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gravitywonagain · 4 months

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Inquiring Minds

holy shit, i finished a thing. well, a draft of a thing, but still counts!

based on this post about wwx being just dead enough be susceptible to the compulsion of inquiry

It was, in retrospect, the stupidest possible way to be found out. Wei Wuxian will readily admit that. Unfortunately, the level of stupidity was not a determining factor for the level of reality — as was the case for so much of Wei Wuxian’s life.

It all happened because one of the two dozen Jin disciples who bothered to show up to the war got a little drunk and a lot prideful and ended up starting a fight he couldn’t finish. Or, that was the going theory, anyway. The Jin leadership — such as it was — wanted an investigation done. As if they had nothing better to do. As if there weren’t reasons to be conserving spiritual power and not wasting it playing Inquiry for a guy who had decided to pick a fight — hopefully, hopefully it was a fight — with a Nie disciple who, granted, did not have the startling musculature of some of her shixiongs, but was still a fucking Nie disciple!

This guy was not worth their time. This guy was not worth Lan Zhan’s time. Or his attention, or his spiritual power, or the stress it would put on his guqin strings— okay, maybe Wei Wuxian should have taken a moment to purge some of his resentment before walking into the tent.

But he didn’t. This is important.

Because then Lan Zhan began to play.

And there was this strange… tugging sensation in the pit of Wei Wuxian’s gut, right where his golden core was supposed to be, pulling him toward Lan Zhan, or toward the empty space in front of Lan Zhan.

Wei Wuxian shouldn’t have ignored it. He gets that now. He does. But he always wanted to be near Lan Zhan, and his body had been doing all kinds of weird shit since he’d had his core cut out, and who was to say this wasn’t just another weird side effect.

Well. It was. A weird side effect. After a fashion.

But that’s not the point!

He should have noticed then. He should have left then. But he didn’t.

The melody changed and the tugging sensation stopped. Which was great!

Until something else started. It felt like a kind of drunkenness, light and hazy in his head, loose around his tongue. Three or four bowls in.

He shook himself to dislodge it, but the motion only drew a sharp glare from Jiang Cheng.

The tent was full of spectators. At least two representatives from each major clan were present, plus several “close friends” of the victim -- like four of the fifteen total Jin disciples -- who probably just wanted something else to do outside of eat, sleep, and fight. Wei Wuxian couldn’t blame them, exactly, war was remarkably boring most of the time, but it was getting awfully stuffy in there.

Lan Zhan changed the melody again, something almost lexical about it. Wei Wuxian could almost hear the question being asked, even before Zewu Jun’s voice chimed in, translating for anyone who didn’t know the qin language — which was pretty much everyone else in the tent besides the Twin Jades — “What is your name?”

Wei Wuxian caught his own response between his lips, pressing them together tightly, as the guqin sounded three distinct notes which Zewu Jun reported as Jin Zixin.

So, good. It was the right guy. That was great. Nothing weird at all.

He should have left then. He didn’t.

Lan Zhan played again, and again Wei Wuxian thought he understood the phrase, the question, even before Zewu Jun said for the tent, “How did you die?”

Wei Wuxian felt the answer fly to the tip of his tongue and bit his teeth around it, through it. His cheek bled with the force of keeping quiet.

It was weird. So weird. But maybe, Wei Wuxian justified to himself, maybe it was just an effect of holding a secret inside for so long and having someone actually ask the question out loud. Maybe, it was just the same automatic reaction of answering with your name when someone asked for it. Maybe he was just too fucking tired, and the resentment under his skin just wanted something to laugh at, something to entertain itself with. Like the five of ten Jins standing in the back of the tent. War was boring, okay?

The notes from Lan Zhan’s guqin hung in the air, resonant and waiting. The moment seemed to stretch out too long. It dragged and Wei Wuxian gradually felt the words stop fighting him to escape.

But the Jin ghost didn’t answer either.

When Lan Zhan played the same phrase over — “How did you die?” echoed on Zewu Jun’s tongue — the compulsion was much stronger. This time it was like Wei Wuxian could feel Lan Zhan’s spiritual power pouring through him; the strongest of wines, several jars of it.

He couldn’t fight it.

His mouth opened.

I fell. I fell. I fell.

“I fell.”

All eyes in the tent turned to him.

Jiang Cheng’s elbow caught him in the ribs. He didn’t even bother to glare. He said, “Not you, Idiot.”

The qin sounded and everybody looked back to Lan Zhan and Zewu Jun, waiting to hear the Jin disciple’s answer.

Zewu Jun hesitated for the barest of moments, stuttering into the start of his translation before finding the confidence of his voice once more, recounting whatever it was that the ghost had strummed out.

Wei Wuxian didn’t hear a word he said. He was, instead, pierced on two sides.

On one: Jiang Cheng muttered to himself, “Wait,” and then his eyes went wide as he looked back at Wei Wuxian.

On the other: Lan Zhan’s fingers froze above the strings of his guqin and he turned to stare over his shoulder at Wei Wuxian with something like horrified understanding dawning within his gaze.

Wei Wuxian finally realized he should fucking leave. Immediately.

He wanted to run. He knew better. Knew what that would look like.

Instead, he was going to simply walk out of this tent as he had walked out of so many already during this campaign. Gravel crunched under his heel as he turned.

But his brother knew him too well. Jiang Cheng’s hand clamped tight around Wei Wuxian’s bicep, his grip unyielding. With his golden core, Wei Wuxian might have been able to break it. But the real bitch of it was that it was his golden core that was holding him in place.

Jiang Cheng tensed as if readying for a fight, but Wei Wuxian already knew how that fight would end. So he let himself be restrained.

He turned back to face the Inquiry.

Lan Zhan was still staring at him when Zewu Jun finished speaking. He was still so stuck in place that his brother had to prompt him into finishing the ritual. Which he did, with all the grace and skill expected of him. He really was just so beautiful to watch.

All the while, Wei Wuxian listened to the music and bit through his tongue to keep it silent. The questions continued to drag at him -- “Do you know who killed you?” Wen Chao. “Do you have any last requests?” To leave this fucking tent. -- though the pressure to answer eased significantly as the Jin ghost became less stubborn about it. Wei Wuxian settled for reciting the answers to them in his head until they no longer felt pressed against the thin seam of his mouth.

It took approximately sixteen-hundred years.

All seven Jin disciples supporting the war effort left the tent after the ghost had recounted his final moments. The attempted sexual assault was not unexpected, judging by their faces, but still disappointing to hear about. Clearly not the entertainment they were hoping for. Luckily for Wei Wuxian, they were apparently too wrapped up in their Jin nonsense to realize new entertainment was fidgeting in the corner and trying not to sever the tip of his tongue completely.

The Nie, represented by Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, left shortly after the ritual concluded. If Nie Mingjue had to tug his brother away, Wei Wuxian was too busy keeping his mouth shut to comment on it.

And then there were just the four of them. Plus the corpse. But they were like six months into a war, so the corpse didn’t actually seem to bother any of them. It hadn’t even started to smell yet. It was still pretty intact, too, and now that it was verifiably a criminal, Wei Wuxian wondered idly if the Jin would let him use it in their next battle. Probably not.

His idle wondering ceased abruptly as his brother’s fingers bit deeper into the meat of his arm.

“Wei Wuxian,” he said, all of his surely filial worry for his gege boiling over into a spitting, incandescent fury. He never had to say he loved his brother, Wei Wuxian could always tell. It was the teeth gnashing that gave him away. “What the fuck do you mean you fell?”

Right.

Wei Wuxian played it as cool as he could with a definitely-not-bleeding tongue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jiang Cheng.” He shrugged, but his arm didn’t move very far.

“You answered Inquiry,” said Lan Zhan. Succinct as ever.

“No!” Wei Wuxian said, maybe a little too loud, but not at all childishly.

Zewu Jun narrowed his eyes and pulled out his xiao. Wei Wuxian tried not to flinch about it, he did. But Zewu Jun only played a short, non-Inquiry melody, and a shimmering, blue barrier manifested around the interior of the tent.

“No,” Wei Wuxian said again, this time at a totally normal volume. “I was just… messing around. You know how I do that, Lan Zhan. Always a rule breaker.” He grinned, desperately trying to play it all off. Realizing faster and faster how very badly this was going for him.

Lan Zhan surprised him, then, saying, “Not when it matters.”

“What?”

“Wei Ying doesn’t break rules when they matter.”

Wei Wuxian didn’t know where the fuck that was coming from. But he couldn’t say he hated it.

Except that he did, because it was going to be a problem for this whole I’m just a silly rascal defense he was setting up.

Jiang Cheng still hadn’t let go of his arm. His fingernails were starting to split the fabric of his sleeve. And worse, his eyebrows were scrunched together in the way they do when he’s thinking through all the angles of a problem.

Zewu Jun still had his xiao in hand, and he was looking at Wei Wuxian like he was deciding whether to perform an exorcism or an execution.

But Lan Zhan… Lan Zhan hadn’t moved from his seat on the mat. He had turned his body so that he was facing Wei Wuxian, giving him his full attention, and was looking up at him with… pain in his eyes. Shining, wet pain.

“You died?” he asked. “Are you dead?”

“I don’t…” Wei Wuxian trailed off. He couldn’t find the words.

He didn’t know. Which was, possibly, not the best sign.

“I can’t be dead,” he said, looking over at Zewu Jun, Jiang Cheng, then back to Lan Zhan. “Can I?”

Zewu Jun, still wary, said, “You responded to the compulsion in Inquiry. Inquiry is a song that speaks to and compels answers from the dead. It does not generally work on the living.”

“Well--” Wei Wuxian started, defensive and scared. But again, he didn’t really know where to go with that.

“Where were you, Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng asked him. “Why didn’t you meet me at the bottom of the hill?”

Lan Zhan and Zewu Jun shared a look. They didn’t seem to know what Jiang Cheng was talking about. But Wei Wuxian really, really, didn’t want to get into that whole mess. If anyone was going to see right through him and his flimsy tale about suddenly remembering the location of Baoshan Sanren’s mountain, it would be Lan Zhan. Actually, Zewu Jun would probably figure it out, too. And then maybe even Jiang Cheng. Now that he wasn’t all broken and desperate and gullible.

Fuck. With the way Jiang Cheng was looking at Wei Wuxian, the way his hand released some of the pressure around his arm, he might already have.

Wei Wuxian laughed, hoping it came off more smoothly than it felt in his chest. “Ah, Jiang Cheng.” He brought his own hand up to lay over his brother’s. “What if I told you--”

“No,” Jiang Cheng cut him off. “No more bullshit. Where were you?”

The mirth, false as it was, drained out of Wei Wuxian as he saw the pain building behind his brother’s eyes.

There was movement in his periphery and then Lan Zhan was standing on his other side. His fingers wrapped around Wei Wuxian’s other arm with a much gentler grip than Jiang Cheng’s. Something imploring about the touch. Like he was seeking confirmation to a theory, or maybe proving to himself that Wei Wuxian was actually there.

“I…” Wei Wuxian trailed off.

Zewu Jun’s gaze was hard as steel, but aimed, it seemed, at Lan Zhan’s hand, rather than at Wei Wuxian in general.

“There was a rumor,” he said in slow, even words, “that Wen Chao had thrown you into the Burial Mounds.” He waited a moment after he finished speaking, as if trying to reconcile the words himself, before he looked up to meet Wei Wuxian’s eyes.

Of course, Wei Wuxian didn’t want to meet Zewu Jun’s eyes. He didn’t want to meet any of their eyes. He wanted very much to be out of this tent and away from knowing gazes altogether.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite figured out how to teleport using resentful energy yet. So in the tent he remained.

He looked down at his feet. His boots were crusted with dirt and blood and other bodily fluids. War really was super gross, in addition to being largely boring.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, still looking down. “Everyone knows that nothing leaves the Burial Mounds.”

Lan Zhan’s hand tightened around Wei Wuxian’s arm. Jiang Cheng’s loosened, but didn’t let go.

“Yeah,” said Jiang Cheng, like an accusation, “it would be impossible.”

Wei Wuxian still didn’t look up from his feet which meant that he missed whatever silent conversation happened between Jiang Cheng and Lan Zhan that had both of them tightening their grips on his arms just before fingers were pressed to the pulse points of his wrists. He struggled, flailing as much as he could, but against Lan Zhan’s golden core and his own, he stood no chance. He could barely budge them.

He screamed but the sound only reverberated inside the tent.

The only thing he could think to do was to call up the dead. The dead man still lying in front of them. The Jin. Rapist. Criminal. He could use that wicked corpse to fight off the people holding him down, taking his secrets. Smoke curled out of his sleeves and he--

He stopped himself.

It was over anyway.

Even if they couldn’t read his spiritual energy, or lack thereof, his fighting them was confirmation enough.

He went limp in their grasp. His knees buckled.

It really was the stupidest possible way to be found out.

“Where is it?” asked Jiang Cheng. But it was clear from his voice that he already knew the answer.

Lan Zhan was silent.

Zewu Jun looked to his brother for an answer, not understanding what they had just discovered.

“His golden core,” said Lan Zhan. “It’s gone.”

“Wen Zhuliu?” Zewu Jun asked.

But Jiang Cheng made a sound that was somehow both a laugh and a sob.

Wei Wuxian regained control of his arms. He sprawled himself out on the tent floor, exhausted from his struggle. He laughed, too. “After a fashion.”

Jiang Cheng fell to the ground next to him, hands cradling the place where Wei Wuxian’s core now spun. “What the fuck?” he said, quietly, to no one in particular. Then, loudly, to Wei Wuxian in particular, “What the fuck!”

His cheeks were wet. Jiang Cheng’s, his own. He looked over to confirm, and yeah, Lan Zhan’s too. Zewu Jun had nothing to cry over, except maybe confusion, but he was too cool for that, so he just stood in the middle of the tent, shocked, presumably, as his brother, another sect leader, and a demonic cultivator broke down around him.

Wei Wuxian stared up at the tented canvas ceiling and cursed himself for not leaving the tent when he first noticed something wrong.

“Jiang Cheng,” he started, but Jiang Cheng cut him off with a wet yell.

“Why would you do that, you fucking idiot?! What the fuck were you even thinking?! How did you-- How--”

He seemed to lose steam trying to figure out what happened on “Baoshen Sanren’s mountain” and potentially also why Baoshen Sanren’s voice sounded so familiar.

Zewu Jun’s voice was remarkably calm for a man witnessing-- whatever he made of what he was currently witnessing. He said, “Wei Wuxian, I believe your Sect Leader would like to know how you lost your golden core.”

Wei Wuxian laughed at that. Because yes and no.

“No, Zewu Jun,” he said, still laughing. He tried to stop, but it was just too funny. “No,” he said again, slightly more sober, “he wants to know why and how he now has my golden core.”

