#this is what it feels like to talk to ''''''empaths''''''

[yanderenightmare]

As someone who writes horror core smut (or tries to) I'm having trouble with the "Yandre" perspective. When I try and write it out it seems cringe to me, like less of an amateur novel and more of middle school AO3. Do you have any advice on how to make it seem more realistic and less "middle school fan person"?

On Realistic Yandere

Excellent question and something I’ve also battled with!

♡ Believability

Not everyone will agree with this, since when you take the unlikeliness out of a yandere character, it doesn’t always feel like a yandere anymore. But I feel like this "cringe" you're talking about stems from that—the unlikeliness of the yandere archetype in and of itself.

And by unlikeliness, I mean the whole never-ending, unexplained utter craziness of the yandere character. 

The fact is that “utter asylum craziness” doesn’t feel very realistic, firstly because it’s a personality that we never come across in real life, and secondly, because it doesn’t work in the long run since it’s unlikely that an utter-asylum-crazy yandere would be able to pull off a long-term kidnapping, as they wouldn't be able to plan it and would probably get caught by the police before even touching a hair on the victims head.

I’ve spoken about the Power of Persuasion before, but this is essentially what it’s all about. That feeling of fear you want to inspire in your readers doesn’t take root because the utter-asylum-crazy yandere, though scary, seems rather easy to trick or rather seems prone to fuck up and get caught all on his own, or just doesn't seem real. 

It’s just not a very convincing villain.

And so, don’t make him utter-asylum-crazy. Make him normal, with a fucked up view of life.

Write him as normally as you can, normalize his fucked up point of view as much as you can, and otherwise make him empathy-compatible.

By empathy-compatible, I don’t mean that your readers should have sympathy for him, but that they’re able to put themselves in his shoes and see things from his perspective, no matter how warped that perspective is. This is something authors get told a lot. Even when you have a villain—unless the villain is some distant foe we never see head-on—you have to make the villain somewhat relatable to the reader.

Again, we don’t have to feel sorry for the villain, but we should understand where he’s coming from. Empathy, not sympathy. Understanding, not compassion.

That’s the fault with the utter-asylum-crazy yandere—he has zero empathic value. No one gets his motives or his way of thinking. No one even knows what he wants or why he wants it. He’s the equivalent of an inanimate object doing something it’s not supposed to—as in, yes, it has a surprise factor, but mostly it’s just confusing and leaves your readers with questions you have no better answer than simply saying “no reason, he’s just utter-asylum-crazy”.

That’s why, and it’s fucked up to say, but the best way to make your character believable is to take notes from real life.

Real men aren’t exactly yandere, but they are way scarier in how they’re narcissistic, prideful egomaniacs who manipulate, mansplain, control, and patronize us by treating us all like needy and naive pussies-on-legs. Like, real men are so scary it’s ridiculous. We don’t need to make the yandere character utter-asylum-crazy, real-ass men are already terrifying.

So, I’d say just take inspiration from every time you’ve been in the club and feared getting gangraped by that shady group in the corner who bought you a drink, or all the stories your girlfriends have told you about their boyfriends strange and uncomfortable behaviour, or any other horror story you hear where a woman has been so scared to leave her husband even when that husband has literally isolated her from all her friends and family, forced her to quit her job, then fucking baby-trapped her. 

Like, you don’t need to make up any of the crazy, because believable crazy is way scarier.

♡ NIGHTMARE'S HELPDESK

[yuseirra]

My Fragile God, Fading Fast Analysis (Interpretation of Mizi's character)

It looks like something new came out, so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to talk :)

Right… I used to wonder why Mizi would voluntarily enter something like a death match/survival stage. I wondered if she really didn’t know anything about what was going on-was she just that pure? Or was there more to it. Well, now it's revealed and her life is just… wow…

Maybe I should have seen this coming. Her guardian seemed like a being with a completely different sense and perception from that of humans.

The feeling I’m getting from reading this chapter is an extension of what I felt from The True Face, actually.

I think Mizi wanted to be accepted. She wanted to be understood.

It’s just that the way that comes across—how she mentions about how Sua's "crushable"—feels a bit unsettling.

