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devildomwriter · 4 months

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One Little Thing, A Ring Part IV | Mammon x Reader

1.1K Words | GN! Reader | CW: Angst

You came home late again that night from work and were surprised to find Mammon already asleep. The past few weeks you’d been working extra hard, Mammon had stayed up for you and offered you a rose he’d stolen from a bouquet somewhere in the house. But tonight he was sprawled out under the covers and his cheek was pink and puffy.

You inspected closely without waking him up and felt the skin had liquid beneath. Using your magic you identified the perpetrator and healed his wound, draining the last bit of magic you had in you for the day.

Not bothering to change out of your old clothes you lifted the blanket and fell asleep next to Mammon.

Mammon was practically comatose but he could sense your presence and his pained face grinned as he snuggled closer to you, head on your chest.

You smiled and held onto him as you drifted into sleep.

Mammon was sad the next day to see you’d left early again. He noticed your slippers by the bedside and began to wonder if you’d actually been there or if he’d dreamed it up.

He pulled out his D.D.D. to call you but you couldn’t answer and he gave up after a few tries and sighed.

He scratched his back and stretched, trying to wake up his body before being put back to work. Despite the cheer of the holiday season, Mammon stayed occupied only with work and didn’t enjoy it as he normally did. All he could focus on was money and this time it was for a good reason. All of this was for you.

Mammon’s brothers had all learned what was happening and dealt with it in their own ways. Lucifer’s way of dealing was to occasionally ensure Mammon had more work to do but he remained at the castle a majority of the day to make sure he wasn’t worked too hard.

His brothers began to randomly appear at the castle and soon after some kind of disaster would occur that they’d never be punished for.

Eventually, Mammon caught on and he wasn’t happy. He put up with a lot of shit from them over thousands of years but he wasn’t having it and called for an intervention.

They didn’t listen to him so Lucifer forced everyone to come together and hear him out. Mammon got a pardon from work so everyone could meet up at an acceptable time of the day.

“Okay, why’d you call us here?” Leviathan asked annoyed and focusing more on his D.D.D.

Mammon growled, “Dammit, you know why. All of ya do!” He pointed his fingers at his brothers.

Asmodeus gasped and placed his hand over his chest. “I’ve done nothing wrong, how could you accuse me!”

Mammon glared at him and Satan nudged Asmo to cool it with the theatrics.

Belphegor rolled his eyes at Mammon’s declaration. “What did you expect?” He hissed, in demon form.

Beelzebub put a hand on Belphegor’s shoulder trying to ease his anger but it was palpable.

“You guys know damn well why I’m working and you’re makin’ it harder what gives!”

Satan glared at Mammon now, “as Belphie said. What did you expect?”

Mammon clenched his fists and his demon form slipped out which surprised his brothers. Mammon didn’t often lose control like the rest of them, even when they beat on him, called his names, or won their money back, Mammon would stay calm. But not now, Mammon was beyond pissed.

Lucifer remained silent, he knew what Mammon was going to say and he knew that Mammon would be right too.

“Do ya realize that by gettin’ in my way, you’re really just gettin’ in ___’s way!”

They froze in silence.

“I get that you’re all mad they didn’t date you instead! I get that cause I’d feel the exact same way! Y’know how pissed I got all those times I thought they were dating one of you! Or when they kissed Lucifer that time he got amnesia!”

Lucifer chuckled and earned hateful glares from each brother.

“Anyways, I get it! But this isn’t about me, it’s about ___! And if you really care about them then you should want them to be happy and like it or not, they’re happy with me! And I’m tryin’ to give them a ring they deserve and I’m doin’ honest work! So quit comin’ into the castle and screwing everything up! It’s not cool and you know that!”

Everyone was silent for a while and Mammon finally tucked away his wings and sat on the couch facing his brothers.

Lucifer finally spoke with a small nod. “I know.” He relented. “You’re right. All of us are making things harder on you.”

“Hey! You don’t speak for me,” Belphegor snapped but Satan shook his head.

“Give it up Belphie. We’re too obvious.” Satan looked Mammon in the eye. “Fine. We’ll stay out of your way and we’ll do it for ___ not for you.”

Asmodeus nodded and Beelzebub looked at the ground.

“But know this,” Satan continued. “I’ll be waiting for the moment you slip up and when that happens I’ll be the one by their side.”

Leviathan set his D.D.D. down and glared, “That goes for me too.”

Everyone agreed and Mammon sighed. “Whatever, that’s not gonna happen so you’re all gonna have to suck it up for ___’s sake. You really think they want you guys trying to ruin their relationship the second you can?”

Satan turned red and Beelzebub blushed in some sense of shame. They wouldn’t admit to it but they still intended to romance you any chance they could get. Similarly to Diavolo, they were hoping that after hundreds or thousands of years with Mammon, polygamy might be on the table.

Mammon knew this and stayed wary of his brothers but took solace in the fact they wouldn’t dare upset you, so his relationship was safe as long as you were happy. That scared him at the same time.

The closer Christmas got the more he panicked. Was he really good enough? Could he really make you happy forever? He couldn’t even make up his mind on a ring because everything looked so damn perfect when you wore it and he couldn’t afford to get them all.

Mammon looked at the calendar one more time before collapsing into your bed, “the twenty-third already…” he sighed and covered his face.

He was so close to eternal happiness but at the same time feared letting you down. Mammon had nightmares that night until you shook him awake.

“Huh! What’s happening!” He shouted with a start, his cheeks stained with dried tears.

“Mammon…” you said in a gentle tone and wrapped your arms around him. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

Part I • Part II • Part III • Part V

#obey me shall we date #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me satan #obey me leviathan #obey me belphegor #obey me beelzebub #obey me asmodeus #obey me mammon x reader #obey me x reader #one little thing series #obey me angst #obey me fluff #25 days of obey me christmas #obey me 25 days of christmas

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hyptrance1 · 3 months

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Hypnosis Challenge #5: Hypnotic Hijinks

Hi all, apparently this was the most requested text induction (technically there’s like an hour left until the poll closes) so I’m gonna continue this series apparently. It’s a little wild that a series I started writing at the young age of 20 still has interest 10 years later just a few days before my 30th birthday. If you’re new to this the idea is simple: try not to go under. If you end up winning good for you, but I know the majority of you are trying to go under from this challenge. If you do end up losing this challenge the post hypnotic suggestion will be to reblog this with a comment, something like “I was hypnotized by HypTrance’s induction, I must reblog his induction like a good hypnotized toy.” If thats not something you’re interested in doing if you go under then I would suggest not reading this induction. If that is something you’re alright with then well, continue reading. As always, my inductions are not for anyone who is not an adult so you better be 18+, and lastly if you are interested in more of my inductions they can be found on my profile somewhere (sorry, just search and you’ll find them eventually). That’s it, enjoy.

So the last induction I had told you guys about how other guys had felt when going under to my words. Obviously you won’t go under for that again, so I suppose I’ll have to try a different approach. Additionally, I’m sure that you’ll be trying harder this time to resist my words and not go under, which is fine because I like the challenge. So do your best to try not and get comfortable then. Don’t let your body sink into whatever you’re laying on, don’t allow your body to subconsciously get comfortable even if it wants to. Just stay in this position while reading, focusing on both your body and my words, cause is it really winning if you dont give your attention to my words? I don’t think so, and I would tell you and your body that exact thing if you told me. So give my words your undivided attention and try not to let your body relax too much. I suggest not breathing too deeply in, and not slowly exhaling out, since slow even breaths are an easy way for your body to start relaxing. I wonder if your body will help you in resisting my words, or maybe it will follow my words instead, helping me to take you that much further under. Interesting thoughts, right?

And while your focus is split between two things, your body and my words, trying to not have your body relax to much and your breathing to slow down to much, you should also try not to let your thoughts slip out of your mind to much. It’s difficult, I know, when your attention has to be slip towards so many things, having to switch your focus from your thoughts making sure that some are not slowly slipping out, your body to make sure that your breathing isn’t slowing down subconsciously, and reading my words making sure that you are actually finishing this challenge is difficult, but I’m confident in your abilities to do all three and not be subconsciously swayed by my words telling you to just read, relax, and slowly stop thinking. It’s probably a little bit tiring though, but don’t worry, not in the I’m going under tiring, just the having to keep your attention on all these things makes you mentally tired. But that’s probably not a good thing, so you better find a way to keep yourself alert and awake. Oh, but wait, now you probably start noticing that your body is also relaxing now, that your breathing has slowed and you’ve gotten more comfortable where you are. But do you remember your original position? It’s probably difficult to think of the exact position, especially when you’re supposed to be focusing on not letting your thoughts slowly stop and continuing to stop your body from relaxing more. And reading my words on top of it is dividing your attention a little too much. Maybe this challenge is a little harder than expected.

I don’t think focusing on all of those things is the only thing that’s hard. This would probably be easier if you didn’t find hypnosis hot, and didn’t find resisting and failing to resist hypnosis even harder. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that there’s pleasure building within your body. Is your dick hard by now? Just reading my words and imagining yourself going under to them, even after all the strong resisting you did? Well I suppose that’s just another thing that you have to try and focus on and stop from continuing: the building pleasure within you. How is your attention doing? Being split into four different directions. I hope you’re still trying to resist going under, not letting yourself relax to much, your breathing to slow, as your thoughts stay within your mind and don’t slip out, while you try to keep your hard on from inflating any more and you keep reading my words. That seems to be a lot to handle. Are you sure you can handle it?

I’m sure that last little bit of teasing reinvigorated some resistance in you. You’re probably thinking that you can’t let my words take you under, that you can let how relaxed they make you, how hard they’re making you, stop your thoughts in their tracks and leave you staring mindlessly, hypnotized. But like my last induction said, like others have said, “your eyes just keep coming back to my words, continuing to read even if the words are taking you deeper and deeper”. So even if you try to take a moment to stop, catch your breath, refocus on your thoughts, you keep coming back to my words, keep coming back to the same feeling that seems to be pulsing through your more and more: relaxation, pleasure, and probably a little bit of submission as your resistance slowly begins to fade. Just like how you haven’t noticed till now that your body is in a very relaxed position, that your hard on is fully throbbing and pulsing right now, that your eyes seem heavy and your head seems light, like there are not enough thoughts in it.

And it is probably now that you’re having a hard time thinking. Go ahead and try. Its hard to form a thought when you’re attention is so split by everything, your relaxed body, your pleasurable hard on, your heavy eyes on my words, my words filling your mind, making it almost impossible to let your thoughts even start to enter your mind. You’re just sitting there, reading my words, unable to make a thought. It seems as though you’ve lost the challenge, but let’s just make sure for a second, alright? When I count down form 10 to 0 in a second, you’re going to slip further and further under my words until your mind is blank, empty, and deeply hypnotized. You can feel those words entering your mind, and you know that you’ll follow them, but you can try your hardest, just as hard as your hard on right now, to resist my words and not go completely under to my induction. You ready to give it one last shot?

Your body relaxing more, even as you try to resist.

Your breathing slowing, making you relax even further.

Your eyes so heavy focused on my words.

My words floating through your brain filling it.

Your thoughts unable to even form.

Pleasure in your body filling every part of you.

You’re hard on just slowly throbbing.