He didn’t really mean to say it. He felt drunk again, like he did when Lan Zhan was playing Inquiry. Ready to spill all his secrets at only the slightest provocation. Zewu Jun could probably ask him just about anything right now -- Lan Zhan and Jiang Cheng too, for that matter -- and he would answer it. It wasn’t exactly a safe mindset to be in. But he couldn’t really do anything about that now.

At least there was some kind of privacy barrier over the tent.

Zewu Jun stood. Speechless.

Lan Zhan’s tears fell silently.

Jiang Cheng glared, hands clutched tight against his lower dantian -- whether to hold something inside or to tear it out, Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure.

Wei Wuxian felt light as a feather. Drunk and dizzy with it. A weight had been lifted, he supposed, but one he was never supposed to let go. His laughter died down to the occasional press of his lungs. Tears collected in his eyelashes until everything was blurry.

Emptiness yawned inside him, but it was gentler somehow. As if the secret itself had been clawing away at his slowly healing wounds.

“Fuck,” he said with a hiccup of a laugh. And again, quieter, “Fuck.”

He really should have left the fucking tent.

Also, wait. Was he dead?!

#wei wuxian #lan wangji #jiang cheng #lan xichen #inquiry.mp3 #mdzs #the untamed #cql #fanfiction #my writing #inquiring minds #hey look i wrote a thing!#i actually finished a draft of something!#now if only i can aim this energy toward projects that other people actually care about...........

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farfromstrange · 6 months

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Lizzi's Kinktober 2023

Day 3: Cockwarming

October 18th, 2023

Main Masterlist | Kinktober Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader (use of "good girl")

Summary: Matt is always working, but you need him. So, he gives you what you want. Sort of. But not really.

Warnings: EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT (18+ MINORS DNI), cockwarming, praise, use of "good girl", teasing, slight Dom!Matt, not proofread (I sense a theme here)

Word Count: ~970

A/n: This is a drabble again, and I am so sorry for not posting it yesterday. I finished it and then I fell asleep. Oops. I caught a cold and I am so tired, so I hope this can live up to expectations once again.

Matt’s working.

He’s always working. Either on a case or out on the streets as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. The protector. There are only a handful of moments when you have him all to yourself, and sometimes you have to beg for it and hope he caves.

Just like tonight.

He’s been working again. He’s been working ever since he came home. He told you he would have to go out at some point that night, possibly after you’ve gone to bed. Maybe he’ll cuddle you, but that is never certain. You can hope, you can pray, but you can never be a hundred percent certain that he will be there.

But you love him.

You don’t care that he is gone a lot because when he isn’t, he makes up for the time he missed. He treats you like you are an angel on earth. That’s what he calls you often enough.

Angel. Sweetheart. Divine. Heavenly. He loves you more than you’ve ever been loved. He would go to the ends of the earth with you. But you can’t make him stop something that sustains him. You understand. You really do.

He’s doing something to help people, and if you have to spend a night or two alone, so be it. Not everyone could do what he does, and that’s as much a blessing as it is a curse. He has to do it or he will lose himself. Maybe it’s an addiction, maybe it’s unhealthy, but you love him and your love has survived much worse than that.

Still, there are times where your needs become a little too hard to ignore, and most of the time, they take over.

Sometimes, the little voice in your head gets stronger than your common sense, and you become needy. You become so needy, Matt can’t tell you no because deep down, he loves it when you get needy.

It’s the easiest way to distract him, being needy. It’s the easiest way to get him to pay attention to you, yet at the same time, it makes him just want to take care of you in ways he too often neglects.

Matt has been sitting at the dining table, typing away on his laptop as he listens to witness testimonies on his latest case for what feels like an eternity.

As the time dragged on, you eventually started shifting on the couch, watching him, trying to get his attention. When that didn’t work, you started sighing. It took about thirty minutes until his low voice rang out, “Come here.”

And that is how you ended up here. Part of you regrets it now that you have been teasing him so relentlessly, but you couldn’t stop. You had to do it. This is your compulsion.

His hard cock is nestled deep within your slick folds as he’s got you seated on his lap, chest to chest. He’s so deep inside of you, you can feel him in your very soul.

Your walls are so tight around his girth, you can feel his veins pulsating every time you try to shift your position. You’re clinging onto him for dear life, your head on his shoulder, and he just types. He types away on his laptop as if he isn’t buried completely inside of your wet cunt. The clicking sound is slowly starting to drive you crazy. It’s his moans you want, the sound of skin slapping against skin, not whatever this is.

It’s torture, to say the least.

“If you’re so needy, you can keep me company while I finish this report,” he said to you after he called you over to him.

You thought nothing of it until he grabbed your waist and pulled you closer.

“You can keep my cock nice and warm for me until I’m done, and then I’ll fuck you, baby. I promise. I just have to do a little more work.”

You shouldn’t have pushed him, but God, you love what he feels like inside of you.

You shift again. His left hand flies to your hip, stopping you. “Don’t move,” he says. “I’m not done yet.”

Your moan is muffled through his dress shirt. “Please, Matthew,” you whine.

“No.”

Oh, he’s cruel. He’s so, so cruel.

He knows exactly what he’s doing, too. His rough hands alternating between gently resting on your thighs, stroking up and down, and his nose burying in your hair to breathe in your scent—and every time your clit bumps against his pelvis, you can’t help but moan and seek more friction. But when you do, when you move to seek friction, he stops you time and time again because, “I’m not done yet.”

When will he be done?

Every time he breathes, every time he talks, his cock moves just a little deeper. He presses against that sweet spot inside of you entirely unintentional, but he knows instantly what effect it has on you.

At this point, you’re sure he’s teasing you. He’s doing this on purpose. Is he even working? You’re sure he can’t be.

“So beautiful,” he whispers into your hair. “And so good for me. I’m almost done.”

“You’ve said that before,” your voice is hoarse, breathless, on the edge of breaking.

Matt only chuckles, tilting your head back to give you the softest of kisses. Suddenly, you’re not so mad anymore. The pleasure that simple kiss sends straight to your already dripping cunt, coating his cock in even more wetness and allowing him more leeway as he shifts in his seat now, forcing you closer together—it is inhuman. You moan into his mouth, and the kiss turns heated.

You are so needy. Maybe he is getting desperate too. He’s kissing you back a bit more forcefully, and you’re sure he’s about to lose it. But then he stops, pulls back, and focuses back on the Braille on his keyboard.

“Be good,” he tells you.

You try. You really are trying, but it seems nearly impossible. You still bury your face back in the crook of his neck, and you try to breathe.

The rubberband in the pit of your stomach tightens with every passing second, threatening to snap. Your nerves are on fire. Your muscles are sore. You can feel yourself tensing up, trying not to move, trying not to make a sound…The relief is too far away, still.

“That’s it. Good girl.”

You’re done for. Your teeth sink into his shoulder, and the lewdest moan escapes your lips.

“You like that?” Matt asks. “Being called a good girl? My good girl? Is that it?”

He shifts again. It’s better than nothing. It soothes the ache in your core, but as soon as he stops, it multiplies.

“Yes,” you breathe.

“Then be good just a little longer for me, sweetheart, and I’ll give you exactly what you need.”

You’re going to hold him to that.

Matt Murdock Smut Tag List: @acharliecoxedfan @gpenguin666 @linamarr @mcugeekposts @itwasthereaminuteago @ravenclaw617 @mattkinsella @norestfortheshelbywicked @yarrystyleeza @littlenerdyravenclaw @etanordoesbullsh1t @thychuvaluswife @harleycao @schneeflocky @imjustcal @pipsqueakkitten @merlinbtch

Also tagging: @blackshadowswriter @1988-fiend

#matt murdock #daredevil #michael kinsella x reader #matt murdock smut #kinktober 2023 #kinktober #daredevil x reader #daredevil smut #charlie cox #lizzi writes

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autisticlancemcclain · 3 months

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okay so you just put this in your most recent post so now i’m really curious, what are your thoughts on kuron? what specifically makes you say he’s a good iteration of shiro? /gen

oooou okay thank you for asking. i covered this a little bit in this essay here, but i'll sum up the most important bit from that essay (in relation to this topic):

"Lastly — and this turned out to be less relevant to the essay than I expected, but I do want to go over it a tad — is Shiro’s tie to humanity. I mentioned two important points: Shiro’s connection to mortality makes him the most intimate with his humanity out of all the characters, and he is undoubtedly the flattest character of them all. That is, if you don’t consider his clone to be part of his character.

But I’m begging you to reconsider. Reconsider, perhaps, who the clone is — Haggar had pure access to Shiro for a year, you remember. His thoughts, his dreams, his mannerisms, his priorities, his body. Even him at his most human, his most deranged, his most scared. She had Shiro then. She had Shiro when he had nothing to look forward to. She had Shiro when he hurt his crew to make sure they would live, at direct cost to himself.

She stripped him of his humanity — his connection to his own mortality. She took his illness from him. And who, then, did she return to the team? Who was clone? Shiro, mostly. The clone was happy to play with the team. The clone was clever. The clone believed, fully, that he was Shiro, only he was angrier and meaner, a little, and less capable of shoving down his own pain. Shiro, stripped of his tie to humanity and mortality, stripped of his compulsive need to be strained and stressed and the one everyone else can rely on, the Role rather than the Person, is emotional. He has flaws and outbursts. He can’t manage his own pain. He is is cruelest to the one person on the team — Lance — who canonically reminds him closest of himself.

Shiro, in the purest form that Haggar can make him, is flawed and self-hating. That is where our love for him comes. Not the man who pushes himself down at the same time as he sacrifices his personality to be someone for others, but the man who is struggling and can’t keep it locked down. That’s where it comes from."

so! what does this mean.

shiro, as a character, does not get to choose and form his own identity. first he is the Garrison Poster Boy -- and while he is a pilot, an explorer, and happy to do both of those things, he is uncomfortable with (largely lance's) hero worship. he both a) doesn't believe he deserves it, and b) is not happy in that role. we see it in the "blam blam blam" scene -- he is trapped in the 'hero' role because he is trapped in a role of Perfection, and he is not perfect, and it grates on him. second he is the Champion -- and while he did force himself to be the Champion by injuring the Holts, it is a sacrifice. being a sacrifice is not the same as choosing a role. third, he is the Paladin of the Black Lion (not the Black Paladin, for deeper analysis on my thoughts there please read this essay and maybe this one too honestly) -- he tries to escape that role from the very beginning. i know i keep pushing yall towards the essay but i genuinely do discuss shiro's role in it, but i'll reiterate:

"...from the very beginning, he set up a replacement for himself.

Doesn’t that strike anyone else as odd? I haven’t seen the show in five years, and I don’t plan on rewatching, but I do remember that every moment with Shiro almost had this underlying tension. The closest thing I have to canon off the top of my head is the Handbook (which I had to stop reading because they did everyone SO dirty there, even though some of it was honestly pretty funny), which was released in S2, and even that incredibly early canon talked about Keith replacing Shiro!

From the very beginning, Shiro was planning an out to his role. He knew it was not meant for him. He did the role well, but it was not his to do."

shiro does not want that fucking role. every single second we see him on screen, as Shiro Original, he is shouldering a burden. he is being someone he does not want to be. not to give voltron any credit, but don't you think it's interesting that he, as a character, comes out to the audience as queer when he is...free from those roles? when he is no longer the Garrison Poster Boy (i.e. lance stops the hero worship), no longer the Champion (haggar is defeated), no longer the Paladin of the Black Lion (keith is now the Black Paladin)...we see him come out. we see him, as it is often called, "be true to himself". to me, this signals that he is finally free from playing someone he is not, and interestingly, this came after kuron -- after he maybe got to be something he truly was.

aside from the more abstract analysis, shiro is deeply, deeply traumatized! it is inane to expect him to be the same person he was. why on earth would he have the same patience during/post war as pre-war? he knows now that hesitance gets people killed. if he had hesitated to hurt matt, matt would have died. if he hesitates out on the field, people die. patience yields focus, sure, but he hasn't had time for patience in god knows how long. any patience he has is, if it has not already torn, wearing thin. lance's lightheardness, although important, is bound to make him snap, especially because shiro used to be the lighthearted one -- if he was still the lighthearted one, people would die. on his conscious. his snappiness at lance, while inappropriate and damaging, makes total sense. it comes from a place of a) deep self-hatred/mistrust and b) trauma.

to quote myself again -- "shiro, in the purest form haggar can make him, is flawed and self-hating". take away shiro's roles, take away his masks, take away any of his responsibilities that have shaped his life for him -- who is he? would he be angry (like kuron)? would he be hurting (like kuron)? would he be vulnerable (like kuron)? would he, for the first time, reach out and ask for help (like kuron)?

i think he would.

#in my essay era again #anyways shiro i love you #vld #voltron #shiro #takashi shirogane #kuron #clone shiro #my writing #longpost

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f0point5 · 5 months

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Okay so this is totally a suggestion and you don't have to do it but i LOVE reading this in books so i thought i'd request it and maybe you could write it as like a written piece (the ones you said youd post after the fic is finished) (please and thank you a lot if you do)

So i love reading chapters where one of the love interests just feels comfortable sleeping/ napping with their potential significant other there and them like covering them with a blanket, making sure not to move to not wake them up, and just looking at them while the other is sleeping and just being grateful to have them in your life

