#this is a lot more negative sounding than i intended lmao

[munkkyprime]

I think i hauve (long) covid

[shima-draws]

Okay so a few things about the ending to the DLC. Spoilers below obviously

-Really REALLY disappointed they didn’t go with the whole toxic possession arc thing with Kieran and the new mythical (Pecharunt?) TO BE FAIR that was more of a fan theory than anything but it was one that made a lot of sense and had a lot of evidence to back it up. I guess I got too attached to the idea and was inevitably let down when the game didn’t go in that direction. Still it would have made more sense to give that extra edge as to why Kieran’s treating everyone so awfully,, and having him finally break free of that control during the final fight VS Terapagos would have been SO sick. Either that or before we even get to Terapagos Carmine calls Kieran out and that’s when he finally fucking explodes and rages and vents about his inferiority complex—and THAT is what summons Pecharunt, those negative feelings that it probably feeds off of or smth idk. Then we’d get a split second of Kieran finally being back in control and begging for help. And then Carmine realizing her brother has been under the influence of this Pokemon the entire time and. Okay I’m getting off track into AU territory now lmao sorry moving on

-Switching back to the Terapagos fight, I really enjoyed it! It wasn’t too long of a fight to be drawn out, but it was just long enough that it didn’t feel anticlimactic (also the MUSIC? STELLAR. Pun intended). ALSO ARGHFHH the five stages of grief Kieran goes through in that fight to finally accepting that he’s been going about this the wrong way and has been an awful friend and the way the LIGHT COMES BACK INTO HIS EYES I ALMOST CRIED. This is 10000x more emotional and powerful if you choose to bring Ogerpon with you and fight with her bc that really just. Hammers in the fact that despite all the bad blood and bitterness, Kieran still chooses to fight alongside you and the Pokemon he coveted so much…AND he even processes things enough to fully let go of all his hatred and anger and allows you to catch Terapagos because he KNOWS you’ll take good care of it and after all this time he still trusts you even though he’d probably hate to admit it. #GOOD WRITING

-Something really scary I realized. Kieran brought a Master Ball with him to catch Terapagos. 1. Where did homie even get that. 2. The fact that he was READY and didn’t even give Terapagos a chance to react, that he was essentially catching it against its will (which probably led to its power going out of control), that he was enforcing his own twisted desires and beliefs onto it and not considering its feelings (sound familiar? Looks at Ogerpon). BOY. 3. We’ve only ever seen ONE other person use Master Balls in SV. The AI Professor. I don’t know if this is significant in any way but if the Pecharunt theory WAS true that would make them so so similar and that’s eerie to me. Two characters controlled by something greater than them that they can’t fight…can you imagine how INSANE the dynamics would be listen to me

-Another thing I was kinda disappointed about was Briar? I guess I was just picking up on the vibes that she was actually a villain and would try to steal Terapagos from the player, but I probably gave Nintendo too much credit on that one lol. I do like that she’s not inherently evil, she’s just too absorbed and obsessed with her research to really pay attention to what’s going on around her. BUT. They should have pushed that WAY further. Either commit and do the full villain arc where she snatches Terapagos from Kieran right after he catches it to use it for her own purposes, or pressure him into Terastallizing it so much that it makes him uncomfortable. I want to see Lusamine levels of unhinged obsession. What she had was just a little bit too excited about Area Zero, not a full blown unhealthy and dangerous thing that puts everyone around her in danger.

-Following up on that. Drayton. I kept expecting him to also go villain arc IDK LOL I guess I want everyone to be gay do crime in this DLC 😂 But I seriously kept thinking he was just using the player to knock Kieran off his throne so he could take it right back from us. But no he actually genuinely cared about Kieran and kept pressuring us to beat the Elite Four so WE could knock some sense into him since Drayton wasn’t strong enough to do it himself. Which is a very sweet sentiment, I think :’) But am I the only one who was like bro calm down right after the fight where he was getting up in Kieran’s face and calling him ex-champion…..either he’s way too honest and doesn’t realize he was being cruel OR he was doing it on purpose to be a silly goober (but everyone else was like DUDE. LOW blow.)

-I still have questions. HELLO. HELLO. The notes in Area Zero mentioned the professor meeting a child with a white(?) book? Is that the Scarlet/Violet book? We still don’t know how the whole time travel paradox happened and why Heath talked about meeting Paradox Pokemon DECADES before the professor even brought them to Area Zero through the time machine? What is with the weird ass crystal tree sitting in the middle of a lake in the depths? Is there any significance to the Crystal Pool in Kitakami being connected to terastallizing and Area Zero? I’M JUST. AGHHH. I’m fairly certain we’re getting more content, maybe an epilogue to the DLCs but I’m going CRAZY I NEED TO KNOW NOWWW

-Also isn’t Area Zero like. Top secret hush hush. Why did Geeta let Briar publish a whole ass book about the HIDDEN SECRET of Area Zero that was miles under a closed off SECRET lab. I thought they were denying Briar access to Area Zero for YEARS, probably because they didn’t want her blabbing to the public. Idk. Maybe my memory is fuzzy on that one. Just feels very contradictory fhhdd

-The small little subtleties of Kieran regaining his regular personality as we went down….I ADORED that. His little smiles and him unable to contain his childish excitement and Carmine smiling at him with a knowing look bc after all this time her brother is FINALLY acting more like himself. And Kieran trying to brush it off like “wh-whatever” like he’s some sort of edgy teenager pretending he doesn’t care. GAHHHH it was so cute I wanted to cry 😭

ALL IN ALL it didn’t QUITE meet my expectations but it was still really good, especially considering this was all DLC content. Nothing will ever EVER top the main story of SV but the entirety of TTM and TID came pretty darn close. Kieran my sweet baby boy my blorbo I’m so glad you got your redemption arc and that you finally came to terms with your perception of strength and how it affects others. Baller DLC Nintendo do it again 👏

[mangosaurus]

Hi! Love your jwcc fanarts! (Hope u don't think my question is to annoying lmao 😭❤️)

I wanna ask u what do u think about that theory abt Ben gf being a catfish? Maybe one of that people that have been hunting them idk. Some posts claim it's actually Brooklyn trying to keep herself updated about the whole situation?? TO MUCH THEORIES

Also if the gf is actually real I'm curious about your opinion. Like I saw a post saying that Ben could be Bi, Pan, etc, but really, I am bisexual myself and there is no bi subtext on that boy... and it's not like they suddenly are gonna officialize he is bi/pan, or give him this type of subtext at this point of the franchise. Is not cool when people call "bi/pan" a media trying to avoid dealing with a character queerness. It's just painful that people think this is a real way of portrait of a bi/pan experience. It's not!!

AW thank you so much! i know i haven't posted much art lately but it still makes me really happy to hear that people enjoy it. and your question isn't annoying at all, don't worry about it :) i love receiving and answering asks, it doesn't matter what they're about

the more time that passes the more plausible the catfish GF theory sounds to me. if i had to guess, ben probably met his girlfriend online, possibly through dark jurassic (which a lot of the fandom seems to be in consensus about). as for it being brooklynn ... not too sure about that one! i've mostly treated it as a crack theory up until now, if just because of how absurd it sounds on paper, but i wouldn't put it past brooklynn to pull something like that. keeping in touch with ben is probably one of her only links back to her friends, besides her contact with ronnie (who is only partially connected to darius at this point, since he quit the DPW). i'd recommend giving these two posts by kitabearuwu a read if you're interested in exploring that theory further.

now if the girlfriend is real: i obviously can't speak for you or other bi/pan/otherwise mspec people, but i've come to not care all that much, if i'm being honest. it was definitely a shock to hear, as was the intended effect, since darius, sammy, and yasmina all initially reacted with surprise. but my question is what harm does ben having a girlfriend in chaos theory pose? like, does it play into any negative stereotypes? does it communicate a dangerous message about queer people? i've seen some people argue that it perpetuates the notion that mlm relationships are "icky" and shouldn't be portrayed in media, but i have to disagree, respectfully.

i think it's also really important to remember that subtext is ... ultimately kind of subjective, and is totally independent of the creator's intentions. that's the whole point of subtext—it exists below (hence the prefix sub-) the underbelly of the text. you have to be looking for it to see it, basically. and for a long time, the fandom (or at least the queer part of the fandom) subtextually read ben as gay! a lot of that had to do with his rather intimate interactions with the other boys, juxtaposed against the way he rejected yasmina when he thought she had a crush on him ("i like you, but i don't like like you ... i'm just now starting to find myself"). but ... i don't know, if we want to start citing text, you could also argue that ben's whole thing about not putting him in a box circa jwcc s5 could be a point towards him being generally unlabeled, which leaves room for him being mspec.

if i had to make some definitive statement on the matter, i guess it'd be that this fandom gets really bogged down by the specific labels of these characters, when it's really not all that necessary. this is still a gay show made by gay people featuring unapologetically gay characters in explicitly gay relationships, of which has been some of the best gay rep i've ever seen in media. and having that kind of representation on TV matters more to me than knowing what ben specifically identifies as, even if it doesn't align with my headcanon. it doesn't have to! but i also don't know for sure if it doesn't align with my headcanon, because we haven't gotten the full story yet. ben's girlfriend is most likely gonna be of some importance, given that he mentioned her twice without going into much detail about her. that leaves a lot of room in future seasons to expand upon who she is and her role in both the greater narrative and ben's life specifically, including his identity. i just think it's best we reserve judgement at this point, basically

[juniperhillpatient]

The Ember Island Players Re-Watch

I feel like this episode gets a lot of hate & I totally get why but for the most part, it's just funny to me. I'm not entertained by overanalyzing this one too much, it's just a silly little meta parody. I like Zuko's reference to his mother taking him & Azula to see the players "butcher 'Love Amongst the Dragons'" when they were kids. I like to think of the three of them - Ursa, Zuko, & Azula, having fun tearing the performances apart & having a good time together being hyper-critical theatre nerds. And Zuko & Azula re-enacting the play together as kids <3 Zuko doesn't mention his father, but I wonder if Ozai ever went with them? I wonder if the Fire Family had some really good times like that before it all went bad....

I enjoy the throwbacks & parodies of past interactions, a lot of it makes me laugh. I especially enjoy Toph's utter delight with her own portrayal & savagery toward everyone else. Sokka helping out the actor who plays him & Suki using her warrior skills to get them backstage is also fun.

I have a love-hate relationship with the "did Jet just...die?" moment because it IS pretty funny & I now like to almost kill Jet in my fics but not quite & see if people will comment with that line. BUT - I mean, how many times can I really say "fuck the writers" for how fucking useless to the plot & narrative Jet's death was that the only mentions of Jet afterward are either in reference to the bad things he did (so why even have him show up again at all let alone die trying to help Team Avatar?) & a throwaway meta joke? I've surely said it enough by now, right? Wrong! I can never say it enough. Fuck them.

BUT.....Even though it's terribly written, I WILL take my Jetko crumbs where I can get them. Zuko sounded pretty sad by this realization & in the Good Canon that lives in my head, Jet's death did mean something to him we just didn't see more of his grief 'cause it was off-screen. No, I will not take criticism on this.

I'm sorry but I cracked up at Zuko's actor shoving Iroh's actor to the ground & saying "you smell! I hate you forever!" Again - this episode is kinda stupid but it makes me laugh a lot. I really genuinely enjoyed Zuko & Toph's talk about Iroh though. Toph can be surprisingly emotionally intelligent for how brash she is. I thought it was really cute that Toph was able to make Zuko feel better about himself & hopeful about a reconciliation with his uncle. I love their friendship.

Alright. Ugh. The Katara/Aang kiss....I literally have no idea why the writers would have a scene like this where Katara is so ambivalent about her feelings for Aang & definitely seems to still view him as a little brother (& I want to be clear I LIKE their friendship - I enjoy both characters - I just do NOT see the romantic chemistry, I see a one-sided crush 'cause that's what we were fucking shown lmao) SO close to the end & then.....still have it as endgame? The writing for this "romance" (if you can call it that) is a mess. I'm not interested in arguing about this. If you like the pairing, good for you, but we will never agree lol

Sorry for the rant.

Ahem. Anyway......

Wow, I really have just about nothing else to say about this episode. I mean, it's funny, but it's not exactly rich with scenes to analyze. I feel like this review is coming off more negatively than I intend it to because legit I do crack up every time I watch this episode. I think it's fun, there's just not much to say about it.

The foreshadowing of the final battles & the Fire Nation crowd cheering for the Avatar's downfall was interesting. I laughed when Zuko said "that was not a good play" at the end. That's all I have! No one earned any iconic behavior points in this episode.

OH wait. I'm petty as fuck. Zuko earns +100 for sitting between Katara & Aang. Good for him. Ok, & I guess Suki also gets +100 for getting her & Sokka backstage, that was neat.

