#they...didn't...care...about B&C

[mejcinta]

Look how they massacred our Dowager Queen :(

When I catch you, Sara Hess and Ryan Condal!!!

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about how deeply lucanis' life has been defined by a lack of control of that life -- as he himself points out, even before the ossuary went and carved the headline out again with big bloody letters. of course he reacts badly to losing what little control he did manage to construct for himself even within those circumstances.

(namely: experience has taught him that things (caterina, loss, pain, love, all horribly and indelibly intermingled) will happen to him whether he wants them to or not and there's nothing he can do about that... but he gets to decide what's let in or out of his soul as it happens, even if he has to close it all down and deaden and numb himself out in the process. (even if that means he drifts further and further away from illario, who's been desperately reaching out and trying to keep hold of him until he finally gives up completely and tries to cut the bond all at once when lucanis doesn't seem to reach back anymore.) it's such rare well-observed freeze logic solidly constructed from the bottom up, I'm still so impressed with it.

the way illario seeks constant external means to cope with caterina's abuse and importance in his life -- he can't win her admiration or acceptance or warmth (or like. acknowledgement even, at times :') ), no matter what, so he goes out and finds those things in others and then disdains and dismisses it for how easily and falsely it's won from them. he plots, he conspires, he tries to beat her at her own game however clumsily, he tries. lucanis doesn't try things that way. he's not about 'how do I improve my situation' by nature, he's 'how can I stop this from getting worse'. he avoids, he internalizes, he hunkers down and makes himself nothing until the pain maybe ends. he's fundamentally not a plotter, he's a reacter. an expert assassin pantser, if you will, to illario's clear and stated exasperation fhsak. man I love them. illario says 'get us out of here!!! if you loved me as I love you you'd help me get us out of here before it kills us both', lucanis says 'there is no other place, there's nowhere to go, all we can do is endure. and if it kills us... well, that's just family. that's what love is (the way things are headed I'll die first anyway so it's fine I won't have to face losing you)', and they're equally baffled and hurt by each other's POV. but they're both right, and they're both wrong. there's no 'right' way to deal with caterina's treatment of them, or their situation. the house always wins, if you pardon the expression. house dellamorte still stands and that is what matters to caterina in the end more than anything.

it also fits so well b/c like... their core wounds are that illario is the least favourite and is constantly dismissed, so he has to prove to caterina again and again that he matters. not even that he's worth love or respect or warm regard, but that he's here at all and as such should be considered. he has to shout 'in case u forgot I EXIST!!' at the top of his lungs or else be rendered nothing within the family structure (and himself, because it's all about family, that's all that really matters. in some weird twisted way I think caterina openly declaring him before all the other crows to still be of house dellamorte -- and no one from house dellamorte kneels -- is kind of a victory for him, as much as it's also a furthering of a prison sentence and public humiliation. house dellamorte brainfuckery goes hard.). lucanis is the favourite, and it's the double-edged sword that he gets all the affection and attention but also all the control and impossible expectations. drowning under all of that constant stress and close evaluation, his brain whispers 'I don't exist' to try to escape, to hide and hold on to the deep parts of himself that are crucial to life but not part of the perfect grandson caterina demands of him as the price of her love.)

I think a lot about how what seems to disquiet lucanis the most post-ossuary (as it would anyone with that psychological makeup) is the dissolving of internal boundaries and control he's been relying on, which is part of what spite symbolizes. his anger and reactivity has seceded from the union to the point of personification as a little guy (a little guy he resents and fears for his unpredictability and invasions into regions of his psyche he wishes to stay frozen and barren, and yet cares about deeply, loves! and also constantly dismisses and frequently helplessly lets down unless he's helped to learn to do otherwise. does this remind you of another relationship in his life, perhaps. it makes me feel nuts to think about the illario/spite parallels thanks for asking), and now that little guy is out there running the show freely the moment he glances away or closes his eyes. literal nightmare scenario I feel for him so deeply. so much of his coping is predicated on being able to Not do or feel or want certain things, and that's out the window now, Spite has Opinions. Spite refuses to stay wisely in place even if that place is hell on the logic that if you move you could find yourself in a place that's even worse, somehow. Spite actually wants to experience the world, however fucked up and scarring the way he arrived here, not just endure it. Spite means he has to face that maybe illario wasn't wrong all those years, at the same time as having to admit and face what illario has done to him, and figure out what to do about any of it.

