#this is kinda a trauma dump

[mooneggtarts]

Mike will tellthe kid once he's a little older, or once Mike has the mental capacity to explain it

[fantasticgothicpeachsludge]

When I was a kid I used to lay on top of the couch’s arm rest thinking that it would make my stomach look like a Disney princesss

[notaplaceofhonour]

it’s october 7th. you hear about the attack by seeing people you followed glorifying the terrorist attack—a massacre, a pogrom—as victory & justified resistance, glorifying a terrorist group that was founded with the explicit intent to kill your entire people

you make a post in which you make it clear you support palestinians and oppose the ways israel has wronged them, explaining that the terrorist group is still not good. you know you will probably get some flacc from the pro-Hamas side, but naively underestimate how much.

you get thousands of notifications on that one post, the majority of them hateful comments.

some of the response is positive. multiple messages thank you for the post, expressing bafflement that it’s controversial.

a few Israelis are upset at the loaded language in your post, but explain their problems with it civilly. you called Israel “apartheid”. they ask you what apartheid laws Israel has. you admit you honestly don’t know.

your inbox is flooded with anonymous hate from anti-Israel leftists.

over the course of a few weeks you have received hundreds of death threats, a dozen rape threats. people accuse you of being pro-genocide. you’re a literal Nazi. you’re racist, you thirst for the blood of Palestinians. you’re brainwashed by propaganda, a shill for The Zionist Entity. a few of the hate messages are from literal Neo-Nazis; the overwhelming majority are from leftists, many of them queer.

you are considering suicide.

you see footage of the october 7th attacks. you see footage of the bombings in gaza. you see footage of a Jewish man being murdered at an anti-Israel rally.

a popular creator you follow posts in support of an antisemitic hate group that masquerades as a Jewish organization. this organization regularly posts blood libel and other antisemitic rhetoric, works with groups that are even more explicitly antisemitic, including celebrating October 7th, holocaust inversion, blood libel, “Khazar theory” and others. more than one of the orgs they work with is pro-Putin.

your former roommate liked the post.

graffiti appears on a street you frequent that says “#freepalestine” and “end settler colonialism”

the boyfriend of the friend you spent most of the summer with makes his first post about the war. it’s a reposted comic that mocks and downplays the october 7th attack.

you doubt he’ll be receptive to criticism. he’s shared leftist memes about “monied elites” pulling all the strings and evangelicals being modern day “pharisees” in the past, and getting him to understand why that was antisemitic was like herding cats. you try anyway.

another of his Jewish friends also pushes back. he smugly dismisses her, tells her she’s falling for Zionist propaganda and uses several antisemitic tropes. you go off on him. he just deletes your comment.

you give up. you’re done. you block him.

you see anti-Israel posters and billboards around town

you mention what happened with the guy you went off on to his girlfriend—the friend you’ve grown very close to, who you’ve been listening to as she unburdens her fears for the future and complains about her bf’s BS over the last year. she doesn’t respond to you.

a friend of a friend shares posts tokenizing fringe groups that spread blood libel and have collaborated with holocaust deniers. you know they don’t know what you know, so you explain what those groups are. they seem somewhat receptive, apologize, and take it down

the next day they share several more posts that dip into antisemitic tropes. you mention this to your mutual friend, that you’re worried about them being radicalized. you’re not sure how receptive they’ll be to continued criticism

you have a confrontation with the foaf. in the meantime they’ve shared even more antisemitic posts. they say they didn’t mean to cause you distress but instead of stopping they effectively block you.

the “end settler colonialism” vandalism has been counter-vandalized with the words “commie propaganda” in place of “settler colonialism”. you don’t know if this is an improvement.

a month passes. the friend whose bf you went off on still hasn’t spoken to you. you see she shared a post defending an SJP chapter that posted Nazi cartoon caricatures of Jews repurposed in “Anti-Zionist” memes. you unfriend her on all social media platforms but you can’t bring yourself to block her number.

you see a friend of someone whose couch you surfed when you were homeless harassing Jewish celebrities with “Free Palestine” comments. you block them.

you’ve lost count of how many people you’ve unfollowed or blocked, or who’ve blocked you. friends, content creators.

when a friend takes an unusually long time to respond you worry if it’s because of your posts about antisemitism.

most of the podcasts, youtube channels, and other content creators you regularly engaged with no longer feel safe. you wonder who will be next

a couple friends wish you a happy hanukkah. you don’t celebrate much aside from lighting the hanukkiah and making some latkes.