Resistance leaving your body.

No more resistance.

No more thoughts.

Blank and hypnotized.

Now you can just continue reading as you allow yourself to just stare and follow my words. At this moment you should know that you have lost this hypnosis challenge and have gone under to my words, which is fine because your body feels so good and your mind feels so nice with my words filling it. So as you continue to read this you should remember that I said that if you lost this challenge you would be given a post hypnotic suggestion, which I will give to you now. When you wake you’re going to reblog or repost my original post to the induction, whether it be on twitter, or Tumblr. When you repost this induction you will also reblog it with the comment “I was hypnotized by HypTrance’s induction, I must reblog his induction like a good hypnotized toy.” If you do not wish to complete this post hypnotic suggestion, please feel free not to complete it and to disregard the rest of this paragraph. For those of you that are okay with following this direction, you can feel that post hypnotic suggestion flow into your mind with the rest of my words, ready to be followed when you wake up.

Which, in another moment you will wake when I count to 3. I want you to all feel nice, relaxed, and hoary when you wake from this trance, content and feeling well rested. You will feel peaceful from your time reading these words. Now:

Thoughts returning to your mind

Becoming more alert, more awake, more conscious.

Wide awake.

Wide, wide awake.

Well hopefully you enjoyed this second reinvention of an old challenge. I think I’ve done this one before as well, but always good, even after ten years, to rework it into an even better version. I’m hoping that you continue to enjoy both my text and voice inductions which you can find linked to my page. You can also always reach out with ideas or leave them anonymously. Other than that, trace ya next time.

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kiwikipedia · 1 year

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Now I’m Not Saying That I Should Be Allowed To Design Servants For Fate, But....

Summer Unit, Caster Chiron has Arrived! As the immortal Caretaker and Teacher of Mount Pelion, there’s little doubt that he knows all the tips and tricks to survive a coastal month in the sun. What’s that? The Constellation is wrong? Sagittarius? Don’t be silly, Chiron’s always embodied the Constellation Centaurus. Always.

Costume Dress(es), Individual Stills for the new Sprites (Asc 3), Notes, and Taglist below the cut :)

That "Always" bit is meant to be somewhat ominous which hints at the whole "rewriting and creating heroes" idea in my last post about this Eternal Summer Stage event.

And if i am to be 100% honest, I don't quite like the final result still in terms of the toga, however, I know that if I keep working on it it will never get done and that's just the way that artists are lol. The effects and everything else though? Beyond what I was even expecting for it to turn out as.

Anywho.

In terms of design, I was mostly just going for the "Dad who has the Cooler" with a casual look for the first two designs and the costume dress really isn't a drastic change either just being called Hatless. The final ascension was a more divine feel where you get that connection with the stars and space that Chiron has due to his constellations. The Costume change there is just "Divine Blessing". I honestly couldn't pick between the two colors so. Costume Dress.

So. Anyways. Each of the stars in the final ascension design are the major "Centauri" stars within Centaurus, the Constellation that Chiron/his NP is embodying here rather than Sagittarius.

The large star that Chiron has in hand is Theta Centauri, also called Menkent, and then the ones on the staff are Alpha-Gamma Centauri.

The top three stars are Alpha Centauri or Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman, and Proxima Centauri. The three make up the full Alpha Centauri as the two blue stars are a binary system that Proxima orbits

The middle two are Beta Centauri or Hadar and Agena, another binary star pair

The lower two are Gamma Centauri which is another binary star group but are unnamed

Actually, the myth of Centaurus is a little wonky because certain texts refer to Centaurus as the Father of all Centaurs and the constellation is because he put an image of himself in the sky where others point to it being the other constellation that Zeus turned Chiron into instead of Sagittarius. Honestly, I'm more inclined to the latter due to conflicting texts about mount Pelion and the Centaurs themselves as it's implied that Chiron was already on Pelion before the other Centaurs arrived in some texts

("The Kentauroi were spawned by the cloud-nymph Nephele after she was violated by the impious Lapith king Ixion. She deposited her double-formed brood on Mount Pelion where they were nursed by the daughters of the immortal kentauros Kheiron (Chiron).")

So at least in this/my version of Myth/Fate, Centaurus is Chiron as a Caster and Healer but no less a teacher, rather than the more combat-ready and "war-like" Sagittarius.

I don't have everything mapped out, but I do have skills and NP sorta created, if I actually ever get to the full thing, who is to say lmao.

1st Skill: Seaside Planning

Buffs Healing Skill (self), Attack up (all units)

2nd Skill: Teacher's Guiding Hand

Target Focus (1 turn), Invincibility (1 turn), Defense up for all units, Battlefield change to Forest

3rd Skill: Blessing of Artemis / Blessing of Apollo (costume change)

Applies "Blessings of the Moon" or “Blessings of the Sun” to all units ( Defense Up, Heal Per Turn, NP gain Up, Crit Up)

Noble Phantasm: Hunt of Lupus: Protector of Mount Pelion | Quick

Rank: A NP Type: Anti-Personnel Range: 5-99 Maximum Targets: 1

A single target Noble Phantasm much like Antares Snipe, however, while Sagittarius uses a bow, Centaurus uses his staff to sweep through and pierce the body of Lupus. This is the story of Chiron. However, here, his job is not finished. The slaying of "Lupis" ends, and thus the Teacher and protector of Pelion returns to those he protects and tends to them.

At its base, one could call it the Single Target version of Geronimo's Tsago Degi Naleya in which it deals damage and heals the party after.

"Entrust to me the stars and my Guiding hand shall lead you, o watchmen of the night. I encircle myself twice with the seven heavenly bodies so that I may continue my role among the stars. You who has woken me, fall. Hunt of Lupus."

Truth be told, still workshopping the Noble Phantasm, but it's fine, it's out there as a concept. It's a lot like Antares Snipe though, I guess? Because I did want to lean into the Greek and Constellation side of things and just. Oh well. Originally, though, I was going to make Chiron and Chariclo one Servant, and then have their Noble Phantasm be Chariclo's ("Lifeblood of Mount Pelion") but then split them up because idk I enjoy hell. They're both casters though, because I refuse to put more Rulers into the already bloated Ruler cast.

I do not have voice lines at the moment despite the fact that I have all of Chariclo and all of Agravain's finished lol

Taglist Form or feel free to ask me to get tagged (just DM!):

@jedifisto @spaceydragons @purgetrooperfox @spacerocksarethebestrocks @insanelytomato @babygirljoelmiller @certified-anakinfucker @d3epfriedanger @thecodyagenda @babygirl-leon-kennedy @txtalnyx @jawajawas @ge-ge-ge-ge-genifer

Please tell me if you want to be taken off of the list as this is no longer just Star Wars art

Additional Tags for those who have been interested in Summer Chiron previously (i hope you dont mind):

@300iqprower @bitterrosebrokenspear

#Kiwi Creates #fgo chiron #Chiron #fate chiron #fgo fan singularity #fgo fan event #fgo #fate go #fate grand order #fate #archer of black #FGO Male Swimsuit Event #FGO Male Servant Alt #Eternal Summer Stage (Fan Event)#Gonna take a break for a bit in terms of sprite editing but next is either Chariclo or Li Shuwen perhaps. gotta figure out designs #edit: changed skill 3 gonna give Inhabitant of Mount Pelion to Chariclo

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matan4il · 2 months

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I admit I’m kinda suspicious hearing that the IDF investigated itself and found no wrongdoing

Maybe I’m just jaded given how often that happens with us military and cops

I usually try to answer by the order I get the asks, but I am guessing you are referring to this IDF investigation, and I think that is important enough to address it right away, as a completion for that daily update.

Anon, IDK if I'll surprise you, but I actually get where you're coming from. It does sound weird for anyone to investigate themselves. I should know, I def am very suspicious of the UN investigating themselves when it comes to UNRWA.

That said, there are a few reasons why I have more faith in an IDF investigation in this specific context.

For one thing, there's a difference between when an organization investigates a specific incident, versus when it is looking at something much more systematic. It's easier for a system to put together a team within it, with independent authority to investigate another part, focus on "a few rotten apples," than if it has to admit that the whole system is rotten, and cut off its own heads, or even worse, admit that the system has no right to exist (*cough* UNRWA).

In that respect, when the IDF has to be checked on how it failed to prevent the Hamas massacre on Oct 7, it is NOT going to investigate itself. It is already conducting an investigative procedure to look into where the issues were, in order to learn from them, but this is done in addition, NOT instead of, an external investigation, with the actual power to recommend for people to pay personal prices for what happened. Which is as it should be. IDK that I would trust it any other way, as much as I do think that quite a few of the heads of the army and security forces are decent people, who have already taken responsibility for the failure to protect Israeli citizens, and will probably resign at the end of the war, regardless of what the investigation will say about them.

In contrast, UNRWA has stopped having a right to exist decades ago. No other UN agency has a similar decades long mandate. A similar UN agency meant to help South Korea following the 1945 partition of Korea into two (UNKRA) operated from 1950 to 1958, and then it was disbanded. As it should be. UNKRA certainly didn't continue operating in North Korea for decades, with an overwhelming majority of its staff being North Koreans, and intertwining it to an inseparable degree with the North Korean dictatorial regime, which is who this agency would have had to cooperate with, in order to continue working in NK. That's the equivalent of what UNRWA has become, so it has to go. It is complicit in employing terrorists, as well as indoctrinating Palestinians to be antisemitic and terrorists. And the UN has KNOWN and HAS ALLOWED THIS TO GO ON FOR YEARS. And that means that, beyond how antisemitic the UN inherently is (especially so long as it gives antisemitic and dictatorial regimes an equal vote), this organization also HAS to delegitimize Israel, because that's the country exposing the UN for its complicity. THIS goes all the way to the top. That's why the UN investigating itself is beyond questionable to me.

Back to the IDF. It's also in its own interest to justly investigate such specific incidents. Soldiers who defied orders are an issue for any army, especially if they show other soldiers they can do the same. Soldiers who defied orders and intentionally killed uninvolved civilians, causing their army and their state real damage (and in this, Israel is inspected in a way no other army and country are), are a danger for everyone. They can get every IDF soldier arrested for a sin only a few people had committed, which is why it is in the interest of almost everyone in the system, to make sure there is a clear distinction between such people, and the rest of the soldiers, who do follow the ethical code of the IDF. In fact, Israel's own legal system stopped an attempt to undermine the possibility of the IDF prosecuting its soldiers.

Lastly, there's past experience. If the record had shown that the IDF always absolves its soldiers, never prosecuting them for breaking orders, then I would be way more suspicious of its investigations. I think the most telling recent example is actually the accidental killing of the three Israeli hostages in Gaza by the IDF. There was no one at the scene other than the soldiers. They were in a war zone, no journalists around, in the middle of the battle chaos, if they had wanted to bury this and claim that Hamas terrorists were the ones who killed the hostages, or that the hostages were killed during an exchange of fire with Hamas terrorists, we'd probably never know the truth. But those soldiers reported what happened. And the IDF passed the truth along to the families, as hard and painful as that must have been, and to the public, whose faith in the army has already been shaken by the failure to prevent Oct 7. That tells me something about the army and the people leading it.

