#with a more acceptable personality so they would not be fucking hated and isolated

[haarute]

it's amazing how almost all of my friendships (and by almost all i mean Every save like three) are ruined by my own self essentially swerving into a wall and crashing on purpose due to my inability to believe my company could ever be even slightly desirable to anyone and i'd rather just burn it all and die than see myself as someone who intrudes and abuses people's kindness out of my own selfish desire to want companionship.

[yougavememyopia]

Tags: Manipulative masochistic yandere, mean annoyed reader, stalking, yandere behavior, isolating, cursing, hair pulling, choking, he does a lot of stuff without consent.

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"Hellooo~? There you are. I've been looking all over for you. Where have you been? Don't tell me you're avoiding me..." Your stalker whined in that annoying tone, making you roll your eyes almost instinctively. "Because I'll be really, really sad."

You shifted on the grass you were sitting on, debating on whether to stay or flee. It didn't matter. He would follow you around until you gave in and talked to him.

He sat beside you, too close for comfort. You finally looked at him as he made a small whimpering noise. You knew that indicated him crying crocodile tears if you continued your negligence. "You're driving me insane with your bullshit."

"Aww, are you getting tired of little ol' me?" He smirked. He knew you hated when he acted all cocky, so he decided to pout instead. Looking up at you with a soft, innocent look. "But... but I've done so much for your attention. Look, I even wore this pretty sweater for you."

"I don't give a shit. It's not going to change my view of you. You're a fucking nutcase. It doesn't matter what you do, I'm still gonna reject you."

His face fell. A blank look on his face. It was always scary when he showed no emotion. Like you were getting a glimpse of his true self. You shifted your gaze away, unable to control the shivers you got. Were you too harsh? He always acted so fake. You could never tell what he actually thought.

"You say that, but you'll miss me. I'm the most interesting person around!" His cute smile returned. He clasped his hands together and brought it up to his cheek. "You won't admit it because of your big ego. But I know. Under your cold exterior, there's a softie."

"If I want you around, it's not because of that. It's because of your psychological manipulation, dumbass. The love bombing? Ring a bell?"

"Ah, so you admit it! You do care about me! You want me around. I'm your favorite, right~?" He leaned his cheek into his hand. Batting his eyelashes at you to drive you more crazy. "Might as well go ahead and accept me. I'm not going anywhere. You're not going anywhere. It's meant to be!"

"Ughhh, fuck!" You cursed, slapping your forhead. He did this often; twisting your words into something totally different. "Every single fucking day. It's the same thing. You and your delusions. You won't accept my rejections."

"Then we'd never be together." He commented. He furrowed his eyebrows to show confusion, putting his hands on his lap. "We've come so far already. And I know one day, we'll finally be together! Who knows, maybe today is the day."

His head tilted, and he smiled brightly at you. The gesture making your blood boil. He knew how to act right, to seem more attractive to you. His practiced smile and the quiet mumbled voice drew you in. The weirdly submissive side of him appealed to you. As if he was waiting for you to finally take control of him.

Despite all that, you couldn't look past the creepy things he has done. There were the "coincidental" meetings he admitted to being stalking, stating how he couldn't be apart from you for so long or how he was bored without you. The small souvenirs that he collected, like your hairclip, to put on his hair, or even the bigger items that he took, like your hoodie, to wear and show how he was yours. He tried to isolate you as much as he could. Sticking close to you wherever you went. Finding sneaky ways to get rid of other people around you. His unhealthy obsession was slowly ruining your life.

You've gotten used to it all. Not fazed if he did something stupid for your attention. He tricked you into going on dates with him so many times. You were practically dating. It was hard to admit it to yourself, but you had a soft spot for him. For some weird reason, you enjoyed his company. You enjoyed playing with him. He was entertaining. Interesting.

He suddenly crawled behind you, his hands grasping your shoulders. "You're so tense." He leaned in to your ear and whispered. "You've been on edge for a few days now. Do I really scare you that much?"

You scoffed. "What do you think?"

"Please, I'm harmless! I should help you relax. Treat you to a nice massage." He began to rub your shoulders and slowly moved closer to your neck. His hands worked skillfully to press against your tensed muscles. Drawing circles and kneading your flesh. "Maybe more physical intimacy will help. Something different, perhaps?"

He took advantage of your lack of fight and relaxed state. Throwing his arms around your waist, hugging you from behind. His face nuzzled against the crook of your neck as he inhaled and breathed out a sigh. "I love your smell. I gotta buy your perfume. Well, I have your clothes, so it's kinda the same thing. I never get tired of smelling you~"

"Seriously?" You mumbled. Your skin pickled from his warm breath. The feeling of him sniffing you with his nose brushing against your sensitive skin gave you small shivers. His grip on you grew tighter as you tried to move. His grasp on you almost suffocating. You kick the grass in exasperation. "Augh... Fuck you."

"Is that a promise~?" He giggled and rubbed his nose against your neck more deliberately. "I love the way you talk to me. Always so aggressive. So passionate~ You only act this way towards me. Like I'm special to you."

"Haah..." You clenched the grass beside you. Fingers poked with their pointy heads while you hold onto your anger. "You always do what you want. I never gave you permission to hug me."

"You need it. It'll calm you down. Take away all that stress. And! And.. I give the best hugs ever." He squeezed you tight against his chest. "But if that's not working, I can always try something else. Something that feels even better."

Before you could protest, he began to kiss your neck. Placing long, soft kisses against your skin. Finding the right spots that made you shudder. "Ah...! Hey-?!?"

You struggled against him, but he was determined. Weirdly strong for his short stature. His hands pulled your shirt lower so he could have more access. Kissing along your neck to your shoulder. His tongue joined in between the pecks. It brushed over your skin, coating everywhere with saliva. He lapped at your skin, drawing a line from the bottom of your neck all the way up. Goosebumps covered your body. Your cursing and protests still being ignored.

You reached a hand up to his hair, pulling it, trying to get him to stop. "You're crazy! Let me go."

"Nngh!" He moaned out. You couldn't win with him. Anything you did, he loved. Treating him like garbage or ignoring him completely. He was utterly devoted to you. "Oh, that felt good. Do it again. But harder. Pretty please~"

"Fucking masochist. How did I end up with someone so messed up?" You tugged his hair again, more firmer this time, making him moan louder. He started doing different things to your neck, sucking and nibbling on the skin. You couldn't control the small grunting noises from spilling. "I swear, if you leave a mark, I'll choke you to death-!"

He seemed to like the threat. His movements becoming frantic. He was definitely leaving a mark. Just to despite you. "Mmh~ Feels good..." His hands started to rub under your shirt. His nails digging into your skin.

He panted against your neck as you stopped. You rubbed his scalp instead, enjoying the feeling of his soft, well-cared hair between your fingers. He nuzzled against you, hugging you loosely. "Ahh... You didn't struggle as much as I thought. Did I change your mind? Do you believe me now when I say that I won't ever leave? Oh, that reminds me. I think it's about time I move in with you."

"What the fuck are you going on about?" You sighed in annoyance. His love was driving you insane. There was so much a person could take until they compromised with the weirdo who wouldn't leave them alone.

"Oh, come on! I've been waiting forever. I'm moving my stuff in first thing in the morning."

You pushed him away with force. Pinning his shoulders to the ground and climbing on top of him. "You're makin' me really angry. I don't want you around. Why can't you get that through your thick skull?"

He chuckled, looking up at you. "I'm not giving up on us. Ever. You're stuck with me whether you like it or not. Plus, you've got nobody else to turn to, remember?"

"Ughh." Your hands close around his throat with force. "You act this way to provoke me. You enjoy this. Do you get off when I do these things to you? Hm? Is this what you want? I can't believe I actually fell for you. Good-for-nothing stalker."

He arched his back and closed his eyes, humming slightly. He was enjoying every second of this. You tightened your grip. The lack of oxygen making him squirm underneath you, but he knew you'd never kill him. His hands grabbed your knees. He just had to touch you in some way. Clingy as ever. The tent in his pants no surprise to either of you.

"I wanna do something that'll make you speechless for once. You're always doing unexpected things to me. Well, how about this?" You leaned down and kissed him. Pushing him further down and roughly shoving your tongue past his lips. Secretly, it was an excuse for you to be reminded of the sweet cherry taste in his mouth. (You knew tasted like that on purpose to lure you in.)

This wasn't your first kiss. He frequently planted small pecks on your cheeks and "accidentally" on your mouth. Though, after the second time, it was obvious he was doing it on purpose. While you kept protesting, you couldn't deny the spark you felt when your lips met. It felt good— unfortunately, it seemed like this batshit crazy guy was your only option. And the only option you'd ever choose.

He groaned softly, relaxing and allowing you to do whatever you wanted with him. Kissing you back with passion and true devotion. He always emphasized how he was yours to use. You pulled away to look at the smirk on his face, your hands cupping his cheeks. Squishing them together. "Don't look so happy. This doesn't mean I'm accepting you. I just, sometimes, like using you. But you're not moving in."

"We'll see about that. I bet I can change your mind." He commented, leaning his cheek to your hands and chuckling. "I have a few compelling arguments. I can cook. I can clean. I can do anything you want me to. So, won't you please reconsider? Pretty please?"

Pt. 2

[fangsandfeels]

I gained the next level of appreciation for how well Dragon Age 2 understood trauma, the ugly side of it.

I don't blame Fenris. I understand why after enduring years and years of abuse, humiliation, having your autonomy, your memories, everything that constituted you including your own name stripped away from you, you have no empathy for anyone reminiscent of your abusers - especially if nobody came to save you in the end and you are the only one fighting for your life and freedom. I understand why upon hearing how someone (who reminds you of your abusers) suffers unfairly, the only thing you can say is "Good" - and lash out at anyone trying to tell you off for it. Where all these fucking preachers were when you were suffering? Why even in the land that is supposed to be different from your own hellhole, your word and your experience still don't matter?

I don't blame Anders. I understand why after being betrayed by your own parent, after the decades of listening how you must suffer for the sin of being born, being confined to isolation, being treated like a monster while being a child, being denied the simplest of comforts, you fiercely defend people who share your abilities - because nobody else would ever look out for you and them. Of course you would clash even with someone who has legitimate reasons to be negative towards people like you because your own wounds sting more than their pain. You have dealt with the Chantry's vile propaganda for so long, you no longer take things at face value. Of course, Chantry would say that the foreign land where mages rule is foul, and corrupt, and full of blood magic and demons! So many times rumors, lies, and twisted religious depictions have been used to abuse, lobotomize, and enslave you, you're no longer letting it happen - and you only believe what you see and hear. And all you see around is injustice and indifference. And you're only the one screaming into the void, raging against the horrors everybody else is willingly blind to.

