#your opinion is only relevant for your body and if someone asks you for your opinion on them getting x done

[ryanthedemiboy]

We need to work on our shittiness to people who don't look how we think they should, and actually stop thinking people should look a certain way.

That said: adults have the right to do with their body as they please, even if you don't understand it or dislike or or it makes you uncomfortable.

Bodily autonomy is not just for who you decide needs it. Trust people to know what they want and need.

It doesn't matter if it's a trans man getting a phalloplasty or a cis guy getting a penis enlargement or someone getting a tummy tuck or a cis woman getting large breast implants.

Not your business! Trust people to make their own decisions.

Look. I’m going to be honest with you. Adopting that hard anti-plastic surgery stance while trans people’s lives and right to transition is at stake is absolutely horrendous timing. Knock it off.

[citronverveine]

when you think about it, tgcf really wouldn’t have the same impact if xie lian didn’t cultivate through abstinence.

it’s funny because it’s not even relevant to the core of the plot itself; xie lian never uses his cultivation as a reason to stay away from hua cheng. he only reminds the reader of it when he drinks wine, which is pretty irrelevant anyway. but if it doesn’t impact his relationship with hua cheng then it must serve another purpose, otherwise it wouldn’t be here, because things in fiction don’t exist just for the sake of existing.

xie lian abstaining from earthly pleasures fits into the narrative of control, expectations, and divinity, the transcendance of his mortal body.

xie lian’s goal, very early on, is to become a god. and what are gods? above mortals. or that’s what everyone thinks, but not xie lian, not entirely at least. xie lian views godhood as a means to serve the people, not being above them. this is why he doesn’t think kneeling before gods is right, and why he doesn’t want his believers to kneel.

obviously, very few people agree with him and tell him how his godhood should be, even his own believers who think it’s stupid to not kneel before a god.

xie lian always saw godhood as a tool, and his body as a tool to reach godhood. xie lian is self-sacrificing in nature, and even if at first he doesn’t really know how much it takes, it reaches extremes once he is forced to self-sacrifice for a hundred people at once.

during that time, xie lian’s body and autonomy was taken from him. “this is what you want? then take it.” it makes it seem as though it was his choice. he wanted to help, so he got to help, he should be happy, right?

i often wondered why xie lian didn’t just say to hell with it and broke his cultivation through his eight hundred years of banishment. not once, as far as we know, does he willingly break it completely and irreversibly, even though he is shackled, even though he doesn’t even actively cultivate anymore.

i think it’s about control. during that time xie lian had very little control over his life.

godhood is about repressing your human traits. when he was a god, xie lian was asked not to care, not to intervene, not to help. he was asked to sit back and watch as his people suffered, as his kingdom threatened to fall. he couldn’t.

that’s why he couldn’t be a god. he realized that himself after almost releasing the resentful spirits on Yong’an. he ascended and asked to get bannished once again. all of what he did was too human, from start to finish, and he would never be fit for a god.

his cultivation was the third and last shackle, self-imposed from the start. the first shackle bound his spiritual power, the second his luck, and the third one his cultivation, asking him to repress his humanity.

this is why it’s important that xie lian makes the choice of breaking his cultivation for hua cheng. it’s an obvious choice when you understand all of this. hua cheng gave xie lian his autonomy back by letting him be himself and making his own choices, and trusting him with them. never did he doubt xie lian, never did he tell him what to do, even when he had his own opinion on the matter. hua cheng lets xie lian be. while supporting him through it all. he’s always behind him, no matter what happens, no matter whether xie lian does good or bad, he’ll always be there to catch him regardless of what he does, because he is there for who he is. he’s xie lian. he’s human. it doesn’t matter that he’s a god, a prince, a scrap collector, a curse.

and because xie lian has finally found someone who accepts him as a whole, can he finally let himself be whole and let go of the control he has on his body. he doesn’t have to hold back. he doesn’t have to try. he can indulge. he can be human. he can want. he can love. he can hurt. he can cry. he can laugh.

tl;dr: xie lian, once aware he has someone that will accept him, the whole of him, can finally let go of any artificial control on his self to fit in what the world expects of him

[sendothetaurus]

How to write good dialogue

Almost every story needs dialogue - obvious right? Well, this post is about the not-so-obvious sides of conversations. I've struggled a LOT with snappy and realistic speech, so I've made it my mission to collect some handy directives. Here is what I found:

Contents

Information Dumps

Setup And Payoff

Characterization Through Dialogue

Three Simple Questions

Four-Sides Model

Depth

About Answers

Sources And Credits

⮮ Let's go! (^▽^) ⮯

Information Dumps

Everybody knows them, everybody hates reading them. But how do we avoid them? Something really clicked for me when I understood context. If your character talks about something that happened in the past, they don't need to explain what happened. They were there. Here's an example:

"It would be nice if we at least got a B for that paper. Since I will go to college next year, I feel that this is important to me."

The speaker and the listener should be aware of the exposition (regarding their last year at high school). During dialogue, these conditions go without saying.

Setup And Payoff

Instead of dumping everything at once, let the reader guess what's happening. This is done by mentioning something that is not answered right away. Also dropping hints can increase tension.

Scene 1 "Why do you always carry that with you?" she asked and pointed at the box cutter. Her friend eyed her with suspicion. "For cutting." "Yeah, but why?" "Might come in handy sometime." Scene 2 An ice cold shiver ran down her spine as her fingers felt around the bag, searching for the familiar shape. There was nothing. The other tossed the thing onto the floor between them. "Care to elaborate?" She couldn't have known. "How could you!"

Someone definitely has a secret here that they don't want uncovered. It makes the reader speculate: Does she carry the knife to defend herself or does she plan on hurting someone with it?

Characterization Through Dialogue

The general rule of thumb is: Show not tell. If a character is shy, self-absorbed or chaotic, make them act like it. Also, readers take part in the characterization of your protagonists. Make them guess why a character acts a certain way.

"C- can I have your pen?" She twirled her thumbs and looked at the ground. "What the hell, no!" Disgusted, he brushed off his hands on the front of his jeans. "I'mma better disinfect that."

Notice how the girl is stuttering and the boy has a loose tongue. Mannerisms help identifying traits in a character. Everyone has a distinct way to speak (e.g. relaxed, polite, malignly) which makes it easier to tell them apart. Sometimes there is a difference between speech and behavior. This can be quite useful to highlight conflict inside a character.

Three Simple Questions

Who wants what from who?

Why now?

What happens if they don't get it?

These questions ensure plot consistency. For question 3 the only other outcome is conflict. Conversations thrive off of conflict and it is of benefit to have a supplicant and potential provider for a solution. It's basically intention versus obstacle.

1. She wants to be his wife. He doesn't want a marriage. 2. She is pregnant. 3. She needs to provide for a baby all on her own.

Tadaa, a conflict ensues.

Four-Sides Model

The four-sides model is a theory on communication. It assumes that a message has four distinct ways of being conveyed:

Facts -> data, facts, truth and relevance

Self-Disclosure -> explicit and implicit information about the own mindset; likes, dislikes, opinions

Relationship -> information about whether the person is liked or detested; approval and disapproval; "I assume you have [this] opinion of me"; body language

Want -> a direct attempt to influence the behavior of another person; advice, desire or instruction

Since this is highly technical stuff, I'll provide you with an example:

Customer: "I always drink my coffee black." 1. Fact: The coffee I drink is black. 2. Self-Disclosure: I like black coffee. 3. Relationship (POV of the waiter): Did I do something wrong? OR It's their fault! They ordered the wrong thing! 4. Want: Bring me black coffee.

Controlling the message through sender and receiver gives a new level of influence to an author. The relationship-level is the bottleneck in a conversation that holds the most potential for misunderstandings. I'm trying to be aware of it when I write subtext (see below).

Depth

On the nose dialogue is what we want to avoid at all costs. For this reason subtext is created in stories. Read this:

Scene 1 A: "I like you." B: "Nah, I don't like you back. You're so annoying." A: "Ouch, that hurts. I'm not sure if I heard that right." B: "We were never friends. Go away."

This is not how conversations work. Thankfully, dialogue like this is not entirely useless. It conveys what the characters really want to say. The challenge is to think of a way to not say the thing but keep a similar meaning.

The true meaning behind the dialogue is called subtext (scene 1). If I don't know how to continue after a certain line, I write down the subtext first before I decide on how to paraphrase it.

Finally, I add a fitting description of expression and body language if needed. I try to keep it short and simple.

Check this out:

Scene 2 She tucked her hair behind her ear. "I need a ride home later. Are you free?" -> I like you. "Sorry, all seats' re taken," he said without looking at her. -> Nah, I don't like you back. You're so annoying. "Uhm, okay. But I'm small. You could fit me in the footwell, honestly." -> Ouch, that hurts. I'm not sure if I heard that right. He leaned forward as if he had the urge to stand. "Ha, funny. But no, I'm not planning on doing something illegal tonight." -> We were never friends. Go away.

A character's action depends on their own intention and the other's response. I feel it is easier to keep track of what's happening behind the curtains when it's written alongside the dialogue.

Simultaneously, you can keep habits and traits in check. Does the the character apply all criticism to themselves? Are they disregarding or constantly marginalizing others? Do they worry only for themselves or solely for others? Subtext truly is the most powerful tool in conversation-writing.

About Answers

Did you know that you don't have to answer every single question? In fact, there are two other ways to show an emotion without telling it.

The first one is called sidestepping. The character ignores the posed question and carries on with an entirely different topic.

A: "Do you still love me?" B: "We should get going."

It's very obvious, right? By sidestepping the question, we can assume that the character is uncomfortable or angry with the other person.

The other way to answer is actually a bit paradoxical. Through silence, a great variety of emotions can be displayed. It is recommended to refrain from actually describing silence with words like "he remained silent", "he refused to say anything", "he never responded".

- The laptop hummed. - The birds chirped in the trees. - She felt her legs going numb from sitting in an uncomfortable position. - His eyes wandered around, searching the parking lot for a familiar face.

It feels more natural to explain the things that grab our attention when we sit in silence.

This is it, folks. That's all I could find on the topic - for now. If there's anything missing, I'd love to hear it.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope this helped ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

My sources are this and this video as well as this article.

Also a big thank you to @zoropookie for helping me with the colors ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

[thewertsearch]

@manorinthewoods asked: Vriska and Eridan have now killed one person each. Tavros and Feferi's respective moons have been destroyed; as such, they cannot be revived via dream selves or the moon-crypt slabs. What do you think will happen now? ~LOSS (18/5/24) @manorinthewoods asked: Welcome to Murderstuck, aka Homestuck's version of Canaan House. Who do you think's going to survive this? ~LOSS (22/5/24) Anonymous asked: tavros and feferi are D----EAD! do you think they'll stay dead? you've already stated your opinion that there are death flags like crazy all over vriska, so do you think anyone else will die? if so, who? Anonymous asked: Now that the bodies have started to hit the floor, what's your prediction for who's gonna survive to meet the humans?