you see posts about a destroyed chabad menorah, antisemitic comments on Jewish celebrities’ Hanukkah posts.

your neighborhood is covered in pro-Palestine & anti-Israel posters. some are seemingly innocuous, some are JVP “not in our name” posters. some call for intifada. “globalize the intifada” “Zionists fuck off!” “solidarity means attack!”

a man kills himself shouting “free palestine”. you learn about his suicide by seeing posts from several popular accounts you followed glorifying it.

you follow a bunch of jewish accounts on social media and commiserate with them about everything happening

your jewish friends post screenshots of the dead man’s antisemitic, pro-Hamas views. you look at his reddit and find even more horrific shit: anti-Ukraine posts. mocking Zelensky. “elites” are “lizard people”; the only named individual he calls a lizard person is Jewish. you start to notice a pattern: a lot of the people he dislikes just so happen to be jews.

several people you know share a post glorifying this man’s suicide. most are acquaintances, one is someone incredibly important to you.

you wonder how they would respond to your suicide.

you tell the close friend that shared this post how it scares you. you show them the receipts of the man’s antisemitism. their response is a single sentence. they didn’t know about the antisemitism.

they don’t apologize.

you notice none of your irl friends, even your closest ones, interact with your posts about antisemitism. you are able to vent to a couple friends, but no one has reach out to you

you try not to read into it. you try not to take it personally.

you haven’t slept well in months. you’ve always been an insomniac but not like this. you’re not sleeping until 4am, 6am, even 9am. even when you get to bed at a decent hour and get a full night’s rest it takes you hours to get out of bed.

a few weeks go by. the friend with the single sentence response shares a post saying they’re excited and proud to join a group to help palestinians. you’re excited and proud for them.

a couple days later, they share a post about a fundraiser to help a palestinian family get out of gaza. you note to yourself this is a much more effective & less concerning form of activism than the pro-suicidal antisemite post.

your friend shares another post about the fundraiser. it’s a joint post between their group and another group.

you open the other group’s page

the page is just a wall of signs from rallies. you swipe through one after another: “from the river to the sea”, “by any means necessary”, justifying/denying the atrocities of october 7th, calling for violent revolution. anything done in the name of resistance can’t be terrorism, all Israelis are terrorists. Jews aren’t indigenous; they’re white colonizers. holocaust inversion. other vile, thinly veiled violent rhetoric

you feel sick to your stomach imagining talking to your friend about it.

you already feel like you’re burdening the few friends you can talk to about this. you already feel like you think about it too much, talk about it too much. but you can’t not think about it; it affects every aspect of your life.

you’ve filtered out relevant keywords on more than one social media site to avoid the worst of it. some still manages to leak through.

there isn’t a single friend you regularly interact with that you don’t fear the moment when they will switch from listening to your concerns to seeing you as the evil zionist or indoctrinated hasbaranik they’ve been warned about.

it’s not an irrational fear. it keeps happening. you knew it would then, and you were powerless to do anything about it before, and you continue to be as it happens again and again.

you don’t know what to do about any of it.

[timetravellingshinigami]

True story 😅

gif credits @1strecomdejablue

[empressofkingfishers]

the Goat

wouldn't it be fucked up that when the Goat gets the Purple Crown he immediately hunts down Lamb and violently tries to attack them., screaming and shouting they did this to him.

Then the Goat freaks out and starts hyperventilating and crying when the reality of the situation sinks in.

He's not happy the Purple Crown picked him, he's fucking scared and terrified of what this means. Instead of accepting that he's been chosen for his true nature, he wants to blame the Lamb for it all. After all, he talked to them a few months ago, their godlike germs must've gotten on him. Or they released the Purple Crown to be cruel.

He was rather violent and hot-headed as a doeling, he nor his parents knew why he was so aggressive. He threw tantrums, broke horns, broke limbs, and pushed and punched fellow kids. He even once bit a Priest when they mistakenly called him by the wrong name. A cold fire burned within him, and his parents were afraid (and deep down inside he was too) he'd never live a normal life, and would someday be banished from the community. But he couldn't stop himself, he was just so... so... angry at nothing. At everything.

However when he was chosen by his successor, her Master (which is the same species as the Mystic Seller) he was taught discipline and ways to calm himself. He grew out of his temper and roughness thanks to schedules and discipline, though he is rude to those who worship the Gods.