I don't blame them both for losing their mind in their own ways while the rest of the group silently wondered why they couldn't just be normal.

Personally, I don't think there was any chance for them to become friends or make peace during the events of the game. The "I suffered so I don't want anyone to suffer like I did" or "I'm a bigger person" are pretty lies and half-truths at worst. At best, they are mindsets only possible after someone who suffered finally feels safe and can be out of their survival mode. Which is not really true for Fenris and Anders, even during the final act of the story.

Even on high friendship or romance, Anders is still self-destructive, ready to die at Hawke's hands after launching his plan in motion. Even with a friend/lover at his side, he is alone in his head, in his vision of the world, in his pain.

Even with proper support and help, it takes Fenris three years to accept a relationship, but it doesn't change his perspective and if you don't have enough of his trust, you lose him to his trauma-based response.

I may be overthinking it, but I am truly thankful to the game for not toning down the complex, hard and uncomfortable aspects of trauma. People have always been in love with the concept of the perfect victim (who hates only "the right" bad guys and suddenly knows when to be tolerant, nice and accepting and doesn't say any rancid and hateful shit ever), but it became particularly aggravating lately.

[eff-plays]

Also enby here! I hate how much I hate Taash's writing.

It's pretty clear to me how it could be a story that would resonate with a lot of people, something raw that came from the writer's own experiences... but it doesn't work for this character. Like, the catharsis of confronting an unsupportive parental figure is usually something I'm all for - except Shathann is not not supportive, she's confused. She's trying to understand Taash through her own cultural framework, but that's not good enough because she doesn't use the right words, so we still get to yell at her like she rejected Taash's identity. The way the writing engages with multiculturalism - or the qun in general - is atrocious.

And the Bharv scene had me seeing red, tbh. I know people have different reads on the scene, some more favorable than others, but it fundamentally misses the point why sometimes misgendering might happen - Isabella is telling a story she has told many times before, from a time when she still thought Taash was a she, so a slip up can happen even if she's fully supportive and accepting, because she's going against both muscle memory and the brain's silly habit of not applying new information retroactively as well as it should - and then, since Taash's entire gender discovery has this preachy tone and a vague cloud of A Teaching Moment hanging over it, it more or less casts that stupid performative act of self-flagellation as The Correct Way To Appease The Transes If You Commit The Sin Of Misgendering which is just... no. I don't want people who otherwise support me wholeheartedly to make a big deal of it if they misgender me by accident, actually. Just correct yourself and move right on - make it as mundane as messing up my address because I moved recently, actually. Treat it like it's not a big deal, like it's a normal thing for me to be enby, because that's the fastest way it will become the new norm. There are studies about this sort of thing.

It would be different if Taash had to struggle to get their new identity accepted by their peers, but that's not the case at all - the Lords, the companions, their mother, everyone is completely on board with them being nonbinary as soon as they understand what's up - so it felt like the narrative is targeting the wrong people for transgressions they didn't really commit, if that makes any sense.

Sorry this is so long, but the frustration over seeing the character I was most looking forward to messed up so badly has been festering in me for a while now. I hope you have a wonderful day. <3

Yeah! Taash themselves is written as though the whole world is against them and their gender identity, as though it's some never-before-seen struggle unique to them, but in an attempt to not bum anybody out by making that TRUE, everyone around them is like "oh good for you!! here's a pamphlet with all the up-to-date words to use for those who are just like you!!"

So we have this character who's angsting about their gender and how they're soooooo different and alone, while everyone around them bends over backwards to show their support. Even their mother, who's the main person who doesn't "support" them, is at worst confused, and she fucking DIES for that sin and in order to re-establish the 100% support rate Taash gets for their gender identity.

That's the part that makes them feel like a whiny teen and makes their struggle so hollow. You can't both have a huge fucking tragic coming-out story while the entire world around you is rolling out the red carpet in anticipation for your exit.

That's why I predicted Taash's whole story would fall apart for me the moment my Rook was like "I'm exactly like you and I know how you feel" in this very sympathetic way early on. I was like "oh boy. they're showing so much empathy and are being very supportive while being explicitly nonbinary, I imagine this will undercut Taash's entire storyline when the game will attempt to show them as uniquely isolated due to their identity." And I was right! Because the game doesn't account for the possibility of a nonbinary Rook being there to support them, all you get are like a few asides of "I know how it feels uwu" and Taash being like "woaow you soo know how it feels", but fundamentally their story is still about them being SO nonbinary, more nonbinary than anybody else has ever been nonbinary, to the point where your actual nonbinary Rook just has to stand there and pretend they don't exist at all. And then when Rook has to be a pseudo-mentor to Taash while seemingly being their peer is so weird, too, and doesn't help the feeling of Taash just being a huge fucking child about the whole thing. Like a teen whining that nobody gets them while the adults around them are like "it's ok! these feelings are natural! here's a pamphlet!"

Anyway yeah. I have feelings about how nonbinary Rook breaks Taash's whole storyline that I haven't even talked about yet. The way the game sort of expects Taash to be the one true enby of the world in a very self-important sort of way and ends up creating a bunch of contradictions. You can't both have "uwu being nonbinary is so normal and natural that nobody questions it and everyone automatically knows Rook's pronouns" and "uwu being nonbinary is normal but sooo unusual and not everybody will get it and you need to adjust and it'll take time and when you fuck up just apologize profusely for this grave offense." Like, which is it, game? You need to pick because otherwise Rook's nonbinary existence makes Taash's whole deal into a big fat nothingburger. And you'd think that the whole Qun/Rivain storyline would at least put a unique spin on their nonbinary story and set it apart from Rook's but. Well. That would require not having the Whitest Possible Take on that part, and I'm not sure BioWare could ever deliver that.

[zombie-bait]

Full Moon

Ok so I don’t normally post about Helluva Boss but the newest episode touched on an interesting concept I haven’t necessarily seen represented in media. Back when I was on Twitter (derogatory) a few years ago there was this now deleted viral thread where someone discussed how their struggles with mental health affected their relationship with their partner and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. 

This is such a good, short example of how anxiety and depression can play tricks on you. It becomes so easy to envision yourself as a nuisance, a constant burden to those closest to you because they cannot possibly genuinely enjoy your company, right? But in doing so you create this arbitrarily cruel version of the people you love, people who would otherwise never behave like this outside of your own mind.

It's mean. Because your mind wants to be mean to you under these circumstances. It wants to put everyone else's emotions and desires above yours, both in worthiness and validity. And that starts bleeding into your understanding of other people, especially those you care about.

Now. Helluva Boss.

"Can I get a fucking MINUTE to think after everything you put me through you pompous rich ASSHOLE? Treat me like one of your little butler imps, you can’t just dismiss me like that! I mean, you royal fucks think you can do this every time, like you can just play with our feelings because we’re smaller and not as important. Well I’m not letting you, BITCH! Let’s go!" - Blitz

I find it really interesting how Helluva Boss decided to approach this conflict between Stolas and Blitz. Obviously, the difference in power matters. It's the underlying tension of their entire relationship and their lives. Stolas is burdened by the mountain of expectations thrust upon him from a very young age while Blitz is constantly reminded that he can NEVER be part of that world, that he is "smaller and not as important" not just in Hell's hierarchy but in his own life and family. Stolas very literally has power over Blitz (through the grimoire, the arrangement, his position in society) and Blitz uses their relationship as an excuse to reverse those roles. But that power dynamic, in one form or another, never truly goes away. And for Blitz, it's a lot easier to paint Stolas as this manipulative symbol of power and himself as nothing more than Stolas' plaything. It's easier to be angry than to be vulnerable and accept that someone might care about him.

"Dismiss" is the keyword in that quote. All that Blitz has been able to process is that Stolas has decided to end the relationship that they have. He feels ls like a choice has been taken away from him so he lashes out because he's not ready to emotionally tackle what the rest of Stolas' offer might entail. If Stolas hates him, just wants to play with him, then he is justified in his anger, his self-destruction, his isolation. If the world is mean, you're "allowed" to be mean back.

But

In that moment he forgets that Stolas is someone he actually cares about. Someone he's known for way too long and clearly wants to keep in his life, no matter how reluctant he can be to admit it. Someone who is not innately cruel or manipulative but sad and desperate for connections in a lot of the same ways that Blitz is. And Blitz immediately sees that he's miscalculated something.

Somewhere along the way the fictional version of Stolas that he's allowed himself to be mad at and the real one that he's not ready to admit he cares about have merged into something real that he has actual power over. Stolas can get hurt and Blitz can be the one who does it. He has once again allowed his greatest fears (which Stolas so frequently symbolizes) to co-opt his loved ones, to give him an "out" even though he didn't actually want one in the first place.

I'm definitely not the first person to say this but I think this is an example of the miscommunication trope done right. Their individual struggles are what cause them to be unable to connect during this conversation or to even have a proper conversation in the first place. There is no convenient misunderstanding or third party fabricating this rift. Both of them have preconceived ideas of what the other one is thinking but those ideas are flawed and rooted in self-hatred. They also both shutdown in their unique ways when the conversation starts heading in the direction they'd feared it would.

Blitz and Stolas work because they're both fucked up in similar ways, because they want similar things. That's the same reason why they're uniquely designed to hurt one another. A fear of rejection and a yearning for happiness. To borrow a quote that has been used by literally everyone from Spiderman to Evangelical preachers, "hurt people hurt people."

anyway, I really liked this episode.

(twitter thread screenshots sourced from this reddit post)

[12woso12]

Angry Woman

Part 1

TW: Does have some very heavy topics so look after yourselves and don't read if you don't want to

You were 21 years old and completely new to London. Having grown up in the North of England, everything felt backwards...including Arsenal. At 15 you were Manchester United's wonder kid. You were scoring goals for the senior team at a rate that no teenager had managed before.

The day of your 18th birthday you captained the U21 Lionesses in a European final and scored the winning goal. And at 19 you made your senior Lionesses debut.

Defenders hated you.

Forwards wanted to be you.

And your fans?

Well, you weren't sure if they wanted to be you, screw you or take you out for coffee. You were on the front page of every newspaper in the UK, whether you were modelling, showing off your football prowess or caught in public with your popstar boyfriend, the public rarely ever escaped your face.