anyway. mary kirby ma'am that's some good fucking metaphor work. thank you, and sorry about all the shit that happened

[drowningparty]

I just think the polite, well-behaved young man who secretly enjoys murdering people with his bare hands and gouging their eyes out and the blood-splattered god who delights in carnage and gleefully exploding people with his mind should, hand in unloveable hand, embrace their primal rage, become avatars of the slaughter together, and be deliriously happy for all of 2 seconds before one of them invariably kills the other. and it would be a real coin toss who dies first

[fantastic-nonsense]

just saw a screenshot of the worst TikTok ever y'all

[altschmerzes]

i need to stop shadowboxing the concept of romance when i write. i need to make my brain go to a world where romance doesn’t exist when i write because feeling its constant presence and people’s expectations of its presence and reading in of its presence is making me a worse writer.

like. thinking a lot about that post that’s going around rn about Books That Are Clearly Afraid Of The Reader. been thinking about how fear of being interpreted or perceived or whatever permeates a Lot of what i do and always has, creatively, and frankly compromises it, especially in terms of fear of people reading romance into my stuff because of how much i write about interpersonal relationships and intimacy and reliance and vulnerability and intense emotional situations.

i need to stop trying to build a boat with my main priority being ‘i dont want people to insist to me that this is a car or make people feel tricked into seeing a car etc etc’ when there is actually no part of this boat that needs to be made with cars in mind at all i could just Build The Damn Boat. this metaphor got lost.

point is i need to stop letting romance take up space in my stories at all. even if it's just as something i'm doing backflips over and around. i need to just start writing about platonic relationships - friendships, queerplatonic relationships, familial relationships, etc - without feeling like i need to first disprove romance as an automated and inherent assumption. romance should have no quarter here, even in feeling forced to deny it.

[townieboyfriend]

unsure if this has been a talking point before but the whole thing with hermann canonically having a family offscreen is so gut wrenching to me because of the implication that he knew that his child would never grow up or likely even be born. vanessa was supposed to be due in april '25, around the same time he calculated the triple event would take place </3

[slayerdurge]

i gotta say i do love durge & minthara just standing in the corner cheering on astarion as he ascends. best enablers in baldur's gate. 💖

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[caterjunes]

need some good things to come my way asap, NO i will not be doing anything to make this happen

[pbaintthetb]

been playing around with an au where megumi is "haunted" by the ghost of teenage yuuji, who first shows up when Megumi's like, 3 or 4.

anyway Yuuji does NOT tell Megumi that he's from the future, that's a lot of pressure for a neglected 4 year old, he doesn't need to be dealing withYuuji's trauma, he's the teenager here and- like Yuuji totally could talk about it- what do you mean?! They've got time to change things (lbr yuuji knows jack about the jujutsu world timeline pre sukuna finger. if we're lucky he knows that jjk0 happened but nothing about it. at best maybe he can help stop tsumiki's coma)

but yeah, anyway the point is that as Megumi grows up he starts to realise, based on the way that Yuuji acts, that he probably knew Gojo, definitely knew Nanami, and acts in a somewhat similar way around Megumi himself, so maybe he knew his dad? before he died.

he also finds out that yuuji was under an execution order (but it can't have been for anything bad because Yuuji's a softy- he's like that yuuta kid who's gonna be megumi's senpai next year). also while yuuji won't cop to it, megumi totally has it figured out that yuuji was a sorceror (look at the guy!, if only he could crack yuuji's technique though) and went to jujutsu high (it's where teen sorcerors go!)

so yeah. megumi's got it figured out. yuuji is gojo and nanami's dead fellow student. but he has tact so he won't bring it up. megumi thinks yuuji's a weird mix of Haibara and geto basically.

but somebody yuuji better keep him out of sendai. megumi might be in for a few surprises.