[isa-ghost]

Reading your journal thing rn and damn that's a ride XD

Was curious at "figure out a communication method that my skepticism can’t debunk" and honestly should've guessed that it'll end up being tarot, these little shits (affectionate) never fail to feel me called the fuck out lmao. A pendulum was my guess tbh (pendulum & dice were my first tools)

But also, damn Leviathan & Michael? - you're in very good hands. (the rest likely too, just no experience with them). Think... healing, recovery, shadow work, trauma work... Both of course have different approaches, but when they intend to help you get better, they mean it.

And your response to my ask - yeah, I tend to be drawn to the ones that feel like powerful friends as well, rather than the ones that expect me to walk on eggshells and overthink every action... imo that makes things a lot less stressful.

"He loves slapping me with my Spotify playlist" - Leviathan used to do that to me lmao. Me: trying to chill. Leviathan: okay but what if we think about *growth* instead??

Honestly, everything you're saying sounds promising and you sound excited :3

Heard only good things about Apollo tbh, but don't know much personally, I'm more familiar with demons ;) - A

YES I was so hesitant to use a pendulum at first because it's easy to go "no that was me moving. No it was already swinging like that. No the fan blew on it and made it move. Etc." I still often ask questions twice or even three times to confirm the answer is legit and I make sure the pendulum is absolutely still before I ask a question, so that any movement is Definitely An Answer after. Tarot, however, doesn't lie, and WOWIE do Apollo and Levi love to go for the throat. It's very funny.

Last night before Leviathan was like "yeah I scratched you, L. Anyway put Ashton on the mic I want him dead rn," I was doing a reading with Apollo because I'd seen a crow while I was out, which usually means "Isa I have words." And he basically came outta nowhere with 4 cards that were basically like "take a wellness break, all your major obligations are dealt with, things at home are peaceful, you're doing great sweetie." And I was bewildered bc he'd made it sound like I was super stressed out but I really wasn't.

I was scrambling and probably overthinking that he was referring to something specific when he was just speaking generally, but when I asked him if it was just a plain message with the pendulum, its movement was basically the spiritual equivalent of him going "EEEHsorta? ... You'll figure it out later."

Leviathan hasn't personally obliterated me with anything but literal Lake Michigan waves yet, but he basically turned my friend Ashton into soup last night, so I know I'm definitely in good hands and whenever he DOES have a tarot message for me, I'm lovingly dead meat. I always joke that he's my Paranormal Activity Demon, he claimed me as a baby and he'll fuck up anyone who touches his blorbo.

Michael is probably the third most present entity of the five, despite him lurking rather than working with me. My sister is,,, Desperately In Need Of Therapy and refuses to get it, so she's A Lot /Neg. I'd confidently say she's verbally/emotionally abusive to me, let's just say that. And Michael gets very defensive of me about it. He got into it more in that reading I mentioned about Family Matters in the post. He's also been like "Its ok bestie I got you" while I've been in churches for weddings and whatnot.

Ceridwen has had a single message for me, which was basically "hey dummy, start talking to Levi and I more, I know you're only confident in talking to Apollo but you gotta talk to us in order to get that far too." And this poor woman. I was misunderstanding the cards so hard, I ended up pulling like 6 more cards and asking questions that all got progressively more exasperated "NO"s. Like mom I am so sorry, I'm a huge dumbass omg. So eventually I gave up and talked to the friend who found out these 4 were around me in the first place bc she was the first one to start working with Ceridwen, and right away she was like "yeah no you were overthinking so hard, she meant this." I have yet to get anything else from her, but our group has gotten to the point where if more than one of us works with a certain entity (nearly all of us work with Apollo. After he picked me, he went on his "actually I want this whole server" arc, which is funny bc we're all art kids and that's His Thing. Multiple of us work with angels, Morrigan, Ceridwen, Thor, Aphrodite, Athena, and Asmodeus, just to name a few), we can ask the others to help discern what the entity is trying to tell us if we can't figure it out for ourselves.

Morrigan hasn't said anything to me directly Or through other friends yet. Which tbh is on brand for her I think, she's probably the most intimidating entity present in the server. Has big Disciplinarian Stern Mom Woman Of Her Word energy. She said she'd lurk and she meant it, whereas Michael lurks but he'll be like "heeeyy :>"

Overall I Definitely feel like I'm in good hands. I've looked up symbols for all of them, so when I'm out of the house there's a high chance at least one of them (usually Apollo) makes me laugh because I see something and I'm like "REALLY DUDE?" They're all really good at making it known they're here.

[darkpoisonouslove]

🦋what are you most insecure about when you post a fic?

🍭why did you start writing?

💎why is writing important to you?

🤍what's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

🦋what are you most insecure about when you post a fic?

Whether or not the character motivations come through. I tend to write a lot of canon divergence/AU and sometimes the roles that I put the characters in are not immediately intuitive for them. Honestly, I am - at all times, not just when posting - one step away from literally screaming, crying, throwing up at the idea that the characters' actions and words might not be believable the way I've written them.

🍭why did you start writing?

Hell if I know. I just had an idea and I went for it. I wrote about 4 chapters before abandoning it. Much later (5+ years) I had another idea and I started writing down small snippets of thoughts coming to me. They weren't really stories yet but I was already planning these great epics. That went on for another year where I started at least three more novels that got abandoned either on the first or second chapter. And then I saw the Seventh Son. It gave me extreme rage for the movie and that's when the idea for my main book was born (not abandoned but I am very much cleaning up the plot and themes still, 8 years later). Completely out of spite. At that point I guess I knew writing was for me but I cannot remember why I decided to keep going... other than the overwhelming amount of ideas that just seemed like gold (they were not - at that point my approach to generating plot was just "throw a bunch of terrible situations at the page and see what sticks, except I didn't have the critical ability to actually discern what "stuck" aka was good and most of the alleged plot was just a poorly motivated soup of happenings). I think I also discovered fanfic and started my first one in the summer before the main book came to me (which happened at the end of January). I just had situations in mind that I wanted to subject my characters to.

💎why is writing important to you?

Lmao, the last couple of years writing has been a literal pain so it's not so much "I love it for reasons x, y and z" as much as it is "I literally, physically start to go stir crazy if I go without writing for a certain amount of time". It has certainly helped me deal with inner conflicts before but I don't think I've been able to successfully process an emotion since the pandemic started so I wouldn't say it's been an emotional outlet recently. Surely, I've dumped my emotions on the page - more often than not - but it either makes me more confused when I try to disentangle the characters' feelings as well as mine, or it adds more negative emotions like self-doubt and frustration. That sounds very bleak and I don't want it to but the truth is that it has been a struggle the past few years. I am constantly overthinking every little detail or getting mad at myself for tiring so easily and not having the mental capacity to write. This all sounds like a perfect set of reasons to quit but I haven't yet and I don't really intend to. Writing is important to me even if I can't tell why right now. It must be since I can't quit.

🤍what's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

I'm not sure I can actually give an answer to this because I'd have to know what people think of my stories and most of them get one or two comments in total so it's hard to say if people get it or not. Honestly, I'm lucky because you really get them (hive mind ftw!). I am instantly thinking about how you literally highlighted all the parts in Want of a Mask that I tried to emphasize with my writing so that was the opposite of what you're asking me.

Honestly, the only thing that comes to mind is Sharing - a Fairy Tail fanfic that I wrote for a fandom week. It is much deeper and moving than the other two - very generic - works that I wrote for the same fandom week, yet those are more popular (that's the impression I got at the time when it was only posted on FFN; stats on AO3 kind of disagree with me atm).

Send me ((REAL)) fic writer asks

[valleyfthdolls]

Thanks! So I’ll get into the relevant AU lore and my explanation for Michael possibly having BPD.

- In this AU, Michael’s motives for going to all the locations to try and undo his fathers actions were mainly because he felt obligated. William was the cause of everything, so as his son, he "needed" to put everything back together. However, there was also a need to gain validation from William that influenced Michael’s actions. To Michael, if he endured all of the harm that came from what his father did, it would somehow prove he was worthy love. (Self destructive behaviour caused from wanting validation.)

- I think this is main reason I considered that Michael could possibly be borderline. He has a fixation on Henry that reminds me of BPD attachment styles. Strong admiration that can become with blind idolisation, to the point where his self destructive issues intensify. Michael almost accepted his fate in the FNAF6 fire because it like a way to show respect to Henry (I don’t really know how to explain it right now.)

There’s more a bit more but the AU is still a massive WIP and I don’t want to spoil too much of the story I’m planning. And I may have spent way longer on this than I intended to-

Anyways, love to here what your thoughts are!

Ok I finally thought hey I need to fucking answer this lmao- be aware my commentary may sound negative but nothing you’ve said is offensive and it’s clear you care about properly representing things like this when you write them.

That being said, I think this is a bit of a misunderstanding of how BPD works. It’s hard to tell from just reading up on it, and this I know because before I realized I had it, or at least am suspected and have a lot of traits, I totally misinterpreted what it was like from reading about symptoms, but a lot of BPD symptoms come about in interpersonal relationships as a massive part of BPD is a fear of abandonment. This can manifest in the ways you mentioned above, however in the context of BPD I’m not entirely sure that it fits the criteria of the disorder. While Michael is seeking validation, he doesn’t seem to be doing it with the intent to keep someone close or avoid being abandoned in a relationship he feels is important to him. Him wanting to prove himself worthy sounds more like some sort of complex, wanting to prove to himself that he is worth his father’s love as opposed to trying to keep him around. With Henry I feel like the attachment style best known for BPD, a favorite person, often comes with a need for, again, a close and constant relationship. A description I’ve heard from someone who helped me sort out my feelings on my ex FP is that “just the idea of them leaving you feels like the world crumbling under your feet.” It tends to manifest as a sense of dependency on the person for emotional stability, extreme anxiety about them abandoning you, a desire to be with them as much as possible and a need for them to be happy for you to be happy. Idolization certainly does happen with BPD, as black and white thinking is a very commonly discussed part of BPD.

If you don’t mind me derailing for a second, I want to bring up a bit of my own writing, which also features a protagonist with BPD and a massive fire. The protagonist of this story’s biggest flaw is his black and white worldview, followed by his inferiority complex, social incompetence, stubbornness, poor relationship skills, emotional and somewhat unpredictable behavior, and the fact that he can’t stop thinking about horror for more than 5 minutes or he will explode and die. If you’ll excuse that tangent, as you can probably tell, this character is heavily coded as autistic and borderline. The black and white worldview, especially in how he views others, is the biggest symptom, but over the course of the story as everyone around him is basically dropping like flies, he develops an attachment to his friend(?)/crush, a girl he had previously seen as above him as a result of the aforementioned black and white thinking. At the end of the story, their school is set on fire with the survivors inside, and this girl is restrained inside the school. Despite constant pushing from the other survivors to get out and leave her because unfortunately they can’t save her and make it out alive, he physically attacks the girl pulling him toward the exit and runs back toward her. This relationship with her is so important to him that it completely dominates his thoughts in this moment, overtaking even his survival instinct as the thought of losing her is so painful that he’d rather be cooked alive than let her go.