When you made the shocking transfer from Manchester United to Arsenal, the entire footballing world halted in its tracks. You were United's star pupil, if fans were shocked at Alessia's transfer, then they were in utter disbelief at yours.

You would have died for United.

You walked through hell to wear that red shirt every week.

Literal hell.

From the outside you were golden. Everything about you shone passion and potential, you were praised at each turn, awarded with each goal or neat piece of trickery. The only thing missing from your game was an ability to control your temper. It wasn't as if you were a mean person, you wouldn't hurt people maliciously. You just...lost control.

The media gave you some lenience when it came to your rage. The tabloids blamed it on your unstable childhood, bouncing around foster home to foster home with no real family to call your own. Pundits could be a little harsher on you, the older you got the more they would criticise your inability to reign in your rage on the pitch. It had been okay when you were a hormonal teenager, but now at the ripe old age of 21, you were picking up a lot of heat for it.

You never really bothered to listen to the voices outside your bubble at United. Sure, you were a little more enthusiastic on the pitch than was acceptable but it was your only outlet. Football was your only source of therapy, your only way of forgetting what was going on away from the pitch.

Your anger didn't come from your fucked childhood.

It didn't originate from a dead family or a famous boyfriend who snuck around behind your back.

Your anger came from a place much darker.

Hell.

To you, United behind closed doors was hell.

It started the moment you begun to get senior minutes at United. You were barely 15 and still wore thick braces, the kind of braces you would see the high school nerd get bullied for in American coming of age movies. Looking back, that's what confused you most. How could someone like that be so interested in someone like you?

He was a god. A saviour. A husband. A father.

David Coben was 45 years old when he first touched you. And he was 51 when you finally stood up to him. He used to tell you that you were special, that you wanted him to touch you, to do things to you that no one had done before. He prayed on a vulnerable girl with no family to protect her. At first you screamed and cried and tried your hardest to avoid him... but he never failed to find you. Whether it was in a private corridor after a match or in the isolation of your hotel room on away days. David Coben always found you. And worst of all, he always got what he wanted.

If you refused, he'd tear up your contract with United himself, that's what he told you. And at 15 years old without having built a strong name for yourself it seemed impossible to leave United for something more successful.

So, you stayed.

And you told no one.

You became a star, a constant talking point in woman's football. Your fame shot to new heights when you started to date a pop star and that's when the modelling jobs began to pour in.

And suddenly, you were rolling in money.

But you still took everything that David gave to you. And then you took it out onto the pitch and gave the world a new talent to obsess over. The older you grew, your game became better but your anger became near catastrophic. It wasn't until you finished a season with 5 red cards and a serious telling off from Sarina Wiegman at your latest England camp that you decided enough was enough. You couldn't do it anymore. You had to say no.

That's when you moved to Arsenal.

[lavupland]

Elphaba just wants to be loved: analysis

I keep getting snagged on this lyric from "The Wizard and I" and what it means for Elphaba/Galinda/Gelphie and Elphaba's personal development into act two.

And all of Oz has to love you When, by the Wizard, you're acclaimed

This offers such big insight into Elphie; how she thinks, and what she wants.

The rest of the song talks about people being "small-minded", about them being "fixated on her verdigris", her father not being proud, her sister being ashamed. The focus is on others being wrong about her because she's green. This is the story Elphaba tells herself, it's her surface motivation, the one we see on the screen/stage: everybody is wrong about her, and she'll prove it.

But the line "all of Oz has to love you" shows us a deeper motivation. Elphaba, more than anything, wants to be loved (and I'll lay out why I think this is her real motivation, and what truly drives her in act one, in a minute).

Despite acknowledging that those who dismiss her due to her looks are narrow-minded, she still wants their love and respect. I think this is something she has trouble admitting to herself. She wants a celebration throughout Oz that's all to do with her - but she sees this in a vision, it's coming from outside, not something she's conjured up herself (arguably). So there's a distance there. She finds it hard to admit to herself that she wants people to see past her appearance into the real person she is inside. (He'll say to me, I see who you truly are [...] and that's how we'll begin, the wizard and I** / Shouldn't a girl who's so good inside have a matching exterior? - again, the wizard is "saying" this - it's kept at a distance, so she can deny it's her true desire).

Elphaba doesn't think she's worthy of love. That's the most heartbreaking thing about her in act one. She doesn't say "all of Oz will love" her, she says "all of Oz has to love" her. It's the only way she can foresee herself being loved; when it's mandatory, when the Wizard tells everybody it's acceptable.

And this is where Galinda starts to come in. Yes, when they meet, Galinda points out that she is green. But then Elphie quips back, embarrasses her in front of everybody, and makes a really astute observation about who Galinda is. "You couldn't care less - though I doubt that". They're on equal footing from that moment on.

**From the very beginning, Galinda sees Elphie for who she is inside (which is how she wanted things to begin with the wizard). Yes, Galinda doesn't like what she sees, and it's why she "loathes" her lmao, but she sees it. And Elphie knows that. The seed for love is planted.

Then at the Ozdust ball, Galinda begins to love Elphaba- or show it, anyway. And in accepting Elphie, she makes it okay for everybody else to accept her too. This is exactly what Elphie wanted from the Wizard!! All of Shiz has to love her, now that by Galinda, she's acclaimed.

This love really props Elphaba up, helps strengthen her resolve. It's why Galinda pisses Madame Morrible off so much. Elphie was isolated, the perfect victim to transform into the wizard's puppet, but Galinda fucked all that up.

But then it all evolves. In being loved by Galinda, Elphie has that root desire fulfilled. It stops being about being beloved by Oz, because Galinda loves her, Galinda accepts her, and that's enough.

And it's instrumental in her development, in the choices she later makes. It's a huge part of her defying the wizard. It's why she can stomach being seen as the Wicked Witch, being hated by everybody. She believes she is worthy of love now, and that's enough. (Disclaimer: a lot of credit for this also goes to her alone; it's also because she's strong and because used to it).

I don't think Galinda is purely a saviour figure - I think they saved each other, but that's a whole other essay. Do I think Elphaba would have still defied the wizard if Galinda never happened? Maybe yes maybe no. I err to the side of thinking she'd defy him eventually, because she has really strong convictions, but not right away. Not when he's the only thing tethering her to what she wants, which is love.

So Galinda gave Elphaba the love she always wanted, helped her believe she is worthy of it - and its from this foundation she can really stand up for what she believes in. Galinda doesn't have to love her. She just does.

[thewistlingbadger]

Imagine if for about ten years you had no one to talk to. Imagine if for about ten years you only had a few people you could actually speak to and when you do speak to them, it's never anything personal. It's all just business. Imagine if for almost ten years you couldn't go where you wanted to go, you couldn't be in public, you couldn't be about with other people because there was someone out there trying to kill you- someone who hated you so much that they wanted nothing more than for you to die by their own hands.

Then imagine that after almost ten years of isolation, you met someone. Imagine if this person talked to you all the time. Imagine if they opened up about themselves to you and told you their problems. Imagine if they smiled at you. Imagine if they found humor and comfort in you. Imagine if they liked being around you. Imagine if they enjoyed your company everyday for several years and they let you know this.

This is what happened to Silco. Silco only had a few people in his life that actually cared about and loved him, and all of those people either died or turned on him at an early stage of Silco's life. As far as we know, Silco's only friends throughout his entire life were Felicia and Vander and maybe Benzo, maybe even Connel if we're being generous. We never see him try to rebuild a social life after Vander's betrayal. He has distant employees, colleagues he hates, a blackmailed enforcer, and a right hand woman who's maybe his friendly acquaintance given that he's closer with her than he is any of his other employees, but not actually his friend. She would turn on him in a heartbeat if the opportunity proved to be to her benefit, and she's made this clear to him.

We never see him get close to anyone ever again. Except with Jinx. Jinx, who isn't afraid of Silco. Jinx, who holds no judgment for his past actions and his current misdeeds. Jinx, who was a child who looked to Silco for connection and acceptance after being rejected one too many times.

When we talk about the early days of Silco and Jinx's dynamic, a lot of us like to paint the picture that he gave her a lot of reassurance and affection. I have no doubt in this interpretation, but I want you to wonder: what if it was the other way around? What if it was little Jinx who gave Silco affection? What if she hugged him at random? What if she practically stayed at his side every chance she had? What would Silco, a man who hadn't received any kind of affection or positivity in so long, do with that? How would he react? Because when we look at all the physical interactions between Jinx and Silco, they tell us that Silco is NOT used to physical affection and is a bit put off by it, whereas Jinx IS used to it and she gives it out and accepts it freely.

It all truly starts here. In this scene, Silco is looking for Vi. Silco has just witnessed how powerful she is and he needs to find her because if she's alive and if she cannot be turned to his side, then she poses a major threat against Silco. Vi is Vander's daughter, his prodigy. She can fight like hell, she's strong willed, and she's not someone Silco needs on his bad side. Silco is shocked to see that he has found a little girl, alone, instead of Vi. He's not sure what to make of her. She looks small and pathetic, but the rest of Vander's kids have already proven that they can be menaces despite their youth and size. Silco bends down to reach Jinx's level and hides a knife behind his back as he asks her in a measured voice with fake kindness. Whether he was going to use that knife to kill Jinx or if he just had it out in the scenario he would have to defend himself against her (again, Vi has already proven that these children will throw hands AND fuck up adults if need be) remains forever unknown, because after Silco asks Jinx where her sister is, she looks up, Silco leans towards her with an inquisitive look, and Jinx LUNGES at him. And that is not an exaggeration- she throws herself at him with such force that the knife in his hand lands too far for him to use and she sends him straight on his ass several feet away from her original position.

Jinx curls herself towards Silco, nuzzles her head into his chest, and tightly wraps her arms around him. This man is a complete stranger, but in this moment it doesn't matter. He's here when everyone else is gone. Silco is COMPLETELY in shock. His mouth is open, his eyes are wide, his breathing is uneven, his legs bend as if to scoot away from her...he was not expecting this at all and he doesn't know what to do or how to handle this. He looks over at Vander's body as he listens to Jinx's words and a realization of some sorts dawns upon him. His legs twitch, unfamiliar to the human who is resting between them. SLOWLY, RELUNTANTLY, HESITANTLY, he raises his hand and returns Jinx's affection lightly. He scoots his legs to further embrace her and leans closer towards her to cradle her, as if to protect her from a threat that isn't present. He has to think before he knows what to say to her, and his next words are said ever so softly. It's almost as if the words he's saying aren't directed towards her, like they're actually for someone else. His words turn from a gentle affirmation to a determined promise. Jinx's hands clutch at Silco's back and he leans closer towards her.