[in-asterism]

educational present due to that poll I've seen

[vigilskept]

5 & 13 for dinara! (For the fifty (more) questions)

5. Who does Rook romance? What was the moment that sparked their interest?

lucanis! unfortunately for the both of them. very sweet dynamic, but literally dating anyone except for a fellow crow could've saved them.

as for the moment... it was the meeting with illario at cafe pietra.

it's less that it sparked her interest and more that it allowed her to be less wary of him. it's such an insane thing to trust another crow with that it factory resets her a little

he might trust viago but he only just met rook! and he let her see how fractured the relationships are in the recently talon-less house dellamorte! and he isn't even worried about that! that's insane!

anyway. the realisation that this man is an extremely poor strategist and that he (for some reason) already trusts her lets her stop side eyeing him for abomination-related and crow-related reasons and start actually getting to know him as a person.

13. What would Rook’s LI(s) say are their flaws?

at top of the list is the canonical rook trait of throwing herself into danger too easily and setting aside the consequences because she can deal with them later. makes her an incredibly stressful partner because she is not actually invulnerable.

the next one isn't necessarily a character flaw but it makes him incredibly uneasy that she seems to be changing somehow. the longer they stay in the fade, the more distant she seems to be getting. she's focused enough on the job, and she'll help out everyone who asks her for it, but they never had to ask before. it was always 'what can i do?' 'how can i help?'

and it's nice, probably, that she's getting along with spite now? it would be nicer if she wasn't also becoming friendly with other spirits too, though, or looking so bereft every time they step out of the lighthouse.

he doesn't know how to fix it. every time he tries to broach the topic she just looks sad and tells him that she wishes he could understand.

fifty (more) questions for rook

[krisrisk]

For someone who chose the medical field presumably to help other people with medical issues, my doctor sure isn't happy about seeing my for new reasons or having me talk about problems.

[sassyhazelowl]

Me @ the local exotic bird fair: I'm way too white for this -- oh *gasp* ITS A CHICKEN *immediately bypasses the emus and parrots to see the modern game bantams and old english games in the back*

[frostedturquoise]

forgot i had dnd yesterday and squandered my last day of decent internet (whoops) Weeelll i wouldn't quite say it was fully squandered but i once again stumbled into the character creation dillemma that was 'went into it with an halfassed idea then pulled an entirely different idea out of my ass because i clicked on something i didn't intend to click on'

To be fair i was fretting over the OC i had in mind being too oddball but its nice that im not the only person pulling funny/silly/slightly odd concepts out my ass here. (since we are playing a series of small running mini-adventures while waiting on shit to be polished for other games or things get polished and tweaked if we decide to do an epilogue for the one that kinda recently ended)

I hate how i cant play most of my OC's because its impractical or ill fitting for the setting or shit that wont fly or would take basically commiting more than 'adaptation to new setting' surgery given how the hell i worked shit for my setting since dnd is far more loose leaf than 'SO there s several modifiers and factors that determine who has access to what magic' and most spells just feel so utterly impractical and weird to give that i would rather make up some poor fuck on the spot and roll with it because plopping almost any one of anyone else in one of my brothers best friends game is literally a 'and this is steve' scenario. For once though, i would like not to be the healer though. It is not the first time also that i started as the healer and ended up with more hit points than the party tank. Druid is different from cleric, heals are taking the side shelf but next time im going to outright say 'before anyone does anything im not going healer make of that what you will' straight out the door lmao. Outside character creation stuff if things stay calm enough i might be able to start chewing at w.i.p's again before vomiting out the words to finish them before i get overwhelmed by to much going on at once too often always in stupid wonky ways and the resident grouch 'its fine if i do it but not anyone else' starts nattering on over stupid inconsequential shit who hates it when people say irrelevant shit but the shit that comes out of that old ladys mouth makes the dogshit bad faith tldr but made my own assumptions piss on the poor shit that happens on this website look not that terrible actually.

I could go into why but it could easily be summed up as holy shit this is the baby cordial version of most of the reasons why as a teen i rarely talked' cant even make a neutral observation about the weather or the grass being mowed today, or asking if the mail guy had been yet without copping shit, its fucking unreal. I don't even need to be talking to her she'll just come up butt in and start being a idiot all over the place not just to me but probably also whoever the fuck i was talking to.

[jewishcissiekj]

is an x-men podcast that still runs, has a sapphic/queer woman as a host, and isn't just one person talking to themselves too much to ask for