He's devoted to his Master because it pretty much soothed his rage, gave him not only powers, a halo, but a new title and shed his old identity. He was essentially reborn and would gladly spend a hundred years being its mouthpiece until it desired a new Messenger. He knew its true name, he knew its prayers inside and out.

After all, it is an ultimate being, one who can see the threads of the worlds, time means nothing to it, it can never age or die, even if it is forgotten about. Heretical Gods and entities that lurk in the world are beneath it and its kind. To become a worshipper of a God is a sin and heavily frowned upon.

So to lose his halo, to lose his title of Messenger, is horrifying on its own, he is now a false idol that the Priests lectured against. But... he's lost the one thing he turned to to help curb the aggression within him. He cannot remember its name, for mere mortals and Gods cannot comprehend its true name, nor the true name of the others,

He's also lost his community, a sadistic twist to what he feared all along. What his parents had worried about came true, just not in the way they expected.

And worst of all, the thing he once called 'My Lord' and sent prayers to, said absolutely nothing before his halo was replaced by the Purple Crown in his sleep. It essentially iced him out, and he'd later learn it only picked him to instill piety and discipline within him for the cycle that will never be broken. It nudged him to learn about the past and the mistakes that had been made by his predecessor. He had essentially been groomed to become a better God of War, not a Messenger.

[acediaedeus]

a little afterthought from the last post about Ichigo, which I didn’t want to leave as a tag, cause it felt kinda unrelated, but yeah: the amount of existential and identity crises this boy had to go through is astounding.

he sees ghosts;

he killed his mother;

finding out he’s a shinigami;

finding out he’s a hollow;

finding out his father is a fucking liar (that one was a banger, straight up A+ parenting, give it up for Isshin);

finding out his whole life was planned and orchestrated by Aizen (I know Eren would go mad if someone pulled this shit on him);

finding out the spirit he thought was his sword wasn’t his sword all this time and actually is kind of the god he’s supposed to go defeat (casually, yk, like we all do on a nice Tuesday morning), and his actual sword is the Hollow he thought he needed to fight. but oh no, wait a moment, BOTH of them are his swords:

and oh yeah, he’s a quincy;

also don’t forget his mum dying wasn’t his fault, but wait no, it kinda was??

and of course that time he lost his powers aka the only thing allowing him to fulfil what he sees as his purpose in this life;

and then that one time a random dude pulled up and started gaslighting everyone around him, to the point that Ichigo started thinking HE was the one going mad (all that while still being powerless, so his sanity was already nonexistent);

and yeah, don’t forget the training with squad 0 when he got kicked out no sword, no nothing! (and was so ashamed and afraid of his father’s reaction he couldn’t go home, so he went to his boss???)

I could probably add some other stuff, but it’s not really canon, so let’s settle on these 11 points. obviously not in chronological order, bc I have memory issues and haven’t re-read the manga in a while, so don’t hold that against me, pls.

also, if this seems a little bit erratic, manic and unhinged… it’s bc it probably is, tbh. so I’m putting down tumblr before I write more bs.

aand last, but not least, I must thank @kingofanemptyworld , you are truly a darling and I couldn’t agree with you more, you never fail to validate my delusions!

╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

[esouliie]

it’s so strange to me how people can actually have healthy relationships with their parents? like… you guys are really like that… you didnt grow up without a father and you didn’t grow up with a emotionally absent, unwell mother…?

[keepthetension]

still stuck on mhok's trauma, unsurprisingly. i keep thinking about the opening scenes of this show, showing us day losing his sight, and mhok losing rung. i really thought that the show would spend equal time and care on both

my first post about this show was pointing out that the first shot of day is a close up of his eyes, and the first time we see mhok, he's holding something in his mouth. and i thought it was so interesting that we see mhok gagged, because society generally doesn't care what people who've been incarcerated have to say. or poor people. and by and large, it doesn't care about the voices of traumatized people, either

and i was so curious to see what the show was going to do with that. i can't believe the show itself was never really interested in what mhok has to say

and i'm stuck on mhok's time in hawaii. the show highlighted over and over again how poor he is, and we know that he didn't like studying. what are his english skills like? we saw singha there, and i think one other thai person. was that the extent of his social circle? he seemed pretty happy to leave hawaii behind, so did he make no new friends? did he spend his days off just sitting in his room by himself, the way day did when he went to songkla with mhok?

i assume he and porjai were still in touch, but he moved abroad at a time when his ptsd was getting worse, and in the wake of a terrible breakup, and he just walked all of that off? alone???

feeling overly protective and over-responsible is absolutely an understandable trauma response for mhok, but you know what else is? losing a relationship, and feeling like you HAVE to go back and fix it, and that if you can just get a do-over, you'll be able to do everything perfectly this time, and you'll get everything right, and everything will be okay! this makes more sense to me in the final episode than the idea of mhok and day having a happily ever after does

[annisshifting]

Shifting Advice that no one asked for.