But Mizi isn’t the type to want to crush someone else. It’s more like… she wanted to have an effect on someone. She wanted to be a presence that mattered to someone in a significant way. To carry some kind of weight in another person’s life. Because she’s always been fragile, and had to survive by leaning on someone else’s warmth. At first, it seems that just being loved was able to make her happy. But living through it… she realized it was actually invasive. Violating. She couldn’t keep living like that. It’s hard to explain, but I do get the feeling.

Mizi wanted—even if it meant dying—to live among beings like her.

No matter how much those aliens who took her in cherished her and treated her as cute in their own way, it wasn’t in a human way.

They couldn’t truly understand her.

At some point, she must’ve realized: she’s fundamentally different from them. No matter how deep their affection, with just a flick of a finger, she could be killed. And living in that situation, no matter how well-meaning her guardians were, was probably unbearable.

And more importantly, they could never truly understand or connect with her emotionally. Their feelings were different. Their ways of sensing and sharing emotion weren’t human. So even if they meant well, they couldn’t connect to her heart.

I think Mizi really did love and like those aliens who raised her. And they probably loved her back, in their way. But what is “a pet,” really? It’s not an equal being.

At the very beginning of the comic, there’s a moment where she notes that Sua has the same number of fingers and toes as she does.

That really matters to Mizi. She wanted to connect with someone. She wanted to truly interact, be understood, and understand in return. That’s why she chose to go among humans even if it meant potential death.

Even if she died, she wanted to live among beings like herself.

She wanted equal interaction and communication—relationships where you give and take at the same level, where even if you hurt each other, it’s mutual. She wanted a relationship where wounds could be shared and given in return. That’s what this is emotionally about. That expression about being able to "crush" someone. However, it doesn't mean that Mizi would actively go around hurting people, quite the contrary, she's always shown to display a pretty big heart, because you see, her essence is about wanting to be understood and connected, treated as an equal.

What’s fascinating is that the “god” Mizi chooses is actually very different from what people usually imagine a god to be. The aliens who raised her are more like the conventional “god” figure: they control life and death, they’re affectionate and loving in their way, but ultimately, they’re supernatural and unable to empathize with human standards. They fit that “god” mold more closely.

But Mizi chooses Sua as her god.

And she knows Sua is far weaker than the aliens who raised her. She knows that she could hurt Sua at any time if she wants it. (That’s the “fragile” in the title.)

And I think there’s a kind of sorrow in that—less a thrill of power, more of a sadness. When you look at her expression, it doesn’t feel like she’s elated or satisfied by the idea that she could destroy Sua. It feels more like she’s melancholic by the fact that her god—this person so important to her—is so finite, so breakable, so easy to lose. Maybe even more fragile than Mizi herself.

Still, I think she found something real in that.

This soft, tender, fleeting being—Sua—is still her god and her universe.

And there’s something a little tragic in that. The sadness that comes with realizing, “My god is someone who could die.”

When Mizi says that she could crush Sua, it’s not from a sense of domination or power.

Mizi needed a god she could understand. Sua became like an anchor for her heart.

Maybe… after her mom(?) died, Sua was the first other person she really met and got close to?

And Mizi wants to be a person.

Even back in The True Face comic, Mizi’s actions were driven by her desire to be understood. She tried to get along with the other kids with this kind of innocent purity she put up as a facade of sorts. (Because she wanted to live among them.)

But deep down, she didn’t want to be accepted just for being harmless. That’s why she snapped when Sua said, “It must be easy for you.” What she really wanted was for someone to recognize her for who she is. And I think she eventually found a lot of that in her relationship with Sua. Mizi must’ve loved Sua a lot—That’s why she called her my universe, my god.

She seems like the type who always wants to connect with others.

And she really, genuinely means it. She wants it to be genuine.

Honestly, in this series, I think Mizi may be the one who cares most about "people", in the broad sense along with Hyuna. Both Hyuna and Mizi seem to have strong compassion for humanity, but it’s displayed in different ways.