This is the first scene we get with Silco and Jinx post time skip. By this point they have already been living together for years and they have become very close. Jinx now works for Silco, she is very comfortable with him and he is very comfortable with her. He lets her hide out on the rafters in his office. He's let her draw on his items. Likewise, Jinx is comfortable opening up to Silco about the things she isn't proud about, her failures and traumas. Jinx post time skip is very tough on the outside, but in this moment we get to see that she is still just as vulnerable as she was as a child. Silco is used to Jinx being vulnerable and honest with him because when Jinx tells him why she messed up, he hums with recognition and understanding. Jinx mistaking people for her sister is clearly something that has happened before and it's been something that Silco has been there for for Jinx. Silco extends the dropper for his eye medicine to Jinx. As she reaches for it, her fingers brush against the top of his hand and Silco leaves his hand up in the position it was before, even though Jinx has already taken the dropper and is starting to move closer to Silco. He doesn't put down his hand until Jinx is completely settled into her new position. It's kind of like the physical contact has him frozen or entranced, like he's still trying to process it or cling to it.

In her new position, Jinx's feet rest on the arm rests of Silco's chair, keeping him trapped in his seat. Her faces is inches away from his and her fingers are curved around his shoulder, her thumb rests on his throat. This is notable because Silco has trauma with being choked. He has been choked twice by Vander that we know of, with the first incident being so traumatic that all throughout act one he wore clip on ties instead of real ones. Only after Vander dies does Silco begin to wear normal ties. Yet despite all this, Silco allows Jinx to touch his throat and put pressure on it. This will happen again later as well. When Silco talks to Jinx, he spends most of his time looking dead straight instead of looking at her. Only occasionally do his eyes dart towards her. His tone is gentle, but it's clear that he's exhausted. Her performance at the job was less than ideal and even though he's not particularly angry or upset at her, he's stilled bothered. Jinx recognizes this, and that's when we actually get to the gif above.

Jinx specifically leans towards Silco, not even the chair. She made the distinct decision to move even closer to him than she was before, parts of her face now touching his hair. Silco sees her move this close to him and makes no reaction. Not to the movement or sudden contact. Immediately after, we see Silco touch Jinx for the first time unprompted. It is not in an affectionate manner, it is more of a reprimand for not paying attention to his words. He firmly grabs her wrist and lowers her arm. By this point Jinx's face is no longer just touching his hair, its touching his own forehead. This contact redirects Jinx's focus back to Silco. Silco keeps his hold on Jinx's wrist as he continues to talk to her, continuously adjusting his grip and making it tighter as he becomes more passionate with his speech. Jinx forcibly pulls her wrist away from him, out of his grip, and Silco lowers his hand.

This scene is the first time we actually see Silco get genuinely upset with Jinx. In the last scene he was disappointed in her failure and bothered by the ramifications of it, but he ultimately made sure to not let his emotions take control. But in this scene, Silco full blown shouts at Jinx and is angry at her. We can see his frustration grow as Jinx doesn't hear him/ignores him calling her name several times, until he finally gets her attention and goes off on her. Just like before, Jinx is blowing Silco off, ignoring him, not giving him her full attention. He gets closer to her and aggressively takes a pencil she was holding away from her, but he doesn't actually touch her. Now leaning closer to her, almost bending down to her level, he also uses his arm to point accusingly. Jinx takes his anger and gives him the gem stone, their hands do not brush. Silco looks at the gem stone, perplexed. He doesn't know what it is but Jinx seems to be happy with herself. Silco is still trying to figure out the gem stone when he looks up and finds Jinx a few feet away from him. In the gif you can clearly see the difference in silco's face before and after Jinx hugs him. Once again, he looks like he completely wasn't expecting her affection. He makes a shocked expression, he allows the weight of her body to push him backwards, and his arms instinctually move to surround her even if he doesn't immediately process what's going on.

Jinx herself looks like she was holding back right before, most likely out of excitement. However it's still clear that this is something she's used to doing with him, because she instinctually turns her head to the side when she hugs him and she makes her body flushed against his. Compare this to when she hugs Thieram, the bartender. She puts her head above his shoulder. She does the same thing when she hugs Vi too. Jinx continuously makes herself smaller when she's being physically affectionate with Silco. She does it as a child, when she curls into Silco's embrace. She does it in the office when she's hugging her knees. She does it in this scene by turning her head. And lastly she does it in the next scene I'm going to talk about by holding her arms.

But anyway, in this scene Jinx's arms quickly wrap around him like they did when she was a kid, she knocks him a little bit back like she did as a kid, and her hug makes a thud noise like it did when she was a kid. Silco is reluctant to return Jinx's affection, just how he was when she was a child, but he does return it. He delicately puts his hand on her shoulder.

If we're looking at all this scenes as Silco's journey with physical affection, then this is definitely the "turning point". Silco gives Jinx a lot of physical affection in this scene and it's the first scene that the affection he displays is completely of his own accord. He isn't just reciprocating Jinx's affection he's actually reaching out for Jinx to give her affection. First, the scene starts with Silco putting a lot of physical distance between himself and Jinx. This contrasts with all the other times we've seen them, as they have a history with having a close proximity to each other.

Silco extends his hand, physically reaching out for Jinx. This time, it's Jinx who actually hesitates but nevertheless she begins to make her way to Silco. As she gets closer, Silco begins to extend his hand even more, begins to lean towards Jinx even more. Jinx does take the hand he extends to her, and can we just look at that gif? Even though Silco was the one who extended his hand out to Jinx, even though he was the one literally reaching for her, he has barely taken her hand. Her four fingers are just barely wrapped around his top two. He's holding her hand in a very elegant, almost fragile manner. They are not completely hand in hand, flesh against flesh. He pulls her closer to him using the hand that has hers and with his other hand he gently holds the back of her head. Silco's mouth opens to take a breath, as if he's the one that's about to be underwater and not Jinx. He carefully lowers her into the water, adjusting his hand from the back of her head to the back of her neck for better support, leaning towards her the further away she gets to him. With only her face left to be submerged, Silco lovingly swipes his thumb against her temple and smiles at her. He lowers her even more, his fingers slide along the side of her face, to her cheeks then chin.

We've seen Silco get upset and aggressive with Jinx, but his negative emotions never actually impacted the way he touched her. Unfortunately, Jinx does not extend that same grace. Jinx's emotions drive everything about her and she has no problem on taking things out on the people she thinks deserve it. By this point in the story, Jinx has found out that Vi is alive and with this truth comes Jinx's assumption that if Vi is alive, then that means Silco has been lying to her this whole time. Silco hasn't seen Jinx for awhile now and when he does see her again, she's very aggressive and accusatory with him. She pushes his head back against the chair with her hand, forcing his head up. She climbs into and sits directly in his lap, a movement that is very childlike, a movement we haven't seen from her yet. Silco, I feel, doesn't even really get to process this because he's too busy trying to catch up on what's going on. He hasn't seen her in a few days perhaps and she's speaking in riddles, clearly upset with him. Jinx roughly moves her hand from his forehead to the sides of his face, with her lower fingers touching his throat (remember think back to the choking thing I talked about earlier) and her upper fingers pressing into his cheeks and jaw. A few moments later Jinx's hand readjusts itself higher, almost like she remembered something and purposefully moved her hand higher so she wouldn't be touching his throat so much. Jinx stabs Silco with his medicine dropper a few times and it's clear that Silco wants to retaliate in some manner. His hands instinctively ball up and flex but he ultimately does nothing other than move his hand from his lap to her forearm, similar to how he did earlier. Recall back to how I opened this post and now think about this moment. Jinx at this point is the one person in Silco's life who has afforded him physical affection, and now she is actively, purposefully harming him. Silco readjusts his hand higher, to her wrist as he begins to talk Jinx down. The more convinced she becomes, the looser Jinx's grip on Silco's face gets, until she ultimately gives Silco the proper eye shot and runs away.

Oh boy howdy is this one of my favorite scenes with these two. As I said earlier, from ep5 on we start to see Silco be more openly affectionate, and that is very clear in episodes seven and eight of season one. Somehow after their last interaction and Jinx ran off to go be Jinx, Silco manages to find Jinx on the bridge. Except, oh uh, Jinx is lying down on the ground as if she were a victim and not the aggressor. Seeing her unconscious and still, Silco rushes over to Jinx, fearing the worse. He is genuinely terrified, his eyes being the widest we've probably ever scene them. He instantly bends down and turns her face towards his with his hand. He runs his thumb over the side of her face, similar to how he did earlier in the river. When he sees her up-close, covered in blood and soot, Silco begins to feel a lose he had no idea he was capable of. To lose Jinx to her sister is one thing, but for Jinx to actually die? It is simply something Silco has never had to imagine before, and now that it's staring him in the face he has no choice but to imagine a life without Jinx. With one hand on her shoulder and the other on the back of her head, he lefts her upper half up. He moves the hand behind her head to hold her even closer to him than before. When he hugs her, her hands fall, and in pure astonishment Silco sees the length Jinx was willing to go for Silco. He rubs his hand against her hair, then moves it to her shoulder to properly hold her. He then picks her up like a child and walks off.

Immediately following the last scene, Silco rushes all the way from the bridge to Singed, hoping to get a hail mary that well help Jinx stay alive. Singed is able to help, but it comes with a lot of risk. Risk that Silco is unable to evaluate given the severity of his emotions and the lack of time they have to save her. Singed asks Silco if he's prepared to loose her, and once again, the thought is clearly inconceivable. Jinx coughs in the background, causing Silco to run to her side. He holds his body directly above hers. He cannot lose her. He holds a hand above her face, a ghost of a touch, before resting it on her head and giving her a kiss on the forehead. This is the most physical affection Silco has ever displayed on Jinx, even though he's kissing the strap on her forehead and not her actual forehead. Would he have done this had she been conscience? Would he have done this had she not been dying? Those are questions for you not for me. He pulls back from her slightly, keeping his hand on her head and a watchful eye. This is the last time he ever gets to touch Jinx.

In conclusion: I believe Silco was a man who was unfamiliar and shocked by physical affection after not receiving any for practically a decade. But then he met Jinx, a girl who had been rejected, yet loved all her life. A girl who was used to giving and receiving physical affection. Jinx has no problem being affectionate with Silco and for the most part she feels like she can be very childlike when around him. After being betrayed by Vander, Silco made it his own personal mission to mask his emotions at all time. For the most part he is very successful with this, except for the times where Jinx gives him physical affection. Despite the fact that they've known each other for years and have given affection to each other over the years, Silco is still always shocked to receive it and he's cautious when giving it to Jinx. Every moment is calculated and voluntary, he always makes sure its her choice whether or not to engage. He always is very gentle and light with his touch as to not overstep or be overwhelming. Not only is Silco touch starved from years of neglect and isolation, but he also has a complicated relation with touch due to his trauma of being nearly choked to death.

