then they only have a limited capability to diversify, ie into platelets, red blood cells, phagocytes, lymphocytes etc, but nations have a grossly sped up healing process that can occasionally, especially times when a nation is on high alert, like druting a war scene or some severe national bullshit going on, cam be seen in real time, so if like, an arm is cut off in battle, there's a painful regrowing of it, but it will regrow in about an hour fully, yet if something as such happens during peacetime, it takes around a day.

Like their cells divide very, very fast in wartime, their hair grows after in wartime, and considerably faster than a persons would normally, their eyes cannot be replenished because the cells in your eyes do not divide and replace, hence how i have a bunch of the older nations with genuinely terrible vision.

Eh, i am rambling but i wrote something similar here. I'm sorry this isn't as much of a satisfactory answer as i would like to give i can just not translate my brinrot into the correct words.

Scared of death he supposed, his flesh was knitting itself back together as he sat, where his fingers were missing soon grew bone, muscle, on wept as his skin grew back, unblemished and fresh, salty tears making the pain only worse, dripping into the bloodied pot. Least his stew will have salt, he couldn’t afford it normally How had he the energy to fix himself to such a degree, gaping wounds on his arms slowly stitching itself back together with sinew and whatnot. Not a pretty sight, Alba felt beyond ill, and Albion seemed resigned to this, he could not care less.

The bloodflow stopped, Albion forced himself up off the ground, sloppy and unfocused, he stumbled his way to Alba, he looked worse now, ashen grey, dried blood clotted all over him, hair matted with it and mud, a large chunk of his flesh was simply hanging off his cheek, going blue as his skin stitched itself together as Alba watched in horror, going blue then black, and falling off, dead onto the ground, Albion eyed it, contemplating whether to pick it up, he chose not to, it was filthy now anyway.

#the heam speaks #nation biology #tw blood #tw gore #BIOLOGY #its not very good im sowwy

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yagsad · 1 month ago

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Current WIP focus has been making spreads for my characters. Something eye-catching. I’ve been posting these in Instagram but wanted to share three from my pinned posts on IG.

| Meet the top three members of The Apocalypse |

A long time ago, I developed a slightly-worse-than-morally-gray character named Cain. He was the leader of a gang called The Apocalypse and they all lived in flooded subway tunnels in South Korea. He was created for an RPG I was running where the world was dying and some people were developing powers, which they could spread to others in a weakened version (ie, if someone could make plants grow, the person they gave powers to may only be able to grow herbs or specific types of plants). I was really proud of him (and the RPG thanks to the lore I created) but the RPG eventually had to be shut down.

A few years later, I began roleplaying on that site again and chose to revamp Cain as a being of my creation - a Shadow. He was still a trouble maker and still led The Apocalypse, but he was now immortal and no longer had his powers from before. As I used him, he began to develop and grow and he left the gang behind to live with the people he had fallen in love with.

But I missed the chaotic energy that was being channeled negatively. I still wanted to have The Apocalypse and to refine it a bit.

So, when I decided to start roleplaying again after months of being in a slump (due to Q losing social features, making it harder to meet people), I wanted to revamp The Apocalypse and create the next generation.

So enter Romi - his name comes from Romeo. He has Cain’s original abilities - emotional manipulation. I think that, for The Apocalypse, it’s a great ability for a leader to have. While he’s gotten pretty good at controlling and handling the ability, I also like to think that he could accidentally use it if he gets worked up (ie, if he’s getting flustered and embarrassed because someone is holding his hand, he may accidentally trigger a feeling of the same emotion in the other person).

Then I thought… “By time he left, Cain had two guys who were essentially his go-to allies in the gang. Romi needs his right and left hand.”

That led to Jules (Julius Caesar) and Mac (Macbeth).

Jules is a little hard of hearing due to experiments he endured, but he has a seismic sense. If you’re an Avatar fan, I picture it similar to Toph. He can sense where things and people are and even feel if a person stops breathing. It’s extremely overwhelming, though, since he can’t just “turn it off.” He wears thick-soled shoes to muffle it, but ultimately prefers spending time in places high up where his feet can dangle off the edge.