Does that guarantee that everything will always be transparent? No. But I am more inclined to trust an army willing to freely admit its own fuck ups, than the anti-Israel crowd, who will forever call anything the IDF does "a massacre," whether it qualifies or not, and who can't even accept it when foreign countries and independent investigators look into anti-Israel accusations and find Israel in the right, such as in the case of the al-Ahli hospital, where it was determined by multiple external investigations that the one conducted by the IDF was right, and the rocket that landed there was fired by Palestinian terrorists from Gaza, accidentally fell in the parking lot, and didn't kill anywhere near the 500 fatalities figure that Hamas is still claiming to this day.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #anon ask #israel under fire #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #ask #unrwa #un

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phoenixyfriend · 1 month

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This is a bit of a silly question, but you honestly seem to know a lot about political, business, and economics, so I thought I would ask.

So I’m seventeen, soon to be applying to universities, but I’m already so disillusioned with the world. Like, don’t get me wrong, I still have hope in collective action and volunteering and voting and all that, it just makes me sad that the entire world has kind of gone to hell. I like english literature and I like history and I like studying them, so I used to hop to study both at uni. I wanted to get a job as a teacher, because I want to make a difference in the world and have more variety than a typical desk job.

However. Being on Tumblr since the age of thirteen has taught me that no matter how kind or good or hardworking one person is, or even a lot of people are, one politician can still screw things up for entire groups of people. I mean… a few politicians overturned Roe Vs Wade and that sort of thing. The disability benefits bank account thing. Politicians have an enormous amount of sway over the world, and that area seems to be where someone could make the most difference.

From what I’ve seen of a political science degree, I genuinely don’t think I would enjoy it much, but I could get through it. I want to make a difference in the world very badly — it’s the only sort of legacy I care about leaving behind. And I thought being a teacher could do that for me, but the scale of being a teacher and a politician are on entirely different levels, and Tumblr has really shown me that.

So I guess I’m just asking, since you seem to be passionate making the world better too. Do you think I should study politics, so that I can try and change things on a large scale? Or study what I love and make a much smaller impact.

I honestly don't think I'm the best person to ask this question. A lot of how I ended up where I am was a matter of luck, including the luck of having parents who let me live with them rent free while I put together some savings (and even while I was unemployed).

I don't know a whole lot about polisci. I was a business major and, honestly, that major did not come in useful when hunting for a job after college... partly because all the jobs it was a foot in the door for were uhhhhhh let's go with Not The Right Fit. Most polisci majors are... I guess probably pre-law and intending to become lawyers, and lawyers do in fact often become politicians, so there's that.

My first instinct is actually 'learn a trade and join a union.' The last few years have been pretty evidential of the impact that unions can still have on both the business world and politics in general: see the impact that UAW is having, at least in the media, on the presidential election. Unions are also a pretty solid option for local networking, which is pretty key when it comes to having an impact on local or regional politics. A trade job is also something that is in high demand, stable, and pays reasonably well in most places, including paid apprenticeships, so it would give you the financial stability to focus your free time on what you want instead of on stretching to pay the bills, or having to worry about student loans. It also gives you an expertise or specialty that you can then leverage as 'evidence' of understanding the working class as a unit when engaging in something like a town hall.

Being in a union or other local organization will also give you a more hands-on understanding of how politics and things like that work, as you'll have things like contract negotiations, union votes, and policy debates going on regularly.

If you aren't the kind of person who thinks they're a fit for trade work (I'm definitely not), then college might be the right fit! But I'd definitely consider going into it with a plan for how you want to impact the world. Look up some charities or impact organizations and see what it is that they need. A lot of places are looking for grants writers or financial coordinators, or just someone who can do the accounting. It's not glamorous, and it's not like you'll be held up as a hero the way a doctor in a warzone is, but keeping track of funds or writing letters requesting funding from the government, for something like Doctors Without Borders or Planned Parenthood or Coalition for the Homeless is still an important part of the process.

Local volunteer work is also often a lot more personally satisfying and requires less overhead, so more of the money goes directly into the community you want to help, e.g. the grant writers and accountants do need a salary in a huge organization, but a local soup kitchen can probably just hire someone from the local tax office once every few months and call it good. Doing volunteer work once a month, for a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter or summer childcare program, can make way more of an impact than maybe getting a position as a staffer for a politician you may not even like that much.

That said, if you think you're good at polisci, that you'd be good at law, or that you can get a different degree with polisci as a minor that would then help you enter politics directly... maybe college for polisci is the right choice for you. Maybe you have the finances to not worry about loans, you have parents that would be supportive, and you can find an effective position after you graduate.

I can't make that decision for you. If you have a guidance counselor and they're any good--not a guarantee, but let's hope--talk to them. If you don't have a guidance counselor, maybe find a trusted teacher, or a local librarian, something like that. I don't really know you or your situation well enough to tell you what to do, but hopefully I've given you something to think about.

#Anonymous #phoenix answers asks #economics #adulthood #college #unions #vocational training

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emotionallychargedtowel · 1 year

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The Eighth Sense e5 & e6: portraying trauma with nuance

Episodes 5 and 6 of The Eighth Sense have really blown up a discourse bomb in tumblr’s BL scene. I had been putting off watching these episodes because I had gathered that episode 6 ended with something pretty distressing, and stuff like that sometimes hits me pretty hard, especially when it’s left as a cliffhanger. But I was already tempted to rip off the band-aid and watch it anyway, and then everyone has been debating aspects of these episodes. So I just had to see what all the discussion was about and figure out my own take on it.

In case it’s not obvious, the following will have spoilers for the series up to and including episode 6. I have a lot to say about this, because it touches on subjects that have been a major focus for me in my personal life, in my previous work as a trainee therapist, and in my research and writing. But I want this to be a manageable read, so I’m going to put things in bullet form when I can to keep them brief and organized and I’m going to make some section headings to help with skimming or skipping around. But before I launch into the rest, there’s one thing I should get out of the way: I don’t think any part of episodes 5 or 6 are a hallucination, a dream, or otherwise did not occur. I do think that there are aspects of the way the show portrays certain things that indicate dissociation and/or an acute trauma response. I’ll talk more about that below. (Hey, @waitmyturtles, this is the epic TES post I’ve been writing off and on for two days! I hope it’s of interest.)

Here are the section headings I’ll use below, to give a sense of what I’m going to talk about:

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

We don’t know how his younger brother died, but we know that he died in front of Jae Won when they were together, and it’s clear that he blames himself. I would be shocked if he was actually at fault even a little bit. But it does appear to have happened “on his watch” in a sense that lends itself to blaming himself. This is a huge issue, one that I’ll discuss in more detail later on.

Even before his brother’s death, Jae Won was clearly under a ton of pressure from his parents. And his father appears to be emotionally and, almost certainly, physically abusive. This is also far more likely to have pre-dated his brother’s death than to have only developed afterward.

In addition to pressure and abuse, I think it’s pretty clear that Jae Won was a parentified child. This means that he was put in a position of having to take care of his parents’ emotional needs as a child. This kind of role reversal has profound effects throughout the parentified person’s life.

Jae Won’s self-blame about his brother’s death means he was always going to be predisposed to stay stuck in the chronic version of the acute trauma response instead of moving through the natural healing process. In other words, he was almost certain to develop PTSD.

This is less clearly shown in the show, but my impression is that Jae Won has a deep-seated depressive tendency that existed before the loss of his brother. This would make sense for someone who faced the family-of-origin difficulties that he did.

When he did develop PTSD, as I have no doubt he did, Jae Won’s existing challenges were going to make him even more likely to develop the depressive symptoms of PTSD than others. We’ve seen some of these in the show already:

feeling alienated from others, unable to form meaningful connections with them,

anhedonia (an inability to feel positive emotions), and

negative beliefs about himself, other people, and the world.

All of this is happening at once. He’s dealing with PTSD, but he also still has all the same habits and beliefs he had before due to the parentification and training in people-pleasing, so he’s supposed to bottle up all of this pain. And if it’s his fault (in his mind) that his brother died, how much more does he owe his parents than he ever did before? This is a distorted, unhealthy way of thinking about all of it, but these kinds of maladaptive thoughts and expectations happen all the time with trauma survivors.

Jae Won’s therapist really sums all of this up very well when she says, “All your worries, not doing what you want to do because you do not want to let your parents down, and trying hard to be a good person to everyone because you do not want to disappoint others. Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother? Your younger brother, who got into an accident while with you. Your younger brother, who you couldn’t protect. And you are struggling to live your life for him as well.”

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

I went into this series feeling nervous about its portrayal of therapy. I was very excited that therapy was being portrayed at all, mind you! It’s horrifying how seldom we see therapy mentioned as an option, much less shown, either in BLs or kdramas, and I’ve hoped for this to change for a long time now. But therapy is shown in an inaccurate way so often in media. And often, we see therapists and other mental health professionals breaking ethical rules. So I was on my guard, big time.

There’s one thing I really take issue with about Jae Won’s therapist, and it’s somewhat of a small thing: her office is way, way too dark! I just don’t think that kind of low lighting, with a lot of the illumination coming from her aquarium and other tinted light sources, is professional or conducive to therapy work. Of course, it’s obvious that her office is lit in this way because it looks cool and sets a certain mood for the show. And that’s fine. It’s a very stylized show in a lot of ways. But it makes me a little tweaky to watch it.

Some of the things she does in the therapy space with Jae Won are a bit open to interpretation, and could be debated. But I view her in a fairly charitable light, and I found that a favorable interpretation wasn’t difficult to justify at all. I ended up viewing her (so far, at least) as a very skillful and effective therapist.

I loved it when she joked, in the first scene after the credits for episode 1, “For God’s sake! Just tell me what your worries are!” Jae Won isn’t great at sharing. He’s been trained from early childhood not to show his messy, vulnerable emotions around authority figures. Jae Won is not an easy client by any stretch, so she may have been showing a mild version of some real frustration with him when she began that comment with mock-hostility. But he seems really sensitive to criticism, real or perceived. Coming at him directly about this could be risky. Using humor is a good way to get around this sensitivity pretty effectively. It’s worth noting, though, that I wouldn’t endorse this kind of move by a therapist unless they knew a client very well and had built a solid rapport with them.

The comment I quoted above (”Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother?”) connects so many of Jae Won’s interpersonal difficulties to the loss of his brother in a skillful way. It was very astute and well-put. But there are some things I would quibble with about it.

First, I’m kind of surprised that she is only saying this explicitly this far into therapy with Jae Won. It seems rather late to make such an observation considering this constellation of issues has, without a doubt, been in place the entire time they’ve been working together. This could definitely have been done sooner.

At the same time, paradoxically, it’s delivered abruptly, as if she blurted it out too soon. Actually, the abruptness comes from the fact that there’s not sufficient lead-up to the comment in their discussion beforehand.

Though the show’s treatment of mental health is strong overall, I think this part of this scene suffered from flawed writing. If I had written this scene, I would have made a change that I think would have resolved both of these issues. Instead of introducing this insight as if the therapist has just voiced it for the first time, I would have presented it as something she and Jae Won have touched on together more than once during their work together. Anyone who’s been to therapy knows that the same ideas, which appear as shocking revelations at first, often have to be returned to many times and worked through before we can benefit from them. She could have said something like, “This is that issue we’ve talked about before, right? It seems like another case of your beliefs about your brother’s death causing trouble in other areas of your life.”