I love it so much

This would have been a bit hard to do as an smau part that would be long enough but I also love this in fics so I’m hoping you enjoy this version instead!

~~~~~~~~

Another Sunday, another race won, even if this time you weren’t there to see it. You’re glad he won Silverstone, if only to see the devastated faces of everyone who doubted him.

You had considered going. You’d tried to consider it, anyway. Part of you felt guilty for not being able to go back there when Max had to, and did so easily. He said he understood, but you were sure he didn’t, you prayed he didn’t. It was embarrassing, how even thinking about that track brought back a visceral terror, a feeling your body seemed to remember better than the words to your favourite song. You could still taste the bile, throwing up in a rubbish bin outside the medical centre. You could still see his car careening towards the barrier. You could still hear the silence on the radio. Pathetic, maybe, but you’d never go back. Max had never even asked.

It’s only now, really, on the flight back to Monaco, that you feel really relaxed and you can tell Max feels the same. You’re going through your notes on the race, explaining the battles happening thirty seconds behind him as he lies on the coach across from the four seats around the table where you sit in the window seat.

“I think they really should have pit him earlier because he had decent pace all race, I was checking the lap times. And I know you’ll say it’s just Ferrari being Ferrari but I can’t exactly say that on the podcast. Not before Monza at least. From your perspective, what-“

Your words are interrupted by the softest of snores.

You turn to Max, only to notice he’s fallen asleep. Snorting, you open your mouth to say something to no one in particular, when you stop yourself.

He looks so young when he’s asleep. Unburdened and almost reachable, like the years and success have melted away from him. His full lips are slightly parted, his criminally long eyelashes casting tint shadows on his cheeks. You wonder, not for the first time, what a man like him could possibly have left to dream about.

Unfolding your legs as delicately as you can so they don’t cause the leather chairs to squeak, you shuffle over the empty chair to get up.

You’re careful to move silently, not even too quickly in case too much air hits Max’s face and causes him to stir. That’s how delicate of a sleeper Max is, so alert that he needs silence, darkness, and stillness to even have a chance at resting. Just like the cats, he moves at any small stimulus.

You pick up the Hermès blanket that’s folded on the corner of the couch and unfurl it. You’re not even sure why - the plane is already warm - but the need to contribute to his comfort is instinctual after all these years. Even back in the days when you relished in his discomfort there was a compulsion to fix it that you steadfastly ignored.

If there was one person on this earth who never deserved to be cold, or hungry, or sad, it was Max. History was littered with people who’d never come out the other side of what he had, and you were convinced none had ever come out of it so unbroken yet so soft. You know you hadn’t. That was the thing about Max that you liked, he had a kind heart but it didn’t need protecting, just company.

You drape the blanket over him gently, placing it up to his shoulders, hoping it doesn’t disturb him, but he doesn’t so much as shift. He must be exhausted.

When you finally settle back into your seat, you pull out your laptop, but think better of working in case the sound of typing wakes him up. Your nails tend to stab at the keys and Max is a delicate sleeper. Instead, you connect your headphones and turn on Netflix, careful to avoid all the shows you and Max watch together. You scroll past Drive to Survive and can’t resist a roll of your eyes before they fall on a sleeping Max again. This, ladies and gentlemen, is your villain.

You choose a romantic comedy, curling up into your seat to get an extra bit of warmth. As the credits roll, you really wish you had a blanket.

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mikuni14 · 2 months

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I wanted to reply to this post by @italianpersonwithashippersheart and it turned out to be a very long text, so I'm posting it separately 😉

I have a tactic of reading posts on Tumblr, that as soon as I start reading and see that the author is going in a direction that I know I won't like, I immediately stop and move on (ALTHOUGH sometimes the author writes something I don't agree with in such an engaging way that I read it to the end for intellectual pleasure, or it's someone I like with whom I disagree just this time, but I read it anyway because, after all, I like that person for a reason 😚). That's why, fortunately, I usually (<- key word, usually) avoid fandom wars and problematic fandom behavior. I do this because I know how irritating fandom can be sometimes, especially when a it goes to war to defend its blorbo, or ship, or the entire series. And I regret to say that defenders are the most aggressive... Personally, I don't mind fans living on ships, their blorbo, squealing about them and so on. (I mean, I do that!) Unfortunately, as I'm sure you all know, so many fans who live it, LIVE IT and it's not just fun for them, it's the meaning of their lives. This is where the attacks on actors come from, like the recent attack on Nut, a homewrecker 😆 in Pit Babe, having the audacity to be friends with the actor playing Alan AND HE BELONGS TO SOMEONE ELSE!, or, as in the case of DFF, tearing Ta into two parts by his ukes two fandoms lmao. Unfortunately, such behavior poisons a positive fandom experience and even I can see it, even though I try very hard NOT to see it.

It also seems to me that DFF viewers could be divided into two distinct groups: DFF fans and BL fans 😉 I'm a DFF fan and that's why I'm interested in meta, theories and Tan. I like PheeJin for their dynamic, but, I don't really care if they end the series as a couple. Besides, for me DFF is a mystery/thriller/slasher/social commentary series with BL elements, in which I DON'T HAVE to have a happy ending for BL relationships to be happy, I only want Tan to be happy. However, someone for whom DFF is only a BL series could be frustrated because 1) there is no monogamy 😬 2) there is "cheating" 3) the characters behave unpleasantly 4) the characters behave in ambiguous ways and it's often not clear what they think and whom they truly love 5) the characters behaviour becomes unpredictable and non-standard and often problematic 6) the plot keeps getting weird, instructions unclear 7) what about my ship?? *panic*

Regarding the concerns about the ending of the series: in any other series I would have EXACTLY THE SAME worries. But I look at DFF in two categories:

as a slasher

as a story about life, without a moral lesson

This makes me NOT worry about the ending because:

if you look at it as a slasher and my favorite film of this type, i.e. Scream and to some extent also Final Destination, there is no moralizing here, because the victims are often innocent and still die, because this is the rule of this genre: people die in masses

if we do NOT look at it as a story with a moral lesson, we also get rid of the compulsion to judge, like, did they deserve or not to die?

I know that in the DFF fandom we often joke, more or less seriously, that we would like this one or that one to die, or for everyone to die, but this is completely normal behavior when consuming media in which someone gets hurt. In the case of DFF, emotions are high because we naturally stand on the side of someone who is bullied and we see how others, through their actions or omissions, or often making stupid mistakes, saying cruel words in anger, contributed to the great tragedy of the entire family. But what I noticed is that the series does not actually moralize. It emphasizes very clearly that Non is a victim, but he is not entirely innocent and has made many stupid decisions himself, having had other choices, while also showing why he makes such choices. It shows Por as a complete asshole, while showing his environment and expectations towards him, but it does not absolve him. It even shows Keng not as a typical sweaty, brutal pedo, but someone who is genuinely concerned about Non, AT THE SAME TIME showing the issue of his pressure on Non, the money, the grooming.

The series presents dry facts, shows characters from different sides, in different situations, it also shows how events move from point A to B and further along the letters of the alphabet :) all the time discovering new facts that explain more and more, sometimes posing a seemingly already explained situation in a completely new perspective.

Personally, I don't get the impression that the series even WANTS us to moralize in our high glass tower, because the series clearly shows that the innocent, defenseless and vulnerable suffer and no one helps them. That a stupid event can lead to tragedy with the butterfly effect. That sometimes things happen beyond our knowledge, that we are just a pawn in someone else's game and, despite our sincere intentions, we cannot stop the course of events. And that the poor have a hard time and lose entire families and their future, with the first fatality in the series being the only son and the future of the richest family.

Therefore, I am 99% sure that:

we do not know all the facts that can turn all our predictions, judgments and faith in what is happening on the screen 180 degrees

whatever happens to Tan, Phee and Jin, I doubt it will be presented as a punishment/reward for anything

Tan can kill them all and not be the winner, Phee can kill Tan and live with it for the rest of his life as a loser

there is no way for the series to end sensibly AND with "the victory of good over evil" and"justice", because evil has been winning all the time and every kick to Non's face, the death of his parents, Tan's "madness", the death of two young people, the trauma of the others were proof of that, also all the lives lost and their future in which change for good is possible

At the moment, I have nothing to complain about the 10 episodes so far, for me the series is run logically, and any question marks that appear in my head, I am calmly waiting for their answers in the next episodes. THERE IS HOWEVER ONE THING THAT WILL ANGRY ME ABOUT THE ENDING: IF THE SERIES MAKES TAN A CONVERTED SINNER WHO CHOOSES LOVE, PEACE AND FORGIVENESS AT THE LAST MOMENT 🤮 I don't even want to think about it. This is the worst thing that can happen.

Despite everything, I still believe that the series will not do something so stupid at the end, that from a painfully realistic story about life with hints of a thriller and a slasher, it will turn into a fairy tale with a moral lesson, in which good (the established social order) will be rewarded and evil (anarchy represented by Tan) will be punished.

I have my dream ending, but whatever, it's my fantasy 😍 But at least 3 BL series from recent weeks ended exactly NOT the way I wanted, so I'm resigned to the fact that DFF may also fail in this matter 🤡

tl;dr everything will be fine, and if it's not fine, we have a great team to sit together and bitch together 🥳

@italianpersonwithashippersheart I fucking love rant posts 😤😤 I LOVED YOURS 💖💖💖

#dead friend forever #thai bl #bl drama

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nicoleanell · 9 months

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Another smart post going around reminded me of this thing that's been in my drafts, so you gonna hear some SURPRISE RENFIELD 2023 DEEP THOUGHTS FROM ME. <3

Going back to this post which still does occasional numbers,

I feel some ways about how Robert Montague Renfield is overflowing with empathy for other people despite his own circumstances being a million times more dire. He adopts calling the group's abusers "monsters" despite intimiately knowing an actual genuine monster and arguably being one himself.

Like he could've EASILY taken a look around that support group and been like "boo hoo call me when your literal intestines are coming out of your body", but instead of ever looking down on them or treating it as a competition over who has suffered most, he meets them at the place where they're hurting and absorbs it and connects to his hurt. He recognizes it as part of the same continuum, even when the details don't line up or measure evenly, it's Real and an experience he can imagine or relate to. Which is a good thing for support and/or therapy in a group setting.

Later on he lightly calls Rebecca out for her anger issues, but then after she rants about the source of that anger, his response is an utterly sincere "that sounds painful." INTESTINES. OUT OF HIS BODY. MAYBE 48 HOURS + 1 BAD HAIRCUT AGO. HE HAS JUST SHOWERED OFF THE BLOOD OF THE ONLY FRIENDS AND ALLIES HE HAD. But he winces in sympathy over her corruption and dead dad stuff.

And yes, I also feel a way about how that's a part of his nature that's been either exploited or fully trained into him by Dracula, because we ALSO see that in their interactions - "you deserve better", "I know being undead is a painful existence." Like… the fact he constantly leads off with empathy and validation of other people's feelings and that's the way he diffuses Rebecca's anger in that moment is not NOT linked to his codependency issues and the ways he's been abused. Of course everyone else's pain is not less valid than his, it's more valid actually!! He is more than happy to shut up about his needs and his trauma and declare someone else as the priority and Life's Main Character. The way he's still apologizing compulsively and transferring his submissiveness and fawn behavior to somebody else is very much a thing other people have pointed out, jokingly and sincerely.

But in spite of that, I still think it's ultimately a sign of his kindness and genuine compassion for others. And it doesn't have to be a one-way street.

Rebecca is (pretty understandably!) not as sympathetic to him in that scene as he's being with her, because she's still very freaked out and thought he was an ENTIRELY different type of weirdo than the weirdo he's turned out to be. But. Less than an hour later she is listening with an open mind while he tells her the most bluntly holding-myself-accountable, not-self-pitying version of his story and her takeaway is not only "you're not a bad person", it's specifically: I've done shit that I regret too, and being mean to my sister is on an almost LAUGHABLY smaller scale than anything you just said to me, but the point is I recognized your feelings on a basic humanity level somewhere in there and related to that. Again not a competition, and not about their experiences being perfectly in proportion with each other! It's good.

#renfield #renfield 2023 #robert montague renfield

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doomsday-dj · 2 months

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There isn't going to be a chapter of DNH this week. Instead here's a kinda rough snippet of a post-Remember Me one shot I'm working on, as a lil treat.

Jane stares, absent and unfocused, into the jet black eyes of the horse in front of her. She reaches out to brush her fingertips along its flank, but it jumps away at her unsteady touch. Frowning, she reaches out again with a slower hand and the calloused pads of her fingers finally graze against the taut side of the animal.

“Jane?”

She is roused out of her trance at the sound of Maura’s voice. Blinking slowly, she looks over at her friend. Maura stands a few feet away and looks exhausted—bedraggled in a way the perpetually put-together medical examiner hardly ever allows herself to be. Deeper than the tiredness, however, is the concern etched into her features. Concern for Jane.

Concern for Jane, Jane realizes, because she is currently standing next to her couch, gently petting a mylar balloon horse. Concern for Jane because this would be a deeply odd thing to do under any circumstances and is even more so on a day where they both nearly died. Maura is staring very hard at a spot just above Jane’s eyes and Jane knows she’s looking at the butterfly sutured head-butting wound that Jane acquired earlier in the day. Maura is almost certainly wondering, with good reason, if Jane is concussed.

Jane drops her hand away from the balloon, one of the many horse-themed novelty items decorating every inch of her apartment, courtesy of her (well-meaning if woefully misguided) mother. She self-consciously makes a fist. There’s a terrible tension in her palms and she feels the compulsive need to flex her fingers, to take one hand in the other and dig her thumbs into the rough scars in each center, but she doesn’t want to do it in front of Maura. She jams her hands in her pockets instead.

Truthfully, they don’t really hurt that much anymore and her dexterity is almost all the way back; she often goes days without even thinking about them. Today, however, they ache. Every once in a while she’s reminded that although she’s trained her mind to leave certain thoughts alone, her body can still betray them.

Maura’s eyes flick down to Jane’s disappearing hand trick then back up to her eyes.

“Jane, are you all right? You haven’t said a word since everyone left.”

Jane didn’t even realize that everyone had left. She faintly remembers saying goodbye to her mother and to Korsak but not much else. The whole evening, apart from walking in and then Maura’s gift, is a bit of a blur.

This is absolutely not the worst day of her life, but it is the strangest.

“I’m fine. It’s just he’s not exactly the horse I asked for, but he’ll do,” Jane jokes weakly. Maura frowns and Jane quickly follows up. “I didn’t really want a horse. The racing lessons are perfect.”

Maura’s frown deepens. “I know you didn’t want a horse, you made that abundantly clear,” she says. Jane recalls their conversation about her birthday in this same room, simultaneously only a day earlier and a lifetime ago.

“Why the face, then?” Jane asks.

Maura, evidently unaware of how openly she’d broadcast her displeasure, quickly tries to school her features into an impassive expression. She mostly fails and huffs out a quiet little breath. She looks away from Jane, stares silently into the kitchen at the half-eaten birthday cake, and Jane knows Maura is performing an exhaustive cost-benefit analysis on what she wants to say next.

“I guess…” Maura’s tone is hesitant and she stops to sigh. The weighing of pros and cons must have come up fifty-fifty. “I guess I was hoping that, for once, maybe—finally—you wouldn’t deflect with humour.”

Jane winces. She takes a long look at Maura, eyes drawn to the angry red cut on her neck, inexplicably not even hidden by a bandage. She feels abashed. Maura is right and Jane owes her more than her usual if-you’re-not-laughing-you’re-crying bullshit. She’s being selfish. For a long time Hoyt was her personal boogeyman and she was allowed to employ whatever maladaptive coping mechanisms she wanted to, but now he belongs to both of them and other considerations have to be made.