I'm actually doing to do something a little different this time, and analyze the situation primarily from an author's perspective, rather than an in-universe one. I had a lot of fun doing that with yesterday's Kanaya post, so I want to try it again.

Let's enumerate the remaining trolls, in ascending order of how likely I think they are to kick the bucket (😳) during Murderstuck.

There's no chance whatsoever that Sollux will die. His Doom prophecy is fulfilled, and if he were to die a third time, it would break his long-established duality theme. Plus, he'd have predicted it, and would have been complaining about it since Hivebent. He's fine.

Death flag score: 0/10.

We just got Aradia back. She's not even involved in Murderstuck, seemingly travelling to the Furthest Ring after being resurrected, so none of the murderers can touch her anyway.

Aradia is a powerful time manipulator who can freeze even the most dangerous enemies. It would take a lot more than Eridan and Gamzee to defeat someone who can stalemate Perfect Jack, and I predict that she'll survive the rest of the Act with ease.

Plus, killing her again so soon would feel really cheap. Been there, done that.

Death flag score = 0.5/10

Karkat and Terezi are too important to die.

This doesn't always guarantee a character's survival - A Song of Ice and Fire comes to mind - but ASOIAF kind of proves my point, doesn't it? Martin can throw all the Red Weddings he likes at us, but everyone still kind of knows that the really important characters aren't going to die until their arcs are complete. If A Dream of Spring ever actually comes out, Daenerys will still be around, and you can take that to the bank.

So no, I don't think Karkat and Terezi will be going anywhere. Now that Kanaya appears to be dead, they're undeniably the most important trolls remaining, alongside Vriska. And we'll get to Vriska.

Death flag score: 1/10.

I know it's weird to predict that an already deceased character won't die, but I wrote an entire post last night about why I believe this to be the case.

tl;dr: it doesn't make narrative sense for Kanaya to stay dead.

Death flag score: 2/10.

Now, we're onto the characters who I think might actually die.

Gamzee's still alive at the end of the countdown, so he'll at least survive the next couple of hours.

Certainly, his position seems rather precarious. His stated intent to wipe out the entire Veil will make him a lot of enemies very quickly - and based on the image above, he clearly gets into some sort of trouble. That scratch almost looks like it could be the work of Jack's sword.

However, I have a hard time believing the Most Important Character In Homestuck is going to die less than halfway through Homestuck. He's been saying all sorts of cryptic nonsense lately, and he strikes me as someone whose role in the story will expand even more than it already has. Gamzee is the one character on this list we know will stay relevant for the entire comic.

I don't think he's going to achieve his murder mission, of course. I think he'll probably be 'defeated' somehow, and expelled from the Veil by the surviving trolls, only to pop up again sometime later. There's still a chance that he'll be killed - but if he is, I'm 100% sure that he'll return in some form. Gamzeesprite would be even worse than Calsprite, in my opinion.

Death flag score: 3/10.

Yes, I still believe Vriska will die - but I don't know if she'll die in Murderstuck.

Scratch positioned her as someone who will perpetuate a monumental, large-scale mistake, and I don't think there's anything she could do on the Veil that fits the bill.

However, Vriska is more imaginative than I am. She could easily pull a trick out from up her sleeve that I didn't see coming - some terrible, horrible idea that earns all of Scratch's foreshadowing in one fell swoop. Vriska is known for her Incidents, and you never know when the next one is on the horizon.

Death flag score: 4/10.

There's not a lot tying Equius and Nepeta to the Veil, is there?

They don't have strong relationships any of the remaining trolls, and even among the B-team, they've barely had any prominence since we've left Alternia. Killing one or both of them would up the stakes of Murderstuck without introducing the narrative issues that, say, a dead Karkat would cause.

Plus, if one of them dies, then the other would immediately gain an incredibly strong motivation, and become a more prominent character overnight. I already like Nepeta - but a heartbroken, vengeful Nepeta hunting Eridan down across time and space? That's a fucking arc.

They could also both die, and return to the story from another direction. It hasn't escaped my notice that almost all the 'important' trolls are Prospit Dreamers, and the two Furthest Ring explorers are Derse girls. I've been wondering for a while now if the solution to the Veil's bloated cast is to split the trolls back into the Red and Blue Teams, with the Red Team joining the kids outside the session, and the Blue Team joining Aradia in the Ring for some secondary mission. I guess that implies Tavros will be resurrected, but there do seem to be hints that that might happen.

I don't want either of these two to die, but... well, killing them would raise a lot of interesting possibilities.

Death flag score (both of them together): 6/10

Death flag score (one of them) : 7.5/10.

Eridan is screwed.

Neither the story nor the trolls can allow him to ally with Jack and lead him to the Veil, and they'll do anything they can to stop him. I don't think anyone's inclined to show him mercy, either - Kanaya and Feferi were very popular.

I don't really see any way out for him. He has no allies, he can't Hopesplode everyone at once, and he's never shown himself to be particularly resourceful. I think if there's one troll practically guaranteed to be Murderstucked, it's him.

Death flag score: 9/10.

[kerubimcrepin]

ANALYSIS: Joris Jurgen, Mage-Slayer, Bearer of Grougalorasalar's Black Fire.

For quite a while I had wanted to make this post, concentrating my personal pet theory/something I noticed, but as of recently, it has been made especially relevant with to the role Grougalorasalar, as well as the Jurgen-Crepin family, may play in the manga.

This post touches on the following topic: Joris is probably mostly/fully incapable of using magic due to Grougalorasalar's possession, and there may be other consequences too, for his psychology.

"At the time of the Dofus film, we saw [Joris] as a mage-killer. Someone who does not practice magic, nor is attuned to it."

Note: Some parts of this were already proven true (or true-in-the-past-but-now-reconned) by this tweet, but I would like to go more in depth, and talk about why Joris is not practising or attuned to magic.

Black Fire, Stasis, and Dragons:

The magic of the world is based upon the Quadramental Breeze (the elements of Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind), Black Fire (Stasis, energy of destruction), and White Fire (Wakfu, energy of creation).

All of these forces originate from the three dragons of Osamodas: the elemental dragon Spiritia, the white fire dragon Helioboros, and the black fire dragon Ouronigride.

The descendants of Spiritia became the four elemental primordial dragons.

Dofus MMO Book "Dragon Era - Found Fragments III"

Ouronigride had three descendants, of whom only two are extremely relevant to this post: Grougalorasalar (ebony dofus), and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who refused a physical body, and therefore, remained without one, unlike all the other dragons.

Helioboros had three descendants, two of whom are important to keep in mind: Dardondakal (ivory dofus, his guardians used to be Joris, as well as Leorictus Sheran-Sharm), and Croulakrakoss, a dragon that has a history with Grougalorasalar.

Possession & violence:

"Young Lukruh… You don't know that I'm watching over you… From the shadows!"

Joris is not the first person in the history of the World of Twelve to be possessed by a Black Fire dragon — albeit his possession was less planned, and ended far less tragically for him.

While Grougalorasalar only resorted to possessing a body and mind that would not resist him, in order to save his own life — his sibling, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, had always yearned to possess and overtake, and for that end, he chose a man named Lukruh.

"Go ahead! Set them on fire! Oh yes! Lukruh! Your hatred gave the two of us wings! Keep going, and then nothing will stand in our way!"

He spent a long time slowly weakening his defences to overtake his body and mind (the downside of possessing someone who is not a newborn, and actually has a free will and a mind to overwrite, I suppose), and fed on his anger, at some point even giving him wings.

Feeding on anger to increase control over the body, something isn't unique to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

It is unknown whether possession is something only Black Fire dragons are capable of, but we do know the dire consequences it has for the possessed — because Joris has opinions on this story, and he voices in the Dofus MMO questline for the Ivory dofus.

During the first Crimson Dawn, he took the life of Dardondakal, and some time after, died himself. What really happened is murky (perhaps in part because this is not my lore area of expertise), but we know that Hyrkul ended up as an undead lich, before being abandoned by the dragon.

Joris explains that:

1. Dragons of black fire are not evil, but merely drawn to destruction. While I personally believe him, the fact that he mentions this immediately and unprompted may point to this being an insecurity of his.

2. The He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named kept Hyrkul alive, or turned him into a lich, using black magic. Then, in response to being asked whether it is possible that Hyrkul could have recovered his free will, Joris says the following:

This implies that 1. Joris views the condition of being possessed as one you can't recover from, and 2. that he still does not entirely possess a free will of his own. His mind has forever been tainted by/muddled with Grougalorasalar's, and that is simply not something that can be changed or healed from.

...Perhaps Black Fire stirs his thoughts too. No wonder he would mention this not being an evil thing, then.

(To be honest, one of my own darker thoughts on this topic is that Joris as we know him has been possessed since infancy, so if Grougalorasalar overwrote his brain fully with his own personality without any memories, we'd just never know. Though, considering there wasn't really a personality to overwrite, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Sorry for becoming a conspiracy theorist for a sec.)

Joris also elaborates further on their relationship in the Ebony dofus questline:

This reveals multiple things:

Joris may be implying that he and Grougalorasalar did not part on good terms.

The alternate explanation for his words here, is that Joris knows what Grougalorasalar feels due to his influence over his psyche — meaning that he also neither forgives nor forgets. While it is a fun possibility that fits in with the rest of the post, I am inclined to believe that the shorter and easier explanation for his words is the one meant by the developers. Occam's razor.

The conflict that led to their separation was based in their world-view and morals — but here Joris says something that is very interesting:

The thing about possession, is that it affects both parties, whether they like it or not.

(Imagine two pieces of clay. Imagine pushing them together, and then tearing them apart. There would still be a bit of colour from the other piece of clay, on both of them, you know? I suppose it works the same way with souls.)

Whatever their relationship used to be, Grougalorasalar no longer respects Joris's opinions. Joris still seems to feel protective of the Ebony Dofus — even if he couldn't fulfil his promise of keeping it safe forever.

Joris the Powerless:

The Black Fire eats away at all magic and life, like rust; and rules the thoughts and impulses of those affected by it, like hunger.

But it's not an evil energy — merely the yin to Wakfu's yang. It destroys without a malicious intent.

Even if we've seen the consequences that an abundance of it has, in season 4 of Wakfu...

*relevant parts of the quotes are marked with a red tint

It is not a secret that Joris was first conceptualized to be a character who had no innate powers of his own — instead drawing them from his magic wand/hand-held tree stump. (Well, the first idea was a warrior with a woman's voice, but Xa disregarded that brief and made up a whole new guy...)

It was the idea they had during the making of Wakfu season 1 — which is why he always held his magic wand back then — and it was the idea they had during the development of the cancelled spin-off game "Joris the Powerless".