For Hyuna, it feels as if it’s more about ideals—justice, belief, freedom, inherited principles. Her love for people comes from a value system, a kind of universal ethics. She's a very humane and idealistic person.

But Mizi simply likes the people around her. (Not saying Hyuna isn't! She loves people too.) She has a desire to be with people. Her love for humanity comes from a more personal place.

That affection projects onto Sua—and Sua is her most precious person.

Even if Sua is weaker than the aliens who raised her, in Mizi’s eyes, she’s the strongest and heaviest presence in her world. But also, the most fragile—someone who could die at any time. A fragile god.

That’s what “My fragile god” means, I think.

Well, that's what I felt from reading the comic!

These kinds of feelings are fascinating to read. There’s so much tangled up in them… but I think I understand. This is just my personal interpretation, but unraveling through it is really enjoyable...I enjoy reading them!

[the-paris-of-people]

Also it's fucked up to yell at members of marginalized communities for acting within the two party system and not burning it all down when you don't have a plan. People are not your fucking sacrificial lambs to skewer and roast on a stick

[liltalle]

I want to add a note about Caleb Michaels, a Badger Lion from The Bright Sessions. Spoilers for Season 7: The College Tapes below the cut:

Caleb is very much not a villainous character, buuut in S7 he's having a breakdown. He's an empath (as his superpower), and he's long been overwhelmed by other people's emotions. It's gotten worse of late, as he's awakened an ability to influence others' emotions as well, which has him fearing and dehumanizing himself, and doubting if what others feel is real. And, as a very nice person, he has a fearful relationship with his Lion secondary and his physical strength. He's expressed his overwhelm from other people's emotions in physical violence before, and he's terrified he will again.

All this culminates in a breakdown, where he seeks out Oliver, another atypical who has (long story) a magical book that puts emotions onto its readers. Single, stable emotions; Caleb is using the book like a drug to cope.

And the way that Caleb lashes out at Oliver, he's so tired of everyone else's emotions impinging onto him, and he starts to blame them for their feelings. Oliver is existing near him, and his feelings keep changing, and Caleb, terribly overstimulated, feels every emotional shift as painful, and even as an attack (my autistic sensory issues totally get this). And with that Lion secondary, he's angry, he yells, he tries to get Oliver to just leave him.

Eventually, Oliver seems to calm him down, but when his back is turned, Caleb takes the book and runs. Turns out, it was manipulating him One-Ring-style into thinking he was supposed to destroy it, but he actually brings it back to its master.

And that guy, Professor Blackwell, gives Caleb a speech about how misunderstood atypicals (people with supernatural abilities) are, and how the book is meant to help people understand, and how he should side with his own kind. And Caleb, maybe the nicest guy in the series, pretty clearly almost joins what's been shown to be a quite fascy apocalyptic atypical cult. (Instead he finally talks to and makes out with his ex-boyfriend, for which I'm delighted.)

It has me thinking about this as an interesting road for a Badger Lion villain. Empathy can be a tool for morality, but that sensitivity can be overwhelming and painful, and when people get too much of it and don't have agency over it, other people's pain can feel like an attack. And a Lion secondary wants a very direct solution to a problem, which, particularly in the throes of emotional distress, can be violent.

So, what about a villain who, feeling others' pain so intensely, wants them to stop feeling? It starts to feel... terrifying, invasive, how-could-someone-blame-you-for-this. (And relatable, it's how I feel about loud noises outside sometimes.) The literal magic empath is a simple road you could take with it, but I think there are others. I could see someone like Maedhros, oathbound to slaughter his enemies yet empathetic, beginning to hate his victims for their pain, because of the way it hurts him. He might refuse to see it, think of more cruel, indirect methods of violence. (This would put a whole wrinkle in the Kidnap Family scheme.)

The horror of it is that, to put it bluntly, empathy does not equate to morality. It's a sentiment that I, as an autistic person and a Snake primary, find rather comforting, but it can be used in other ways.

I see that Huffledor (Badger/Lion) is pretty often describe as a "protagonist sorting". But is it possible for such a person to be more of an anti-hero, or even villain under certain circumstances?

