#LIKE THAT VERY MUCH WAS THE MENTAL ILLNESS. BUT ALSO MAGIC IS ALSO REAL

[saintsenara]

the wizarding world really just does not care about anything huh? i mean. what would have happened if tom had been institutionalized due to his magic?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i need to actually get around to writing the big meta i have on the idea - which i know a few people have asked me about - that hogwarts applies some level of selection [that is, that - despite what lupin says in deathly hallows - it doesn't teach the majority of magical children in britain, whether they're born to magical or muggle families] when it comes to who it admits, and that muggleborn potential pupils who fall short of its criteria never get the letter-delivery meeting that we see the canonical tom riddle receive.

which would mean that, had tom been committed to a psychiatric hospital as a child, i think the wizarding world would have quietly struck his name off the list for potential admittance to hogwarts and continued on untroubled.

which is obviously grim.

although i think it's worth saying that, while there is a lot about 1930s psychiatric care which was legitimately inhumane - and the sort of one flew over the cuckoo's nest-style dystopian vibe, which makes the idea of poor wee tom being stuck in a hospital seem so terrifying, isn't entirely inaccurate - there's also, as odd as it sounds, a chance that he might have been genuinely helped by the psychiatric treatment of the time period.

we picture the psychiatric treatment of the early twentieth century as straitjackets and padded cells and lobotomies - violent and dehumanising procedures with no clinical benefit - because [as is often the case today in the way mental illness is spoken about both clinically and culturally] the medical community tended to regard anything accompanied by psychosis [schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and so on] as intensive, untreatable and unmanageable [and to - therefore - institutionalise patients with these symptoms permanently].

but at the same time, mental illness which wasn't accompanied by [long-term] psychosis [depression, anxiety disorders, addiction, ptsd and so on] was increasingly seen not only as treatable, but as curable - and clinicians' aims were for patients to be treated temporarily either in the community or in modern hospitals which looked very different from the padded-cell asylums which were holdovers of the victorian/edwardian era, and to live independently after their course of treatment was done.

this was largely due to the prevalence of "shell-shock" and "soldiers' neuroses" - which we would nowadays understand as types of post-traumatic stress disorder - among men who had served in the first world war. these men - often from "respectable" backgrounds, with no history of mental illness in their families - were a very different demographic of patient than either the destitute "lunatic" or the hysterical woman of the victorian and edwardian imagination. they were also needed back in the trenches - but with their symptoms under control enough that they weren't considered dangerous to their fellow soldiers.

and treatments for shell-shock were - as a result - considerably more humane than the contemporary treatment of psychosis. emphasis was put on holistic treatments - especially the chance for men who had been shivering in the trenches to get a period of real rest - and on talking.

[british army officers were ordered - for example - to attempt to reduce shell-shock cases by encouraging their men to process their experiences of the war in individual and group settings.]

after the end of the war, the treatment of long-term shell-shock combined with the growing interest in "analysis" - which, while the image i'm sure many of us have of it is of sigmund freud suggesting the patient wanted to fuck his own mother, actually looked rather a lot like the various branches of psychotherapy do today - into courses of treatment for conditions like depression, anxiety, and ptsd [especially those caused by childhood trauma] which aren't actually terrible...

the way the young tom riddle speaks about magic in canon absolutely sounds like psychosis to someone who doesn't know he's a wizard - and so, yes, there is a very high chance that he would have been institutionalised to be stuck in restraints for the rest of his life.

but it's also the case that, since he was a child when mrs cole was trying to have him "looked at" by doctors, this increasing disciplinary focus on the psychological motivations for behaviour - especially in childhood; child psychology and the causes of juvenile delinquency were things the psychiatric community was increasingly interested in during the 1930s - might, instead, have had his belief that he could do magic put down to a fantasy which he had invented on account of his numerous [and treatable] neuroses.

and while it's not the case that he's making up being a wizard... it very much is the case that he's neurosis-central. you've never seen a more unbalanced ego.

and that actually being prompted to confront his childhood trauma [especially his grief over his mother's death] - even when the strange, freudian flavour any psychotherapy would undoubtedly have had is taken into account - would probably have done rather more to actually help him than hogwarts' "ignoring children's emotional needs is fine" approach...

#asks answered #asenora meta #tom riddle #lord voldemort #on medicine #the tl;dr of this is that there's a huge amount of presentism in the way the history of medicine is talked about #people have always been treated and they have always been helped by that treatment #and this can coexist with the fact that other people have been harmed by the treatments to which they were subjected

[millenniummmbop]

LOVE how kaiba would rather just openly admit to everyone that he has a psychotic disorder than actually believe for a second that ancient Egyptian magic could actually be real

#thinkin bout that one kaiba line #'oh great i'm hallucinating again 🙄' #he's really out here every day like 'yeah NO SHIT there's something wrong with me but there's clearly something wrong w all of u as well' #*experiences vivid flashbacks of his ancient Egyptian life* #'yeah it's just the mental illness don't worry about it it happens 🙄' #'i saw a fucked up melting dragon back in duelist kingdom we don't need to talk about it' #LIKE THAT VERY MUCH WAS THE MENTAL ILLNESS. BUT ALSO MAGIC IS ALSO REAL #LIKE I GET WHERE YOU'RE COMING FROM KAIBA BUT MAGIC IS VERY MUCH REAL IN THIS UNIVERSE

[dunmeshistash]

How do you feel about Milsiril? Like what do you think of her interactions between the canaries, her goals, her intentions and morality? I keep seeing people with mixed feelings about her, some saying she's just toxic or morally grey or doing bad but with good intentions or that she's just a mentally ill and literally so much more, also with the comic about Otta calling Milsiril love for her children/Kabru as just love for a pet, I always saw people take it at face value and say yes, Milsiril did love them more as pets instead of children, did she take up raising/adopting non-elf children because she felt like none of them could ridicule her like the elves did because they didn't know what an elf was supposed to be like (and also because they were children) or did she inherently view them as less? I mean the canaries and I'm pretty sure almost all of the cast in dungeon meshi have some sort perspective on different races especially because how they were taught about them, i just think it was interesting to finally see someone interpret it as Otta just misinterpreting Milsiril, I'm just really interested in her, i think shes neat, sorry for the rant!

Ooh, well to preface this, I hadn't really realized Milsiril was such a controversial character before my last post, I kinda live under a rock. She's really not a character I had given much thought besides what I wrote there before it, but I can do my best to express what I have thought since, with sources for it. I'm not sure what order to go thru so I'll just go by manga appearances and then extras, this will probably be quite a long post

This is the first time she shows up in the manga (ch55) Kabru is wondering about what future they might have if the elves take them into custody because of the ancient magic, he thinks about Milsiril as a get out of jail card, and mentions "There's a chance they would make us become permanent resident of the elven lands." with the image of Milsiril holding him. I don't think that means she would be the one to not let them leave, since this would probably be an legal issue, and the fact Milsiril lives away from other Elves. It does set up that Milsiril is quite overprotective tho, with Kabru's reaction to her teary hug. (rest is under a cut)

The next time she shows up is in ch61 right after Kabru falls down the dungeon along with Mithrun, he faints and has this flashback

She's being her overbearing self treating Kabru's small injury as if its something you need to be in bed for, hand feeding him like he's a toddler, and when he insists he wants to learn how to fight and be strong like her, she hugs him revealing to us for the first time her arm scars, she's cleary in distress too, so you wonder "what has happened to her?"

It continues in the next pages, as she tells him to stay there, where it's safe and there's cake, and describes the bad things he might encounter. Until he tells her he will go with or without her help

Honestly this is a Kabru we don't see often, this is the version of him that is usually in thought bubbles, he's blowing out in frustation over being smothered and demanding straight up what he wants, instead of trying to manipulate Milsiril, very blunt for him. Milsiril seems to flip a switch into battle mode, when she decides to train him for real.

I really thought this was funny, the visual of these cuddly toys and this Mom that was being so soft just a second ago completely flipping into something menacing is very amusing to me. She says "I'll give you an exhaustive, thorough training in how to use a sword... until you finally decide that you're ready to give up." although it sounds cruel, it seems she really trained him as best she could to make sure he would survive the dungeon. If he couldn't take the training with her there was no way he would be able to take on the dungeon, but he could, so much so that he managed to make her let him go. I can see this being seen as her trying to prevent him from going but to me it seems more like some tough love from a traumatized war veteran in this case.

The last thoughts he has is admitting his Mom was right, "Not only were there plenty of traps, monsters, and malice... but there were times when I felt so hungry and cold that I couldn't stand it."

And he concludes with "I never once thought that I wanted to go back there. That room where I could eat all the cake that I wanted..." While I can understand the interpretation that he means he would rather go thru all this than go back, perhaps cause he hated it there, I think it's rather a statement to how committed he is to defeating the dungeon, the visuals show him in rubble vs him in a soft big bed, the rough reality he fought to be able to face and the comfyness of what his life could be. Plus is mirroring exactly what Milsiril said to him. Admitting she was right about the bad things but that he won't give up for the safe easy life he had.

After that visuals of Milsiril are used while Kabru tries to sus out Mithrun but she shows up again in Mithrun's backstory.

Here she's straight up called Gloomy, which wasn't really the version of her we saw so far, gotta remember this is also how Mithrun saw her and that she was called gloomy as a way of bullying. Kabru mostly cuts off her part in the story until the end, when she's the one to find Mithrun after he was eaten by the demon

She doesn't really care much for Mithrun as we see in some extras, and she was ready to mercy kill him, but she is also the one to spare his life. This could be seen as her thinking he can still be of use, and it's how it sounds with how Kabru tells the story, but I do think this was also a merciful act, Mithrun was in rehabilitation for 20 years after being saved, by the time he was actually useful for anything Milsiril had already left the canaries and adopted Kabru.

Now for extras... About Mithrun/The Canaries, Milsiril was cleary someone that hated the people around her. This is her extra in the Adventurer's Bible

Milsiril seems to be the type that hates "popular kids" so to say, her description says she was bullied by other elves for being so introverted so I believe she holds a grudge against people like Mithrun that seem to have succeeded where she failed. But realizing he was a twisted person like her seemed to make her feel more sympathetic towards him, that's why I think she really did act with mercy when she saves Mithrun, he's now someone she sees as similar to her, she sees he also suffered like her

Her decription also mentions she left the canaries specifically because she was disgusted with how the Utaya situation was dealt with. Yet it seems like she came back to help Mithrun with his rehabilitation once she quits.

