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#which is almost a lie because it’s mostly projection
sepulchritude · 10 months
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I got bored and decided to reread my fic in a new way, so here’s the official The Simple Truth—
Kokichi Lie Count (by chapter)
7
5
5
2
2
9 (nice)
4
2
9
4
0
3
2
1
11
4
0
That’s an average of about 4 lies per chapter. I didn’t include times when he intentionally prods at people to get a reaction unless it involved a direct lie, but I did include a few lies by omission.
Analysis below 👇
The two 0 lie chapters are pretty interesting to me because tbh that’s pretty out of character for him. In chapter 11 Kokichi doesn’t have a big role (although that doesn’t stop him in other similar chapters) and spends most of his time sniping back and forth with Maki. Genuine dislike trumps chronic lying habit I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But in chapter 17 he has a ton of screen time, they’re having a sleepover with Kaito and Maki and they’re all sitting around chatting while they do slumber party stuff (#girlsnight), but Kokichi just isn’t lying. Not even casual funny lies to match the lighthearted vibes of the scene. He’s still being himself (nuisance) but he doesn’t quite feel the need to be dishonest about anything. It’s interesting and as the author I kinda want to poke and prod at this chapter more to figure out what’s up with him here
As for chapter 15 with a whopping 11 lies in a single conversation, this one makes a lot of sense. He thinks he’s going to enjoy a little light vandalism, theft, and mischief in Tsumugi’s office, only to be confronted by a Tsumugi who is not acting anymore and is happily ready to verbally rip him to shreds using like five deeply ingrained insecurities he barely knows he has. He is not ready lmfao and he lies and deflects as much as he can to cover for the fact that she’s hitting hard and he can’t land a scratch on her. RIP 💀
This was a cool lens to analyze this fic with! In terms of finding a pattern in Kokichi’s lying, I’d say it’s not right to just conclude “oh he lies under pressure” or “oh he lies because it’s fun.” Those are both true. He lies to distract people, to mislead people, to entertain himself, to protect himself, to disguise the truth, to highlight the truth, to make light of situations, the list goes on and on. He often makes it pretty clear when he’s lying, too, but that’s just another defense mechanism to keep you from looking too closely at the lies he doesn’t telegraph (or worse, the truths he wants you to dismiss as lies)
What I think would be an interesting pairing to this reading would be to count Shuichi’s lies instead. He doesn’t do it as much, and usually out of politeness, but the ones I noticed had me like 👀 Especially his lies by omission, hoo boy that boy(?) can deflect like a champ. He still hasn’t told anyone the full story of why he left or what he said to Kaede.
If you read this, thank you for walking with me on this little analysis! I’m super invested in this fic and love analyzing different aspects of it to use when writing/planning new chapters 😃
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emphistic · 1 month
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Sukuna Headcanons
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a/n: this is from the same universe in my Boy Nextdoor Series, in this drabble yuuji is sukuna's baby brother, i mightve gotten a bit carried away while writing this
@starlets-things PS: idk if you wanted me to tag you in a part two of "Buttface", or just another part of my Boy Nextdoor Series (example: being part of a tag list), pls lmk though
Please REFRAIN from REPOSTING MY WORK
(REBLOGS ARE EXEMPTED FROM THIS RULE)
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These are mostly pre-relationship hcs (post-relationship hcs are towards the end of this post)
Neighbor!Sukuna who hangs out at your house constantly, whether it be for studying, playing a game, or having your weekly movie night, he's there almost 24/7
Neighbor!Sukuna who would always force you to partner up with him whenever a group project was assigned; he always played it off as "I'm just using you to get a good grade" — which is a total lie if you haven't caught on yet
Neighbor!Sukuna who discovered his love for whenever you played with his hair when you pushed him into the pool and had to blow-dry his hair as recompense
Neighbor!Sukuna who sometimes forgets that his friends were supposed to come over when you were already at his house
Neighbor!Sukuna who constantly teases you for the height difference between you and him
Neighbor!Sukuna who always walks you to class, even if it means being late to his [own classes]
Neighbor!Sukuna who, without a doubt, hates your friends, like absolutely despises them — this is because he doesn't like the fact that they take your attention away from him
Neighbor!Sukuna who has a hate and love relationship whenever you come over to babysit his brother when he's busy at basketball practice or something — he loves having you over at his house, but he hates that he has to miss seeing your smile and hearing your voice
Neighbor!Sukuna who never listens during class because he's always staring at you
You turned your head around to be faced with a surprised Sukuna. "Hey. Stop staring at me, Freak."
Sukuna would always roll his eyes at that, denying the accusation, but you knew the truth, though — and so did your whole class, maybe even the whole school too, your teachers included
Neighbor!Sukuna who gets on your nerves on purpose because he is obsessed, utterly infatuated with the cute face you make whenever you're mad
He thinks you're adorable when you're upset, especially when the cause is him
Neighbor!Sukuna who sometimes makes you a little too angry, resulting in detention for the both of you — however, he doesn't mind the extra time he gets to spend with you
Post-establishedrelationship hcs:
Neighbor!Sukuna who always shuts you up with a kiss whenever he thinks you talk too much (he is a little mean, yes)
Neighbor!Sukuna who can't stand when other people are talking to you
Neighbor!Sukuna who always has to be touching you one way or another — whether that be a hand around your shoulder, hand on your waist, or even your hand wrapped around his bicep/arm, sometimes he doesn't even realize he has a hand on you, it's just become instinct now
Neighbor!Sukuna who kicks the back of your knee when he wants you to stop talking to someone, and talk to him instead
Neighbor!Sukuna who forces you to wear his jersey whenever he has a game; he loves seeing his last name on your back — he always points you out in a crowd to his teammates
"See that pretty girl over there? Yeah, that's mine."
Neighbor!Sukuna who can't resist slapping your ass whenever you walk past; it's become a natural instinct at this point
Neighbor!Sukuna who is actually super clingy, but he'll never admit that; he'll spam you with nonstop calls and texts just to ignore you when you do eventually respond
Neighbor!Sukuna who can't fall asleep without you beside him in bed
Neighbor!Sukuna who loves when you kiss him on the cheek — he doesn't even know why, he just thinks it feels more intimate than an actual kiss on the lips
Neighbor!Sukuna who always carries your bag
Neighbor!Sukuna who rarely gets sick, but sometimes gets sick on purpose just to have you take care of him
Neighbor!Sukuna who would always kiss you, even if you were sick
Neighbor!Sukuna who pretends not to pay your guys' dinner bill but actually sneaks the money into your purse after you go to sleep
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crimsonbubble · 3 months
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Hi it's anon who was hornyspeaking about Johnny's nose UR SO RIGHT ABOUT THICK PPL!!! I was thinking about MK1 men, I feel like none of them would turn their nose up at thicker!reader but i feel like some of them would actively pursue them.
I feel like it's just obvious Johnny would like thicker people. He'd always have his hands grabbing or touching you in some way and would def squeeze your softer parts just to watch them bounce back into place. Not to be cliche but look me in the eyes and try to tell me this man wouldn't buy you things that show off your body and accentuates every gorgeous curve and fold like c'mon. Would also make some corny ass comments like "my ears are cold, can I use your thighs to worn them?" or something like that.
Kung Lao would be similar to Johnny but I feel like he would tease you more about it. Not in a malicious way, but more of an affectionate way, calling you curvy girl/pretty boy/my little pudge while wrapping himself around you from behind and just lovingly squeezing the softness of your lower belly. I think he'd also playfully pinch the soft parts of your thighs, your arms, your waist and just smirk when you squirm at how sensitive and ticklish they are.
I feel like Syzoth would be a very touchy feely boyfriend since he's cold-blooded, so of course having a chubbier partner = more warmth and softness to curl up against and cuddle with. Would absolutely nuzzle his face into your stomach so lovingly, holding your thighs to gently press them into his face as he lays down and uses your soft tummy as a pillow, you're like his own little sunning rock. He's almost in tears at just how soft your skin is and how good it feels to just hold you in his arms and would be telling you how much he loves you the entire time.
Bi-Han wouldn't be as open about it, not because he's ashamed of having a thicker partner (quite the opposite) he just doesn't like to admit any weaknesses he might have. He would try and chalk it up to something along the lines of you having a more fertile body and being more likely to produce an heir for the Lin Kuei or something but in reality he just can't keep his eyes off your body, and when you're not around he can't keep you off his mind. Would also like to show you off as a status symbol, seeing you as proof of how powerful he is, priding himself on being able to keep you pampered and taken care of.
Liu Kang just appreciates beauty when he sees it, and he thinks your body is the most beautiful thing he's ever created. Very much a soft dom and would be heavy into body worship, so having a chubbier partner just means more to worship and lavish with affection. Mans would BURY himself in your softness. You can tell he's immortal because he spends so long kissing and caressing and praising every inch of your body like he has all the time in the world, which he does, so you're both gonna be there for a long time.
Sorry to ramble this is mostly projection I just needed to unleash my thoughts somewhere RAHHH I LOVE THICKER!READER‼️💥
cw. suggestive, gn!reader, thicker!reader, mentions of pregnancy *not proofread, just pure horny
[BRO THIS ASK IS LONG AS FUCK, still answered it tho]
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Johnny Cage
Casual Sunday lie-ins
Lounging on the couch with his head resting on your thighs
He’s the type to lose his mind when you wear form fitting clothes
Like anything that highlights and accentuates your curves good lord he's falling to his knees
And it doesn’t matter how many times he’s seen you hear tight fitting clothes, he will be bricked up every time
Kung Lao
He’s a very physical lover
Hugs, cuddles, snuggles, and any type of skin ship he can think of it benign used
Finds amusement in pinching at your waist and thighs
He likes how you frown at him for a second before going back to what you were doing
He always keeps a hand on your belly when he’ss between your thighs
He also loves to show off how strong he is so-
Syzoth
Soft and warm tummy and thighs means soft and warm pillows
It’s like he wants to be under your skin anytime that he clings to you
But he’s got the cutest pout and the prettiest eyes so you can’t help but give into him
Bihan
Bihan trying to avoid staring at you for too long bc all he can stare at are your hips
He had a thought of you being pregnant once and it’s been haunting him since
Literally can not look at you without getting hot under the collar
He works hard so he can show of how well taken care of you are
But seriously though, he stares at your hips too much
Just let him give you a child, help him produce an heir
Liu Kang
He has mastered the art of seeing the beauty is everyone and everything
You are no exception
There is a glow to you that outmatches everyone
There is something so alluring about your soft figure that has all of Liu Kang’s primal urges resurfacing
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beebeetheclown · 4 months
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Quiet as a Mouse
Oliver Quick x fem!reader
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Summary: You attend college with Oliver Quick. He is quiet and a little strange. You think you are nothing alike, he proves you wrong when you are assigned partners for an assignment.
Notes: This is different from what I usually write so bear with me here👀 I needed to write about Oliver as soon as I watched Saltburn because I love little freaky men and I know you do too, don’t lie😏 Hope you enjoy it😊
Also, go read my bestie’s, @aurorag98’s, Saltburn fic if you haven’t already, it is perfect in every way.
Read here on ao3
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It was your second year of college when you first spoke to Oliver, he was in one of your classes. You thought you were different from one another as he was quiet and you were more talkative and went out to a lot of parties. In your first year, you weren’t as extroverted, it was actually your boyfriend who helped you come out of your shell more, he was the one who dragged you out to all the parties. Now that you have been with your boyfriend for a while, you became more like him and enjoyed things that he liked, which was mostly drinking and partying.
It was hard to focus on studies when you went out a lot as it would give you less time to study and actually focus as you would sometimes go to class with a hangover. You were very smart though, so even when you felt like shit from the other night, you managed to keep your grades high.
The only reason you had spoken to Oliver was because you had been assigned as partners for a big assignment. You would much rather have the professor let you pick your own partners but he said that it was better that he picked as it would make people fool around less. He also said that it was good to get to know others.
You figured Oliver was pretty smart, he’d attend every class and you had seen him in the library often either studying or reading. You didn’t really want to be his partner though because you knew nothing about him and he didn’t know anything about you, so it would probably be awkward.
“Switch tables and sit with your partners, this will be the seating plan now as you will be working on this project until the break. You have three weeks to complete it.” The professor says.
You sigh a little, not wanting to have to sit next to him because you knew you’d most likely have to do all the talking, but you had no choice, you collect your things and go to sit next to him.
He looks up at you, and to your surprise, he’s the first one to speak, “Looks like we’re partners.”
“Looks like it.” You reply and sit next to him, “So, I guess we just decide which part we will each work on. I’ll choose mine and you’ll choose yours, we work on it individually then share them and put them together the last week before it's due.” He just looks at you with his blue eyes before looking down at the paper, you could tell something was on his mind, “Unless, there was something else you had planned.”
“Well, the professor said we work on it together, not individually.” He says quietly, continuing to keep his eyes on the instruction paper.
You grew annoyed easily when things didn’t go your way, it was something you got from your boyfriend. You didn’t let your annoyance show as you knew that you’d be with him for the next three weeks. You had to get along with him otherwise the three weeks would feel even longer.
“Yes, it’s just harder to work together as we, you know, don’t know each other well. But it’s fine, we can figure something out.” You say and then your phone buzzes, it’s a text from your boyfriend and you immediately smile and text him back. Oliver was now annoyed with you, but like you, he didn’t let it show.
“So, I think we should pick our parts now, class is almost over, I want to start early so we can finish early. That way, we’ll have free time for a while in the end.” He says as he looks at you typing on your phone.
“Alright, you can pick your parts, I’m fine with whatever.” You say, still looking at your phone. Oliver just takes a deep breath in and exhales before he looks over the papers while you stay on your phone. A few minutes pass and he has read them over,
“Okay, I think I’ll do part 1, 5, and 8. You can have the others.” Finally, you put your phone down and look at the parts he gave you, they are a lot of work but you shrug it off.
“Cool, sounds good to me.”
“Would it… be okay if you started tonight? You don’t have to do much, even a little research is fine.”
You look at him, “Yeah, I’ll start some, no problem.” You give him a fake little smile. You knew that you most likely wouldn’t start anything. Soon, class ends and you are done for the day. Your only plans now were to go to the library after dinner to help your boyfriend with his school work, he wasn’t the brightest at school, it was almost like his party life was more important to him.
Hardly anyone was in the campus library as it was later in the evening and it was closing in an hour or so. The two of you enter the library and laugh together as you hold hands and you walk with him to find a computer. When you sit down next to him, you look up only to see Oliver sitting at another table a few feet away from you.
“Shit.” You say quietly and laugh.
“What?”
“My project partner is here. I told him that I’d work on the project. I haven’t even started.” You can’t help but laugh quietly.
“Just lie to him, no big deal. Now, help me with this essay before I fall asleep.” You begin to help him and Oliver soon notices you. He can’t seem to stop studying you. He was watching you to see if you were working, seeing who you were with. He hesitated for a second but when he sees you laugh with your boyfriend and put your hands in his hair, he stands and makes his way over to you.
“Hey, sorry I don’t mean to bother you.”
You turn and look up at him, “No, don’t worry about it. Is there something you need?”
“I just come over here to tell you that I’ve got part one started, you know, for the project.”
“Oh, okay um, that’s good. You can share it next class.”
“Yeah, okay. I was just wondering if you… got any work for the project done?”
You side glance at your boyfriend before answering. Oliver captured the small glance, he was good at catching the small details of a person, the side glance told him everything he needed to know. He knew you hadn’t started, but he let you finish speaking anyway.
“Oh, yeah. I got a little research done earlier today.”
“Great, you can share it with me in the next class.” He grins a little, knowing now that if you were going to keep lying to him, you’d have to get work done now as you’d have to show it to him next class.
“Uh huh, right. It’s uh, that’s not a problem. See you next class Oliver.”
“Okay, see you.” Before he leaves, he looks over at your boyfriend for just a second with a blank expression.
Your boyfriend leans into you and speaks into your ear when Oliver is walking back to his own table, “Yikes.”
You playfully hit him in the arm and laugh. Little did the two of you know, Oliver heard the words leave your boyfriend's lips and he felt upset. He already hated your boyfriend. Oliver wanted to be better than him in some way, he didn’t know how yet, but he would find a way. He always found a way to get what he wanted.
The next few classes, Oliver knew that you didn���t start the work. He had listened to so many of your lies, hearing you say that you forgot your notebook, saying that your laptop with all of your work on it was dead, or that you had forgotten your USB stick. He came up with a plan, he knew how to make sure you would actually start working.