“You’re right,” Jane says. She cannot tear her eyes away from the wound on her throat, the one that’s entirely her fault. Maura opens her mouth to speak but closes it when Jane puts her body into motion and eliminates the half-a-room’s worth of distance between them.

“I guess I just—tonight was crazy, right?” She speaks softly, eyes still on the cut, tracing the red line on Maura’s neck back and forth, like she could somehow stitch it up by looking hard enough. “We almost died today, and then I had a surprise birthday party. Like…” Jane trails off as she takes in Maura’s outfit and her eyes grow wide. She looks down at herself before looking back over at her best friend. “God, Maur. We haven’t even changed. We’re both still wearing the same clothes.” Jane reaches out and takes hold of the lapel of Maura’s jacket, pulling it away from Maura’s neck. “There’s blood on the collar of your jacket.” She looks up a few inches and lets go of the jacket to brush her fingers through Maura’s hair. “And in your hair.”

Jane clocks, but chooses not to think about, the way Maura’s breath catches when Jane puts her hand in her hair. Instead, Jane is thinking about how Maura almost died because Charles Hoyt could so plainly see what Jane refuses to admit.

“There’s blood in your hair and my mother just threw me a 12-year-old horse girl’s birthday party.” Jane is just holding Maura’s hair now, rubbing her thumb against a crusty patch of dried blood. Her voice has an almost dreamy quality to it when she speaks. “We almost died and then everyone came to my streamer and balloon-infested apartment and you drank beer out of an aluminum can.”

“I don’t think the last one is quite the same as the rest,” Maura murmurs. Her hand comes up, fingers wrapping loosely around Jane’s wrist. She doesn’t pull Jane’s hand away from her neck but it does serve as a reminder that Jane is standing in her space, touching her bloody hair weirdly. Jane blinks, spell broken, and gives Maura a wry look as she takes a step back. Jane feels Maura’s grip tighten briefly before she lets go of Jane entirely.

“You don’t know you as well as I do then,” Jane says.

It makes Maura smile just a bit. She looks away from Jane, eyes roaming over what has to be hundreds of dollars of horse paraphernalia.

“She knew she didn’t have time to take the decorations down,” Maura says, then looks back at Jane. Jane tilts her head questioningly. “The party,” Maura continues. “Angela was in a panic. She’d spent all day putting everything up and she knew she didn’t have the time to get it all down, so it was between you coming back to an empty but decorated apartment or just having the party. In the end everyone decided that while the horse party likely wouldn’t hit the right note, you might still want to be with people.”

Jane’s eyebrows knit together. “Everyone? Were you a part of that decision?”

“Yes.” Maura notes Jane’s expression, lips twitching downward. It’s that heartbreaking face she makes when she’s worried she bobbled a social norm and Jane’s heart clenches. “Was it the wrong one?” Maura adds anxiously.

“It’s not that,” Jane says quickly, shaking her head. “I just…today happened to both of us. To you as much as me. I don’t understand why they dragged you into a debate about whether my horse party was still appropriate. You went through it, too.”

“Maybe that’s why.” Maura shrugs mildly, as if using her trauma as a barometer for Jane’s is an acceptable thing for everyone to do. Jane is furious on her behalf. “Or maybe they just think I know you.”

“You do know me,” Jane insists.

“I’m not always so sure that I do,” Maura demurs, staring off into the middle distance. Jane notices that her posture has stiffened, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

Something terrible is happening, Jane realizes. Maura is preparing to withdraw, to put this day behind them and return to normal. She’s looking everywhere but at Jane and with every minute she is slowly folding into herself. It’s easy to recognize the signs because this has already happened a few times. Because Jane always makes it happen.

When Jane shot herself through the guts outside the precinct, she didn’t let it mean anything. She pissed and moaned through her recovery, bulldozed right over the reality that Maura nearly watched her die, ignored how Maura had stemmed the flow of blood from Jane’s body with her own bare hands, and Maura let her do it. Maura let that day be something that had only happened to Jane, and Jane took it and ran.

When Paddy Doyle kidnapped Maura, when Jane answered the phone openly offering to commit felonies if it brought Maura home, Maura let that day be something that had only happened to Maura. Jane was allowed to pretend she hadn’t been exposed, that everyone didn’t know her relationship with the law extended only as far as Maura’s safety, never had to explain how for her, the difference between right and wrong was a single hair on Maura’s head.

Now it’s happening again. In deference to Jane’s propensity for avoidance, Maura is preparing to treat the infirmary like another day on the job. Without even trying, Jane must be oozing out whatever repressed weirdo vibes always cut the ribbon on another grand opening of a thing they never talk about.

The usual relief Jane feels is being replaced by abject panic.

Maura rubs at her upper arms like she’s cold and takes a deep breath.

“I should—”

“Stay the night,” Jane says quickly.

She hadn’t intended to finish Maura’s sentence, she just wanted to interrupt whatever was going to come out of her mouth. But hey, it works. It startles Maura enough that she looks at Jane again. She looks hesitant to respond, like she isn’t quite sure she heard right, or worse yet, she isn’t sure it’s a good idea.

“Stay over.” Jane looks right into Maura’s eyes. She can’t bring herself to promise out loud that it’ll be different this time but she hopes it can be inferred. “We should talk about it. We should shower first and foremost, but we should talk about it.”

Maura’s arms tighten around her chest and her eyes flick to Jane’s door.

“Stay over,” Jane repeats. “I’ll get something soft for you to wear. I’ll—” Jane cuts herself off, sucks in a deep breath. She takes a step forward and puts herself back into Maura’s space. “I need you. Please.”

Maura’s body sags, her defences visibly shattering under the weight of Jane’s admission. She looks up at Jane and her eyes are wet. She nods.

“Okay.”

#rizzoli and isles #rizzles #rizzoli and isles fanfiction #rizzles fanfic #femslash #f/f fanfic #f/f #maura isles #jane rizzoli #doomsdaydj fanfic

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sideprince · 2 months

Text

I wrote a reply to this post but OP has deleted it and even though I should probably leave well enough alone, it got to me that I could have sworn I saw this post months ago and then realized it was actually from yesterday. This is a long reply so I'm putting it under a cut, but after I went to OP's blog and saw a post from them complaining how mean everyone was to them on this post, I replied to say I'm sorry if they got any anon hate I don't know about but otherwise none of the comments on this post were mean or hateful, they just disagreed with OP. I pointed out that this is partly because they cited non-canon events as canon, and OP immediately blocked me (this may be why I can't reblog the post even from another user, though that's not how tumblr usually works so who knows). I can't help but feel that OP's post was made in bad faith, as a result, and I've seen enough people on this hellsite who are more interested in protecting their egos than admit when they could have been approached something more thoughtfully, so I'm diving in. If you're going to say a character "is very interesting to study" while doing the exact opposite, then you'd better have the critical analysis skills and textual evidence to back it up.

I think OP has some misconceptions that are frustratingly common, and seem to stem from people not having read the books, or not read them for a long time, and conflating the movies with canon. While I mostly agree with the replies above, I want to take this opportunity to cite the text to refute some of OP's points. I often forget details from the text, but I choose to either look them up before asserting unconfirmed points as fact (Potter Search is a great tool, or you can just do a ctrl+F search if you have the books digitally), or else I usually state clearly that I'm not sure if I remember something correctly and don't have the spoons to look it up.

I saw OP say in the comments in response to someone arguing their points:

"that's your interpretation, I have mine, I think both can coexist within the material we are given."

It doesn't sit right with me that so many people think that referring to their subjective memory of what the text meant to them is the same as actually citing it and offering an explanation. OP's interpretation can't exist within the material given, because some of it doesn't exist in the material at all, and you can't interpret what isn't there. OP is essentially claiming to have done critical analysis, and although no one is required to always critique a text analytically on a tumblr post, I find it upsetting when people claim to do so while failing to cite a single source to support their argument. To me it sounds like someone trying to pass off a creative writing essay as an academic research paper, and in an age of rampant propaganda and knee-jerk reblogs that eschew critical thinking, I feel an almost compulsive need to go through OP's reply and argue it with the textual evidence they conveniently avoided, if for no other reason than to show why it's important to discern between loosely formed opinions and informed ones.

I also want to explain why I don't accept the films as canon, because while I do think that canon can exist across several mediums (such as with Good Omens, in which at least one of the writers of the text is directly involved in writing the TV series), I don't think that applies to Harry Potter because the original author was only marginally involved in the films, in only a consultant role, and had little input on the writing. The HP films are an interpretation as written from the perspective of Steve Kloves, except for OoTP, which was written by Michael Goldenberg. I've gone into it on other posts, but suffice to say these interpretations did not prioritize story and character development and were often influenced by pressure from the studio to prioritize marketing opportunities over storytelling. Important elements like foreshadowing and themes were not carried over from the text to the screen. These changes affected the storytelling significantly and left out crucial elements. This, combined with the films having been written with little to no involvement from the original author, is why I feel the films can't be taken as canon. This doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed by any means, just that they scenes that appear in the films but not in the text, or are presented differently on screen than in the text, are not a reasonable basis for character analysis.

And now, on to OP's ask:

"I think he is a very good representation of a man who felt insecure in his manhood; his male ego was permanently wounded by James' bullying and he decided to make it everyone else's problem by being the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts."

The first thing we have to establish is that the books are told from Harry's perspective, so we have to take narrative bias into account. Calling Snape "the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts" is a subjective statement and I can only assume it's based in Harry's biased perspective as narrator, given that he and Snape have a bad relationship from the outset. I have a brief analysis here about how Snape dislikes Harry because in their first class together he interprets Harry's ignorance of the course material as a lack of curiosity and appreciation for his gifts as a wizard, while also recognizing something of his own experiences with childhood poverty and abuse in Harry. Harry, being ignorant of these factors, just feels singled out for hate by a strict teacher, and their relationship deteriorates throughout the rest of the series, until the end of the final book.

To pull back from the narrative bias, let's look at some of the other teachers are Hogwarts:

McGonagall:

“Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?” Hermione hung her head. Harry was speechless. Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets. “Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,” said Professor McGonagall. “I’m very disappointed in you. If you’re not hurt at all, you’d better get off to Gryffindor Tower. Students are finishing the feast in their Houses.”

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10.

“I’m disgusted,” said Professor McGonagall. “Four students out of bed in one night! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. All three of you will receive detentions — yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it’s very dangerous — and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor.” “Fifty?” Harry gasped — they would lose the lead, the lead he’d won in the last Quidditch match. “Fifty points each,” said Professor McGonagall, breathing heavily through her long, pointed nose.

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 15

In just the first book we see McGonagall punish Hermione for successfully defending herself against a troll and take house points, then sends her back to her common room without getting medical attention, as if a ten year old can be responsible for assessing how badly they're hurt. A few chapters later McGonagall takes several hundred points from students in her own house (more than we see any other teacher do at one time throughout the series), and assigns the students detention on top of it. As we later see in the same chapter, the detentions aren't even served with her directly, but instead the children - again, ten years old - are sent into the Forbidden Forest at night with only Hagrid to protect them, to hunt down whatever creature is vicious and cunning enough to kill unicorns.

Although it's said that Snape favors the students in his own house, he doesn't seem to be the only one:

“Potter's been sent a broomstick, Professor,” said Malfoy quickly. “Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Professor Flitwick, beaming at Harry. “Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?” “A Nimbus Two Thousand, sir,” said Harry, fighting not to laugh at the look of horror on Malfoy’s face. “And it’s really thanks to Malfoy here that I’ve got it,” he added.

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10

Not only did McGonagall make an exception to school practices and allow Harry on his house Quidditch team despite being a first year, she used either school funds or her own (unclear) to purchase a first-rate broom for him. We know the school has brooms, as first years are not allowed their own and they are provided for flying lessons, and because “Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms” (PS ch. 9). And yet, McGonagall ensures Harry has his own broom, and an expensive one, new enough to be the show model in a shop window in Diagon Alley a few months earlier:

“Several boys of about Harry’s age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. ‘Look,’ Harry heard one of them say, ‘the new Nimbus Two Thousand - fastest ever -”

-Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 5

If we're discussing which teachers are Hogwarts are the most "insufferable" then we also have to talk about Hagrid, who might mean well and be affectionate, but is also irresponsible and dangerous.

In Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid:

Punishes Dudley, a child, for his parents' offenses, the final straw being his father insulting Dumbledore (Ch. 4). While Hagrid acknowledges that he shouldn't have lost his temper, he also admits that his intention had been to turn Dudley fully into a pig.

Hatches a dragon in his cabin (Ch. 14), tries to raise it illegally and against the animal's need of care, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, ten year olds) have to fix the situation and get Ron's brother to find some friends to take the dragon away safely and prevent Hagrid losing his job (Ch. 14). In the process Hagrid endangers himself as well as the children, and it's because of this that McGonagall gives them detention and deducts hundreds of house points. Hagrid not only allows the children to endanger themselves for his sake, but to be punished and subsequently ostracized by their peers also for his sake.

The reason he even has a dragon is, as we find out in Ch. 16, because he was foolish enough to accept it from a faceless stranger in exchange for unwittingly divulging the secret to getting past the three headed dog guarding the Philosopher's Stone (and the stranger later turns out to be Quirrel/Voldemort).

In Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid:

Starts his first lesson with a volatile creature (Ch. 6) and, although Malfoy acted irresponsibly, Hagrid was nevertheless the teacher and responsible for providing course material consistent with the experience level and maturity of his students' age.

Gets drunk and has to be taken care of by Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, children) (Ch. 6)

Skipping ahead to Order of the Phoenix ch. 30, we find out Hagrid

Compromised his return from the mission Dumbledore sent him on by bringing a giant back to England.

Brought said giant into the school grounds and left him in the Forbidden Forest.

Asks Harry and Hermione (still children) to look after him if Hagrid is sacked.

Although Hagrid means well, his actions are consistently thoughtless and irresponsible, requiring those around him - often Harry, Ron, and Hermione - to fix the damage he causes. Although I think it remains subjective which teacher at Hogwarts is the "most insufferable" I think Hagrid is a strong enough candidate to qualify OP's interpretation of Snape holding that title as extremely contestable. Of course, since the books are presented through the lens of Harry's narrative bias, and he's fond of Hagrid, respects McGonagall, and dislikes Snape, an uncritical reading could lead one to OP's conclusions. However, a more objective analysis of the text shows that many teachers at Hogwarts are strict, punitive, biased, and wreak havoc on students in ways that make the Snape's actions look fairly tame, or at least the norm. And this is excluding an analysis of various DADA professors like Lockhart and Crouch/Moody, who were insufferable in their own rights (Lockhart was smarmy and dishonest to the point it risked students' lives; Crouch/Moodly transfigured a child into a ferret and humiliated him with torture as a disciplinary measure and deliberately triggered Neville's trauma in class).

OP continues their reply to say:

Add to this that he is a halfblood and only his mother was around, iirc?

They don't recall correctly. Snape, whose father was a muggle and whose mother was a witch, was indeed a half-blood (as is evidenced by him being revealed to be the Half-Blood Prince - I assume I don't need to cite a source as this is a pretty well-known fact and the literal title of an entire HP book, but should you need a reference it's in Ch. 28 of HBP). Both his parents were around in his childhood:

Snape staggered - his wand flew upwards, away from Harry - and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his: a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner …

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 26

‘How are things at your house?’ Lily asked. A little crease appeared between his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘They’re not arguing any more?’ ‘Oh, yes, they’re arguing,’ said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. ‘But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.’ ‘Doesn’t your dad like magic?’ ‘He doesn’t like anything, much,’ said Snape.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

We know that Snape's father was around because he's mentioned both in Snape's memories in OoTP that Harry accidentally invades during an Occlumency lesson, and when we see in Snape's memories that he gives Harry as he dies. Lily asks about his home life by referring to both his parents, implying that his dad is a consistent presence at home. We also know from JK Rowling that Snape's father "didn't hold back when it came to the whip" but this is supplementary and not mentioned in canon, so I don't expect anyone to refer to it when analyzing the text, I'm just adding it as bonus material.

Continuing on with OP's reply:

Snape, Voldemort and Harry all act like foils of each other in that sense, but whereas Voldemort fixated on his blood status as the main reason for his insecurities, Snape fixated on Lily.

So much to unpack here. Firstly, all of this should be backed up by examples from the text, as they are subjective readings that have significant bearing on character analysis.

Snape, Harry, and Voldemort don't act like foils of each other. For one thing, a character doesn't act like a foil, a character either is or isn't one. That being said, I don't know OP's background and there could be a language barrier because English isn't everyone's first language, I'm just being pedantic. Even with that in mind, the statement remains incorrect. A foil is a literary device - a character who contrasts with another character, often with the protagonist. It is not a choice a character makes or an action they take.

In Philosopher's Stone Snape is set up as a foil to Harry in order to misdirect the reader from suspecting the real villain, Quirrel/Voldemort. Snape is presented as secretive, sneaky, and nefarious, contrasting Harry's role as a protagonist who is outspoken, honest, and brave. As the series progresses, Snape, along with Voldemort, are eventually shown to have more parallels than contrasts with Harry. Snape and Voldemort were born into muggle poverty, and although Harry was raised in a middle class home by the Dursleys, they thrust poverty and neglect onto him in a way that parallels his childhood of neglect and want with that of Snape and Voldemort. Snape's father was abusive, as was Harry's guardian, Vernon Dursley. Harry, Voldemort, and Snape all had traumatic experiences growing up in muggle environments. If anything, Snape and Voldemort might be foils to Harry in that they both harbored resentment for their muggle fathers in ways that signified the separation between the wizarding and muggle world, while Harry's experiences with the Dursleys didn't color his image of muggles in a comparable way.

The contrast between Harry, Snape, and Voldemort is in the way each of them deals with their trauma. As Dumbledore says:

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

-Chamber of Secrets, Ch. 18

This becomes one of the overarching themes of the HP series, Harry, Snape, and Voldemort are all examples of how their choices took them to such different places in life from their comparable childhoods.

At school Voldemort was a handsome boy with talent, intelligence, and the recommendations of his teachers, but he chose to pursue power instead of success:

“He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you might have expected, top grades in every examination he had taken. All around him, his classmates were deciding which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts. Nearly everybody expected spectacular things from Tom Riddle, prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Special Award for Services to the School. I know that several teachers, Professor Slughorn amongst them, suggested that he join the Ministry of Magic, offered to set up appointments, put him in touch with useful contacts. He refused all offers. The next thing the staff knew, Voldemort was working at Borgin and Burkes.”

Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 20

Snape chose to become a Death Eater for reasons we can only assume. We know he was in Slytherin during an era when Voldemort was in power and many of his allies had children in Slytherin house. At least two of Snape's dorm-mates, Mulciber and Avery, are canonically acknowledged to have become Death Eaters (both are present at the Ministry when Harry and his friends fight the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries in OoTP Ch. 35). It's unclear whether Snape chose to become a Death Eater out of admiration for them or out of peer pressure, or perhaps a lack of other options, while at school:

'… thought we were supposed to be friends?’ Snape was saying. ‘Best friends?’ ‘We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging around with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev? He’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?’ Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. ‘That was nothing,’ said Snape. ‘It was a laugh, that’s all -‘ ‘It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny -‘ ‘What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?’ demanded Snape. His colour rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

It's unclear what Snape thinks of Avery and Mulciber, as his reply to Lily is downplaying but doesn't defend their actions. We see Snape's indecisiveness later in the argument he has with Lily after he calls her a Mudblood:

'It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?’ He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. ‘I can’t pretend any more. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.’ ‘No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?'

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

Although Snape does ultimately choose to become a Death Eater, we see in his reply to Lily about both Avery and Mulciber and later her assumption that they all want to become Death Eaters that Snape doesn't argue for or against her accusations, but instead is evasive and unsure of himself. He opens his mouth to speak when she accuses him of wanting to become a Death Eater, but then closes it again without saying anything - he can neither argue against her point, nor state clearly, let alone with any kind of conviction, that this is indeed his ambition. It can be argued that it's the passivity of his choice that lands him with a Dark Mark on his arm, and it's the active choice he makes to risk his life in order to defect from Voldemort's ranks and turn spy that defines his character and without which Harry could not have defeated Voldemort.

Harry, as the protagonist, is also significantly defined by the theme of choice:

'But, sir,’ said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argumentative, ‘it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? I’ve got to try and kill him, or -‘ ‘Got to?’ said Dumbledore. ‘Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!’ Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat. ‘I’d want him finished,’ said Harry quietly. ‘And I’d want to do it.’ ‘Of course you would!’ cried Dumbledore. ‘You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal … in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you … which makes it certain, really, that -' ‘That one of us is going to end up killing the other,’ said Harry. ‘Yes.'

-Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 33

There's a clear point made by the author through Dumbledore as her proxy here, that choice is what matters, not fate. It's Harry's choices that make him the person he is and lead him to eventually defeat Voldemort. While Snape, Voldemort, and Harry all can be contrasted through the lens of their choices, this does not make them foils, as it is the the theme of choice and how it is exemplified by each character that makes them unique, but their experiences and many of their character traits (boldness, bravery, a personal sense of conviction) that make them parallels of one another. Each of them occupies their own place on the spectrum between the light and dark that the series establishes, Voldemort at the dark end, Harry at the light, and Snape in the grey area between them.

OP goes on to say:

His character is all about male entitlement, he was obsessed with her at Hogwarts and then showed to have no boundaries as he went into her house to cradle her dead body in front of her traumatized kid.

There's a lot to unpack here, and it's particularly challenging because you can't provide textual evidence for something that didn't happen in the text. After the above scene from Ch. 33 of DH in which Lily ends her friendship with Snape, we never see them interact again:

'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’ He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole … The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting shapes and colours until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone …'

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

The scene in the corridor in front of Gryffindor Tower between a fifth year Snape and Lily leads directly into the scene where Snape begs Dumbledore to protect the Potters (which I wrote an analysis of a few months ago but is too long a subject to derail this post for). We see no more interactions between Snape and Lily, and therefore there is no canonical support for the idea that Snape behaved obsessively or failed to respect her boundaries.

There's also no mention of Snape going to Godric's Hollow at all after her death. Snape holding Lily's dead body is only shown in the film version of Deathly Hallows, and as mentioned, the films are not canon. That moment doesn't exist in the text and can't be considered in an analysis of Snape's character. The scene on the hilltop leads directly into the scene of Snape crying in Dumbledore's office:

The hilltop faded, and Harry stood in Dumbledore’s office, and something was making a terrible sound, like a wounded animal. Snape was slumped forwards in a chair and Dumbledore was standing over him, looking grim. After a moment or two, Snape raised his face, and he looked like a man who had lived a hundred years of misery since leaving the wild hilltop. ‘I thought … you were going … to keep her … safe …’ ‘She and James put their faith in the wrong person,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Rather like you, Severus. Weren’t you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?’ Snape’s breathing was shallow.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

This is the only depiction of Snape immediately following the Potters' deaths. The scene of him cradling Lily's dead body was Steve Kloves' invention and has no basis in canon. If anything, Snape's actions in canon can be interpreted to show that he respected the boundaries Lily set, and that even when her life was at risk he chose to go to Dumbledore - who he thought might kill him on sight - rather than talk to her directly after she ended their friendship. In addition, in all the information the text gives about the night Voldemort fell in Godric's Hollow and Hagrid collected Harry to take him to Privet Drive, there's no mention of Snape whatsoever.

There isn't much in the text to support the interpretation that Snape exemplified male entitlement either. So far we've seen him being as strict, if not milder, than other teachers at the school, his favoritism is also comparable to that of other teachers - implying it's more of a norm than an example of entitlement - and there are no canonical examples to support the argument that he was obsessed with Lily or violated her boundaries. Snape struggles to argue with Lily when she accuses and berates him, and the usual markers of patriarchal entitlement - silencing women, gaslighting, dismissing women's opinions, talking over them - are all nowhere to be found in any of their interactions. The only time we see him lash out at Lily is when he calls her Mudblood (OoTP Ch. 28) which, while inexcusable, he does under traumatic duress, and is not indicative of his usual interactions with her, as exemplified by the fact that she ends their friendship over it. As cited before:

'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’

There's a clear implication that Snape has never called her this before. An argument can also be made that it speaks volumes of Lily's own biases, or perhaps her own affection for Snape (who, not long before this, was still her best friend), that she excused this behavior from him when it was directed at others, and only took issue with it when it was directed at herself. That, combined with Lily's own acknowledgment that they were "best friends" shows that Snape's relationship with her was a balanced, consensual one even when it became strained, up until their friendship ended.

Continuing with OP's points:

He only saw Lily as a trophy to be possessed, which you can see from the way he hated Harry, because Harry reminded him Lily wasn't his and that Lily had sex with another man.

There's no support for this in the text anywhere and is pure conjecture. I can appreciate it being OP's headcanon, but it's certainly not a result of studying the text and relying on it to form opinions, but rather seems to be OP projecting pre-conceived notions onto Snape as a character and trying to find justification for it. I've written a whole post extrapolating Snape's first class with Harry, but the tl;dr is that Snape, who grew up in muggle poverty and knew Aunt Petunia enough to guess that Harry didn't fare well in her care when he showed up at school bearing signs of neglect, likely expected Harry to have the same hunger for learning that he himself did at Harry's age. Instead, Harry couldn't answer a single one of his questions and showed no curiosity or enthusiasm towards being a wizard as far as Snape could tell.

Nevertheless, even though Snape did seem to dislike Harry, hate is an awful strong word given that it is revealed at the end of Deathly Hallows that Snape has risked his own life to protect him. This isn't particularly surprising when you consider that this goal was established as early as Philosopher's Stone, when Snape protected him, which Harry initially interpreted as Snape trying to kill him:

Harry couldn’t take it in. This couldn’t be true, it couldn’t. ‘But Snape tried to kill me!’ ‘No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I’d have got you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a counter-curse, trying to save you.’ ‘Snape was trying to save me?’ ‘Of course,’ said Quirrell coolly. -Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 17

Again, the story is told through the lens of Harry's bias, but that doesn't mean his opinions of Snape reflect Snape's character. As another example, there's an implication in OoTP that Snape, having seen some of the Dursleys' abuse of Harry through his memories during Occlumency lessons, passed this information on in an effort to protect Harry, and that this is the reason why several Order members (Arthur Weasley and Moody in particular) show up at King's Cross at the end of the schoolyear and threaten the Dursleys to stop mistreating him. There seems to be no other explanation in the text for why these adults are suddenly aware of the abuse Harry experiences, except that Snape, who was abused as a child himself, and who is an Order member himself, is the only adult in the series who we see witness Harry's mistreatement firsthand. At no point in the narrative do we see Harry complain about the Dursleys to the adults he trusts or ask them for help, merely to spend his holidays away from them without explanation.

While Snape did indeed dislike Harry and often compared him to his father, his dislike for James had much more significant roots in bullying and trauma than in his concern for Lily's relationship with him. It's established in canon that James Potter and Sirius Black dislike Snape from the outset (as in the scene on the Hogwarts Express in DH Ch. 33). In their fifth year, Sirius - annoyed that Snape is so curious about where Lupin goes each month - tricks Snape into following the tunnel under the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack, as Lupin tells Harry:

'Professor Snape was at school with us. ... Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me -‘ Black made a derisive noise. ‘It served him right,’ he sneered. ‘Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to … hoping he could get us expelled …' 'Severus was very interested in where I went every month,’ Lupin told Harry, Ron and Hermione. ‘We were in the same year, you know, and we - er - didn’t like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch pitch … anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he’d be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it - if he’d got as far as this house, he’d have met a fully grown werewolf - but your father, who’d heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life … Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on he knew what I was …'

-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 18

From this we can deduce that Sirius intended for Snape to die, or at least get severely injured, and that even as a grown adult Sirius doesn't regret trying to mete out this punishment to him as retaliation for curiosity. We can also deduce that Lupin was unaware of Sirius' intention and did not consent to be used as a weapon. For his part, Snape never did reveal that Lupin was a werewolf while at school, or even during that school year, until after Lupin ran amok on Hogwarts grounds, endangering others' lives, including Harry's.

There are other meta posts that go into Lupin's insecurities and vulnerabilities, but in short, he was grateful just to be allowed into the school as a student, let alone to have friends, and was in no position to challenge James and Sirius. Even as a prefect he didn't curb their behavior, as we see when he allows James to bully Snape later that year after their O.W.L.s:

'Leave him alone,’ Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. ‘What’s he done to you?’ ‘Well,’ said James, appearing to deliberate the point, ‘it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean …’ Many of the surrounding students laughed, Sirius and Wormtail included, but Lupin, still apparently intent on his book, didn’t, and nor did Lily. ‘You think you’re funny,’ she said coldly. ‘But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.’ ‘I will if you go out with me, Evans,’ said James quickly. ‘Go on … go out with me and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.'