There's an interpretation to be made that she did this only to get "revenge" on the demon since she just saw the destruction of Utaya, and that she's using him. On the other hand maybe she wants to help him find a motivation to live, she's no longer a canary and she has time to actually help him now. I don't know which one is the truth but it's not obviously something self-serving if you ask me. Especially in the context that right before this scene Milsiril admits she wishes they could have talked before.

My interpretation of her relationship with the canaries and other elves is that she's someone depressed that was mistreat for her 'quirky' side, the dolls are clearly one of the ways she used to cope with anxiety/depression but it only caused her to be bullied by her own kin, she's the daughter of an important family and it's shown in other extras, including one about Mithrun, that nobles often send out the kids they don't want around to become canaries. It's an easy way to get rid of someone undesirable and I think it was the case for Milsiril. (Pattadol even assumes her parents love her less than her sisters for sending her to join the canaries).

No wonder than that now that she's finally free from the canaries she chose to seek her own happiness away from the society she felt she could never fit into, she clearly likes to take care of children too, I think it's mean to assume she only likes them because she feels superior to them when there's no indication that this is the case.

And I don't think it's a coincidence she's so overprotective of Kabru after Utaya, it's literally the tragedy that was the breaking point for her, and he's a surviving small child from that tragedy, Milsiril cares about Kabru and wanted him to have a comfortable safe life after everything he went thru...

This ended up getting way too long so I'll make second part tomorrow about the rest of the extras and Kabru, and some other things I've seen said about Milsiril, but to answer the questions...

I don't think she treats her children as pets, Otta is just salty she was called out for dating like Leo Dicaprio.

Every single dungeon meshi character can be called morally grey because they all have flaws that in our world can be considered unforgivable, but they don't live in our world. To me Milsiril is doing her best in the context she lives in.

Who even is neurotypical in dungeon meshi, Milsiril is yet another flavour of a neurodivergent traumatized character among so many.

I believe she thought of the other canaries, especially Mithrun, as the same type of people that were cruel to her, probably because some of them really were, but that she generalized it to the point she thinks of all of them as bad by default. You can only get hurt so many times before you assume everyone will hurt you.

Part 2

#dungeon meshi #adventurers bible #this is REALLY long because I dont know how to say things #and I want people to make their own interpretations of this... #Milsiril #Ask #Long post #longpost #Part 1 of 2 #Edit: I went back and rewrote some stuff I thought were written in a confusing way #I keep repeating this in tags but I really am bad at writting I say things in a weird order using strange words sometimes #If you ever dont understand something I said please ask #dunmeshi thoughts

[f1ghtsoftly]

Upon reflection, it was so damaging in childhood to be expected to preform at the same level as everyone else while being abused. I had so many embarrassing conversations with adults in my life about why I did this, why I was messy, why I was late all the time, why I didn’t get work done. Telling the truth would mean a CPS call that would yield nothing but a brutal beating the next day. Sorry, I was shaking when I woke up and could barely get out of the house because there was screaming so loud it shook the walls to my bedroom. Sorry, my sister was locked outside like a dog last night, I had to wait late to sneak her out a snack. Sorry, I’m afraid to ask my parents because of how they will react.

I really can’t overstate how much I dislike stories about magical poor kids, disabled or otherwise marginalized kids somehow preforming exceptionally under very difficult circumstances, because even though sometimes that does happen, it is a vanishingly small amount of kids that can even make something of that talent or skill after they display it. It is simply too much to ask a human being to continue steady work while caring for addicts, while getting sexually abused, while repeatedly not being accommodated for disability, in the aftermath of severe bullying and assault.

It is so brutally, brutally unfair that our society sees working hard through abuse, homelessness, unaccommodated disability, illness and poverty as some kind of badge of honor and not what it really is, a blistering indictment of how our society expects someone living in a shelter to work just as hard as someone in a stable home and have the same resources and blames those who fail to meet expectations with less opportunity, lower wages and social scorn. I can’t express how inhumane it is.

I remember a friend of my sister’s who was r*ped by an older boy in my grade. She was taking some advanced classes and the school was “unable” to separate them and keep her in advanced classes. I remember how anyone expected her to learn in that class but she would also be blamed if she didn’t preform well. No college would get a note explaining a poor grade or a poor semester due to retraumatization from abuse. Her failure to work through humiliating and traumatizing circumstances would mean a loss of educational attainment and potentially a worse transcript.

A lot of words are thrown around about victim blaming and there are very real cases, like Amber Heard, where women are attacked for coming forward or defending themselves against abuse-but another pernicious form of victim blaming comes from expecting someone to trudge through the unthinkable and label them as sick, as failures, as mentally challenged or just not good enough when they inevitably fail.

#radblr #radical feminism #radical feminist #char on char

[gwydion-aacblog]

I hate to be that guy, but crippled-pvp is a known raging neurodivergence/mental illness ableist who's said some real egregious stuff, I wouldn't hope you'd like what other posts they've made.

right ... so first off . morg do not use they pronouns . like gwydion , morg use he pronouns .

second … morg have severe level disabilities , and get mistreat and abuse for this . this include both things in body and in brain . people who have physical disabilities but perfect mental health just not exist , plain and simple . even someone who gain disability later in life , that bring trauma and anxiety at very least .

say that because , what is reason say this ? gwydion see so many these things that people say about morg , and just can not agree because kind of know where start . 

for example , and something that gwydion say too : accessible event or building should mean , physically . when people use this to say sensory friendly , that do nothing for people who can not walk up stairs , or fit through doors , or who can not use bathroom in peace to change diapers , deal with digestion problems , or take break for medications .

morg live with disabilities that genuinely do not get equal access in this world . after so much time people mistreat and abuse , who would not be angry ? especially when people start to take these important words , important ideas , and change so that not even actually help anymore . 

gwydion can put on sunglasses to make things less bright . on days that use wheelchair because too weak wobbly to walk , can not do anything to fit through door too narrow . and is lucky only experience things like that on rare days , not everyday , not all time . 

so yes . morg is angry , because so many times , people act as if morg " forget " other disabilities exist , when is really not in same discussion . sensory friendly not same as accessible , and help everyone to say so , to separate discussions .

do gwydion like see people get angry , say rude things ? no , really stress out sometimes , make wish could help . but that not mean not justify feel angry . and morg's blog , is morg's space . not think morg ever actually try be some big icon either , is just what happen over time because one of few here with spinal cord injury . but is still just some guy with blog , at end of day … numbers and presence not change that .

also . communities that focus on neurodivergence all so much more cruel to gwydion , than communities focus on physical disabilities .  if want say that morg have anti-neurodivergent problem , know can not stop , but need recognise this also very very much go other way too . neurodivergent focus communities can be very horrible to people with intellectual disability , with physical disabilities , with brain problems that not stop at just " quirky , kind of sensitive , but still fairly normal . " people like gwydion still try fight to undo these slogans and fight for selves .

is people with autism and nothing else who bully gwydion worst , who blackmail and trick , who kick out because could not believe someone would really have trouble eat food , trouble with walk and talk , trouble with understand and follow simple things . those things all just make gwydion fail who not try hard enough .

physical disabilities not make people magic understand those things because each disability different , and yes , sometimes physical disabled people cruel in same ways . but many understand those things , too , and far more welcome for gwydion even when not same reasons and experiences . 

[ramshacklefey]

No but serious. Dungeons & Dragons is one of the least flexible systems out there. So whenever I hear someone asking, "Why can't I do X in DnD?" or "How would I do (thing that the system is totally ill-suited for)?" my first response is just "GURPS."

For those of you who aren't familiar, GURPS stands for "Generic Universal Role Playing System." I always say it's like the Linux of ttrpgs, in the sense that it's less a system and more a framework that you can use to do whatever you want with.

And I really do mean whatever you want. You want high fantasy? Done. You want gritty realism in a dystopian world? Got it. You want superheroes? Good to go. Super tech space opera? Oh boy we got you there. You want magic systems that aren't based on spell lists? Go for it. Horror games where character death is a constant and very real threat? Sure thing.

You can set up your game to be anything from a complex data driven grinder to a cinematic rules basically optional flight of fancy.

You can play characters who are anywhere from realistically squishy humans to god-like super beings.

Characters personal flaws and strengths can have a direct impact on mechanics. Character species can have a direct and serious impact on mechanics.

The existence of so many options can make GURPS seem overwhelming at first glance, but if you are willing to put in a bit of effort, it's actually a very simple system to play. Most of the hard work is front-loaded into setting and character creation. Once play starts it runs as smooth as can be.

It's totally possible to play it with just the two core books, BUT there are dozens of books that are nothing but tips and advice for how to build a particular type of world or a particular flavor of campaign.

And the books, while not nearly as pretty as DnD books, are laid out in a way that makes it incredibly easy to find exactly the information you want.

Some more mechanical things that I particularly like about it (under the cut):

Characters are created on a point-buy system, but you don't just buy your basic stats, you also buy your skills, advantages, and secondary stats. And you can gain points back by dropping stats below average or taking disadvantages.

The advantage/disadvantage system. This is sorta the core of the character building, and it is *so* much fun. See, rather than pick out a class or species, you have a list (selected by your GM from a much larger list) of things you can buy that will have mechanical impacts on you in the game. Basically, an advantage is anything that opens up more possibilities for you in-game, and a disadvantage is anything that closes off possibilities. They can be superpowers, species traits, cinematic plot armor, personality traits, or things like chronic illness, bad temper, physical or mental disabilities, or being doomed by the narrative.

Simple dice system. To play a GURPS campaign you need three d6. That's it. All checks and saves are done by rolling 3d6 (low rolls are better than high). This has an additional advantage over the d20 system in that there is a probability curve. You're more likely to roll numbers in the mid-range, which makes both critical successes and critical failures rarer, and therefore more satisfying.

Your target roll is adjusted, rather than adding/subtracting from the roll itself. Say you're trying to, idk, hack a computer. Your skill level doesn't affect your dice roll, it affects the number you need to roll in order to succeed. This makes things a lot simpler on the player's end, imo, because there's less they need to keep track of. (You're trying to roll under the skill check, so whatever the base difficulty is, the GM just adds or subtracts your skill level from that).