Even better, she could have been shown quoting some kind of metaphor or shorthand Jae Won came up with himself when they’d spoken about this previously. For example, I had a client once who used to talk about metaphorically carrying around a giant, heavy book where he wrote down all of his failures. He described it in a similar way to “the catalog of mistakes” (I’m not going to share his actual wording, of course). Whenever I would use his wording, saying “the catalog of mistakes” or even “the catalog,” all of our prior discussion of that issue came into both our minds immediately. It also served as a reminder of our rapport and the importance I placed on his perspective.

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

There’s one other area of Jae Won’s interactions with his therapist that is a bit hard to interpret. The exchange he has with his therapist about the amount of medication she’ll prescribe to him certainly seems important, but it’s hard to tell what exactly it means.

One thing that complicates this is the fact that he is receiving therapy and medication management services from the same provider. In other words, she seems to be a psychiatrist who provides therapy services. In most parts of the United States, this is rare (though that wasn’t always the case). I haven’t been able to tell whether this is more commonplace in South Korea.

Because she’s a prescriber and a therapist, asking for three weeks’ worth of medication instead of two also means waiting longer before having another therapy session. Maybe Jae Won really is just busy and trying to cut down on demands on his time, but this doesn’t seem too likely. It’s also possible that he’s seeking a greater quantity of his medication for some purpose, such as abusing it or using it for self-harm or to end his life. But he also could just be trying to put off his next therapy session to a later date because of his difficulty talking about vulnerable topics, something he demonstrates at multiple points in his therapy session. Similarly, when his therapist says she can extend his prescription to three weeks but not a month, because, as she puts it, “I need to do my job,” this could be in reference to the medication or her therapy work. Part of her job is keeping him from having access to too large an amount of medication at once, while another part is having therapy sessions with him (that are frequent enough to be useful). It’s hard to tell which of the two she was referring to, or whether it could be something else entirely. So I don’t think there’s one clearly correct interpretation here. But I do think we should be attentive to the possibility that he might be medication-seeking, possibly with the aim of using the medication for self-harm.

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Even if you have experienced trauma or have been close to someone who has, unless you’ve spent time with a sizable sample of trauma survivors, it’s hard to understand just how readily people blame themselves for traumatic experiences. I had had personal experience with this as a survivor of intimate partner violence before I ever did any training in trauma therapy, but I was still totally floored when I observed firsthand just how often this happens and how unjustifiable every single instance of self-blame I encountered in clients turned out to be.

This is actually a big area for me as a researcher so I’m going to try not to go off on a massive tangent, but I think this is important. When we experience trauma, one of the most frequent responses people have is to blame themselves. I used to describe this to clients as a “deal with the devil.” Blaming ourselves allows us to feel like we have control over whether such things will happen to us (and/or those we care about) in the future. If we tell ourselves, “the trauma only happened to me because I did something bad, or something wrong,” then we can also tell ourselves, “but I’ll never do the bad or wrong thing again so from now on I’ll be safe.”

It’s very tempting to make this bargain, but it is an extremely bad deal. Self-blame is one of the biggest reasons some people get stuck in their acute trauma response instead of completing the healing process, resulting in PTSD. That feeling of control isn’t worth that. But human beings are so tempted to make this trade. When I was doing trauma therapy as a trainee, I saw example after example of folks who did seriously remarkable amounts of mental gymnastics in order to justify blaming themselves for their trauma. I’m going to talk briefly now about a client I had many years ago, without giving any details that could be remotely identifying. This person had witnessed the death of a close friend when they were in combat together. I did prolonged exposure therapy with this person, meaning he had to tell me the story of his friend’s death again and again and again. When we do this type of work, it usually seems at first like the client is telling the exact same story again and again without any real change. But little changes crop up gradually and accumulate and after a while, you find the story has made big shifts. And occasionally, a big change happens.

This client started out telling his story in a way that looked for every possible reason his friend’s death could have been his fault. And wow, was he ever grasping at straws. It was almost as if he had said something as nonsensical as “I had oatmeal for breakfast that day and maybe that’s why my friend died.” Every miniscule decision he had made that day could, in his eyes, potentially have caused his friend’s death in some mysterious and imperceptible way. It would have been absurd had it not been so sad. But thankfully, as we continued the exposure work, his story gradually changed and these justifications for self-blame started to fall away a little at a time.

Then, one day, a crucial detail was added to the story that blew me away. After weeks of telling the story in the usual way, my client mentioned for the first time that just before his friend was hit, he had called out a warning to him, which the friend had ignored. He’d mentioned countless ways he might be to blame--none of them remotely justified--but had never told me about the one very clear way in which he had tried to prevent his friend’s death. When I pointed this out, my client was shocked that he had never mentioned that detail before. We spent a lot of time unpacking what all of this meant. It was the single biggest turning point in his therapy. So, yeah. People have an amazing capacity for figuring out even the slimmest of pretexts for self-blame, and it’s abundantly clear that Jae Won is exercising that capacity big time. I’m pretty certain we’ll find out that he has been blaming himself a lot for what happened while having no real justification for doing so.

(Side note: I have tons more thoughts about trauma, self-blame, victim-blaming more generally, and other related psychological constructs--these are all longstanding research interests of mine--but I’m going to stop here because this thing is already ridiculously long. But if anyone reading this ever wants to discuss any of this further, please feel free to hit me up! I love talking about these things.)

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Let’s review where we find Jae Won toward the beginning of the show. I’ve talked about how Jae Won had a lot of psychological difficulties before the story started. His family of origin situation was damaging even before he lost his brother, and then he had to contend with trauma and complicated grief. After that, he went through a breakup (possibly due to his partner cheating on him), completed his military service, and then had to make the transition back to civilian life, which isn’t easy under the best of circumstances.

And then he meets Ji Hyun, and his feelings for him unsettle the precarious set of strategies that he’s been using to get by. Ji Hyun makes Jae Won feel tempted to let his guard down and be himself. He places a degree of trust in Jae Won that challenges his cynicism and makes him feel tempted to trust Ji Hyun in return--to trust him to an extent that would normally be out of the question for him. Ji Hyun shakes things up, and while this is mostly a very positive thing--there are a lot of things in Jae Won’s life that urgently need to change--it’s also rather destabilizing in the short term.

Then the shit starts to hit the fan when Jae Won wakes up after staying out late drinking to hear his father pounding on his door. And the makers of the show start to play around with cinematography, editing, sound design, and other aspects of the show’s production to evoke Jae Won’s inner experience. After his dad pounds on his door, the way the show is shot and edited changes.

This disjointed editing and other distortions of typical filmmaking at this point in episode 5 have reminded some folks on here of a dissociative state, and I can see why. I would agree that it has a dissociative flavor. There are two prominent types of dissociation (which can happen simultaneously):

derealization, a feeling that the world around us isn’t real--it may feel empty, strange, or just plain wrong; and

depersonalization, in which we feel like we’re seeing ourselves from the outside, as if the person we’re observing isn’t us.

It’s tricky to talk about either of these in the context of tv/film because as viewers watching a fictional story unfold in a TV show, we are by definition:

perceiving that the world the characters inhabit doesn’t seem real, because it isn’t

looking at the characters from the outside, because they aren’t us (and they aren’t real)

But there are conventions of film and tv production that give us a sense of realism and of seeing things from characters’ points of view, and when Jae Won is dissociating we see those conventions get suspended or distorted. For example:

Conventional editing creates a flow of time that feels realistic (partly because we learn the “language” of film from a young age and interpret it that way). At important moments in The Eighth Sense, the editing breaks the rules of conventional editing, often messing with the viewers’ sense of time. Contexts change abruptly, as when Jae Won suddenly goes from being at home to being in his car. At other points, dialogue also goes out of sync.

Shot-reverse shot techniques help to approximate seeing things from the characters’ perspectives, situating us in the story so that we don’t feel like we’re observing from a distance. The most notable moment when this rule is broken happens when Jae Won is upset about his camera being damaged. We see him telling someone between sobs that the camera was a gift from his younger brother, but that person (assumably his dad) isn’t shown at all--not even a shoulder or the back of a head.

There’s also a lot of use of shallow depth of field (something the show uses in other ways as well), putting Jae Won in focus while his surroundings become a blur, making the world around him look hazy and unreal.

The sequence where Ji Hyun and Jae Won kiss in the ocean puts their dialogue way out of sync. On my first viewing, this just seemed like an interesting choice, one that gave the scene a sort of dreamlike quality. I’ve seen this strategy used before, as well, without any reference to mental illness, usually in art films. The first example that came to mind for me was from a Godard movie. It would be a valid option regardless of mental health-related content in a show. But after what immediately follows, I think that scene is portraying a trauma memory. Sometimes benign events that happened just before something traumatic become encoded with trauma memories rather than our usual type. (To put it briefly, trauma memories are encoded and stored in a different part of the brain from our everyday memories, and this is why they “behave” differently and have a different sensory quality from typical memories. Trauma recovery often involves some degree of re-encoding these memories in a more normal manner.)

Basically, the show sometimes puts the viewer into an approximation of a derealized and depersonalized state, particularly relative to what we’re used to as TV watchers. At other points, it shows characters’ experiences as if they were traumatic memories.

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

All this being said, I think that Jae Won’s dissociative moments, while very concerning and doubtless extremely distressing for him, do not point toward any sort of severe dissociative disorder like Dissociative Identity Disorder, nor do they make me concerned that his reality-testing (his ability to effectively distinguish what is and isn’t real) is impaired. I also don’t see any signs of cognitive impairment that would create a similar degree of confusion about reality. As a result, I don’t think the show’s use of signs of dissociation suggests that entire sections of the story will later be shown not to have happened.

Here’s the thing about dissociation. On paper, it sounds like an extreme symptom that approaches the kind of severe mental illness that includes symptoms like hallucinations and delusions. But the vast majority of the time, it’s very different from psychosis. And it’s also, in my opinion, more of a spectrum than we care to acknowledge most of the time. When we look at it that way, we can see that in a sense, Jae Won is at least a tiny bit dissociated a whole lot of the time. But frankly, so am I. It’s not uncommon for trauma survivors. It’s very different from something that would result in impaired reality-testing.

It’s possible that the show will end up revealing that Jae Won’s mental illness has resulted in him imagining entire segments of the show. These types of symptoms are often portrayed in media, for a couple of reasons: 1) people just find psychosis fascinating, and 2) these types of symptoms are very handy for creating plot twists and other interesting narrative devices. It’s not hard to think of examples of this. Fight Club, Black Swan, Shutter Island...the list goes on and on. But these portrayals are almost always inaccurate and exploitative. So far, the folks who make The Eighth Sense have shown a great deal of nuanced awareness of and sensitivity toward mental health matters, so I don’t think they would use this kind of cheap plot device. But they might. If so, I’ll find that pretty disappointing.

There is one thing the showrunners are doing that is somewhat sneaky in a way that’s could look analogous to that. Others have pointed out that Jae Won and his therapist are wearing the same clothes in every therapy scene, suggesting that we’re seeing the same therapy session interspersed with the other events of the series. In other words, the therapy session operates on a very different timeline from the rest of the story. We don’t know where to situate it relative to the rest of the plot. But I don’t see that as tied to the show’s portrayal of Jae Won’s mental health, nor does it seem exploitative or out of left field.