I don't know why I'm writing this. No one asked, but I'm doing it anyway because why not? Maybe someone might actually find this helpful. So I'm shooting my shot into this void.

Q: Best shifting method?

A: We all know there isn't one "best" method, because the "best" is subjective yada yada. What your probably trying to ask is "I don't feel like this method is working how do I fix it?" Which here is a way to "fix" you can do to a method you like.

First, find the parts you don't like or get frustrated with. Take a moment when you're not solely focused on shifting and go through the method. Find the parts that make your brain go "yeah, no."

Next, decide what is you don't like about it. Don't wanna count? Wanna visualize something different? Takes too long? Figure out what it is about the method that bothers you.

Change it, look into other methods and add and take away until you have a method that is basically second nature to you.

I personally, listen to rain sounds, and invision that I'm half asleep listening to people in my DR talking. It's just what I was left with after working with the Alice in Wonderland method for so long. It feels completely natural to me and it feels like how my method should be.

Q: What happens when someone tries to wake you in your CR?

A: Now, this question is a little more complicated, but that's mainly because of what your personal beliefs are.

You see, this life we live is crazy weird. I'm not gonna lie it is, so don't stress out this decision, because it's completely possible that both these things are true at the same time.

In the Multiverse theory, you will wake up and respond as normal, because time is already a loose thing when it comes to shifting. So when someone comes to get you, you will already be back. It's a bit headache inducing if you think too long on it.

In the consciousness theory though, is where this gets a little weirder, but in the simplest way I can think of explaining this is, nothing happens in your CR when your not here because you're not here to witness it. It would be like someone hitting pause on a movie. Nothing happens well the movie is paused.

Deciding which theory you like more could help you with shifting.

Q: I haven't shifted yet and I don't know what to do :(

A: I'm not gonna give you that "shifting is so easy" and the "everyone can do it just believe" speech that has been given thousands of times. That's not what you're looking for.

I understand your pain, I do. As someone who has been attempting to shift for four years, I have been beaten black and blue over my time and it sometimes feels like it won't get easier.

But I hold out hope that it will.

All I can really suggest is when it feels like nothing is working. My suggestion is to look at the parts that frustrate you, they make you upset for a reason. Reverse engineer until you find the source of the problem, even if the answer is something that you don't like. I promise that facing that problem head on will make journey go so much faster then mine.

How much faster?

Well you might avoid writing shifting advice at three am to hide from the fact you feel lonely.

[cherries-in-wine]

He thinks I'm insane but psychology students love me so I'm winning 🎀

[thedreadvampy]

suicide chat under cut (not a live issue don't worry)

was telling my partner the memory I have of being about 10-11 (not long after my grandpa died/dad found the body/it was maybe a murder/etc) and I was at the time (for I'm sure Entirely Mysterious Reasons) really neurotically obsessing about how you could die without traumatising whoever has to find your body. like I would draw elaborate suicide contraptions and human slaughterhouses in the back of my exercise book at school bc I was trying so badly to find the way that the trauma could be taken out of death.

so far so normal I'm sure you can agree.

anyway I was remembering that this came up at the dinner table and dad (in retrospect must have been full on in the Trauma Hole)(probably quite drunk cause he was most of the time) just started in on this whole monologue about the most foolproof ways to kill yourself. I remember him saying if you were going to jump you'd need to make sure you were 100+ ft up so you could be sure you'd die on impact, but then you'd have time to change your mind on the way down, so that was a bad option. and that his chosen method would be to take as many pills as possible then put a plastic bag over his head so if he vomited while he was unconscious, he'd still die.

looking back that's nuts cause that's such specific ideation. he was obviously really seriously thinking about it. and this was just over dinner to his wife and kids (10, 10, 12). I remember mum being really upset by it, which in retrospect fuck I cannot imagine how distressing a conversation that is to watch between your severely depressed partner and your extremely earnestly engaged preteen.