Finally, Mac. Mac is the smart one in the group - which isn’t really saying much. He filled the role that had belonged to a muse named Ari for Cain. He is the voice of reason, but still prone to misbehaving. Unlike Ari, though, Mac has a thirst for knowledge, as they weren’t educated much while being experimented on. He has taken time to learn everything he can, from random ways to fix mechanical issues to how to make flames change color to how to make a cast. He’s become the unofficial doctor of The Apocalypse. Like the others, he has an ability - the power of illusions. He can create visual illusions with ease, and sometimes trigger sound ones if he tries hard enough. However, with skin contact the illusions can grow stronger - you can feel, taste, smell, hear, and see with ease. He often used this ability to calm them and the other children when young, but can also use it in combat to exhaust an enemy mentally (imagine feeling the pain of an attack that didn’t happen).

All three boys are open to plotting and RPs. Please check my carrd for info on what I’m looking for in an RP partner. Romi will have four ships, Mac and Jules will likely have three each. All three are available for short-term one-shots as well.

#oc rp #original characters #roleplay #roleplay search #rp #celebrity fc OCs #role play #former quotev user #character information #new OC #discord 1x1 #original rp #soul fc #jooyeon fc #junhan fc

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thefallenangelsgang · 10 months ago

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PTSD nightmares are... a nightmare (ba dum tssss) (I'm coping with comedy)

(gen Trigger Warning, I don't get into my trauma but I bitch about how my brain processes it)

I hate the nonsensical nature of them, I hate that they package my trauma in an abstract form (no no no you don't get to recollect the things that traumatized you, you get to experience the fear and anxiety in new fun ways!), and I hate that they always wake me up at inconvenient times. It's 4 am, my heart is racing, and I'm triggered. I just want to go to bed.

One of the worst parts but also my saving grace (real double edged sword here jfc) is that I almost exclusively lucid dream. Over the years its gotten less pronounced, I used to manually control my dreams a LOT as a kid, but I still can if I need to. Nowadays I'm more likely to let a narrative play out. It is important though that I am choosing not to interact with the dream. I retain some sense of control which makes it fun when the logic breaks and my brain goes "excuse me!" and fixes it in real time but very much NOT FUN when I'm experiencing horrors and I am in control of myself (or whatever character I am playing) (one fun time I was Ryan Reynolds but that's a story about my not normal arachnophobia and the inherent strangeness of a overcast suburban neighborhood)

It seems though my brain has adapted over the years. It sounds ridiculous but the dreams have gotten narratively more- not logical but reasonable. I could read a short story about my dreams and understand the plot and setting even if its a story about a residential development (that kinda looks like my grandmother's neighborhood) surrounded by impossibly high, sheer concrete walls. And we aren't talking like hehe 8ft walls you see in idk a prison. We're talking hundreds of feet tall and wide. I could read that and get real stupid and salivate over themes and shit. Cause yeah, the theme is feeling TRAPPED and that there is no ESCAPE and my brain is using chemical warfare in the literal sense TO HURT ME

Lucid dreaming also makes the nightmares worse because I can dissect that shit in real time. I can go "mmmm this is giving me anxiety and I think I know why (:" while I can feel my heart racing out of my chest.

The one saving grace is that I can force myself awake if need be and usually my brain will automatically do it if shit's getting wild (ie I am in danger of crying in the middle of the night like I'm 6 again) but then I end up sitting in the dark (cause my pupils are dilated to hell from fear(dark flavored) so I can't turn on my lights) at 4 am, triggered and only getting more triggered by sitting in the dark alone with my thoughts.

So let's go to Tumblr and rant about trauma until the images of those fucking Clowns(?) gets out of my brain. (I don't have clown trauma? I've never had clown trauma? I also don't have home invasion trauma but that was more a metaphor for loss of control. Still confused why clowns were involved. Also confused why my brain chose to make the setting SciFi dystopia but here we are)

(also these weren't like neon stupid wig and lots of face paint clowns. These were like mime/street performer esque clowns, far more understated. Normal people doing clown shit (had a great shot of one doing a card trick outside a window that I should kick over to my film friends) with a lil classic clown make up. YOU KNOW THAT ROBIN WILLIAMS PHOTO OF HIM AS A STREET MIME, FUCKING THAT)

(I REALLY JUST WANT TO GO BACK TO SLEEP)

#Fucking trauma #tw: clowns #tw: mimes #in case those freak you more #tw: ptsd #tw: nightmares #tw: home invasion #tw: lucid dreaming #I know that can trigger people who struggle with unreality stuff #ugggghhhhhh I want to go back to sleep #I also want to make a masterlist of my most horrifying and narratively interesting nightmares #cause there are some real gems in there #but that's enough wrestling with it in the dark #processing that can wait until its bright out

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seikilos-stele · 1 year ago

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One of those questions that just pops into my head and I need to know if I’m the only one…!!