I want you to think about how I opened this post. Imagine if you went years without having any meaningful social or physical interactions. Imagine if you then spent everyday with a person who gave you both for the next several years. Now imagine that person's relative, who you know is close to your person but has also hurt you person in the past, comes around and tells you they're going to take away the person you've been with for the past several years. And now you see why Silco was so hellbent against Vi. Because she was going to take away the one person Silco had. The one person who gave silco affection and the one person who accepted affection from him. Now you see why Silco was unable to trade Jinx for Zaun. Jinx gave so many things to Silco that he would be unable to have without her. Affection, love, hope, humanity. A life with Zaun but without Jinx would have been pointless for Silco.

[duskstarskies]

bro i hate itzsubz why is he like that. wrapped up in his stupid one track mind of getting banned. repeats repeats i dont care i dont care i hate this place get me out. ignores the burning untouched feelings in the back of his mind. focus on getting banned to push anything else to the side. because he’s thought and thought and thought… came to this one conclusion, final solution of leaving after countless hours of isolation with his thoughts (sounding familiar…)

and it’s like, he will ignore uncomfortable feelings. he believes he can run away. if he goes far enough he doesn’t have to deal with the server. he’s tried. but now, the sun burns, stars bore their eyes into him, and he’s surrounded by deepslate… where everything bad happened. he cant run from ANYTHING. even the end… his first safe space… so he thinks that by leaving the server, he can leave it all behind. and he’s cluttered up his base, no place to channel zam onto the walls. his s6 base was his starter so it makes sense that it’s cluttered and messy but not to this extent.. like he’s purposefully making it garrish and distracting. so that he can grind villagers and zombies instead of., well think of anything else.

because he never processed those s4 events he can’t move past it he’s genuinely still very bitter about it. nobody is surprised at this. like his hand is still stained with purple ink and he sees it and he hates it. he doesnt build anymore because he sees quartz and glass and its just too much. his thing with mapicc he indulged in because it felt like old times and he can still pretend nothing ever happened. it’s so .grrrrrr. (not to mention how i think they r kinda similar in that if there’s nothing left for them they will leave. i think subz understands why mapicc left on a personal level…)

it’s also he’s embraced being the ’villian’ something vitalasy couldn’t handle and it’s sooooo. he saw how attachment was vitalasys downfall so hes making sure nobody not even us can get an emotional grasp on him. he can only bring up eclipse in a detached way, or at least he tries to. (he ‘dgaf’ abt zam but he still read all of his signs abt mapicc. sure girl!) u can see the bitterness leak out of him. and there’s moments of sweetness too, where he keeps his promise to vi, if vi needs him, he’ll log on. i guess this is subz picking up where vitalasy left off, ending the world.

subzam convo would make me worse. it would not save me. zam accepted subz resignment, because he understands it now why subz leaves. the first time he tried to bring him back and well… zam got told before (by subz himself) why subz can’t stay but he didn’t want to believe it before. he still doesnt want to believe in it, but he understands it now. if that’s what subz wants. 3: (i still think there’s hope… but maybe im too optimistic) zam’s feelings abt subz r still unresolved, mirroring subz feelings abt eclipse. taking a good long look at zams new shield and the subz princeaxe-> eclipse axe. i hope that bubble pops and they are so so so so messy about it.

i hope bacon talks to subz more and i hope they get freaked out by each other more. bacon is probably internally sighing to himself abt getting zam to break up with vitalasy 2 yrs ago. cuz these guys r too messy…

but anyway yeah fuck this guy.

[myokk]

✨ELOISE APOLLONIA BABBIT✨

My sweet and entirely too introspective girl🥹

She was born the second child of Oberon Babbit and Elladora Black in 1874. Her older brother, Leonard, has been prepared from birth to inherit everything and carry on the family name. (I love Leo so so so much too♥️). The Babbits are one of the oldest, most powerful wizarding families and quite reclusive, being able to trace their lineage back to pre-Roman times. If the Babbits had been around in the 1930s when the Sacred 28 list was created, they DEFINITELY would have been on it.

Her relationship with her mother is quite complicated. I made a huge post (for myself and @elliecutte 😭♥️) about Elladora, which I think shows her loneliness and loss of control. She put too many expectations on her daughter - the women of the Black family are known for being exceptionally powerful (& unstable😶) and was unable to handle the shame of having given birth to a squib.

As Eloise got older and older, without any sign of magic whatsoever, she was slowly isolated until the day came and went when she SHOULD have received her letter to Hogwarts. When it never arrived, she was burned off of the family tree and made like she never existed à la her great-nephew Sirius. HOWEVER…for reasons I haven’t explained yet in my fic (so I don’t want to spoil too much🤐) her parents decided to take advantage of her situation and enrolled her in a muggle boarding school and pulled strings to betroth her to a prominent muggle landowner to take advantage of connections and make it so that her life wasn’t a complete waste.

Eloise HATED living with the muggles. When she arrived at the school, she was clearly from an important family, and yet none of the girls had ever heard of her. She didn’t know who the Queen was, she didn’t know the basics of etiquette that had been drilled into them from birth, etc. the only enjoyment she got from that time was learning to play the piano and learning about muggle literature♥️ she especially loves Satie’s gnosiennes and Chopin, and reads anything she can get her hands on.

Her parents were actually FURIOUS when she was accepted to Hogwarts at the age of 16. They were counting on exploiting her future connection with her muggle betrothed’s family/wealth, and they lost their chance. Now, they’re trying to take advantage of her in other ways, working to prepare her for the life she had always been denied before.

My girl is STRESSED THE FUCK OUT !!!!!!!!! She hates herself so much for how badly she wants her parents approval; they threw her aside without a second thought, so why in the world is she bending over backwards and going along with all of their demands, hoping for a tiny scrap of affection?????????😔😔😔

She has a LOT of growth, character development, maybe not always for the best. She is imperfect and fallible and just a teenage girl with too many emotions roiling around inside of her to know what to do with.

My fic includes a lot of horror, blood rituals, sacrifice, magical theory, mythological references, lots of romance & slowburn, making all the wrong decisions, arranged marriage to the wrong person, complicated family dynamics and conflicting emotions that are all existing simultaneously & a very sweet girl who is going THROUGH IT😔🙏 my masterlist links to all of my Eloise posts, my fic, PLUS she is the unnamed MC in my two oneshots, clumsy and note-taking🫶

Thank you so much @bookie-bookdust for starting this & for tagging me🫶🫶🫶

The MCs of this fandom are just all so very amazing and creative, and I genuinely love seeing every post I come across during my morning coffee scroll♥️ lately I’ve been more of a silent lurker (all of my likes come from my main blog @oerflink), but hopefully I can be more active again 🤞 If you see this and haven’t done an introduction post yet for your own, PLEASE DO !!!!!!

[11queensupreme11]

Okkk I saw the new ask and what if-what if both Percy and the said yandere got isekaied to the past?

Or what if yanderes got isekaied to when they first met Percy how would they react?

I just know Poseidon's reaction will shock the hell out of everyone 😂

if the yans got isekai-ed to when they first meet percy:

LOKI WOULD BE HORRIBLE LMAO CUZ WHO'S THE FIRST PERSON PERCY MEETS?? (aside from the angels who were guarding the bifrost) LOKI 😭😭😭😭

loki is absolutely gonna snatch her away before ANYONE finds out about her existence and he's gonna make sure to kill any witnesses (the angels who saw her). he fucked things up by trying to kill her in the og timeline, so now he's gonna pretend to be a nice, helpful friend. "oh no ur lost and you don't know how to get home? 🥺 poor thing, here i'll hide you in the palace while i try to find a way to get you back home" but obviously he doesn't do that, so he just keeps her hidden and more importantly, isolated with only him for company. HOWEVER, he's not gonna keep her in the basement forever ofc, his biggest advantage is his cloak that hides her presence so he can totally take her out on dates with the cloak on her so she won't ever go stir-crazy

POSEIDON'S ACTUALLY GONNA BE LOWKEY RELIEVED 😭😭 we all know how shitty he was in the beginning, well now he sees this as the perfect chance restart and avoid all his mistakes so he's gonna be EXTREMELY intense at the first meeting, which only makes percy freak out more cuz at least in the og timeline, it was gradual and she was able to slowly love him, but in here??? nah, she's just weirded out 24/7 😭 everyone else is gonna be just as freaked out as her because WHYYYY on earth is poseidon acting SOFT???? and POSSESSIVE??? PROTECTIVE?????? over this random girl that just got shoved into his care??? surely he can't be THIS eager for fatherhood, right???? oh and he almost IMMEDIATELY marries her much to percy's horror, he's not risking another hades situation (also, poor man's confused as to why his baby brother suddenly hates him LMAO 😭😭😭) he also NEVER lets her out of his sight this time. his baby kept getting kidnapped 24/7 so he practically latches onto her like a clingy, paranoid cat 😭😭 percy needs to pee? he's right out the door. she needs to be educated on how things work? he's plopping her right on his lap while proteus drones on about lessons. he's never making the mistake of letting her out of his sight.