To sum up:

So far, The Eighth Sense has been remarkably accurate regarding psychological matters and has portrayed therapy and the use of psychotropic medication in a mostly positive and realistic light. I get the feeling the writers/directors/etc. have had some experience receiving mental health treatment. I really hope they maintain this level of quality throughout the remainder of the series.

I don’t think Jae Won’s PTSD (or his depression/anxiety) are sufficient for him to experience psychosis. I don’t expect entire segments of the show will be revealed to be an elaborate lie or hallucination, and if they are, I would consider that to be an example of poor writing and an unrealistic and potentially harmful representation of mental illness.

#The Eighth Sense #psychology of BL #trauma #self-blame #dissociation #media portrayals of mental illness #media portrayals of psychotherapy #media portrayals of trauma #jae won x ji hyun

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emblemxeno · 1 year

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Alm and Celica’s argument at the end of Act 2 in Echoes is honestly fascinating when you think about it more cuz yeah it’s easy reading it on the surface level as a lover’s spat (hell I think even Kusakihara described it as “girl gets mad and boy has no idea why girl is upset, just like real life” which bleh) but it grants very good setup. These certain lines from each of them stick out to me most:

Alm: Nrgh… If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I was speaking to a blue blood. My station doesn’t matter, Celica. I’m here because I was called. I have a duty to perform, and I’ll perform it. No more, and no less. [...] Do you think I WANTED this fight? This all started because Lima IV went and angered the empire. If you wish to point fingers, point them at the ruler who failed his people. It’s his fault we’re in this mess.

Celica: That’s not… Well, so what if it is? Maybe you should go become king if it’s such a damnably easy job! [...] You’re awfully free with accusations for a boy with no idea what royalty entails! And now that you’re a “hero,” I imagine the throne is next on the list, is that it?

Celica directly critcizes what Alm is currently lacking as a leader, and Alm unwittingly hits one of Celica’s major insecurities.

Alm is established as having strong ideals and unwavering views during Act 1, but his awareness of the world is incredibly shallow, not made better by how he’s so sure of how the world should be that he’s unprepared for what it actually requires of him and what it means to be a person of influence, be it an army’s commander or someone of high birth, hence why Celica brings up exactly how he’s ignorant to the kinds of burdens that royalty have to endure. That’s why his parts of Act 3 and 4 have him dealing with exactly that: it starts with his Brand being revealed to Berkut, next he gets the Royal Sword that’s supposed to be royalty only, the conversation with Clive about rescuing Delthea, him finding out Celica is a princess, dealing with killing his own father and cousin, etc. And despite it all, what he has to due is think beyond himself and for the world. He can’t focus on his sadness of losing his family right now, as the heir to Rigel’s throne his responsibility is to make sure the safety of Valentia’s people is secured. That’s the burden of royalty that he was lacking, what Celica has had since she was a kid and what she criticized him for, and the piece of the puzzle he was missing.

Celica meanwhile is established as being incredibly aware of the people around her during Act 2. She takes out pirates even thought it’s not in her mission description because she knows the people are suffering because of them, for example. However, she’s distant. She’s closed off. She knows what’s required of her as a princess, but it can seem like she’s being cold instead of responsible. And despite this, she’s still under the impression that she’s not doing enough, hence why she gets as upset as she does when Alm calls Lima a terrible king, because even though she didn’t like him whatsoever, Celica herself sees herself as a terrible princess. In response, during Act 3 and 4, this insecurity of hers gets put into overdrive. She’s helping people yes, but being Mila’s priestess and the newly revealed missing Princess of Zofia starts having her taking her burdens to extremes. She’s convinced that she has to do everything herself, and that Mila is the only way to fix things. This extreme is taken to the point where she’s too self sacrificing and closed off to the pleas of her friends and the situation right in front of her, that everyone involved gets hurt. Her piece of the puzzle that she’s missing, is the day to day perspective, and understanding that the strength of her friends can buoy her; Alm being raised as a village kid means he was set up to have this way of living woven into his character.

In short: Alm sees what’s in front of him, but needs to learn to see the bigger picture because he’s unprepared for what kind of pain being a leader brings. Celica is very aware of the bigger picture, but needs to learn to lean on her friends or else she’ll end up hurting more than just herself in trying to do things alone.

They each have what the other lacks, but are just unable to reconcile early on because they were separated for so long, hence the argument. But y’know. Hardship builds character and all that. And sometimes hardship means unknowingly killing your cousin and dad, or getting turned into a souless monster and stabbed with a sword.

#fire emblem #fire emblem echoes #fire emblem shadows of valentia #fire emblem echoes shadows of valentia #alm fire emblem #celica fire emblem #what's great is that iirc Ascended Celica's forging bonds focused on exactly this dichotomy #with how Askr just fights the problem in front of them with seemingly little regard for the big picture #now i only hope that the (hopefully) inevitable Ascended Alm's forging bonds will complement this

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beautifulpersonpeach · 4 months

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Hello, you're someone I've come to respect to give honest and thoughtful answers to questions that may not be 'the general consensus' and I hoped I could get your opinion on the following. I was watching a translated version of an interview JK did during his solo era and I know we need to be cautious about accuracy of tone and meaning. He said he missed being on stage with BTS but instead of it coming across as ‘I love being solo but sometimes miss them' it was more 'thanks for the solo opportunity but I still prefer being with them'. I’m a newer fan – Dec 2019 – so I don’t have years of perspective insight on their personalities like some other fans but I sensed that this moment was at odds to the ‘I want to be the biggest popstar ever’ we got shoved down our throats recently. It niggled at me to the point that this last week I've been looking back on a lot of JK content and I'm a little startled by how much evidence there is that JK hasn't ever wanted to be a soloist. It's nothing major, just lots of little comments and behaviours that paint a big picture if you look for it. I know that confirmation bias happens, that once you have an idea you look for evidence and convince yourself you're right when you find it. But the more I look the more I see JK not being the 'cocky soloist bts sell-out' that many horribly seem to have tagged him with recently but as possibly the biggest OT7 in the group who was forced into a solo project. Looking back through BTS content, I'm actually a little startled how many times he says he prefers being on stage with the others than doing a solo performance. We all know he’s said he wants to be in BTS till they are old men, that he wants RM to always be leader (a little strange for the supposed soloist), he looked almost terrified when he found out that Dreamers was a solo project, he always hovers in the background in BTS content (again strange for THE soloist), and there is an overall impression he hates being on his own and is very much an introvert. He seems happy to show off his voice for solo material providing it’s mainly in a studio or a familiar/homely setting and he can get back to the group activities asap. There are many other things out there but I’m glossing to save word count. Now, looking back at his latest solo venture with an idea that maybe he didn’t even want to do it, the story becomes very different but I’d argue makes as much sense as the (horrible) current rhetoric. For years, the expectation from BigHit/Hybe/Armies is that JK could and should be the new global superstar. And let's be absolutely honest here, JK has the talent to be the biggest artist in the world if he wanted. I'm just wondering if he doesn't actually want it? That he just wants to sing and be the main vocalist for BTS – and while he enjoys being told he has the best voice and ‘could’ be a global superstar – he actually doesn’t want that, for whatever reason. If he didn’t want a big solo career and he put in some resistance to keep his career from going astronomical it explains some of the weirdness around his solo era – and choices. I’ve seen others mention a weird dichotomy with some of the choices made and I wonder, now, if it was down to a push and pull between JK and Hybe. Hybe wanted to rocket launch him into stardom and JK wanted a limit that didn’t put him in jeopardy of losing BTS as his main focus. I have to admit I get a chuckle out of the idea of JK dragging his heels writing an album to the point Hybe are like you will have a global solo project even if I have to get a western producer to write it for you. Then JK coming back with the trump card of, well, you do that and I’ll play along but oops I’ve applied early for the military so *timelimit* but hey I’ll be back in time for the promised BTS comeback! Obviously that’s some serious conjecture and I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek but I guess, what I’m ultimately wondering, is if this kind of conversation has ever hit your radar? Or if it’s something you’ve wondered yourself?

***

"Obviously that’s some serious conjecture and I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek"

I'm grateful for the small show of self-awareness. Really.

Thank you for taking the time to write all that. It helped me better understand your point of view, and while I can see where you're coming from, I disagree with many of the assumptions you've made and what you conclude.

First off, why is it so difficult to imagine Jungkook as a global pop star while active in BTS and fitting seamlessly in a group that keeps reaching new heights? Why must it be a zero sum game of one or the other? Why is it so difficult for people to believe this is a reality Jungkook might envision and work towards?

I've said before that I think Jungkook is a very simple and honest person. When he says something it's usually what he means. If you want to understand Jungkook, the easiest way is to simply listen to him. Anon, you said you don't get the impression that Jungkook wants to be a global pop star, but I think he does. There's an interview from 2020 that I strongly suggest you read in full. It explains so much of the kind of person Jungkook is. It made me fall a little more in love with him. The article is linked here but the excerpt I want to highlight is this:

Jung Kook: I think my heart’s telling me to. BTS was able to climb this high thanks to the group members, the company and our fans. But there’s always the question of whether I could receive that kind of recognition by myself, so I have this feeling of wanting to throw myself at some challenge alone. There’s a lot I want to do, and a lot I want to achieve.

By gradually improving yourself, what kind of person would you ideally want to become? Jung Kook: A person who’s crazy awesome in their field. (laughs) Those kinds of people look cool even when they do something different. I still have a long way to go. I feel like I could be more captivating and draw more out of people by improving any number of things, by trying hard to be confident about my singing, or the way I dance and perform. BTS is way more important and meaningful to me than I am to myself, so I’m not saying I want to do anything alone. But I hope I get to the point where I can perform alone for three or four hours in a venue full of people.

Italicized for emphasis.

Like I said, I honestly think anybody who is shocked by what they're seeing in Chapter 2 for any member, probably just wasn't really paying attention before. That's not a diss it's just what I think.

We agree that Jungkook has more than enough talent to be a global pop star; we agree that at the end of the day, going by his choices to enlist so much earlier than he needed to, among other things, Jungkook indeed prioritizes the group. But it's only in a fandom filled with insecure twats that Jungkook simply saying he wants to be a global pop star is treated like he denied the holocaust. In my opinion. Jungkook could be the biggest pop star and Jimin would be right there with him. On his own merits. Owning the world with him because they are BTS. Solos are obsessed with sorting out the popularity of the members within the group, but they forget that BTS are too ambitious to ever make it easy for the world to care about anything but them. I take issue with the very idea that Jungkook being the biggest pop star is somehow problematic for a group like BTS. Even more so when this is apparently the reality BTS have all agreed to, enough to renew their exclusive contracts early, twice.

I think you have a point about all the times Jungkook appears kinda reluctant to do a solo gig though. I mean, he's said it himself that he's actually kinda shy and feels most comfortable with the guys. They're all like that, you know? That's the thing about BTS that it seems only ARMYs get. BTS actually want to remain together, in a system designed to pull them apart. That's why they're one of the few anomalies in this ecosystem, an anomaly the system keeps trying to both replicate and eliminate.