“Why don’t you just come to my dorm room tonight? That way, we can work together. I can even help you with yours.” He looks down at the table, “... Or start yours.”
You look at him, “I have started.” You lie.
This only makes him look back at you, “Look, you don’t have to lie to me anymore. I know you haven’t started. I won’t get angry with you if you come and work with me, just this one time. Please?”
You think for a moment, you really didn’t want to go to his dorm because you felt as if it would be both awkward and boring, but you did have to get work done eventually, “Okay, I’ll come over, but just this once. You can just help me get started and I’ll go from there.”
He smiles a little, “Perfect. How does six o’clock sound?”
“Six sounds fine.” He soon gives you where his dorm was located and unlike you, he was actually excited to have you over. He wanted to get closer with you, not just for the project, but in general. He found a lot of people pretty or handsome, you were one of those people.
You went out to dinner that night at a little pub with your boyfriend. You went out at four, you knew you had to be over at Oliver’s by six, but you didn’t see a problem if you would be a little late.
Coincidentally, he was at the pub too. Well, he was outside of the pub. He was on the street when he saw you a few feet ahead of him with your boyfriend and he watched you enter the pub. He slowly made his way closer to the building and gazed through one of the windows and he spotted you sitting at a booth. He watched you for a moment and you didn’t notice him watching. There were a few tables outside, so when one of the waiters asked if he needed something, it kicked him back into reality.
“No, sorry. Just looking.” He says, but before the waiter can walk away further, he stops her, “Hey, actually could I just get one drink?”
“Of course, would you like to sit inside or outside?”
“Inside please.”
“Of course, we should have a table open for you.” He follows the waiter inside and she begins to lead him closer to your table, you still didn’t see him as your back was to him.
He notices that the booth next to yours is empty and he knows that the waiter most likely was leading him to it, he stops in his tracks, “Hey, actually, I might just sit at the bar on one of the stools. Thanks though.” With that, he turns and walks to the bar and sits down. You were still in his vision.
While he is sitting at the bar counter, you are still at your booth just a few feet away. Your boyfriend is facing where Oliver was sitting and he sees him, “Hey, isn’t that the guy? Your nerdy project partner?”
You stop smiling before turning you back to look where your boyfriend was looking and you spot him. He is looking at you but when he catches your gaze, he quickly turns to face forward again.
“What is he doing here?” You say, half laughing and half annoyed.
“Maybe he is following you.”
“What’s the time?”
Your boyfriend checks his phone, “five thirty, why?”
“He wanted me to come over to his dorm at six so we could start this stupid project early.”
“You’re going to his place?” Your boyfriend asked with a concerned look on his face, “You didn't tell me.”
“Well, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Why can’t you just work on it at school?”
You shrug, “He seemed to really want to work on it at his place.”
“The campus isn’t far, I wonder if he walked here as well. You should ask him to walk back with us.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think we should just leave him alone. He’d probably rather walk back alone anyway.” You reply. “We should actually head back.”
He pays for your meals and begins to walk towards the door with you. In order to get to the door, you’d have to walk right past the bar where Oliver was sitting.
Your boyfriend tends to always do what he wants so when the group walks past Oliver, he stops right next to Oliver, “Hey, you’re my girlfriend's project partner, am I correct?”
You turn back to look, annoyed that he said anything even after you told him not to.
Oliver looks at him, then to you, and then to him again, “That would be correct, yes.”
Your boyfriend gives him a fake little grin, “We were just heading back to the campus. She tells me that you two are planning to work together soon. Would you like to walk back with us?”
Oliver just looks at the two of you. Before he can say anything, you speak, “You don’t have to. I can just meet you at your place. I have your dorm number.”
Your boyfriend barges in, “No, no. We insist you come with us.”
You give your boyfriend an annoyed glare but he ignores it. Oliver speaks again, “Alright, sure. I can walk back with you guys. I was planning to leave now anyway.”
“Great.” Your boyfriend replies, and soon, you along with Oliver make your way back to campus with you both.
Your boyfriend was the one who did most of the talking, once in a while, his friends would join in. They paid most of their attention to Oliver.
“So, Oliver, what brought you to the pub? We maybe thought you were following us.”
“No, I came for the same reason as you, I wanted to get out for a bit.”
“Right. But you went out alone.” Your boyfriend replies. “This must be weird to you, hey? Walking with us. I seen you around, you seem like you don’t hang out with people like us, or you are and I’m just not seeing it.”
You stay quiet and listen to what Oliver replies with,
“People like you?”
“Yeah, people like us. We party, go out, get drunk. It’s fun, you should try it sometime.” Your boyfriend continues blabbering, “I’m curious now as to why you chose my girlfriend as your partner.”
You finally speak up, “He didn’t choose, the professor did.”
“Ah, I see. That’s a shame for you isn’t it.” He jokes and nudges his arm into yours playfully.
You look at Oliver then at your boyfriend, “Stop.” You say quietly. He was beginning to get on your nerves a little. The one thing you didn’t really like about him is that he could be mean at times and he would be cocky about it.
“What? Oh, come on. It was a joke. It was a joke Oliver, clearly you aren’t offended, right?’
“No, I’m not offended.” He replies coldly.
“See? You are too soft sometimes.” He wraps his arm around you and kisses the side of your head. Oliver watched as your boyfriend held you close to him and kissed your head. There was some sort of anger building up in his stomach.
Soon, the three of you finally make it back to the campus and it is now time to break apart. You were going with Oliver to his dorm. Your boyfriend whispered “Good luck” to you before he left the two of you and it now grew silent for a moment as you both just stood still in the hallway.
“It’s just down this way.” Oliver says, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
You follow him down the hallway, the whole time your mind was only thinking about how you wanted to apologize to him for how your boyfriend was treating him. You don’t apologize right away and just walk in silence beside him. You couldn’t help but notice that Oliver smelt good, you didn’t know exactly what he smelt like, maybe a flower of some kind, but all you knew was that he smelt good.
He breaks you out of your thoughts as he makes it to the door of his dorm and unlocks it, “You don’t have your things. It’s okay, I probably have paper or something you can borrow.” He could have just sent you to go get your things as it would probably only take you about ten minutes, but he was growing impatient and he even thought that maybe if you left him, you’d run away.
When you enter his room, you look around and see that everything is clean and so organized, crazy organized. Everything everywhere was straightened out, the things on his desk, the pillows on his bed, everything. The one thing you did realize was that he had no pictures or posters on his walls, they were bare.
“No posters?” You ask.
“No, I like how it is.”
Something was on his mind, and you could tell, “Hey, I’m sorry about him. My boyfriend can sometimes say a lot of stupid things. He is kind of cocky.”
“Cocky?”
“Yes.”
He looks at you deeply and says your name, “Your boyfriend’s a dick.”
Your eyes widen, “I’m sorry?”
“He’s a dick. I don’t know why you are with him. You deserve someone better.” He walks over to his desk and gets papers out, “We should start now.”
“Hold on, you just called my-”
“Yes, I did. Can we work now, please.”
“So that’s why you are alone often. You are quiet but when you speak to someone, you insult them.”
“I am not insulting you, I am insulting your idiot boy.”
“Okay, and? That’s basically the same thing.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to hurt your little feelings, all I’m saying is,” he pauses for a minute, “What’s happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last year, you were like me. Quiet, smart, focused on work. You were these things but not a total ‘nerd’. We were similar and now ever since you met this guy, you’ve acted differently. I liked you better before.”
Hearing him say all of this just makes you still in silence for a moment. You barely even remembered him from last year and he seemed to remember you so well, as if the two of you had spoken before.
“How did you know that?”
He shrugs, “I’ve seen you around. Is it fun hanging out with them? Do you like it better than how it was before?”
You think for a moment, you honestly had never thought about it before, “I don’t know.” You reply softly, “I can’t remember what I liked about being quiet rather than outgoing. Do you like it quiet? Do you like it this way?”
“I do. It’s peaceful really. But I hate being looked down on by people like your boyfriend. I sometimes want to be the way he is, not give a shit about anything and have fun.”
“Then how come you don’t go out more? You can come out with my group of friends if you’d like.” You saw Oliver in yourself now, he was alone but was too afraid to go out because everyone else felt different than him. He felt alienated.
“They wouldn’t like me. I am not like you anymore. You have changed into a copy of everyone else. At least I stay the same.”
Just as you thought you were finally getting along with him, he gets on your nerves again and you get on his. You would just be annoyed with him but his annoyance felt different, he was annoyed with you but felt a weird connection to you. He wanted you to like him but he also wanted to show you that he could be strong and that he didn’t just pretend to be strong.
“I was trying to be nice. You make it really difficult for me to like you more, you know that?”
“I don’t need you to like me, I just want you to respect me. Look at me as if I am the same as you.”
“Well, we are not the same. Maybe we were a year ago, but not anymore.”
“We are the same. Deep down, you are just like me.” He walks closer to you now, “I can see right through you.”
“You’re crazy. I came here to work on this stupid assignment and all you’re doing is insulting me and speaking nonsense.”
He chuckles softly, “You’re boyfriend was right, you are too soft, aren’t you? I am not insulting you, I am just telling you the truth. Truths aren’t always what we want to hear, most people hate the truth, but you can’t run away from it. You can’t run away from reality no matter how hard you try. Trust me.”
Your faces were inches apart now and it seems as if he has trapped you in place somehow because you feel as if you can’t move back or push him away, you just stand still and let him inch closer.
“You need help Oliver. You need fucking help. You are even crazier than I thought.”
His smile only grows, “I think you’ve got the wrong word. I am real, raw, not crazy. God, there are not enough real people here. That’s why I liked seeing you last year, you were real like me, I could feel it.” He brings his hand and tucks hair behind your ears and you let him, “You don’t have to be scared.”
“I’m not scared.” You whisper back.
“Then why’d you change yourself? You changed yourself to be better for him, changed to be how society makes people like your boyfriend cool and people like us strange. You didn’t want to be strange, so you changed.”
All of his words were true, you couldn’t believe that you only started talking to him and he was revealing truths that were hidden deeply in your mind. You thought no one else knew about your truth, but he did.
You begin to cry very quietly, a couple of tears run down your cheeks. “You are pretty when you cry, has anyone ever told you that?” He asks. You shake your head and continue to cry softly, “So quiet, so small, like a little mouse. Your eyes look all glassy when you cry, it brings out the beautiful colour of them more.”
He leans in closer and brings his tongue to your cheek, licking the tear off your skin with the tip of his tongue. You could feel his warm breath on your skin. He moves his lips to the left side of your face and does the same, bringing his tongue to lick away your tears.
He holds the sides of your face in between his hands and looks at you in the eyes, “You are like me, and I am like you. Just give it up, give in and admit that it’s the truth.”
“Okay.” You whisper.
“Let me hear you say it. I need you to say it. Tell me what I just told you.”
It takes you a couple of seconds before you obey and repeat his words, “You are like me and I am like you.”
“Good girl. Say it again.” His voice was soft but demanding. You’ve never been in a situation like this. You were under his control, his power. You were too weak to move, you couldn’t do anything else but listen to him and do as he told you. You didn’t know how he did it. Oliver was quiet, but had so much control, he had you at the palm of his hands, right where he wanted you.
“You are like me and I am like you.”
“Again.”
You keep on repeating the same sentence over and over again. You only stop when he runs his tongue along your lower lip very slowly before he kisses you. He still has his hands at the sides of your head as he continues to kiss you. You kiss him back and part your lips, allowing him to slip his tongue inside of your mouth to meet your tongue.
Your mind was running with so many thoughts, it was so loud and everything didn’t seem like it was real, you felt as if you were in some crazy dream, a crazy nightmare. He begins to push you gently backwards so you make it to his bed. When the back of your legs hit the edge of his bed, he pushes you so you sit on his bed.
“Who are you Oliver?” You ask.
He leans down so his lips are close to yours again, “Do you want to find out?”
You shake your head and continue to look into his eyes, “Why are you doing this? How- why can’t I stop you?”
“You can’t stop me because you want me. You want me just like I knew you would.” He begins to drag his fingers up your thigh, “Are you going to take off your clothes, or are you just going to sit there and stare?”
You finally snap back into reality, “No, Oliver. You are not doing this. I can’t. I have to switch partners, I have to tell the professor-”
He stops your words by putting his hand over your mouth, “Can’t you just give in for just a moment? You are so difficult. Are you this difficult with him? Does he even know how to fuck you?” He doesn’t remove his hand yet and he just looks you in the eyes. His eyes were the colour of water, but they were burning through you like fire, “Now, when I remove my hand, you are going to smarten up. You are going to be quiet and give in to what you want. No more lies, all we want here is truth, okay?”
You can’t help but nod your head and he removes his hand and the room falls silent for a minute. You were wet between your thighs and that was no lie. You shouldn’t have been, you liked your boyfriend. You felt like you couldn’t say you loved him yet but that didn’t mean that cheating on him was not a big deal. It was a huge deal, if he found out about it. Oliver was quiet, the secret would be in good hands.
“I don’t want to take my top off.” You whisper, “I will feel guilty.”
“Then take off your pants.” He brings the back of his hand to stroke the side of your face, “He won’t find out. If you stay quiet, it will be easy; he won’t catch on. All you have to do is be quiet about it. Be quiet like me. You get away with a lot more things when you keep to yourself.”
You look at him the whole time you begin to remove both your pants and panties, you are soaking wet, you shouldn’t be but you are. He is already hard in his pants, he was dreaming about having you like this ever since he first saw you.
“Now it’s my turn. I am going to remove everything and you are going to watch.” He says and pulls his shirt over his head. You couldn’t believe what you were doing, sitting half nude on Oliver’s bed and watching him undress himself. First of all, you had your boyfriend, and second, you never thought Oliver would be like this. You saw him like a deer, quiet with pretty eyes. But he wasn’t a deer when he was alone with you, if anything, he was the opposite. He still looked like a little deer, but he didn’t act like one.
Soon, he is standing in front of you naked, you don’t even look at his body and just keep your eyes on his, feeling as if it would make you feel less guilty of cheating on your boyfriend if you didn’t look at his body.
“What now?” You ask innocently.”
“What now? What do you mean ‘what now’? Has your boyfriend never fucked you good enough? I bet he just gets right into it doesn’t he, bet he doesn’t even excite you first.” He chuckles a little, “That dumb boy. Spread your legs, quit being so scared.”
You do as you’re told and just sit there, waiting for what to be told to do next. He kneels down in front of you now and admires your pussy, “Does he ever eat you out before fucking you?”
“Sometimes.” You reply, “I don’t want to talk about him, Oliver, not when I’m like this.”
“Like what?”
“Having you in front of me while my legs are spread. It’s so wrong.”
“Oh, but it’s so right. You want this, look at how wet you are. Stop pretending to be someone you’re not just to get him to like you. You’ll regret it, trust me.” Right after he says this, he latches his lips onto you and tastes you, gliding his tongue along your walls. Your hand falls down to his hair and you brush your fingers through it. A loud noise leaves your lips and it makes him hum into you in satisfaction. He ate your pussy as if he was starving.
He doesn’t let you cum, he removes his mouth from you and brings his lips an inch away from yours, “Kiss me. Taste yourself on me to know how good you taste.” You thought he was crazy and doing such a thing was bizarre, but you bring your lips to him and kiss him deeply, tasting yourself on him, “Now, I’m going to fuck you.” He says bluntly when he pulls away, “I was going to fuck you with my fingers like I’ve wanted, but you’ve got me so hard I can’t wait any longer. Maybe next time.”
“There will be no next-” You can’t finish what you were going to say as he pushes you down so you are now on your back and he stands. He pulls you by your legs to get closer to you,
“You’re going to see just how much pleasure you’ve never received, how much time you’ve wasted by fucking pretty boy when you could have had me this whole time.” He grinds his hips forward and fits himself inside you and you both let out sounds. He grins as he fucks you, thinking that he has won, he finally has you like this and made you pick him over your boyfriend.
He watches every part of you as he fucks you, looking at your stomach, your breasts, your face and how you reacted to the pleasure he was giving you. Your boyfriend wasn’t that bad at sex, but something about how Oliver was working you made it feel like your boyfriend was completely clueless on how to fuck. Oliver fucked you with such need, with a mixtare of love and hate.
“Oliver, wait.” you whimper out, “Let me ride you.”