While it’s a similar concept to Michael and Henry in your AU, the interpersonal relationship aspect is important. This isn’t me saying I’m a better writer than you, I just want to explain how I executed a similar idea with a character who canonically has BPD. If Michael is close with Henry or sees him as an important person in his life or someone who his relationship with is this important, then this does check the box. A close relationship really isn’t necessary for that attachment, but it has to be a relationship that is that important. Like in your analysis on Devon, who isn’t close with the girl you proposed as him being attached to, but he certainly is fixated on her and their relationship to the point it consumes a lot of his thoughts. If this is similar to your Michael’s view of Henry, then like I said, this is a pretty good depiction of a common borderline attachment style. However, as it is, while your Michael having BPD is possible as he has abstract(?) symptoms, it’s not really a dead ringer for BPD. However, if you imagine your Michael as having BPD, it’s also not really inaccurate as it’s different for everyone, but the relationship aspects are very common. And at the end of the day it’s up to you since it certainly is possible given what you’ve written

[raitrolling]

anyway uhhhhh. scattered thoughts about Spanner In The Works time

the whole idea for this plot started out because when celise last met epsilo he was very close to just straight-up killing them, and while that crisis was avoided i liked the idea of celise dying and getting resurrected due to vernrot's eldritch influence so i decided to roll with that for my own plot

lucy being the culprit just made sense to me given how it is established that he does kill tourists whenever the various entities at vernrot require a troll sacrifice, and then i was thinking Hey What If That Had Consequences

... and also i had that scene where vallis figures out that lucy is drunk because he's listening to his bodily functions using his eldritch senses stuck in my head and wanted to write that. i love vallis' lowkey freak shit

that was. about the extent of of pre-planning i did before writing those five drabbles LMAO most of the stuff came to me while i was writing, or i was thinking about the next drabble while writing the one i was currently working on

lucy wasn't originally going to call upon the horrorterrors to save celise, but something about that moment of being so delirious from blood loss and regret/grief that you call out to anyone who would hear for some sort of solace was really evocative to me that i just had to include it. and it helped tie vallis into the plot for Part 4 even if he was mostly used as exposition

as an aside, i thought it was really funny how vallis talks about being disappointed that celise wants nothing to do with him, only for it to be revealed in the next drabble that they were so out of it they dont even remember him being there

celise is a frog zombie for multiple reasons 1. they are a frog troll and making them more froglike sounded fun; 2. vernrot's horrorterrors tend to warp people by giving them more aquatic qualities so amphibious bullshit made sense to me; 3. i like frogs; and 4. celise fucking hates weird zombies so this was such an ironic and mean fate to give them. id actually been debating for years if celise should have an inexplicable frog tongue mutation because i thought itd be funny if they could just. eat flies out of the air with it, but i always worried it mightve been Too Weird And Gross that i didnt go ahead with it... Until now. if anyone gets weird about it im beating you to death

i genuinely forgot that celise was a vegetarian too, so i had to pivot hard towards them having to deal with the horror of eating meat in After Pain so that ended up a lot more visceral than i initially intended. though i did have to rewrite one part because i got so into writing a contrast between celise's disgust between eating meat and how their new instincts desperately crave it and it tastes irresistible to them now that started sounding a bit vaguely erotic and i went FUCK OH NO GO BACK LMFAOOO. dungeon meshi changed me as a person

but yeah unfortunately for them their diet has completely flipped and they can only eat meat now! they can stomach animal meats fine but it doesn't sate them nearly as much as troll meat does, and for those who skipped the emeto scene the main thing worth noting is that ordinary food tastes rotten to them now. big rip

also the timeline is just vague enough that its ambiguous who left the offering at the end. was it the horrorterrors looking after their newest creation? or was it lucy trying to repent for what he had done to them? vote now on your phones

and i think i made it clear enough, but the thing that the horrorterrors took away from them was their ability to feel intense amounts of anger, which now when they get angry they start feeling really hungry instead. funny how they constantly denied their ability to feel negative emotions and anger to the point where they dissociated themself from the emotion entirely, and once they finally acknowledged it, it was taken away from them and the absence is so much worse. on the bright side, theyll be a little less insufferable to deal with now, so lucy did one thing right by killing them :)

[imjustaf444keriguess]

Ageism absolutely does apply when you use "kid" in a way meant as negative, or at least that's how it came off.

what do you mean. what even is ageism. the way i understand ageism isn't "when someone uses a word in a way you dont like / negatively", it more correlates to how different people of different ages are treated and neglected in society. me calling you "kid" is different than me treating a real child (under 13, aka not allowed on tumblr) as if they have no autonomy or decision making capabilities and hurt them or neglect them. i am assuming you're not literally a child, as you are on tumblr, and i am not intending to say you have no autonomy or decision making capabilities.

kinda the opposite, i was more replying to your decision to claim that someone else doesn't matter and that they are a waste of space. which really does sound like projection out of anger and hurt. i don't think anyone who's "not mad, bro" would say stuff like

like I said, GET A DAMN LIFEEEE. You are such a miserable waste of space, your existence is pointless

it sounds like you have a lot of issues to deal with, as those are not thoughts most people have towards anyone. i have a guess that is how you see yourself and you don't want to see yourself that way, so you make a "burner" account and you yell that at other people.

also, this statement is very funny to me

I'm clowning on some bozo that has nothing better to do than yell "you have to have trauma to be a real system!!!!" bc it's funny to piss them off more lmao

because the op of this post is claiming to have a disorder without the original criteria of having the disorder. i do think that DID itself is mainly formed from childhood trauma. you can form a system without that trauma, but you can't "transition" into having a disorder, especially one that involves trauma from a young age as often as DID is correlated to.

op might form a system and might have amnesia issues and such like DID, but might not have the same trauma as other systems with childhood-formed DID. and i think searching for that hurt can either mean that they already ARE a system, they just don't want to admit their trauma was good enough, or that they are seeking harm for themselves due to another disorder.

i have regular therapy sessions + i go on whimsical walks regularly to enjoy the small joys in life

they do say this, so if they are correct, that means their therapist can help them understand themself/selves and their wants and "transition" plans, which i would suggest op do (talking to your therapist about your disorders, the ones you may already have and the ones you want, will definitely help you understand why you think the way you do), but... in the end, it's not really my problem.

people have the capabilities to hurt themselves however they wish, even if i don't think it's healthy. as long as they have the ability to seek medical help for any problems, i can't really do much else. and if they have no ability to seek medical help, that's an entirely different story in relation to self diagnosis and healthcare and such.

don't even know where i'm going with this, honestly. tldr i don't understand what you mean by ageism, and you need therapy for your projection and insistence that others are worthless, since it shows that you might deal with similar feelings for yourself. i also dont think you can transition into having DID itself, but plurality exists outside of DID because of course it does. aaaand seeking to hurt yourself or gain a disability or disorder can be dangerous and i think if you feel that way you should figure out why or smth.

our DID symptoms have been worsening!

upside: hehe transition go brrrr :)

downside: wow cisDID ppl werent lying this SUCKS

[taakitz]

i wish i was better at messaging people back and messaging people first in general like what is wrong with me. what happened to me?? why am i like this????

[archived-kin]

you go to a devildom zoo and a penguin attempts to seduce you (the brothers are not happy)

note from kin: this was meant to be out way sooner but covid-19 and a whole lot of catch-up coursework said no to that idea >:(

anyway formatting on mobile is actual ass so let me know if this ends up unreadable!

enjoy, darlings!

fandom: obey me!

character(s): gn!reader, lucifer, mammon, leviathan, satan, asmodeus, beelzebub, belphegor, diavolo (mentioned briefly)

pairing(s): demon brothers/reader, penguin/reader (one-sided), a bat also very briefly tries to seduce you

warning(s): reader really loves deadly creatures which i know isn't really a warning but just as a heads up for those who can't relate i guess??? also this is ended up WAY longer than i intended lmao

genre: fluff (but also crack)

oh the pure joy you felt when you found out that there are zoos in the devildom

zoos full of sphinxes, chimeras, hydras, krakens, manticores, basilisks and griffins, but zoos nonetheless

in fact, you’d argue that the fact that the zoos here are full of potentially lethal legendary beasts is even COOLER

so, naturally, you begged lucifer to let you go to one

his response?

“absolutely not, you could be killed.”

well now that’s just unfair

there are so many things down here in the devildom that could kill you! the heat, the food, the dragons just wandering around in the skies, your fellow students at rad, belphie, not sleeping enough, the stupidly narrow staircases, lucifer himself! in fact, you’d argue that lucifer has already come close to killing you more times than any of those creatures at the zoo

unfortunately that was entirely was the wrong thing to say because now lucifer’s gone all broody on you

you just KNOW he’s gonna spend all of next week either drowning himself in work or sulking in the music room if you don’t cheer him up quickly

so you guess it’s time to pull out the puppy eyes and hope that they work

spoiler alert: they do. you also end up being stuck in lucifer’s arms for about five hours afterwards as he cuddles out all of his negative thoughts, but that’s not a bad thing, so you’re not complaining

the next day, however, you are BACK on your bullshit

and you are back with a vengeance!

you are getting a trip to that zoo whether lucifer likes it or not and you will not rest until you succeed

your first idea is to go to diavolo for help because.... he’s diavolo and lucifer would listen to that demon before anyone, including himself

unfortunately that doesn’t work because diavolo is out on a business trip to the human world with barbatos

(which means your butler buddy, who could probably have helped you make your case, is also out of the picture)

you suppose that you could try getting simeon in on the scheme but you’re pretty sure he’d end up making it worse with his insatiable penchant for teasing lucifer

your final solution?

cry

and it worked a treat too!

lucifer is just a sucker for his human and he doesn’t like seeing them sad okay :((

he finally agrees to let you go to the big zoo just north of RAD since it’s directly under diavolo’s jurisdiction, but he also makes you promise that you’ll take at least one brother with you

(he’s hoping you’ll choose him)

but then you uno reverse card him!

jokes on you, lucifer, your human wants a family day out!!

lucifer would be lying if his heart didn’t swell slightly when you proclaimed you wanted all the brothers to come with you so that you could all spend the day together having fun

although you may have just made a mistake because now lucifer is going to do everything in his power to make sure the day goes perfectly, and if that means smiting the rude demon in line in front of you, then what about it?

(luckily you stop him from the killing someone before you’re even inside, but it was a close call)

the moment the eight of you step into the zoo satan whisks you off to look at the devildom equivalent of big cats

which means the sphinxes and manticores first, then the giant fire-breathing tigers

he’s planning to have a nice heart-to-heart conversation with you while the two of you stroll along the exhibit, but then you both get distracted by how cool the animals are

so the two of you just end up dragging each other back and forth to look at one creature after another

not the romantic scene satan initially had in mind, but he’d be lying if he said this wasn’t also absolutely perfect

holding your hand while you talk enthusiastically about how majestically that manticore leapt thirty feet into the air with your entire face lighting up like the most beautiful lantern in the world? stunning. outstanding. he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

meanwhile, back at the entrance, levi is sulking, mammon is fuming, beel is already stuffing himself with overpriced food stall delicacies, belphie has crawled under a bench to nap while he waits for you to come back, asmo is taking pictures with the extra long-legged flamingo billboard, and lucifer is so preoccupied with trying to figure out just how the hell the walking system here works that he hasn’t even noticed that you and satan have just disappeared into the void

in the end the remaining brothers split off into pairs, all agreeing that whoever is the first to find you and satan will get to have some one-on-one time with you next

and, drumroll please, that lucky pair turns out to be... beel and belphie!

(really they have an unfair advantage though since beel can smell out anyone he knows from a mile away)

meanwhile satan has just spent just about all of the grimm he brought with him on a hideously overpriced plush version of the manticore you were so fascinated with

but the smile on your face when he gives it to you?? the LIGHT that exudes from you when you declare that the plush’s name is now greenie because it has green eyes just like his?? worth it. absolutely worth it.

but uh oh, the moment is soon to be gone, because guess who’s here?

beel and belphie can’t let satan have all your attention! beel is a little more forgiving, but belphie is going to make sure he’s the first to get a kiss today, anti-lucifer club alliance be damned!

he’s not going to admit that of course. instead, he’s going to very subtly hip-bump satan out of the way so that he can hold your hand instead (beel can have the other hand, but if he tries to pull you away, he’s getting what-for.)

normally satan would be pretty miffed by this, but hey, he’s in a good mood right now and he doesn’t want to spoil the day by getting pissy, so he lets the twins get away with it. younger sibling privilege, am I right?

belphie wants to take you to his particular favourite exhibit here, the giant carnivorous cattle with horns the size of chair legs

beel, on the other hand, suggests that maybe you don’t want to see a gargantuan mammal tear apart a giant piece of meat that may or may not have been sourced from a human graveyard (the giant carnivorous cattle are picky, okay? at least they’re not murdering people for the meat)

you, however, are absolutely fearless

besides, what harm can a giant carnivorous cattle with horns the side of chair legs do to you when it’s being kept behind six inches of hellfire trench, with three of the devildom’s most powerful demons close by to swoop in to your rescue?

beel begrudgingly agrees to go see the giant carnivorous cattle, but makes you promise to stay slightly behind him so that he can jump to defend you should they get out of hand

your big strong demon standing in front of you, protecting you as you get to look at a super cool and also deadly creature? you are absolutely on board with this.

(satan is slightly concerned by your willingness to go near creatures that could tear you to pieces in a second, but if he gets to see you smile like that again then... well, what can he say, he’s a simp)

so off you go!

the giant carnivorous cattle are AWESOME. you get to watch a trio of them eat what appears to be an entire car in, like, two seconds, tops, and they don’t even look bothered by the metal disappearing down their massive gullets.

(you ask belphie in an undertone why the cattle are eating cars if they’re carnivorous. his response is that even giant carnivorous cattle need their minerals, so the zookeepers feed them a bunch of the metal stuff you get in human scrapyards.)

(sounds like an RSPCA violation to you...)

you’re practically tumbling over the fence as you lean forward to get a proper look at them and their adorable tiny wings, so belphie ends up having to pull you back

just as he does it, however, he has a very bright idea

so instead of gently tugging you back as he’d originally planned, he practically yanks you into him, conveniently slipping your hand out of beel’s in the process

listen, it’s not that belphie resents letting beel hold hands with you at the same time as him. a demon’s just gotta get his hugs sometimes, alright?

of course you’re a little miffed about being so violently yoinked, so you’re about to turn around and give belphie a piece of your mind, but then he pulls you close to him and nuzzles his nose into your hair

how are you supposed to scold him for that???

he seems so content and he’s even doing that adorable little purring thing demons do when they’re happy that he never does in public

you can’t just pull out of his arms! it’s probably illegal!!!!!

belphie gets a pass for being cute this time. only this time. no more.