Jungkook feels most comfortable performing with the guys, but he also has a desire to establish himself as a solo artist. I assume this is something everybody in BTS, Bang PD / HYBE, and Jungkook himself understands. Rather than the company dictating solo goals for Jungkook, I think this is something Jungkook is involved in and partly responsible for. As are the other members.

I'm already rambling but what I mean to say is that I think a lot of the discourse around Jungkook's actions in Chapter 2 have been either ignorant or in bad faith. And I think that's unfair to him given it came from his own fandom.

The only real disappointment I got from Jungkook in Chapter 2 is that his solo album didn't have a song he wrote or produced, especially when I know he'd done both several times before. I understand writing a song in a language he doesn't speak can make a difficult task even more intimidating. But I also think he just kinda choked. He'd been building expectations for his solo debut for three years and had to deliver something epic. But between the Busan concert, World Cup, OSTs, enlistment announcements/planning, etc I wouldn't be surprised if he just got overwhelmed and by the time he got his bearings he felt he didn't have enough time and got stuck. That sounds kinda long-winded but it's something I've seen happen often and a feeling I've experienced myself.

Sometimes people just get stuck. It takes a mini-intervention to get the ball rolling again. In this case, and to use a reference from the article above, Jungkook decided to tackle the idea of introducing himself as a solo artist, a bit at a time. In Golden we're given a selection of his pop tastes, songs that he feels represents him, in his beautiful voice. Bang PD gave him a challenge of an all English album and Jungkook more than delivered. Would I have preferred more direct involvement from him? Of course, and it's what I expect in his next project. But for his first work I'll excuse it given he does such a phenomenal job in his vocal delivery and the songs are bops.

Anyway, I appreciate that you felt there was something off in the bad rep Jungkook has been getting, and actually did the work of going back to watch original content. I just disagree with some assumptions you've made along the way because in my view, it's unneeded. Jungkook is very clear about the kind of person he is and what he wants for himself and BTS.

#jungkook #jikook #bts #bts chapter 2 #bts solo careers #bts solo music #bts solo stans #bts fandom #bts army

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painsandconfusion · 10 months

Text

Intermission

Showstopper - Part Six

(tw: torture mention, medical whump, drugging, noncon touch, yandere whumper, delirium, creepy / intimate whumper, kidnapping, noncon kiss, a lot of pain)

[Previous | Masterpost | Next]

Pain.

Darian wished he could be cool and start off with a dramatic, badass-sounding intro line like ‘He awoke to pain. An old, familiar friend.’

But they weren’t old friends. They weren’t friends at all and it wasn’t familiar.

It was just pain.

Air wheezed out of him as he processed the inferno that wrapped his body. Skin and flesh shredded from their places and screaming agonies at his blurred and distant mind.

He shifted a little, heart pounding against his skull as he registered just how thirsty he was.

“Oh-! Hey, there you are. Thought I’d lost you or something.”

..not a welcome voice.

Darian grimaced, head rolling away from the sound- then wheezing as Calyx’ weight shifted on the bed, disturbing the delicate balance of agony and consciousness.

“Awh, don’t pull away from me – it’s not like you can, anyway.” A hand combed through Darian’s hair. Calyx chimed a soft giggle, amused as Darian’s neck mindlessly stretched to chase that touch – the only sensation that wasn’t bringing pain. “Awwww~! You’re adorable.”

Darian half-scowled, head turning away again as a kiss pressed to his nose.

“Come onnnnnnnnn~ I saved your life – aren’t you at least a little grateful?”

Darian’s throat was rasped with dehydration and unuse, but he crackled out the whisper anyway. “y-ou..y ou hhurt me-“

Calyx snorted a laugh, ruffling Darian’s hair. “I mean duh. What did you think I was gonna do? I’m gonna go ahead and blame the sheer patheticness of that sentence on the drugs, mkay? No judgment from me, nope nope.”

Darian grimaced, eyes cracking open in a groggy scowl at Calyx. “..wh’ day’s it?”

Calyx hummed, checking their phone. “Thursday. You’ve been out for likeeeeeeee thirty something hours.”

Darian’s eyes strained down over his body. Covered in bandages and smelling like medicine. “..h-ow did y-..”

Calyx shrugged. “Patched you up enough you wouldn’t die on me and gave you a blood transfusion. I avoided doing any major damage, so you should heal up in a couple weeks.”

Darian frowned, looking over Calyx. “..wh’….are you doing-?”

Brow raise. “…what, with you?”

..small hum of confirmation.

Calyx shrugged. “Just keeping you, that’s all. Obviously couldn’t let you keep living, and…wasn’t ready to let you go. So.” They took a moment to nitpick at the way Darian’s hair laid, brushing it from his brow. “Found a middle ground. You like it?”

Darian’s face twitched away from Calyx. “N-o I don’t ffucking like this-“

Calyx blinked a tight smile.

Then something cold and sharp pricked against Darian’s aching throat.

“You sure you don’t like this alternative? Because I can always skip back to plan A.”

Darian froze, swallowing against the cool blade. “..I-ll ma nage-“

“Good.” The knife pulled away, and a kiss pressed to his cheek.

Darian was quiet for a long few moments, just...trying to focus on Calyx’ fingers in his hair. “..why d’ you like me-?”

Calyx shrugged, fingers drifting down now to trace the lines of Darian’s face. “You see me. You actually appreciate my work. Anddddddd I’m bored. Good enough answer for you?”

He did his best not to twitch under the little touches. “..did..y…..the video..-“

“Mm. Mhm. Sent it to your team. Saw on the news they think you’re dead. There’s like a candlelight vigil thing for you this Friday in the park. Isn’t that sweet?”

Darian twitched a frown, eyes sliding away. “..s-ure.”

“I’d totally go, but I feel like it’d be rude to leave you alone during your own not-funeral, y’know? We can have a movie night or something instead.”

…Darian….had no idea what to say to that. So he said nothing at all.

A small part of him was screaming for him to run. To lash out and hit Calyx. To sprint from the room or strangle them.

..the rest of him was too fucking tired to even get through considering that idea. He’d probably pass out if he tried to stand, anyway.

Aaaaaand Calyx was back to playing with his hair. …no – braiding it now. Their little fingers were twisting it out as long as possible to tangle a small cornrow from the corner of his forehead. Keeping their hands busy, he supposed.

“..c-an I…..get some water-?”

“Mm-! Right right right, you’re probably dehydrated as fuck, one sec-“ Calyx stood, crossing out of the room.

Darian stared after them, then finally let his eyes roam the space.

…queen sized bed. Not a spare room – this one was littered in things. Piles of clothes that weren’t put away. A few articles that had missed the toss to the hamper. Pictures tacked on the wall. Pocket change and trinkets drizzled over the dresser. This was Calyx’ room.

Whichhhhhh meant they probably slept next to Darion last night.

..and would continue to.

Greatttttttt-

His eyes snapped back up to the doorframe as Calyx reentered, holding up a clear water bottle with a straw. “Got it – think you can sit up?”

Darian half scowled at them, shifting up and shoving his elbows under his weight to scoot b-

…

Darian winced and twitched away from whatever was patting at his cheek.

“There you are.” He could fucking hear the grin in Calyx’ voice. “Guess the answer to that was ‘no’, huh?”

Darian grimaced, head rolling away. “a-ns’r to wha-?”

“Whether or not you can sit up.” Something poked at his lips, drawing a flinch. “..it’s just a straw, you’re fine. It’s water. Undrugged and everything.”

Darian wanted so badly to give him some shit line like ‘that’s what you said last time’, but not only would that make Darian look even dumber, he had no choice here. His throat was practically sticking to itself with every swallow – he needed water and it wasn’t going to come from anywhere else.

So. Reluctantly. He let his lips close around it, sucking down greedy mouthfuls of the fresh, cool liquid. A half panic surged through his mind, mouth chasing the straw as it withdrew.

“Hey- chill out, there’s gonna be more. You’ll make yourself sick drinking it that fast.”

Darian scowled, letting his head flop back against the pillow.

Calyx perched on the edge of the bed again after they set the bottle down. Their arm propped up on the other side of Darian, leaning over him. “Are you mad at me~?” Pouting.

Darian’s head twisted further from him. “N-o shit.”

Calyx cooed a sorrowful sound, fingertips ghosting over Darian’s lips. “I’ll make it up to you~! You’ll see. You’re going to love being mine.”

[Previous | Masterpost | Next]

(tags: @prisonerwhump @whumpawink @mabledonut @happy-little-sadist @paleassprince @distinctlywhumpthing @wibbly-wobbly-whump @batfacedliar-yetagain @suspicious-whumping-egg @wormwriting @villainsvictim @throwawaywhumper @wild-selenite-caffine @whumpasaurus101 @thecitythatdoesntsleep @whumpworld @whumpberry-cookie @a-galactic-fox @shywhumpauthor @hold-back-on-the-comfort @veyroswin @suffering-and-misery @whump-queen @a-whumped-tea @scribbelle @sunshiline-writes @scp-1296 @salomeslashes @ha-ha-one)

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doubleca5t · 2 years

Note

Honestly the whole “fetishization of lesbians” thing is so weird to me as a queer woman because like. The majority of men I’ve met in yuri-heavy fandoms or that have liked wlw content have been chill and respectful. There are some bad eggs but it’s a significantly less common problem in my experience than tumblr presents it as, and imo as long as someone respects irl wlw they can like the fictional content however much they want. Like, why the hell would I be mad that a dude thinks two girls kissing is cute? So do I, that’s just having good taste! Especially if they make art or fanfic or headcanons or anything, that is literally beneficial to me that they are making more content of what I want to see! If I was one of those people so worried that any man who likes wlw content is fetishizing or whatever, I’d miss out on being friends with a lot of cool people. RIP to them but I’m gonna have fun and focus on connecting with others and seeing the good it has to offer instead of focusing on the differences and getting mad over an issue blown up past its actual size, but I guess part of what it might be is people want a shortcut to judge whether everybody is good and bad instead of either actually either giving them a chance as an individual or recognizing that they don’t have enough info to judge. Maybe people should realize it isn’t their place to judge everyone in the world; even if it seems like what will keep them safest or be the most moral thing to do for some people, it isn’t right.

Couldn't have said it better myself! I also think the key thing with fetishization is that, at least as I understand it, the dudes who are really gross about lesbians aren't going to go out of their way to get involved in a wlw fandom and consume fan content made by actual wlw. If they really were just there for the porn why go through the trouble of getting like... invested in the community and all that? At that point it feels like if they went through the trouble to seek out sapphic content made by and for sapphics then perhaps you should give them the benefit of the doubt. Not that they can't be weird and gross about it but I feel like the odds are VERY different from the general population.

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patchesjam · 1 year

Text

My MCC Video Rant, sorry its a bit long :)

So first off, the video itself is a bit crap. The first 2 mins are just introduction waffle, they then talk about a UI change for 2 mins. They’ve changed it from the typical mcc style to fit the mcci UI a bit more, to ‘improve viewer experience’. I personally don't like the change, for me it's a bit... busy. They then spend 3 of the remaining 5 mins mins advertising merch and mcci. Only about 1 min of the 8 min long video is about actual updates to mcc.

The actual updates, like the ones that actually matter and change the game are in the comments for some reason??