hades is gonna be soooo sly and sneaky. he's gonna take it slow and act completely normal and basically let things go on with the flow.... UNTIL THE FATEFUL DAY WHERE PERCY GETS LOST IN VALHALLA WHICH LEADS TO POSEIDON BEING PISSED. and then you know, she runs away. hades lets this all happen because he knows that sometime afterwards, after a meeting with beelzebub, she asks to go to adamas. well, after her session with beelzebub, he CONVENIENTLY shows up like "percy, are you okay? 🥺 i'm so worried about you, i know my brother can be a bit horrible at times, would you like to stay with me for the time being?" and bam, he snatches her up before she could even think of going to adamas and then the grooming begins 💀

you know how the cover-up is that beelzebub's trying to find ways to safely ascend her??? welp, in this au, he's gonna straight up ascend her the second she's handed over to him. HOWEVER!!!! not right away 😈 since their first meeting happens when poseidon still isn't fond of her, beelie's gonna take advantage of it and make a deal with poseidon "i'll find a way to safely ascend your daughter, but in exchange, i wish for her hand in marriage" and naturally, poseidon would (eventually) approve because why wouldn't he? he doesn't want a filthy half-breed for a child and beelzebub IS almost as perfect as him; he's powerful, looks down on humans and other gods, doesn't rely on anyone, etc. etc, he wouldn't mind having him as a son-in-law. so poseidon accepts the deal, percy is (forcefully) ascended, and with her father's approval, is eternally bound to beelzebub through marriage AND the contract her father signed

apollo WON'T try to kidnap percy this time lmao!!! he's gonna ascend to midgard and see her poking her out of the seas and be like "hi there 😍 whatcha dooooing???" and she's gonna be like "oh, hi, i was just looking for new york, but i think this is greece, so imma just go" and then he'll be like "oh i can take you to new york!!!!!!" and even tho he cant stand the filthy city, he happily takes her there (and since their first meeting happens BEFORE the beelcy date, that means apollo just unknowingly snatched beel's chance of taking her to new york LMAO). obviously, poseidon finds out, loses his shit, and tries to kill apollo but percy defends him, this time more fiercely because of how much she enjoyed spending time with him. anyway, this is SUPER good for him because this definitely gave her a better first impression of him compared to the og timeline 😂

anubis first meets percy during mimir's funeral and he takes advantage of percy's adoration for kids, so what does he do??? summon kebi after the funeral, gives her a handful of flowers and says "see that pretty girl over there strangling Loki? give her these flowers and call her pretty! 🥰" and obviously she does it and percy melts and because she's nice, assumes she's lost and helps her find her daddy. kebi purposely walks all over the place, using this time to lay out their babie charms to win percy over and then when some time passes, anubis comes running over like "omg 😱😱 kebi, there you are i've been looking everywhere 😱😱 oh wow, who's this pretty princess with you?? 🥰". he cemented a pretty damn good first impression cuz now she equates him to "good dad". and when they run into each other again in helheim, he tricks her into a marriage and THIS TIME, doesn't waste time in mating her to make her PERMANENTLY his 😍

(no cú chulainn here cuz he shows up in act 2 and i don't wanna spoil how they meet hehe sorry!)

now if they BOTH got isekai-ed into the past.... (assuming they all know the truth too and also they're both kids like in the previous ask):

12 year old poseidon is immediately gonna drag percy's ass to sea 💀 oh she wants to go to camp??? wants to see her mom??? HELL NO. he's not spending a second longer in that shithole of a country and he's going straight to atlantis to Fight God (his counterpart lmao) and for once percy actually has the brain cell in this duo and is trying to tell him how much of a TERRIBLE idea that is since he's literally fucking 12 💀 but then a monster attacks and now percy REALLY needs to get their asses to camp but poseidon keeps losing his shit every step of the way because everything is quite literally out to kill his baby 😭😭😭 knowing percy, she's probably gonna feel so bad and scared for her dad's sake that she goes "you should go on without me 😞 if i stick around with you, i'll only put you in danger 😞😞 here's the directions to camp--" but then he just throws her into the ocean before jumping in with her 💀

hades is trying to stay calm but it's kinda hard for him to do that when everything is a monster trying to kill his niece and he can hardly protect her because he's fucking twelve years old and a human 💀 he's trying to be calm and rational and all like "alright, how about we just go up to olympus and talk to this universe's zeus--" "he hates me." ".....okay, how about my counterpart---" "also kinda hates me." "poseidon???" "we can't interact or zeus'll kill me." "is there ANYONE we can go to for help that won't try to kill you?!?!?!" "mmmm not really, oh and also ur dad's alive here". he's done 💀

apollo is just clinging on to percy out of misery, fear, and desperation. he's been turned into a human AGAIN, and even though he has some bits of his power, it's kinda useless since he's TWELVE AND IN A FOREIGN UNIVERSE THAT KEEPS STRESSING HIM OUT. the worst part is that he keeps trying to fist fight every monster that tries to kill his beloved (reminder that ror!apollo is also known as the god of boxing!!!) but it's kinda useless since the monsters here can only die from an enchanted metal which none of them have yet cuz they haven't reached camp 😭😭

beelzebub is freaking out (which is no surprise whenever percy's involved). they haven't even been in this universe for ten minutes and they already have a horde of monsters after them AND the police AND the country apparently thinks percy's a terrorist mastermind while he's her... sidekick??? ok, he's a little offended by that, but he's also just baffled at how chaotic percy's life is 😭 he can barely get a break before another monster pops up!!! they've been trying to get to camp half-blood but they are TWELVE, with NO MONEY, and EVERYONE IS AFTER THEM. beelzebub is absolutely horrified at the state of her life, what do you mean this is normal for you??? to be constantly on the run and attacked and starving and SOMETIMES YOU GOTTA SLEEP ON THE STREETS?????????? he is only twelve years old and he's already balding, someone get this man back home he can NOT survive the demigod life as a human nor can he stand percy going through this 😭😭😭😭

with loki AND percy, you best believe they're gonna somehow become INTERNATIONALLY WANTED CRIMINALS within the first hour of being isekai-ed 😭😭 usually loki would be entertained, but he's twelve years old, not a god, and monsters are trying to kill the love of his life (who is also now twelve). percy is desperately trying to get this man to go on ahead without her for his own safety but he is NOT splitting up with his girl!!!!! he also doesn't want her to go to camp cuz that's where all the attention-hogging "inferiors" are and he doesn't want them trying to take percy away.... but the monsters won't stop and camp is the only safe haven for her, so he grits his teeth and goes with her because he doesn't want her dead.

anubis is excited!!!! sure he's not happy to lose his divinity and look like a 12 year old, but percy's 12 too and omgggg she just looks soooooo cute 🥺🥺🥺🥺 he wishes kebi were here so all three of them can just run around new york and have playdates everyday, but then reality HARSHLY smacks him in the face when the first monster attack happens and he can't protect percy as well as he'd like. now he's no longer smiling and he's been reduced to a paranoid mess while percy tries to comfort him and get to camp. she'll also suggest that maybe they split up because of how dangerous it'd be for him if he stuck with her but he gets flashbacks of that one time percy ditched him and loses his shit 💀

with cú chulainn, it wouldn't be that different from the previous asks, the only difference is that percy would be sassier and more annoying to him because she knows full well who is he is 😂 but anyway, unlike the gods, he has no issues protecting percy because his body's not that different, just de-aged, so he's not being weakened by mental breakdowns like the gods are from losing their divinity LMAO. anyway, he refuses to let her go to camp cuz he thinks the place is stupid anyway and why would you wanna go there and be sent to numerous quests and a war??? he knows she hates always having to fight, but he'll get pissed when he finds out its cuz she misses her loved ones. they get into an argument, break split up and percy heads to camp while he eventually goes after her to make sure she makes it there safely while also trying to find a way to get them back home

[nylloth]

I think one more reason why that final line pisses me off is how much better Sky's line was: "Everything about you inspires me." Not a word about his disease, because Viktor is more than his disease. That's what he'd always wanted.

Viktor knows about this. She didn’t tell him directly, but according to the official League of Legends wiki, he found out through her journal that he had inspired her to pursue science. Right after Sky’s death and reading her diary, he refused to use hexcore. He wasn’t obsessed with “improvements,” and I always noted how that set him apart from original LoL Viktor.

In season two, it’s actually Jayce who fuses Viktor with the core, and according to Linke, the core begins to affect Viktor afterwards. So none of it is Viktor’s own judgment. He had already rejected those beliefs in season one and even asked Jayce to destroy the core. How could he have asked him that if, according to Jayce, he “always dreamed of fixing himself”? Viktor wasn’t even trying to fix himself, he was trying to survive.

I know the scene of him running is very important and that he obviously had deep insecurities about his leg, but that wasn’t the only reason for his loneliness. He was from Zaun, and that also made him isolated in Piltover.

All of these facts make me hate Jayce’s line even more, and even resent people who are moved by it, especially those who say things like, “If someone told me that, I would cry. I’ve always wanted to be accepted with my disability!” It just feels so shallow.

that was never Viktor’s core theme. It never was. Viktor wanted to live, he didn’t want to die. What does “acceptance” even mean in the context of death? I’ll tell you more: he did accept death. That’s why he says to Jayce, “I was supposed to die.” He gave up not only perfection, but survival. So to add this topic so abruptly, and furthermore to emphasise it as if HE ALWAYS strived for it, is foolish.

It’s like the viewer is supposed to forget the full picture and just focus on this one micro-moment, erasing all prior knowledge about his character. The point is, why the fuck would Viktor be ‘touched’ by that line from Jayce when he already knew in season one that there was a person who admired him? comeon

[jscrawls]

Grave... Affection?

I'm which Jason accepts some things...

(One shot)

Warning: contains mentions of blood, mentions of harm, yandere Jason coded...

🔹🔹🔹

Jason was a lot of things.

A survivor, a fighter, a vigilante, a good soldier, someone's son.

But he wasn't perfect, no one is right? Perfect doesn't go out at night and use themselves to break those that have committed the sin of being on the wrong side of the law, perfect doesn't rage and seethe and pitifully ache for the love of the people they push away from as much as it begs those same people to let in, Jason's not perfect.

He's very aware at the very least, when he's rejected of things he knows it's because he's too much, too cruel with his words, too aggressive, makes too many waves. He won't forget, how can anyone else forget? Why is he the only one screaming?

But everything shifted just a little when he met them. (Name) Addams. They were so…. Odd, too loud and too happy, sticking out at all the wrong angles just so in a way Jason knew Gotham would grind down forcibly. she always does.

But…. They continued to be loud and wild and deliriously happy, they stabbed a man and grinned happily in their mugshot, they giggled madly in the face of super villains, even Bruce Wayne couldn't brow-beat them into submission, he hates that he envies them.

The worst yet was how they treated him, they heard he died and cooed at him, he snapped at them and called them vile names and they'd giggle behind their hand, he showed them the scars and marks of his hurt, his own pain and the pain he's caused others, and they kissed his palms and told him he was a work of art. It's infuriating how much he thought about that last incident.

He can't shove them away, no matter how hard he bites and pushes, but when he asks they leave. They laugh at his brute force like he's their favorite show in the world and lay gentle, reverent hands on him only when he allows them the chance.

Maybe that's why he started to ache for them too.

They don't allow him to shove himself into a corner of isolation, instead they act like they'd prefer to sit in the dirt with him at the edge of everyone else's comfort than sit at their table with the ‘good ones.’

they like that he's fucked up. Not even in the ‘you make me feel better about myself’ way either, they don't see him as company to their own misery, they just see him.