(as an aside, this sort of thing happens at least once a day because belphie’s a whiny little baby who can’t go twelve hours without your love)

anyway now beel looks a little downtrodden which you are not having

your solution? wait until belphie lets go of you on his own and then you can give beel a hug of his own.

unfortunately belphie doesn’t seem interested in separating from you

luckily you don’t end up having to deal with that, because then satan steps in

partially because he feels bad for beel and also partially because okay that’s enough touching now, know your boundaries

which means it’s BEEL’S TURN TO SHINE

does this demon want you to die? because that is what’s going to happen if he keeps being so friggin sweet

first of all he buys you a bunch of treats from the nearby food stalls with his own money and offers every single one to you

is he on drugs? is that what’s happening here? what happened to the avatar of gluttony who ate first and asked questions later???

of course you aren’t going to be so cruel as to take every single one of the treats he’s offering when you can physically hear his stomach rumble as he holds them out to you

instead, you take a handful or so and tell him to eat the rest himself because he deserves it

beel almost tears up he’s so happy he loves you so much in that moment

some may say he’s being dramatic but beel says that every moment with you is a treasure and he has every right to be emotional

belphie is a teensy bit pissed that satan simp-policed him when he’s just as whipped but it’s beel so... he’ll stay down

satan, meanwhile, starts snapping pictures of you at every opportunity, most of them candids, to save to the album he has dedicated especially to you, and also to send to the brothers’ group chat to brag

asmo responds to each one with even more heart emojis than the last, levi always has some kind of jealous comment to make, lucifer stays silent (satan knows he’s saving the photos to his own gallery to gaze affectionately at later though), and mammon just keeps sending angry stickers and then quickly adding that they’re not aimed at you but at satan for having the audacity

anyway, the four of you end up leaving the giant carnivorous cow exhibit after spending a few minutes just sitting together on one of the giant benches while you and beel (mostly beel) eat the giant pile of food he purchased

(beel’s not evil so he offers satan and belphie some obviously, but he makes it clear that you’re getting first pick)

beel’s about to ask where you want to head next when

here comes trouble

and make it double

asmo and levi are IN the building (zoo)

levi, having gotten so antsy waiting for you to show up, disregards all subtlety and basically throws himself right at you, scoops you up, and takes off

leaving behind your poor manticore plush, a stunned satan, beel, belphie, and asmo, who immediately starts running after the two of you, shouting ‘hey, that isn’t fair!’

satan, belphie and beel are left to exchange disbelieving looks and attempt to follow

(don't worry about greenie, satan picks him up and vows to keep him safe until he meets up with you again)

meanwhile you are being quite literally swept off your feet

“levi. levi stop i can walk. levi i’m coming to aquarium with you. you don’t need to pull me. levi i’m getting a little dizzy over here. levi please”

luckily you are saved from your impending doom (because, realistically, there is no way mr hasn’t-exercised-in-several-millennia can carry someone halfway across the biggest zoo in all three realms without tripping) by asmo

now, asmo does not like exercise. it makes him all hot and sweaty (and not in the sexy way) and it’s just... not it. however, because it’s you, he will make an exception just this once.

so he grits his teeth, pins back his long-ass fringe with a cute butterfly clip, and runs for it

normally jealous-mode levi will not stop for anything, but a running asmo in the right situation is even more terrifying than a quiet angry lucifer, and a quiet angry lucifer normally means multiple people are getting burnt alive

so what does levi do? naturally, he stops in his tracks, lets out a scream of such a high frequency that he disturbs a flock of deathseye hawks nesting in a tree nearby, and almost drops you on your head

asmo immediately stops running, takes a moment to dab off any sweat on his forehead with his dainty little pink handkerchief, and lets his hair back down

because he is not exercising for a second longer than he has to

anyway, now that you’re not being torpedo’d halfway across the world, you can finally take a second to breathe and actually ask levi what he wants

he goes pink and stares shame-facedly at the ground and refuses to say a word, especially with avatar of lust ‘i like teasing my brothers to the point where it might be sexual harassment’ asmodeus Right There behind you

but you want your purple boy to be honest!! which means it is puppy dog eyes time again

finally, staring determinedly off to the side, levi mumbles, “you promised we’d go see the fish...”

oh your poor heart

you’re inclined to start pressing kisses all over his face, but you just know he will immediately blow up on the spot if you do in such a public area, so you settle on giving him a subtle hug and reassuring him that yes, you will go see the fish with him

now, asmo’s a hoe for attention, we all know that, but even he has his moments

so, making you promise to go see the birds of arcadia with him later, he departs with a wave and a very sneaky kiss planted on your cheek to let you and levi have your time together

thanks asmo

so off you and levi go!

the aquarium FUCKS

sorry that was too strong

the aquarium is GORGEOUS

it’s got this beautiful deep blue-green ambient lighting, and there are enormous tanks for the giant sharks that essentially make up the walls and ceiling

and there are SO MANY FISH!

rainbow fish, neon pink fish, fish with tiny markings that make them look like they have moustaches, fish with scales that change colour every five seconds, glow-in-the-dark fish, fish the size of a small car

literally any kind of fish you can imagine? they HAVE THEM

you’re almost too distracted to notice levi tugging aggressively on your sleeve

when you do, though, he quickly ushers you over into the tunnel exhibit, where the dolphins live

devildom dolphins look pretty similar to regular human dolphins, except they live in what’s essentially hydrochloric acid and are pitch black in colour with bright purple eyes

you’re pretty confused as to why levi wanted to drag you in here so quickly - you’d have thought he’d go for the goldfish, or the venomous water serpents, or even the special hydra exhibit they’ve got for a limited time

but then levi pulls you over to the very edge, taps his fingers lightly on the glass, and... starts clicking and chirruping?

you’re about to very concernedly ask if he’s feeling alright when something amazing happens

the giant male with scars all over it who, according to one of the signs along the tunnel, spends most of his time skulking as far away from the glass as possible and will eat any demon who comes too close, swims over to him

then, wearing the gentlest little smile, levi turns to you and tells you to say hello to captain

you almost yell out of sheer excitement, but you manage to collect yourself

instead, what comes out is an aggressively whispered:

"hello!! hi, captain!! it's lovely to meet you!! i love you!!!!"

and captain loves you too!!!!!

he swims right up to you and butts his nose against the glass

well you can't not immediately press your face against the glass as well so it looks like you're bumping noses with him can you???

so you do exactly that

all the while going "hello!! hello!! you're such a pretty boy!! what a handsome boy!!"

levi almost cries because you are just too perfect

you love captain? and captain loves you too? he seriously has to hold himself back from dropping to one knee and proposing right then and there

after taking a moment to get his heart to calm down, he translates what you're saying to captain, who immediately starts clicking back

and guess what??? captain says you're the prettiest!!!!!!!!! you’re the handsomest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now you're going to cry

you and levi spend ages in that tunnel together, just talking to captain and holding hands and exchanging little kisses now and then

levi is so in his element here in the aquarium that he isn't even as nervous and stuttery with his affection as usual

it's almost jarring, but are you complaining? absolutely not

when and levi emerge from the aquarium, both a little giddy and still enthusiastically talking about all the other creatures you said hi to after captain (who you are most definitely coming back to visit sometime), asmo is waiting outside so impatiently that he's getting a lot of irritated looks for his aggressive foot-tapping

levi wants to go see the reptiles now, but then asmo plays the 'i let you get away with having alone time, now let me have mine, bitch’ card

and to be honest levi's pretty sure that even self-proclaimed romance expert asmo can't top the mini-aquarium date you've just had with him, sooooo...

buying you a little keychain replica of captain just to get a final one over his brother, he bids you goodbye and goes off to the reptile house on his own, pulling on his headphones on his way so that he won't accidentally end up talking to some stranger again

it is now asmo's time to shine!!!

and so off the two of you head off to the birds of arcadia exhibit

however, it seems that asmo doesn’t have much interest in the birds themselves apart from for taking pictures with them for his devilgram

the birds are beautiful indeed, but guess what else is also beautiful? here is a short and concise list:

1. holding asmo’s hand

2. giving asmo kisses

3. receiving kisses from asmo

4. giving asmo hugs

5. receiving hugs from asmo

6. cuddling with asmo

7. sleeping with asmo (in the literal sense)

8. sleeping with asmo (in the not so litera—)

this has been a short and concise list of things that are very beautiful and you should absolutely do right this second (not ghost-written by asmodeus, avatar of lust, not at all)

anyway, it’s kind of hard to concentrate on that adorable neon striped pecker sitting close by to you when asmo is draping himself all over you like a damn scarf

it’s cute! it’s cute. but.... the birds...... you want to see the birds.........

in the end the two of you settle on a compromise: asmo will let you have some time to just look at the pretty birds as long as you keep holding his hand, and then the two of you will go and get matching face paint together

asmo’s kinda pouty about it at first, but he quickly changes his mind when he sees how enamoured you are by the birds

you really are too cute!! he just wants to scoop you up and cover you with kisses, but he’s already promised to leave that for when you aren’t in the middle of a busy public space

(he definitely isn’t the slightest bit jealous of them because he wants to be the only beautiful thing that you look at like that. he knows he’s prettier than those birds.)

(but, like... he’s still gonna puff up his chest a bit when he catches one edging just a bit too close to you. he may be the avatar of lust, but he does have his moments of jealousy as well… even if they’re at blooming birds.)

finally, when you’ve decided that you’ve had your fill of gorgeous birds, asmo immediately pulls you off to the face-painting booth

all the designs the demons managing it have come up with are pretty beautiful, so he’s not bothered about which one to get as long as you two are matching

which means you get to choose!!!!

at first he thinks you’ll ask for the super popular one that imitates the feather pattern of the most popular bird of arcadia, the lesser spotted spectra

but then you turn to look at him, think for a moment, turn back to the demon doing the painting, and ask if they do custom designs

asmo can only watch on, confused, as you and the demon whisper conspiratorially back and forth for five minutes

then the demon has started painting, and the cheeky little grin on your face is making him a little worried that you’ve deliberately asked for a really stupid design just to mess with him

but then, as the strokes and colours all come together, he realises something that might make him a little teary eyed. just a little bit.

the design you’ve asked for just so happens to be the gorgeous, swirling pattern of the avatar of lust’s pact mark

and it’s not just that, either. he takes a closer look and realises that the little flowers added around the edges are his favourite kind of rose as well

and THEN the demon doing the painting turns to him and tells him with a smirk that, by your suggestion, the paint he’s using has been enchanted so that it goes rainbow when you kiss the person who’s wearing it

oh, he really should have had more faith in you! this is even better than anything he could come up with!!!

(he takes about a million photos of you while he’s waiting for his own turn and sends at least a quarter of them to the group chat)

asmo is practically vibrating with excitement as he sits there getting his own face painted

and if you think he doesn’t drag you off to some secluded corner for a good half an hour just pressing little kisses all over your face and giggling when he pulls away and your face paint has gone all the colours of the rainbow, you are severely wrong

of course, he wants kisses as well. this is a give-and-take system and he wants just as much as he gives!!!

unfortunately, there is one disadvantage to spending so much time just canoodling

the others haven’t heard from you or asmo in a good hour and they are beginning to PANIC

mammon in particular is practically shooting off the walls and just constantly spamming you with ‘WHERE ARE YOU’ and ‘COME BACK’ messages

asmo doesn’t want you to go but he’s also kind of running off a high right now so he decides it’s okay and sends you off you find mammon with a cheery wave (and a love struck sigh once you’re out of earshot)

you find mammon just walking in circles in the communal area outside the cannibalistic not-zebras exhibit

he almost bursts into tears when you come up to him and tap him on the shoulder because it feels like he hasn’t seen you for what feels like hours and hours and he just,,, he missed you okay

after five minutes of him just furiously rubbing his eyes and refusing to admit why, he gathers himself and asks you what you want to go see

you have to think for a good long while because, while you’ve been to plenty of zoos in the human world and know by now the sorts of animals most of them have, devildom creature species are unpredictable

you could jokingly say ‘hyper-aware empathetic goose’ and they’d probably have one

but then you have a look around you and see the big map

and what is the first thing you see on that map?