It is also why he has seldom been shown with the tree stump afterwards — it has lost its relevance to his character outside of being his preferred weapon.

The reason I bring it up is that, while ideas change — when something is so integral to a character that you almost name a game after it, even multiple rewrites may not get rid of an idea entirely.

If black magic is a hunger that corrodes other magic, then wouldn't it make sense, if Joris could not use magic to begin with?

His situation is far different from Julith, who used black magic to try and resurrect Jahash. Black Fire is a part of Joris the same way it is a part of Black Fire Dragons, — it's not just a tool to him.

...Though, he does make use of it.

All of this together would explain why Joris was envisioned, and could still turn out to be, someone who neither practices nor is attuned to magic, and how the idea of him being a powerless individual may have evolved.

It is important to note, that while I think he is mostly incapable of magic, he can probably still preform simple spells:

Joris is shown using some type of magic in the Wakfu series, though we don't know what sort of magic it is, and what is its source.

And, this is a bit more shaky, but he may be shown using some sort of electricity magic in Dofus MMO's battles — to enhance his mobility/melee attacks. The only reason I am unsure is that it could just be game-specific animations, to make the fight more interesting.

Either way it would make sense — Black Fire Dragons are living beings attuned to Stasis, but they are not devoid of Wakfu, (if they were, they would either be dead or necromes...) and Joris is simply an individual whose body was warped — capabilities for branching out into other types of magic could be limited, instead of being gone.

From possession to possessiveness:

While the main point of this post was to analyse the fact that the possession probably affected his magical capabilities, it is also important to note, that I don't think his psychology was untouched.

We have multiple sources claiming that dragons are, in general, emotionally unstable, as well as textual evidence of said fact (via Arty's Burning of Bonta, which is mentioned by Qilby; Grougalorasalar's... Grougalorasalarness, as well as Adamai's many crises.)

As well as an interesting quote by Qilby, in regard to Grougaloragran. But it comes with a preface:

While we don't know whether the vocabulary of "white fire/black fire" applies to the Eliatropes, it is important to consider this:

It was said by Tot that six dofus are required to create a world.

The appearance of a new primordial black fire dragon (Rotalström) in the necroworld could signify that having six primordial dragons for the four elements, as well as stasis and wakfu, is a constant between various worlds.

According to Tot, Rotalström was the last dragon defeated by Toross. Could it be that Primordial black fire dragons play an important role in keeping the world safe? And is this why Grougalorasalar is very active in the new manga?

This would probably make Grougaloragran a black fire dragon. It would also explain why he is both impulsive, and very keen on self-control and trying to be a kind person. But this isn't outright canon — just my speculation.

(It would also explain why Adamai knows how to use stasis magic at such a young age, having been raised by him.)

Which brings me to this point: it is interesting to think about the way Grougaloragran craves violence and destruction as a baby (cute), and how this quote about impulsiveness and jealousy also fits Grougalorasalar:

Many people may not know it, but there is a lot of lore pertaining to Grougalorasalar in the Dofus MMO — and especially to his child, Crocoburio.

Crocoburio and Grougalorasalar tried to devastate and control the lands, slaughtering countless people, and Grougalorasalar was madly obsessed with his offspring: whispering him advice in the dark, supporting him every step of the way, giving him enchanted items.

These aren't necessarily normal behaviours for a dragon — but his son was so much like him, that it bewitched him for centuries, even after he was gone.

The quests in the MMO involve Grougalorasalar wanting to ressurect his offspring, even if it damages Crocoburio's soul irreparably — and the player trying to ressurect Crocoburio without hurting him, to use as a bargaining chip.

What I am saying is that:

Joris is a very impulsive person, a misantrope prone to poor decision making, involving himself in situations that don't concern him, and anger issues. He is also obsessed with his family — his so called "sons" (they aren't, but the three of them love playing pretend).

And maybe it's just how he was born — but maybe, just maybe, this too, is something that can be in some way traced to Grougalorasalar.

But maybe Joris also relishes in having posessive control over Kerubim and Atcham. Maybe he also hates everyone else besides them, and barely tolerates some people outside the family unit, with his brief friendships with others. Maybe its just like Grougalorasalar, and his love for Crocoburio.

[nancylou444]

Hi Nancy,

I hope it's okay I turn to you with this, but I just recently joined spn tumblr so I haven't really discovered many blogs I share my opinions with yet (though I did find some awesome blogs I'm excited to follow, but most of them only really talk about spn and the characters and not the actors, and this ask is concerned with j2m and danneel). Buckle up, this will be long because I tend to over-explain myself. Sorry in advance.

So I've been in the fandom since 2018 but haven't really paid attention to the cast other than watching some gag reels/bloopers, interviews with j2(m) and clips from cons. I never dug deep into the relationships/dynamics of the cast members (and also took like a 3-year break from the fandom so I'm not at all up-to-date)

I like to think I'm pretty good at reading people (in that when I find someone likeable they tend to prove themselves to be a good person and when I dislike someone seemingly for no reason I usually discover some pretty fucked up things about that person later on. Obviously with celebrities you never actually know what they are like irl but so far I've been right about people as far as I know.)

All this to say that I had an inkling about misha from the start, even though I never cared enough to do my research and justify my dislike towards him. I always got this pick me vibe from him, and like he's trying to insert himself into the j2 friendship to seem more relevant and likeable. And it seemed pretty clear to me that he is clinging to jensen and making it look like they are besties, ignoring jared or making him look bad as much as he can get away with only to fuel destiehellers in their belief that jensen also supports destiel and that jared is to blame for it not being canon. I've since found your masterpost about why you're anti misha, and finally feel justified in my feelings towards him, so thank you for collecting his shitty displays in one place.

So what my ask is about (getting to my point at last) is that in my browsing the anti misha tags I came across the anti danneel tag and decided to check it out out of curiosity (and arrogance, as I wanted to see if I was right about danneel as well, since I always got a bad vibe from her too (even though I never actually paid attentionto her)). And I did find some things that makes me think her and jensen's relationship isn't a healthy one built on mutual love and respect, and is possibly even abusive. I'm inclined to believe it not only because of my own instinct, but because of a video I saw where jensen's body language screamed that he is uncomfortable while sitting next to danneel who was rubbing/petting his back (though I don't have context for that clip so there might be another explanation for his body language that I'm not aware of). However the only 'evidence' about her being abusive was instagram posts that were (slight) jabs at jensen, that could just as likely be playful teasing as actual bullying depending on their relationship dynamic and whether the teasing is reciprocated imo (& there's no way of knowing how they interact in private so who knows). I'd be curious to know if there are more concrete instances of her treating jensen badly or generally being a bad person, but I couldn't really find anything useful in the tags.

But anyways, reading these posts I discovered yet another anti tag, this time anti jensen, which I definitely did not expect. I obviously know about The Winchesters drama but I thought they moved past it and are tight again, so I'm confused about what other reason there is for people to be anti jensen. I've seen some posts discussing him not standing up for jared/not being very supportive of him, siding with misha (though I'm especially sceptical about that one) etc.

I would like to be better informed about these things without having to watch hours of footage to analyse their interactions or read through hundreds of posts that either have some proof or not, without having to decipher whether what someone says is their opinion/interpretation or actual things that happened. From looking through some of your posts you seem to be well informed and trustworthy, so I'd kindly ask if you could explain the situation to the best of your knowledge or refer me to someone who has more information regarding danneel and jensen's relationship as well as jensen and jared's and can provide receipts. Thank you so much, and again sorry for this super long ask <3

Hello my darling.❤️ Nothing to apologize for.

@lightofraye recently posted an awesome anti danneel post with pics and videos. HERE

As for anti Jensen, for me, the prequel mess is a done deal. J2 have moved on from it and are besties again. I have the 'anti jensen' tag blacklisted. I really don't see him picking misha over ANYONE, let alone Jared.

Maybe @its-sassyboots @hologramcowboy or @walkergirlsposts can help you with the anti Jensen stuff.

[butch-king-frankenstein]

Asking in good faith: in your post about reasons to lose attraction to a non/pre-op trans woman, 1) what is your opinion about if someone is simply aroused by vaginas? 2) Were vaginas not mentioned because you think that attraction toward vaginas is less likely than bigoted dislike for penises? I ask because I feel like "attraction toward vaginas" is a highly relevant component of this discussion and I was wondering your thoughts on this.

Things don't happen for no reason. Attraction does not exist in a vacuum. People are subconsciously motivated by the culture in which they exist, and we live in a transmisogynist culture.

If someone tries to argue that they could simply never have sex with a non-op trans woman because they're only attracted to vaginas, they need to examine why they feel that way. What is it about the vagina that is attractive to them, and what about the penis is unattractive? What associations do these body parts have in this person's mind? What's their emotional response to the presence of one over the other, and where do those feelings come from? Why is the presence of a penis/absence of a vagina a deal-breaker; would they react similarly to any other body part or feature they weren't attracted to, such as a certain nose shape or eye color? Why are they assuming that their partner's genitals are going to be relevant to sex at all?

(These are all forms of self-reflection I would also recommend to gay men regarding their sexual relationships with non-op transmasc people, but I do not belong to either of those groups and feel less qualified to speak on it more specifically.)

As with the post that inspired this ask, I'm sure that somebody reading this is going to demand to know why I think trans women are entitled to sex with cis lesbians, or why I'm promoting rape culture, or something along those lines. These are not good-faith responses to what I'm actually saying here. They themselves arise from transmisogynist bias (which can occur even in people who think of themselves as allies to the transfem community). If someone's takeaway from this post is "how dare ve say that I'm obligated to let trans women fuck me," that person is projecting their cultural anxieties about aggressive predatory trans women over what I've actually written here, and that shit is simply not my problem.

And that brings me to your second question. I'm willing to believe that you are, in fact, asking this question in good faith. (I wouldn't have written a multi-paragraph essay in response to it otherwise.) But your second question, in itself, shows some of that transmisogynistic cultural bias I was talking about! The phrasing of your question implies that you think I'm wrong—that there's no way "bigoted dislike for penises" could be a major factor in this equation, and that most lesbians who don't want to fuck trans women just love pussy too much to try anything different.

I can see where you're coming from. Many lesbians—the majority, I would suspect—really like pussy.* You can tell because they talk about it constantly and at length. I could probably name a dozen well-known Tumblr users off the top of my head whose love of dyke pussy is a central element of their personality, self-image, and artistic output. Do you think it's always unintentional that trans women are excluded from these people's supposed love of the dyke body? That the trans women who are pushed into the margins by dyke culture at large are accidental, but acceptable, casualties? Are they, perhaps, being too sensitive? Would an attempt to assert their existence as worthwhile objects of desire be unacceptably aggressive?

I'd recommend you give the matter some thought.