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 28

James acknowledges that he has no real reason to bully Snape and uses violence as a bargaining chip to coerce Lily into going out with him (James' behavior reflects much more entitlement than Snape's, in my opinion). He also chokes Snape with a bar of soap and then assaults him by dangling him upside down and removing his trousers (threatening to remove his underwear but we don't see it happen).

Lily herself refers to James as arrogant, and it's this trait, along with the trauma from James' bullying of him, that Snape perceives in Harry. He doesn't resent Harry for looking like his father because it reminds him that Lily had sex with another man, he resents him for it because of all the trauma James inflicted on him. The conflict-laden relationship between Snape and the Marauders is a significant driver of the story through several of the books and OP seems subjective to the point of being problematic in ignoring it completely and instead focusing Snape's dislike of Harry onto an invented idea of sexual jealousy that doesn't exist in the text.

It's never stated whether Snape had romantic feelings for Lily, or vice versa, only that they were friends. The closest we see to a hint of this is when “The intensity of his [Snape's] gaze made her [Lily] blush," or when “The moment she [Lily] had insulted James Potter, his [Snape's] whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Snape’s step …”

Lily's blush could be interpreted as implying she was attracted to him, or conversely that she didn't and felt awkward thinking he might be attracted to her. Similarly, Snape's relief at her insulting James can be interpreted as indicative of his attraction to her, or of him simply being worried about a friend hanging out with people he perceived as dangerous and was relieved to learn she wasn't putting herself in the way of danger by becoming friends with them. Although JK Rowling has said that her intention was for Snape's affections towards Lily to be romantic, and that she may have returned his affection had he not chosen the path he did, this is - like the note about Snape's father whipping him - extratextual and more of an interesting fact than a bit of canon to be extrapolated from the text.

Finally, OP says:

His interest in the Death Eaters was only secondary to his obsession with Lily and I think Lily rejecting him pushed him toward joining the Death Eaters, because, once again, his male ego was bruised and he needed to replace it with something else.

We've already seen that Snape's interest in joining the Death Eaters was a big part of Lily's reason for ending their friendship. Therefore, logically, Lily's decision didn't push him towards becoming a Death Eater, but rather isolated him from having any support system outside of the DEs. She didn't reject him, because rejection is the refusal or dismissal of another person's advances or proposal. They were friends, meaning they had a mutually consensual platonic relationship. Lily therefore didn't reject Snape, she ended their friendship and, as already stated, nothing in canon implies he didn't respect her boundaries.

As we have also seen in canon, Snape was bullied at school and had, at best, a neglectful and dysfunctional home environment in his childhood. In addition, he shared a dorm with students actively interested in becoming Death Eaters, and his one social lifeline away from them was cut off when he called Lily a Mudblood. What OP interprets as Snape's male ego being bruised is actually a much more complex set of social and emotional factors being described throughout the series to eventually reveal the profile of a character - young Snape - who was a vulnerable youth primed for radicalization by a violent faction of zealots. Although the enforcement and upholding of patriarchal norms is often a huge element of these kinds of social movements, that didn't seem to be the driving force for Snape based on everything we learn about his character. Instead, what we see is a boy who comes from abuse, lives in abuse at school, who loses all the support systems that might give him an alternative to the fascist cult he's being radicalized into which - if it's like most hate groups - would have been more than welcome to both take him in and help him cut his ties to anyone else in his life he might escape from them to.

It also goes against the argument that Snape was sexually obsessed with Lily that he continued to risk his life in order to protect her son an defeat her murderer for almost two decades after her death. He knew it would neither bring her back from the dead nor bring about forgiveness, and it goes without saying that sex was no longer an option. Framing Snape's motivation as obsession dismisses the realities of the complex and meaningful relationship we form as people, and the lasting, transformative influence we can have on each other, which is what Snape and Lily's story illustrates.

Finally, OP concludes with:

He remained mysterious up till the end and his back-and-forth with treason was very compelling to read about. So I hate him (as a "person") but he is such a good character narrative-wise and he is very interesting to study

OP openly admits to hating Snape, ie. having a bias against him, while stating he is "interesting to study" - except no part of their answer has shown that they've actually done so. Their arguments are unsupported in several ways, one being that they don't offer any evidence, and the other being that none can be found in the source text. What's ironic is that OP seems to resent Snape's subjective bias against Harry (and misinterpret his reasons for it in baseless ways) while also showing the exact same kind of bias against Snape themselves. You don't have to like a character by any means, but claiming that the kind of unfounded, superficial, and unsupported opinions that OP stated in their response have a basis in any kind of study of his character is ludicrous and an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it.

#long post #I'd say sorry to OP for ripping into their post like this but they think people disagreeing with them politely is mean and hateful so #but yeah sorry not sorry when your argument is so unfounded that it can be shredded with an entire cited essay then maybe #reconsider the claim that your opinions have any basis in study #and look I don't think OP is stupid by any means I think they knew exactly what they were doing and that's why I decided to argue them #even if they won't see it #I usually don't tend to argue with haters and prefer to spend my allotted hellsite time delving into meta but this one got to me

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eroticwound · 9 months

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The Parentification of the Berzatto Siblings: Mikey

(If you want a primer on Parentification, please see this post)

This series will be based off of seasons 1 and 2, but will be leaning heavy on my extensive Fishes notes. I wanna discuss Mikey first since he was the one haunting the narrative all season 1, and Fishes is the most screentime we’ve had with him.

The episode starts with Mikey coming out of the house to check on Natalie. This is Mikey’s big role in the family: to check on, to comfort, to amuse. This has been his role his whole life. He does it for his siblings, and he does it for Donna.

That first scene in Fishes has the Berzatto siblings game-planning how they’re going to deal with Donna and the stressful Seven Fishes dinner. It’s almost a negotiation, but that’s only because Carmen’s been away. There are clear and established roles that they all fall into: Natalie mediates among the siblings, Carmy handles Donna in the kitchen, and then there’s Mikey.

One of Carmy’s first lines in this episode is: “Hey Mikey can you come inside and be you for a little bit, I don’t know how to deal with these people.” Mikey’s duty is to field the guests, to distract them from Donna’s emotional state, and make things copacetic. According to Carm, and family lore, it’s who Michael is.

We know that Michael is very empathetic, he can “dial a room.” He’s loud, he’s funny, and he’s been made this way to survive. But by Fishes, he’s not emotionally sound enough to uphold this role.

I’ve always assumed Mikey is Donna’s favorite, which might be supported by the fact there are more photos of Mikey in the opening montage than the other two siblings (something @bartonbones pointed out. However, a lot of those are of adult Mikey, and it could be a reflection of Mikey having a tougher time in adulthood and so having to stay closer to Donna: taking over The Beef, moving back home with her, etc).

If he’s not the favorite per se, I will say Mikey must have been Donna’s original kitchen attendant, as evidenced by him being the only other person besides Carmen allowed in her kitchen. Throughout the episode, Donna compulsively kicks everyone else out. In fact these are the only two she actually calls for. She even calls Carmy “Michael” when he’s trying to coax her to the dinner table, making it clear that both Carm and Michael talk to her in this way.

And the way is important. Donna says Carm is talking to her like she’s a child, because in this moment, she is demanding the care and attention a child would. And Carm does responds to her patiently and empathetically, as I’m sure he’s been doing his whole life. This is extremely emotionally draining for a young adult, let alone a child. But the Bear Sibs have been talking this talk and walking this walk their entire lives. It’s second nature.

As the oldest, Mikey’s been blasted most with Donna’s neediness and instability. Especially once their dad leaves (whether he dies or walks out on them is unclear). Donna as the only parent leans on him as she would a spouse. So Mikey is getting a lot of the Instrumental Parentification, which involves helping handle the logistics of running a home, and the most severe Emotional Parentification. This means he would help raise his siblings, would help out at The Beef, and support Donna in her moods. We know this is true because Sugar, or Natalie, as I will be referring to her throughout this series, does not get the same access to Donna’s emotional state.

Don’t get me wrong, Nat is shouldering her share of the burden (I’m assuming for a lot of the Instrumental Parentification), but because she can’t quite gel with Donna’s emotions, she gets neglected. Instead, Natalie gets the severe emotional contagion and neglect (and Donna’s ire), but is shut out of the sickly closeness of emotional parentification. This might almost be a good thing comparatively, and I’ll discuss it more in Nat’s Parentification rundown.

But looking back to Mikey, once it was clear Carmy could handle Donna in the kitchen, it meant he could unshoulder some of his own emotional burden. This must have been a huge relief to him. Despite their age gap, Mikey could relegate most of Donna duty to Carm, and instead play Host, an important role meant to field guests from Donna and distract them from her. If we want to play within restaurant terminology, Mikey is front-of-house.

Except by Fishes, his coping mechanisms and dysfunction have severely impacted his ability to fulfill this role.

#michael berzatto #mikey berzatto #carmy berzatto #carmen berzatto #donna berzatto #natalie berzatto #sugar berzatto #the bear #the bear fx #parentification #fishes #bear meta #the bear meta #meta

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butchhamlet · 6 months

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hi :) i don't know if it's really my place to say since i'm not sure if i actually have ocd or not; but as someone who's struggled with a lot of horrible taboo intrusive thoughts, guilt, rumination spirals and possibly trich this summer your ocd hamlet post really resonated with me.

i've been rereading hamlet and hamlet being an ocd sufferer just reframes so much of his acting and his “antic disposition”. to me it feels like he’s putting on masks upon masks upon masks not just because he NEEDS the control (if it’s all an act it means i don’t actually want to hurt anyone right? if i’m pretending to be insane i’m not actually insane?) but also because he’s afraid of being known. like my deepest fear is probably anyone knowing the extent of my intrusive thoughts and the things i feel guilty about and obsess over. so if he says all this nonsense nobody will know what’s happening in his mind—which i guess was probably the original intention anyway, the idea that claudius wouldn’t suspect him of treason if he acted insane, but i think it still fits.

there’s also his first soliloquy, “o, that this too [solid/sullied/sallied] flesh would melt, / thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” i like the reading of “sullied” because it really highlights that feeling of being contaminated. hamlet feels tainted by the immorality in the danish court, but if we’re going by the ocd reading, he also feels tainted by the horrible intrusive thoughts and obsessions he has (tying in with what you’d said about him having sexual intrusive thoughts rather than um. an o*dipus complex.) the disgust towards the flesh can also be related to physical compulsions like body repetitive behaviours (e.g. skin picking).

this one is a bit “trust me bro” but the “i have of late, but wherefore i know not, lost all my mirth…” line is just. exactly what my experience was. i’ve always had intrusive thoughts, but one afternoon everything just Went Downhill and suddenly i couldn’t stop thinking about it for a couple weeks. i’d be normal for a while before it all started happening again. again, i know in the play he DOES know why he “lost all his mirth”—he saw his father’s ghost—but well.

the famous scene where he yells at ophelia too feels so striking. “get thee to a nunnery. why wouldst thou / be a breeder of sinners?” feels like such a PERSONAL fear of raising a child or being responsible for another life. obviously this isn’t unique to ocd but i imagine for people who have taboo themes (harm ocd, scrupulosity ocd, especially pocd) it’s especially prominent. i feel like the word “sinners” is really important because someone with moral/scrupulosity/religion-related ocd would be very preoccupied about the idea of sinning, and that guilt is something you would never wish on anyone, least of all a child. (HE wouldn't know this, but ocd has genetic factors so even though i don't know if i have it, the possibility of passing this guilt and anxiety on puts me off ever having kids even more).

that ties in to the next lines too: he says, “i am myself indifferent honest, but yet / i could accuse me of such things that it were better my / mother had not borne me. …. what should fellows such as i do / crawling between heaven and earth?” hamlet admits himself he’s “indifferent honest”—rationally he’s probably not the Worst Person In The World Ever—but in the next lines he does seem to consider himself the Worst Person In The World Ever. that kind of all or nothing thinking (small mistakes puts you in the same category as the worst, most morally repugnant criminals) is apparently really common in real event ocd. (https://ocdspecialists.com/real-event-ocd/) hamlet goes on to list everything wrong with him (“i am very proud, revengeful, ambitious…”) which itself feels so much like an intrusive thought. that self-condemnation just feels like he's trying to cover up his anxieties about not being a good person but telling everyone he's not a good person so nobody gets the wrong idea. (he's not an inherently bad person, but he can't possibly convince himself of this because what if he believes that and he starts doing bad things? what if not beating himself up makes him lose control and become even worse? better keep suffering to keep himself in check.)

sorry for clogging up your inbox!! i really wanted to put this out there somewhere but i didn’t want to put it out on my blog since i’ve never really talked about potentially having ocd (? i don’t seem to ALWAYS have it maybe i was just going through a rough patch mid 2023). again i don’t have a diagnosis or anything i’m just going by my own experience and hopefully i’d read enough about it for this to not be way off—though please correct me if i am!! hope you’re having a really nice day, thanks for reading this if you made it all the way through :)

!!! i'm so glad the post resonated with you! honestly, i've gotten some of the sweetest messages about that post from people who saw themselves reflected it in it, which is astonishing to me because i wrote it basically for myself. so it makes me very happy that it means something to you :]

not just because he NEEDS the control (if it’s all an act it means i don’t actually want to hurt anyone right? if i’m pretending to be insane i’m not actually insane?) but also because he’s afraid of being known. like my deepest fear is probably anyone knowing the extent of my intrusive thoughts and the things i feel guilty about and obsess over

YEAH. YEAH. YEAH! i sometimes catch myself having the paranoid thought that people around me can read my mind--i don't actually believe this, but i have a simmering fear of my Worst Thoughts sort of seeping out of me, so reframing hamlet in this light is. ohhhhh man. and sullied really is such a good word for it! the stains! the contamination! miasma theory was right <- JOKE

(also, "if i'm pretending to be insane, i'm not actually insane, right?" is the kind of thought that ocd will chase in CIRCLES, my god.)

i’ve always had intrusive thoughts, but one afternoon everything just Went Downhill and suddenly i couldn’t stop thinking about it for a couple weeks. i’d be normal for a while before it all started happening again

BTW ANON THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT HAPPENED TO ME AT AGE 14. SHAKING YOUR HAND. DOING A FANCY CODED HANDSHAKE WITH YOU. it really can get so much drastically better or worse at once and it's often (in my experience) hard to tell why, but even when it's not hard to tell why--i think the reasons for Losing His Mirth can be multiple. like, my OCD always gets way worse when i'm stressed about unrelated things. i can see a hamlet whose father's death pushes him over the edge into his worst-ever symptom flare, which exacerbates the grief, which exacerbates the obsessions, which...

i feel like the word “sinners” is really important because someone with moral/scrupulosity/religion-related ocd would be very preoccupied about the idea of sinning, and that guilt is something you would never wish on anyone, least of all a child. (HE wouldn't know this, but ocd has genetic factors so even though i don't know if i have it, the possibility of passing this guilt and anxiety on puts me off ever having kids even more).

YEAH. GOD. OH, MAN. anon your fucking MIND. (i personally read hamlet as having religious components to his OCD; this is at least in part me projecting lol but i think there's evidence throughout the play that he is a deeply religiously conflicted person, & this line is part of that.)