The basic stats are on a much tighter scale, and they make a lot more sense. Human average is a 10 in everything. When you make your character you can buy higher stats or take lower ones and get more points to spend on other things. All stats cap out at 18, because that's the highest number you can roll. At a 10 strength you are a normal person. At 18 you're basically Superman. You'd have to roll a critical failure not to succeed in a strength check, and remember: critical failures are far less common than in a d20 system.

I could keep going ad infitum here, but instead I'll just close with:

Come with me boy, play my games! We'll have cowboy times in space!

#gurps #ttrpg #i will shill for this game at every opportunity

[sofoulandfairaday]

Please share all of your Sirius and Bellatrix thoughts ♥️

I have way too many, darling.

The TLDR is it is our choices that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities. The long version is under the cut.

When reading about them I usually prefer stories where their original 8-9 year gap is preserved (it annoys me to no end when people write the Order and the Death Eaters as entirely made up of people in the same couple of years in Hogwarts —really? Was the conflict exclusively waged by child soldiers? Were Dumbledore and Voldemort just chilling before 1977, when they decided to start recruiting?). With that being said, I can also enjoy fics where - for shipping purposes - their ages are more compatible, to make them share time in Hogwarts or during the First Wizarding War.

I think they are very, very alike personality-wise. The narrative draws some delicious writing parallels between them, both physically and in their expressions, vices and virtues, and choices. Directly between them, might I add. The author underlines the difference between Bella and Narcissa more than once, we're meant to see it, and similarly we're meant to see the similarities between Bella & Sirius.

They are haughty, passionate, powerful, competent, arrogant, bright, much more intelligent than the fandom thinks they are. In general, they suffer from the stigmatization that many characters - but some people in real life do too - that someone who is intense and impulsive cannot possibly be as intelligent as people who are meek, soft-spoken, generally more controlled. Think what the fandom does to Sirius vs Remus and Bella vs her sisters, when every arrow points to the fact that they are actually the cleverest in these pairings.

They are both some shade of mentally ill, and not because of the curse of the Blacks - half the Blacks went mad didn't they? What's the saying? Every time a Black is born the gods flip a coin. god the Targaryen-Black parallels are gold - Sirius is very likely horribly depressed in OOTP, something no one around him seems to understand, infuriatingly. The only one that seems to get it is Harry, who has the literal Dark Lord living in his brain (= bigger problems to deal with). Bella is... I don't know what she is, ask me after my psychiatry module next year, but my money is on PTSD after Azkaban - after all, she didn't have the escape of an Animagus form behind bars. She would also very likely be victim-blamed for these different feelings, which would lend itself to a delicious nobody else in the world understands us but us type of post-Azkaban dark!fic which I would love to read.

They are both skilled at magic, and while they might despise each other for their respective political views, they respect each other because of this. Bella is probably above him in terms of magical power and skill, because she's 9 years older and because of Voldemort's training, but Sirius seemed to be keeping up quite well with her during their fight in the DoM.

Speaking of which, I am sure that Bellatrix's scream of triumph was due to her winning their duel, not because she thought she had killed him and that is probably the single thing I love the most about HBC's interpretation of her in the movies. That look. 10/10.

I am of the opinion that Bella is all bark and no bite when it comes to certain members of her family, especially her sisters. Sure, she might say that she wants to prune her family tree but 30 years later in the beginning of DH, she still calls Andromeda sister. I'm sure she would want nothing more than to put him under lock and key for the rest of his life and never let him escape, not kill him. And, to me, the way Sirius speaks of his family is very interesting. I'm sure he firmly believes that he hates them, but his actual feelings are more complex than that. You can hate someone and still desire their love, their respect. You can hate that they are the only people in the world who understand you - and hate yourself more in turn, for it.

Sirius seems to me like someone haunted by his own darkness. He, much like Harry, would be constantly worried that he's becoming like them. I'm sure it's a weak spot for him and I wish we had heard more bickering, or at least a full interaction between Bella and Sirius (I feel like she would claim him as hers, underline how much he cannot escape his own blood, even just to mock him/unsettle him in battle). But what Dumbledore says to Harry is true: it doesn't matter how alike they are, it's their choices that matter much more. And I feel like this is why the two of them would never reconcile in canon. They stand for different things.

I also think there might be some - and I know Freud is controversial nowadays, but bear with me - penis envy, on her part. Because Sirius was born the heir - something she would have given her left hand to be: to be born and die a Black instead of being expected to marry into another family - and he squandered it all away by consorting with werewolves and mudbloods. But no. He got everything and pissed on it, and it's just not fair. And by choosing not to come back, even in the two years after Regulus' death, he made sure that the Black Family name will die with him- and I think that is just something she can never ever forgive him.

Now. Everybody knows I don't like TCC and my preferred view of Bella is someone with fertility issues, even to the point of being sterile.

[I read an amazing fanfic once and a line from it stuck in my brain - "If I can't be life, then I'll be death"]

But. If we do see it as canon. This is also the reason why - despite being overjoyed at Delphi's birth - I am convinced that she wished for a boy when she was pregnant. If she had a boy with the Dark Lord, who couldn't possibly give them his name, the House of Black would have an heir. This is also the reason why I don't thing she was necessarily opposed to having children with Rodolphus - the "spare" would have been her heir.

Bellatrix would say that Regulus was her favourite cousin, but truth be told, it was really Sirius whom she respected more - at her core, in my opinion, Bellatrix is really only someone who respects power. Sirius is like her that way.

But Bellatrix is clearly a cruel person, which Sirius is not (or at least, he tries not to be: Kreacher and Snape are two very particular cases of people who are mean to him back). Also, Sirius' view of the world is much more egalitarian - If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. Bellatrix is clearly someone who sees the world in terms of hierarchies, and lives within them (see: how she acts around Voldemort and what is implied of her treatment of house-elves who obey their masters: there is a scale and some serve others, and as long as they do so well they have certain rights; disobey, you get punished).

(Bellatrix is somewhat a feminist character but let's be real- she's not a revolutionary. She went to the Dark Lord and showed him just how powerful she was - aka my wand is bigger than all these male DEs' - and he said "okay, fair, I'll give you the Mark", thereby freeing herself. She is not a "equal representation for women inside terrorist organizations!!" type of girlie)

I also love how her death parallels Sirius'. It's thematically beautiful and it excuses her death coming at the hands of one Molly Weasley (who could never ever in a million years have beaten her on skill alone). She dies because she is arrogant. It's one of her traits. Overconfidence. She was always meant to die like that.

[coincidentally one of the reasons why she would not be a hufflepuff like some suggest: this woman is not humble]

I could go on, but I think I've rambled enough.

P.S. Let's not sleep on the fact that the two of them together would be hot.

#sirius black #bellatrix lestrange #bellatrix black #sirius x bellatrix #asks #answered

[ystrike1]

Inside Mari - By Oshimi Shuzo (8/10)

A love story for one. A love that doesn't matter. A selfish love. A mental breakdown. A high school life with no friendships. A college life with no friendships. Both parts of this "couple" never really get to know each other. They're just obsessed with the other.

Komori is a gaming NEET who lies to his parents every day. He went to Tokyo with big dreams, but he has anxiety. He never addressed it and it ruined his chances. He got too nervous to attend class, and now he is in a rut. A very dark one.

The signs are all there. Komori seems to think he is a loser monster that will never touch a woman. He never even spoke to a girl in high school. His intense paranoia and self hatred are all signs of untreated anxiety and depression. He enjoys his games, but he is unaware of how smelly his room is. He has no social responsibilities at the moment, so he is happier. Living in filth is fine. Crowds and pressure is not.

He is obsessed with a pretty high school girl. She's in the same place, every single day. She buys the same drink. She takes the same route home. She's easy to follow. Komori really wanted to get a girlfriend in Tokyo. He thinks it's impossible because he has so little experience with the opposite sex, so he gets attached to Mari.

Mari, his stalker.

The lonely girl that finds comfort in his quiet, secluded life.

"Komori" wakes up inside of Mari, but that's not true. Mari has been pushed to the brink by bullying and family misunderstandings. The clues are all there. This is not a body switch manga. Mari convinces herself. She believes she is Komori, her stalker. The man she stalks out of comfortable affection.

Her denial is very deep. It takes a long time for her to accept that Mari is within her, but again the clues are stark. She doesn't want to be Mari. She wants to fool around and be alone with no deadlines, like him.

Poor, depressed Komori becomes the victim. Mari is convinced that she IS him, so she thinks a stranger is inside the old body. Mari's creepy antics eventually push Komori to get a job and move back home.

He gets better before she does.

It's heartbreaking.

Mari is still in terrible condition, convinced that she's some kind of Komori doppelganger, while he's getting his hair cut and moving on.

Their "friendship" is disturbing, but Komori thanks Mari in the end.

Mari was jealous of his stability. Komori has parents who are willing to support him no matter what. Mari's mother is a weirdo who isn't very empathetic. When Mari gets bullied by her supposed best friend at school she has no one to turn to.

When she started stalking Komori she wished she didn’t have to go to school. She wished she could play games all day. She bought the games he played, and she followed him to the convenience store until their routine developed.

She also looked through his bedroom window, from a vantage point above his apartment.

This "letter" is found by Mari, who believes she is Komori. She's convinced it is a message from Mari, who disappeared.

But no, Mari just wrote notes obsessively about Komori before her psychotic break. Sometimes a creepy note on the ground...is just that.

Mari also takes advantage of a closeted lesbian who is in love with her. Yori believes the whole story. She believes that Komori is inside Mari, even though the real Komori lives down the street. Denial is a hell of a drug, and mental illness is hard to understand.

Mari and Yori kind of try to date near the end, but Yori goes to college...and Mari doesn't because she skips so much class because of her stalker breakdown.

They part as friends.

Yori doesn't hate Mari either, despite all of the weird things she did when she was convinced she was the man she liked.

Mari doesn't completely get better.

There's just an implication that she will eventually be ok.