I would love to see a truly, unambiguously villainous Badger/Lion. You could absolutely do it - there are so many scary ways Badger primaries can go bad, and what makes a Lion secondary a Lion secondary is the way they keep going until something breaks. That could easily be a villain trope. 

That said, I can’t think of any Badger/Lion villains. The best I got is John Winchester of Supernatural, who is structurally antagonistic during the first part of the show. But never, ever framed as something so easy as a “villain.” 

[cavennmalore]

so interesting that in chapters 12 + 13 of unraveled keefe and cassius don’t just respond to what each other are saying but speak directly to the others emotions. through the whole conversation keefe takes 90% of his cues from cassius’s unspoken feelings and cassius does the same. we get to see what keefes conversational style looks like with the right partner; keefe picks up and addresses the other persons emotions because to him (and other empaths) conversations happen on two levels: the spoken and unspoken. it’s the kind of conversation only two empaths could have and i wish we could see more of that unique kind of communicating

[readandwritesilver]

wwdits spoilers

if u disagree that's okay and i see you and i hear you however i fully don't think being canon was ever nandermo's future. there were a few things about the finale that i didn't like generally but nandermo isn't one of them. both these characters are so complex and maybe if we're talking about how going back the last 2-3 seasons should have been strictured differently then yeah sure there are definitely ways the story could have been told where some kind of definitive romantic conclusion made sense but at some point we're just talking about a different show.

yes i thought the plotline with nandor and the guide was really weird. yes i wish last season and especially this season had the emotional intensity and serious moments/plots of seasons past. but even if both those things were true i still don't think oh look we confessed our love now we are kissing yayyyy was the ending they deserved😭😭 seeing people comparing it to like supernatural or whatever other [insert queerbait here] just. idk i feel the pain that is being expressed and i understand deeply the place that it is coming from but i think calling nandermo queerbait is very misguided. those characters are both explictly queer. and they explicitly care about eachother a lot. they are also both explicitly not in a place for that kind of ending to be a legitimately satisfying conclusion.

the whole point of the finale is that life is going to go on (literally) infinitely for these characters. all the vampires are going to be there for a very long time. guillermo has grown exponentially in the last six years and while he doesn't know exactly what he wants to do with himself, he has a much clearer picture of who he is in the first place and we can feel sure he's going to make descisions according to that. nandor literally says to him when they're leaving canon capital, you're not just a human anymore, you can't ever just go back to that life, and he's right. they are both going to live their lives, and sometimes they'll be together and sometimes they won't, and eventually maybe they'll figure out something that works between them and maybe they won't.

i love nandor and guillermo together. i have written i think around 40,000 words just on the subject and made countless more posts on here. this isn't about the quality of them as a pairing, it's about telling a story, and i just don't think that was the story wwdits needed to tell in order to have a good conclusion.

tldr i think season six had a lot of sloppy moments and there are a lot of things about the season as a whole that i found disappointing, however nandermo not going canon wasn't one of them

[skyeslittlecorner]

Can I request a Raphael x angel MC please 🥺

The Gabriel x Michelle and Lucifer x Michael were so good 😭😭

I'm stuck with you and your scenarios now 😠

You're welcome, dear~! I see my total eclipse of the brain bring some good after all. I hope I will be able to fulfill this request. Rafael is on the verge of being a character I dare write for, but let's try.

It was all your fault, that you make Raphael feel so special, then forget about it, and after all, you died. Lowly, pathetic human being. How dare you? Do you think he will forgive you for this? Tsk. Not only stupid, but naive, too. You are lucky that you chose to be reincarnated in heaven. Maybe there's still a chance for your pitiful soul.

And *maybe* you will repent if stop teasing him and start to suck.

Even though you were below him, licking his piercing and letting him tug at your hair, you knew who was boss. Poor, unaware angel. Blessing? Being the chosen one? Good joke. Only few strokes and his tip was already covered with whitish ooze. You raised an eyebrow and snickered.

“And who is the pathetic one?” 

He grabbed your hair harder. 

“Shut... up. Do your work.”

“Truly pathetic…” Your tongue stroked his trembling manhood. “Swayed so easily.”