So maybe that's why he started going over to their house more, the place was unsettling and creepy and broken and…. He's starting to see a pattern here.

But Jason doesn't care, not when they give him what he's so desperately craved in his life, unconditional affection.

He doesn't need to fight to earn it or be the best of, he doesn't need to shove every single part of himself into a small, Robin shaped box to be worthy.

He goes to them, covered in blood and ichor and sin and they still caress his cheek like a monarch blessing their knight in red. He doesn't even know whose blood dribbles off his chin onto their hand when he kneels before them, but as he looks up at them in the dim light of their room, the yellowed lightbulb casting a halo around their head as blood drips onto them like pomegranate juice staining their fingers….

Jason suddenly understands what it's like to be completely mad for another imperfect, mad person.

🔹🔹🔹

| m.list |

A/n: I cooked this up after @viilan inspired me! Check her out y'all shes got a phantom! Reader au starting up that's so fun 😚😚😚

[1nkwe4ver]

So here’s the theory. I think I’ve got it

I still think what Lumon is doing is bigger than giving rich people the chance to sever off their bad experiences. And I think Helena is actually a big hint to understanding whats going on with Gemma.

They act like Cold Harbor is going to be a religious revelation to the world, and I don’t think it’s just “eliminate all your troubles with Severance!” Like okay so if you’re not immediately existentially horrified by it, that might sound kinda cool, but what’s the big miraculous reveal they keep referencing with Cold Harbor? That will change the world? Make everyone join the cult of Kier? Why all the goddamned secrecy and hiding Gemma underground? Obviously people already know about severance and about using it for your inconveniences, people are already doing it. People are severing off worker bees for their 9-5. Rich people are using it to give birth.

So I have a theory of how this is bigger than that

First of all, some of the questions they asked Gemma. I felt like they were checking on her mental functions and memory as herself, as an Outie. “Where did you go?” And “Would you be more afraid of drowning or suffocating?”before she even starts her rooms for the day.

The next key I think is in things like MDR. They are finding the scary numbers and refining them into the boxes labeled with tempers(if that’s not what they’re labeled with it’s something like that). Mark’s first file matched the name of Gemma’s Christmas Thank You Note room, I think. Implying his finishing that file had something to do with the formation of that room. The room resembles the way one of their actual Christmases was set up, so I feel it’s implied they were drawing from his memories. Possibly one where they were feeling crappy because of all their failing to get Gemma pregnant.

Okay. So even if you accept that Lumon categorizes all bad feelings into the “tempers”, why does Lumon need this to make a room for Gemma’s Innie to experience this temper? Why bother personalizing it to Outie Gemma’s experiences in such a weirdly intimate way? After all, Innies aren’t supposed to have that kinda connection to their Outies.

And even beyond Mark, what is the rest of MDR doing? Why have them craft these weirdly personalized rooms to isolate tempers so intensely? If all they wanted was to let Innies do the dirty work for the Outies, surely they could come up with rooms doing the basic premises for themselves- eternal dentist offices and chores.

Also, why fucking plane crashes and Thank You Notes? Yes, Gemma hates thank you notes, but that Innie didnt hate thank you notes until she was subjected to that room over and over. You can’t tell me they’re going to sever so many innies into the average brain that someone is going to have one set aside to turn on just in case a plane crashes. Irl, a persons going to want to call their family if they have the service. They’re going to want to experience their last moments in case they die. They can’t trust the Innie to actually behave like a person on a real life plane rather than a simulated one. I also highly doubt someone will really get another brain surgery just to do a petty thing like Thank you notes. Will they delegate it? Sure. But even if I’m buying into the system of brain slaves thing, I’m not going to schedule the time and take the risks to have another severance done. If im that rich and petty I’m sure I have a personal assistant doing that shit anyway.

So how does Helena Eagan shed some light on this?

Remember after Irving nearly killed her, she speaks with Drummond. They say something along the lines of, doctors say her tempers will rebalance promptly. But if she’s still feeling poorly they can treat her. She insists immediately and firmly that she is fine.

I know it’s implied Helena wasn’t severed until she got her job on the severed floor. So what if that’s the point of severance?

Stay with me here. Kier has to be the core of whatever’s going to be revealed with Cold Harbor and Gemma. The beginning. They’re crediting everything to him. Praise Kier. His work will finally be realized and everyone will rejoice. But Helena has confirmed that Jame is the one to come up with the severance procedure.

So what did Kier do? He identified the tempers, for one. What does Lumon actually do with the tempers? All we’ve heard mentioned is people getting them in balance, or out of balance.

Helena’s situation implies two things-

One- followers of Kier approach larger medical issues, physical and mental, with doctors who rebalance their tempers as opposed to other remedies.

Two- Even Helena fucking Eagan isn’t really willing to undergo whatever the fuck you have to do to get your tempers back in balance under a doctor’s supervision.

So my theory is- Kier’s original method of balancing the tempers, the basis of Lumon’s ideology, is some variation of what they’re doing to Gemma, traditionally without severance. Obviously, because severance didn’t exist till a few years ago.

My theory is that they believe every illness/lack of wellness is an imbalance of the tempers. More often than not, a lower amount of one.

To raise this temper, they dig into you psychologically, maybe with normal therapy or something, take something that stimulates a certain “temper” and make you experience it over and over, to the point of torture. In their view, this ultimately realigns the temper and once youre done, you recompartmentalize the Dieter in you that’s experiencing that shit, and you’re well again.

The issue was, well- patients either left their cult or lost their minds. Kier died and I’m sure his personality, which had probably drawn and kept many in, lost many followers with it.

So the Eagans and their remaining followers have to accept that things aren’t going right. They have to change their approach. Make things a business to keep their power and influence, and back off from the things that make them look like wackjobs in the public eye.

I mean, obviously, Kier could never have been wrong, he was right. The problem is the world. The masses cannot handle his wisdom for some reason. We have to approach this differently.

So they need to do two things to make Kier’s word acceptable to the mainstream, really. They need to prove, as they believe, that balancing the tempers can heal pretty much any fucking thing under the sun. And secondly- they need to make a way to make the process usable on the masses. Something an average person could make it through without losing their mind.

In comes Jame Eagan.

He has the best idea. Kier always compartmentalized his time “balancing his tempers.” He put it all on Dieter(if Dieter was a real brother, excuse me, but I’m going with the ‘he was a metaphor’ interpretation for this. If you disagree, just take my references to Dieter to be personified portions of yourself you’ve compartmentalized to deal with traumatic situations). But Kier was pure. He was superior. The average person may need help to do that! Let’s section off a portion of their memories, so they don’t have to remember going through treatment! We create these people’s Dieter’s for them, because as long as the tempers in their body are balanced, they will experience the healing effects of Kier’s treatments. So what if those versions of them are in continuous loops of torture? Nobody cares about the states of those minds. Those are Dieters. Those aren’t real people. And then the real people get to be whole again!

Okay, but how do we convince the masses that this isn’t crazy bullshit? We need a real, solid example of how surreally magical and intense Kier’s treatment can be.

Well, the doctor says- with such strong mental barriers as this procedure will give us, I believe we could rebalance the tempers in anyone. Could do anything.

You know what it could do? We could raise the dead.

So- I think Gemma did die. Physically. I think they took her corpse, which Mark identified early on, and quickly swapped it out for them to bury a different one.

Then they used crazy technology to resuscitate her. I think she was on the edge of death and miserable and a shell of herself. Probably hardly functioning. Hardly reacting to the questions they asked. Who knows what her mind and body were like when she was recovered. She was her, but if she’d been allowed in a normal hospital, she would have long been pronounced dead, and if they somehow resuscitated her as Lumon originally did, so late, no one would have let her live how they resuscitated her to be. Gemma being brought back to herself as we’ve seen her would be a miracle.

That’s why they need MDR to unconsciously choose what they will use for the formation of the rooms. They are making sure the rooms will spike the sharpest reactions of her tempers possible. It is necessary to have a raw, unconscious human response dictate this. It is helpful to draw from Mark’s memories because they’re not trying to test Gemma’s Innies ability to withstand dealing with the rooms, they’re trying to restore Gemma’s tempers to the levels they were at before her death. Other people’s experiences can work for some general things, like anxiety at the dentist office, but it makes sense that Mark is so essential here in that context. He is the refiner that can’t be fired because to really get Gemma back to Gemma, we need situations that will stimulate her from the life they shared. They have a general idea of where her old tempers were, I think because they measure it in the blood. And they had a lot of access to Gemma medically before her accident. She went to Lumon blood drives. She went to the Lumon fertility treatment, where that doctor who worked on this hell floor was seen in the background. I’m guessing they believe they have an idea of her “tempers” pre-death because of that.

This also lends itself to a late stage Uno reverse from Cobel or Helena, trying to get Mark on their side. Hell, it might late stage be the only reason Mark finishes the goddamned Cold Harbor file.

Because we’ve seen how tortured Gemma is right now, so in our heads, right now, it seems like nothing could make us sympathize with these crazy evil folks. Makes us hate Lumon drones we’d come to like, like Milchik and Cobel and Helena afresh. But what if Gemma really was dead before all this? What if she really was a barely breathing corpse when they started this work on her? It wasn’t their right to take her body, but now she is back and she is her

If you hear, Milchik, Cobel, and them really are so devoted to this company because they’re working on bringing people to perfect health with a health framework that is so superior it can bring people back from death, you want to say that they’re deranged and wrong, but ignoring whatever got them into the company in the first place, what about what they’ve potentially seen with Gemma? Maybe it’s still wrong to be so cruel, but if you’ve really seen this company bring someone back from death to essentially herself, wouldn’t that inspire your devotion? Wouldn’t you think you should probably toughen up as opposed to getting out? Wouldn’t you be a little reverent? Wouldn’t you have committed to breaking society’s rules already? And if you wouldn’t be, can’t you imagine someone else being so? Like that is wild. Cobel has been in this company since she was a child and now she’s literally a part of them doing one of the most miraculous things anyone ever said she was crazy to believe they could do.

This also puts Cobel’s obsession with Mark and his family into perspective, because it’s not just screening things for a sign he might get away, keeping control of the situation, a weird sense that she’s entitled to be close to him- it was also originally probably a recommended route to getting more info on Gemma. How many times did Selvig bring cookies for Mark and gently coax him until he told her stories about Gemma? How many pictures did she pull up and ask questions about? How many little pieces of furniture, like the candle, did she steal, to help personalize Gemma’s experiences further? How much info did she get from getting to know Ricken and Devon?