This is all information that are actual updates, none of it hinted at all in the video but just commented below.

Skybattle’s update is truly confusing. Let me explain, currently there a a few raw pvp games (battlebox, sb, sg) and they all prioritise something different, BB is teamwork in rapid environments, SB is kills and SG is survival. With the nerfing of SB kills it turns it into a hunting and killing game to a hiding game. It also creates ridiculous scenarious where, for example with past scores adjusted, someone with 10 kills can come 3rd (dream mcc24) and someone who dies 1st each round, with zero kills, gets 64 coins (ranboo mcc17) and someone who gets 5 kills comes 2nd behind someone with 2 kills (Krtzzy and 5up, mcc 20).

It also, crucially, completely nerfs the ability for surpise comebacks and popoffs - for example, Joel Smallishbeans, not exactly known for pvp but he had a very impressive run getting 5 kills in mcc19 and gets just 260 coins with this update. Instead of potentially getting lucky, or a good opportunity you now have to just try and survive to the end.

Battlebox’s update is a little bit of a nothingburger, they are just adding blocks to all maps which, although probably a bit more fun and makes things interesting. They are also releasing new maps throughout the season - but no major overhaul. Not that it particularly needed one either.

One thing to note is that they mention that the blocks will be ‘brown, not team coloured, so you won’t mistake them for concrete’. However, several contestants are colourblind.

In the game, it’d be extremely easy to mistake brown construction blocks, for both red and orange concrete. It probably wont end up effecting much at all - but when you can use the black colour, which is nearly universal it doesnt make any sense at all. I really hope it has a different texture or something because otherwise its just silly.

Grid Runners changes is fine, probably pretty good change tbf. It does surprise me they havent announced new rooms, if there are no new rooms I’ll be dissapointed as I feel like theyre getting stale, but hopefully theyre leaving that as a surprise.

However, I’m more pissed off at what they didnt announce. No mention of anything to do with Buildmart, which regardless of opinion, is one of the few games without big updates from S2. It’s also hated by 1/3 of the players and watchers so if they are focusing on improving player’s experiences surely this should be a focus? No mention of new GR rooms. No mention of SG scoring, which still wasn’t great from last season. No new games. No mention of new AR maps. No mention of Meltdown maps. No update to SOT. No mention of new maps for RSR. No PKT scoring update (desperately needed).

It’s just all a bit dissapointing, very few updates actaully talked about and released for the start of S3, where surely they should at least be hinted at. And instead, a nice 5 min long ad for their other products.

#also im ignoring it here but there def were hints of mocking fans of a certain someone so hackles raised for that already

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naminethewriter · 2 months

Text

Extra Service

Chapter Two: The Brother

Masterpost | Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 | Ao3

Hello everyone! I'm finally returning to this story and hopefully the third chapter won't take me as long as this one has 😅 Please be mindful of the content warnings, if you would rather skip this chapter, there is a summary of it at then end of the Ao3 link.

Story Summary: Remus hadn't expected to work as a housekeeper at a hotel managed by his best friend but he wasn't complaining. Especially if it gives him the opportunity to keep a (very attractive) guest from overworking himself.

Content Warnings: Past Roman/Virgil, Discussion of Past Self Neglect, bordering on self harm, but not from the person themselves

~~*~~

Soon Logan had showered and the salad had arrived. Remus used the time in between to roughly vacuum the room and use some air refreshener so he could finally close the windows. He also pushed the books and papers around to make space on the tabledesk for the salad. Thankfully nothing fell to the floor (though some of the stacks were very wobbly and Remus couldn’t help but imagine what it would look like if one crashed into the salad and food and plate shards would fly everywhere. His brain tried to get him to topple it, but he managed to resist. Barely.)

Logan emerged from the bathroom in shirt and sweatpants (since Remus had refused to let him take another suit), a towel around his shoulder and still trying to dry his hair. Remus grinned at him and stood behind the chair as if he were a gentleman offering a seat to his lady. He could be courteous if he wanted to be!

“Is this really necessary?” Logan asked, eyeing him skeptically.

“No,” Remus grinned but didn’t move. The other sighed and sat down without another word. Remus pushed his chair closer to the tabledesk with a giggle before sitting down himself and resting his elbows on the polished wood, watching Logan intently. The other raised an eyebrow at him.

“Do you intent to watch me eat?”

“Yeah!”

“Why?”

“To make sure you finish! Also thought this is a good opportunity to tell you why I’m doing this! You said you wanted to know and it’s gonna take a while, so…”

Logan sighed again but picked up the fork Remus had placed in its proper place next to the plate, motioning for him to continue.

“Very well. Do explain yourself.”

“Chance to ramble? I will take it!” Remus grinned at Logan, who looked a bit more reprehensive but didn’t protest. Instead, he started eating his salad, though his eyes remained on Remus for the most part. Before starting his explanation, Remus took a moment to appreciate how Logan’s lips closed around his fork. He really hoped he’d get an opportunity to taste those lips for himself. Only with consent, of course.

‘Focus on the issue now, fantasize about the hot nerd later!’ he reminded himself.

“You see, I have a brother, a twin, actually,” Remus began, leaning back in his seat. “He’s a bit of a dumbass but has a good heart, y’know? We’re both the creative types, though I mostly work with sculptures, art, and pottery – I teach a late-night class actually! Doesn’t pay well, but it’s fun for the most part – while he’s more of a writer. He’s also a perfectionist, which I am most definitely not, I let my hands wander and see where they get me!” Remus winked at Logan but either the other didn’t understand his innuendo or had a great poker face. ‘Uhhh, you should invite him to play strip poker with you! That’d be fun!’ He tabledesked that idea for later, he should probably ask him on a more normal date first and see where that’ll lead him.

“Aaaaaaanyway,” Remus continued, “my brother decided he wanted to write a play and then perform it in our local theater where he works. His boss basically green-lit the whole thing after Ro-bro gave him the pitch but had some guidelines. Nothing major, but enough that my brother felt the pressure.”

Remus could see Logan watching him intently – those deep green eyes were so hot – while he slowly chewed his food. He seemed the observant type, but even if he wasn’t, it was hard to miss the shift in tone. Remus couldn’t tell this story without being somber, it was a time he didn’t like revisiting.

“Roman threw himself into his work. It was fun at first, see him talk about it so passionately, what his plans for the characters were, the twists and turns and how he could see it performed on stage already. His boyfriend at the time was also super supportive, the both of us rubber ducking him constantly.” A wry smile played on Remus’ lips. He took a deep breath before continuing.

“But writing’s fucking hard if you didn’t know. The words can be perfectly aligned in your head but once you put them to paper they look mangled, like rotting corpses you clumsily stitched together and suddenly the eyes aren’t on the same height and one arm’s longer than the other and you forgot a nipple and maybe even a spleen, so how are you supposed to create a functioning monster?!”

“I understand your point, Remus,” Logan cut in before he could get even more lost in the rather gruesome picture he was figuratively painting. “I assume your brother struggled with the writing process once he got started.”

“Yeah, he did. Like a lot. And when he can’t get what’s in his head on the page the way he wants it to be, he gets frustrated and that leads to him struggling with the words even more and it’s a vicious circle. He started spending more and more time at his desk. When he wasn’t working, he was writing. Or attempting to write. He started losing sleep. I often had to drag him to meals. He cancelled plans or didn’t show up at all because he forgot all about them. It was really worrying.

“And it really put his boyfriend on edge. Like the dude’s been a friend of mine before he got together with my brother and anxiety is like half of his personality. So having plans cancelled on him constantly and his boyfriend not taking care of himself properly led to some problems.”

Remus’ had to make a conscious effort to relax his hands after they curled into fists. To be honest, he still hadn’t entirely forgiven Roman for how he treated Virgil during the last legs of their relationship. It hadn’t been fair to the Emo and while his brother had admitted to his faults, Remus just couldn’t get Virgil’s red-rimmed eyes out of his mind. ‘You should revisit that idea about dunking his head in the toilet bowl’ his head suggested and Remus waved the idea off. Roman would wiggle too much.

“It came to a head eventually and the guy broke up with him. Which sucked because I liked him, but because of his anxiety he needed a clean break, so he asked me not to contact him either for a while. Which turned out to be never, but that was more my fault than his I guess.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. (Remus wondered how often he worked on those; they were immaculately symmetrical.)

“What do you mean by more your fault?” he asked.

“Well, like I said, I was friends with the guy so I knew that he would have trouble reaching out to me first. I should’ve contacted him after the situation settled somewhat, but I didn’t.”

“Why?”

Remus chuckled but it was a dry and sad sound.

“I… always had the feeling that he was kinda afraid of me. I know I come on strong, and I have intrusive thoughts and keeping them in my head is hard, so I usually blurt them out or use them for my art and he… well, it often triggered his anxiety. I didn’t really want to contact him and have him feel like he needed to talk to me again.”

Virgil had been a good sport about it most of the time but even before he started dating Roman, he had visited Remus in his art studio less and less. He took great care to censor his words in front of him, too, but it sucked that he couldn’t discuss things with Virgil freely anymore. It was like he had to be constantly on guard around the man and it only got worse during Roman’s breakdown.

Remus missed Virgil, but he figured he was better off without him in his life. At least Janus still contacted him once in a while, so he knew he was doing well enough. It was a small comfort.

Logan had put his fork aside and was watching Remus with his piercing green eyes. He felt like a bug underneath a microscope and that shouldn’t have had him as hot and bothered as it did. Well, not literally bothered – don’t get him wrong, the dude was hot and being examined by him so intently was a nice bonus, but Remus needed more than that to actually get physically excited.

It would lead to new fantasies however; he was sure of that.

“I get the impression that that conclusion is based on a cognitive distortion,” Logan commented eventually. Remus just blinked at him. “In other words, I think you are jumping to a conclusion. If that man was your friend for as long as you are implying, then I am sure he would appreciate you contacting him again.”

“You stopped eating,” Remus said instead of answering and after a few moments of simply staring at each other (‘Staring contest! Staring contest! How long would it take for their eyes to dry out?), Logan relented with a sigh and picked his fork back up.

“Very well, I will not meddle in your personal affairs. Unlike other people, I respect such boundaries.”

Remus cackled at the obvious jab at his intrusion and as he calmed down, he could see a small smile on Logan’s lips, though he tried to hide it behind the next bite of his meal.

“Well, back to the story: my brother got dumped. Which I had hoped would be a wake-up call for him to quit the bullshit and realize how bad he’s gotten. But instead he doubled down. Every waking minute he had that wasn’t spend at work, he was writing the script – or more accurately, he tried writing it. More and more often I would hear him shouting at his laptop about how nothing was going like he wanted it to, how it needed to be perfect, how he would show everyone that he could do it.

“I tried to get him to eat and sleep, but it would only end up in yelling matches. We both don’t have great tempers and more than once I stormed off and didn’t return until like a day later. I don’t think he left his desk in those days…”

Remus sighed, remembering the sorry state of his brother, hunched over his laptop with bags under his eyes that reminded him so much of Virgil that Remus was almost glad that Roman was hardly going to the bathroom so he wouldn’t catch his own reflection in the mirror.

It had been an absolute trainwreck.