‘vampiric venomous bats’

oh fuck yeah

mammon is a little concerned because the vvbs are known to randomly swoop down and attack the people who walk into their exhibit

he knows you can protect yourself!! but when you’re being swarmed by a horde of more than fifty giant bat creatures with enormous teeth full of venom that can kill you in seconds, there’s really not much you can do

and there is no expressing the amount of absolute misery that would descend on him if he let you get hurt

so instead, you make a compromise and decide to go to scheduled talk on the vvbs in ten minutes instead

normally mammon finds these zoo talks boring as all hell, but heck, if he gets to hold your hand for a whole forty five minutes without having to make an excuse to do so, he’s down

so off you go to the talk!

you’re having the absolute time of your life as the keeper shows you one of the more lethargic bats and describes exactly how it paralyses its prey with high frequency screeches and then kills it with a single bite to the neck

mammon, on the other hand, is honestly kind of spooked

that bat may be half-asleep, but it’s got the eyes of a murderer

so what if he shuffles a little closer to you every time the bat moves?? it’s not like he’s scared of it or anything! no way!

(please hold him or he may cry)

but then... DISASTER strikes

the keeper looks out across her bright-eyed audience, listening attentively to her explanation of how the vvb detects prey through the slightest vibrations in the air... and asks if there are any volunteers who want to hold it

everyone goes quiet. they’re all looking at the floor and avoiding eye contact like students who don’t want to be picked to answer a question in class. they may be demons, but even they know danger when they see it.

except...

mammon is just commenting to himself in amusement about how quiet everyone’s gotten when he looks to the side and practically feels his heart freeze

your hand has flown straight up into the air, and before he can pull it down, the keeper has called on you

mammon may be just as terrified of that bat as everyone else, but he isn’t going to let you go near that thing without him to protect you

the keeper looks a little befuddled as to why one of the most powerful demons in the devildom is following you up to the front like a very attached duckling, but luckily she goes along with it

first she gives you a super thick dragonhide glove to wear, just in case the bat gets violent

then she attaches the little lead around one of the bat’s feet to the end of the glove, so that even if it tries to attack an uncovered spot on your body, it’ll just get pulled back

(meanwhile, mammon, standing just behind you, is just barely holding back from bursting into demon form and wrapping himself around you to protect you)

and so, as you watch in anticipation and mammon in terror, the keeper slowly moves the bat from her arm to yours

at first it just kind of sits there and blinks and... doesn’t really do much

the keeper, however, seems very happy about this

“it means she already trusts you!!!”

and she tells you to try a simple little trick

“just flick your wrist up and she should swing down to hang from your hand!”

mammon is very pointedly whispering to you that that’s enough, you’ve held the bat, come on let’s get out of here

but you are determined to continue putting your life in danger, it seems, because you do exactly what the keeper says

and it works!!!

piki, which you have learned is the name of this particular bat, lets out a quiet squeak and drops to hang from one of the enormous fingers of your glove

you immediately go ‘wooAAAAAAAAAH’

mammon almost bites his tongue in half because of how on edge he is, but it turns out that he doesn’t need to be

because the bat turns to you, blinks once, and suddenly puffs up around the neck

you panic a little at first, but the keeper seems incredibly excited

“she’s displaying!!!!!!! she likes you!!!!!!!!!!! she sees you as a potential mate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

okay mammon is not having any of that

he is not about to be upstaged by a goddamn bat

and so the instant the bat and glove is removed from you, he grabs you by the hand and charges right out of that room, shouting something about it being urgent

leaving poor piki the vampiric venomous bat squeaking sadly because her new crush is gone

sad :(

now mammon is buying you a giant plush to make up for dragging you away like that

happy! :)

and you KNOW this means a great deal because mammon does not part with his money very easily. in fact, most of the time, one would have to physically threaten him into buying something for them

and the fact that mammon bought you a ridiculously expensive enormous plush that probably dug a pretty big hole in his savings without you even asking??? your heart basically melts on the spot

now you definitely can’t get angry at him for pulling you away so suddenly

so instead the two of you go to see the giant narwhals

you’re fascinated, but mammon is too distracted to even look at the narwhals

he just keeps staring at you looking so happy hugging the giant plush he bought for you so close to yourself with this giant dopey grin on his face

(s i m p)

he’s shaken out of his infatuated daze when he hears a camera shutter directly behind him

at first he whips around ready to fight because he’s expecting levi or asmo, but then he looks up slightly and comes face to face with none other than his beloved older brother

lucifer doesn’t even try to hide the tiny grin on his face as he very slowly raises his phone and takes a photo of mammon’s half shocked and half irritated face

mammon is so dumbfounded by how much kinder lucifer looks when he smiles like that. he doesn’t even recover in time to tell you who’s just showed up - you end up noticing by yourself

you should have given lucifer a bit of warning because the moment you turn around and and greet him with such a bright and happy smile on his face he is DECEASED

all you and mammon see is his cheeks going pink but let me tell you this man is screeching like a trapped possum on the inside

lucifer may act like he’s a Big Important Unfeeling Demon but everyone else knows that this man would quite literally bring you the moon if you asked (he probably wouldn’t be able to pull down the entire moon, but damn him if he isn’t going to try)

he has to stay silent for a moment because he knows that if he speaks his voice is going to crack and mammon absolutely would NOT let him forget that for the rest of his long life

once he’s managed to get his puddle of a heart back to a state where he can speak without sounding like the physical embodiment of being smitten, he’s quick to offer to take you to the nearby penguin exhibit

he’s paid attention to the messages he’s been receiving periodically from the other brothers throughout the day about the things you’ve been getting up to with them, and he has seen a pattern in the sort of creatures you like the best

that pattern is: the more deadly, the better, with bonus points if it still looks cute

and lucifer has been to this zoo enough times to know most of the best exhibits pretty well (especially since diavolo’s taste in deadly creatures is very similar to yours, so he knows that any of the demon prince’s favourites will probably end up pretty high in your list as well)

therefore he knows that the devildom’s penguins are about two and a half meters tall, with millions of retractable fangs in their beaks and venom sacs in their necks that they can spray so violently and quickly that they’ve become known as ‘venom machine guns’

and you are ALL ABOUT THAT

you’re so excited by the concept of these penguins that you don’t think twice before tucking your arm into lucifer’s outstretched one and following him off to the exhibit

leaving mammon pouting furiously behind the two of you

now, while the avatar of greed doesn’t dare to directly interfere with his older brother, he most certainly dares to inconvenience him

what does that mean? it means that mammon is immediately whipping out his DDD and shooting a quick message to the group chat specifically made without lucifer to let everyone know what’s going down

and, within ten minutes, every single one of the other brothers are heading right for the penguin exhibit as well

lucifer is in the middle of listening to you excitedly talk about piki the bat when he feels something hit him in the back

he turns to see, with great dismay, that the six other brothers have started following behind the two of you, and have begun taking turns throwing things at him. satan doesn’t stop even when he realises that he’s been spotted.

lucifer feels a vein pop in his cheek when satan manages to nail him right in the middle of the forehead with a screwed-up ball of paper

unfortunately for lucifer (and fortunately for the other six brothers), you quickly take notice of the group following behind you

the avatar of pride can only watch in dismay as you call out for the others to come join you to see the penguins

well, obviously, the others are coming now that you’re inviting them over!!

asmo immediately jumps to give you a little kiss on the nose just so he can see your face light up in all the colours of the rainbow again

(which earns several surprised noises from the other brothers since, while they knew from the pictures from asmo that the two of you had gotten your faces painted, they didn’t know the paint did that)

belphie subtly shuffles up behind you to give you a little prize figurine he spent way too long trying to win on one of the zoo’s mini claw-machine games, while beel attempts to find a stealthy way of sneaking the bag of treats he’s carefully sourced for you into your pockets, but ends up giving up on that and just hands you the bag instead

levi is still on a bit of a high from the mini aquarium date, so his face immediately goes fifty shades of red when he sees you, but instead of running off like he usually does when he’s flustered, he just offers you the WIDEST smile

satan is a little disheartened when he realises just how much bigger the plushie mammon got for you is than greenie... but who cares!! greenie is small and cute!! he most definitely isn’t puffing up slightly like an indignant owl when he sees you hug that plushie to yourself like it’s the softest thing in the world!! no sir!!!!!!

mammon is being kinda whiny about lucifer barging in and ruining your one and one time together, but then satan reminds him that they’ve all just interrupted lucifer’s one on one time with you before it could even really begin, and also points out (a little saltily) that, judging by the giant plushie in your arms, he’s already spent more than enough time with you

(luckily mammon isn’t exactly perceptive so he doesn’t pick up on it or else satan would be in for one hell of a teasing)

you, meanwhile, don’t miss the way that lucifer not so subtly presses himself closer to you as the eight of you are walking to see the penguins

so close that your arms are physically touching

it’s not like lucifer to be this clingy (well, clingy by his standards, anyway), but you aren’t going to bring it up considering that he would probably immediately move away out of ~pride~ if you did

unfortunately the other brothers don’t need you to point out lucifer’s behaviour to immediately start attempting to sabotage him

by the time you all get to the penguin exhibit, you’re surrounded completely by all seven of them, and they appear to be executing a genuine attempt to crush you if the pressure on all sides is anything to go off of

looking on the bright side of things, though, the penguins are SO CUTE

sure, they’re about nine feet tall with beaks full of millions of tiny serrated teeth and very toxic-looking feet-claws. but they’re ADORABLE

you love them so much!!!!!! but now the brothers are being big MEANIES and aren’t letting you get close to the fence

“those penguins can shoot venom up to twenty feet, we’re not taking any chances” so WHAT you just want to see the goddamn penguins!!!!!!!! you’ve survived countless near-death experiences down here, you can manage a bit of venom!

eventually your very pointed complaining finally gets most of them to relent (asmo is still against it, but majority vote says you get to get closer to the penguins, so HA) and you are allowed to go right up to barrier that separates the attraction from the spectators

you’re absolutely delighted, but the brothers quickly realise that their concerns about this whole thing were not unfounded

because that fucking penguin over there is totally giving you the googly eyes

levi is the first to notice - as the general of hell’s navy, he has a natural connection to all animals of the seas, even the ones that are only semi aquatic

satan notices soon after him - he’s been to plenty of ‘taming dangerous creatures’ club meetings, and he knows how to recognise attraction in animals

you yourself are pretty clueless until you suddenly notice that one of the flock is now sliding beak-first on its belly towards you

levi silently hopes you’ll be scared into leaving, but instead you just lean right up to the barrier (lucifer hurriedly grabs you by the arm before you fall over it) and whisper-shriek “hi baby!!!!!!!!!!!”

oh the brothers did not like that at all

but the penguin seems absolutely THRILLED

you’re pretty sure you see its eyes light up. like physically light up, not in the metaphorical sense - its eyes glow

(do devildom penguins understand human/demon speech?? you could swear from the penguin’s reaction to your greeting that they do, but when you ask satan about it later, he just scowls and shakes his head, proclaiming that devildom penguins have ‘a brain smaller than a tangerine and the motor function of a slightly bent paper clip’)

(damn satan you didn’t have to do the penguins like that)

anyway, this penguin, now thoroughly convinced that you are its destiny, hops to its feet, nods its head several times, then proceeds to start making the weirdest noise at you

you don’t even know how to describe it. it’s like a laser beam has been combined with a motorbike combined with a vacuum cleaner combined with levi when his favourite idol group releases a new song combined with that godawful screeching violin satan has been playing on repeat for two weeks just to annoy lucifer combined with, i don’t know, a turbo-charged printer or something. and then the whole thing’s been shoved through a dubstep filter.

it’s such a rattling sound that asmo, mammon, levi and belphie clap their hands to their ears, beel frowns so hard his entire face squishes inwards, satan recoils so far backwards that he’s about two feet further away from you than he was at first, and even lucifer actually physically flinches

(short break for a personal headcanon of mine but hear me out here: this man probably listens to nothing but full professional orchestra classical all day. he absolutely has that thing where his ears are sensitive to poorly played notes or just harsh grating sounds in general. you know, like how lan wangji and lan xichen in mdzs are physically repulsed by the sound of bad music? yeah that)

you wince slightly, but the pain in your eardrums is overpowered by your thrill about the fact that this penguin is actually talking to you

you smile wide and reply, leaning right up to the banister, “hello!! hi!! it's nice to meet you too!!”