*And listen—I get it. I'm right there with them. But like, c'mon, guys.

[lexsang]

Hi! I was reading your opinion if father Sebastiaan and Sabretooth and you mentioned finally seeing sanguinarianism as a blessing. As someone who struggles a lot with seeing if as anything but a handicap and feeling frustrated, I'd love to hear more about how you managed to see the positive in all this.

This is a fantastic question. I'll try to cover it as completely as I can, but I do want to stress that my experience, like all of ours, is unique. Just a warning before I jump in, I am talking about my awakening in a decent bit of detail, so please ensure you are in a good place before reading. It might not be a bad Idea to have your favourite blood substitute on hand before giving this all a read.

I may have told a vague story of my awakening a number of times, but I think it's pretty relevant to this topic, so I'll start with that. Surprisingly, I don't think I have actually heard many in-depth awakening stories from other vamps, so I don't know if many of the details of mine are different from the norm. I do know that the general feeling of absolute isolation is fairly common though. When I first awakened, it was like a dam burst. Suddenly, and without any inciting moment, I had a vague interest in blood, and the curiosity in drinking it. But it only remained a small thought for a couple of days, and quickly exploded into full body cravings that left my mind unable to think about anything else. It was violent, disruptive, and absolutely life altering. I, unlike some lucky members of the community, had no previous knowledge of the vampire community, or that anyone else could possibly be have the kinds of experiences I was thrust into having.

I assume that having that knowledge would have changed the course of my awakening, but if I'm being honest with myself, I don't know that it would have changed a thing. Suddenly, I was an isolated individual, unlike anyone else, constantly wading through seas of people (I was in school, and then university at the time), and overwhelmed by vivid, violent thoughts. Like I mentioned, I like to think that having the knowledge that all I needed was to feed on a little bit of blood would have changed the depth of my awakening. However, my body, sending every signal it could in the effort to convince me to feed, pushed further and further, until the cravings pushed past just blood, and into meat as well. I mention all of this to help convey that I was wholly consumed by my cravings. For every second of every day for two or three years, this was my internal experience. What I have failed to mention, however, is how I felt about that experience.

I didn't push away from it or create tension between myself and those feelings and impulses. Of course I did maintain control (albeit somewhat loose control sometimes), but rather than being fearful of myself, I quickly accepted it as a part of myself. I have to be direct. I loved the feeling that the cravings sustained in my body. And that is the main thing that I think makes my experience so different from the experiences of many other sanguinarian vampires. I enjoyed the experience of vampirism from the beginning, I just closed my eyes and fell backwards into the sensations and the experience, with a smile on my face.

That being said, it did complicate parts of my life. I was in a pretty negative relationship throughout much of my awakening, and she, being the only person I had told about my cravings, was kind enough to fairly consistently remind me that she saw me as a monster, despite the fact that I was clear that these experiences were happening at me, and not from me (suffice to say, don't keep people in your life who are incapable of accepting you). It was also difficult to manage family at the time. Because of that relationship, I started going through some rough times, and the addition of unsated cravings complicated my ability to ask for help. My family became very worried about me, but there was only so much I could say. So I certainly won't say that vampirism is a completely enjoyable experience without it's difficulties, not to mention the very real pain that can come from cravings.

I do think there is a decent amount to be learned from my experience. That the experience of vampirism, though I harp on the fact that vampirism expresses itself uniquely in every individual, varies most extremely based on the perspective of the person experiencing it. And luckily, perspectives can be changed! You, at present, view your vampiric experience from the perspective that it is a handicap, but I can't imagine that that one perspective has been the entirety of the experience. The way I see it, my vampirism allows me to look at life as if I'm looking through a stained glass window, one that no one else will ever get the chance to see. Yes, there may be other vampires (which is also a good thing, we get to connect with others over something that makes us all unique and alike), but no one else will ever experience it in the same way you do.

I think it's also very important to take time with the cravings. By pushing against them, many vampires add tension to their experiences, and make it harder to deal with. Use substitutes if you need to, or feed if you have the opportunity to, and disconnect from the experiences of others. Just sit in your own body and let the cravings be there with you almost like meditating with your vampirism. When you are present with them like this, without judgement, how does it really feel to sit in that vampiric experience? When there isn't something pressing that the cravings are distracting you from, how does that experience manifest?

And of course, feeding is probably the big one. Yes, we gradually get to a point where we don't feel healthy. The level and timeframe of that varies from vamp to vamp, but it is a fact that that aspect of vampirism is a handicap. But through that difficulty, we get to experience feeding, something that 99.999% of people will never be able to understand. People say that you can't truly experience the good in life if you haven't experienced the bad. I won't necessarily agree or disagree with that, but I will say that that is a great way to relate to the experience of feeding. The instant dissolution of whatever doubts that might have been swimming around in my mind, along with the sudden removal of negative symptoms is a blessing. And in my experience, that is just where feeding starts. It obviously shouldn't be seen as a drug to be used for regular recreation, but the feeling of feeding, if you see it as more than just filling a need, like taking a prescription, is really something else.

This has definitely been much longer than I had originally intended, and I'm too lazy to look back through it to see if I messed up any spelling or anything, and I solemnly apologize for the number of times I used the word 'experience'... but I couldn't think of any other word, and it's too late to crack open the thesaurus. I hope this helped, and if you have any more questions or are looking for any clarification, please feel free to ask. I'm more than happy to help where I can :)

[fictionfolk-safehaven]

I have so many mixed feelings about my sources. Mainly because I’m sources from:

(all from hazbin hotel)

-Valentino

-Velvette

-Alastor

-Charlie

-Camilla Carmine

-Lucifer Morningstar

my strongest sources are Velvette and Valentino

i don’t regret my source actions. I wouldn’t do it again but I don’t regret it.

I feel bad about not feeling bad though

-Destiny

(input wanted)

CW's for this post: Will add based off the above sources if asked, we just don't know the source; Mentions of explosives and arson and such, exotrauma, serious talk of guilt/shame, and self-worth.

Post author: Wilbur (DSMP fictive)

Quick disclaimer- we don't know your source media very well, and only really have one example of a problematic action from any of your source characters beyond typical "we're in hell lol" stuff. But from what little we do know, I think I'm the one out of our collective who relates the most. Also apologies in advance, I get sort of serious near the end of this. Nothing bad, just like- really genuine.

Hello! So, I'll start off with the fact that I see no issue with not feeling guilt for sources. I have some commentary because I relate a bit to this, but first... Our way of looking at it is like this; Would any of us feel guilt for something we did in a past life? We believe in reincarnation, but I don't think you need to believe in that for it to be relevant. Who I am now has no control over who I was in my source. That's not just past, it's outright another life. I personally feel- while other fictives in our collective have a different relationship to their source than I do- that there's no room for guilt in this situation. I don't feel bad, because that was another me so to speak.

As for what I did in my source- I'm often considered to be the character that started the ball rolling down the hill and into hell, pretty much. Not even joking, my profile picture on discord is me blowing up the homes of a solid chunk of my sourcemates. I felt a little bit bad, because... I don't feel bad for that. My actions were, at least from my point of view, understandable. And even if they weren't- who cares? Certainly not me. I'm allowed to have been a horrible person in my source, and to still accept myself now. I think I owe that to myself, actually, and to my sourcemates. Not to get all poetic, but- what use would causing more pain do? Would turning that pain inward rather than outward help? It doesn't change what happened.

Most of my sourcemates have exotrauma that's directly or indirectly tied to/caused by me. If they expressed that they were struggling with exotrauma from our source that I'd caused, I'd do what I could to help, but ultimately guilt and shame from me won't help them. Understanding will. I don't know if you have sourcemates, and I don't know their relationship to your source or you, but ultimately my admittedly-very-not-professional opinion is that guilt and shame just make people feel bad. They don't do much else. Whether we like it or not, we share a body and a life now. We have to learn that our wellbeing as a collective includes everyone. If someone is drowning in guilt, miserable, that's not a good thing! I'm not bad for not feeling that way, that's not what any of us want. I wouldn't wish that on even our worst enemies, if they were introjected. Once you're in here, you're in it for the long haul and you deserve happiness just as much as everyone else. Regardless of source actions.

At least, that's our take on it. I hope some of this made sense- I didn't know I had such strong feelings on this honestly. Kaeya made this blog mostly for himself and here I am ready to shake people by the shoulders into loving themselves apparently. /lh /silly

I wish you and your system/collective well. You all deserve it.

-Keeper Wilbur (yes I'm still signing off even though it says at the top of the post. I think the Haven Keepers thing is cool as fuck and Charlie liked signing off so we're doing that too.)

[sapphos-darlings]

A certain strangeness has become obvious to me through detransitioning, and it's that for the first time, I'm well and truly aware that other people have very strong opinions about my body and who I am or should be and what that means for how I should be presenting myself.

At home, I have a wonderful bisexual partner who loves me for me, which includes the traits of me that are atypical for my birth sex. Particularly, they love the little facial hair I grow - and, to my surprise, got very sad when I shaved it for a trip to the capital. Of course I did, the same way I'll wear something that isn't my pyjamas when showing up in public for more than a trip to the store, but to them, this was a loss of something, and upsetting on a level that I hadn't expected. A silly thing, from both perspectives, they admit to this and there is no real pressure for me to show up as a caveman to the outside world, and in this case, it was a very positive and reassuring experience of someone having preferences for my body, because hair is something I grow naturally and my partner's reaction reinforced that this is not unwanted or ugly, which is a message I perhaps would expect from most people.

When I brought this up to my mother, however, she immediately reacted strongly in the opposite. She told me, very straightforwardly, that the facial hair that I grow is unsightly and I should get it plucked or lasered. I'm sorry, what? I spent four years of my life taking masculinising hormones so that I could grow facial hair and this is the best I could do and you'll tear it from my cold dead hands, thank you very much. She's also told me that my leg hair, as fine as it is, is horrible and I should shave it off. Why? Why should I? The only venue at which I present my hairy legs at is my own home. The hair that I grow hardly bothers anybody, and if she doesn't want to see it then maybe she shouldn't be looking when she comes over once every two months or so for a couple of days. She's entering my space, voluntarily - I'm not going to shave my legs for my own goddamn mother and if she can't deal with my body existing in its natural state then that seems like something she might need to go to therapy over, not my problem to deal with.

At a doctor's appointment, recently, as terrible as it was, I was trying to have changes made to my SSRI medication because the side-effects of it were driving me up the wall. Instead, this doctor diverted the discussion to her own personal problems with me.

"I was expecting a male patient. Are you changing your sex?"

No, ma'am, I am not. Sorry about the misleading name but that has nothing to do with my medication's array of side-effects. I had to explain to her that I am a born female, tried transitioning but it didn't work out because my body is extremely determined to stay female thank you very much, and that I am not male, never was, and I'm most definitely not MtF, not that it has any goddamn relevance to, again, my medication - which we never got around to discussing, because she did not care.