(he's not an inherently bad person, but he can't possibly convince himself of this because what if he believes that and he starts doing bad things? what if not beating himself up makes him lose control and become even worse? better keep suffering to keep himself in check.)

ocd will literally be like "okay so i'm not allowed to believe i'm a good person because if i let myself off the hook for one second i will become complacent and self-justifying and then become a bad person. could this possibly be maladaptive and self-harmful thinking? no, it's the everyone else who is wrong."

AND ABSOLUTELY DON'T FEEL SORRY FOR ANYTHING! i fucking LOVE talking about ocd hamlet this ask was SUCH a delight to receive. me clicking on this and seeing how long it was

also tbh anon it sounds like you are definitely having symptoms that could be grouped under OCD, and ultimately diagnostic labels are just the words we apply to groups of symptoms. which is to say, i can't armchair-diagnose you, but looking into coping skills/tips for OCD might help whether you "have" it or not!

thank YOU my comrade for the brilliant thoughts and analysis :3

#max.txt #asks #also i did have a good day. woooooooooo #hamlet #ocd hamlet #< need to start tagging this. for my archives

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rabbitenn · 6 months

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Can you write out some headcanons of what you think it would take for Tenn to fall in love with someone?🙈in my mind he’s a hard nut to crack so I want to know what would make his heart break from its cage and start fluttering!🤍thank you <3

YOU ARE IN LOVE, TRUE LOVE.

Maybe this feeling wasn’t in his plans, but all he wants is to feel the warmth of your affection.

ft. Kujo Tenn x gn! reader.

cw/genre: fluff, romance.

hello, dear and thank you very much for your request ! I always love it when you guys ask for Tenn content, he deserves all the love in the world <3 I also included an additional mini scenario, I hope you like it ! My apologies that I couldn’t post it sooner !

— For Tenn to start taking a liking to someone, they’d need to be kind and hardworking.

— Those are attributes that he very much shows, even if he may not realize the former sometimes.

— It’s endearing to see how you give it your all, trying your utmost to do your job/passion/hobby perfectly.

— Plus, if it’s something to do with an audience, like being an artist, a musician or idol too, a writer, streamer, etc, Tenn can relate so much to the feeling of doing your best to make them happy.

— Tenn dislikes inconsiderate people, that is why I mentioned kindness as another key quality he’d be attracted to (also, who doesn’t like a kind and caring partner?)

— The center of TRIGGER is always giving his everything to everyone, doing all he can and more to make his fans and the people that are important to him happy.

— So when you care for him, doing your best to make him smile, to make him comfortable, Tenn can feel this warm sensation in his chest… Almost like a desire to get closer to you, to share more with you, to return the gesture…

— It’s so cute, you think, how his eyes widen and the pink tint on his cheeks deepens when you give him one of your sweet smiles as you hand him a lunch box you made for him.

— As much as you love charming angelic center of the stage Kujo Tenn, there’s something so adorable about his feelings being so raw in his expression.

— You’d love to kiss him.

— And you don’t know yet, but he feels the same way.

— A sort of magnetic pull, a sense of yearning akin to the anticipation he experiences before stepping on stage.

— Another quality Tenn would like in his potential s/o is honesty. Compulsive liars are the kind of people he doesn’t get along with (I mean, pretty common sense again).

— So, please, be honest with him! Even if sometimes there are things he won’t tell his fans in order to avoid them worrying, if you are truthful with him, it makes Tenn feel valued.

— The same goes for any actions or kindness you extend towards him.

— To see you caring for him from the bottom of your heart and for who he is as his own person, rather than just for his idol image…

— Tenn has to let you know how much he appreciates you.

— Has to let you know he loves you.

— And that is exactly what he will do.

♡

Shades of argent blue paint the wintry evening sky.

Sunset is approaching, the glowing trail of the dusky sun lining the horizon, readying the stage for the appearing constellations.

Beneath this moment, tinted in shades of both night and day, two figures stand.

If a young shooting star were to see the world for the first time at this moment, it’d believe one of the two people is an angel.

Right now, you are staring into this person’s eyes.

They remind you of the cotton candy you ate with him just a while ago at the amusement park.

He smiles softly.

For you to surprise him with tickets and fulfill his dream date… It’s true you’ve become pretty close, but this gesture alone melts the singer’s heart.

This isn’t the first time you’ve been so good to him, either.

It’s been a while since his heart started dancing to the song your affections played for him.

He had never verbalized it, though.

But today, as a halo of early night surrounds the quiet street, he has to tell you.

“[Y/n],” The idol calls you, his expression tender but solemn. “There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” He utters, breath coming out in puffs that merge with the first stars.

“What is it, Tenn?” You prompt him, that smile filled with kindness you always gave him, illuminating your features.

One of his hands reaches to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear, his lingering touch sizzling as it sends waves of fiery shivers down your spine.

“You’re so kind to me, so good… You make me happy.” Tenn says, voice soft. “I want to be with you. Not just as friends. I love you.”

Your gaze widens, the shimmer of a charmed night reflected in your eyes, staring at the curve of Tenn’s lips as he gives you his sweetest smile.

“Tenn…” You return his smile, as you throw your arms around him. “I’m so glad… I love you too.”

In the threshold of your beloved’s shared residence, two figures stand.

The ancient stars watching from above smile knowingly; they had already foretold how the angel’s invisible wings would wrap around his lover.

♡

— In addition to all of the aforementioned attributes, Tenn himself mentions how he’d like to be with a partner who understands the music/show business industry well.

— There are times when he may not be able to spend all the time he wants with you, since his job requires hours upon hours of practise.

— In other instances, you two may have to keep your relationship a secret, so as to not hurt the fans and avoid mass media.

— Being with a lover who could understand that, plus enjoying at least to some extent the world he’s into, would really make him cherish them more. (And not only that, but someone like that would be highly compatible with him as well, from an objective point of view).

— So, what would it take for the perfectionist idol’s heart to start fluttering? To sum it up, kindness and care for him and for all of those he holds dear (please, get along well with Riku too!), earnestness and hard work, knowledge of the showbiz world and being considerate and honest.

— Hold Tenn’s heart of gold gently, please, he needs and deserves all the love.

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herotome · 4 months

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I've been scrolling through your blog, which is great by the way but anyway what I came to say, or well write, is that almost every answer by jade or post tagged as jade just makes me go: This is uncannily me?. So I just wanted to ask how did you get inside my brain and who allowed you? - Jades long lost twin??

You see, anon, Jade is also uncannily me... We're all Jade here. 😔🎈

No I'm jk but lol I think she's the one most people actually relate to on a certain level?

Griffin is the part of me that operates at 200% and has enough spoons to rival a kitchen drawer - the part that makes good impressions, makes people laugh and smile and regard me with that awed look of 'I didn't realize you were cool.' (But like, I tap into that energy a few times a year at most, sometimes needing to rely on alcohol to access it, whereas Griffin has an apparent endless supply even when sober l o l).

Mia is my late teens and early-twenties, constantly second guessing, wondering if I was too much, unsure of who I was and how I came across, immediately regretting it every time I had a big emotional reaction; yet at the same time had such a big heart that was ready for love and to be loved in all of love's different forms, just didn't know how.

Dart is how I behave in public - guarded, dismissive, unwilling to interact, but with glimpses into an unwaveringly kind and patient nature that I dole out in cautious doses to people who actually need help. It's the part of me that's seen how people take advantage of others and knows how people can be cruel and ignorant, but nonetheless feels compelled to do the right thing.

Jade is my anxiety and my compulsion to put myself under review, under a microscope, the part of me that is all too aware of being Perceived and wants nothing more than to hide under the covers and sleep for a thousand years, to be away from everyone. The part that is so, so tired, the part that would feel quite done if not for Mr/Ms 200% egging me on and on and providing some levity and good humor.

I think between enjoying yet fretting over the unpredictably fluctuating nature of internet culture, living in an age of monitoring and security and scrutiny, and maybe even a general millennial angst, the Jade mindset has become very commonplace and therefore #relatable.

bonus-

Warden... uhhh. Warden is like... the part of me that's more instinctual - my first reaction to things, which includes my skepticism and my willingness to believe things at face value? He's my capacity for faith and for withholding judgement - even when he wonders deep down if he's making the right call. When placed in a position of authority, the wondering and overwhelm runs rampant. Tbh I'm putting him last because he's also a lot like Jade in a weird low-key way - the way they think is very similar, the way they express themselves couldn't be more different.

And finally, MC. As best as I'm able to write it, MC is my surface level running stream of consciousness. It's capable of deeper thought and introspection, but I make an effort to keep it on the crust rather than allowing it to descend too deeply into the magma (where Jade and Warden live).

All this to say I bet every character is #relatable, if you dig deep enough and see them in the right light!

anyway tldr we're all sharing a brain, we're all in the matrix

#ro: everyone #herotome ask #ro: jade #ANON DIDNT ASK FOR THIS LOL but I've been looking for an excuse to put my petri dishes into words so here yall go

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scribbleseas · 8 months

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Beyond the Walls, Chapter 2: Mother Nature

Description: It's the year 850.

You are a renowned scientist who narrowly saved the world from impending famine and malnourishment with a myriad of agricultural advancements after Wall Maria fell, surrendering acres of farmland to titans. However, your innovations are not quite enough to be a permanent solution, given that their yield rate is nowhere near ideal. Many are still starving, costs for bread and vegetables are still high, and refugee rations remain low

Convinced that the only sustainable answers can come from the natural world outside the walls, you implore Survey Corps Commander Erwin Smith to allow you to join his company’s ranks for their next expedition. His only condition? You must be trained in omni-directional mobility gear under Humanity’s Strongest Soldier, Captain Levi Ackerman, to qualify for the expedition as a soldier. Despite having no demonstrated prowess outside your trusty greenhouse, you willingly accept Erwin’s terms, desperate to prove your hypothesis. However, during your time with the Captain, you soon learn that there is more to the stoic and strong soldier that meets the eye, and instead, you have much more in common that you would have guessed. Not even you, a certified genius in the horticulture field, could predict the blossoming romance between you.

Is your commitment to saving humanity enough for you to endure extensive training under the scrutinizing Captain? Or will it be your unexpected feelings for him that ultimately distract you from your original experiment?

Content Warnings: Violence, gore, death, swearing, eventual kissing, eventual smut, human-eating titans, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder

Author’s Note: Hi Everyone! This was sooooo overdue. That being said, though, please let me know how you feel about this one! Believe it or not, this is only my third time writing Captain Levi. I really hope he’s in character for you all. I’m probably going to try to post the next chapter of Straight Laced next, but since I started the Fall Semester at my university, I can’t give you a date estimate. Shit happens, unfortunately.

Another announcement, I know I said I was going to post a poll about my next Ciel story, but I actually the next one myself lol. But on the bright side, I know you’ll all like it.

Thank you so so much for reading and staying patient with my terrible date estimates. (I know I originally said September 3rd for this one…)

Well, as always, Happy Reading!

- Dan

“I can’t even begin to tell you how jazzed I was when Erwin said you’d be joining us,” Section Commander Hange Zoë’s grin was nothing but radiant, alight with hope. Their hand rested on your forearm amicably as you walked through the Survey Corps’ Headquarters.

You and Hange were correspondents long before you started your first aeroponics prototype, about a decade ago. Hange was your colleague, watching your hypothesis about landless planting develop with rapt fascination. You studied together up until the moment they decided to join the Survey Corps and focus their scientific genius on understanding titans. Meanwhile, you decided to continue your studies, pursuing a certification as a medic and a focus on agronomy, the study and practice of soil and crop management.

Even with the distance between your respective research, you kept well in touch. It was Hange’s frantic encouragement that inspired you to make your direct appeal to Erwin Smith. They referred to the Commander as a visionary before you ever had.

Hange had met you at the main entrance and insisted that they were your tour guide for the day. At the same time, a team of cadets started to move your belongings, deaf to your protests. While most of your belongings were equipment for the greenhouse and your experiments, rather than personal items, there were still a great deal of heavy boxes that needed moving. You felt sorry for the cadets tasked with the activity— especially in this heat— but Hange seemed to think little of it, telling you to let the young kids get their energy out.

They said it as if the two of you were approaching your fifties, rather than your thirties.

The corner of your lips pulled upwards in an answering half-smile. “I know. I’ve missed you,” you admitted, taking in the expansive halls. The headquarters was an old regal castle in the countryside, the hallways lined with large windows that allowed the summer sun to stream in. Despite the antiquated architecture, the premises seemed to be extremely well taken care of, there was no hint of dust, nor one blade of unruly grass. In fact, it was so picturesque, that you suspected that no onlooker would think to assume it was a military headquarters and instead, assume it was a wealthy residence.

“Well, Y/n, as did I. That’s why I made sure Erwin made me your tour guide,” Hange exclaimed. “There are a few places I want to show you, some people I want you to meet…come this way!”

You walked with Hange obediently, content with following them around the base. The tour started with your private quarters (the cadets left all of your boxes on the floor next to your bed), continued to the base’s training areas, Hange’s office, your new greenhouse, and ended with the mess hall. As you walked, you shared greeting nods with soldiers who passed you around the base. Few people stopped to exchange words with you, sensing that you and Hange were in the middle of touring. Erwin likely debriefed his forces prior to your arrival, anyway.

The mess hall was abuzz with soldiers in decently high spirits, much to your surprise. There was a monotone chatter around the room as soldiers ate their breakfast.

The Survey Corps served their meals cafeteria-style, the lines at the far side of the room long as everyone waited for their lightly salted oatmeal and a singular slice of bread. As you suspected, there wasn’t a piece of fruit or a vegetable in sight because the military insisted its men sacrificed their diets alongside their lives. While you doubted you could produce enough vegetation to give everyone a nutritional boost in such little time, some change was better than no change. The tables of soldiers you passed continued to track your movements with evident curiosity, sizing you up— wondering whether or not you were as great as your reputation imagined you were.

“Levi Squad, Miche, Moblit, this is my dear friend Y/n Y/l/n,” Hange announced proudly, stopping at a long table towards the far side of the mess hall— the furthest away from the line of hungry scouts. Populating the table were a number of men and one woman, each regarding you with varying levels of interest.

“Y/n, this is the Levi Squad,” Hange gestured to the group of six soldiers— the Levi Squad consisted of soldiers Petra Ral, Oluo Bozado, Eld Gin, and Gunther Shultz. Miche Zacharius and Moblit Berner were also distinguished Survey Corps members; Miche was one of Hange’s fellow section commanders and Moblit was their research assistant. You were never one to enter a situation unprepared, so you took the liberty of reading through the Survey Corps’ major players. “Levi Squad: meet Y/n!”

“I’m Petra. It’s great to meet you,” Petra spoke first, quickly rising from her seat to give your hand a professional shake. “We’ve been reading about some of your work…not that we understand the technicalities of it, but…” she laughed, “for curiosity's sake, we try. We could never do what you do.”

I’m not sure I know how I do what I do, either, you wanted to admit. Your pride forced you to swallow the words down like a dry cracker.

“The pleasure’s mine,” you responded, reciprocating the shake and the same greeting with Gunther and Eld.

“You both can sit next to me,” Petra offered, shifting to the end of the bench. Hange took the seat directly next to Petra. You took a seat between the section commander and the tall soldier you knew to be Miche.