if the penguin was happy before then it’s absolutely over the MOON now

it makes the weird honking sound again, nodding its head furiously at you, all the while shuffling closer and closer to the barrier

you are positively delighted by this development, but each of the demon brothers seem to be taking the penguin’s approach as a personal threat both to them and to you

beel’s expression is steadily scrunching up more and more in displeasure as each second passes, asmo’s glare could probably boil the penguin alive, and you’re pretty sure you just heard levi hiss at it

you turn around to try to tell them off for getting jealous over a penguin out of all things, but they are just not listening to reason

the penguin meanwhile is desperately trying to get your attention back by nodding even more frantically and honking so loudly that lucifer actually reels back a little

you try to turn back to it but then belphie decides that he’s going to shove his way right between you and the barrier and block the penguin’s line of sight

the penguin immediately sets up an extremely loud complaint, but belphie refuses to give it any rope at all

at this point the other brothers begin catching onto what he’s doing

mostly because of his weird twin telepathy thing, beel is the first to join belphie’s quest, with his giant frame being substantially more effective as a barrier, while asmo and satan work together to not-so-subtly start ushering the entire group backwards and away from the penguin

you’re attempting to protest, but lucifer is practically shouting over you about how interesting and fun you’ll find the giant giraffe exhibit, which just so happens to be on the other side of the zoo

the penguin is positively screeching at this point, but a moment later is suddenly goes silent. for a moment you’re afraid that one of the brothers have lost their nerve and actually killed it, but then you manage to spot it sliding away again around beel’s massive shoulder

turns out that, though his brothers don’t seem to care about his status and power placement at all, the avatar of greed’s glare is enough to silence even the most passionate of penguins

while the brothers exchange triumphant looks as they lead you away from the penguin exhibit, though, you’re more than a little upset by this whole ordeal.

the disrespect? abundant. the lack of sympathy? rampant. the audacity? sheer.

you make your displeasure very clear by scrunching up your face, crossing your arms, and refusing to respond to any of the brothers when they try to ask you something

goddammit, it was supposed to be a good thing that they saved you from the so obviously dangerous penguin, but now you’ve got them feeling bad

in the end, though, you still can’t stay mad at your boys for long

they all apologise (well, all of them except lucifer, whose pride will forever be his downfall, and belphie, who genuinely doesn’t think he’s done anything particularly wrong), and you can’t bring yourself to keep dampening the mood

so, with a short scolding that’s really little more than a light slap to the wrist to remind the boys that you don’t need to be protected from everything like some sort of delicate glass case despite how much they might think that’s the case, you’re back to your previous happy self

thank fuck

the rest of the day goes smoothly! the eight of you do indeed go to see the giant giraffes, which you actually get to feed, and beel somehow manages to knock down an entire row of rigged carnival targets to get you a pretty wooden carving of a super cool dragon

(you’re still not entirely sure how that happened but it was probably the sheer willpower)

you convince all of the brothers to take about three hundred photos with you in the cheesy green screen safari booths (it was mostly levi, lucifer and belphie who needed convincing, since beel and satan weren’t too fussed about it either way, and mammon and asmo were downright thrilled to do so)

lucifer buys the whole group matching keychains, despite the fact that they were pretty basic wood-and-plastic affairs but still cost a good fifty grimm each

(you’ve noticed that he seems to like doing that, considering the harrison porter keychain you’ve still got from that trip up to the human world back during the whole body swap fiasco)

he gets himself a fire-breathing peacock, mammon gets a gold-hoarding crow, levi gets a sea serpent, satan gets a good old regular cat, asmo gets a lesser spotted spectra, beel gets a manticore (since they’re known to eat more than three times their body mass on good days), belphie gets a giant carnivorous cow, and he begrudgingly lets you pick out the giant penguin design - as an apology for his actions earlier.

(you don’t fail to notice the slightly irritated looks levi and satan in turn both send the keychain as you tuck it safely into your pocket)

all in all

a lovely day out

10/10 would do again

[pumpkinpaix]

hello there, hope you're having a nice day <3

so i've been reading a lot of fics lately, uk for sanity's sake, and i've noticed that in most of them, lwj doesn't use contractions (eg., says do not instead of don't)?? and i think he doesn't in the novel either but i don't remember lol so i can't be sure but anyway that made me curious - does chinese have contractions as well? does he not use it bc it's informal?

hello there! I’m doing all right, i started to answer this ask while waiting for a jingyeast loaf to come out of the oven 😊 many thanks to @bookofstars for helping me look over/edit/correct this post!! :D

anyways! the answer to your questions are complicated (of course it is when is anything simple with me), so let’s see if I can break it down--you’re asking a) whether chinese has contractions, b) if it does, how does they change the tone of the sentence--is it similar to english or no?, and c) how does this all end up with lan wangji pretty much never using contractions in english fic/translation?

I’m gonna start by talking about how formality is (generally) expressed in each language, and hopefully, by the end of this post, all the questions will have been answered in one way or another. so: chinese and english express variations in formality/register differently, oftentimes in ways that run contrary to one another. I am, as always, neither a linguist nor an expert in chinese and english uhhh sociological grammar? for lack of a better word. I’m speaking from my own experience and knowledge :D

so with a character like lan wangji, it makes perfect sense in english to write his dialogue without contractions, as contractions are considered informal or colloquial. I don’t know if this has changed in recent years, but I was always taught in school to never use contractions in my academic papers.

However! not using contractions necessarily extends the length of the sentence: “do not” takes longer to say than “don’t”, “cannot” is longer than “can’t” etc. in english, formality is often correlated with sentence length: the longest way you can say something ends up sounding the most formal. for a very simplified example, take this progression from least formal to absurdly formal:

whatcha doin’?

what’re you doing?

what are you doing? [standard colloquial]

may I ask what you are doing?

might I inquire as to what you are doing?

excuse me, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

pardon my intrusion, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

please pardon my intrusion, but might inquire as to the nature of your current actions?

this is obviously a somewhat overwrought example, but you get the point. oftentimes, the longer, more complex, more indirect sentence constructions indicate a greater formality, often because there is a simultaneous decreasing of certainty. downplaying the speaker’s certainty can show deference (or weakness) in english, while certainty tends to show authority/confidence (or aggression/rudeness).

different words also carry different implications of formality—in the example, I switched “excuse me” to “pardon me” during one of the step ups. pardon (to me at least) feels like a more formal word than “excuse”. Similarly, “inquire” is more formal than “ask” etc. I suspect that at least some of what makes one word seem more formal than one of its synonyms has to do with etymology. many of english’s most formal/academic words come from latin (which also tends to have longer words generally!), while our personal/colloquial words tend to have germanic origins (inquire [latin] vs ask [germanic]).

you’ll also notice that changing a more direct sentence structure (“may I ask what”) to a more indirect one (“might I inquire as to”) also jumps a register. a lot of english is like this — you can complicate simple direct sentences by switching the way you use the verbs/how many auxiliaries you use etc.

THE POINT IS: with regards to english, more formal sentence structures are often (not always) longer and more indirect than informal ones. this leads us to a problem with a character like lan wangji.

lan wangji is canonically very taciturn. if he can express his meaning in two words rather than three, then he will. and chinese allows for this—in extreme ways. if you haven’t already read @hunxi-guilai’s post on linguistic register (in CQL only, but it’s applicable across the board), I would start there because haha! I certainly do Not have a degree in Classical Chinese lit and she does a great job. :D

you can see from the examples that hunxi chose that often, longer sentences tend to be more informal in chinese (not always, which I’ll circle back to at the end lol). Colloquial chinese makes use of helping particles to indicate tone and meaning, as is shown in wei wuxian’s dialogue. and, as hunxi explained, those particles are largely absent from lan wangji’s speech pattern. chinese isn’t built of “words” in the way English is—each character is less a word and more a morpheme—and the language allows for a lot of information to be encoded in one character. a single character can often stand for a phrase within a sentence without sacrificing either meaning or formality. lan wangji makes ample use of this in order to express himself in the fewest syllables possible.

so this obviously leads to an incongruity when trying to translate his dialogue or capture his voice in English: shorter sentences are usually more direct by nature, and directness/certainty is often construed as rudeness -- but it might seem strange to see lan wangji’s dialogue full of longer sentences while the narration explicitly says that he uses very short sentences. so what happens is that many english fic writers extrapolated this into creating an english speech pattern for lan wangji that reads oddly. they’ll have lan wangji speak in grammatically incoherent fragments that distill his intended thought because they’re trying to recreate his succinctness. unfortunately, English doesn’t have as much freedom as Chinese does in this way, and it results in lan wangji sounding as if he has some kind of linguistic impediment and/or as if he’s being unspeakably rude in certain situations. In reality, lan wangji’s speech is perfectly polite for a young member of the gentry (though he’s still terribly rude in other ways lol). he speaks in full, and honestly, quite eloquent sentences.

hunxi’s post already has a lot of examples, but I figure I’ll do one as well focused on the specifics of this post.

I’m going to use this exchange from chapter 63 between the twin jades because I think it’s a pretty simple way to illustrate what I’m talking about:

蓝曦臣道：“你亲眼所见？”

蓝忘机道：“他亲眼所见。”

蓝曦臣道：“你相信他？”

蓝忘机道：“信。”

[...] 蓝曦臣道：“那么金光瑶呢？”

蓝忘机道：“不可信。”

my translation:

Lan Xichen said, “You saw it with your own eyes?”

Lan Wangji said, “He saw it with his own eyes.”

Lan Xichen said, “You believe him?”

Lan Wangji said, “I believe him.”

[...] Lan Xichen said, “Then what about Jin Guangyao?”

Lan Wangji said, “He cannot be believed.”

you can see how much longer the (pretty literal) english translations are! every single line of dialogue is expanded because things that can be omitted in chinese cannot be omitted in english without losing grammatical coherency. i‘ll break a few of them down:

Lan Xichen’s first line:

你 (you) 亲眼 (with one’s own eyes) 所 (literary auxiliary) 见 (met/saw)？

idk but i love this line a lot lmao. it just has such an elegant feel to me, probably because I am an uncultured rube. anyways, you see here that he expressed his full thought in five characters.

if I were to rewrite this sentence into something much less formal/much more modern, I might have it become something like this:

你是自己看见的吗？

你 (you) 是 (to be) 自己 (oneself) 看见 (see) 的 (auxiliary) 吗 (interrogative particle)？

i suspect that this construction might even be somewhat childish? I’ve replaced every single formal part of the sentence with a more colloquial one. instead of 亲眼 i’ve used 自己, instead of 所见 i’ve used 看见的 and then also added an interrogative particle at the end for good measure (吗). To translate this, I would probably go with “Did you see it yourself?”

contained in this is also an example of how one character can represent a whole concept that can also be represented with two characters: 见 vs 看见. in this example, both mean “to see”. we’ll see it again in the next example as well:

in response to lan xichen’s, “you believe him?” --> 你 (you) 相信 (believe) 他 (him)? lan wangji answers with, “信” (believe).

chinese does not do yes or no questions in the same way that english does. there is no catch-all for yes or no, though there are general affirmative (是／有) and negative (不／没) characters. there are other affirmative/negative characters, but these are the ones that I believe are the most common and also the ones that you may see in response to yes or no questions on their own. (don’t quote me on that lol)

regardless, the way you respond to a yes or no question is often by repeating the verb phrase either in affirmative or negative. so here, when lan xichen asks if lan wangji believes wei wuxian, lan wangji responds “believe”. once again, you can see that one character can stand in for a concept that may also be expressed in two characters: 信 takes the place of 相信. lan wangji could have responded with “相信” just as well, but, true to his character, he didn’t because he didn’t need to. this is still a complete sentence. lan wangji has discarded the subject (I), the object (him), and also half the verb (相), and lost no meaning whatsoever. you can’t do this in english!

and onto the last exchange:

lan xichen: 那么 (then) 金光瑶 (jin guangyao) 呢 (what about)？

lan wangji: 不可 (cannot) 信 (believe)

you can actually see the contrast between the two brothers’ speech patterns even in this. lan xichen’s question is not quite as pared down as it could be. if it were wangji’s line instead, I would expect it to read simply “金光瑶呢？” which would just be “what about jin guangyao?” 那么 isn’t necessary to convey the core thought -- it’s just as how “then what about” is different than “what about”, but “then” is not necessary to the central question. if we wanted to keep the “then” aspect, you could still cut out 么 and it would be the same meaning as well.

a FINAL example of how something can be cut down just because I think examples are helpful:

“I don’t know” is usually given as 我不知道. (this is what nie huaisang says lol) It contains subject (我) and full verb (���道). you can pare this straight down to just 不知 and it would mean the same thing in the correct context. i think most of the characters do this at least once? it sounds more literary -- i don’t know that i would ever use it in everyday speech, but the fact remains that it’s a possibility. both could be translated as “I do not know” and it would be accurate.

ANYWAYS, getting all the way back to one of your original questions: does chinese have contractions? and the answer is like... kind of...?? but not really. there’s certainly slang/dialect variants that can be used in ways that are reminiscent of english contractions. the example I’m thinking of is the character 啥 (sha2) which can be used as slang in place of 什么 (shen2 me). (which means “what”)

so for a standard sentence of, 你在做什么? (what are you doing), you could shorten down to just 做啥? and the second construction is less formal than the first, but they mean the same thing.

other slang i can think of off the top of my head: 干嘛 (gan4 ma2) is also informal slang for “what are you doing”. and i think this is a regional thing, but you can also use 搞 (gao3) and 整 (zheng3) to mean “do” as well.

so in the same way that you can replace 什么 with 啥, you can replace 做 as well to get constructions like 搞啥 (gao3 sha2) and 整啥 (zheng3 sha2).

these are all different ways to say “what are you doing” lmao, and in this case, shorter is not, in fact, more formal.

woo! we made it to the end! I hope it was informative and helpful to you anon. :D

this is where I would normally throw my ko-fi, but instead, I’m actually going to link you to this fundraising post for an old fandom friend of mine. her house burned down mid-september and they could still use help if anyone can spare it! if this post would have moved you to buy me a ko-fi, please send that money to her family instead. :) rbs are also appreciated on the post itself. (* ´▽` *)

anyways, here’s the loaf jingyeast made :3 it was very tasty.