Komori tells Yori the brutal truth as soon as he gets a job. It's obvious that Mari is following him around acting crazy. There's no such thing as magic. He isn't Mari. Her perception of reality is clearly off for most of the story, but nobody wants to accept it. Everyone waits for Mari to get better, but it's hard. Komori, understandably, kinda washes his hands of her. He realizes that crushing on a teen girl is gross. He realizes that he was just obsessed. He realizes that he was only into Mari because he never left his house. She was the only pretty girl out at night.

That was it.

Komori admits nothing special is going on. Mari just knows how to act like him, because she's been peeping for a long time.

There are even signs in Mari's room, when she is in deep denial. Receipts. Weird manga. There are mementos in her room that indicate she has been stalking him for years. Mari's cracked mind goes over these clues believing that she and Komori are somehow connected. They are, but not in some kind of supernatural way.

It's just stalking.

It's sad how hard the girls try.

Yori is convinced that she's involved in something special for most of the story.

Reality is much bleaker.

Mari says goodbye to parts of herself, and she finds the will to live on as Mari. It's implied that she really does like nerdy games, and karaoke, and being silly. She just had to act cool because she's pretty and psychological warfare style high school girl bullies latched on to her.

Her mental illness never gets a name.

Her mother's mental illness never gets a name.

Mari's original name was Fumiko, from her Grandmother.

Her mother changed it.

Her mother wanted her to be cute, and her mother never really cared about Mari's issues. She just wanted her daughter to act normal and get better. It's rough. Familial love sometimes isn't enough.

Mari and Yori cut ties with the bullies.

They manage to graduate ok.

By then Komori is long gone.

Mari accepts that she concocted this fake version of Komori, inside her, so she could escape her life. She forgot about her happy childhood as Fumiko, because her mother hated it. Her mother was more volatile back then. She suppressed herself. The hobbies she wanted. She made no friends. She has an undiagnosed mental illness. Her pretty looks made her a target. She snapped and the worst part of all of it is the two people she loved grew up. Yori and Komori go on to do better, but Mari has to go slower.

It's incredibly tragic.

#Inside Mari #yandere #male yandere #yandere male #yandere boy #recommendations #recs #rec #recommended

[kaldurcalm]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers ♡

I'm gonna be real with you, these always seem to come at a time when I feel least equipped to answer the question.

On the bright side, I guess that means I get to recommend comics I like.

1.

This is so cute and sweet that I'm bouncing just thinking about it. Just. Look at them.

Adorable. I love them. I love them so much. Thanks @moosopp-art!

2.

We're gonna take a hard left. For some reason, watching this teenager take on an improbable amount of attackers is so so satisfying. He's the opest of op characters. I love it.

He's also clueless about how to live a normal life and all he wants is for his grandpa and sister to be happy. He goes to deliver a lunch his sister made to a friend, finds out the friend is in trouble, drops the kawaii lunchbox on a nearby table and takes out an entire gang like it's nothing.

This is a light day for him.

The friend is also a gangster. They met because he was hired to attack a teenager and as soon as he engaged he was like, nope, this kid is out of my league, pull back. Now he goes and helps the kid's grandpa on a regular basis.

He's still a gangster he's just more of a found family business now.

3.

*chef's kiss* everyone is messy and the color palette changes often. The depictions of mental illness are extremely vibrant. Mal is doing her best and also a mess. The commenters affectionately refer to her main love interest as rat man. I love them.

4.

*vibrating excitedly* how do I describe this one

Neoma starts as like, perky magical girl protagonist. Surprise! We get to explore toxic family dynamics.

She meets a guy who figures out he also has spiritual abilities. He likes her and is down for exploring but is Very Concerned by her grandfather. As he should be.

It's one of those I can see spirits stories and it looks like we're going to be exploring why being perky all the time is bad for you actually. I love the art style and the character dynamics. Can't wait to see where this one goes.

5. @painted-bees and their Hi-Note universe. They also have a webtoon called Woven and I really wanna see that through to the end, but Hi-Note is a bit more relevant to my current age and life experiences. Adhd 🤝 autism bros. (Not platonic but also sort of platonic.)

It's just a good depiction of (mostly) two people going holy shit, no one has ever understood me in this way before. I love it. I love that. Cortez scares me a little but they seem interesting too. (Eldritch being. They don't show up as much because it's still in development.)

~::~

OK. Thank you. Smiling now. This was good.

#i have like five different layers of exhaustion clouding my perception but i don't wanna sleep yet #asking games

[csuitebitches]

Hi! You're amazing and your page is amazing. I'm a girl who's really interested in growing and building my life. My mental illness has taken so much from me, so I feel I am starting life over this year like a little baby while everyone else is an adult. I often feel VERY insecure around friends who are normal and have achieved so much and have not made the many mistakes that I have.

I now have been isolating myself because I usually feel so ashamed of myself when I'm with them. I barely have any cooking skills as a female, I've never held a real job, I never network or connect with anyone, I have felt so miserable with a scowl on my face everyday, and I barely know what I'm doing with my life now in college.

As I am now working on my character flaws, how do I still feel I am loveable to my friends, stop pushing everyone away, and stop feeling like hiding when I'm with them?

everyone was once in your shoes. Were your friends born with their job? Were they born accomplished? Was Gordon Ramsey born with a knife in his hands? Have you seen the video of him crying because of his mentor Marco Pierre White?

Ive lightly burned my fingers, my food, set off the university dorm fire alarm because of my initial cooking skills. I’ve melted a spatula. I’ve burned countless toasts, broken glass bottles, had a whole bug infestation because I forgot to close the fridge tightly when I left uni for summer. Then I learned. I watched more YouTube videos. I practiced cooking. I can objectively say I cook better than my mom today because I made the effort to learn.

A master was also an amateur once.

“I never network with anyone” it’s good that you can admit the things you need to work on. The way you address problems like this is:

a) are there networking opportunities near you?

b) can you look up conferences and opportunities near you?

you assume that your friends have not made as many mistakes as you have. Do you go on a radio show and tell the whole world about every mistake you’ve made in your life? Even with close friends, one does not always reveal every single thing or sometimes, doesn’t feel the need to.

your journey is your own. The exam paper of your life does not have the same answers that your friends have written.

you’re not going to magically wake up accomplished, you’re going have to work towards it. And the best part is, you’re in college! That’s such a great stepping stone because you’re in an environment that’s programmed to help you grow if you can use your cards right.

can you join any extra curricular clubs or activities? Or ask your professors or the counsellor for internship opportunities? Can you organise an event like a bake sale or something for the local charity? Can you take up volunteering opportunities?

your insecurities are holding you back. You’re not any less lovable than the friends and family in your life. You have control over your own life. When you choose to actively put yourself out there, start socialising, engaging with people - which can be difficult for some people but always rewarding - you’ll start seeing change.

unfortunately the world doesn’t revolve around us. If you’re unhappy with how things are, the remote control of your life is in your hands.

you’re already working on yourself which is great. That means you have the intrinsic motivation to do something. It’s time to stop moaning and whining and start creating a plan of action.

tackle things one thing at a time. Don’t start with 10 things.

From your message it seems like:

You need help with adulting - cooking.

job - ask your college counsellor/ professor of your favourite subject for internship opportunity, on campus or off campus.

purpose -find a hobby, sport, volunteering cause, something that you like that you actually enjoy.

look at these three problems in the best positive light. It means you get to learn all these things you didn’t know! It means you’ll be able to meet new people who could become really good connections!

make your life simple. Progress doesn’t mean going from burning the kitchen down to cooking a three course meal. It means taking one week to learn how to fry an egg. It makes taking a week to learn how to make a decent pancake or some rice. It means screwing up 10 times and then finally getting it right on the 11th.

allow yourself to make mistakes. Acknowledge to yourself about them and move on.

Do not let your shame hold you back from living your life. We torture ourselves in imagination more than we actually suffer in real life.

I’ve felt embarrassed countless times in my life. I’ve slipped up, messed up, forgotten things, done what I wasn’t supposed to, held my tears back, been scolded, full blown cried, scribbled aggressively in my diary, ranted to my mom, had dramatic fights with my imaginary boss in the shower, woken up late, screwed up royally in important meetings. These are not original experiences. These are universal experiences. Anyone who is telling you that they have never felt this is a dirty liar.

I wouldn’t exchange those mistakes for the world.

How do you think I’m able to give you advice on this if I didn’t go through those similar experiences?

If you want to make changes in your life that badly, start today. Set three simple goals that are achievable. Set deadlines. Be your own parent. Get your life together.

#Q/a #you’ve got this

[saintsenara]

Riddle’s extremely fearful and aggressive reaction to Dumbledore when he thinks he’s a doctor (and the fact that he assumes this at all and believes he is being lied to) has some pretty dark implications (which of course no one follows up on). Do you have thoughts?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

and yes - this has occurred to me too... which means that my thoughts come with a trigger warning for the sexual abuse of a child, and are under the cut.

the relevant scene in canon is, of course, this:

“I am Professor Dumbledore.” “Professor?” repeated Riddle. He looked wary. “Is that like doctor? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have a look at me?”  He was pointing at the door through which Mrs. Cole had just left. “No, no,” said Dumbledore, smiling.  “I don’t believe you,” said Riddle. “She wants me looked at, doesn’t she? Tell the truth!”  He spoke the last three words with a ringing force that was almost shocking. It was a command, and it sounded as though he had given it many times before. His eyes had widened and he was glaring at Dumbledore, who made no response except to continue smiling pleasantly. After a few seconds Riddle stopped glaring, though he looked, if anything, warier still. “Who are you?” “I have told you. My name is Professor Dumbledore and I work at a school called Hogwarts. I have come to offer you a place at my school - your new school, if you would like to come.”  Riddle’s reaction to this was most surprising. He leapt from the bed and backed away from Dumbledore, looking furious.  “You can’t kid me! The asylum, that’s where you’re from, isn’t it? ‘Professor,’ yes, of course - well, I’m not going, see? That old cat’s the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they’ll tell you!”

the surface-level reading of this scene - which is clearly what the text wants us to go for - is that riddle thinks he's about to be institutionalised for being "mad" - and, specifically, that he thinks that what dumbledore has been told is his "madness" is actually his magic.