“Eventually, my brother collapsed during one of our fights. Passed out on the spot. I barely managed to catch him before he would’ve hit his head on the ground. He woke up only moments after and tried to convince me that it was just a dizzy-spell and that it wasn’t anything to worry about, but I had enough. I carried him off to the hospital right then and there.”

Roman had fought him the entire way, cursing at him and demanding to be brought back home. He almost fainted again in the car since he worked himself up so much. Remus had thought about pulling into the oncoming traffic and putting them both out of their misery – the stress had made his intrusive thoughts so much worse.

“I got him to cooperate by saying that if nothing was wrong, the doctor would just let him go home and I’d leave him alone afterwards if that was the case. He still complained though. Then he was diagnosed with severe malnutrition and anemia. He had to stay there for a few days.”

“And did he do so without complaint?”

Remus had almost forgotten Logan was there. Almost. He looked back at the other – after he had apparently just stared at the wall for the last few minutes – to see that he had finished his plate.

Good.

“Yeah. I’m not entirely sure what happened since I wasn’t allowed to be there when they took his vitals and shit but apparently one of the nurses laid into him about proper self-care and that he could’ve killed himself. I think only then he truly registered how bad it’s gotten.”

“I see…” Logan looked thoughtfully at his empty plate and Remus just watched him until he spoke up again. “And what happened after? Did your brother finish the play?”

“He did. Took a long break from it though. Went to therapy. He’s doing well now, has a sleep and eating schedule and goes to the gym on the regular. It’s kind of annoying how toned he’s getting. Jan sure appreciates it though.” Remus wiggled his eyebrows, but once again Logan doesn’t react to his implications.

“What about the performance?”

“What performance?”

“Of the play. You said that your brother was ensured that he could perform the play at his place of employment.”

“Oh! He didn’t go through with it.”

Logan blinked at him, surprised.

“What do you mean ‘he didn’t go through with it’? Doesn’t that make the entire ordeal worthless?”

“It wasn’t worthless,” Remus said softly, feeling like this might be the point where he can get through to Logan. “Roman learned a lot from it. So did I, to be honest. The entire thing helped my brother to grow as a person. Yeah, he finished the play, but he had to rewrite around half of it since what he wrote during his mania was either awful, extremely personal, and or sometimes even harmful. And even after all that editing, he still found it too close to his heart to publish. He says that maybe sometime down the line, when he’s healed more, then he'd put it on, but not right now.”

“I… think I understand. Still, I cannot shake the belief that it means his struggles were for naught.”

“I know where you’re coming from, but productivity isn’t all we live for. Learning from our struggles and teaching that to those who come after us is what I think we’re supposed to do.”

“That is quite the profound way to see the world.”

Remus shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

“Maybe. It’s at least what led to me coming in through that door and forcing you to take care of yourself. Which reminds me, you should be going to bed.” He got up and pulled at Logan’s arm.

“Sleep?! It’s the middle of the day!” the other protested, but Remus remained insistent and led him over to the freshly made, plush bed.

“Yeah, but that hardly matters when you’ve been up for who knows how many hours. Your eyebags make you look like a raccoon. Oh, maybe I should’ve gotten you your dinner out of the garbage bins outside!”

Finally, he managed to push Logan onto the bed who looked at him with trepidation.

“I cannot go to sleep, I need to finish my work,” he insisted.

“Pish-posh, I bet you can barely remember what you’ve been writing for the past few hours anyway. Get some rest and then look over what you wrote again, I’m sure you’ll want to make some changes. Sleep-deprived brains rarely put out the work in a quality you want.” Remus pushed at his shoulders until Logan was lying down and then covered him with a blanket.

“Fine,” the other sighed. “But I need to set an alarm. I have a deadline.”

“How about I’m gonna come by when my shift ends in—” Remus glanced at his wristwatch— “about four hours? I’ll help you sort through those books, too, since I kinda just put them together willy-nilly.”

“I guess that’s acceptable.”

It seemed that lying down had a quick effect on Logan as he let out a long yawn and snuggled deeper into the comforting warmth. Remus smiled, proud to see him follow his advice and relax.

“Then see you in a few, Lolo! Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite!”

“If they do, I’ll sue you.”

Remus grinned as he listened to Logan’s half-asleep mumble before he gathered up his used dishes and silently tiptoed out of the room.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 3

#namiswriting #my writing #Extra Service #Chapter 2: The Brother #platonic intrulogical #past prinxiety #ts logan #logan sanders #ts remus #remus sanders #human!au #discussion of past self neglect #multichapter fic #sanders sides #fanfiction #reblogs are appreciated

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kriegertops · 2 months

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This might be a kinda controversial take and opinion, but I haven’t really seen it addressed yet. And that’s that Sloane and Ocean’s birth parents deserved a lot more effort than what Ashlyn seemed to put forth. Putting your child up for adoption is a monumental, life altering decision. It is done with heartache, doubts, and probably so much pain. A parent does that, so their child can have a better life than what they are able to give them. Both sets of parents agreed to GIVE THEIR CHILD to a married couple, and probably with the assumption it was a happy marriage that would last. For Ashlyn to insist on adopting Ocean, to wanting to leave her partner less than a year later, has just never sat right with me, and speaks volumes to her character and mindset. And yes, children should be in a happy home with single parents versus an unhappy one with both, but to me, AH didn’t try anything to save this marriage or honor those parents who child she agreed to raise with her wife. I want to ask her, was it all performative? Are those kids props to you? Did you actually sit down and think about what it would be like for Ocean to have ZERO memories of his moms together? She was not only selfish, but cruel throughout this whole ordeal. One day those kids will know- wonder how they’ll think abt her then.

Hi Anon thanks for this ask. This topic has actually come up a few times with one of my friends that I talk to and I didn’t really know how to address it on my main page.

Those birth parents chose Ashlyn and Ali to raise their kids and provide a stable loving home. It’s impossible to predict the future but for Ashlyn to move on to a whole new relationship in less than a year is not only disappointing but also disgusting. Based on how fast everything happened I’m under the impression that Ashlyn just gave up and found the easy way out instead of sticking around long enough and put in the work to see if they could fix things. It’s hard to fix things and work on your marriage though when you’re partying and fucking around with your new side piece.

This selfish mindset though is not surprising after what Ashlyn said on the snacks podcast. Ashlyn made oceans adoption about herself. She literally said she didn’t want to see ocean in the hospital until the papers were signed. I’m sorry but if you’re hoping for that baby to be your child you go to the hospital no matter what. Even if it ends up with their bio parents keeping them. The child should always be the centre of focus, it’s not about the feelings of the adoptive parents. I’ve been trying to educate myself more and have been listening to content created by adoptees and one of the major issues is adoptive parents thinking about themselves. So when Ashlyn said that the whole adoption process was emotionally hard and all that and not wanting to see ocean in the hospital I was pretty disappointed to hear that. Those feelings are valid but at the same time they should’ve been at the hospital for ocean.

Additionally, oceans first year of life as you said wasn’t filled with the same loving family memories that Sloane got. Even just looking at the way Ashlyn was probably drunk and maybe high based of who she was hanging with and how she was acting at oceans first birthday

So at the end of the day how this all went down and how Ashlyn always finds a way to post the kids when she’s with them or use the kids as a reason why people should be nice to her and understand her desire to cheat just really rubs me the wrong way. Also Ashlyn’s whole narrative that two happy families is better than one unhappy one is so interesting because she’s acting like she broke up the family for the kids sake and not her own selfish cheating reasons.

Long rant, not sure if all this makes sense but ya

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femmefatalevibe · 11 months

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Hello!

Hope you’re doing great today.

How do you become your best self- like operating in your full Potential? There’s a girl I know of who’s super popular on campus and she’s great: a model, may be doing pageants one day (I encouraged her), and is super smart. Recently on IG I saw she’s at Harvard Business school studying and she has a major in Political science.

I’m an English major - couldn’t attach myself to any legal studies because it wasn’t for me and I get insulted by family that I should be doing something other than English (they look down on the major).

So I find myself comparing myself to her because I am trying to do different clubs, and speak up and be all that I can be. But I’m not seeing anything changing for me.

I get over looked a lot, and it’s a new school for me (I’m a transfer student) so that’s added.

And I’m so lost.

I often looked down on my degree, I do believe I should be a speaker or go to galas and study things that holds influence. To be a woman of change but I don’t see that. I haven’t gotten any scholarships for holding events for clubs, nor do I get recognized.

I feel like I’m not doing enough and I feel inadequate in my abilities (I literally took a creative writing class with fifteen other poets for a special class and the Professor would constantly nit pick at my writing and say I have to revise - and the other students would be praised for their writing. And I actually thought I was a great poet til that happened. And he’s a poet himself, and well known so that hurt. And was embarrassing cause my peers weren’t helpful or encouraging either. They would just stare at me while he critiqued my work).

Not sure who I should be.

I’m not even good at the things I thought I was good at.

But when looking at my acquaintance- I see such great things going to happen for her in her future (all well deserved).

Hi love! You sound like you're doing great for someone in university, honestly. Most people, especially at that age, do not take the time or energy required to self-reflect and think critically about how they can improve/ thrive in their environment instead of blaming external circumstances for any obstacles they face. You sound very emotionally mature, which I'm sure will take you far. Having so much uncertainty and little support is so difficult, so know that your feelings are valid regarding why you feel uncertain and like you're losing time in this current moment.

While it is easier said than done, comparing yourself to others is a waste of the time and energy you can be spending on ideas, hobbies, and activities that make you happy/help you reach your goals. Please know that people putting you down for being an English major is very closed-minded. There are so many career paths you can pursue with an English degree (signed someone who almost did one, lol) – copywriting, PR, social media/content strategy & creation, UX & technical writing, broadcast journalism, reporter, editor, screenwriting, etc. Also, he is one poet – that is an opinion, not a general consensus. He might be a professional and have considerable skills under his belt, but that does not make his words gospel. Writing quality can be fairly subjective. However, the way he singled you out is awful – I would talk to an advisor about this unprofessional behavior.

The best things you can do in a situation like this are three-fold:

Focus on taking care of yourself. Block out what others, especially critics, think or say about any choices you're making that don't hurt anyone else. Try to establish some healthy routines (meals, walks, workouts, studying, skincare, reading, etc.) to feel more in control of your day-to-day life

Sit down and reflect on the activities that give you energy, what you're passionate about, and the goals that you would most like to achieve in the few years after university and the immediate ones while you're still on campus. For example, it sounds like you're interested in writing, public speaking, and fancy events. Find resources to get good at these skills and ways to get yourself in your desired work environment (internships, temp service work for special events, etc.) Maybe consider potential career paths like PR or speech writing. Consider creative outlets like making a podcast, TikTok, or Youtube videos.

Make it a priority to develop confidence in yourself and an unwavering sense of self-trust. I feel like an old lady saying this, but you're so young and have so much time to figure it out. Everyone has different histories, traumas, resources, and advantages/disadvantages in this life. Spending time ruminating over those of others and comparing notes is taking away the energy and creativity you need to pour into constructing your own life and identity.

Hope this helps xx

#femmefatalevibe #college student #college advice #career advice #career path #life skills #student life #life path #life lessons #life advice #career tips #self confidence #self concept #q/a #goal setting #healthyhabits #self esteem

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