I ended up lowering my dose without supervision and dealing with the withdrawals to get rid of the worst of it, since clearly the psychiatric unit was not interested in helping me out with the issues I was having.

This is extremely jarring to me, because prior to detransitioning, I never faced issues like this. Now it feels like I'm questioned left and right about who I am and why I have a name like this and why I look like this and people feel entitled to opinions about my body and my appearance in ways that they never did before transition or during transition. When I was transitioning, I had few encounters in terms of people asking about my transition - but when they did, they were positive encounters. The most common one was chatty nurses during my million urgent care visits during that time, where they'd carefully sniff out how I felt about discussing my transition as a topic, and often fell into a casual, friendly conversation about how it all works, because I was never averse to talking about it and they were often dealing with the first trans patient of their careers, so it was the first time for them to be able to hear how it all worked and what it was like. It was never a negative experience, and nobody ever commented on how I looked, how I presented myself, etc.

And now it feels like that has been flipped on its head. Everyone has an opinion on my body, who I am, how I'm showing up. I should be doing this differently, I should look different, I should wear different clothes, I should have a different name.

I'm grateful to the people - my partner, my friends - who truly accept that I am who I am and I look the way I do and this is a positive thing for all of us. The rest of these people, I need them to, frankly, piss off about my body and identity. None of your fucking business how much hair I have on me or what my name is. Deal with it.

[psychewritesbs]

Unpopular opinion in the fandom right now, but I don't think Megumi becoming a villain is, if at all, plausible. It would be way too typical for Gege and very obvious.

I don't think he'll get out unscathed either and that a corruption arc is likely to happen, but in jjk's case this 'corruption' may be interpreted as the need to confront the worst version of one's self in order to reach completion. Kind of like a union of opposites (like how he got Totality after white divine dog got killed).

Don't know how Gege will do it but Megumi's upcoming arc might just make him the best character this series has to offer, and he's pretty much already on the way there.

Dear anon, I want you to know you are EVIL* for inducing the brain rot. Your cunning took you to the top of the ask queue. I have things I should be prioritizing, and yet here we are--me gladly taking the bait you so generously placed in my inbox lol.

You see, the thing is... yeah, my agenda is that I want to see Megumi go feral and do feral Megumi-things and be a menace. To whom? I'm torn 50/50 on whether I want him to be so distraught that he turns against everyone, including Sukuna, or whether I want him to shred Sukuna to pieces only. There's absolutely no denying that. But I suspect you might be right and I had already thought something similar might be the case.

I still think Megumi needs to take responsibility for himself, after all, him becoming or not becoming a "villain" and taking responsibility for himself are not mutually exclusive. But...

Evil*-induced word vomit under the cut.

... there's just something about Megumi right now that is asking for healing and self-acceptance and, yeah... other than the fact that Megumi going full on villain is an "obvious" outcome, a "cliché/obvious villain" arc feels kind of jarring rn if I'm honest. And while he could still become a "villain" and redeem himself (which is where I'd put my money--"corruption and redemption" arc)... idk anon.

I'm kind of with you actually? And at the same time I feel like being a "villain" in jjk is far more nuanced than just doing "#evil things".

Again. I want to see Megumi be selfish and go feral. But I really think right now the situation is calling for Megumi accepting everything he doesn't like about himself. Could he just loose his poop and go on a killing spree and then redeem himself? Sure.

I like the whole idea that someone you saved could hurt others. People have brought this up a lot recently.

But something that I can't quite put my finger on feels like you might be onto something.

Anyways, there's layers to your ask. Let's peel them back.

What if the corruption part of the arc was getting possessed by Sukuna?

Notice how the parallel between Toji and Megumi and them going on a path of carnage has to do with being "unconscious".

To be more specific, ever since Megumi got possessed I've been wondering whether the possession itself wasn't meant to be the corruption arc in question. As you say, "'corruption' may be interpreted as the need to confront the worst version of one's self in order to reach completion" and I couldn't agree more with you.

I wonder if Gege isn't telling us that Sukuna is what Megumi could be if only he got out of his own way. Tons of parallels to support this idea. But I think particularly relevant to this is that when we are "unconscious" to our potential and who we are, not only do we call what happens to us "fate", our sense of self is vulnerable to corruption from outside sources.

In Megumi's case, we're talking about Sukuna possessing his body because Megumi had a tendency to live for others and reject aspects of himself that he projected onto others. Cue that one panel showing "learned helplessness":

So... for a very long time I've been wondering whether getting possessed by a demonic force means his soul was corrupted.

Jacob's Ladder

Here I go talking about Jacob's Ladder again. Like... don't I have something better to talk about?

NO!

Guys. Seriously. Jacob's Ladder (1990) is... just do yourself a favor and go watch it and then watch videos analyzing it because I can't do the themes in it justice if I'm honest.

What I'll say about it for now is that this movie is a bit of a metaphor about the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Now, there are archetypal similarities between the stages of death according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Dante's Inferno in the Divine Comedy. This is relevant because Gege gave us two references to Dante's Inferno.

The first is that the purpose of the bath is "to be near evil" in the official translation.

But if I remember correctly, the Japanese raw uses the kanji for "beast" or something like that. Don't quote me on it. But the thing here is that at the very bottom of hell in the Divine Comedy, Dante meets the Devil.

The second reference is a little more of a leap in logic but we see it in the presence of Urizen's compass in the panel showing us Jacob's Ladder. Urizen is a character by William Blake who represents "God" and "good" as "reason". Blake is also the author of a painting depicting the Biblical "Jacob's Ladder". At the top of Biblical Jacob's Ladder and after climbing out of the Inferno, there is "God".

Gege dropping these references is interesting because they go back to the idea of good vs. evil and jjk "villains". More on villains in a bit.

That said. I'm going to leave this here just for funsies:

Jacob: I was in hell... it's all pain. Louie: You ever read Meister Eckhart?... Ekhart saw hell too. You know what he said? He said the only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life. Your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul... so the way he sees it, if you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it. That's all.

What does it mean to be a "villain" in jjk?

Last thing I will say about this evil* ramble is that "villain" and "evil" are used in a very interesting way in jjk. The Jacob's Ladder reference specifically is very interesting because, according to what I shared above, going through hell can set you free from reason and attachments.

And villains and evil in jjk simply means "following your desires without regard for others." Villains have no attachments to others and are therefore freer to be themselves than others who do. This is, of course, exaggerated and blown out of proportion in jjk:

Sukuna emphasizes why extreme individualism (lack of regard for others) as "evil" is "bad". But I think that what Gege is actually doing with his villains is criticizing the collectivistic mindset in Japan: or "there is nothing wrong with leaving your attachment to others behind, being selfish, and doing what you desire, as long as you live and let live".

Where Sukuna says "if you're in my way I'll kill you," Megumi says "I won't kill you, so please don't kill me."

ANYWAYS. All that to say... I still want to see Megumi be selfish in the pursuit of what he desires, however that looks like. If that makes him a "villain", then so be it. He's already a more nuanced "villain" than Sukuna anyways because he is neither "good" or "evil".

And I think that's because Sukuna is missing one key ingredient...

Megumi's heart

(source)

I think D and I had this conversation after chapter 248 dropped? Remember I mentioned Sukuna's body language and thought patterns are unequivocally Megumi? If I remember correctly this conversation is in regard to that.

I haven't seen/read HxH so I can't speak to what D is talking about, but something about it rings TRUE.

And this is when I realized that, while I want to see Megumi do the "villain" thing, it rings more true that the corruption arc is behind us and now it becomes about Megumi's healing.

Just the way I had a weird intuition about something ominous happening to Megumi way back when, I smell a blessing from a mile away. Or as you said, "Don't know how Gege will do it but Megumi's upcoming arc might just make him the best character this series has to offer, and he's pretty much already on the way there."

ANON. YOU ARE EVIL for sending me this but I love you all the more for it. Thank you! As per usual, hope this made sense? LOL if I rambled too much and wasn't able to justify my points, I blame it on you for encouraging the brain rot before I finished cooking.

[the-red-thread-that-strangles]

Hmm. For the ship ask meme, you can have... Satou x Takagi?? Idk I'm at a loss here, unless you want to talk about YamaHiro if you haven't already.

I don't really have much to say for TakaSato - they're cute, I like them, they're probably one of if not the only straight ship Aoyama has come up with that is compelling to me. But that's about it.

So for the ask meme I'll do

✨🤡YamaHiro📱✨

1. What made you ship it?

It started out as a joke.

In my circle of mutuals, while people loooove Hiro, Yamamura comes up very rarely. I think YamaHiro had been brought up once or twice, as a joke mostly. After all, if Aoyama likes his childhood friends to lovers pipeline so much, Yamamura and Hiro would match the pattern exactly!

Now, the thing is, YamaHiro never got to that point because, as we all know, Hiro is a little bit busy being dead.

And you might ask, dear reader: how is it that you ship YamaHiro, Iris, if you usually don't get too attached to ships with dead people in them?

Two things happened.

One - Yamamura had a speaking role in yonaga-san's Demon Lord AkAm fic Slip Past The Moon. This fic has done a number on me in a variety of ways, but most relevant for this here ship biopsy is that it reminded me of the fact Yamamura exists, and that I kinda find him funny.

Two - I was writing sweater weather, my akam AU where Hiro is very notably alive. And I was wondering what to do with him, now that he's around. I like the whiskey trio as a ship, but really only one that ends in tragedy when Scotch dies. Since that was not happening here, I was left to wonder: is there anyone Hiro could have a fling with? Of course I could've left him single; but it was around then that I read The Body on the Gunma-Nagano Border case and. Ouch. It made me feel very bad for Yamamura, who was still so fond of Hiro after all these years. So I figured for this soft and silly AU, I could give YamaHiro the resolution for the childhood romance Aoyama had set up.

And then the joke was no longer funny, because I genuinely thought about it and caught emotions.

2. What are your favourite things about the ship?

It would make Rei so mad.

Of all the people his best friend could date, it just has to be this bumbling fool who can barely solve a case? Who's a liability more often than not? Really? That guy?

But that's not what Hiro sees. Hiro sees how expressive Yamamura is; in his joys and his fears and his dreams. After all his time spent working with repressed people (Akai) and liars (Rei), Hiro deserves to be with someone he doesn't have to decipher like code. You can call Yamamura simple, and perhaps you'd be correct (if a bit mean). But it also makes him straightforward, and I think Hiro would appreciate that.

Also he'd make Hiro laugh so much (intentionally or not), and Hiro deserves all the happiness he can scrape out of this world, after what he's been through.