[he is also clearly meant to be read as panicking a little bit that he's fucked around torturing his fellow children and is now about to find out...]

that riddle accepts he's a wizard so easily - and that he is so reassured by dumbledore agreeing that he's not mad - is something the text wants us to read as sinister. him immediately describing himself as "special" is set up as a precursor to the adult voldemort's delusions of grandeur - which the entire arc of the series, ending in his death as an ordinary man, is designed to undermine.

but i've always disliked this reading. the eleven-year-old riddle - a magical child raised around non-magical people - is objectively correct to describe his powers as "special" [in that they make him identifiably different from the crowd] within the context in which he lives. the word choice is nowhere near as deep as dumbledore decides - he's clearly known since he was very young that he's a wizard, but he didn't have the precise language to describe this fundamental part of himself until dumbledore offered it; prior to that, "special" is a perfectly reasonable alternative term.

and, in always knowing that he's a wizard, he also knows that he doesn't have a mental illness - but he must also know that this is something it's near impossible for him to prove.

in the real world, if i spoke to a patient who told me:

“I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.”

then i would be correct to describe them as experiencing psychosis. and i might - depending on their other symptoms - have reasonable cause to admit them [voluntarily or not] for psychiatric treatment.

riddle is - of course - demonstrably not psychotic. but it's not unreasonable that mrs cole would assume he is - the world she lives in, as a muggle [even if she's a religious one], is one in which people do not possess the ability to move objects or control animals with their minds, and if one of her charges is convinced that he can, then she's justified in seeking medical intervention.

[that psychiatric treatment in the 1930s can be described without exaggeration as inhumane is another matter...]

which is to say, i think we can easily suppose that mrs cole has - prior to dumbledore's arrival - succeeded in having riddle "looked at", and that the idea that he's mentally ill and should be committed to an asylum has been mentioned before. i think most of us would be instinctively [and angrily] wary of doctors if this happened to us, regardless of how nice the doctors in question were.

and maybe that's all there is to it.

and maybe it isn't...

in the doylist text, the eleven-year-old riddle's personality is the way it is because he's the villain of the series. where harry is preternaturally capable, even as a child, of all the things the series defines as admirable - above all, enduring difficulty without complaint - riddle is preternaturally incapable of them. he's meant to come across as unambiguously sinister - and the fact that the text repeatedly emphasises that he has control over his unpleasant traits invites us to view him as someone who is acting with full agency. that he lives in an orphanage is a trope which the text uses, like a campy horror film might, predominately to underscore how creepy he is - and the text, in keeping with its general lack of interest in states and their institutions, never really prompts us to interrogate the impact of his childhood upon the course his life takes.

[this is despite the fact that voldemort's reliving of the night he killed the potters in deathly hallows is an incredibly accurate depiction of ptsd...]

but it's also the case that the eleven-year-old riddle's behaviour and personality fits a pattern we might expect to see in a child who is being abused, sexually or otherwise:

he's aggressive, he has a hair-trigger temper, and he becomes distressed even by behaviour - such as dumbledore speaking mildly and calmly - which would not ordinarily be expected to provoke such a reaction.

his broader emotional state is fractious. his mood changes sharply, he seems to feel emotions very profoundly, he struggles to control his emotional response to things, he's extremely easily irritated, he's attention-seeking - and he particularly seeks negative attention, and he's very highly-strung. his admission in deathly hallows that he feels calm before he kills - or before he otherwise eradicates a threat or a problem - comes with the flip-side that he's someone who appears, when things aren't going well or he finds himself in a situation which he can't control, to become quite anxious. which is a trauma response.

he's extremely isolated. the text presents the fact that he has no friends as a deliberate choice - "lord voldemort has never had a friend, nor do i believe that he has ever wanted one" - and his relationship with everyone else he ever meets, including his fellow orphans, is defined by the text as exclusively involving him controlling, manipulating, and punishing them. or: he is always the more powerful person in the pairing. but this need for control can be read as self-protective just as easily as it can be read as sinister. there are hints in canon that riddle is not just some malevolent force in the orphanage preying on mild-mannered innocents. for example, billy stubbs, the owner of the rabbit he kills, is targeted by riddle as revenge: “Billy Stubbs’s rabbit... well, Tom said he didn’t do it and I don’t see how he could have done, but even so, it didn’t hang itself from the rafters, did it? [...] But I’m jiggered if I know how he got up there to do it. All I know is he and Billy had argued the day before." on the rare occasions billy turns up in fics, he's usually - i find - written very like neville - sweet and guileless and a bit pathetic. but the alternative reading - especially when we take into account that riddle attacks the rabbit rather than billy himself - is that billy is someone he would be afraid to physically confront. indeed, it's striking that voldemort - at all stages of his life - is described as being quite physically fragile. not only is he very thin, but he's always cold and his heartbeat is described several times in canon as irregular. i think this is supposed to be a comment on the physical changes he undergoes the more horcruxes he makes - although the idea that the soul would affect the heart doesn't actually align with how the series understands the soul to relate to the body - but it can also be interpreted perfectly legitimately as something he was experiencing prior to splitting his soul. i am committed to the headcanon that riddle was quite a sickly child - and that this is one of the things which drives his fear of death - and i'm also committed to the idea that his obsession with magic is because the enormity of his magical power makes up for his physical lack. he can defeat - and humiliate and frighten and remove the threat of - billy or dennis [or even an adult man?] with magic. without it, if they were to physically overpower him, then he wouldn't be able to throw them off.

he is extremely nervous about being alone in a room with dumbledore - someone he doesn't know, and who he assumes is connected to a profession [and, maybe, who knows any other doctors he's been previously made to see...] of which he is frightened.

he doesn't trust or confide in anyone - which, as a child, means particularly that he doesn't trust or confide in adults in positions of responsibility. he's clearly uneasy with the idea of finding himself in the subordinate position in an adult-child relationship when dumbledore offers to take him shopping for school supplies - potentially because he's worried that dumbledore will try and dictate or restrict what he's allowed to buy unless he behaves in a certain way... and i am always very struck that dumbledore says in half-blood prince: "He was very guarded with me; he felt, I am sure, that in the thrill of discovering his true identity he had told me a little too much. He was careful never to reveal as much again." this is presented in the text as evidence that dumbledore is the only person of whom voldemort is afraid - by which the text means that voldemort acknowledges that dumbledore knows that an ordinary man, mortal and unimpressive, lurks behind the mask of unassailable power he has created for himself; and which the text thinks is a good thing. but we can also read it as a self-protective act on riddle's part. in his excitement, he offers dumbledore information [that he is known to be a liar, that he is in trouble a lot, that mrs cole dislikes him and is disinclined to believe anything he says] which would give dumbledore - or anyone in a similar position of power and presumed respectability - cover to abuse him, safe in the knowledge that he would be unlikely to be believed if he reported it.

he doesn't appear to feel safe in the orphanage and he's frequently absent from it - by his own admission, he spends a huge amount of time wandering around london on his own, which may even involve him staying away for several days at a time. nobody appears to notice or care about this.

he's very independent - which the text again presents as evidence of his deliberate self-isolation and rejection of the bonds of love and friendship - and his independence is unusual for a child his age [i.e. that he is capable of doing all his own shopping for school].

his knowledge of violence - i.e. how he designs the trip to the cave to be maximally psychologically devastating for dennis and amy and devoid of repercussions for himself - is also more advanced and methodical than would be expected in a child of his age. again, the text uses this to emphasise how inextricable the child-voldemort is from his adult self - and also, to some extent, to underscore the intellectual brilliance [his magic is also more advanced than is normal for a child] which his narrative archetype [the exceptional villain who is defeated by the everyman hero] requires. but we can also read it as evidence of his own victimisation. a common sign that a child is being sexually abused is that they display a knowledge of sexual behaviour which is more advanced than is reasonable for a child of their age - for example, knowing in detail how a sex act is performed, or fluently using sexual slang which they have no chance of knowing either from age-appropriate settings like school-based sex education or conversations with a parent or trusted adult, or from the sort of enthusiastic hoarding of rude words and phrases all children enjoy as they grow up. riddle's precise, clinical knowledge of how to manipulate, frighten, torture, and control can be seen as something similar. if he can - at eleven or younger - methodically break down another child until they're "never quite right" again, then this is because he's learned how to from someone.

he keeps secrets. and he also goes out of his way to extract them. his grooming of ginny in chamber of secrets - he manipulates her into confiding things she wants to keep to herself, promises he won't tell anyone, and then uses the threat that he will to get her to do his bidding - is an absolutely textbook example of how abusers use the idea of secrecy to control their victims. it doesn't make his abuse of ginny any less inexcusable if we assume he learns this from being on the other side of things.

dumbledore understands his little cache of objects as trophies he's taken from victims - and the text takes the view that dumbledore is correct in this assessment. that hoarding trophies is something widely associated with serial killers means that this is yet another thing which underlines how creepy - and how like his adult self - the child-voldemort is. but it's also the case that the adult - and teenage - voldemort places a lot of emphasis on gift-giving as part of his control over other people. the two most obvious examples in canon are wormtail being given his shiny hand as a reward for helping voldemort get his body back, and slughorn being buttered up with crystallised pineapple before voldemort asks him about horcruxes. the text thinks this is sinister - and one of the reasons it does this is because gift-giving is a grooming tactic. the text also clearly thinks this isn't behaviour voldemort has learned from the other side. and yet a common sign that a child is being abused is if they have possessions it doesn't make sense for them to own [i.e. a child from a low-income background who is suddenly decked in designer clothes] and which they can't or won't explain how they came by. riddle's cache isn't luxurious - although he's so poor that a yoyo or a mouth organ probably is a luxury to him - but there's also nothing in canon which precludes the objects being presents, rather than stolen goods. if the spell dumbledore uses to make the box rattle is caused by a statement which is both relatively ambiguous and dependent on dumbledore's subjective personal morality - is there anything in this room he's acquired through nefarious means? - then the spell would still work as it does in canon if riddle was an abuse victim given the objects as "rewards". dumbledore's tendency to locate right and wrong in the individual and dumbledore's belief that good people should steadfastly endure misery means he can be written entirely canon-coherently as someone who would think a victim who appeared to collude in their own abuse - such as a victim who "offered" a sexual act because their abuser promised them something if they did - was behaving consensually, manipulatively, and nefariously. and it's worth noting that when riddle doesn't know what dumbledore has done to make the box rattle, he is "unnerved". when he realises dumbledore thinks he's stolen the objects - and that he has no interest in forcing him to admit this aloud - he is "unabashed". perhaps because he's just received proof that an experience he doesn't want to talk about is still secret...