When my beloved Snape killed Dumbledore I was traumatized. How can my favorite character kill my second favorite character in my much obsessed-over Harry Potter??

Until the whole sequence was explained later, I felt robbed of Snape. I was left adrift because while it did fit the story arc, I felt robbed of my obsession-within-an-obsession: Snape. He went a bridge too far. We were going to have to break up! 😭

In this session of Asker’s Studio™️ (have a seat. just move the cat 🐈‍⬛) I want to know if there has ever been an action/incident in which your favorite character did something so heinous that you had to divorce them?! If so, were you able to get around it by re-writing, ie, fixing the scene with fic?

There have been endings that were fixed (so artistically done…) but when you look back at the demise of Padme, it makes me wonder how anyone can feel anything but revulsion for Vader/Anakin…but redemption being what it is, anything is possible - essentially with fic.

If there is more than one example (I hope that there is at least one example!) all the better!

You know what, I had to think about this ALL NIGHT to come up with one, but I finally got it. Snape would be an easy example, but I didn’t react the same way you did — I think, in 2004 or 2005, post-HBP, JKR gave an interview somewhere. She was asked if Snape was actually a bad guy and she gave some coy answer like “you’ll have to wait and see.” Well, obviously, if we have to wait and see, then he’s a good guy! So that interview soothed my fears 😆

The characters that actually got to me were all played by Robert Carlyle. I had a huge crush on him and I wanted all his character to be admirable! Not good, necessarily, but admirable: meaning, not cowardly, not whiny. I wanted them all to have an internal strength that I could respect, whether their morality aligned with mine or not. And for three important examples, the characters just…didn’t.

Those characters are Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold from Once Upon a Time, Nicholas Rush from Stargate Universe, and whatever the fuck his name is from 28 Weeks Later.

I especially loved Rush and Gold, and every time they back-slid into their selfish/cowardly ways, I was personally devastated 😆 miserable! I’d be wracking my brains to make their actions fit my view of the character … or I’d be cursing the writers. Gold had it worse imo. There was an internal consistency with his character for most of S1-3, and imo it disappeared or wobbled too much in the seasons after; it became harder and harder to make sense of Gold’s character arc, and damn near impossible to like him. I couldn’t see the traits I’d originally liked so much.

Rush was easier because he was slimy from the start … I just wanted him to become Less Slimy in a more uniform manner 😆 We got lots of competent moments from him — and lots of embarrassing incompetent moments too. He had a petty jealous streak that wasn’t likable. He struggled embarrassingly with physical tasks too, and his refusal to get in better shape seemed petulant, and like a form of denial. If you’re familiar with SGU, you’ll notice that I’m leaving out Rush’s most abysmal actions. The thing is, I love bad guys who do abysmal things. So long as they have a core of admirable traits: self-reliance, flexibility, competence, for example. It’s when that core is weak that I feel betrayed by characters.

To use Snape as an example, I see now that even if he WERE a total villain, his murder of Dumbledore and his loyalty to Voldemort wouldn’t bother me. It would be the way he bullies children. That’s always been the hardest part about Snape for me to stomach. I don’t know how to explain it! I guess it’s because I like the trope of the honorable enemy soldier — the honorable enemy soldier can do and believe a lot of heinous things, but he can’t be a coward, he can’t be whiny, he can’t bully young children. He has to have an honorable core, something that reminds you of your favorite allies, to contrast with the unforgivable beliefs and actions. If his core isn’t honorable, if it only reminds you of obnoxious bullies and self-serving cowards, then there’s nothing interesting about him — he’s just a rotten guy.

….and I never want a hot Robert Carlyle character to turn out to be a plain old rotten guy. Unless it’s Begbie 😆

ETA: oh, I forgot to answer the other part.

No, I’ve never really written a fix-it. I did write lots of fic for HP, OUAT, and SGU. But I wasn’t skilled enough to do a fix-it at the time. I mostly wrote crack oneshots and occasional humorous multichaps. For OUAT, I eventually expanded into hurt/comfort, but it was fairly OOC across the board.

#my asks

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arcane-ish · 3 months ago

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I'm basically the opposite of a JayVik shipper, but to me the scene felt too short not because it should have been more emotional but because I feel like an audience I don't know what Viktor's deal is and why he's leaving.

I don't think that it's a big deal that Viktor is unemotional because I assume that that is the influence of the void/hextech thing that is changing him from the inside.