[cdroloisms]

haha your snippit abt the dispenser got me thinking.

Dream gets let out of prison and he talks constantly, whatever is on his mind. And he's positive all the time. To a fault where people walk over him. And it doesn't make sense because he was tortured right???? But after an incident they find out it's because he hates the sound of silence and needs constant reminders that other people are there. Also he was punished for any negative emotions in the prison so his default is happy now,,,

hi anon !! this concept makes me SO goddamn sad ,, the idea that he Has to be happy bc anything else would mean punishment im so *punches the walls*

this ,, ficlet is honestly. pretty ooc, not really related to the ask at all, and mostly an excuse for me to cry abt c!dream and c!punz for an excessive amount of time (technically the vote on twitter was supposed to have this as c!sapnap pov, but i just wrote one for him so i went for c!punz instead. mostly bc i wanted to write him LMAO). hopefully someone enjoys it despite *gestures vaguely* all of that mess

tw: trauma, disordered eating, implied torture/abuse, blood, injuries, unhealthy coping mechanisms, emotional distress, thoughts of murder/mercy killing, mentioned animal death, dark content

In the end, it’s all rather anticlimactic, the complete opposite of Dream’s vault and the whole fiasco of adrenaline and theatrics that had made up that day. Quackity ended up having one too many drinks, bragged about the wrong thing to the wrong person - Punz doesn’t know the specifics, only knows that one thing has led to another and suddenly Sapnap was screaming at his ex-fiancé, sword pointed at his chest and tears streaming down his eyes in the middle of the Community House floor, everyone else stood around and watching. A look into Quackity’s office said everything he didn’t - the chests and chests of used and new tools, shiny and sharpened and completely rusted over with blood and everything in between. There’s been a balled up shirt in the wastebasket, completely unsalvageable from how saturated it was with blood, more red than white, and perhaps most chilling of all the calendar, marked with X after X in red pen, going back months and speaking to their utter failure to see what had been happening all but right in front of them.

With Quackity down, Sam caved not too long after, and with his input getting into the prison was no challenge at all. The only thing holding them back were bad memories and the tense, worried edge to Sam’s jaw as he led the small group of them - himself and Sapnap, actually entering the facility, Bad and Puffy waiting outside - carrying them through winding corridor after winding corridor and lava pit after lava pit, until they’d come to stand before a chasm filled with flowing lava, slowly draining before the main cell.

“I- I have to warn you,” Sam had muttered, uncharacteristically hesitant, “it looks…pretty bad,” and Punz would’ve questioned him further, but the lava had fallen far enough to reveal the topmost edge of the cell, so they let Sapnap hound the Warden for information as they directed their full attention on the cell itself and holy shit.

Nothing Sam said could’ve possibly have prepared them for the sight - it was a complete fucking bloodbath, crimson painting the walls and smeared over the floor and splattered over every visible surface like some abstract art experiment gone wrong. The stench of iron and burning flesh and viscera was awful, even over the gap marked by the still-draining lava. Punz strained his eyes; at the very back of the cell, huddled, unmoving, was a similarly bloodstained shape that must’ve been Dream. They remember the crack of Sapnap’s knuckles meeting Sam’s face and breaking his nose, remember themselves chucking a pearl and feeling along Dream’s neck desperately for a pulse - everything beyond that became a swirl of voices and panic and crying that makes their head hurt to think about, so they don’t.

Recovery is…messy. The physical side had been bad enough - pulling Dream out of the cell, barely breathing, limp in his arms and far too light, all Punz could think about was a sheep he’d found a year ago, frail and struggling to breathe, one he’d ended up killing - quick and painless - with a sword through the skull because it seemed kinder than letting it suffer. Watching Dream struggle on the bed, laid up in Bad’s mansion because none of them knew if he’d survive going any further, body resisting the potions they’d slowly forced down his throat after being so over-saturated on them, temperature spiking and heat baking into his skin like the lava from the prison had been imprinted onto his body, Punz feels the same strange mixture of pity and unease, wonders if it’d be a hell of a lot kinder if they just put him out of his fucking misery.

Still, because Dream is a stubborn bastard, against all odds, he ends up surviving - his fever breaks, the potions begin taking effect, and a few tireless, aching days later his eyes flutter open, lucid for the first time in a week. Punz isn’t even in the room when he wakes, only knows that it happens because the too-quiet room suddenly erupts in noise and activity, muffled thumps and sounds of a struggle undercutting Bad’s frantic calls for someone to help, anyone, and they run into the room to find Dream thrashing on the bed, wounds reopened and blood dripping onto the sheets, eyes wild and wide as his head whips from side to side so hard Punz is half-afraid that he’ll straight up break his neck. Somehow, worst of all, not a single scream falls from his lips, nothing but muffled whines squeezing past his mouth, clenched shut, and for a singular, awful second they wonder how long it took before he realized that screaming was useless.

Fortunately enough for them, or unfortunately, it’s not like he can tell the fucking difference anymore, the panic and strain end up with Dream passing out altogether, and they trade uneasy glances with Bad before going to clean off the worst of his wounds. If everything they’re doing feels hopeless, dressing up wounds that’ll be torn open hours later when Dream is awake enough to feel fear but not much else because he’s forgotten what it’s like to not be afraid - well, that’s for them to think and everyone else to pretend not to agree with.

Weeks pass along the same vein - Dream wakes up, panics; they try to calm him down, fails; he falls back into unconsciousness, and they move on and pretend that they’re cleaning up wounds from battle and not from someone that’s literally been tortured for months on end. People stop by, occasionally; Puffy spends more time than not inside the mansion, but hardly ever enters the door into Dream’s room, Sapnap and George drop by occasionally with potion brewing supplies that the rest of them can’t go out to get; once, he’d gone out to the front door to find a chest with an enchanted golden apple, sender nowhere in sight. He knows that the server is busy; Quackity’s admission had brought more than a few secrets to light, and from what they understand, the political fallout has been pretty damn messy. Still, he stays in the mansion, and watches.

He doesn’t exactly know why he stays. They’re not a stellar healer, not beyond what they know to dress their own wounds, and spend most of their time doing odd-and-ends tasks for Bad, who looks more tired than ever. Maybe it’s because he’s seen Dream at his worst more than the rest of them, had been there through his entire fall from grace, watched as his eyes became clouded with anger and madness and a single, desperate hope that he’d chased at the cost of his world and himself. Maybe it’s because they have no ties to the rest of the server - not to Las Nevadas, falling apart under the scrutiny of the eyes that now fall upon it, not Snowchester, caught up in the chaos, not the Badlands, half-dissolved after the fiasco of the Egg and with Sam’s actions having just come to light. Maybe it’s because above everything else, he feels guilty.

They’d thought the prison was the answer. It’d seemed too simple, back in that Vault - a perfect answer, because everyone else was perfectly happy to watch Dream die another time and some part of them had clenched painfully at the thought even thought they knew it was for the best. The prison meant that he’d be alive, if angry, and at some point when he had the time or the nerve or the guts he could go and visit, and they would talk, and Dream would be angry but with time maybe he could even understand.

They hadn’t wanted this. He can’t imagine anyone wanting this.

“Punz?” They don’t jump at the voice at their back, they don’t, but Bad still has a tiny, tight-lipped smile when they turn around anyway, eyes creased in the corners and still not as bright as they’d been before the Egg. Bad looks at him knowingly, setting a bowl of soup into his hands. “For Dream, if you can get him to eat.” He shifts a pointed gaze towards the door. “Maybe you two could talk.”

“About what?” The words come out harsher than they intend, and they take a moment to bite back the mostly self-directed anger that Bad doesn’t deserve to receive the brunt of. “I just-” he waves his hand in the air, trying to articulate the mess that is his relationship with Dream without the words to explain it. “I don’t know, man.”

“You don’t have to talk about everything,” Bad says, calm as always, eyes flicking down to the bowl of soup in his hands. “Just start with the soup.”

Punz sighs. “I’ll try.”

He enters the room in a single, fluid motion, mostly because he knows that if he were to stop at the door then he’d never actually make his way in. Dream flinches back when they enter, eyes going wide and stance going rigid, and the familiarity doesn’t make the sight any easier to bear as they wait, as always, for Dream’s eyes to clear enough for him to realize he’s in the mansion and not stuck in that same obsidian hellhole.

“I brought soup,” they say, finally, when Dream looks up. Dream’s lips twitch up in what he probably means as a smile; between the still-healing gashes on his face and the fear that flashes over his expression, still, it comes out as more of a grimace.

“Thanks.” Dream looks away. “I’ll eat it later.”

Liar, Punz thinks tiredly, moving closer to set the bowl down on the nightstand by the bed. They frown as Dream’s expression goes slack and distanced, again, eyes fixed to stare blankly at the wall once again.

“You should have some now,” he tries, careful to keep his words even. “You need the calories.”

“I’m good,” Dream says, automatic, just shy of sincere. “Thank you.”

“Dream,” they don’t quite succeed at keeping a displeased sigh from falling from their lungs, and bite back a curse at themselves when Dream pulls back with a silent flinch. It’s so goddamn hard, to talk to this version of Dream, both of them feeling around the edges of their relationship like walking on goddamn eggshells. A few months ago, he would’ve straight up called Dream out on his bullshit, get it through his thick skull that the whole ‘I’m fine and don’t need anyone’ act was stupid and completely failing to convince him. Here, they bite back another sigh, look forlornly at the bowl of the soup on the nightstand, sure to go uneaten once again, and force themselves to sound completely neutral when they speak again. “Alright. You’ll have to eat at some point, though.”

“Mmhm,” Dream hums noncommittally, once again staring at the wall. Punz stares at his hands. This is so fucking pointless.

“So,” they say after a few seconds, Bad’s words echoing in their head - they can try to make an effort to talk, sure. It’s just that Dream’s not going to cooperate. “How are you, man?”

The words come out stilted, awkward. He looks up to watch Dream’s expression, as the other man begins to gnaw on the inside of his cheek.

“I’m good,” he says, words deliberately light. “You?”

“Dream…”

“I’m fine.” Dream’s voice sharpens suddenly, breath hitching, before he shakes his head and turns his head away. “I’m fine.”

Punz looks at him incredulously. “Are you serious? Do we need to get into exactly how not-fine you are?” They wave a hand in his direction, jaw clenching when he rears back. “Do ‘fine’ people lose their minds from someone waving at them, now?”

“I-” For a second, Dream glares at him, eyes burning with a familiar, irritated fire that Punz knows all-too-well from having it directed at him a few too many times, before it suddenly dies and Dream is swinging his head back to the bedsheets, hands tightening on the cloth as he stammers. “I- What do you want?”

Punz breathes a soft sigh, regret blooming in the center of their chest. “Sorry,” he mumbles, careful to keep their gestures overly-telegraphed and away from the other man’s face. “I’m just- you’re not okay, man. No one’s expecting you to be okay after...all of that.”

“But why?”

Dream’s voice is small, nearly a sob, and Punz directs wide, alarmed eyes to where he’s hunched in over himself, knees pulled to his chest, hands staring at the sheets pulled over them. “Why?” he says, again, quieter, lip trembling slightly.

“Because you were tortured,” Punz begins, words slow as they watch Dream’s expression, trying to pull out the thoughts behind his averted eyes, “Because the cell was inhumane, and nobody deserves to be treated like that. Because you were hurt very, very badly because of what we did, and none of us are expecting you to be fine right after going through months of trauma.” He pauses. “You know that, right?”

“But I’m out,” Dream says, quiet, disbelieving, instead of answering their question. “I’m out of there. It’s over. It’s- everything’s good,” he whispers, more to himself than to them, hands curling into fists and then uncurling. “I’m- they said I would never get out. And I’m outside, and it’s not- not the cell, and I get real food, and Quackity doesn’t visit anymore,” he shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut as his breath catches in his throat. “I’m happy- I should be happy. Right?”

“Oh Dream,” the other man flinches back, breath quickening, and Punz’s hand stops short from where he’d almost let it fall onto the other’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be happy, man. Not- not after all of that. Not if you’re not ready yet.” Dream’s eyes, wide and wet, rise to look at their own, and they feel more than hear the soft, wounded noise that leaves their lips. “It’s ok to be hurt. It’s ok to be scared. No one’s blaming you, alright? No one’s gonna hurt you anymore.”