Also, another thing about Helena, which is just occurring to me as I write this- I’m thinking back to early season 1. When we still don’t know her full identity, but we see her side of her first day at Lumon.

I originally attributed this to them being unsure what they were going to do so early on, but I’ll say, Helena seems genuinely happy and pleased when we see her side on the outside of her first day severed.

Nowadays, when we see her in the outside, she’s cold and reserved, in large part I think because the experience has gone so wrong. And I think people have just written off that early episode as just them keeping her behavior vague- she’s being polite, going through the motions. Based on her behavior now, we might think she never wanted to be severed in the first place, was always forced.

But I think of like, when they show her smiling and talking about it, almost nerding out while they’re doing the procedure. Nervous, but genuinely a bit excited. And what is there to be excited about? You’re not gonna remember what goes on. I don’t take anything she said for the videos at that party in the finale as real.

But this theory, about the Kier cult and balancing tempers for health purposes? I think that really makes it make sense.

Helena was raised in all this, and she seems to scoff at some parts of it. I’d say it’s implied on some level, she knows it’s bullshit. She is stressed and firmly denies she needs to go to the tempers balancing doctor after Irving tries to drown her. She starts giggling at the dramatic story about Kier masturbating. It very much seems like she doesn’t drink her own Kool Aid.

So, if shes really just a business mind in all this, not a real spiritual believer, I think she’s excited to be severed because she’s stuck in this system. Every time something in her life happens to her- she gets hurt, she gets attacked, she undergoes a traumatic experience- she gets sent into the waking nightmare of the doctors who dig into your psyche and rebalance your tempers. What they’re doing to Gemma, without Severance. Torture. She’s an Eagan, it’s not supposed to bother her, she of all people is supposed to be superior, but she fucking hates it with all of her being.

So she is excited to be severed because it represents finally not having to fucking deal with that.

She is ready and willing because before Helly, she saw severance as her way out of hell. Her way to finally create a Dieter she didn’t have to deal with. To not experience them carefully crafting experiences to torture her in the name of “rebalancing her tempers.” Severance was finally going to let her compartmentalize all the shit she couldn’t stand about being an Eagan and focus on being herself. Everything she’d been taught about it said she didn’t need to worry about Innies, they weren’t people.

But then she takes the severed job- and Helly keeps trying to run out the floor. She threatens to cut off Helena’s fingers. Helena is supposed to walk in the elevator and come out never knowing more than an echo of Helly’s pain- and one day she walks in the elevator, and the next moment she’s being hanged.

So her hopeful little smiles before going in are just gone. She still feels trapped. She never wants Helly triggered again, I highly doubt she wants to create a system of others. But of course, she’s still an Eagan, and she has to still finish the realization of Kier’s wishes, and they still have a woman nearly brought back to life in their sub-basement. And they still want Helena Eagan’s severance as a publicity stunt.

So yeah. I think we’re going to find that Gemma DID die in that car accident, and was brought back to life using an extreme combination of Kiers principles and balancing of the tempers, a process which she can only handle mentally because the parts of her dealing with the individual bits of the torture are severed off.

Mark’s contributions in unconsciously creating the rooms are essential because they need to make sure her tempers are balanced back to the way Gemma originally had them. I’m not sure exactly what the Cold Harbor file is, but once the room is done and used, Gemma will be “completely” brought back. And Lumon intends to use this as proof to the world that the Rebalancing of the Tempers is the cure for everything, as Kier always said.

[macsimagines]

I loved your bully headcannons! Would you be willing to do some for Kisaki and Izana?

oof sorry about the wait! flu kicked my ass but i was really excited to do this one! Hope you like!

WARNINGS: MINORS DNI, ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR, BULLYING, GASLIGHTING, YANDERE TENDENCIES, HARRASSMENT

YANDERE!BULLY KISAKI TETTA

What attracted him to you? Your kindness. You're so nice to everyone around you it almost makes him sick. He wants to test you for whatever reason, wants to break what he feels is a façade so he master manipulates a plan to shatter that mask you're wearing.

He spreads rumors, turns people against you, makes your friends abandon you, and yet you never waver. You still smile at him, even if he can see the sadness in your eyes, you still try to do your best for those around you, even if you're met with disdain, you're still kind to him. Even though he doesn't deserve it.

Kisaki thinks you've proven yourself. Obviously you deserve nothing but the best that only he can provide. And so he tells you. That you've completed his 'Tests' with flying colors and how you're going to be so happy together.

And you? God, do you want to fight back against him. The literal torture he put you through. All this time he's been behind the agony and just pretending to be your friend. Just for what? To isolate you and break you down so you're perfect for him. But the subtle threat is what's holding you back. You never thought someone could have this much control, can you really risk pushing it?

So you put up with it. Every kiss and caress you accept without any fight, and he tries not to feel too disappointed when you don't reciprocate. After all, you're just shy.

Kisaki really doesn't know or understand why you would resent him. In his head, what he did was for the sake of your love and relationship. You should be grateful he put this much effort into you. Right?

YANDERE!BULLY IZANA KUROKAWA

God. Fuck you and fuck the way you make him feel. Your smile, your laugh, that glitter in your stupid perfect fucking eyes. It's like you represented everything he could never be or have in his life. Pure. Wonderful. Fucking perfect.

And Izana hated you for it. The way his chest tightened when you walked into a room, or the way your smiles made him want to be the only person to ever make you smile like that. And the fact that he wasn't made him crazier and made you a bigger target.

You think you get to live your life and be happy when you make him so miserable by existing? Think again. He's here to ruin your day and remind you about the hard knocks of life.

Your skirts are getting flipped up, chairs are being pulled from under you, friends are abandoning you quickly and Izana is reveling in your misery. You can understand the way he feels when you're just as alone as he is.

But goddamnit, why does your frown feel so... wrong? It's not supposed to be there, he reliazes. You're never supposed to be this unhappy and miserable it's like there's something cosmically wrong when you're depressed.

Suddenly he's seeking you out for more than his usual torture and harassments. He's actively trying to make you... you don't even know what to call this.

"Look, Y/N, it's that dumb snack you like so much." "Ya..." "I bought it." "Ya." "For you."

Then he's stopping others from the bullying he helped facilitate. Like he wasn't the fucking ring leader of it all. Like he didn't want to do this to you. What the fuck?

"It's over now. Will you just fucking deal with it and... smile. Please? For me?"

[ladyefoxy]

I know this is going to be unpopular and maybe even borderline offensive to some people, but honestly, I need to say it: I find the whole Feyre vs Nesta thing so unnecessarily dramatic. Like, exhausting. Maybe it's because I’ve been through a rough period of depression myself and tend to be more pragmatic, but the way people romanticize Feyre's behavior while demonizing Nesta drives me up the wall.

Let’s talk about that period when Nesta was spiraling. She was very clearly pushing everyone away, drinking, isolating herself, refusing help. And everyone—especially Feyre—just kept chasing her down like it was some noble act of sisterly devotion. But here’s the thing: when you’re in that place, when you’re *actually* in that dark mental space, people constantly “checking in” or “trying to help” can be overwhelming as hell. You just want to be left alone. You want silence. And Feyre refusing to accept that—refusing to respect Nesta’s need for space—feels more like it was about *Feyre’s guilt* than Nesta’s well-being

And don’t even get me started on the money situation. If Nesta was such a horrible, selfish leech who used Feyre’s money to drink herself into oblivion, then why not just cut her off? Like truly, cut the cord. Feyre had all the power—if the money was the issue, she could’ve ended that without the endless guilt-tripping. But no. Instead, it’s this loop of “I just wanted to help” and “she wouldn’t let me in” and “she’s destroying herself with *my* money.” It’s this weird martyr complex. It’s performative. If you don’t actually respect the person enough to let them make their own choices, even bad ones, then maybe it’s not really help you’re offering. Maybe it’s control.

And the part that bugs me the most is that Feyre keeps pushing this idea that Nesta is the *problem* in the family. She’s the angry one. The ungrateful one. The one who makes everything difficult. And yet—why does Feyre keep showing up? Why does she keep insisting on being there for someone who’s clearly saying “I don’t want you here”? If my sister genuinely didn’t want me in her life and hated the people I loved and the things I cared about, I wouldn’t keep forcing the relationship. I’d let go. That’s not heartless, that’s healthy. That’s boundaries.

Even Elain, who’s constantly portrayed as soft and sweet, somehow had more emotional intelligence in that situation. She stayed out of it. She didn’t force anything. She just existed quietly and let Nesta be. And honestly, that’s probably the only respectful thing anyone did for Nesta during that time.

And yes, I like Cassian. A lot. But even he was stuck in this loop of “I’m so mad that she’s cruel to me, but I won’t leave her alone.” Dude, if she’s telling you she doesn’t want you, stop trying to provoke her just to get a reaction. Stop expecting her to match your emotional investment when she’s clearly drowning and not interested. That whole dynamic was just a storm of miscommunication and mutual hurt, and still people act like Cassian was this poor man heartbroken by the mean woman who wouldn’t love him back. Come on.

Like I said, I don’t think Nesta is some saint. She’s not. But she’s also not the devil people make her out to be. She was hurt. Angry. Deeply depressed. And she had the right to be. Like her refusal to engage made her cruel. That’s what depression *is*. And calling it “attitude” or “meanness” is not only reductive, it’s dehumanizing.

Sometimes I think about how different all this would feel if they’d just let Nesta be. Let her hit rock bottom if she needed to. Let her rebuild—or not—on her own terms. Maybe that's just the way I see things, being Latina and raised in a culture where when someone cuts you off, you *let them.* You don't chase them down to prove you're the better sibling. You let time speak. You let them come back if and when they're ready. And if they don’t, well—that’s life. if she wanted to kill herself? If she had enough courage to do that, you know?? what the fuck like if you say you've done everything, GO AWAY, FUCK, huh

So no, I don’t hate Feyre. I think she was young, overwhelmed, desperate to hold her family together. But I also think she was immature, and a little self-centered in her need to *be the one who saves.* And that’s okay—she was twenty. Who wasn’t a little dramatic at that age? But it doesn’t make her actions automatically right. And it doesn’t make Nesta automatically wrong.

Not every sibling relationship is meant to survive everything. Not every bond is sacred just because it’s blood. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is *walk away.*

And sometimes? All that drama could’ve been solved with one good fight and a clean break. just two sisters finally being honest, and moving the hell on. or just existing in different lives, what the fuck is it so difficult?