And Yamamura... he's still so hopelessly attached to Hiro even if he's not seen him in years. He'd be so overjoyed to see him again. It doubt it would take him long to break through to Hiro, and even if he can't relate to Hiro's time undercover, he'd strive to make him feel so much better.

They would be so cute and silly and happy and augh. YamaHiro is the happy ending they deserve.

Sorry I keep killing you, Hiro. You deserve so much better.

(But you make for such a good dead wife haunting the narrative.)

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I think shipping Yamamura at all counts as an unpopular opinion, and even moreso with fandom darling Hiro XD

But I can't help it. They're just so cute <3

Thank you for letting me ramble about them for the ask meme, PT. You probably got more than you bargained for XD

[heartberrydog]

inquiring out of curiosity and love for your craft and your analysis!

the impression I get from your interpretation is that dazai only ever slept with chuuya - or mostly chuuya, anyway.

for the context, the impression I personally get of dazai in the context of his sexual relations is that he does sleep with people - not neccesarily only women but he doesn't talk about it - as a coping mechanism and an escape from loneliness. as a way to brush off other people, to being briefly, if only physically, understood by someone. dazai is still a very alienated person, after all, and in most cases he either fucks and dissapears or has friendly relationships where he doesn't fully reveal himself - he does enjoy people and encounters with them, he just can't stand actual, true intimacy (or when it's said out loud). but on top of it all I think that dazai either already had relationships with chuuya of sexual or romantic nature before, though it wasn't discussed openly and wasn't neccesarily exclusive/commited - or he wishes he could have something like that with chuuya some day. also he, very likely, has used his body for information or other professional exchange before, I think nurse scene hints at that.

has he only ever truly considered chuuya in your take? I'm very curious as to how you interpret women that dazai apparently broken hearts of by chuuya's own words, or his stalkers/mailers. is it not of interest to you and you don't see him from that lense or it's rather that the nature of this relationship doesn't seem sexual to you? maybe he just does it all for fun? how do you view chuuya in this regard, has he ever had sex or attempted relationship with anyone else? with who, if yes, random one night stands or people from the business? in what time period in your interpretation they start being sexual with one another? how do you interpret the whole "I want to die with a beautiful women" thing, the usual dazai bullshit or a hint at his desire to be understood/accepted or something else entirely?

sorry for the unusually long question/text wall, I'm genuinely extremely interested in your takes on bsd and soukoku because they seem very interesting and well though out (as well as your texts hehe). I hope it doesn't trouble you to answer!

Hi hii! This is such an interesting ask!!! ( ˶°ㅁ°) !!

Genuinely thank you so much for leaving it! 💗💕 These are all things I have very specific opinions about that I’m always waiting to talk about!!! o( > ᗜ < )o ₊˚⊹♡

Okay let’s take these in order 😈

Firstly, yes, I do believe that in the canon Universe, or, well, my personal rendition of it, Dazai would only sleep with Chuuya and nobody else.

BUT, I agree that he would sleep with random people (Well. Men, I headcanon him as strictly gay) in an AU where he either doesn’t meet Chuuya as young as he does in canon, or has made a habit of sleeping with people before he meets Chuuya, or gets separated from Chuuya for a really long time and genuinely doesn’t think they’ll ever see each other again.

The canon Universe, doesn’t fit any of those criteria, so 💔 (except perhaps the being separated one, but whether he saw Chuuya again or not was ENTIRELY in his hands in that scenario. So he always expected them to reconnect, because it was always his choice to make, and he knew that he was going to make it someday. He literally called them meeting again in the dungeon a “reunion long in the making”)

Now as for why I believe this, there are a handful of reasons, and I feel like they all kind of tie into each other.

Firstly, I believe Dazai to be on the asexual spectrum. The aromantic one, too, but that's not particularly relevant in this situation. I think he's somewhere under the demisexual umbrella, which means that he genuinely cannot enjoy sex with someone he doesn't know very well/feels connected to/whatever. And I believe the only person he's actually capable of feeling this way about is Chuuya.

To me, he's at the very far end of the spectrum, in the sense that he wouldn't want that with anybody at all, but he just so happened to meet the ONE person that meets all of his hyper-specific criteria that would allow for an exception. This head-canon is mostly based on vibes (and projection) but I also think it fits thematically for him.

His ability literally entitled No Longer Human is touch-based. And, he feels like that ability dehumanizes him. Abilities dehumanize mostly everyone in BSD, and especially people that are... Anywhere but in the ADA. They turn children into tools, into weapons. This is shown time and time again, and even more so, despite there being an argument to make about how Dazai's intelligence is what actually dehumanizes him, NLH is the icing on the cake. That ability is so useful and so overpowered, it is the final thing that turns him into an elite weapon.

And NLH is bound to his skin. It is activated by touch. Can we be surprised he grows to distain it? Not only because of the dehumanization, but also because he keeps needing to fucking touch people. Strangers. Over and over.

This is also why I think he wears his bandages. They are placed in such a peculiar way. Covering every inch of his skin that isn’t covered by clothing except his hands. Even his fucking neck, in what context would someone need to touch his neck? He can't cover his hands because that would render his ability useless. He cannot cover his face because he needs to see and breathe, or whatever. But in his teens, he does cover half of it. At least half. At least he's not leaving it fully bare.

This motherfucker is so touch repulsed it's insane. And the way he uses his ability, when he has to, reinforces this. He nullifies Atsushi's ability for the first time with a single finger. He places one single hand on Chuuya's neck when they first meet. He never touches more than what is strictly necessary, when it comes to strangers.

Was that “I'm not interested in hugging men” moment towards Atsushi really a “I'm not gay” moment, or was it “I'm not interested in hugging. I don't want you touching me. But I have to play that off. But I have a persona to keep up.”

So, I don't think sleeping with people would work as a coping mechanism. He wouldn't find any escapism through that because bare touch, to him, is inherently vulnerable.

The reason why I feel like he might do it anyway in AUs where Chuuya is not present for whatever reason, is because he is desperate for that closeness to somebody and he doesn't have anybody to project that onto, so he goes into it every time hoping something will change; it is nothing but a stale, fruitless habit. Or, he'd use sex strictly as self-harm, and if he's never had sex with Chuuya at all in such an AU, he probably wouldn't even know it's not supposed to feel like this and he is meant to enjoy it.

And even if this wasn't the case, other people aren't capable of understanding him in the slightest. It would be irritating simply because the person is incapable of reading his mind and doesn't know the hyper-specific way he wants to be treated and fucked. Dazai? Expressing his… wants?? 😨😨

And otherwise, if Chuuya is an option, why would he bother with someone else? Why would he have uncomfortable unfulfilling sex that he hates if the only person that understands him in the exact way which he wishes to be understood, is able to fulfill all of his desires perfectly without him even having to voice them, and that he is simply just interested in and fascinated by like no other is RIGHT there? Having sex with someone else when Chuuya is an option would make the encounter even worse for him, because he's aware of what he could have instead.

So, whatever complex relationship they do have would be exclusive imo, simply because Dazai knows putting the energy into having sex with someone else wouldn't pay off at all, and would only work at making him feel bad, dirty, and uncomfortable.

That being said, I do agree he was taught to use his body as a tool. I think all Mafia members are. This is not only shown through the nurse scene, yes, but also through that Kyouka scene where her first idea for distracting someone is using her "womanly charms". A 14 year old girl. Sigh.

But, Dazai is clever. And he is especially clever with his words. Even though this is a standard Mafia practice, and something he has been told and taught to do, he's able to dodge ever having to actually end up having sex. He can flirt, and he can tease, and he can withhold and dangle sex like a prize until his goal is achieved before the act is even initiated. Then he slips away from the situation. He'd touch the other person using his hands at MOST, when someone is being incredibly stubborn and not budging at all, because that's detached enough, and nobody is actually touching him in any way, he's doing all the touching, and he also mostly uses his hands as the outlet of his ability as well so it helps making it feel like a strictly work-related affair. And he'd know how to talk his way into making that seem like enough, how to make that seem like more than enough, even.

Plus, being instructed to use his body this way would only make him even more touch-repulsed, I fear. Not only is he a weapon, but now he's being reduced to a mere undefined object, too, because of his godforsaken body. He is told to give up all of his personhood and his identity and dignity in order to fulfill a goal. He is being viewed as nothing but a means to an end. Never a fucking person.

His body is the only thing that is permanently his, that he cannot get rid of even if he tried, and he is taught time and time again that it is nothing but a tool. Through fighting, and using his ability, and even offering it as a sexual object, it is nothing but a tool. Of course he feels uncomfortable in his own skin, of course he hates it, of course he wants to cover it up, and of course he never wants anyone to touch him ever again.

Regarding the next point, I have a lot of thoughts about Dazai's relations with and opinions on women as a whole. As in, I think he's deeply misogynistic.

The only reason this slips by people, including the audience, is because he’s not conventional about it in the slightest. Misogyny is not just screaming from the top of your lungs that women don’t deserve rights and they belong in the kitchen, or whatever the fuck. Misogyny can be the very societally acceptable, you know… Disregard for a woman’s boundaries and not taking ‘no’ for an answer *cough* the waitress *cough*. Or leading women on/lovebombing for entertainment and without guilt, as I believe he has done with those women Chuuya says he ‘left crying’.

Plus. He threatens Dazai with giving those women his address, right? Which implies that Chuuya has their contacts, somehow. And Chuuya uses the specific phrase “you left crying” so it’s safe to assume Dazai initiated those interactions then called it quits. Even more so, it implies that he gave them Chuuya’s number instead of his own, presumably because he didn’t want further contact. If it was a consensual one-night stand kind of deal I don’t think those women would have any reason to be crying? Even if they wanted it to happen again, Dazai not wishing for that wouldn’t be heartbreak. Maybe if he acted particularly loving for spectacle and then gave them his [Chuuya’s] number and those women were expecting something more? But I don’t think that’s the case either. Like I don’t think pretending that he loves the person he’s having sex with would serve Dazai for… anything. It wouldn’t help make him feel less alone, and he wouldn’t believe those lies himself. It would be entirely futile unless he’s trying to get some entertainment out of simply fucking with the women’s heads and hearts, which I believe he would do if he wasn’t touch repulsed. So. He does it. Without touch having to get involved. Catch my drift?

So, no, I don’t think those relationships were sexual. I do not think they were anything at all, honestly. They were either transactional (as in, other instances of Dazai using his body, except he only needed to use his charm and good looks and it didn’t have to go further), or they were just Dazai being bored.

He views women, and the prospect of the romantic/sexual they believe can happen (which can’t, not only because of the aforementioned aro/ace identity and touch repulsion, but also because, again, I believe he is STRICTLY gay) as entertainment or tools, and nothing more.