but I just remember thinking. wow we are really not on the same page on what a perfect suicide is. cause I agreed that it's best to be sure you're not just severely injuring yourself but my priority, at the time and also the one time in my adult life I've seriously contemplated, was to minimise the mess and distress of finding the body, I just wanted to disappear but also give people closure. my solution as a 10 year old was well what if I dig a grave and put up a headstone and left a note and then rigged up some manner of contraption to fill the grave in on top of myself and crush/suffocate. Again in retrospect that's a terrible solution, logistics aside, what a horrible way to go. and honestly the place I got to through all this childhood chewing on the problem was that you can't kill yourself without causing pain and trauma, so I let go of the idea of killing myself cause that wouldn't solve the problems I had (feeling like a burden; not being able to reduce the trauma people dealt with).

but.

haha

told this story to Sam and he just gave me a Face and went WHAT A NORMAL CHILDHOOD YOU HAD. SO INCREDIBLY HEALTHY AND NORMAL.

haha yeah. no history of trauma or mental illness in my family!!!

[lizziebat]

Was thinking about that candy trauma dump trend

My trauma is so weird

I’ll have a panic attack if I get nauseous but you could cut my hand off and honestly I think I’d be alright.

[wish-i-were-heather]

was it casual when we knew each other since we were kids and as we became teenagers he made it clear that he liked me and wanted to ask me to the dance but never did and then kept saying my name randomly and kept staring at me to the point that my friends called him a stalker and then he got in trouble for spitting in the teachers food but when asked i said i didnt know who did it because i didnt want to be a "snitch" but then somehow i decided i liked him back but then he started to like this other girl who didnt feel the same and then he started ignoring me and not talking to me and then his you know what pic was posted on snapchat and i had to immediately retract all feelings i had for him because i realized he was a disgusting weirdo but i still see him around campus sometimes and feel awkward even if we never discussed it

[notawraith]

TW// Mentions of Trauma (Slight spoilers for BG3- Astarion’s Romance)

Playing through Astarion’s confession where he tells you how he really feels and confesses to developing feelings after manipulating you and having him speak about how inexperienced he is with non-sexual & romantic interactions with partners hurts me so much every single time.

It’s just so well written I teared up the first time I read it because it felt like every word coming out of his mouth could have come out of my own.

I find myself replaying and rewatching that scene often lately since I got it for the first time and still just feeling so strange. Like i’m having to confront feelings I don’t address because I don’t pursue romance in my real life anymore due to past traumas.

It hurts but in a good way to see representation like this because it means that trauma victims such as myself are able to be seen, be heard and have their experiences not chalked up to “being a whore just because”. That’s what bugs me. Also the options of offering to just be his friend or to have a non-sexual relationship just felt so touching to me. And also the hug, (which honestly I did think the option should’ve been “can I hug you?” But I still love it regardless) and his reluctance at first just made me feel like looking into a mirror.

THANK YOU LARIAN FOR BEING SUCH GOOD WRITERS

I love Astarion for who he is and what he represents and it’s just a lot of feelings I struggle to put into words.

[stinkrascal]

like i totally understand why people think oversharing or "trauma dumping" or whatever is rude, and yeah it can be inconsiderate and whatever. but id rather talk to someone whos very in touch with their own emotions and willing to express themselves while struggling to understand the emotions of others, over someone who is both completely unaware or unable to express/understand their own emotions and the emotions of others. and also im autistic and i have bpd so when i meet someone for the first time i want them to trauma dump to me like bitch dont ask me about the weather dont ask me about my career. ask me about the lifelong trauma my mother has inflicted upon my soul. tell me about the horrors your family has forced you to endure since you were a child. and then you can tell me your weather preferences afterwards

[lavalampstealer]

Okay, I’ve made a compiled dump of lore on my interpretations/versions of IEYTD characters (mainly Phoenix and Handler so far) so I can pin this and ppl won’t have to go looking for old posts. I’ll be updating this as I figure stuff out or if anything changes with them. Apologies if this is a little hard to read, I kind of word-vomited info here and I’ve tried to clean it up a little. Spoiler warning for IEYTD 1 and 2

Buckle up it’s gonna be a long one

First up: Handler, he/him (tumblr doesn’t have yellow text so orange will have to do).