He paused inside of you for a moment, “You want to ride me? You’re more of a slut than I thought.” He pulls out of you then the two of you immediately switch positions. He leans against the headboard of the bed and you climb on top of him and lower yourself down. You couldn’t get yourself to look at him, otherwise guilt came over you, so you just put your face in the nape of his neck as you kept moving your hips up and down to ride his dick.
Hearing your sounds in his ear along with having your hot breath against his skin already made him close. He grabs your hips tightly, digging his nails into your soft skin. “Fuck, I need to cum inside you.” He groans out.
“No, no, you can’t Oliver.” You don’t stop your movements, you wanted to let yourself come over the edge too, it felt too good to stop
“Why not? Let me cum inside you.”
“No.” You reply. He growls and then suddenly flips you over so you are underneath him again and he begins to fuck you harsher. The change of pace makes you even closer. He brings his fingers down to play with your clit and that’s all that it takes for you, you moan out loudly and cum around him. He finishes right after you. He wanted to spill inside of you so badly but he decides not to, he pulls out and spills onto your stomach.
In the end, you never ended up working on your project. You only let him fuck you and then you left and went back to your own dorm room. Your boyfriend called you later in the night and you have no choice but to answer it and act as if nothing happened. You smiled and laughed at his stupid jokes through the phone. You pretended and lied to yourself that nothing between you and Oliver ever happened. You knew that it would never happen again, hoped it would never happen again. But you wanted him so badly.
You ended up switching partners, telling your professor that you and Oliver were not getting along and having a hard time working together. The professor thought about it for a while but then gave in and switched you to work with someone else. Oliver was angry but he didn’t tell anyone the real reason why you wanted to switch so bad. He wouldn’t be that cruel to you, he still wanted you to like him. He liked that you and him had a little secret between the two of you.
He grew more than angry as more days passed of you ignoring him and his glances, he practically grew obsessive. He’d follow you around the hallways when your boyfriend wasn’t with you and you were alone, asking you why you didn’t want to sleep with him anymore and why you didn’t even want to speak to him anymore. You got angry at him every time he mentioned the two of you sleeping together and told him to keep his voice down even though he was already talking quietly.
Oliver was always sneaking around now, watching you. One night, your boyfriend's dorm room window was open, facing the campus fields, and Oliver stood there watching through the window. Watching how your boyfriend would kiss you and how your body and your face would react to his touch and his kisses. He felt himself getting hard the more he watched but soon, the two of you were out of his view as you moved away from the window. Oliver was only mad now.
He wanted to find a way to have you again; he would find a way, he always did.
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y-rhywbeth2 · 5 months
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Elf Lore Dump - 1/???
I had to cut a lot of detail. Wouldn't have to do that with any of the other demihumans; they'd just fill a single fucking post. I could be talking about dwarven druids and their giant bees, or bitching about how much better Tieflings used to be, but nooo elves are fuckin' special!
Elves in brief are fey spirits in mortal flesh, spiritually connected to each other, the world and their gods. Often aloof, considered creatures of ethereal grace... They would also very much appreciate it if you never mentioned their long history of fuckups including several world wars, multiple war crimes and genocides - successful or attempted.
I just shoved a load of elven lore together in an attempt at an overview, occasionally hypothesising when gaps appeared in my knowledge; here's hoping it made sense!
Overview; Spirituality stuff/Afterlife; History rundown; The different types of elf
As always: "D&D is old as balls, there's a lot of stories and information out there that may conflict with what you hear from me because D&D is an old trainwreck pileup of lore that keeps contradicting and tripping over itself and there's stuff I might not be aware of." I personally am mostly taking the angle here that older, detailed Realmslore will take precedence over generic 5e lore.
The elven word for their own race is Tel'Quessir - translated as "The People", or "Of The People". This is due to the aforementioned spiritual link: elves are spiritually linked to each other, which gives them a low-level telepathic link…
"Elves seem to have some sort of mental link between them […] linked with [a] mysterious gland in their brains. It cloaks their brains from [enchantment magic] but it can also emit energy to allow another elf to project his mind into another's and then the two share thoughts on some level. The closeness of elven communities comes from this habitual sharing of minds, and the elves do not understand other races without this ability, for they cannot conceive of being totally alone in one's own head. Apparently, elves look forward to sharing their thoughts with others and do it directly or in "reverie."" - Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves
"[Elves] mystically acquire [skills they don't have] by drawing them from shared elven memory..." - Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse
Reverie is the world for the elven trance in the Realms. During reverie the elf falls into a trance like state where they lie down (or recline on a chair or something) and go incredibly still, their eyes open. This can often cause panic amongst non-elves not experienced with elves, to whom they appear to have just died.
In reverie an elf relieves the past events of their life. This is how elves avoid forgetting past events of their lives, despite living for 700+ years.
Pregnant elves eventually fall into a semi-reverie as they commune with the developing infant. The child "learns" of their family, home and is born knowing them and starts off already knowing some basic knowledge of the elven language.
Non-elves are N'Tel'Quessir or N'Quess - "Not of the People." They are not part of this link and not part of the whole that is The People.
I don't think it's ever been specified whether the mind linking applies to half-elves. Half-elves may chose to either reverie as an elf or sleep as a human and possess the elven resistance to enchantment magic, implying that gland exists to some degree. They might be capable of some degree of this connection, at least, but possibly not the full version. Half-elves are sometimes insultingly referred to their more racist cousins as A'Tel'Quessir - "Almost of the People"
Dark elves theoretically should be able to do this, but 99% of them wouldn't, due to Lolthite cult brainwashing.
Considering that vampires are immune to enchantment and psionics due to being corpses with no brain activity, presumably that gland is dead and an elf who becomes a vampire cannot access this communion. They do appear to be capable reverie in some depictions, however - though they probably can't share it. (Even if they can, I highly doubt elves are going to trust a spiritually defiled undead monster that's also an abomination in the eyes of one of the major deities in the elven pantheon.)
Elves are inherently connected to magic and the Weave. This is apparently what gives them their extremely long lifespans and what is behind their cultural adoration of magic.
Random things about elven culture include that they have champagne and they've invented the prog rock genre, according to Ed Greenwood, who created the setting.
Elves live 700+ years and physically and psychologically mature at the same rate as humans. While they are still in their first century of life, and within a human lifespan, they tend to experience the world much the same as a human of equivalent age rather than an ancient fey being to whom next century is the equivalent of next year. Elves in this stage of development usually go through a cultural rebellion stage. They ignore their own communities in favour of humans, if possible; involve themselves in human "fads"; and have flings and relationships with non-elves. Young elves sometimes dabble with evil alignments, something older elves generally consider a phase that they'll grow out of and look back on with embarrassment when they're old enough to know better.
Elves are not considered fully mature adults by their own people's standards until they're into their second century of life. Age 20-120 is basically like being 18 to early 20-something for a century from the elven perspective. Fully mature elves are slow to respond to events (major human events pass in the blink of an eye to elves) and have a rather laissez-faire attitude to the world. That might explain why elven culture values personal freedom and individuality.
--- Afterlife: Elves are kind of fey spirits in mortal flesh - which was backed up in 2e, when the fact that they have spirits and don't have souls meant that resurrecting them could be annoying and expensive sometimes, because Raise Dead wouldn't work on them, only Resurrection and True Resurrection.
According to Ed, the elven spirit is inherently tied to the plane of Arvandor. While they can dedicate themselves to non-elven gods, outside of exceptional cases those elves will still be going to Arvandor when they die.
Dying, in elven terms, is called "Passing West." In their reverie they begin to receive signs from Sehanine Moonbow, elven goddess of dreams and death, who prepares them for the end of this life. A ring of colour like the titular moonbow forms in their iris, marking to other elves that they're in their final days. Then they travel to elven lands where they die amongst their people or pass directly to Arvandor, I'm not sure. Elves that die of unnatural causes are given funerals according to their cultural norms (usually either in tombs or private burials.) It is believed by the very religious that in Arvandor elves will join in a reverie-like communion with the gods - the Seldarine (Tel'Seldarine; "the siblings of the wood") Reincarnation is a part of elven religion, it's believed that Sehanine works with Corellon on preparing elven spirits in Arvandor for the transition to their next life when/if the time comes. In exceptional cases they can also petition the gods to be reincarnated as nymphs, dryads and treants (ents, basically). Or be turned into guardian spirits who will manifest to defend their homes in times of war. There's also a special type of lich (a baelnorn) that can be formed if there's a dire need for it, very begrudgingly tolerated by Sehanine despite her dislike of the undead.
Drow rarely die of old age, and most being Lolthite their souls go to her and I believe she transforms their souls into one of the millions of soul spiders that accompany her (sometimes she makes them into other things, sometimes she eats them) Eilistraeean drow have a similar ending to surface elves, where Eilistraee will call to them at the end of their lives and take them with her to the afterlife (Eilistraee's realm in Arvandor) Most of the Seldarine (with one or two exceptions) actually have no issue accepting dark elven worshippers, so I assume this particular minority of dark elves is also guided to Arvandor by Sehanine. Otherwise they take the half-elven route:
Half-elves have souls like humans, and are not tied to Arvandor in the same way. Worshippers of the Seldarine will be collected by them at the Fugue plane as an elf, and those that worship human gods will be collected by one of them.
-
A brief, clumsy overview of elven history: Elven myths about their origin vary. All claim Corellon Larethian as the creator of their people. The most popular story states they're descended from their chief deity, Corellon Larethian and his/her future-consort Sehanine (and by all accounts, they appear to be correct). The first elves were born from Corellon's shed blood mingled with Sehanine's tears, shed when s/he was wounded fighting the orc god Gruumsh back at the dawn of time.
Of course before Sehanine was consort, Corellon was involved with Araushnee the elven godess of fate. This led to an epic divorce when she allied with Gruumsh and Corellon's other enemies in an attempt to overthrow him and once the dust cleared (following several attempted coups) he turned her into a demon and exiled her to the Abyss (the lower plane of Chaotic Evil), where she renamed herself Lolth and decided that spiders were actually really cool and she was going to start a cult and society based on spiders - a conclusion she almost certainly didn't reach because because spiders eat their mates and she's bitter about her ex, imo. Also, Lolth's banishment would surely not come back to bite everybody on the ass At All.
Elves first leave the Feywild for Toril in -27,000 DR - the Dawn Age, when Dragons rule the world. The Torilian Fey open a portal connecting Abeir-Toril to the Feywild, bringing the dark elves through to come disrupt the dragons. A tribe named the Ilythiiri establish a kingdom in the South of Faerun [Ilythiir] that will be a beacon of elven culture for millennia. Other waves of immigration follow at different times. Elves eventually defeat the dragons at war; elven nations dominate the planet. Five world wars ensue, involving the numerous war crimes nobody wants to talk about because it makes all of them look bad, and ending in the dark elves getting exiled. Humanity rises to power, moving faster than elves can currently comprehend, driving elves out in their expansionism. Most of the elves' bad history with humans involves the Netherese. Various methods are used to try and stop this ranging on a scale from friendship and cultural outreach to founding genocidal terrorist groups because humans are less than animals and must all be exterminated. Elves decide to make Only-Elves-Allowed-Island by dragging a piece of Arvandor into Toril. The Seldarine say; no, please just make friends with the non-elves. The Elves ignore this and end up blowing up a continent, causing mass death. The result is Evermeet (only reachable with permission, and guarded by the avatars of the Seldarine). The elves plan to totally abandon Faerûn and live there alone with no N'Quess. In 1344 DR there's a magical summons that calls all elves to either Evermeet of the elven city of Evereska. It is followed by pretty much everybody except some moon elves and all the copper elves. Everybody except the elves think this disappearance is really sudden, but the elves have been planning this for centuries, actually.
4e had the Spellplague cause the Feywild to realign with Toril, as it did when the elves first moved over. This caused Evermeet to vanish into the Feywild somewhere and allowed "high elves" to step between worlds with ease and then the elves started rebuilding their lost homelands in the Feywild (on the locations where they used to be, but not in the "human" world). I have no idea whether any of that is still canon.
---
A somewhat tongue-in-cheek, overly simplistic guide to elves:
Half-elves - Cha'Tel'Quessir - are the offspring of humans and elves or two half-elves. Very, very rarely they occur in a human lineage that has an elven ancestor a few centuries back in the family tree. Half-elves sport a mixture of human and elven features, sometimes fully passing as one or the other. They generally follow the culture norms of whatever society they were born in, either human or elven. The only places that half-elves make up a significant enough numbers where they can make a significant society are in the Yuirwood in Aglarond of Easter Faerun, and (formerly, I think) the Loviataran half-drow of Dambarath. They live between 100-200 years.
It'd be best to give them their own post, honestly.
The child of a half-elf and a human is, mechanically, a human. The child of a half-elf and an elf is, mechanically, an elf. But these children may inherit traits from their heritage (so a human with pointy ears or a moon elf with brown eyes and skin, for example).
When elves mix (for example, a green elf and a silver elf) the result is a child that, again, mechanically speaking, is the same "subrace" as one of their two parents. They still inherit genes from the other parent. Dark elven genes are almost always dominant, and an elf with one dark elf parent will be a dark elf themselves nine times out of ten.
WOOD ELVES: Copper elf | Sylvan elf | Wood elf | Or'Tel'Quessir - Chill, patient, friendly. The only elven group that's native to Toril, the result of a mixture of the other elven ethnicities after the five world wars (Crown Wars) becoming populous and focused enough to become their own independent culture. As a weird side effect they actually like the world and the non-elven people in it and don't want to lock themselves away from it. They like living in nature in quiet little villages and towns in the wilderness, and are the only elves that don't like arcane magic - locking yourself away studying magic and never seeing the world or other people is unhealthy for you. Druidry is way better. Most half-elves of "wood elven" variety have copper elven ancestry. - Skin is coppery brown, occasionally with a green tinge; eyes are brown, hazel, green; hair is usually brown or black, but occasionally blonde and copper-red turns up.
Green elf | Wild elf (slur) | Sy'Tel'Quessir - Closely related to the dark elves, who they branched off from. Watched as through five world wars one of their dark elven cousins' nations (which they also lived in) was genocided off the map by gold elves for resisting colonisation; and the other dark elven nation started getting involved with Lolth and demons and war crimes; and by the end of it all the other elves had annihilated every single green elven civilisation. They came to the conclusion that permanency and city building is bullshit and they're going to vanish into the wilds, embrace a nomadic lifestyle in touch with the earth and everybody else in the world can fuck off. Bye, don't call (or we'll stab you). They like nature, prefer sorcery to wizardry and have an animistic approach to religion. Often have to deal with other elves either trying to "civilise" them or else going for the "noble savage" angle and appropriating their culture. Very nice bead work. - Dark brown skin; hair is brown or black with the rare blonde; eyes brown, green, hazel with the rare blue.
HIGH ELVES: Silver elf | Moon elf | Grey elf (slur) | Teu'Tel'Quessir - "Flighty, chaotic and irreverent." The party elves who enjoy fun, adventure, hedonism and gambling. Revelry is an important part of their culture. Basically the only type of elf you'll ever meet because the copper elves stay in the forests and the other elves, on average, would rather kill themselves than live with non-elves. Responsible for the vast majority of half-elves in existence. Curiously they make up more than 50% of the demographic of the church of the elven god of moonlight, mystery, dreams, death, and hating the undead. - Silver elven genes include white/silver or black hair; Pale skin, often tinged with blue; Blue, green or grey eyes.
Gold elf | Sun elf | Ar'Tel'Quessir - No actual affinity for the sun, just a reference to their golden colouration. "Dour and serious." "Methodical, careful." Conservative religious types who are raised to believe that they are the purest example of elvendom and that Corellon appointed them defenders of elvendom against the hoards of humans who have driven the elves off their lands and despoil the natural world in their inherent greed and short-sightedness. Would respond to the idea of leaving elven lands much like His Majesty responding to the idea of joining your camp: "I'd rather die." - Gold, bronze, amber skin. Bright golden blonde hair, copper or black. Gold, black, silver and rarely; bright copper or golden-hazel eyes.
Star elf | Mithral elf | Ruar'Tel'Quessir - Human expansion led to the humans trying to conquer them (they lost), so they created an entire plane of existence (Sildëyuir) and all moved there in -699 DR. Recently forced to move back sometime between 1300-1400 DR due to strange monsters invading. They're not very religious, have a strong bardic tradition and wear these weird glowing gems on their foreheads for some reason, they don't know shit about the modern world and they're terrified of non-elves. - Pale skin, like moon elves but with a violet tinge; Gold, red or silver hair; Grey or violet eyes.