I kind of don't like how season 2 so far makes pretty much no effort at all to be self contained. It just assumed that everybody remembers everything from season 1 rather than laying out the characters emotions more. Becuse I feel like generally Viktor's story was pretty muted and small in season 1 in the later acts.

He was vaguely against hextech, he was upset about Skye. Okay, how does this relate to what he's feeling now. I'm trying to picture some things that would have "solved" the scene to me. Not in "I wanted an emotional shippy scene", but in "I wanted to understand why Viktor is doing the things he's doing".

If we had a scene of encased Viktor from his POV that makes it clear that he hears and understands everything that is going on around him and he's not happy with somethign Mel or Jayce are saying.

Or maybe the Void was whispering to him. Or if the Void was giving him visions of Skye and void!Skye is telling him what to do.

I think if we boil it down, the big shift of Viktor leaving is not really "zomg, Viktor is breaking up with Jayce", but it's more that when Jayce shows Viktor the notes he made, he probably expected Viktor to go back to studying them.

And studying stuff was a bit personality trait of Viktor's in season 1, so him turning his back on "this should be investigated" is a big shift.

That shift could have been explained by a more emotional reaction. If Viktor had blown up at him and gone basically "you fool, you keep trying to do the thing that brought us into this mess".

I think that's the big shift. That

1.) Viktor is turning his back on science/Piltover 2.) Viktor doesn't think Jayce can be persuaded

Now that isn't really that out of the ordinary. Viktor did his hextech experiments without letting Jayce into it and he also kept the whole Skye thing from him.

So, is there a reason to why Viktor is going to the Undercity?

Ie: I don't trust Piltover anymore, I tried to fix things here and everything to worse anyway, it's not worth it anymore.

or: More science is wrong, it made everything worse, we should be doing faith now.

or: I got lost in sciencing for Piltover and instead I should be with the people who suffer the most. My perspective was wrong.

But IF there is reason to it Viktor doing what he does, the assumption would be that he would express this in his conversation with Jayce more clearly. Either to try to convince Jayce or just to let the audience know.

If his reason is important enough for him to leave, then it should be important enough to state it in an argument. If Jayce matters to him then he should have made an effort to argue his point to Jayce and see if he can be persuaded.

But that's not what happened. Viktor just says their paths diverged. So from an audience point of view, what is that supposed to mean.

Jayce first distanced himself from Viktor by seeking fame and politics. A story where Viktor things that Jayce has been moving further and further away particularly with their disagreements over weaponizing hextech he's at a point where he can't be reasoned with.

But didn't Viktor also distance himself by his secret hextech research? And we know he feels guilt over Skye. In a situation where two people are in the wrong, that would lead me to expect a more emotional argument. (a more muted argument makes more sense in a world where Viktor never did anything wrong and it was just "you betrayed me thrice [abandoned the lab for fame, moved towards weaponizing hextech, continued making hextech against my wishes, put me in the hextech to keep me alive when I didn't want that], I'm done now, you are beyond reaching").

The other approach is that there is no good, logically arguable reason to why Viktor is acting like that. That he's having an impaired judgement, either because the Void/Hex is influencing him and directing him or supporessing his emotions, or because he's being depressed.

There's this theory that he's a paralllel to Jinx with the whole "I was supposed to die and now I'm aimless/kind of chaotic". The thing is that with Jinx we are more accustomed to associating her with mental problems. With Viktor this is new. If Viktor is acting highly unusual (unusual because the hextech is affecting his emotions or unusual because depression) then I would have expected Jayce as a friend to argue over that. Some "what's wrong with you, you aren't being yourself".

I admit, JayVik was low on the totem pole on stories that interested me in season 1 so it's possible I missed things.

As a viewer, I feel like I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get from this. What exactly Viktor's problem is and why walking around the undercity in a cloak if supposed to help with whatever his problem is.

Again, I can deal with "he's aimless, reeling, just like Jinx", but in that case I would have expected Jayce to bring that up in a "you are being weird and off".

In my longer reaction post I wrote that to me it feels like Jayce was kind of in all stories, so to me it didn't feel like he was that emotional over Viktor, because he sort of "did his job" in the Viktor storyline in that scene and then immediately moved to the next storyline with Heimer/Jayce.

Jayce feels like his mind is all over the place (again, having time to visit Caid and build her hextech weapons, squabbling with Heimer and Ekko). As a non shipper, to me it just felt like JayVik wasn't really that high on his priority list. To me it felt like him realizing stuff about The Arcane (including the mini reference of to his childhood) felt like his most important moment.