With Higuchi, for example, he flirts with her strictly to distract her attention and plant the tracker. Same thing with Sasaki. We joke about the whole “I’d say she’s sexy as hell” line all the time but like… Is that REALLY what you want to say to a woman you just rescued from death?? And then when he flirts with her he does it strictly to gain something, and he immediately ‘ships’ her with Kunikida for no reason. You know, as if women should always be put in relation to men and any woman/man interaction that isn’t hostile must be of romantic nature?

The woman who dies in the first Ranpo episode, he immediately starts going on and on about her looks. Of a dead woman. And how he wishes, if she was gonna die anyway, she would’ve committed double suicide with him. The way he starts objectifying and viewing this corpse in regards to himself IMMEDIATELY 😭 Lmao.

I’m not saying I expected him to have genuine sympathy. This is Dazai after all. I’m just saying that he jumped to objectifying her SO quick. He always does.

And I don’t believe this is because he’s actually attracted to them. The opposite, actually. Attraction, romantic or sexual or of whatever kind, to Dazai are very, very delicate things, as I’ve detailed previously. He is not one to play with something like that simply for fun.

Even more so, if he was taught to use his body to gain things, do we think the accent of that fell on men or women? It would be safe to assume it was both, right, because that would be objectively more useful?

Okay. Then why does he never use these methods with men when he’s in the ADA? I don’t think saying he’s not attracted to them really works here, because this is not about who he is or isn’t into, this is a work-related affair. Don’t think you could reasonably claim he was into Higuchi, for example.

Well, I think it’s because with a woman, he’s always in the more dominant position, you know, the masculine position. Which he would never willingly be in a genuine sexual relationship, so it helps detaching from the situation. If he was trying to flirt with a man, due to the ways seducing a man and seducing a woman tend to differ, which he was taught, he’d have to be on the more submissive position, aka the feminine position. We see that Dazai doesn’t have a problem with being perceived as feminine (the whole Snow White thing as a concrete example, and just?? his way of being??? he presents very feminine tbh), so that’s not the problem here. It’s not the emasculation. It’s because he’s undeniably (key word because he’s still technically the object in such a relation with a woman, but he intentionally spins that around so the woman is always more objectified than him) the sexual object in this situation, not the other man + in a situation where he’d be able to be the masculine counterpart in an M/M type of flirting situation, it could also be argued that he simply has too much respect for men to objectify them like that.

I mean, not only has Dazai never had any good or important relationships with women, he hasn’t had relationships with women at ALL in his formative years. Kouyou or maybe Gin are the closest, but I don’t think strictly workplace relationships would count enough to make an impact.

Otherwise, all of his friends were men, his partner and the person he worked with most was a man, his boss was a man, his mentee was a man. Idek what I should call Hirotsu in relation to him, but he is a man too.

Two of these people stand out, the most important people to Dazai at the time. That being, Chuuya and Oda—Dazai’s sole examples, at the time, of what a human is like. Both are very masculine men. The humanity which he reveres in them, is mostly made up of masculine traits.

What Dazai considers humanity is the capacity for great emotion, the inability to stomp it even when it would benefit the person. What he reveres in Chuuya most is his anger, his violent outbursts, his cockiness, his power. You know, the most masculine kind of emotion. Violence and masculinity are historically interlinked.

What he reveres in Oda is kindness, which would be a stereotypically feminine trait, yes, but it is kindness through the masculine lens. It is kindness through protection. Even if he doesn’t do it lethally, or misses on purpose, we see that Oda is willing to resort to violence if for the means of protection. When he picks up Akutagawa in Dead Apple, he starts shooting aimlessly. Dazai himself challenges this when he tries to force Oda to shoot that Mimic member before he shoots Dazai. What he is testing there is How much violence is Oda willing to resort to for the sake of protecting? How much will he sacrifice his ideals for his loved ones?

Through both of these, he has subconsciously equated humanity with masculinity.

Which is also a big part of why I view him as genderqueer, because he doesn’t view himself as human, so he doesn’t view himself as fully a man either, but I have another ask in my inbox where I can get into more detail about that. This is still relevant here, though, because it makes his misogyny gain hints of internalized misogyny as well. (EDIT: Here’s the post for easy access <3)

(And even though he interacts with a lot more women in the ADA, all of his important relationships still remain with men. His ‘human’ scope extends to Atsushi and Kunikida, and maybe Ranpo, but it’s still just… Men. He recognizes Yosano, for example, as a woman worthy of respect but he doesn’t. He doesn’t really care for her existence. He’s not a RADICAL misogynist to the point where he would bring down any woman, he recognizes that women have merits, he just puts the women that do and the women that “don’t” in separate categories, and only deems one of those groups worthy of respect. Plus, even with women he does respect, he doesn’t interact with. He doesn’t care for them. Most notable interactions Dazai has had with women where he wasn’t objectifying them were that scene when he’s talking with Kyouka on an ear piece, and the scene where he tells Gin she’s grown. And the Gin scene is fucking debatable considering it could be argued he did that for no reason other than to embarrass her.)

Anyway. This derailed a bit. POINT WAS. Dazai’s “attraction” to women is superficial and objectifying, and his only notable relationships are with men. And also, idk where this could be inserted organically in the analysis so I’m just gonna add it here: I believe the womanizer trope is inherently misogynistic.

So… No. I don’t think those relationships were sexual. Explained in too many words 😔

Chuuya gives me a very different impression, though. I find this so funny because I have basically assigned Dazai every kind of queer identity under the sun, in some way (+ I also believe he’s autistic. Should’ve probably mentioned this in the touch-repulsion thing too but I forgot), and then the only thing Chuuya has is... bisexuality 💗

Maybe a hint of demiromanticism. Actually. Yeah. Definitely demiromanticism. But that is IT.

So, I do think he’d sleep around very casually. Honestly I could see Chuuya sleeping with almost every adult in the BSD cast 💀

Or, well, I think he’d be willing to, but it’s debatable if the other person would, and he’s not going to be the one to initiate anything, so…

Which brings me to the answer to the other question. I don’t think he’d go for people in the business himself, he’d probably only initiate things with strangers, but if someone from the business happens to initiate it (and is also sober and legal ofc ofc), he’d most likely go along with it.

Not trying to say he’s like ahajsn a slut or anything. He’s just a chill guy 😔

But, if I were to actually justify this belief, I think Chuuya is a very very flexible individual. So much of his existence is based on catering to others, so of course he is. I also don’t believe he’s very picky when it comes to these kinds of things. He doesn’t exactly have a type when it comes to looks, and he doesn’t view sexual relationships as something that needs to have personality compatibility, so as long as someone isn’t plain icky, he’d probably accept sleeping with them.

Plus, if the other person initiates it, that’s always an ego boost, you know? And even if they don’t, I do think this man KNOWS how to flirt + he’s hot 😔

I couldn’t tell you how he picks the people he goes for, honestly. Probably just vibes. He’s not like Dazai to psychoanalyze every detail about each person down to the micro-habits or whatever. Probably due to him being neurotypical. And regardless, he can mold himself to most types of people and their personalities/wants/needs. The only thing I don’t think he’d be able to do is act submissive, honestly. That one’s just not in his nature 😔

But I don’t think he’d try actual relationships with anyone. Honestly he didn’t even try with Dazai either, it just kind of happened. I believe he understands the risks dating someone brings to someone with his… occupation. And dating someone from the business would be suuuper awkward + he can’t really deny the power dynamic, considering he ranks above most people in the Mafia, and since Dazai’s departure there aren’t any executives for him to date.

I just don’t think he finds appeal in workplace relationships. Dazai is an exception because their relationship was never just strictly workplace, and technically they met before either of them were even working there.

Still believe his and Dazai’s relationship would be exclusive, though. Not because it is anything official or discussed or acknowledged, but simply because Chuuya understands the way Dazai is. Not only does he know that Dazai would never be capable of sleeping with anyone else, but he also knows that Dazai possessive. And, strangely, I do think Chuuya… respects that, in a way? Like he respects Dazai and their bond too much to go around sleeping with other people when he knows Dazai would be opposed to it, even if he never voices it. I actually have a fic idea in the works that tackles this but… I never know when any of my ideas are actually gonna end up getting written 😭

As for when they start being sexual with one another, I don’t have a concrete time. I like not having specific head-canons for these kind of things so I have more freedom with my fics, and also because I’m so full of ideas I could NEVER settle with a single time or place or way that could start and be happy with it. There are always variations.

Though as a time-frame, it’s almost always between 16 and 18, mostly leaning on early 17/late 16—after Stormbringer, in any case. If needed for a particular plot line, or character beat, or whatever regarding the form of the text, I’m also willing to do 22+. I don’t think I’d ever go 16-, though.

Shjensjs I feel like this could’ve fit better somewhere in my gigantic misogyny rant, but I saved it for the end specifically because it was mentioned here. I have… takes on that. Dazai’s whole “suicide with a beautiful woman” spiel, i mean.

I’ve said some of my opinions on Dazai’s suicidality as a whole in the previous analysis, and I do stand by that. I find the fact that he moreso enjoys the attempts and the romanticized idea of death than actual death relevant here. Doing it with someone, specifically a woman, adds to the romanization.

I’ve seem people say before that this is moreso about Dazai being lonely and not wanting to die alone, which I do agree with but in a bit of an unconventional way. His loneliness cannot be filled, and he is aware of this. He knows dying by someone’s side won’t make him feel less alone, but he likes the idea of feeling so, or at the very least the idea of other people not perceiving him as lonely.

Don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but I do think Dazai, much like any man ever, feels the societal pressure to be attracted to women. It’s the “default”. Due to me viewing him as autistic, I believe he’d psychoanalyze the shit out of societal norms and bend himself to meet them so he stops feeling so alienated from his peers (it doesn’t work ofc). Which is another reason for him to dislike women, really—him being attracted to them is a societal expectation that he is not capable of meeting, and so he pretends he does. I meannn… He never really showed interest towards women until he left the Mafia, right? Until he was out in the “normal” world, per se? No longer in the underground where being gay was probably, at the very least, acceptable as a vice?

The ideal of this ‘romantic suicide’ isn’t about the woman (but it has to be a woman, otherwise it wouldn’t be perceived as romantic. Gay people aren’t exactly recognized by society + once again that thing about Dazai subconsciously respecting men too much + him not wanting to be seen as gay), or about dying by the side of someone he loves (even more so, one of Dazai’s ways of showing affection is precisely being AGAINST a person dying. This isn’t about a genuinely romantic suicide, it’s about a romanticized suicide. About it being perceived as romantic by outsiders), as dictated by the fact that he is particularly looking for a woman he is not acquainted with in any way. It’s literally his leading offer with any new woman he talks to. Motherfucker STARTS conversations with this 😭😭

Plus, this ideal reinforces his objectification of women and his use of them for his entertainment. Through wishing for a double suicide with a woman, he is basically saying his death should also, ideally, mean the death of a woman. He is saying women interest him most when they’re willing to kill themselves (or when he can mess with them, in a broader sense). He is, again, viewing the value and existence of a woman in relation to himself and what they can provide him. He is carelessly including a, hypothetical, sure, but potentially real woman’s life in his fantasy of death; he seems to be okay with sacrificing the life of any random and probably mentally unwell woman in order to fulfill a goal of his.