DROW - (Who, frankly, take up a post of their own.) Dark elves | Night elves | Ssri'Tel'Quessir | Dhaerow | Drow | Ilythiiri Originally part of the High Elf category, before exile.
Basic overview of the fallout with the dark elves and everyone else: An empire of gold elves (Aryvandaar) decides they're going to conquer the world and starts by colonising the nearby dark elven empire of Miyeritar. Down south, Ilyithiir responds with hostility. Miyeritar resists, Aryvandaar responds with genocide and wipes them off the map with magic that leaves the entire Miyeritaran region permanently wrecked (even into the modern day) and wipes out the worshipers and power base of Eilistraee, leaving no barriers to prevent Lolth from taking over the dark elves as their only god (In the future surface elves will point blank refuse to ever discuss this event). Ilyithiir responds by going apeshit and starts committing imperialistic war crimes claiming to be avenging their Northern kin. The Ilythiiri were also ruled by demon worshipping imperialists who'd fallen under sway of Lolth and the surface elves insist that avenging Miyeritar was just an excuse.
The surface elves say that the dark elves are N'Quess and start calling them dhaerow, which means traitor. The dark elves say that the surface elves are N'Quess and start calling them darthiir, which means traitor.
Lolth dominates 99% of dark elven society with her cult, and basically their entire society is a cycle of abuse married to their bitter divorcee goddess' spider fetish. Yay, toxic matriarchy; Those with power can do whatever they want to those who have less, so you should do everything to make sure you're the one with the power; Love is a lie, kill your mate when you're done with him; If your children aren't trying to kill you, you've failed as a parent; You only have worth because of what worth Mother Lolth gives you. You only live because of Her. etc.
There are also the merchant clans who live outside of city. They're a little more egalitarian, because dealing with outsiders is demeaning, so it's a man's job. They favour plutocratic governance (they're ruled by an inner council formed by the most wealthy members, often male wizards). They're the most "friendly" to outsiders and basically the trade they bring is the only thing that stops the noble house run cities from collapsing.
Minorities include the Eilistraeeans; Eilistraee voluntarily went into exile so that somebody would be there to encourage the dark elves to put down the knives, get away from Lolth, move out of the Underdark and go to fucking therapy.
Her twin brother, Vhaeraun, also encourages the dark elves to put down the knives, get away from Lolth, move out of the Underdark and go to fucking therapy - stab other people instead of each other! This is totally unproductive villainy! You're better than this! How are the drow supposed to conquer the world and rule over the lesser beings if we're still in this glorified cave after a millennia?? - Noticable sexual dimorphism, females are larger and more robust than males. Very dark skin. Hair is usually pale with black being an extremely rare recessive gene (white, platinum blonde, pale copper). Eyes are also typically in pale colours, with red being common because Lolth decided to have the Ilythiiri nobles breed with a demon lord and that got into the gene pool. Other eye colours: white-grey, lavender, pink, amber, black, green is sometimes seen but it's thought to be a sign of surface-elven ancestry.
OTHER: Avariel | Winged Elves | Aril'Tel'Quessir - Flying elves with bird wings who live on mountaintops. Almost extinct. Sea elves | Aquatic Elves | Alu'Tel'Quessir - Elves with gills and webbed hands and feet that live under the sea. Blue with green stripes or green with brown stripes, depending on what sea they're from. Lythari | Ly'Tel'Quessir - An exclusive elf club where you join by getting infected with elf lycanthropy and then you turn into a silver wolf. They're sterile, so they can only make more lythari through recruiting.
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lunedottir · 10 months
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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤSIBLING DYNAMICS WITH GWEN !! ♡⁠ (⁠˃͈⁠ ⁠દ⁠ ⁠˂͈⁠ ⁠༶⁠ ⁠)
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pairing: platonic!Gwen Stacy x fem!black!reader / mom!Jessica Drew x adopted!Gwen Stacy x reader.
genre: fluff! headcanons! a liiiiiiittle bit of angst! just a little bit 🤏🏾
warnings: english is not my first language, daddy issues, pregnancy ig, mentions of normal sibling violence
a.n: hello!! :3 this is the first day of my challenge of writing something everyday for the entirety of July! so yeah! this popped out on my head when i was having a conversation with my brother so i wanted to write it down! anyways, love y'all, be safe! <3 xoxo
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤPLEASE CONSIDER REBLOGGING!!
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it started with Jess talking about Gwen all the time. you were jealous, yeah, but you wouldn't admit it. the girl was disinherited by her father over being spiderwoman, which was ridiculous. but you could relate, since your own father left your mother when he found out she was spiderwoman. but that's not the point. over the time, Gwen started visiting more, having more sleepovers, and all that stuff. until the day Jess came home asking how you would like a sister. obviously you already knew what she was talking about, so, yeah let's now go to the ✨ sibling dynamics ✨.
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 ⁠↳  when Gwen gets more comfortable, oh boy, poor Jess
↳ you two are a menace to this woman
↳ you're always fighting about something
↳ mostly because Gwen took something of yours, like a shirt or a hoodie
↳ she says they're more comfortable than hers and would die on this hill
↳ likes to go to your room and just lay on the floor while you do your stuff
↳ or just walk around and read a book, or sit on the ceiling and creep at you
|ㅤ "can you stop? you're freaking me out."
|ㅤ "nah. btw why do you have so many entries about hobie in your diary?"
|ㅤ "mOOOM"
|ㅤ "nO NO NO STOP"
↳ and then you'd throw a stapler at her
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↳ if you knew how to cook, would definitely teach Gwen so she could go to the cookout at the Morales'
↳ Jess doesn't approve Miles to date Gwen but oh well
↳ you would be the BEST wingwoman for Gwen, always going out with her as a disguise
↳ hobie, pav, margo and miles would defo have a sleepover at your house when Mom™ is out in mission
|ㅤ "mom can the boys and Margo sleepover?"
|ㅤ "while i'm away? nuh uh!"
|ㅤ "but mom-"
|ㅤ "did your sister agree with that"
|ㅤ "uhm…"
|ㅤ "Y/N DID YOU AGREE WITH THE SLEEPOVER"
|ㅤ "YEAH MOM IT'S FINE"
↳ and she would give Gwen the most criminal offensive side eye ever given, but everything would work out fine (lie).
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↳ she learned how to braid hair so you wouldn't have to do it by yourself, cause she saw how tiring it was for you to do your own braids
↳ you take care of each other's hair like, in general
↳ would only go to salons when really needed
↳ defo do each others nails
↳ (projecting w this one but 🤭) you like acrylic nails and she likes them short
↳ you would do all the prep for your nails and she would do like cool designs or pick the colors
↳ TALKING ABOUT COLORS
↳ y'all don't match outfits, you match the color schemes!!!!
|ㅤ "i wanna do red"
|ㅤ "nah let's go with purple, G"
|ㅤ "but red-"
↳ and there goes another argument :D
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↳ Gwen has nightmares almost every night
↳ so it's common for you to go to her room in the middle of the night just to calm her down
↳ she would cry on your shoulder every time, and apologize a thousand times about waking you up
|ㅤ "ay, don't worry, G. you're my sister, I'm here for you"
↳ and she would cry even harder
↳ overall you're very protective over each other
↳ but you did chase her with a knife once... meh, another day another slay !
↳ she loves you more than anything
↳ and so do you <3
↳ mama Jess is just grateful for the blessings.
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tagging: @ppinkkkiwi @elusive-honeydew
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faetaiity · 1 year
Note
hey if it’s okay with you can you please write the rise turtles helping reader out with overstimulation? thank you! also delete/ignore if you don’t want to!
Hi! yeah, sure! I can write for this! But it's gonna be how I experience overstimulation, which makes me irritable, passive aggressive and want to be alone for the rest of the damn day- You didn't specify poly or separated so I went with separated because it was quicker to write.
Yeah, this is 100% self-indulgent.
Separate! Rise! Turtles x Overstimulated! GN! Reader
Post Format: Headcanons
CW: Crying, Leo getting depressed, mentions of separation anxiety + arguments, and Reader wanting to be left alone in their room for multiple hours (Not necessarily Isolation, but wanting to be in an environment that they can control) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Raphie:
Is the best in terms of reaction
The worst reaction he has regarding you snapping at him is irritation, he will almost never snap back at you
He (mostly) doesn't blame you for your outbursts, he knows what you're going through, and he knows that you'd never snap at him without a valid reason
Hates when you stay in your room for hours by yourself, but he never intrudes when you're trying to calm down unless you're on the verge of doing something dangerous
Tries to keep overwhelming stimuli out of the lair when you're visiting
Yes, that usually can include Leo.
However, the first time you got overstimulated around him did go poorly
He kept asking you what was wrong, pretty much making you want not want to talk about it
At one point it got too much for the both of you (He started getting pushy, irritating you more and making him also start to become irritated) and you just went home to cool off
It took you the entire day to calm down
Once you did, you felt horrible and apologized to him, explaining you tend to get overstimulated really badly around noises and crowds
And asking questions or touching you makes it worse, because being overstimulated makes you easily agitated
He understands and you two talk about what irritates you during these times
He makes sure no-one else bothers you, so that you can calm down quicker
After you've calmed down, please spend time with him, despite the fact that he understands why you need to be left alone, he still feels distressed when you snap at him or can't stand being around anyone.
Leo:
Is the worst in terms of a reaction
He has separation anxiety, so when you leave for hours to calm down and relax, he gets whiny
Often texting you and BEGGING you to let him come in, he swears he won't do anything!
You learned that is a lie the hard way
You relented once, he came in and cuddled you, kissing your cheek softly, making your skin feel like it's getting pricked by needles
You didn't say anything that time, not wanting to hurt his feelings, you felt you could tolerate it as long as he didn't talk or ask questions
Despite the fact that he wants to be in your room while you're relaxing, he gets really aggressive if someone else tries to come in
He once yelled at Mikey to get out when Mikey came to ask you if he could borrow something for an art project
Mikey has never left your apartment quicker lmao
The first time you got overstimulated after you met him was a fucking wild ride
It was a giant argument, making you cry from frustration
He kept getting in your space and touching you up until you snapped at him
He instantly starts freaking out, trying to defend himself (from what you may ask? nothing rational, just thinking his crush suddenly hated his guts) and started asking questions, irritating you further until you left
He got into a depressive episode, almost crying because he thought you hated him, he pretty much was a bit of a simp since day one, so this was a blow to his false confidence
Once you calm down and talk to him, apologizing for your behavior, he calms down as well, understanding that you couldn't help it and that you didn't hate him.
He reacts a lot better now, but please give him attention when you're feeling better, because if he's the cause of your Overstimulation, he'll definitely be in a depressive episode until you are okay with him being around you again.
Donnie:
2nd best reaction out of all four.
ONLY second best because unlike Raph, he will snap back if in a sour mood or if he's overstimulated as well.
If asked, he will leave you alone, only texting you every few hours to see if you're okay
As I've mentioned, he also gets overstimulated, and will ask you if you can leave him alone for a few hours so he can relax.
Also gets aggressive if anyone tries to visit you
Especially Leo, because he's aware that Leo can overstimulate you more than most people can
First time you got overstimulated, he most likely realizes the signs early and backs off
Once you leave, he might wait a few hours before sending you a text
Donnie: Hey (Y/N), you okay? you were pretty irritable when you were here
He won't force you to talk about it, but he is there if you need to talk.
If for any reason, you can't leave while overstimulated, he'll take you into his lab, putting headphones and a weighted blanket on you for your comfort
After either of you calm down from being overstimulated, you two tend to seek each other out, usually to talk about what happened so perhaps you can avoid triggering each other.
Mikey:
Has the 2nd worst reaction
Only because he doesn't get extremely depressed like Leo when you go to cool off, but he's just as clingy
Doesn't like it when others come to bother you but isn't nearly as aggressive as the others.
The first time you got overstimulated around him, he got panicky and started asking you questions, causing you to become irritated
He starts crying a little once you snap at him and it hits you like a truck
You calm down enough to tell him that you just need time alone, which he tries to deny, not understanding why you want to leave him, but eventually he relents and lets you go home
Once you calm down you call him and tell him to come over
It takes him about 20 minutes to come but once he does, he instantly hugs you and apologizes over and over, for what you may ask? he doesn't know, all he knows is that he made you angry.
You tell him he didn't do anything wrong and sit him down to talk about it
He understands once you explain why you got so irritated by his response to you being overstimulated
He does still spend time with you, even when you're in your room trying to calm down
He doesn't interact with you, all he does is draw while on the floor.
When you calm down, please cuddle him, he'll feel so much better.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Made this at 1 am, sorry if it's ass lmao, me sleepy.
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jahiera · 7 months
Note
hello! i can't remember if you answered this in your wonderful astarion romance meta [THAT I CANNOT FIND AGAIN FOR SOME REASON...], but when he propositions us for a second time -- with the series of pick-up lines that we can cheekily call him out on -- do you think he's still in the 'i'm just trying to keep you on my side' stage, or is there maybe some interest in us beyond that?
Hello!! Ahh thank you, you might mean this one? I have another one where I broke down a separate scene so if it’s that one, I can dig for it! But!!!!
I’m currently phone-bound so I can’t grab my usual quotes screencaps BUT I DO have thoughts on that scene, so let me ramble—
for the scene you’re referencing in particular, I really do think there’s a degree of projection from the player (ie what you think this scene means for astarion and your tav is up to you) and personal interpretation for the pacing in here—so if someone else sees it differently or sees it paced differently for their tav, I can definitely get that. however, for me, this scene sort of represents this very interesting shift in the relationship, but not because astarion is developing interest, but because of how he’s acting around tav now that he knows he has tav’s interest secured.
in short: I do think this scene happens still mostly in “I’m manipulating you to keep myself safe,” territory BUT. What’s interesting is that astarion isn’t making any attempts to disguise that anymore. prior to this scene, his two potential propositions (both the one he initiates pre-goblin camp and the one that happens during the goblin party), while not necessarily “natural,” and most certainly not rooted in the first bloomings of a crush, or whatever, there’s a conscious effort to disguise his routine and, in essence, genuine seduction through appealing to Tav, trying to incite desire, etc. — he’s lying and when you know he’s lying it’s obvious, but there’s wiggle room for Tav to genuinely think, hey, this guy is interested in me. but the scene you’re referencing—“here’s my little treat with their cheeks all flushed…” “three little words. everyone’s favorite. I love you. (that would be a lie.) but a very sweet lie,” or whatever he says at the end there—descends very quickly into teasing (almost taunting) that is VERY heavy handed and very gleeful in how he almost …. dangles the falsehood of it in front of you.
there’s multiple ways you can interpret that. is he getting more egregious in his flirting because he feels like he doesn’t have to try as hard, but still TRIES? is he revealing the truth behind the facade because he’s starting, on some level, to feel comfortable enough to reveal THAT if nothing else? I’m less convinced by the second, more convinced by the first, but myyyy personal interpretation of that scene is one that kind of….. is within the romance but removed from it in terms of. I don’t think it’s about tav here, really. I think it’s about astarion.
to elaborate, I think that there’s a kind of thrill in this moment — astarion has been an object for sex and desire for 200 years, and he’s still doing that, still playing that role, but now he’s doing it without the overarching crushing influence of cazador behind him; his safety within the group is relatively secured now; there is less..... external (or perceived external) pressure to keep up the act, but he still does it. which I think results in him almost……. outright telling you that it’s false? like a kind of release, to say that the I love you is a lie, and you know that, and I know that, and I don’t have to FULLY pretend so, in his own way, he doesn't--he tugs and pulls at emotion, and kind of .... invites Tav into the lie, in a sense (thank god there's no option to say "I love you too," here, I worry that fans would take it and mean it sincerely. like. AUCK). maybe there's almost a vindictive thrill to getting to basically display his exaggeration. or maybe he's pushing at the boundaries of what tav & he have here, seeing how far he's sunk in. playing the role still, but at the end, you know it's at least partially an act. either way, poking and prodding like that, to me, isn't motivated by blooming squishy feelings. rather, it's something less sweet, less romance-y to boot, but more interesting for the character as a whole. or maybe that's just my own bias--I tend to find the Soft Squishy Romance to be the least interesting aspect OF the romantic dynamic. also, to be clear, I'm not trying to soften it up with elaboration here. taking away the context of astarion's history and past, what he's doing here is really just mean. it's a kind of cruel thing to so starkly display that you dont really give a fuck about the feelings of the person in front of you--enough to throw flirting and emotional barbs of "I love you," at them just for the laugh of it. it's a bitch move, but it's an interesting one, and I rarely see the conjunction of His Meanness discussed with how it manifests due to his history-- it makes complete sense and it's FASCINATING.
there is ONE thing I'll say, and that in the dialogue branch where you say, "Are you having fun?" or something along those lines, he says, "I am! It's hard not to, with you." and that, I do believe to be sincere, in its own way. I do think Astarion is having fun with Tav out on the road, being with them, being with the group, enjoying the show so to speak, and exploring his newfound freedom--all of which is wrapped up in proximity to Tav. there's arguments to be made that there's pacing issues here, but I actually interpreted the fact that we don't really have another romance-specific scene before the "you're wonderful"/drow confession to be intentional. to me, the trust bond with astarion isn't developed in moments where he's putting up the act or where you're expressing interest or attraction to him (he already knows, he's already removed from that, there's no trust to grow in these moments because sex/attraction is the last thing associated with trust to him), but rather, trust is reinforced over time on the road, through shows of support out and about during crucial, but NON-ROMANTIC moments (such as killing yurgir for him--a nonromantic act, but one that solidifies that he can trust you.)
all in all, after such longwindedness... I guess my answer is that. while I dont think he LOVES tav at all, and maybe he isn't even romantically there yet with them, I do think he likes Tav by this point, and enjoys their company and their presence. what that means to YOU is up to you! as I said, I think it's a scene where the pacing and emotional weight is partially up for interpretation. you can just as easily imagine that he's got unaddressed growing feelings there as you can not--especially since if you turn him down here, what he'll say is "I've gotten on my back more times than I can count [...] most of them I don't even remember. but you, I'll remember." <- possibly implying that there was the start of a potential something here, ultimately ended, which he isn't really sad about because it removes the overall pressure of putting up a show, but at the same time implies a fondness for tav the person; again, not necessarily romantically oriented, but positive emotion regardless.