on the other hand, the objects could indeed be stolen - because petty criminality and anti-social behaviour, especially in pre-teen children, is also a sign of abuse.

he can be extremely obsequious - when dumbledore tells him to watch how he speaks he becomes "unrecognisably polite", he ruthlessly flatters slughorn, and he is cringingly deferential to hepzibah smith. the text understands this as evidence that his apparent charm is only superficial - another trait associated in the popular imagination with serial killers [and it's striking that so much about the young voldemort - handsome, charming, seemingly quiet and polite, true evil lurking underneath the mask - is exactly like the pop-culture persona which has been created for ted bundy...]. voldemort himself agrees that his charm is performative in chamber of secrets: “If I say it myself, Harry, I’ve always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted." but his obsequiousness is also a fawn response - a way of minimising a threat by attempting to please the person issuing it. he becomes "unrecognisably polite" - after all - in response to this: Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. “If, as I take it, you are accepting your place at Hogwarts - ” “Of course I am!” “Then you will address me as ‘Professor’ or ‘sir.’ ”  Riddle’s expression hardened for the most fleeting moment before he said, in an unrecognisably polite voice, “I’m sorry, sir. I meant - please, Professor, could you show me - ?”  riddle could reasonably interpret what dumbledore says here as a threat to prevent him attending hogwarts - even though dumbledore evidently doesn't mean it in this way - and he switches to being fawning because this is something he really doesn't want to happen...

do i think that any of this is what the text was actually going for? no. and nor do i think that reading riddle as a victim of abuse excuses the violence which the adult voldemort goes on to perpetuate.

but i think it is a reading of his characterisation which is both canon-plausible and interesting - a strange, sickly child with a reputation for cruelty and dishonesty being abused by the respectable doctor who is constantly called in to treat his coughs and wheezes, who buys him little presents and charms him into telling him secrets, who then [to paraphrase the teenage voldemort] feeds him a few secrets of his own, safe in the knowledge that nobody will ever believe him if he tries to get help.

and i also think this a reading which is sincerely important.

a significant contributor to the prevalence of child abuse - no matter what exact form this abuse takes - is that we are culturally conditioned to imagine that both the abuser and the victim will look and behave in a certain way if the abuse is "real".

and this means, all too often, that we take child abuse more seriously when the victim is "sympathetic" - when they're from a stable home, and their family are respectable, and they do well in school, and they're polite and sweet, and they look innocent, and they behave perfectly appropriately for their age, and nobody would ever dare to say that they come across as older than they are, and they're white, and they don't have a history of lying, and they don't have a history of attention-seeking, and they don't have a criminal record, and they're not abusive themselves, and there's absolutely no way of suggesting that they colluded in their abuse, and the perpetrator was someone who looks like a child abuser.

someone who is creepy, low-status, ugly, unpopular. someone who everyone can tell is socially abnormal, someone who nobody would ever intentionally permit to be around their children. not someone who is charming, well-respected, attractive, rich, popular, trustworthy. not someone who has a loving family and a happy home. not someone we might be friends with.

but many perpetrators of child abuse are these second group of people. and many victims of child abuse are "unsympathetic", when their social positions and reputations are compared to their abusers' own.

they lie. they steal. they're attention-seeking. they're vindictive. they have trouble distinguishing between imagination and reality. they're violent. they're bullies. they hurt animals. they abuse other children. they take drugs. they're mentally-ill. they come from broken homes. they're in the care of the state. they're dirty. they're poor. they're odd. they're behind at school and badly-behaved in the classroom. they do things which allow their abuse to be dismissed as something they brought upon themselves - they speak or dress in certain ways, they pose provocatively in pictures and post them on the internet, they are known to be sexually active outside of the context of their abuse, they lie about being over the age of consent, they engage in sexual behaviour with an adult abuser in a way which appears [even though it isn't, and there's never a circumstance in which it will be] to be consensual or for their own personal gain, they are flattered by the attention they receive from someone who is important or attractive grooming them, they have complicated - and not always wholly negative - feelings towards their abusers.

and they are still - unequivocally - victims, and what happens to them is still - unequivocally - abuse.

tom riddle is an unsympathetic victim - not only of any potential abuse, but also of the horrors of his life which are explicit on the canon page: that he is raised in an orphanage; that he is grieving; that he knows nothing about his family; that he is thought to be mad.

the absence of any institutional response to his childhood experiences - dumbledore, by his own admission, discloses nothing about riddle to his fellow teachers - is a flaw repeated again and again in the worldbuilding of the harry potter series.

hogwarts - and the wizarding [and muggle] state more broadly - doesn't intervene in any case of neglect or abuse, from harry to snape to voldemort's own parents. the series' individualistic morality means that we aren't supposed to interrogate these collective failings. and the series' black-and-white view of good and evil - and its general belief that violence is fine if the person it happens to "deserves" it - means that it has no interest in examining the ways that poverty, isolation, and neglect are risk factors; that straightforwardly unpleasant people can still be victims; that victims can go on to become perpetrators without their victimhood ceasing to matter; and that the abuse of children usually takes place not in silence and secrecy, concealed in ways which make it fine for adults not to notice it and not to intervene, but in plain sight.

this is knowledge it never hurts to refresh. thinking about lord voldemort's childhood might be an usual way of doing so... but it is an effective one nonetheless...

#asks answered #asenora meta #tom riddle #lord voldemort #if wizards had the concept of safeguarding it would be a game changer...

[jomiddlemarch]

While You Were Sleeping

Chapter 4

Some people, primarily Muggles, count sheep when they have trouble falling asleep.

Wizards preferred Puffskeins or occasionally crups. Molly Weasley had once admitted she counted crups in Weasley sweaters, after George had spiked her tea with something she made him pull from the store shelves.

(Hermione did not believe anyone who said they counted dragons other than Hagrid, who listed them off by their forenames.)

Hermione preferred facts.

Fact: the Eguzkiko continued to think she and Draco were a married couple.

Fact: Draco was fluent in at least five languages.

Fact: Draco wore a subtle cologne that smelled like Hermione imagined the Silk Road would, minus the camels.

(Unconfirmed fact: this was exactly what Amortentia now smelled like to Hermione, forget cut grass and parchment.)

Fact: Hermione’s facts were usually about statistics, geopolitical historical alliances, and characters in Dickens’ novels because her father had loved those dearly but since the start of this mission, her facts had increasingly, exclusively become All About Draco.

Fact: Hermione appeared to have Feelings for sodding brilliant, widely accomplished and knicker-incineratingly fit Draco Black Malfoy, Esq., Feelings she felt ill-equipped to express.

Fact: She felt no more drowsy now than when she’d extinguished the reading lamp and turned on her side to avoid trying to make out his profile or the exquisite line of his neck against the pillowcase.

Fac—THUMP.

“What was that?” she exclaimed.

“I don’t—” Draco began.

THUMP. Thump. thump.

“What the bloody fuck?!” Draco said, sitting bolt upright. There was a yelping quality to his cry, that couldn’t be denied, though his voice was still pitched low enough that no one would have called it a shriek. Also, being bolt upright showed his broad shoulders to notable advantage (who knew pyjamas could be so impeccably tailored?)

In any case, Hermione had that covered, the shriek-department that is. She did manage to keep it to one solitary shriek that she choked back at the end, right at the moment when Draco reached over and grabbed her upper arms. She only had a split second to evaluate the grabbing, but it was definitely from the making-sure-you’re-real and I’ve-got-you-don’t-worry categories, not the get-a-hold-of-yourself-witch or I’m-about-to-shake-you-silly-for-being-a-silly-bint. Also, his hands were big and warm and transiently made her feel very much cherished and she was glad she’d tied back her hair so he didn’t accidentally pull any of it, though the prospect of his hands gently running through her curls was dreadfully appealing.

When she wasn’t devoting her not inconsiderable brain-power towards the mental recitation of facts, she was capable of noticing quite a bit.

“Are you all right?” he asked. With the grabbing, he’d closed the distance between them and they were close enough she could see the hints of green and blue in his grey eyes, the faint shadow of his beard, a darker shade than his hair. There was a small scar near his left temple and she wondered at what curse had caught him there, how badly he’d been injured to leave such a mark impervious to the Healers at St. Mungo’s. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, are you?” she said. Her heart was still beating very fast, but it had more to do with Draco than the earlier noise.

“Yes,” he said. He loosened his grasp on her and let his hands drop, but they still rested on her forearms, lightly enough she could shrug him off. She did not.

“What was that?” she said when the moment had started to grow too intense, the hollow at the base of his throat too tempting.

“I don’t know,” he said. “At home, I’d guess it might be an old house settling for the night or a storm brewing, but here—”

“Could it be something magic?” she said. She swallowed, then said what she’d first thought, when all she had felt was terror, when she’d wanted to call out his name. “Don’t laugh at me—”

“I won’t,” he said.

“A monster. Under the bed. I know it sounds foolish,” she said.

Hermione was absolutely certain that every single one of her acquaintances, with the sole exception of Luna Lovegood, would agree it sounded foolish. And even Luna was likely to give her reassuring smile and tell her that kidakomori were far fonder of people than people ever gave them credit for and Hermione would have to pretend that she was aware of kidakomori and their undeservedly dubious reputation.

“It doesn’t sound foolish. Not to me,” Draco said. 

“What?”

“I didn’t want to say it first, because I agree it makes me sound unhinged, but I also thought of a monster under the bed,” he replied.

“You were supposed to talk sense to me. To tell me I was overreacting,” Hermione said.

“Are you even capable of overreacting?” Draco countered. “I realize I am tacitly validating your prior assault on me—”

“We were children! And you were beastly,” Hermione said.

“And I deserved it,” he said.

“Well, no one deserves to be hit,” Hermione said.

“I understand the progressive Muggle approach to childhood discipline and in general, I don’t disagree but in that particular situation, I must say I did. And not only because I was making a point.” He smiled at her and she liked it far too much.

“Do you really think there’s a monster under our bed?” she said, trying not to whisper and failing. 