This is why it makes me so mad when people in fics make him offer double suicide to someone he’s genuinely interested in 😭 Namely Chuuya, obviously, but shhh.

Dazai doesn’t think dying by someone’s side is genuinely romantic, just superficial romantic. He romanticizes his own death (and doesn’t care for the woman he’d do it with enough to even form opinions on hers), because he doesn’t value his own life, but he’d never do that with someone he genuinely cares for. When he cares for someone, he wants them to live so bad it’s honestly… a little endearing, sometimes. How he values life so intrinsically and subconsciously despite his upbringing, and his desensitization to death, and his belief that he is inhuman and incapable of genuine emotion.

+ It’s literally CANON that Dazai wouldn’t want to commit double suicide with Chuuya 💀 That time in SB where Mori agrees that Dazai’s wish for the perfect death would finally be fulfilled if he got killed by Guivre, but says he knows Dazai will fight anyway because if he allowed himself to be killed, nobody would be able to save Chuuya and they’ll essentially commit double suicide together?? And then Dazai says “Committing a double suicide with you would be the worst. Just this once, I’ll take this seriously”???

Like, both interpreting this as Dazai intended it to sound (double suicide with Chuuya is entirely repulsing to him because them dying side by side would ruin the romanticism), or as what he was probably actually feeling (he will not be able to enjoy his death, even if it is exactly as he’s idealized it, if he know Chuuya will also have to die due to his selfishness) lead to the same conclusion. THIS FUCKER DOESN’T WANT CHUUYA TO DIE!!! He doesn’t want his death to mean Chuuya’s death!!! Because he views Chuuya’s life as more precious than himself, and because Chuuya is dear to him and one of Dazai’s most prominent love languages is feeling responsible for the lives of those he cares for. Especially so in Chuuya’s case. Especially when Corruption is involved. I like to think this is more romantic than wishing to die with a random stranger.

MOVING ON. You have nothing to be sorry for!! These are always my favorite kind of asks to reply to. I adore talking about my opinions and writing analyses wbsksj especially if I can be sure someone’s interested in reading them!! (๑>◡<๑)

If you’re interested in more of my weird little opinions I talk about them unprompted all the time in my ao3 comment replies <3 I have a hunch you might enjoy going through the comment sections and seeing what analysis you can fish out. Or just leave more asks. That definitely works too. I love asks >:D

Have a fantastic day!! 💕💗💓💕💗

[sashaforthewin]

Once again, cleaning up more little ficlets. This one came about because I thought about how Eddie would've seemed to Robin if she hadn't known him in school. She's a protective friend <3

---

"Why didn't you tell me Steve was gay?" Eddie demanded. He slid into the opposite bench of her booth and made to pull her basket of fries over to the center of the table. 

"Why would I?" Robin asked, slapping his hand and pulling her fries back out of his reach.

"When I came out to you, you could've told me he was gay," Eddie pointed out, accusingly. 

"But then you would've gone after him."

"Yeah, because he is my dream guy!"

"Steve is everybody's dream guy. At least everybody that likes guys," Robin shrugged, continuing to eat her fries as if Eddie was not interrupting her lunch. 

"Yeah, but you could've helped set us up," Eddie pointed out.

"I don't want to set you guys up," Robin stated bluntly.

"Wait, what? Why not?"

"Because you're not Steve-worthy. You're kind of a big jerk," Robin said, matter-of-factly.

"What? How so?!"

"Well, in school you always heckled people in the lunch room, basically anyone that wasn't part of your little weirdo clique. You jumped out at people to try to scare them often, and you even shoved around your own cronies! And then you held a broken glass bottle to Steve's throat, teased him a bunch, and then you did exactly what he told you not to do and nearly died. That hospital waiting room took years of Steve's life."

"Well, shit Robin, I didn't know you hated me so much," Eddie scoffed, grabbing the ketchup bottle and starting to spin it on the table to have something to do with his hands.

"Stop that," she grabbed the ketchup bottle and put it back before continuing. "I don't hate you but unlike boy best friends that try to get you laid, girl best friends try to protect their friends from shitbags and losers. Contrary to his reputation, Steve is not a one-night-stand kind of guy and you are."

"No I'm not!" He defended.

"After you came out to me you kept coming up to me whenever Steve was doing something especially hot and you'd say 'if only I could sleep with him just once' as if that was a normal thing to say. You've said it like five times, now. It's why I've been trying extra hard to keep you two apart. He wears his heart on his sleeve and you are going to hurt him."

"I meant it in the poetic sense, like if I could get just one kiss I could die a happy man." He threw out his arms in frustration, body leaning onto the sticky diner table like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Save the poetic shit for someone that cares, I'm just trying to protect my friend and Steve is a lifelong commitment." Robin was over the conversation and her opinion of Munson had not changed, but she was a paying customer so she wasn't going to be the one to leave. 

"Are you sure you're not just in love with him and trying to keep him for yourself?" Eddie accused. "Why are you laughing?" He yelled, pissy in the face of her laughter.

"Because, numbskull, I'm lesbian."

"Wait, lesbian? Why the hell didn't you tell me when I came out to you?!" Eddie demanded. 

"Didn't seem relevant," she said, arms crossed and foot tapping. "You were only coming out to me because I am Steve's best friend. It was super obvious. " 

"Jesus christ, is everyone gay?"

Robin continued to stare at him, unimpressed.

"I'm still not helping you get with Steve."

"And I'm not thanking you at our wedding."

"In your dreams, Munson. You're still invited to movie night, by the way, but I'm not gonna let you sit next to Steve," Robin said, finally pushing her fries over to Eddie, who wasted no time in jamming a handful into his mouth.

[xerith-42]

Hi Xerith!! I saw you wanted someone to ask about your DSMP opinions, I am here to listen to the yapping (and secretly sneak lore out of it) :D

Oh my god I didn't realize you understood my yapping that's incredible!

I can actually tell you how I managed to make my MCD rewrite canon to my DSMP rewrite that you'll never read. Because while I have some... Issues, with later parts of the story, I LOVE the time loop idea. I have had so much fun coming up with different ways the loop and go, figuring out how people enter and exit it (there is no exit), and when the loop eventually breaks.

The reason this is relevant to MCD is because of its existence outside of this loop, but close enough to the pantheon of gods I've created that are also intertwined with the DSMP as a metaphysical experiment that they were going to cross paths eventually. In fact, before there was ever a time loop, there was a being who needed a vessel. And they needed this vessel to be strong, smart, and able to protect itself. But this needed to come from experience in a world harsh enough to kill them, but one they had the capability to thrive in.

Well, there's this little fantasy story going on over here. I'm sure Irene wouldn't mind if this being slipped their vessel into her world for its training. And y'know, that guy who was mentioned in one episode of Minecraft Diaries and then I turned into Technoblade? Well, he ends up becoming Menphia's champion and thriving in Tu'la, until this vessel appears and challenges the champion. And the champion barely wins. The vessel has almost bested the champion. But the most important part is that the vessel and the champion became friends here.

It is in the Tu'la gladiatorial ring that Dream first met Techno. And once their rounds of fighting were over, Dream was taken by their diety, now a properly trained vessel in the ways of fighting, and was instead trained on how to be their vessel. Thus started the first few timeloops, just a "chaos god" and its vessel learning how to operate a world and body together. And even if other friends came to fill in the void, even if a new story all its own that spanned dimensions happened before him, the vessel always thought back to that world.

To the man he met in the gladiator ring, more pig than human, yet more human than anyone he'd met, someone who showed him sincerity and compassion and recognition. And sometimes Dream wondered about that world, why his memories of it were so fuzzy, why it feels like his life started when he entered the ring, why Sapnap tells him they've been friends since they were kids but his earliest memory is of Techno. He'll never get the answers to these questions, or if he does, it'll be wayyyy later in the timeline.

But that's where it all started. A champion and a vessel fighting in a world that had largely rejected them, a world they didn't belong to, only to be ripped out of it by their own cruel divinities with other plans for them beyond this "meager realm".

[castlebyersafterdark]

as a gay guy, what's your opinion on periods and period sex? it might seem anachronistic to ask but i saw a video where finn was with friends and was saying periods are disgusting haha, and i can see that or that he was maybe just being all sassy and loose cos he was playing it up in that dynamic of a group. this was a while ago anyway but it got me thinking, cos i've known straight guys who are fine with period sex but also ones who dont even want to acknowledge that periods exist haha, and it made me wonder because if you knew you were gay from a teen and never experimented with girls, was it taught in schools? is it taboo for you? i always thought there might be this affinity between women and gay men because most of each group engage with something typically considered disgusting and taboo (anal sex and periods) and get on with it / see the beauty in it.

idk how this relates to byler or foah, but maybe that finn clip is just something i keep thinking about haha (it was the time when he was wearing false nails with friends lmao)

Interesting ask! My opinion is... it's just a non issue? Maybe I personally don't need to hear extensive details, but that goes for many bodily functions haha. And I don't think Finn is truly unkind, but you know how guys get sometimes. Annoying. We all say immature shit 🤷‍♂️The body isn't disgusting. It just is what it is, does what it does. And yeah, society has stupid hangups - I see the correlation you're getting at with anal sex, for sure. It's the concept of being normal and mature about bodies. We all know what an ass is for 🤣 But that's absolutely not the only thing. So, if you're with someone who has a period and sex is a possibility - I don't really see the problem if both parties involved are into each other and want to do that. To each their own. You can also maybe not want to do it, but don't be unkind, is all. Body positivity is key.

I'm never gonna be in a situation where the person I'm sleeping with has that as a factor, if that's what you’re getting at. I did actually try to date a few girls when I was a teenager but, yikes. Never got very far hahaha. But it's not like women (and those who otherwise experience this) are so super mysterious. It's not secret knowledge. Moral of the story: I just know for a fact that many men are purposefully obtuse or immature. Sexism. All that. Simplifying the issue but for the purpose of this ask! 💁‍♂️

Also, to relate this a little to fandom: I've read people's headcanons and ideas on here they've shared and not everything has to be hot to everyone, sometimes things are just super interesting. And I really do think it's a nice concept where a character who is in pain and needs some loving, and if having sex during will help that, that's an awesome concept that their partner is into doing that to help them through it, double cool if that's a way to both get off. Fictional and in reality. Like I said, to each their own. But I can understand how people find it hot. And even things that are not completely relevant to my life and inclination, man it's just cool to have spaces and opportunities to talk things out and share ideas, right???