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starcurtain · 1 year
Text
Haikaveh Fanfics I Want to Read (Part 2)
<- Part 1.
Part 3. ->
1. The Palace of Alcarzarzaray might be called Kaveh’s magnum opus, but actually, it was more like a kick-start for his career. Kaveh hasn’t known a moment of peace since, with constant commissioners begging for him to choose their projects. The longer his waiting list gets, the more his fame grows and grows... So when a pair of people come out of the woodwork insisting they’re Kaveh’s long-lost parents, Alhaitham thinks it’s only right to be skeptical.
Kaveh agrees (for once), but... they’re so nice to him, and apparently he’s got siblings, and they haven't asked him for anything; they say they never meant to leave him, and they love him, and--and--how could he just turn them away? What if it’s true?
What if he has a real family?
Of course, when these so-called parents start encouraging Kaveh to move back home with them, Alhaitham becomes determined to unravel the lie and show them for the imposters they (almost) certainly are.
It’s only because it irks him to see people twist the truth and get away with it. It’s only because the logical step is to point out obvious manipulations when you spot them.
It’s got nothing at all to do with how empty the house will feel if Kaveh isn’t in it.
Nothing at all.
  Rest under the read more:
2. Okay, listen. The fact that Kaveh and Alhaitham are both 12s out of 10 does not change the fact that they’re also MASSIVE NERDS. The fic is just silly snippets of them being the graduate school gremlins they most definitely are:
Is it even fighting if all you are doing is reciting academic citations at each other?  
Saturday night, we are both at home doing nothing but debating over the rules to an ancient word game that we’ve mostly pieced together from the barest disconnected snippets of apocrypha and one oblique reference in a single receipt of sale from 1600 years ago, because we are Normal™. The most normal people in Sumeru, even.  
How Althaitham flirts: Practicing his newest language acquisition by translating nothing but obscure ancient love letters (“Well, they could have had romantic intention but we shouldn’t allow modern interpretations to color our perceptions without thorough analysis of their semantic contexts and candid awareness of the moral obligation of the translator to avoid speculation on connotations which might privilege biased readings--”). Then he heaps his transcriptions all over the top of Kaveh’s desk and chair and bed and...  
How Kaveh flirts: “I built you a bookshelf.”   “I take back every uncharitable thing I’ve said about architecture this week.”   “It is both climate-controlled and self-dusting. Also, it will catalog which books are missing after they’re removed from the shelf and remind you when it’s time to put them back in place so that you’re not tempted to leave your moldy tomes all over my--”   “Wait, who is this bookshelf actually for?”  
“See, I’m allowed to criticize his work, but you, peon, are absolutely not. Here is my 50-page rebuttal of your recent article critiquing the architect Kaveh’s research, in which I will outline exactly why you are an incomparable idiot who should be disbarred from publication ever again. Very uncordially, Alhaitham”  
The only time Alhaitham and Kaveh are unequivocally, indisputably, and inseparably a T E A M: Tavern Trivia Night. (The schedule for tavern trivia night is shortly thereafter altered to: “Any time in which Kaveh and Alhaitham are not on the premises. The management apologizes in advance for last minute trivia night cancellations, but asks patrons to please respect the rule that not even a single trivia question be spoken in the presence of the Light of Kshahrewar or the Akademiya’s scribe.”)
In other words, two geniuses live their very best lives together.
  3. When Prince Alhaitham's viziers started nagging about his lack of spouse to ensure an heir, he dismissed them out of hand. But the truth is, he can't inherit the full privileges of his family's throne (including unfettered access to the kingdom's collection of forbidden records) unless he upholds an ancient peace treaty between his country and their most useful trading neighbor: to become king of Haravatat, he has to marry a citizen of Kshahrewar. Alhaitham isn't the type to bow to social or legal pressure, but if it means he might finally be able to further his research, well, he's willing to swear even a marriage oath to get the knowledge he desires.
But he's not willing to marry anyone unworthy. He's not willing to marry anyone boring, or rote, or feeble-minded, or ill-tempered, or shrill, or under-educated, or ambivalent, or weak, or too polite, or--
If Kshahrewar is going to insist on a political marriage, then Alhaitham will insist on accepting only the best.
But now things are starting to look grim. Prince Alhaitham has interviewed and dismissed (in no polite terms), every eligible Kshahrewar maiden and and no small number of their eligible men besides. For Alhaitham, this is but a formality on his way to further reading, but for the Kingdom of Kshahrewar, real fears are stirring--if they can't find an acceptable candidate soon, the peace treaty that has ensured their alliance with Haravatat’s military-might could dissolve, and already the neighboring powers of Vahumana and Spantamad have been testing the boundaries of their borders...
Entirely out of options, the nervous kingdom gives in and sends the last person they'd want to lose: the Light of Kshahrewar, their beloved architect and most renowned scholar.
But it's all right, because Kaveh has a Plan®.
All right, admittedly, the plan was a lot closer to "Be way too beautiful to reject" than "Argue all night and wake up just to argue again," but hey, whatever works?
(Also known as: The Thousand and One Nights AU where Alhaitham's not quite crazy enough to kill the people he rejects but will crush their self-confidence; Kaveh's not great at telling stories but is great at debate; and the ultimate outcome is still the same very cliffhangery happy ever after.)
  4. If you asked Kaveh Kshahrewar, on-call urban planner for the city of Sumeru, he would expound at length and with several melodramatic sighs upon the fact that his life is fraught with a great many challenges and his fortunes are fraught with a great many (obvious in retrospect) mistakes.
To put it simply, Kaveh will tell you he just has rotten luck.
If you were to ask the High Council of Principalities of the Fifth Ring of the Host of Heaven, they would tell you that Kaveh’s luck is actually quite good... for a person in the targets of the dark legions of Hell itself.
There are some exceptional humans upon whom the wheels of fate are hung, whose very existence is destined to bring beautiful things to the world, to tip the balance in the eternal fight between good and evil firmly toward good. Kaveh is one such person, and therefore all his life he’s been a target of unseen forces that would rather see his light snuffed out.
But that last near-death experience was too close. If Kaveh is left to his own devices much longer, he very likely will perish, long before he’s able to achieve his fated great works for the world. Heaven has to do something.
Alhaitham is a very, very efficient Principality. Maybe the most efficient Principality the Host of Heaven has. But he’s never--not once since the beginning of creation--been called on to actually guard a human. Yes, yes, of course he’s read the manual cover to closing, but...
But no one thought to warn him that they were so very emotional.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my house?!”
“I’m your guardian angel. I live here now.”
“911, I need to report a home invasion in progress! Please send help, there is a lunatic eating raw butter out of my fridge!”
(Or: The guardian angel AU where Kaveh is disaster prone because he is Very Cursed, and Alhaitham is even weirder than normal because his frame of reference for humans is still “wears fig leaves.” It’s a tragicomedy in six acts: Kaveh’s going to change the world for the better. His future is already written in stone. And nowhere in that record is there anything about falling in love with an angel, so Alhaitham knows he’s not supposed to be anything more than a bit part in this grand story.
Too bad Kaveh’s always sympathized with the side characters most.)
  5. During an exploratory trip to the desert ruins looking for remnants of the Deshret Script, lone researcher Alhaitham discovers a strange--and, in fact, magical--teapot, containing none other than a beautiful (but rather noisy) djinn.
“My name is Kaveh.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I’m a djinn.”
“I can tell.”
“I’ll grant you three wishes, if and only if--”
“Five wishes.”
“What?”
“You should grant me five wishes.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked politely.”
“You absolutely did not! Ugh, fine, I’ll grant you five wishes. But only--and I mean only!--if you’ll agree to set me free at the end.”
“All right, I swear.”
But where are they now?! Kaveh is getting desperate. It’s been six months, and Alhaitham hasn’t made a single wish! At this rate, Kaveh will never get free! He’ll be stuck bunking in a house full of tacky furniture, being tricked into doing the laundry and sweeping forever! This is so unfair; how is it even allowed?! Alhaitham is human; he has to have some kind of wish in that stone-thick head of his!
(The truth is, Alhaitham does have a wish. It just can’t be granted.
He swore an oath to set Kaveh free, after all.)
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deathdestructiondoom · 5 months
Text
TOP 5 REASON WE SHOULD BE G/T MUTUALS (ESPECIALLY REGARDING TO PROJECT SEKAI)
(this is mostly a joke if you'd like to then 👉👈)
NUMERO UNO :
I need more friends to talk about pjsk g/t. It's been so long (SINCE LAST I'VE SEEN MY SON-) since i got new friends and i realized how lonely i am-
NUMERO DOS :
I can draw. I will draw your blorbos. I will draw your ocs. I will draw anything.
You can choose between Traditional doodles, Digital doodles or free drawings ehehehe.
As long as we're buddies.
I CAN ALSO DRAW YOUR PERSONA TOO IF YOU HAVE THEM. MAYBE I CAN DRAW US TOGETHER. (BTW @wistie WHEN ARE YOU MAKING A PERSONA SO I CAN DRAW US KISSING/J /J /J /J)
NUMERO TRES :
My brain is never-ending unless i get into a slump which is very rare.
I can get very creative with my ideas, i will take two things and combine them in either the best way possible or the worst way possible, probably making the most horrendous G/t au.
Regardless, i can discuss alot of ideas regarding our blorbos. If your brain is almost like mine, we can talk about ALOT OF STUFF.
NUMERO CUATRO :
Speaking of PJSK, i can discuss alot of hcs with you because i am not biased. (That is a lie, Akito Shinonome rotates in my brain 24/7 but i can discuss others with you <3)
Tell me about your favorite g/t pairs, ships, ANYTHING.
Let me hear yours. You can hear mine. WE'RE ALL STARVED.
WE CAN TALK ABOUT POLY/NEED OR RUINENE OR SHIZUAIRI OR POLYSQUAD OR MAFUENA OR POLYSQUAD OR RUIKASA OR EMUKASA OR HONAKANA OR EMUNENE OR MAFUEMU OR THE HINOMORI SISTERS OR THE TENMAS OR THE SHINONOMES DKSGSHSJEGKSE-
I WILL TALK WITH YOU ABOUT IT ALL.
NUMERO CINCO :
I can be your personal therapist because i know some of y'all are fucked up. As long as you can be mine because i am also fucked up.
I will listen to your problems, i will check up on you daily, i might be annoying sliding into your dms all the time but that means i care about you and that's my anxiety, your secrets will be kept with me, if you are in the US then you will prob also wake up in the morning to a bunch of messages because i am all the way in Asia from across the globe.
bonus numero seis : i am not that well-versed in other parts of the g/t community aside from sonic, mcyt, maybe crk? and ofc pjsk but you wanna talk about them i will gladly listen. maybe i could roleplay with you too.
IN CONCLUSION :
I will gladly be your mutual, it might be tricky cuz this is a side blog and my actual blog is @hshwnevdhss but you can follow that so we can be moots and i will also follow yours.
I have discord so if you are actually considering this request of being mutuals which is actually a helpless cry for friends then you can go into my tumblr dms and we will send eachother our discords so we can talk there :D (cuz tumblr's chatting system is shit)
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sunsafewriting · 1 year
Text
Keep Your Arms In - 1 Do A Flip extended cinematic universe
basically just extra one-shots sets in and after do a flip.
excerpt:
Diego forgets about the lie almost as soon as they leave the grocery store. He’s got other, more important things to think about, like how late he can convince Ava to let him stay up, and whether he’ll be able to get a tattoo like Shannon’s one day. 
Ava’s answers to his questions are, in this order: nine-thirty, and yes, one day, but for now, they can hit the mall kiosk that sells temporary tattoos. 
It’s not until they’re back at Ava’s place, unloading their bags, that he remembers their capsicum. 
“I don’t want to eat that,” he says, wrinkling his nose. 
“Nor do you have to,” Ava promises. “I’m going to try it, though. And you’d better start brainstorming vegetables you will eat, because otherwise you’ll get leprosy. Wait, that’s the wrong one. It’s the sailor one, isn’t it? Scurvy.” She taps her temple. “And Sister Frances thought Pirateology wasn’t an educational text.”
He watches her wash the capsicum, chop a chunk off, and pop it into her mouth. 
“Hmm, okay, that’s not winning any awards from me,” she declares, wrinkling her nose. “Nevermind, you were right. Capsicums suck.” 
“See?”
“It’s no broccoli, that’s for fucking sure.” She pauses. “Should I swear in front of you less? Now that I’m a responsible adult, and everything.” 
Diego shrugs. “I don’t know.” 
That ship has probably well and truly sailed, but they Google it anyway, just to be safe.  
For the next several months, Diego lives a blissfully capsicum-free life. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner at St Michael’s are mostly the same, day in and day out, even if the options have become slightly more nutritional since Mother Superion arrived and overhauled everything. 
When he’s with Ava, they experiment with all sorts of different foods — some he finds he likes and some he finds he doesn’t. It becomes a tradition of theirs. Ava doesn’t have enough money for them to do anything really crazy, but picking out something from the grocery store that neither of them has ever had before is always affordable and always fun. 
It’s still just their thing, even once Beatrice is there, because Ava has never wavered in her promise to keep the things he wants to be just Ava and Diego as just Ava and Diego. But at a certain point, it feels stupid to keep doing it without Beatrice, when like everything else, it would probably be even more fun with her. 
Also, he’s kind of excited to show her their notebook, which is the closest thing he and Ava have ever managed to meticulous record-keeping. 
He presents their ledger while they’re having lunch at Ava’s apartment on a Saturday — the three of them sitting cross-legged on the floor in the living room, because Ava maintains that sandwiches shouldn’t be eaten at a table, that such formality is an affront to the spirit of the sandwich. 
“What’s this?” Beatrice asks, when he hands her the notebook. 
“It’s all the different foods Ava and I have tried this year. And whether we think they’re yuck or not.” 
“Writing it down makes it science,” Ava says wisely. “Learned that from MythBusters. ” 
Diego’s dogeared the page of their most recent entry, and Beatrice opens the book there, reads their review of pineapple upside down cake.
“Is it perhaps slightly unfair to penalise the cake for tasting burned when that’s not an inherent quality of pineapple upside down cake?” she asks, dragging her finger across the line where Ava’s written their criticism. 
“It’s like the Olympics,” Ava replies. “Doesn’t matter how good you are, it’s all about what you bring to the arena on the day. We can only judge based on what’s in front of us.” 
“Also, we got distracted making giant soap bubbles,” Diego explains. “And we had the oven on too high.” 
Once they’ve tried something and it’s gone into the book, Diego doesn’t usually think about it too much anymore. There seem to be repeats of things he really loves and not of things he hates, but he doesn’t really, properly think about the fact that this means that Ava and Beatrice remember .