He wears a sleeveless yellow turtleneck over a short sleeved shirt, square glasses, and a yellow headset. Originally a Field Agent for the Agency, he made quite a name for himself and was given the internal/honorary nickname of Agent Moray due to his knack for slipping away from Zor’s clutches while also leaving carnage in his wake (little did people know, he usually ran on pure adrenaline, fear, and general clumsiness that worked out in his favor). He eventually had to retire from field work and become a handler due to him breaking his right leg during his last mission and it not healing properly. Before he had to hang up his spy gear, he was selected to be an early implant tester for the Agency, and the one he got was a rudimentary version of the telekinesis where he could float things in place but not grab objects from afar. He has kept it and it has proved especially useful during his time as a handler for hovering important documents like dossiers and building blueprints/layouts nearby during missions. As for his actual work as a handler, he acts as support to Phoenix, mostly with work related things, but sometimes emotionally as well. He acts as an anchor for Phoenix and is there to bring them back to reality should he notice them getting that glassy-eyed, million mile stare every once in a while. He was very concerned for them in the fallout of Operation: Death Engine and after that he became more attached to them, resulting in him being devastated after Rising Phoenix. If there is anything between him and Phoenix, it leans more towards him being like a father figure than anything else. He usually works from his office in the Agency building (the one from IEYTD 1), but occasionally for more urgent/important/overseas missions, he opts to be nearby (in the crowd in Stage Fright, above Phoenix somewhere in Eaves Drop, outside the chateau in Party Crasher, etc.). If I come up with more I’ll add it to here, 10/10 character.

Next (and probably much longer): Phoenix, they/them.

During IEYTD 1, they had short hair and wore a long sleeve dress shirt and their cyan tie. They were able to do more action-intense missions (hijacking Zor’s sub, sneaking into a cargo plane to steal a car, sneaking onto a shuttle to the Death Engine, etc.) and were generally more aloof about their own safety and pretty much saw their job as just a fun game. However, in the aftermath of Operation DE, their left leg was badly injured and needed to be replaced from the thigh down, so the Agency provided them with a robotic prosthetic. It took them a while to get used to it, and while they can walk, run, and stand with it just fine, it’s a bit difficult for them do more intense activity like, say, hand to hand combat (although a good kick to shin usually has foes doubled over) or dodging projectiles. They also got their facial scars from the DE Incident, with the one on their left cheek coming from the beam that shot into their shuttle when the Death Engine fired for the first time. The other two are just general nicks and gashes from crashing back to Earth. Because of their robotic leg, someone in the Agency gave them the nickname “Tin Can” and it stuck (Phoenix pretends to hate it but thinks it’s amusing). After months of recovery, they were cleared for field work once again where they were given slightly easier missions that have most of the action happen while they’re seated (an exception to this is the implied fight with Gibson before Party Crasher because him being there was unexpected). This time around they prefer to roll up their sleeves because it’s more comfortable, allows for more movement, and it keeps them from getting singed/dirty, but they still wear a cyan tie (a new one since their old one was torn). Their hair grew out during their stint in Medical and they liked it, so they decided to keep it longer. Not much happened to them physically during IEYTD 2, but after Rising Phoenix they had their right arm replaced from the elbow down and got an updated leg (their og prosthetic was shattered in the fall).

I don’t have a design for them as they are in IEYTD 3 yet, so for now just imagine more scarring, longer hair, and a metallic arm from the elbow onwards.

Now, enough about their physical description, now it’s time for more on their mental state(s). After the DE Incident, Phoenix refused to actually dive into their emotions about losing a leg and nearly dying and instead preoccupied themselves with learning to use their new prosthetic and getting well again so they could return to field work. They don’t like to be alone with their thoughts for too long otherwise they start to spiral to a bad place so they’re always listening to some kind of music (a radio, headphones, humming/singing a song to themselves, or just replaying songs in their head). Handler helps them with this and pulls them back to the present every so often. Phoenix also once received an anonymous gift package that contained some very comfy and good quality earbuds (three guesses as to who sent them). They weren’t too surprised by Juniper’s twist of actually being evil (they had an icky feeling about the slimeball ever since they heard his tone in his call during their mission briefing for Jet Set). During Safe and Sound (and by extension, the tutorial), Phoenix gets a sinking feeling that Handler was never truly with the Agency and had betrayed them until Juniper revealed his act. Phoenix is furious with him for toying with them like that and mentally kick themselves for falling for it and for allowing themselves to get that attached to Handler (it’s like a taboo/rule at the Agency for handler and agents to not get connected (they don’t have the budget for employee therapy)).