“Enough!” 

As you opened your lips once more, he thrusted deep inside your mouth. Smiled vindictively as you chocked. He wanted you to lose your breath, to finally be quiet, and obediently end the act of his ascension. As cruelly, as holy. New madness hitted his insides as you murmured with a trickle of saliva ran down your chin.

“Better…” Those full cheeks, clenched throat and murderous intent in your eyes make you both dirty and perfect. Perfect to be used. Clouded with pleasure, he thought that he found his new favorite toy.

All Raphael stans! Let me redirect you to @livelaughlovesubs and her wonderful fics - here you got first and second part. I assume you've already seen it, if not, check it out~ She can write and catch his personality way better than me

[teighveepao]

i cant be talking to people without social literacy anymore 😭😭 its fine if it isnt ur fault but buddy i cannot handle another conversation with u without crashing out (not targetted, just smth thats always been on my mind for forever)

[temperate-rainforest]

I thought being an empath was where you can look at someone who has an injury and feel that injury on yourself, or be around someone whose physically sick and feel the same sickness, or something to that extent, but turns out that's just mirror-touch synesthesia and I have no idea what in the fuck you guys are actually on about

[confines]

my favourite thing about hannibal nbc is that will graham was already very traumatised when the show started. not yet from the gore or the abuse and gaslighting nor from the illness that nearly killed him, but from a lifetime of experience as an autistic person.

he's on-guard at all times, deeply aware that he's different from other people and that sometimes people find him so very interesting that they feel like their interest should outweigh his bodily autonomy. he meets othering from his coworkers with the grim acceptance of a man who fully understands the intricacies of how they are excluding him but also knows he can't stop them. you can see the miles of hurt in almost everything he does, every interaction he has. well, not so much with hannibal after he gets comfortable around him but that's a different post.

[practically-an-x-man]

my mom's diverticulitis is flaring up and it's really tough bc on the one hand I obviously empathize with her and i really don't want her to be in pain. but on the other hand she's even more difficult to be around when she's in discomfort because she literally does not stop talking about it

[hildannette]

i'm ngl i find the fact that there are real actual unironic existing takaya apologists mind-blowing. like. literally how can you remotely empathize with that guy

[uspspspsps]

as a person with zero desire to ever be pregnant, the fact that it is possible--through assault, miscalculation, bad luck or some combination thereof--for my body to abruptly change in painful, sometimes permanent ways i have little control over; that depending on where i live i could not only be denied access to medications that would stop it but also find the informed consent that underlies my current treatment plans crumbling; that my body could become no longer mine not only due to the being growing inside me i did not ask for, but societal norms that normalize strangers touching my body without asking and controlling what i eat; that's pretty frightening to think about.

does this impact how i view or treat other people who are pregnant? nope. and i would not consider a straightforward depiction of pregnancy inherently disturbing, or expect other people to find it so. but a work of horror that took that seed of fear and focused in on it, either with a literal depiction of pregnancy viewed from the eyes of someone who doesn't want to be pregnant or a fantastical depiction where the unwanted fetus is a monster or the pregnancy affects the person's body in ways that extend beyond the real world experience? that could be really disturbing, and the fact that pregnancy is not unnatural and many people choose it happily would not disqualify it as "body horror."

I think that there's a very meaningful criticism to be made wrt body horror and how it often can handle disability or disfigurement in an extremely reactionary and prejudiced fashion but I feel like you've lost the plot if you can sincerely say shit like "cancer isn't body horror" like I dont know I think its pretty scary to have cancer. I dont feel like we need to defend the role of cancer as a natural process of the body. Like that's not comparable to people acting like a cleft lip or a guy in a wheelchair are spooky. Pregnancy is pretty scary too like even before the question of forced birth and other such social violence surrounding it are involved. I think you're sort of dancing around the fact that the human body does frightening things to us all the time and the question of what is "natural" should in of itself be actively questioned because sometimes "natural" things are... bad!