Or, at least, he doesn’t think about it until the day that they’re cooking together.
Ava’s ducked next door to help Camila with her fire alarm, which won’t stop going off, so it’s just Diego and Beatrice in the kitchen. 
He watches, with moderate to extreme dismay, as she pulls a capsicum out of the grocery bag she’s brought with her. She washes it thoroughly in the sink, just like the zucchini before it, and then slices it up. This time, though, rather than dumping all the slices into the bowl, she offers him one. 
“They’re your favourite, yes?” she says. 
Diego’s chest tightens suddenly, unexpectedly. He can count the number of people who’ve ever bothered to learn his favourite anything on one hand without even needing to use all his fingers. 
But Beatrice only thinks capsicums are his favourite because he and Ava are liars and he doesn’t even understand why they lied, but they did, and now Beatrice is being so kind to him, and her kindness is in capsicum form and it’s like God is punishing him for being deceitful. 
The piece of capsicum looks red and evil — but Beatrice is smiling at him, and he can’t let her down, so he accepts it, thanks her, and shoves it into his mouth. 
It’s wretched, spicy and cold. Still, he swallows. 
“Let me know if you want more, okay? Once it’s in this, you won’t really be able to taste it.”
Diego tries not to let the relief show on his face. 
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codename-adler · 26 days
Note
Can I ask for some PiP information on Eva Josten and/or Matt Dan and Her?
so sorry anon for the delay!!! but be proud of me bc i wanted to crack down on Baby Girl, Good Luck and instead chose to focus on you!!!
>>> Dan, Matt & Her under the cut
Adler's PiPs ~ Project: Eva Josten
There was an idea… to bring in a remarkable spy-assassin… to see if she could become something more… so when they needed her… she could kill the one person they never could… The Butcher’s son, Nathaniel Abram Wesninski.
Enter the Butcher’s daughter: Aleksandra Eva Wesninski. 
Lost to Mary, not even remembered by her own brother, the little Wesninski is on a mission, one she was raised for, one she did not choose, but one she damn sure is embracing now that goddamn Nathaniel has ruined everything. His death would be sweet, sweet ambrosia to her. If she had to dispose of all the other puny sports junkies along the way, she would. Where her own father had failed, where Lola Malcom, Riko and Ichirou Moriyama, and Stuart Hatford had fallen short, she would rise up to the occasion and annihilate the stupid bastard. She would die, not trying, but succeeding. Such was her purpose.
xxx
Adler's PiPs ~ Project: Dan, Matt & Her
Dan x Matt x FOC ot3 AU
New Fox recruit (20F) has had a baby recently whose father she claims was another student in her year (lie);
She kept playing Exy until (X) months and with prowess at that;
Kevin is wildly against picking her (somehow she reminds him of his mother) and thinks a team like the Foxes isn't for babies (like every other team) and that a mother like her isn't for the Foxes;
Dan isn't bothered by the recruit's background and baggage but she does wonder why Wymack pushes so much for her;
Abby convinces Kevin and Dan;
The recruit will live at Abby's with her baby as long as it's viable;
Abby will help take care of the baby; she is quite excited despite the circumstances because she has a really, really good feeling about the recruit and the potential she has to bring the team and Wymack closer together;
Dan isn't very comfortable with the baby and the recruit when they arrive, because they remind her too much of her own background and the adult position she has been forced into at a very young age;
The recruit looks up to Dan so much, though, she can't quite avoid all contact
Andrew very much steers clear of the recruit and her baby despite finding them interesting somehow, and them drawing him in for reasons he can't explain (yet);
Neil is traumatized just at the perspective of having to captain the recruit and being in the same room as a live baby; it's almost enough to make him run away again (almost);
Kevin is very stupid about the whole thing, but the least afraid of the Kandreil triad, and his stupidity ends up being endearing (with the baby, not with the recruit);
Renee & Nicky are the most excited of the Foxes, and also the most apt to babysit;
Aaron really doesn't give a flying fuck about the baby, which is why the baby likes him so much; Katelyn, reasonably, really doubts the safety of having a pregnant-until-recently recruit on the Foxes' roster, and of having the Foxes trusted with a baby, which is why she's relieved when Aaron's got baby-duty, but also pissed he has to have another weight added onto his shoulders; she watches the situation from afar but very much disapproves; she bonds a little with the recruit, tries to help her at times, but sets clear boundaries about 'no babies';
Allison buys a shit ton of baby clothes so as to avoid baby-duty, which she couldn't care less about, as does she for the recruit herself;
And Matt... Matt doesn't really concern himself with the baby nor the recruit until /incident/, because despite each Fox having an opinion, it is mostly Abby (and Wymack) taking care of things when the recruit absolutely can't (and she's doing the absolute most);
Matt tries to support Dan as best as he can, which means a lot, lot, lot of talking about the recruit, which means Matt knows exactly when things start to get personal for Dan, knows the exact moment when Dan falls;
Which means he doesn't even notice himself falling for the recruit as well;
Dan falls first and Matt falls harder.
Basically I wanted the Foxes to have a baby but didn't want to do that to any of them, so I created my own OC and then rocked her shit in a very bad way. As you can see, I have not much (if anything at all) figured out. Title is temporary, just a file name. The OC isn't fleshed out (i know how she gets there, idk wtf she does after that) nor baptized, her baby isn't named or gendered either, I don't know what major incident pushes Dan and Matt to really care, I don't know how Serena Williams or Alyson Felix did to compete while pregnant/recently pregnant but I'm looking into it, and...yeah. I also wanted to explore Matt and Dan's characters, and relationship, because I feel they are wildly underrated and swept aside in fics as just the lovey-dovey couple, and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be wild if the most established couple of the Foxes suddenly got with a 3rd partner?' and thus this idea was born (like someone else's baby I know...) Enjoy this shit show!
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we need to have an honest conversation about hostile attribution bias, honesty, and bullying.
@deliciouskeys i've had enough of this shit. you wanted to piss me off. now i'm pissed the fuck off.
hey, hiiii. friends of hers? critics? whoever you are reading this and willing to hear me out, i just wanna start by saying don't hate on her or anyone for this. don't send harassment, don't send anon hate, don't even unfollow her if you do read this all the way and find yourself upset with the topics discussed or her actions.
or maybe you wouldn't anyway, and you've already decided i'm insane, fine. but if you are friends of hers, don't barrage her with verbal abuse of any kind even if you are disappointed or disgusted, i'm not about that. and good friends won't just coddle and take your side to enable the bullshit, but they won't try to hurt you when you're down either
and to clarify what this is? it is a harsh criticism of ongoing behavior i have faced from her behind the scenes. or out in the open i suppose but mostly unseen or dismissed.
yes, i have the motherfucking receipts. i've tried to condense them to what i found most relevant to the topics at hand without clipping the interactions so much that they would give a biased misrepresentation, but all conversations as of this moment and to the best of my knowledge are still available to view in full context. mine certainly won't be deleted.
i may have some bad takes sometimes cause i'm as perfect as anyone, which is to say NOT AT ALL. but i'll readily admit that and the fact that i work on it, CONSTANTLY. and before anyone decides to dig through my shit to see if they can find dirt on me IRRELEVANT to this situation to DISTRACT from what's being called out?
all i ask is a fair chance and moment of your time to show you what i've been through, because it's something she never gave me from day one. and bear in mind please, that i am pissed off because it's gone on long enough and now she's trying to drag my friends into it while CONTINUING TO LIE BEHIND MY BACK and feign fucking ignorance.
no more.
deliciouskeys? you. yes you, i am addressing you directly this time. i gave you a peace offering with the mike sully meme, and you just kept going.
since i poked my head into the boys fandom, you have been hostile to me, LIED about me, put words in my mouth, accused me of hostility towards you, assumed my intent while not only withholding the benefit of a doubt, but consistently. consistently putting me down and insulting me as some sort of estranged fandom villain who only exists or popped up to oppose you or ruin everything.
i'm not a fucking cartoon character, i am a person. i do not exist to supplant you or whatever weird shit you keep imagining me to be that makes you act like this.
almost every single thing i say to you, instead of actually LISTENING or i dunno, READING IT AT FACE VALUE, you take. hyperanalyze. and immediately give it the WORST interpretation you can. and that's if i'm lucky.
i'm not here for fandom wars and shipping bullshit. i'm not here for your false dichotomy fantasy. i'm here to be a bullshit shipper and have fun and try to get others to be more open and have fun too. maybe throw in a psa here and there for the things i find important.
i'm not here to get fucking bullied either or to watch others get bullied. you can take your assumed hostility and narcissistic PROJECTION and shove it straight up your ass if you think i'm going to tolerate it.
and what is 'hostile attribution bias'? it's this shit.
oh, and you don't have to assume it anymore. i'm fucking hostile. why am i hostile? oh... at this point, i KNOW you KNOW. but not everyone else does, so let's just lay it all out and let others draw their own conclusions. hm?
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this was what set you off, right? the automatic assumption that this was someone i knew, looking out for me? i suppose that's possible but that doesn't mean i know exactly who it was or that i put them up to it.
and y'know, i might have even said that anon was a bit harsh and still given you the benefit of a doubt. anon was ANGRY and that's clear, but plausible deniability is so wonderful, isn't it?
but you've gone beyond that point. it wouldn't be the first time someone's noticed your behavior, and i can guarantee that. our first conversation was on my post about the comics and what they meant to me, sparked from an interaction i had with another fan of the show who refused to read the comics but still insulted them directly to me.
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the bottom piece is from the post, the top would be the snippet of conversation with the other person prior. all of these are highlighted with slightly adjusted coloring for ease of understanding who's who. and granted, you could argue that i jumped the gun in my first response to you, but then you accused me of being hostile towards people who allegedly read and disliked them. and i had done no such thing, i literally was not addressing those people at all.
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that was the first time you put words in my mouth, lied about what i said, and 'villainized' me for 'attacking people' made of straw i might add, when the post itself SPECIFICALLY STATED:
MISCONCEPTION.
so not the people, but the IDEA. an actually legitimately incorrect idea given context. i could go into a rant about how the comics cover one of the single most important and detrimental concepts to humanity (the war machine) and how american media is so piss watered down, propagandized and censored for babies and pearl clutching old people (and before you clutch your pearls over me 'attacking' babies and the elderly, i am not. i am criticizing AMERICAN MEDIA and PURITAN MENTALITY) that the comic itself was relatively tame outside of the american world view bubble, but that's not the point here, is it.
the 'many many' actually refers to people off of tumblr too, though i'm sure there's a fair share here of that mindset as it's found everywhere with everything. even then, i don't condemn the people. minds can be changed for ideas, that was what i was trying to do. maybe i need better methods and i can admit that.
still you chose to lie to my face or what, attempt to gaslight me?? whatever it was, it was enough for someone ELSE to step in and literally ask if you were BULLYING me.
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and me, being the naive fucking moron that i am and thinking we ended on a nice punny note and the conversation wasn't so bad STILL gave YOU the benefit of a doubt.
did you extend the same courtesy to me later on? well, let's see.
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no. no you did not. snippets of a convo from an anon ask you got on a proposed canon butchlander from when i tried to join in, you immediately accused me of things i have never said or done or even implied. and when i called you out on it, you immediately apologized (good on you, not included here but i DO acknowledge it and DID appreciate it) and i thought, "oh cool! we must be explaining ourselves to try and better understand each other so this doesn't happen again."
only for you to then backtrack and jump back on that ASSUMED HOSTILITY shit you seem to just LOVE huffing. but just for me i gather. maybe a couple others that i haven't seen or don't know about.
considering this is just the stuff i DO know about.
moving on.
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you have questions? oh, what a cowinkydink, i have answers. if only you had just ASKED ME DIRECTLY INSTEAD OF PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH AND LYING.
but to give some clarification to the numbered ones.
love the framing here. OF COURSE, WE are ONLY here to be a NUISANCE. must be nice being a real human who can interact with others instead of solely "bother" them. if you'd actually read the post, you might have seen it was about the BULLYING itself, not the bullshit that apparently makes you rabid enough to be a bully. great use of being obtuse.
stop putting words in my mouth. stop fucking lying about me. stop assuming my intentions. stop painting me for your weird ass personal agenda or vendetta. stop making up bullshit about me when you haven't taken two seconds to get to know me. i did no such thing as 'slur the cishets'. proof is in the fucking pudding.
ahhh... i understand why you don't block people. and i think i'm understanding the insidious behavior and bullying too. you're disgusting to people who you don't want to see the content of so that they'll block you while you get to pretend you're still on your little high horse of being the "less petty" or "bigger" person. and that way you don't have to see their content anymore, right? having your cake, and eating it too. it's smart. it looks good on you as long as people don't see the behavior, like you might actually want to solve problems.
although, if i'm to understand all this correctly, you don't want to given the continued hostility towards me regardless of what i do or say. am i getting this, more of that delectable plausible deniability? or am i giving you too much credit? do you even want the benefit of a doubt at this point? because you stated before you'd rather be considered evil than stupid.
oh, my mistake, "disgusting" than "ignorant". let me not do what you do and put words in your mouth. clarify for me, if you want to.
personally, i think ignorance is more forgivable than malice because at least the uninformed can learn better, while those with ill intent will seek to harm again, but to each their own i guess.
and if you actually have brain damage over a nonsensical but ultimately harmless shit joke online, i'd suggest seeking actual help from a doctor because that isn't normal. but i'm going to be generous and say maybe it was a bit much or gave you a recurring nightmare or something, i don't know you, in which case yeah, get help if you need it. i take mental health very seriously so i'm not joking or being sarcastic here. happy healing and sorry for the trouble if that's the case on this specific thing.
but oh! you just don't want to see it, right? TOO BAD BITCH, I GOT MORE TO GIVE AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME!!
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and i don't have a problem with you writing your personal views about a pairing, any pairing. if that were all you had done, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation or, if you don't care i suppose i wouldn't be screaming into the void.
but you explicitly stated your point of view was "pretty common", that defaults my view as "uncommon" or in other words, "others" me and those who like bottom billy. don't you dare deny that when you know for a fact it's true.
then citing reasons for why you believed your view was more "accurate". you then went on to claim you were "baffled" when if that were true and you were actually interested in TRYING to UNDERSTAND? YOU WOULD HAVE JUST FUCKING ASKED ME DIRECTLY.
not that i would owe you an explanation or apology, or anything. but i'd have been NICE enough to try and answer anyway to the best of my ability. here, i'll do it now.
i'm not a big fan of bottom homie for the same reasons i'm not at all a fan of (show) homewell. apart from the whole superdick/compressing anus thing, narcissistic abuse/grooming and exploiting someone's trauma for a toxic kink is not only a huge turn off for me, it's super fucking triggering based on my experiences and what i have been through. i've had enough people looking down on me and telling me they "know what's best for me" while trying to rob me of my humanity and use me for their gain.
the funny thing is that i relate to homie in that sense but consider myself a total bottom who also LOVES the 'dom mommy' in certain context, but i also share a lot of similarities with butcher as well and know they both have a lot of very intense differences from me. and homie has a fucking vibrator for a dick. you CANNOT make me want to miss a chance for that, it's just not going to happen. and if i ever want to explore any form of 'grooming' kink from a personal place? i'll stick to thanos and mistress death, thanks.
i also don't find toxic masculinity sexy, that's a red fucking flag for me more glaring than the entirety of homelander, i find POSITIVE masculinity far sexier and true 'top' like. MM has the most of that in my opinion and is the sexiest man on the show, besides the guy who plays black noir under the mask.
i also fully understand the kink on the other end, y'all wanna baby him cause he's never had a mommy and longs for some kind of nurturing parental love, and y'all also wanna fuck him cause he's hot. so ya smash the two together and embrace the infantilization kink (which is seriously not my thing)
and listen, more power to ya. if that's what you like, enjoy it. i'm not judging. i just don't have the same fucking taste and i'm entitled to that. i don't understand why you have to comment on it or be "baffled" by the idea that people can be different from you.
for the record, i don't want to smash the two ideas together, i want to help homie SEPARATE and DEMUDDLE the legitimate problems and confusion in his brain that makes him so vulnurable to women's manipulations, and help him grow the fuck up without wanting to fuck his own mother (if he hasn't already) or keep him baby minded forever. i want to untap his potential and see the man he can/would become depending on circumstance.
because i like redemption and character growth and am a sucker for second chances regardless of liking dark media, and there's a huge difference between "i like you" and " i like that you like me".
that requires a more careful handling than anything suface level, but regardless i don't enjoy exploiting trauma kinks or reinforcing toxic masculinity any more than i would enjoy yiff or snuff. i wouldn't judge someone for having the taste as long as no one real got hurt. but that doesn't mean i have to have their taste.
stop kink shaming me or being "confused" by my preference, i haven't done the same to you. and before you pretend you haven't or that i have.