More random tidbits about them and some other stuff that I couldn’t work into the above paragraphs:

- JJ carries a comb in his pocket at all times because he wants to make sure he always looks good (the smug look on his face undercuts the effect)

- JJ’s hair is more on the side of fluffy/soft but when he slicks it back it looks thinner and more wiry

- Phoenix’s color before getting their TK was a darker blue

- Handler’s favorite flowers were marigolds but after Jet Set, he refuses to have any near him

- Before becoming a handler, Handler’s color was more of an orange before mellowing out to a golden yellow after his retirement from field work

- Phoenix and Handler are injured in opposite legs, to which Handler teases them about them becoming an old man like him (he’s not old, about mid/late 40s-ish, idk)

- Phoenix is around 5’8 while Handler is a little under 5’6

- The Agency trains agents with the implant to use a sort of pointing finger gesture to use their powers but they can develop their own hand sign/gesture that better suits them. The pointer finger is generally effective for everyone but is limited in the sense that the user can’t pick up/float heavy objects. Once agents find a gesture that works best for them, they’re able to lift larger objects (like other people, crates, chairs, etc.). Phoenix has yet to find their gesture

- Background characters do not get a color and are either solid black if they’re with Zoraxis or black with grey or muted gold accents if they’re with the Agency

- Phoenix can and does use their powers in their daily life when they’re off the clock. They use them while cooking to hover ingredients nearby, picking out clothes so that they don’t end up wrinkled on the ground, looking through reports on previous missions to study Zoraxis’ preferred attack methods (explosions, guns, darts, etc.), to grab things from high shelves or faraway, etc. They’re really casual about using it and have to stop themselves from doing it when they go out in public (unless no one’s looking)

- Phoenix isn’t a bad cook, they just like to burn their food on purpose (they like the taste and it annoys Handler)

- Handler is a good cook and gets ticked off whenever Phoenix burns food

- Songs that fit Handler: From The Start by Laufey, The World We Knew and My Way of Life by Frank Sinatra, No More by Manfred Minnich, Nothing by Bruno Major, Slow Summer Swing by Essential Jazz Masters, The Lamp is Low by Laurindo Almeida

- Songs that fit Phoenix: Skeleton Song by Kate Nash, Cloud 9 by Beach Bunny, Leave Me Alone by IDKHOW, Debt Collector, Bad Luck!, and Pressure Bomb 3?!?! by Jhariah (Beginner’s Guide versions), My Way by Frank Sinatra, This Side of Paradise by Coyote Theory (thanks @dieing-lilac for sending me some of these <3)

The songs are a mix of songs from ones that fit their general vibes to ones where the lyrics are accurate (to some degree) of their emotions (Phoenix’s especially). 10/10 songs go check them out if you can

Also the way that character colors work for my style/designs is that it’s an artistic choice to color characters’ details rather than their scars/eyebrows/tongues literally being something like blue or green. A character’s color is a reflection of their personality, characteristics, and general feel that I get from them, with the exception of if a character already has a canonical color (like John Juniper and Roxana Prism). Handler is golden yellow because he seems warm and he likes/liked scotch and marigolds, as well as his subtitle color in IEYTD 1 being yellow (albeit a different shade). Zor is red and gold because Zoraxis is also red and gold so it just makes sense that they would have the same colors as their corporation (also the cliché that red=evil, that whole thing). Phoenix is cyan because of their powers and it fits their personality more than red or any other color would. I don’t really have a reason for why Fabricator would be indigo other than her polaroid pic’s lighting looks dark blue/indigo and that it just makes sense to me. Solaris would be orange because of her love for lasers and because her name makes me think of a glowing ember orange. The more of an impact a character has on the story, the brighter/more saturated their color is (Ex: Daniel Sans would have a muted yellow-green and Anna Ulanova would have a muted maroon because they both don’t appear much but aren’t unimportant).

I think that’s all I have for now, but some of Handler and Phoenix’s characterization can’t really be accurately described without just showing them in their element, so I’m thinking of maybe writing a little story about how Phoenix joined the Agency, how their training went, how they got the implant, and how the events of IEYTD 1 and 2 went with them :) No promises though as I’ll have to find time to plan it out, but if I ever do it I’ll be sure to put it on wattpad or ao3 or something, I’ve never posted a story anywhere before so we’ll see how it goes

Enough of my rambling, I set you readers who made it this far free <33 also here’s something for having made it all the way to the end: 🍬