This, more than anything, seems to be the breaking point, because Dream collapses forward, hands flying up to pull at his tangled hair before Punz manages to ease them away and into his own hands, watching as he grips onto them until his knuckles go white. His breathing shudders, quiet, even his sobs muffled as to make as little noise as possible, and they murmur meaningless croons and hums as he cries into their chest.

“I wanna- I wanna be okay,” he hiccups, and Punz smooths his hair back behind their hand.

“I know,” he swallows around the lump that has risen in his own throat. “I’m sorry.”

[mojjisxng]

hold me like you wanna | sunghoon x reader

genre- angst, fluff, sort of enemies to lovers

warnings- a single curse word lmao, angst (themes of self hatred)

word count- 1.3k+

no capital letters intended

a/n- I FINALLY DID IIIIT!!! writer’s block has really been fucking me up lately, so i’m proud that i’ve actually done this. it’s probably a little short and won’t be very good, but i’m not angry with it. this scenario is based off of the song ‘hold me like you wanna’ by somebody’s child. i put in some of the lyrics throughout (but they’re not i order). i hope you enjoy it 🥺

- issy💕

[9:35pm]

just another normal wednesday evening at dance practice, you know except the fact that i was crying over- no, having a mental breakdown over the boy i both hated and loved the most. park sunghoon. you see, i’ve had a huge crush on him for so many years, but he’s always been so unreachable due to being the most popular boy in school. his utter perfection really began to peeve me and i let all my frustration and insecurity build up. well, up until we had to work on a school project together anyway; that’s when i totally messed everything up, even though i never realised it in the moment. i was so horrible to him while we were working together, making snide comments here and there. this became a regular thing between us both; it had gotten so bad that we had become the worst of enemies. despite all of this, i could no longer pretend and broke down, alone in that practice room.

You're acting like a kid

“why are you crying, dumbass? you look like a stupid little kid who dropped their ice cream.”

i snapped out of my reverie and glanced towards the source of the voice that i know all too well, tears still streaming down my face.

“oh shit- you’re CRYING crying. what’s wrong?”

“you wouldn’t understand,” i retorted.

“try me.”

And you tried your best, and you don't succeed

and that’s when the dam broke and all my twisted up emotions started to unravel and overflow; “i just hate feelings things, all right! i can’t stand feeling so insecure about myself and how i can’t match up to everyone else. even though i try my best with everything, i’m not pretty enough, not loud enough, not smart enough and not even kind enough to ever be loved by anyone; and i hate myself so much for it!” at this point, i was yelling, more in frustration at myself than sunghoon, my face was wet with bucket loads of tears and my fists were clenched too.

I don't want you to feel like I did so...

sunghoon’s soft voice brought me back down to earth, “hey hey just breathe okay, it’ll help you calm down.”

“why are you even being nice to me sunghoon, have you forgotten that you hate me?”

“i don’t hate you y/n, and you’re struggling right now, i don’t want to see you like this, even though you really piss me off,” he remarked as he sank down against the wall. i was trying to process what sunghoon had just said, when he solemnly added “come here.” i tentatively shuffled over to him, apprehensive of what he was going to do. was he going to shout at me, hurt me, laugh at me- oh, he just pulled me to sit in between his legs. all of my muscles froze because i was so shocked at his newfound tenderness. he clearly noticed how tense i was, as he rubbed a hand on my back and explained himself, “i just want to comfort you or whatever because you just sound so broken. it’s weirding me out, you never act like this. what’s wrong y/n, tell me. like were you rejected or something?”

i absolutely could not tell sunghoon the truth because he’d just despise me even more, so i had to vaguely tip-toe around what i truly wanted to say to him.

“no, not exactly. i’m just feeling a lot of things right now. one of those feelings should be something positive, well it usually is for other people anyway. but for me, it’s not an exciting emotion; it just brings me pain everyday. as it consumes me, it makes me feel nauseous and anxious without fail, yet it will only bring more harm if i act on it. it’s just another thing in life that i’m failing miserably at. i just want to give up, i feel too inadequate for anything good to happen to me,” i lamented, in total dejection, as my silent tears dropped onto the wood floor.

You don't have to say anything

the air was still between me and sunghoon for a beat too long, so i looked up, only to be met with a glassy-eyed sunghoon staring at me in pity. “y/n, stop! don’t say things like that; you’re breaking my heart. i loathe that you can say thing like that about yourself. you’re more than what you say you are, even i know that.”

“why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden? keep being vicious to me, that’s all i’m worthy of. i don’t deserve true happiness because i’m just a bitter and lonely girl, who takes out her own insecurities on other people!” my body was shaking as i cried and i could not look at sunghoon, it was too humiliating.

but even after the lifetime of self doubt that i held inside spilling out, sunghoon only gently tugged me closer to him, so that i was curled against his chest. he then asserted with utmost confidence, “you deserve the world y/n, actually no, you deserve the whole universe. i know you don’t believe me, probably because you don’t seem to like me very much, but i like you. i like you a lot. so when you started to act negatively around me, i was extremely upset so i reciprocated the malicious behaviour. but hey, it never stopped me from liking you and it sucks that i caused you so much inner conflict. my god this is so embarrassing.”

to say i was gob-smacked would be a complete understatement. the knowledge that he actually liked me, whether i believed it or not, made me feel even more guilty so i started to divulge the truth, “no no no you can’t possibly like me, you’re too good for me, like totally out of my league. oh god oh god OH GOD i’m such a mess...the only reason i started being mean to you was because your perfection irked me so much, that it made me enraged at you. i didn’t want to feel so defeated, so i made an enemy of you instead.”

“oh y/n, you were never one for being up front and simple,” sunghoon chuckled, “but at least we both know that our feelings are mutual.” he didn’t even give me a chance to answer, as he caressed my cheek with one hand, and placed the other on the back of my neck to pull my face closer to his, taking my breath away. he closed the gap between us, moving his plush lips against mine. when i realised what was actually happening, i returned the kiss. however, all good things have to end, and let me tell you, the kiss felt like it ended just as fast as it had started.

we fell deep into each other’s eyes, dumb smiles etched onto our faces and a blush painted onto our cheeks. i was the first one to break the silence this time around, “so ummm sunghoon, i know we got off to a rocky start, but would you be willing to give us a go? what i’m trying to say is, do you want to go on a date with me tomorrow, to ummm that popular café down the street o-or s-something?”

“there’s no other way i’d want to spend tomorrow,” sunghoon affirmed, “but right now all i want to do is stay right here with you in my arms and make up for lost time.”

Just hold me like you wanna

[totallynotpuri]

i had a lot more points to make but couldn't articulate them well enough lmao. anyway /rp ofc, /nm just in case, and lets get into it

okay so i think the Most upsetting part of today's streams for the audience is that we know more than the characters do. and that means that characters are going to act on their ironic ignorance and its going to be frustrating to watch.

case in point: phil telling tommy to tear down the walls. phil, trying to give genuine advice, tells tommy that his 2 block high walls are useless, trapping him in with his own fear, and need to go. however, phil is unaware of the fact that tommy isn't dealing with some irrational fear of a guy whose kind of scary, his abuser/murderer is actively out to get him and he is battling with the trauma inflicted by that same man. the walls aren't some random offense mechanisms tommy is fixtating on, that he planned to build up to block height and stay holed up inside forever. theyre a coping mechanism, because tommy relaxes when he does small builds and defensive walls made out of those specific blocks are comforting to him. we know theyre an illusion of safety. it doesn't really matter what the walls are going to do, just that tommy feels more safe and in control with them, in a situation where he is completely without control and in danger.

and so people got upset. rightfully so. phil, who knows nothing of dream's abuse and tommy's trauma, told tommy to give up his coping mechanism because he had no knowledge of how it helped to reassure tommy

(also, at what point did tommy out the walls above his friends? when did he claim they were worth anymore than other people? he was a scared kid trying to fortify his house, i don't understand why its regarded as "dangerous" or "limiting" for him to do so?)

Before I start this, know that this isn't a neg against any character, just an overview of how I view them. I don't intend to sound like I dislike a certain character or their actions, this is just an analysis. Also /rp /nm

I think you have many points. Yes Phil doesn't understand the true underlying trauma with Tommy, yes Phil doesn't understand the coping mechanism of Tommy (and honestly, neither do I. I am in no place to deem something a good or bad coping mechanism since I myself do not understand them entirely)

However, I think it's unfair to say that Phil knows nothing about the trauma that Tommy is facing, especially after Tommy's two latest lore streams.

Tommy came running in from the tundra screaming and he was completely ready to shoot and kill whoever was chasing him, crossbow out. Even after he said that he couldn't see Dream, he still told Tommy that he'd shoot Dream if he crossed the border. Phil saying that he trusts and believes Tommy is proof that he knows it's not an irrational fear, Phil saying "the first thing he (Dream) does when he gets out of prison is torment a child. I swear to god, I'm gonna fucking murder this teletubby piece of shit, what the fuck is wrong with him" and agreeing to walk Tommy home is proof that he knows, at least now, some level of trauma that Tommy has that was caused by Dream.

However, the thing with Tommy *thinking* that the walls are going to help is that it puts him in a false sense of security. He says that he needs to build walls around his base when Dream breaks out because he thinks that the walls will keep Dream out and keep him safe. He thinks that if he builds the walls, it'll be safe for him. However, him building walls and boxing himself in obsidian in Tubbo's house prevent him from looking at the bigger picture of it all, which is that there are people out there willing to help him, and he's not going to be able to see them if he keeps building himself in.

I feel like I phrased it bad on my part, when I say "he shouldn't place the walls above his friends", I meant that he shouldn't place the walls on the top of his priorities list, above reaching out to his friends and people who care for him

And building protections isn't bad! I should mention that the concept of building up defenses is good! Tommy building a safe house is good! Heck, the concept of the wall was good! HOWEVER, he was doing it by himself, he was blocking himself in. Now, however, he's asking Sam Nook and Phil and Eryn to help him, he's not going forward alone.

Tommyinnit's greatest strength is that, when he's surrounded by people who support him just as much as he supports them, he's able to conquer amazing things. But when he's building those walls around his base, he's putting up a physical barrier between not only him and Dream, but also him and Phil or Tubbo or Sapnap or Quackity.

Tommy's weakness comes when he is alone. When he builds those walls around his base, that's when he's the loneliest. Dream knows that, and he's *trying* to make Tommy feel alone, he wants Tommy to think that there's nobody to help him and that all he can do is to wall himself in. Tommy needs to break through that mentality and get proper support.

And it's already starting! He's got solid support from Quackity, Sapnap, and Phil. Yes, none of them know the true extent of it all, but they're there to help. Tommy has to realize that, at the end of the day, even if the walls help, the true power he has comes from his friends and allies.

[neopronounsmybelovaed]

About that nd/neo pronoun user correlation you posted about: do you think there is a specific reason why nd people use neos more than nt people? Just because I thought that at least some part of that might be because there are a lot of nd people on tumblr in general and following a neo pronoun blog might be more of an nd thing anyway (I don't intend to he negative or anything. I love the survey and everything you do on this blog! Just wanted to look a little deeper before we jump on correlation=causation) in any case thank you for your hard work o7

Well, I'm sure it definitely varies with exact neurotype, and just people in general, but yeah, here are some reasons!

Neurodivergent people are more likely to be not cis than neurotypicals, and gender diverse people make up most of the neopronoun community, so there's at least a connection there.

In my experience, OCD makes me doubt gender identity and really just won't let me commit to anything in the "gender trinary," so using something completely removed from that makes my gender OCD a bit better (also I just like them lmao).

The common neurodivergent experience of feeling different from the rest of society can cause people to feel removed from gender, humanity, "normal" society, etc, which some survey respondents cited as part of their reasons for using neopronouns.

58.1% of people say their neopronouns reflect their interests/hyperfixations, and while that doesn't make a distinction between neurodivergent and neurotypical experience, it's reasonable to say that nd people with hyperfixations use neopronouns because of this.

While I definitely think my population is skewed and I'm likely overestimating the proportion of nd neopronoun users, roughly 84% of the neopronoun users felt that their neurodivergence impacted their neopronouns, which would hold (at least close to) steady even with an increased proportion of neurotypicals.

So even if it's not causation, there's a definite link between neurodivergence and neopronoun usage. And if you're against a community that's largely made up of neurodivergent folks... you're probably at least a little ableist there bro /nbh

Thank you for asking! Once the survey is closed I'll definitely be doing T tests, Z tests, chi squared, all that good shit. While the survey's still open, I'll be posting some of my thoughts, so not all of them will be statistically sound. And yeah thank you for letting me ramble about this it was a lot of fun.