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if you were "seriously trying to understand" you would again, ASK ME DIRECTLY instead of this roundabout bullshit where you talk about it and 'how confused or tired' you are, but can't be bothered to take two fucking seconds to JUST ASK for a more serious answer beyond willem dafoe.
if i wanted to shame you for having a kink, i wouldn't be subtle about it. but i wouldn't anyway because i wouldn't even shame those who have a rape fantasy because i have one and have written and read plenty of it. i file it under 'horror pr0n' with a number of other things, and not every form or 'flavor' of horror pr0n that exists is going to be for everyone, much the same as fucking regular horror. but if it's FICTION, it shouldn't matter.
i understand that and if i judged others for having different tastes or acted... well like YOU, that would make me a hypocrite.
and your friend got it PERFECTLY on the first note. and then decided to enable the bullshit yet again by subscribing to the bane of human unity, tribalism. thanks for reinforcing the idea that this HAS to be a dichotomy WHEN IT'S NOT.
a little healthy teasing and competition? i'm game. it's too bad that's not what this was.
i am not your fucking enemy just because YOU decided i was, YOU do not get to decide that for me. but i'll give them the benefit of a doubt and say they were 'just joking', right?
that's ALL it ever is. "just jokes". but JUST when you or "your side" do it. it's not like you've ever been derogatory and petty about "your side" being the "good side" of fandom.
if you have to constantly reinforce and self assure how "good" you are compared to "others" specifically not part of your niche bubble?
you're an asshole who's not actually "good", full stop. if you have to measure your self worth based on what others do or comparing yourself to them, actually seek help because that's not healthy. just my two cents
but if you want to get technical, NO ONE IS RIGHT AND NEITHER BILLY NOR HOMELANDER IS TOP OR BOTTOM IN A TRADITIONAL SENSE, not just because opinions and preferences can't be right or wrong. because butchlander isn't fucking canon, isn't going to become canon, and as far as we know, both characters are confirmed 100% STRAIGHT within the show with toxic masculinity issues a mile long and would never wanna touch each other like that with a 10 foot pole, and homelander's shown exactly ZERO interest in actually being pegged thus far, so that idea's a headcanon.
even herogasm showed us that 3 on fucking 1 STILL wasn't enough to take him down and homie freaking out over a bruise from an unfair challenge of 3 on 1 because it had logically been a very long time since he'd been hurt makes reasonable sense on a basic surface level. he's then over it by the time maeve makes him bleed and carries on bleeding, and now butcher's dying and is the most vulnurable and literally weak because he's sick of the bunch, so... headcanons? headcanons are fine but let's not forget reality and then laugh at the people who remember it.
and if you had just asked me why i even brought up lovely amazing beautiful cishet women (not at all sarcastic, see above purple posts), instead of YET AGAIN. ASSUMING MY INTENT AND PUTTING A LOAD OF CRAP IN MY MOUTH. you can have that back by the way, what the actual fuck is wrong with you??
or for clarification on why i brought it up? i could have TOLD YOU MYSELF. because unlike SOME PEOPLE, when someone just ASKS a question or gives a neutral or even heated response? I DON'T ASSUME HOSTILITY OR TAKE IT PERSONALLY FROM THEM LIKE IT'S A FUCKING SPORT.
fact (and correct me if i'm wrong): majority of people participating in shipping fandom are cishet women.
this is a simple fact, it doesn't mean anything beyond that, i specifically said both times there's nothing wrong with this.
a majority of people are cishet, so this is to be expected. it still doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the people.
fact: society has issues, ideas, and expectations that affect and harm us all. cishet, or queer. and these issues will and do present themselves in fandom and fan fictions whether we realize that or not. heteronormativity would be one of those. misogyny is another.
and one of my kinks is challenging that, or at least the way i see to challenge that while dunking on redpill idealogy and toxic masculinity because i fucking can.
and i just LOVE how you tout about having the "pReTtY cOmMoN" perception which newsflash, YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO HETERONORMATIVE IDEAOLOGY IF YOU THINK TOXIC MASCULINITY IS A REASON A MAN WOULD NEVER BOTTOM. you'd be surprised what people could get up to behind closed doors. but then you turn around and not only put more words in my mouth, enable anon to put words in my mouth, discourage getting a direct answer from me, accuse me and my friends of being the type to randomly accuse someone else of doxxing??? wtf even is that.
and of course. given your 'pretty common' perception being the total opposite of heteronormativity, it MUST mean that society has resolved all of its issues and come to accept queer people exactly as they are in all forms with no expectations or interference whatsoever, oh yeah. places like florida or uganda just totally don't exist. the u.s. isn't on the verge of becoming an actual fascist hellhole for us, and it is TOTALLY just... no one oppresses us. no one.
ESPECIALLY not the cishets.
and despite all the evidence to the contrary, you especially have done nothing wrong here and its all in my head. is that right? can you clarify for me? do you think that my situations have put zero pressure on me in my day to day life? on my friends' lives? do you think you didn't add to that? do you think you and company are the only ones that feel or react like humans?
imagine being so far up your own ass you tell the queer HOW to queer. or at least be a GOOD queer, right?
oh, i'm sorry let me not put words in your mouth. you were of course only laughing at me behind my back for the 'anti-cishet' things i never said.
and no. OBVIOUSLY i wasn't saying any of the shit you accused. i was saying i prefer SUBVERSIVE themes when i do my tops and bottoms and a more detailed look at that can be found in my purple all over responses or just the posts themselves, but if you still want to ask me anyway, i'll answer to the best of my ability.
and what a coincidence that despite you understanding top/bottom not just being related to penetration and some people will feel certain dynamics may be reductive, how ironic that you couldn't possibly fathom that as one of my main complaints.
you don't WANT to actually understand. you just wanted a circle jerk of confirmation bias.
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this anon hit the nail on the fucking head. and you wanted to fight them?? i could have overlooked this but i wanted to touch on something really important because i don't know what anon may have seen but i once saw you answer an ask about homelander's redeemability and you cited "tough love" as a means to get there.
and as a former addict and narcissistic abuse survivor (specifying for context), i can tell you first hand "tough love" is not a real thing, and it's not discipline either because that requires teaching and providing tools for rehabilitation. but don't just take my word for it.
from a psychological perspective and to hear actual professionals go over the concept? "tough love" not only DOESN'T work. it is an excuse to be nasty and abusive to someone under the guise that you are only doing it to help them, when all it really does is make you an abusive fuck.
this would be why the SHOW had HOMELANDER of all people saying it, why what billy did to ryan is presented the way it was with HUGHIE of all people, the guy who was at the time dealing with a huge wad of toxic masculinity issues up his ass, 'got it'. and even BUTCHER'S DAD is presented as the piece of shit that he is who gladly passed on his curse to butcher like it was a 'gift'.
even the comics got this when they present butcher doing his scumlord over 9000 move to hughie and annie saying "cruel to be kind" about his own bullshit. no. no no no. he did NOT do that for hughie's well being. he did it for himself because he was a selfish prick.
and i want to be clear. i am being an asshole here and i fully recognize that. that's for ME to feel better because i am fed up with your bullshit. because you have spent your time poking and prodding me for a hostile reaction. well congrats motherfucker. you got it.
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and there ain't NO fucking love there.
i won't be your enemy. but i am NOT your friend either. clearly YOU wouldn't want that anyway.
but because i always have to add in that disclaimer for basic human decency? EVEN WITH HOW I FEEL and what the actual science says about "tough love", i would still never tell someone they can't use it in fiction, presented as a toxic kink or whatever the fuck else. even if it triggers me. even if i have a thousand different reasons to criticize it and voice that in a separate space.
people can do whatever the fuck they want and i can't control that. neither can you.
but i don't have to engage with the content or speak positively on it or keep my mouth shut, and i'm not gonna harrass people or pull the kind of insidious bullshit you do either.
at the end of the day, this is fiction. and if you feel the need to run an entire fucking smear campaign about me over fiction and preferences??
stop lying about me
stop putting words in my mouth
stop talking about me behind my back
stop predetermining who i am for me
stop assuming hostility when i will flat out tell you my intent and you can just ask, that doesn't just go for me.
stop fucking gatekeeping and gaslighting.
I DON'T HAVE A DISHONESTY PROBLEM LIKE SOME PEOPLE.
and fuck you.
neither me nor any of my friends or these anons are crazy and i will not sit around while you try to fucking gaslight me or anyone else. try it again, i fucking dare you.
bottom billy lovers existing is not an attack on you. it never was. you don't own the tags. FUCKING DEAL.
this behavior? is UNNACCEPTABLE.
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as for fandom? a few more things i want to cover. i couldn't have said it better than a friend of mine who while a little hectic and crazy sometimes, has been nothing but a sweetheart<3 that i just want to encourage and motivate to art or post pictures of her billy butcher kitty babygirl incarnate but unfortunately due to circumstances may be regressing back into her shell.
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a message i will never stop promoting, whatever iteration it comes in, whenever it comes up.
i may disagree with what you are saying or doing, but as long as you are not harming anyone, i will fight wholeheartedly for your right to say or do so.
that is the philosphy of true freedom, THAT is what i subscribe to. and it pisses me the fuck off when i see people trying to punish or hurt people for things that hurt no one. we don't get to decide how other people want to live their lives. we can only navigate and hope we might find a friend along the way.
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and THAT is the single greatest picture of captain america ever fucking created. no i will take dissenting opinions.
in regards to assumed hostility or hostile attribution bias, a more lighthearted and easily digestable demonstration is below.
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gais... just don't do it. don't automatically assume that someone means you harm or pain simply because they disagree with you. this is what leads to more problems. this is what leads to human tribalism. this is what divides us. this is what destroys us. this is what leads to wars. fandom shipping bullshit or otherwise.
the fucking stupidest invention of humanity, fought over goddamn unholy wads of paper and scribbles of ink because people couldn't accept that their ideas weren't accepted by everyone else, and anyone who didn't fall in line got the axe. or alienated. or excommunicated. or accused of being a witch. or whatever.
but this is the kinda shit we need to nip in the bud at the most basic level we can, every time we can.
it's called intolerance of the intolerant. and it's how we stop hatred from fostering and the intolerance being tolerated and eventually taking over.
because assumed hostility? it IS intolerance.
people are not made from ideas, it's the people who make or break the ideas, not the other way around. and ideas can change.
that should never be seen as a bad thing because it's necessary for positive changes and better understanding as time goes on.
challenge yourselves and the way you think, listen to newcomers and welcome them, have healthy discussions, learn to agree to disagree. it's not that hard.
and i know, i get it. it's not easy, not that simple either. everyone's on edge, people are sickly addicted to hatred and anger because they are EASY. giving in to them doesn't require self control or any form of discipline, it is as simple as instinct. it IS instinct. but if humanity has ANY hope of moving forward?
we HAVE to learn to give people the benefit of a doubt. we HAVE to learn to listen to each other, *actually* listen and hear *exactly* what others are saying. HAVE to learn to identify the difference between a differing *non-hostile* opinion and actual *intolerance*
because the world has already seen what happens when we FAIL and eventually we WILL run out of chances to get it right.
please at least TRY to give the benefit of the doubt in an appropriate situation.
i'll lead by example.
keys? even you. even now, i'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt DESPITE how you've treated me AND my friends now. because MAYBE you were actually key in the sketch and just having a bad day each time we interacted or MAYBE you have some sort of trauma getting triggered whenever you see my shit or we interact or whatever the fuck it could be, MAYBE you are feeling the pressures of a self discovery coming out journey and it's manifesting badly (yes i did notice that and if this is the case i would still wish you nothing but good will and luck with that, not sarcastic), or some combination, there's a million reasons and i don't know you, so i'm not going to assume or say anything for certain.
unlike some people.
but i don't think you're stupid. on the contrary, looking at your posts, my first 'assumption' was that you are actually very well educated and were just enjoying having fun and being silly. later and based on some things i saw, it occured to me that your education/upbringing may put you at odds or at a disadvantage with connecting with people online or having them understand you, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you or them, it just means you're speaking different languages.
even the "tough love" thing could be a miscommunication/malapropism. it could also be internal denial because you had a loved one do that to you and still haven't come to terms with the actual abuse you were experiencing because "they knew best"
i've been there. but maybe i'm the one who's projecting just to give you the benefit of a doubt. is it fair for me to take out my own frustrations on random people? fuck to the NO. which is why i TRY regularly to keep that shit in line and my life private.
so i absolutely will not excuse you for being so blatantly dishonest about me either behind my back or to my face because even if you do think i'm being hostile (when i'm not), there's no excuse for that. no, i wouldn't excuse myself either.
that needs to stop in a general sense, and i know you KNOW you are doing that because you'd have to *actually* be the biggest fucking illiterate moron on the planet to not know at this point.
especially when i reached out to you before to try and resolve this calmly and you ignored me and then continued lying about me, yucking it up with anons and buddies like high school mean girls. officially. unironically. instead of doing an ounce of self reflecting.
and i didn't include those messages, but the continued disingenuity and callous misrepresentation is there. and especially the carving into my character to define me however you want without giving me a voice to speak for myself.
stop it. you know it. i know it. maybe you think i'm some country bumpkin cousin hick fucker who happens to conveniently be queer but is remarkably stupid or an easy target.
and maybe i am stupid for ever giving you the benefit of a doubt, but you don't get to rob me of my humanity or basic courtesy.
because YOU'RE human too. and you have a right to your thoughts and feelings and opinions, and i get that, and i support it
even if by some fucking bizarre coocoo for cocoa puffs alternate reality, butchlander were to become canon the way I saw it? i wouldn't gloat or celebrate or try to rub it in your face.
I would encourage you to keep liking what you like and keep being yourself, maybe even harder than before.
even knowing you wouldn't do the same for me. at least from personal experience. see any of the above. and if you think i'm a self righteous prick for it, so fucking be it.
but if you're going to be an asshole? at least own the fuck up to it.
oh, and by the way? i now headcanon that billy butcher once a month puts on a full body gimp suit and with ball gag to do some strange kinda unholy shit with fruit OR veggies (never both), and it HAS to be a waning crecent moon, because i fucking can. and you can't stop me. ;)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
gais... don't immediately assume hostility. please. i know tone can be hard to interpret through writing or typic and emojis help, and yeah, i know i can jump the gun too. but i try to take things told to me at face/basic value or read them in a neutral tone and i think it helps too.
but we should never be judging anyone before we know them.
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thestobingirlie · 1 year
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I love reading fics where Steve is disabled, be it hard of hearing, seizures, chronic migraines, like he's had too many concussions not to have any issues from it. (I think its because I have a neurological disability and Steve is my comfort character, so projecting.)
But something that really gives me the ick is I've noticed a lot more ST fic recently have been handling disabled characters in a really ableist way (100% not all, just noticed more) and quite often they're just infantilising the disabled characters. I've noticed this the most when Steve is disabled, because I mostly read Steve-centric fics, but I have also noticed it with Robin and Eddie.
I've been seeing a lot of other characters addressing Steve and Robin as if they were toddlers when they are written as disabled, in ways that no adult should speak to anyone who is over the age of 5. Especially when Steve is written in a post-seizure state, or Robin is having a panic attack. Like, they might not be fully aware, but they are not children.
Sometimes, its other characters treating Steve as if he is incapable of doing anything on his own if he is disabled. As if the only things he can do without constant supervision is lie in bed or sit on a couch and watch tv. I saw one fic where others scolded him for getting out of bed to go to the bathroom without asking for help, and it wasn't as if he was recently injured or fresh out of a seizure, he was in pretty good health aside from being at risk of seizures.
With Robin, I've seen her written as if she needs to be treated like a fragile 2 year old otherwise she is in a constant state of panic attack and is always totally useless, and I've seen people use this sort of attitude to write her out of the high stress situations. Or she will just always go off on unrelated tangents so she isn't useful because she interrupts the people who know what they're talking about. Or she's written as if her rambling is a liability and she can't be trusted because if she got caught she'd 100% tell the bad guys everything.
And with Eddie I've noticed some people who write him as autistic (I love autistic and ADHD Eddie) seem to have him just constantly biting people like he is a nonverbal three-year-old who has figured out that their easiest way to communicate is by using their teeth. And it always with the attitude "it doesn't matter if he hurts people by biting them because it is his method of self-regulating."