“You said our bed,” Draco replied.

“That’s what you’re choosing to focus on? Not the monster part? And the fact that we have no wands and even wandless magic is verboten in here, even assuming either of us knew what spell to cast for a monster under the bed,” she ranted. Her exposure to Parseltongue had been so negative (whose wasn’t?) she kept herself from hissing, but it was a close call. Draco moved his right hand from her forearm to her wrist and then laced his fingers through hers. It would have been the sexiest move she could remember any man making except for the possible monster beneath them.

“Inanis belua, but you have to put the emphasis on the bel and let the final a drift. Like leviosa,” Draco said.

“Inanis belua,” she repeated.

“Perfect,” he said. “You’ve always had an ear for incantation.”

“How did you learn it?” Hermione asked. It seemed he wasn’t going to make her face the implications of our bed. At least not at the moment.

“Narcissa,” Draco said, again referring to his mother by her first name. Hermione almost wished for another round of eerie thumps to distract them both from the ticking bomb that was his relationship with his mother. “She coddled me, as much as she could—the Malfoy heir was expected to be superior in all regards, but the Blacks tend to be high-strung, overly sensitive. It was a secret, that she taught me the spell. I wasn’t to tell my father.”

“I don’t think it’s coddling to make your little boy feel safe,” Hermione said, hoping she’d picked the least inflammatory aspect of what he’d shared. The less she said about Lucius Malfoy the better. Even after all these years, she wasn’t sure she could talk about him without venom and however Draco felt, the man was still his father, albeit immured in Azkaban .

“Perhaps,” Draco said.

“I suppose you think it’s horribly middle-class of me. Or Muggle,” she said.

“I think you were raised by kinder people than I was,” he said. Hermione thought of the estrangement that existed between her and her parents and also how it had been as the Grangers’ little girl, the plush calico kitten that had been tucked with her under her covers, the bedtime stories, the trips to the library with a trolley to bring home her latest acquisitions. When she thought of them, they were still Mum and Dad.

“It was Bellatrix who taught her the spell,” Draco said, watching her face. His own eyebrows were drawn together, a serious expression similar to one he wore when wrangling with a particularly thorny bit of medieval Eguzkikan legislation.

“I take it you’re of the confront your fear persuasion,” Hermione said. “Or is this some kind of weirdly roundabout apology Or a Pureblood thing? If it’s a Pureblood thing, you’ll have to give me some context, like whether it’s all the Sacred Twenty-Eight or just the Blacks. It doesn’t feel authentically Malfoy.”

“I’m not sure what it is,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand, still hanging onto her right with his own. “I thought, we’re talking about monsters, from our past, we’ve never spoken about what happened with Bellatrix. We’re sleeping together every night, it seemed odd not to address it but perhaps that was better—"

“It wasn’t better. But this isn’t necessary,” she said.

“I think it is,” Draco replied. “Necessary, but not better. She’s so hard to talk about and no one wants to, beyond cursing her, and I understand, but to not talk about her, it’s as stupid to me as blasting Andromeda off the tapestry. And I’ve never told you how terribly sorry I am that I couldn’t figure out some other way to help you, when she was hurting you. I don’t know what I could have done but that’s not enough, Hermione. It never was and now—”

Draco broke off and Hermione found herself raising her left hand to cup his cheek, stroking her thumb across his cheekbone. It went on far to long for him to mistake is for only gentleness.

“D’you know, I think we’ve had enough of monsters,” she said. “Only I wonder—”

“What?” he said.

“There’s been no more noise. Might we have done wandless magic with that spell of yours, banished the bedframe’s resident horror to parts unknown? And if we did, will the Eguzkiko be deeply offended and break off diplomatic relations?” Hermione asked.

“I won’t tell,” Draco said. “Wandless is near-impossible to trace and tandem wandless hasn’t been recorded. Or regulated in any magical region. I think we’re safe.”

*

Fact: Draco’s eyes weren’t only grey.

Fact: Draco had been a little boy afraid of monsters.

Fact: Hermione wanted to fall asleep holding Draco Black Malfoy’s hand. And he let her.

#dramione #there was only one bed #fake marriage #rom-com #but with angst #hermione POV #hermione granger #draco malfoy #hermione x draco #post-hogwarts #epilogue what epilogue #sleepy time tropes #diplomat!hermione #lawyer!draco #getting into family stuff #the author repudiates JK Rowling

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 1, Wave 2, Poll 2

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Nathaniel Thorn-Sorcery of Thorns

Qualifications:

Canonically bisexual and uses a cane after one of his legs is injured in the end of the first book. Also, either obviously mentally ill or just mentally-ill coded, depending on how you look at it; PTSD mainly but there's kind of more going on there.

Propaganda:

Miserable, funny, flaming bisexual drama queen. I think he thinks he's in some sort of gothic romance novel. Cane user who suggested getting a sword cane but didn't because his girlfriend basically vetoed it. His trauma-induced nightmares have a habit of coming to life in the real world, so he has to take medicine to prevent it. He was raised by an aroace-coded semi-formerly-evil demon/shapeshifting fluffy cat, which is part of why he's a bit weird. Just trust me, he has swag.

Wei Wuxian-The Untamed / Mo Dao Zu Shi

Qualifications:

Goes through a somewhat unethical organ transplant (in that the person he is giving the organ to doesn't realize that's what's going on) where he gives up his "golden core." This is like his center of power and by giving it up, not only is he not able to do most of the more "magic" things he could do before, but he's also noticeably physically weaker and gets injured much more easily (and takes longer to recover) as well as faints more often (iirc he only faints once pre-golden core removal and that was after sustaining major injuries and going on for a significant time without any healing while also fighting and traveling). Like he finds ways around it and invents new methods so that he can still do some things that he did before, just via a very different method. In the show we don't really see any characters who aren't cultivators, or at least part of that world, so Wei Wuxian is like the only character we really get to see without a golden core.

Also gotta say that this boy is severely depressed. Like "I'm-going-to-ask-my-doctor-friend-to-perform-a-mutliple-day-long-surgery-on-myself-in-which-I-will-be-awake-where-she'll-rip-out-the-core-of-my-being-and-transplant-it-into-my-adopted-brother-who-I'll-make-sure-never-finds-out-what-happened-even-though-he'll-come-to-hate-me" depressed. he has no value for his own life other than what he can give to others, even if it's his own body. like I think some fans unfairly classify him as being insane when he's really just depressed as all hell and having the worst possible things happen to him one after another and every time he breaks down it causes more trouble and usually people end up dying because of him.

Propaganda:

https://youtu.be/swbXAVADjxY ^ok this clip kinda explains the whole thing better (and obvs spoilers)

https://youtu.be/2wO5nsnkSBk ^and this video is just for fun but it's a little thing about Wei Wuxian & Jiang Cheng because their relationship makes me unwell

#polls #poll #disabled characters #lgbtq characters #disability #lgbtq #lgbtq dcs round 1 #lgbtq dcs wave 2 #nathaniel thorn #sorcery of thorns #wei wuxian #the untamed #mo dao zu shi

[kerubimcrepin]

Live-read: The Wheel of Destiny #8, Kerubim.

You can find this article on the Dofus MMO's site, by simply googling it.

A bit of context: this is an article, from the series called "Wheel of Destiny," which focuses on small character studies of various ecaflip characters from the World of Twelve. I won't be doing all of them, just the ones that interest me.

It is my decision to start with this in particular, because of the relatively small size of the article, to test out this... reading liveblogs thing. I hope it goes well, and isn't too boring.

I hate Eca so much it's unreal, just so you know.

To make it more obvious which parts are me, and which parts are the article, while you're skimming the post, I turned on my computer's night mode for making screenshots.

...My sincerest apologies to tumblr's dark mode users, though. I'm sure this is a nightmare for you.

And this is what I was talking about in the previous posts, where I said that, canonically, Kerubim's friendship with Bashi started before the Quest of Two Mornings in Episode 3, Strich Hunt.

Very sad to disappoint, but there does not actually seem to be a Croc Ness monster in the Dofus MMO.

Yet another confirmation of the temple being situated in Amakna. (Besides my own geographical estimations while watching the show, and it literally being there in the Dofus MMO.)

It's a long ass way between the temple, and the swamp, but it is realistically doable for two kids, especially if they have a carriage. (Which Kerubim, being the guy responsible for feeding Ecaflip, does have access too.)

"Five-Cat Monte" is a reference to "Three-Card Monte" which is a real thing.

Glad to know Bashi is also very normal and sane as a kid. Also, very glad that older kids, who give lessons, react to things like this by essentially going "Sure, go die I guess."

God, they are so fucking stupid. Anyway, they are talking about some real landmarks here, all of which are also around Amakna, and seem to be pretty accurate to the in-game geography.

...It feels nice to be right.

...I suppose that, despite its faults, the orphan temple actually gives a shit about its disciples not dying. Color me surprised? Eh, I'm mostly joking. It would be very weird if they didn't.

I will spoil things ahead for you: Ecaflip used magic to make Kerubim look like Atcham.

Bashi's reaction to Atcham being "AAAAH NOT THAT FUCKING CREEPY KID AGAIN 😨". The way he pretty much says, "a ghost?? NO. SOMETHING SCARIER. YOUR WEIRD FUCKING BROTHER."

It all implies., So much. It implies so much. I'm still not over it.

Pictured: my vision of how Bashi reacted to Atcham, when Kerubim (against his will, unwillingly, and deeply embarrassed) was forced to introduce them to one another.

I like to think that before they began to hate one another, Kerubim's relationship with Atcham was similar to what he had with Patafiks. Except instead of copying him, Atcham would, idk. Threaten to kill himself if he got any friend other than him? Threaten to kill his friends?

Something insane and jealousy-based like that.

I may be that guy who's very critical of Kerubim, and constantly going "Atcham's sad implied backstory this, Atcham's sad implied backstory that," but you don't get reactions like that by simply being extremely bullied.

You get reactions like that by being That Heavily Bullied Kid With 20 Mental Illnesses Who Attacks People With Sharp Objects.

Pictured: my rough theory of whatever the fuck happened between Kerubim and Atcham in the orphanage.