[offthewall1979]

wait a second. the twymmf girl acting all "what did i do wrong 🥺" with the onstage michael kiss. she fails to mention that she quite Significantly grabbed his butt. like i'm not saying that should be grounds for what supposedly happened to her, but cmon you know he's weird....

[hauntingblue]

And WHERE is the gyojin island road poneglyph

[nunyabznsbabes]

Katniss is like Lucy Gray this, Katniss is like Sejanus that, and yes fine that's all good and true and lovely but Katniss Everdeen is also a direct parallel to Coriolanus Snow and people NEED to start talking about this because it's driving me crazy.

Think about it: they both grew up poor and deeply vulnerable, losing parents at a very young age, with a matriarchal adult (Katniss' mother and Coriolanus' Grandma'am) who fails to provide for them emotionally and physically. They intimately understand the threat of starvation, even developing with stunted growth because of it, and their narrations in the books share a fixation on food. Throughout their childhoods, both experienced constant fear and suffered a fundamental lack of control over their circumstances. Because of this, they're inherently suspicious of the people around them. They resent feeling indebted to others, especially those who have saved their lives. They're motivated almost entirely by family and deeply connected to their communities. Both are used and manipulated by the Capitol, both are forced to perform to survive and despise every inch of it, both are thrown into the Arena and made to kill. Both have a self-sacrificial, genuinely sweet sister figure acting as their conscience. Peeta and Lucy Gray - performers and love interests with a fundamental kindness and sense of hope about them - fulfill markedly similar roles in their narrative. Both contribute to the development of the future Hunger Games, Snow throughout tbosas and Katniss towards the end of Mockingjay.

It's easy to ignore these similarities because, as mirrors of each other, they are exact opposites. Katniss is from District 12, viewed and treated as less than human; Snow is the cream of the Capitol crop, given the privilege of a name with social weight, an ancestral home, and the opportunity of the Academy despite having no more money than a miner from 12. Katniss has no agency over her life, and responds by being kind whenever she's able, while Snow justifies horrendous evils in order to continue his quest for complete control. Katniss does everything she can to protect her family; Snow does everything he can to protect his family's image as an extension of his own ego. Katniss loves her District and connects with its inhabitants on a meaningful level, but Snow is indifferent at best to his peers - the apparent "superior people" - and only engages with his community for personal gain. Katniss emerges from the Arena horrified at herself and the system, but Snow takes his trauma and turns it into an excuse to perpetuate the violence with himself at the top. Katniss cares for Prim until her death and then snaps at the loss of her little sister, while Snow survives on Tigris' blood, sweat, and tears and then torments and abandons her, presumably because she calls him out on his insanity. Snow actively adds to and popularizes the Hunger Games because of his vendetta against the Districts following his childhood wartime trauma - Katniss briefly agrees to a new Hunger Games (which is arguably a facade to trick Coin), but later definitively stops them from happening by killing Coin and choosing a life of peace and privacy. Snow is obsessed with revenge, but Katniss empathizes with the Capitolites and does what she can to keep them from suffering. He exists in a cruel system and selfishly upholds it; she exists in a cruel system and works to dismantle it for the good of her family and community, at great personal cost. And Peeta and Lucy Gray are incredibly similar, but Katniss and Peeta forge a relationship of genuine love and understanding that shines in comparison to Coriolanus' obsessive projection onto Lucy Gray.

So, yeah, Katniss is Lucy Gray haunting Coriolanus. But I bet you anything that eighty-something year old President Snow looks at her, the girl on fire, and thinks that he sees the ghost of his own past: bright and young and brilliant, emerging from a childhood of starvation with a relentless hunger for success, a talented and charming performer helping her win the Games. And that's why he's so afraid of her! Because if he sees himself in her, then he's up against his own cunning, his own talent for manipulation, his own charisma, his own genius. He reads her wrong, obviously, but it means that in his mind he's up against the version of himself that he could have been, with the nightmare army of his childhood at her back and her star-crossed lover at her side, spewing Sejanus' truths in his own voice. This isn't to say that Katniss ever achieved the level of power and agency that Coriolanus did during her time with the rebellion, but it is to say that Snow was taken down by what truly terrified him - his own morality, come to finish the job.