(And no, I do NOT accept the billy stans who claim that it is ableist to talk about the bad things he's done. like, no that man is not canonically disabled (I've seen billy stans say he is canonically bipolar or has bpd? Like no.), he is canonically racist and abusive. even if he was canonically disabled that isn't an excuse for his behavior. also, I know people that have bipolar or bpd, and they arent racist and abusive. in fact they are some of the most careful people about what they can control of their behavior because they are worried about becoming abusive to their loved ones).
sorry this is really disjointed and probably doesn't make much sense but I just needed to get it off my chest. and I just love your blog!
and i love you, random tumblr user! but yeah, always feel free to just drop thoughts into my inbox, i’ll try and sort through them lmao
i enjoy reading fics where steve’s injuries have repercussions too. though it definitely isn’t always written well.
i think because the duffers ignore his injuries so much, people kinda go into hyperdrive and over-acknowledge them, almost. i think it also comes from wanting steve to be as angsty as possible, which means people don’t treat his disability’s very… nicely? they usually just use his conditions to ruin his life and make him miserable, and infantilise him, like you said.
i honestly think people just know fuck all about seizures, and cannot be bothered to look it up, but still want steve to experience them so they can make him as sad and depressed as possible.
they see seizures as this, like, life-ending condition, and so use them to kinda destroy steve’s life.
i think a lot of people also use his disabilities to get steve cared for, because we all want people to take care of the poor boy. but again, they just over-do it, and make it seem like he’s a little baby that can’t do anything.
i honestly don’t think most of these people are doing this from a place of harm. i think they honestly want to depict steve experiencing these things and being comforted etc. they’re just kinda ignorant.
i am very lucky that i haven’t seen fics that treat robin like that, because i honestly think i’d explode lol.
and yeah, the biting thing was kinda funny at first, and then it got kinda weird… people just see a fandom joke and do what fandoms always do, which is drag it out, and make it so extreme it’s barely recognisable as the original idea.
(yeah, with no character should you excuse their actions with a mental illness. like, billy’s abuse explains why he is the way he is, but it doesn’t excuse it. even when you have a mental illness you can’t just use that as an excuse to treat people like crap, and they’re entitled to call you out for doing so.)
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httplvki · 5 months
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long Astarion analysis / ramble / self-projection
(disclaimer: this mostly focuses on the sexual abuse he went through and how it affected him) risen from the dead just to yap about astarion cuz of how much he’s a bit too relatable
Maybe I'm self-projecting on Astarion, but it's so relatable on how he manipulates Tav at the start because he wants protection and safety, which resorts to him having sex with Tav so the connection will be there with them. He believes that the only way to get Tav to stay by his side is to give up his body because it has become a habit of his to use his body for sex after 200 years of using it to seduce other people for his master. He “abandons” his boundaries and his own worth to have someone stay by his side, which hits a bit too close to home.
He sexualizes himself for the person and agrees on anything sexual because he believes that it will make Tav (in this context) happy, so they won't leave him if he just keeps presenting himself on a dinner plate. Especially in the scene where Tav wants to sleep with another member of the party and he says something along the lines of "It's not because we haven't done IT in a while, right?", where he's worried that Tav was leaving him because they haven't had sex together in a while, meaning that he believes that one of the only ways to keep someone by his side is to satisfy their lust. He believed that sex and his body were one of the only features that he had that he was able to use to keep others around and not leave him. He’s vulnerable when it comes to himself because he can’t think of himself as anything more than just a means to an end, which is why he needs Tav to be able to give him the reassurance that they will back him up and stand up for him whenever he needs.
We could also assume that he was sexually assaulted by the fools or villains (lowly criminals most of the time) that became Astarion's victims. Because almost 99% (assumption) of the time where he has had sex with victims, it was all dub-con (dubious consent where consent is unclear or not stated) at best because of how it was all forced onto him by Cazador. He needed to “entertain” them even if he himself didn’t want to, making it already not very consensual. With needing to seduce anything with a pulse almost non-stop, he is still very flirty with Tav even after romancing them, which I personally would like to headcanon that he could be a hypersexual, and he hates it because it makes him feel disgusting from the reminders of all the bad sexual experiences he had. (Just to clarify this is what I assume / hc)
After 200 years, he's used to saying sweet nothings to others to satisfy them, thinking it will work on everyone because it has after all the years of being a slave to Cazador. For instance in Act I when he said “I love you” to Tav, but it was just a lie, and even he admits it himself when Tav sees through his act. It’s all an act for his own needs and the other person's satisfaction and happiness. However, he comes across a hurdle if you play as Karlach and romance Astarion; he isn’t able to have sex with her because of her condition. He gets frustrated because he has never done anything else to manipulate someone other than sleeping with them; he doesn’t know what to do because it is out of his control.
The difference between choosing Karlach or Tav to romance Astarion is the level of control that he feels he has. If Tav refuses to sleep with him, he gets upset because he feels like he has done something wrong, and it means you won’t be able to trust him, which equals Tav is not going to fulfill what Astarion needs: safety and protection. He loses control in this situation because of the other person's own opinions and actions, which is a no-go for Astarion. Compared to using Karlach to romance him, he gets upset because he can’t sleep with her because of her condition, but he can understand that reason. He doesn’t take it to heart because it’s understandable to both parties, so in the end, Karlach and Astarion just talk and then fall asleep together. (I very much prefer Karlachs one because I wish we could do the same with Tav where we don’t have to sleep with him)
This is why I also believe that one of the other reasons why he wants power (that excludes taking over, Cazador, and his going through with his revenge) is to feel that he has some other power that he can have rather than only having his body as a source of "power" or “strength" that could manipulate other people.
Further discussion about Astarion and manipulation, he “manipulates'' Tav in the scene where he wants power after killing Cazador; he says, “You want what's best for me, surely?” Even after being romanced by Tav. he believes that ascending and taking part in the ritual will heal him from everything and become powerful, but in reality, he would just continue the cycle of abuse for another centuries on end. He loves Tav, but manipulation is already second nature to him when he WANTS something; it's just like breathing air to him because of how normal it is, and it will take a while for that habit to devolve after his traumatic years of needing to manipulate others to stay alive, almost just like Cazador where he will do anything and manipulate anyone or anything to get what HE wants. Furthermore, being manipulated by Cazador has caused a long-lasting effect on Astarion, where manipulation tactics are passed down and used.
Astarion was treated like a doll, controlled with strings to keep using his body to lure victims in, while he didn’t have any bodily autonomy to say no or to stop it. For example, later on in Act II-III, if you don't respect his boundary after he confesses to you, and you still WANT to have sex with him, later on in the cutscene where he and Tav are in bed together, he sits up, and his look shows that his mind is in another plane. He felt devastated, disappointed, and betrayed even because of how you treated him like a doll for seduction and sex, just like how Cazador used Astarion to seduce his victims. He later breaks it up with Tav once he realizes the feeling of being able to say no and have his own bodily autonomy.
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goodluckclove · 14 days
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The Archivist no. 1 - Control
so fuck it i'm trying this anyway. here's a long-form, but ultimately singular piece i wrote trying to process the singular Terrible Event of my upbringing. if unaliving stuff is triggering for you now you shouldn't read this.
i'm not going to do this that often because it's nice to work things out in my head but holy shit this was weird to come back to. if someone finds it relatable in that oh hey your shit sucked too and you survived huh?? way i'll get into it again at a later time.
otherwise uh. yeah. enjoy? legit though read the tags before you do this i don't want anyone freaking out.
The Archivist no. 1 – Control
Mom wasn’t sleeping much in the nights before she killed herself. It wasn’t unusual given her rampant insomnia. Dad would pass out in the bedroom, and I would come out of my room at the end of the hall tin the middle of the night and find her watching bad crime dramas and reading the news on her iPad. I didn’t sleep much back then either, I guess.
Sometimes I would sit with her for a while, but the shows didn’t interest me much. Mostly I’d make a joke and continue to the kitchen to grab a snack before going back to my bedroom to keep on writing. I was almost sixteen years old and I had completed two novels that stood, unread, on an elephant’s graveyard of abandoned projects. So it goes.
Near the end of summer I came down with some sort of head cold. I woke up in the middle of the night, feverish and frustrated, and went out into the hall to see if Mom would be awake.
Time flickers and I’m lying on the couch with my head in her lap. She’s stroking my hair. She’s telling me that in the morning we’re going to go out in the mall and she’s going to buy me new pants. I don’t know why she told me that. I don’t know if it was a lie. She solved a lot of problems by shopping for clothes, so it sounded like something she would say. Mom even insisted in a voice that hung quiet in the dark that we would go to Macy’s, a rarity when she only ever bought my wardrobe from Goodwill.
I believed her then because I was a child and I loved my mother. I was sick and I loved my mother. I was looking forward to her buying me new pants.
Did she know then? I don’t know. She’s had two rounds of electroshock therapy since then, so the memory has been thoroughly wiped from her brain. It’s just gone. That moment exists solely in my own recollection, which is barely better than it never existing to begin with.
Later that morning she left saying she had some errands to run. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I had no way to, really, being that they had me on nine hundred milligrams of Seroquel at the time – one hundred more than the recommended dose for an adult man. The mornings left me in a sticky daze and I usually wasn’t able to gain any lucidity until a few hours after I woke up.
Once that happened I felt a little stirred by the circumstances. Mom had errands? What errands? She didn’t do the grocery shopping, she had my brother and I make that trip every week. She didn’t have a job or friends to meet. More than that, her agoraphobia crippled her at times and made leaving the house for anything a feat. But no, she just let for errands and told me that as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
I told myself it was fine.
When I texted her a few hours later she didn’t respond. I called her after that and she didn’t answer. I think I called her a few times.
She didn’t come home at all that day. I remember feeling the dread clinging tight to the top of my rib cage like something toxic just about to drip. It was a feeling I didn’t know how to communicate, and in retrospect I know now that it is a deeply-rooted instinct from my childhood. The warped insight that tells me that, when Mom leaves under mysterious circumstances, or when she leaves after you make her made – she’s going out to drink.
But that couldn’t be it. Mom was sober now and proud of it. She marked her sobriety date as Cino de Mayo and laughed every year at the irony. Mom was sober now. Things were different.
Dad came home from work and I was lingering in the living room, standing guard like an anxious animal. My older brothers were in their bedroom, on their laptops, no knowledge of the panic I was feeling.
Dad greeted me and asked where Mom was. In a voice that mimicked neutrality I said that she left to run errands. He took that with a nod and went to the backyard. I don’t know why he did that – he wasn’t smoking anymore, but by this point he might’ve been using e-cigarettes. Or maybe he was just enjoying the evening air. I just know I was sitting inside the house, very aware that the only other adult I knew was outside, and my mind was racing.
Do I tell him? Should I tell him?
Eventually I opened the sliding glass door and stood in the kitchen until I drew his attention. In my imagination he sees the look on my face and knows that something is wrong. I don’t know if this is true.
“You have to look for Mom,” I said.
He did. No questions asked. I didn’t linger over that at the moment, but thinking now I know that must mean that he understood what was happening. He wasn’t surprised.
Mom had no intention of taking me to Macy’s.
I don’t know what I did while he was driving around looking for her. I don’t really have a clear playback of finding out what happened. The extent of my trauma has severely limited what I am able to remember, and for this specific part of my life what I know happened now is influenced heavily by the many times my Dad recounted it to me.
A few years later he took me for ice cream and we sat in the parking lot to eat it, staring out at a night bathed in orange streetlamp haze. At one point he put his cup on the dashboard and pointed.
“You see that motel?” He said, drawing my attention to a nondescript line of buildings. “That’s where I found her.”
He recognized her car in the parking lot. The manager didn’t want to tell him what room she was in, (“I bet he was worried I’d catch her in an affair,” he’d remark darkly) but I imagine he explained the situation and got the help he needed. Apparently they found Mom after she took all of our medication. Well, I don’t know if it was all our medication. I just know that she had taken my psych drugs, as well as my dad’s and her own, and decided to mix them with a six pack of beer.
Did someone specify it was beer at some point after that? I don’t know why I would know that. I also don’t know why I would assume it was that over any other type of alcohol.
My Mom took my medication to end her life.
It didn’t work, though. Dad told me later that she died for a little over a minute.
I told them I was worried about taking more Seroquel than both of them put together and they promised me it was very hard to overdose on Seroquel.
Was she counting on that? Or did she forget?
I never liked anything at Macy’s.
At some point I found out that Mom was stable and in the hospital. She was in a coma. In my head I have a memory of standing at the kitchen counter and watching my father call Kaiser to get a new supply of all of our medication. He wrote them all down, every name and their proper dosage. I listen to him speak kindly to the pharmacist on the other end of the line.
“The thing is,” he explains, “we packed to come home from vacation, and our luggage got lost on the flight…”
Inside myself is a vacancy so haunted that ghosts are too afraid to dwell there.
Dad ends up sleeping on the couch. He does not want to sleep in an empty bed. He tells me that he will leave in the morning to go back to the hospital, but he just wants to get a little bit of rest. Once he closes his eyes I slide a quilt above his sleeping body and put on a Jim Gaffigan stand-up special that I only process every third word of.
I don’t know where my brothers are in this memory. I am not thinking about that when it is happening. I’m thinking of my father, and my mother, and how if I didn’t tell my father to look for her he might’ve waited and ended up too late.
Years later I will learn that my father never told my brothers, or my older sister who lived on her own, that Mom tried to kill herself. I can’t bring myself to say tried – she succeeded, and was only brought back by the marvels of medicine. While I am thinking of my mother’s death none of them have any idea what is happening.
I am the one that told my siblings how our mother died for a moment years prior. We learn at the same time that they had no idea. When I ask my father why I was the only one he told about her death and not them, he told me that I agreed they shouldn’t find out.
When did this happen? I was fifteen years old and I have no knowledge of this conversation. Was I there? Or was only my body present and he decided that was enough.
Mom wakes up after three days. My sister joins my brothers and myself and we drive to the hospital to visit her. I can’t imagine what I am feeling. Maybe everything, maybe nothing. I remember riding up the elevator and going down the hall, and then my brain skips again and I am standing at my mother’s hospital bed.
She looks sick and she looks the same. There are tubes. I think she’s probably sedated. She is my mother and I love her and she took all of my medication to try and kill herself.
“Why did you do it?” I ask her, voice soft. I am trying very hard not to cry.
Mom smiles. I don’t know if this is true. She smiles as if doesn’t realize that she didn’t stay dead. When she speaks her voice wavers, faint and weakened.
“I didn’t feel – like I had control,” she pauses to catch her breath. “So I did this...and now I do!”
She is pleased like a child presenting an interesting leaf. My mother is proud of what she was able to accomplish. In some part of my brain that hasn’t fully learned how to speak up enough to defend itself, I absorb the knowledge that she has told me something that will ruin me time and time again for the rest of my life.
All of that is gone now. Mom doesn’t remember, and Dad has decided that it is our job to make sure she never has to.
I wonder if he heard what she said to his child. If he is able to process the deep, permanent damage his wife has done in two simple statements. A sympathetic part of me says that I wouldn’t know what to do in his shoes either, but is that true? I’m not sure.
Pull the child aside in the hallway of the hospital. Take them by the shoulders and lean in close so you have a semblance of privacy.
She is sick, I would say. She is unwell and she is lying. When she is like this, you do not have a mother.
Most of the time I do not have a mother.
When I am in the psych ward after my own suicide attempt my parents are the only ones I allow to visit me. I love my parents and my mother sometimes offers to take me to Macy’s. My Dad crafts little notes like cootie catchers written in red ink. I peel tangerines from the bowl in the cafeteria while they tell me what the dog is doing. He does not treat me like I am sick. Perhaps he considers me more suitable for survival.
I wonder if Mom does what Dad did to me in the parking lot with the ice cream. Does she press her palms into the sheets of her bed and think this is where my child came and told me they tried to drown themselves.
She probably doesn’t. I don’t think she remembers anymore.
I don’t think about the night Mom killed herself as often as I used to, and when I do I don’t really feel anything anymore. As I heal I’ve been warned that things might emerge, and that time might actually make the memory more vivid instead of distant. I don’t know what to say to this. When the possibility emerges I just tell myself that all of that is gone now. It isn’t real.
By this time next year my parents will have no way to find me. I’ve taken control my own way – not through death, but by cutting them off entirely. Whether that is something they understand, or even remember, is not my problem anymore.
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