It is a funny image... that quickly wraps around back to being sad, once you think about little orphan Atcham, who people fucking hate for being a bingus, who has nobody except for his equally-orphaned brother (who doesn't look weird, can actually make friends, and leave him alone, if he wants to. Which he does.) and how at such a young age he got desperate enough to resort to what seems to be violence to protect himself.

Which got him absolutely no help. And also made people look down on him even further.

I think the funniest part of it all is that Atcham as an adult has:

1. The knowledge that hating Kerubim is literally not productive and a weird fucking coping mechanism.

Yet he keeps doing that.

2. A sort of moral compass that's all about protecting and respecting those in the same shit situation as him. (Even if they insult him. He hates that, but he's mature enough to uh.... just shave people against their will about it.)

While Kerubim is like. Still struggling with even saying that he doesn't even hate his brother. Somehow, he's the more emotionally constipated one.

So normal of them.

Anyway,

I think here we can see a bit of the internal growth Kerubim has had, from the time when he was a child, to adulthood.

Joris cannot picture Kerubim being ashamed, or disgusted, by Atcham, despite this article showing him doing exactly that.

It is the reason why I think one of the factors that contributed to Kerubim adopting, and keeping, Joris, was his guilt over whatever Atcham went through, despite how much he likes to say that he doesn't like Atcham.

Joris is different from other kids: small, weird, probably bald. And in any other situation, it's likely he'd develop a complex about it, except his dialogue in the movie specifically implies that Kerubim has put in conscious parenting effort into preventing exactly that.

While it's obvious that Kerubim loves Joris, there are many flaws in his parenting. So him putting a petabyte worth of effort and research into one single aspect of it is... very telling.

Now for a bit of a reach/headcanon: Who's to say that the reason Joris doesn't have many friends, is not Kerubim trying to isolate him from any potential source of shame or trauma? This part, as I've said, is purely speculation/headcanon — but it is an interesting thought.

And Atcham, who was there, and experienced shit like this from Kerubim, is still swayed by Joris's words.

What I think happened between them is that Kerubim, who yearns for societal approval, is afraid of being like Atcham, who is often ostracized and disliked by people for his looks. Besides this, I think Atcham, who was Going Through Horrors, was clingy.

For these reasons, he pushed Atcham away, and it is this betrayal, coupled with Kerubim's advantages in the form of not looking weird and being Ecaflip's favorite, that made Atcham fucking detest him.

What it all means is that Joris isn't necessarily wrong: Kerubim wouldn't hurt Atcham (at least, not unless it's self defense), and what he did was just... trying to save his own skin as kid.

Which isn't exactly malicious.

And I guess Atcham agrees with Joris on Kerubim's incapability of doing harm to him on purpose. Otherwise, he would never be convinced to change his mind.

There is probably a reason for why Kerubim would rather live in a forest, than go back to the temple looking like Atcham. And as I've said, I don't think it's a happy one.

Now think about Atcham doing this his whole life and get sad. Like I just did.

I think that, of all the things, it's most disgusting that whatever happened to Kerubim and Atcham was happening under the watch of Ecaflip, and perhaps even because of him.

I wouldn't put it past him to orchestrate their hatred for each other for fun. Or because he wanted Kerubim all alone, to himself.

I also find it interesting, the way Ecaflip says "once more" here. Implies that it used to be a normal thing for him. I suppose my guesses of Kerubim being disliked by other kids due to Atcham may have some merit.

And god, it makes me so, so sad.

He cares enough to intervene when Kerubim is about to die, which goes against his own rules, but not when it's about his kids' life being fucking awful.

...Maybe Oropo was right.

Do we know if Ecaflip's emotions are even genuine? He is the narrator of this story, after all, and he could be lying. He puts Kerubim in danger many times. Many. Just for fun and his own amusement.

I will take Ecaflip's narration as a straight-forward one, — that he really is feeling these things, but it still reads as manipulation, even if he is doing it for "Kerubim's sake". He's not a good father and never will be one, and these are very cruel lessons.

I will be real, their relationship disgusts me to my heart <3 Amen.

And now we know why Kerubim is... like that. And why his parenting is so overbearingly sweet, controlling, and obsessed with making sure Joris knows he adores him and adores him back.

Perhaps, despite everything, Atcham was the luckier one for not having Ecaflip's "love" the way Kerubim did, but honestly, I feel both of them had it equally shitty.

A true "would you rather sit on an anthill or sit on a cactus" choice.

#wheel8 #ro liveblogs dofus #dofus #wakfu #krosmoz #atcham crepin #kerubim crepin #Youtube #still hate that tumblr automatically adds this tag to posts that have videos in them but whatever.

[mulderscully]

*disclaimer: i wrote this based on the leaks and am publishing it after the episode airs because i have been dying to talk about it. some stuff could have been lost or confused in translation.

something to be said about nandor confusing guillermo's boyfriend as his best friend and being jealous of that because we know nandor sees guillermo as his best friend, then him deciding he needs to turn marwa into freddie in order to be happy. maybe because he sees that guillermo was happy and thought if he duplicated it it would make him happy too, without fully grasping how many boundaries he has crossed. he has so much love for guillermo and he genuinely has no idea how to deal with it or where to place it.

he puts marwa/freddie on the trip to see the world, which was what he wanted, and what he wanted with guillermo and it's so clear how badly what he lost in that trip haunts him and i think he doesn't understand why it didn't affect guillermo the same way. why guillermo was able to find happiness with someone else while he just became more miserable. him being so emotional sending marwa/freddie away is really interesting because we know he and marwa did not have any real connection, he did not care about her. he also did not know freddie. that emotion is about nandor and his continued sense of emptiness and longing for something he cannot allow himself to admit, which is how bad he wanted that trip with guillermo and wants guillermo in general. he can't have guillermo because he can't admit this, so he wants the person closest to guillermo. he wants guillermo all for himself, but he cannot verbalize that because that means actually understanding himself and being vulnerable - and in his actions to avoid his feelings he keeps pushing guillermo further away.

i think guillermo still loves nandor, he has loved him almost half his life and that doesn't just go away - but i think that this season at the beginning was about starting to truly break the familiar/master relationship and have them be friends and equals, but as the season went on they fell back into old habits and there needed to be this final straw to make guillermo be fully fed up and set up for season five, where i am guessing nandor will actually have to do a shitton of self reflection and growth and groveling. i kinda expected that to happen this season, but it is hard to fit that into 10 23 min long episodes.

what's interesting is that, i don't feel like guillermo is distraught at losing freddie per se, he barely mentiond him all season, but more upset that nandor still doesn't respect him the way he should and that has led to the end of the one thing in 13 years that was 100% his. but i feel like guillermo's true feelings are hard gage for me because they've really had him be distant with his emotions in terms of like.... everything.

but i think it all just comes down to nandor thinking he is showing guillermo love by NOT turning him because he thinks being a vampire is a curse and guillermo thinking nandor doesn't love or respect him because he won't turn him yet still wants to keep him all to himself, not understanding that nandor feels like if he turns guillermo then guillermo will leave for good because he got all he wanted from nandor.

i don't know really think nandor's actions this season are excusable per se, esp this episide, but i do think they are understandable. not only is nandor a vampire, he is also stupid (canon) and he is also deeply mentally ill. he has made a lot of progress but the fact that he has all these hidden desires and this quest for perfection that he thinks he can reach with wishes and magic, make him backslide and hurt the one he loves most. and he is going to have to face true accountability for everything that has happened this season, which i look forward to.

i do have a very, very icky feeling about what they did to marwa. from making her a shell of a person who just likes what nandor likes to LITERALLY turning her into a white man. i always kinda thought she and freddie would run off together and fall in love, because it feels kinda fitting for nandor and guillermo's false romantic leads, but not like this.

i am giving this "ending" for her the benefit of the doubt because i don't think it's over. nandor still has two wishes and i am pretty confident marwa and freddie will return in s5. i get the sense that the s3 finale will have consequences for the rest of the show and the trip that nandermo had stolen from them will continue to plague them and their relationship as well as everyone who their relationship impacts for a while.

i understand being angry at nandor, but i genuinely find him so interesting because while he has done a lot of morally horrible things i do NOT think he had any malicious intent and i don't think he wanted to hurt anyone- but he has and he is gonna have to cope with that. he isn't beyond redemption (if you wanna think of it like that) or past winning guillermo back but i think he is gonna have a real wake up call to how selfish and hurtful he has been before any of that can happen.

#wwdits #wwdits spoilers #nandor the relentless #nandermo

[siswritesyanderes]

May I please have some yandere Elsa headcanons with a Female!Reader who can use magic like her?

(For the purposes of these headcanons, I'm ignoring most of what Frozen 2 brings to the lore, just because I find all of it less fun to work with.)

You wouldn't believe how much of a relief it is that she doesn't have to be as careful with you as she is with everyone and everything else, all the time.

She's pretty reserved in public, so the fact that she often holds your hand without gloves is practically her equivalent of making out in front of everyone.

In private, she's all about cuddling. Very touch starved. Cold feet plastered to your leg every night.

She likes to see you use your powers. It makes her happy to have someone like her, and she loves it when you show it proudly.

She is extremely sharp with anyone who tries to call you a witch or in any way disparage you for your magic. She would never express it this way, but she actually kind of enjoys when this happens, because they give her an excuse to act very possessive and also externalize her own feelings of slightedness from having been mistreated for her own powers. When someone mistreats you, she gets to punish them as a protective lover and protect you as a proxy for the version of herself she let Them stifle.

She develops a real Us vs. Them mentality around this.

Usually, she punishes people in the queen way and not the sorceress way. If she freezes someone in a block of ice or shoots an icicle through their heart, they must have posed a threat to you physically. For verbal stuff, it ranges from a stern reprimand (which no one is used to; she's normally so mild-mannered) to arrest. After all, it's treason to speak ill of the queen's consort...she decided.

She's a good ruler! But you are a very specific button she does not play about.

If she has to ice sculpture someone who didn't learn that until too late, then that's hardly her fault. She's done letting everything be her fault!

If you don't want to be with her, that's...fine. No, it's fine. She's not going to make you. But there's a very comfortable spot by her side (if you want it!), and you'd be surprised how quickly everywhere else can get uncomfortable.

As quick as an overnight frost.

#yandere disney #yandere queen elsa #yandere elsa #female yandere