I guess that this could feed back into Viktor and Jayce if that makes Jayce go "oh, I was wrong when I said hextech wasn't that dangerous". But on the other hand, given the trajectory of the games I would expect Jayce to continue making dumb choices and/or keep being torn between different loyalties (ie still being pulled into Mel or Cait's stories).

Maybe Jayce's next step will be to think he can science his way out of the whole "The Arcane is pissed and/or poisoning everything" and that is the core of his folly?

Is my conclusion to be that Viktor realized that and that's why he went away. But if the conclusion is "hextech is bad and we were wrong to underestimate it", then how exactly is Viktor's "I'll become part hextech and infect other people with it" any better?

I guess the conclusion could be "once they were idealist and then both of them made terrible, boneheaded choices". But as a viewer I have trouble liking this story the summary of it is that they are both being dumb.

Now in theory we could say we have this in Cait and Vi as well. Cait sliding off into violence and superstition, Vi becoming self destructive in the fighting pits. But in that story the show actually takes it time and botheres to give scenes to try to explain the emotion beats of Cait's slide into doing bad/dumb/counterproductive shit.

I just don't see this same quality there with the choices Viktor makes leaving me at "why should I care if they do weird stuff". Very "We got "idealistic person slides into doing things that are a very bad idea" at home".

I didn't like this scene much because I felt it left me unclear about what Viktor's motivations are. And if the motivation was supposed to be "the hextech is influencing him", then I would have liked to see a "what's going on with you" from Jayce, not as a shippy thing, but purely as a signal to the audience thing that still makes sense for the relationships these characters have.

And don't get me started, yeah, these characters live in a world of magic, but Jayce still took it exceptionally well that his friend is now 90% hexcore. Like wouldn't "you aren't being yourself" be kind of the logical first step?

I guess maybe to everybody it's obvious that Viktor going Jesus sheppard is a terrible ominous idea, but I genuinely feel unclear what I'm supposed to get from it. Is "The Arcane" piloting Viktor because it has a plan to fix itself and so it's sending him to the undercity to take people over? Did it divorce Viktor from his emotions and it's causing him to make odd choices based on his old interests? I don't even mind that we don't have the answers yet, but shouldn't then the tone of those scenes be more ominous in a trying to guide us to ask these questions? I dunno, the vibe of the whole story feels off to me, putting it on the bottom pile of stuff I liked or cared about in Act 1.

I think there's still potential for irony or tragedy there (maybe Jayce comes to the conclusion The Arcane is bad just as Viktor comes to the conclusion no it's great and I should put it in everybody putting them again on different sides, or maybe Jayce will just stubbornly dig himself deeper trying to science his way out). Or Jayce will just keep being in different storylines and leave that storyline keep feeling undercooked to me.

im going to say something slightly mean which is that i think there is an imagined aspect of jayce and viktor's relationship that the audience is projecting onto them that actually is not supported by the text itself and that imagined facet is the reason people think their parting is rushed more than the issues with the actual show's pacing 💀

like i do think some of what jayce actually SAYS in that scene feels kind of clunky and unearned and sorta tropey, not because of who jayce is, but because it feels like they had to cut some interstitial tissue for the sake of time constraints, but even if they hadn't had to i cannot fathom that scene being extended more than like....a minute. like what kind of argument are they going to have that wasn't the one that actually transpired?

i think it's pointed that viktor is weirdly emotionally stunted and icy after he was such an impassioned person in s1 and he said everything there was to say anyway, just with a colder affect. i guess jayce could have said "hey viktor wait" like. one more time lol but in general if you take everything we have presented by the text on its face their immediate falling out could never have been that long a conversation because there isn't actually that much to argue about. jayce did what he thought was right and what is the normal human thing to do (broke his promise to save his friend that he loves and cares about) and viktor did not want him to do that. which is literally what they said to each other. very directly.

also it's like...supposed to be cold and sad. i don't think viktor is going to be the sole big bad of the show but i do think that the whole point of what we've seen so far in act i is that the arcane is inhuman and strange and kind of hard to understand and viktor has been partly absorbed into that and jayce is still very very human and full of all his hopes and ideals and therefore not able to grasp the arcane's true nature yet. a like. screaming lover's spat or whatever was not going to happen given the narrative positions that these two characters occupy. it doesn't even happen really between the two characters who are actually lovers — cait and vi have an somewhat equivalently long (so pretty short) moment of disagreement before cait hits vi in the stomach and leaves. anything else would have felt like fanfictiony and cheap imo

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