“Honestly, I don’t know how I’ll do what you all--” you started, cutting yourself off with a start as Miche took a long inhale, sniffing near the side of your neck. You hummed curiously, but he made no attempt to explain himself. Instead, Miche nodded to himself and turned his attention back to his breakfast. The questioning look you sent to Hange went mostly ignored. They seemed more interested in the thin bread portion on Petra’s plate, suggesting Miche’s sniffing habit was an idiosyncrasy of his that was to be expected.

Oluo shook his head, unimpressed with your comment. He took a long drink out of a teacup, making no effort to shake your hand and introduce himself properly. “I, for one, have no idea why the Commander thinks you can become a soldier in only two months or less. You’ll be titan chow mere minutes after we—“

“That won’t happen because she’ll be riding with us,” Petra interjected pointedly before turning her attention back to you, her smile apologetic. “Ignore him. He thinks he’s the Captain,” she rolled her amber eyes, cuing you into her joke.

“Speaking of Levi… where is he?” Hange asked, taking the opportunity to change the subject from your potential demise to the whereabouts of the absent Captain. Their ponderous expression suggested that Levi was rarely late to anything. From what little information you were about to glean about him— his superhuman battle prowess, neatly groomed appearance, and stern expression to match — you imagined that the man was also quite punctual.

“Running late from his tea pick up,” Gunther answered, causing the group to share identical looks of worry and frustration. (Save for Oluo, he merely tutted and shook his head dismissively.)

“You know what that means,” Eld said, his thin lips pulling into a grim expression.

Sensing your confusion, Hange started to answer. “It means they don’t have his— oh no,” Hange fell silent at the sight of the Captain quickly making his way towards the table. Despite being a handful of inches shorter than most of the soldiers around him, all standing scouts parted out of his way, eyes diverting from his stoic gaze. The way they scurried out of the way reminded you of anxious prey.

“We should tread carefully, you guys,” Petra suggested, “he’s empty handed.” She sent a warning look towards Oluo, who merely shook his head in response, his hazel eyes rolling. They acted like a married couple— an intimacy that only came from fighting at one another’s sides for years. It was strangely heartwarming that they were able to stay with one another for so long.

“Morning, Levi!” Hange cheered, standing to greet him properly. They clapped him on the back, only to remove their hand in response to his continued silence and pointed glare. “Guess who’s sitting with us today?” they asked rhetorically, “Doctor Y/l/n! She just came this morning.”

You rose from your seat, unsure of how to proceed. Levi didn’t seem particularly interested in introducing himself to you. Instead, he regarded you, likely hypothesizing whether or not you could handle two months of intensive training under him and come out of it with maneuvering reliable enough to save your life. He was calculating any semblance of a chance you had at staying alive and carrying out your research.

“You can call me Y/n,” you decided, extending your hand to him with a tentative smile. Levi made no attempt to return the expression, much less take you. Instead, he regarded the remnants of dirt on your palm, left behind after you took a soil sample from the front of the base upon your arrival— and hesitated. None of the soldiers seemed to mind, given that it was such a minimal shadow left from the soil.

In fact, you doubted they noticed at all.

You made a quick attempt to run your palm over your light green skirts, the linen material light enough for you to remain cool in the hot summer. You chuckled apologetically, “I took a sample from your soil here. To see if it needs any additional nutrients before I use it for my vertical trestles,” you explained, doubting he would understand what you were referring to. Your vertical trestles were long stands with dozens of small engravings to house plants. The beauty of your aeroponics system was that it could grow plants without needing a constant supply of water. All they needed was nutrient-dense soil, sprays of (nutrient-dense, of course) water every few days, and consistent sunlight.

“It’s fine,” the Captain replied, his grave tone insinuating that it was anything but. Still, his calloused hand wrapped around yours, his palm surprisingly cold. His grip was firm and sure. “Given your line of work, you’re bound to drag filth around with you, Mother Nature.”

The derisive nickname caused your back to stiffen as your hand fell back to your side. You frowned, unsure of whether or not he was teasing you with it. But there was no sign of mockery in his face— only mild frustration and inconvenience.

“Training is at noon. Don’t keep me waiting,” Levi ordered, turning swiftly on the heel of his boot to make his leave. He ignored Petra’s dismayed calls, asking where he was going and why he was skipping the meal.

Hange noticed your expression as you reclaimed your seat. “It’s nothing personal. He’s always that grumpy.”

“Especially after that tea store under-watered the flowers again. The ones they need to make his black tea,” Petra sighed. You cringed, thinking about the type of lunacy that would drive someone to over-water camellia sinensis twice.

“And I need to train with him later?” You asked, now mildly concerned for your well-being along with that plant. Commander Erwin said Levi was their best soldier, Humanity’s Strongest. But he didn’t specify whether or not Levi was their best teacher. Was there truly no one else to take on that burden? Someone nicer?

“You might think we’d have someone a bit more…patient, but no,” Petra said as if she read your mind. “All of us,” she nodded to the rest of the group with her chin, her red hair bobbing at the gesture, “need to be focused on Eren while Hange works with him. The other section commanders have to prepare our new cadets. That leaves, well, the Captain, as the most qualified to show you the ropes,” the more Petra explained Erwin’s decision, the tighter the knot in your stomach felt. All of Levi’s elite squad had to make sure Eren’s titan didn’t go berserk and ravage the military branch while their leader helped you, a full-time scientist, master notoriously complex equipment.

“But you can do it!” Hange cheered. “If anyone I know can become a member of the scouts in exactly six weeks, it’s you!”

It was true. If Levi was Humanity’s Strongest Soldier, and the Eren Yeager kid was Humanity’s Last Hope, you were one of Humanity’s only obstacles standing between it and famine, which was just as dire. There was no reason to defeat the titans if most of the population was going to be malnourished and on the brink of starvation-caused extinction. Not to mention, it was too ironic: the titans are defeated only for their former prey to go extinct due to lack of food.

You couldn’t watch that happen when you were so sure it was preventable.

. . .

You had a doctorate in agronomy, a degree in horticulture, and a certification in medical care. And even after those years of hard schooling, long essays, and seemingly endless research projects, you still managed to suffer the worst of equipment malfunctions at the worst possible timing.

But to be fair, who invented this gear?

The idea of omni-directional mobility gear was to make humans as swiftly airborne as possible, giving them the ability to evade a titan’s jaws and provide lethal proximity to their vulnerable napes in milliseconds. However, human facilities were much more delicate than a titan’s— it didn’t take a doctor like you to understand that. To endure high-speed movement and mid-air contortion, the stress would need to be evenly distributed across the body at all times. That was why limp leather straps were dangling from various parts of your legs and torso while you desperately tried to buckle them in their rightful places.

Hange demonstrated the process for you about three times before they left to work with the titan shifter, swearing that you would at least survive the first session with Levi. Now you were standing alone, using one of the many benches to the slide of the big green field where new scouts stretched with their section commanders, as leverage while you tried to buckle the gas exhaust around your lower back.

Several starstruck scouts attempted to ask you if you needed a hand, but your pride refused. You were an academic. You were having issues with…leather straps. Not only that, you couldn’t, in good conscience, let teenagers help you buckle your uniform.

“Do you honestly think your equipment is going to hold you up like that, Mother Nature?” The Captain’s harsh voice asked, causing you to sheepishly turn to look at him, your cheeks reddening. Thankfully, they were already rather flushed from the heat.

“I don’t understand how you all put this on so quickly,” you explained, gesturing to the pieces of uniform that you managed to construct. “It’s like a puzzle…” you mumbled before your face lit up with relief.

“Oh--- there it is.” The buckle slipped through one of the adjustment holes, letting you pull the equipment around your abdomen snuggly. While you weren’t quite sure if this was the proper adjustment, you couldn’t help but nurse your satisfaction while you could. The compressed gas from the exhaust powered the wiring mechanism that worked like a grappling hook: the anchors on the edges of the wires were supposed to dig into any possible service and maintain your weight.

“The section commander was supposed to show you,” Captain Levi said.

“They had to run. Time-sensitive experiment with Eren. Something about sleep deprivation’s impact on titan shifting… It’s really fine, I know how important it is to be meticulous with your experiments’ timing. Maintaining consistent variables and all…” you were rambling. You cringed at yourself— your lack of social competence. But in all fairness, you spent most of your formative years in a laboratory, or your nose buried so deep within the pages of a book, that you could distinguish your textbooks from scent alone. Nothing— out of your vast libraries of literary knowledge— covered how to speak to a soldier of unimaginable strength (and with impossibly azure eyes to match.) It was no wonder the hottest part of a flame was its innermost blue.

“Sounds like Hange,” Levi said noncommittally, but he didn’t seem angry. That told you he was more than accustomed to the scientist’s effervescent (and extremely capricious) nature. It suggested he expected it, at this point. Anyone close to Hange knew to expect some turbulence, at some point. You were relieved Hange managed to find someone in the Survey Corps to grow close to. They deserved it, and it seemed Levi could use Hange’s enigmatic scheming in his life.

“Can you please just…” you looked at the equipment meaningfully. You managed to complete all of the straps that were a bit too personal to ask of him, but there were a few that ran behind your back and attached to said buckles that you couldn’t figure out how to stabilize without a mirror.

“I’m required to double check your equipment -- whether or not you proved incompetent with putting it on. You’re still a newbie, Plant Lady,” Levi said, already fixing the strap that fastened your gas exhaust-- the one you just fixed!

You huffed, dismayed by both your apparent failure and the new nickname. “I was growing attached to Mother Nature,” you smarted.

“Just give me your right gearbox, and we might just manage to start training on time,” Levi ignored your quip.

. . .

You were a puppet suspended in mid-air, only you weren’t lifeless, and somewhat in control of your facilities.

Every muscle in your body pleaded for help as you remained motionless, yet suspended in the air. Apparently, this was the first physical test the military put its cadets through. If you couldn’t strike a near-natural balance with the omni-directional mobility gear, then you were cut— sent to the fields to help with the harvest. Apparently, it would work the same for you. If you couldn’t exhibit the necessary physical prowess on your first day, what was the sense in the Survey Corps investing its time and resources into you?

You could feel sweat rolling down your neck, tracing an uncomfortable line down your back as you trembled with effort. You weren’t even wearing the full equipment. While Levi initially showed you how to put the whole ensemble together, you didn’t need all of it for your first day of training. All you currently were wearing was the various leather straps around your legs and feet, and the main belt around your waist that would have connected your gas exhaust and both gearboxes. According to your reading, those gearboxes held extra blades and gas canisters. Attached to those gearboxes were wooden handles that connected to the blades and anchors soldiers plunged into structures in order to move.

Your arms wanted to reach out and grab something, anything, to hold onto, but there was nothing in proximity. There were only two long bars that supported you on either side as if you were a swing.

You tried to keep your gaze ahead of you, knowing that looking at the distance between your boot soles and the grass was too far for your liking. In fact, the thought of your elevation caused you to shudder, causing your body to sway. You weren’t proud of it, but you couldn’t suppress your worried shriek as your gaze slipped unintentionally downwards.

“Easy there. The more you panic, the less control you have. Put the most power into your core so your back straightens,” Levi watched you, observing your quivering body— in part from the physical strain that came with holding your back straight and core strong, but equally, your fear.

“Like…this?” You managed through gritted teeth. You blinked rapidly to try to keep the drops of sweat that cascaded from your hairline and past your eyebrows away from your eyes. “What if I-I….can’t do this any longer?” you asked, trying to come up with an estimate of how long you were balancing. Seven minutes? Eight minutes? The Idle Suspension Exercise was a minimum of ten straight minutes of steady balancing, excluding any time you spent thrashing.

“Oh, you can just stop and---” the female scout to your side started to answer, only for the Captain to silence her with a single glance. Levi tasked her with turning the lever that hoisted you up and back down. “Nevermind,” she chuckled awkwardly, looking down at her muddy uniform boots.

“Why did you tell Erwin you’d master this gear in two months when you knew you had basic stamina issues?” He asked flatly. There was a dichotomy between the Captain's blunt way of speaking and the way he regarded you closely-- curious to see if you could hold yourself up for a short while longer, or if you’d collapse. The tersely restrained energy in his physique suggested he was ready to spring into action if he so much as suspected the latter was about to occur. “Seems irresponsible, for a doctor.”

“I don’t have-- basic-- stamina--- issues!” You managed through labored breaths. He was essentially superhuman. He had no right to insinuate you had basic stamina issues when he’s had somewhere near a decade and a half to develop his skills in the Survey Corps. Compared to your single day, or half hour, of training rather. “And I’m not irresponsible!”

“I’ve seen first-day cadets perform better,” Levi’s arms crossed in front of his chest, his body relaxing. “Are you sure you gave this decision all of the thought it required, Mother Nature?”

“What?” Your head tilted indignantly, your eyes widening to immediately question the Captain’s words. Was he making fun of you? Questioning your sense of rational thinking?

If you weren’t previously motivated to finish the exercise before, now you were deadset.

“Not everyone has what it takes to be a soldier,” Levi explained, unwithering against your enraged scowl.

“Some people are just more suited tending to flowers in a greenhouse than a battlefield. But I would say your attempt is…commendable,” he said. “Start letting her down, Sam,” Levi instructed the redheaded scout.

Your blood boiled, and it was from more than just the sun beating down on you.

“Don’t you dare, Sam!” You demanded with an intensity you normally reserved for those goading you like the Captain, but you couldn’t control your tone during such immense physical and emotional stress. “I will finish this!” Now you had to.

Sam’s eyebrows drew together as she hummed uncertainty, trying to decide whether she should obey the Captain when you were so clearly invested in beating the challenge. Her hand sat on the lever’s handle, unmoving. So she was going to listen to you.

She sent a resolute nod to you.

You’d dealt with numerous characters like Levi Ackerman. Stingy and sexist government officials and nobles who doubted your projects could produce anything of real scientific value…soldiers who didn’t want their wounds stitched up by someone they assumed was incompetent, based on the way you looked. Infuriated nobles who would threaten your life for making produce and food items more accessible when they’d been making fortunes by price gouging them.

“Let me finish this, Captain,” you snapped, “I can do it!”

“You already did,” Levi responded, taking a quick look at his watch. “You just passed twelve minutes. Let her down, now.”

Before you could process what was happening, Sam obeyed, turning the lever around to set you back down on the ground. The second the bottoms of your boots reached the ground, your legs buckled, threatening to fully give into your weight. If you didn’t reach for the stand to your side, you probably would’ve fallen to the ground.

“You…did that…on purpose…didn’t you…” you panted to catch your breath once again, surprised you could string a coherent sentence together. You used the back of your hand to wipe sweat from your hairline and the rest of your face. You cringed at the pool of sweat that transferred from your skin, still hesitant to believe that you truly managed to go over the minimum requirement.

Because of Levi’s strategically-placed hostility.

“Maybe,” Levi replied, something akin to reluctant respect on his face. “You’re dismissed for the day. “Meet me back here, same time tomorrow.”

“You’ll tell Commander Erwin I passed?” you asked hopefully, looking for your due praise--- even though it was obvious Levi wasn’t the type to commend his soldiers for a job well done.

“It’s my responsibility to update the Commander as I see fit, Mother Nature.”

. . .

“Do you have black tea in stock?” You asked the young girl working the counter at the bakery closest to the Survey Corps’ Headquarters. Even if it was the closest, it was still quite a ways on horseback-- about a half hour back into town.

The girl blushed. “Um, no. We don’t. Our…newest hire…under-watered the plant,” she explained tentatively, her smile sheepish enough to suggest that she was the mentioned culprit.

“It happens. Do you still have the plant?” you asked.

“Yes, we do…?” she replied, unsure as to why you were asking for it. Her smile seemed a bit terse, irritated that you were looking for a plant that they were likely about to compost.

“Can I buy it?” While over-watering typically caused a plant to wilt and rot, effectively killing it. However, under-watering was fixable in most cases. Especially if it was the summer sun--- while camelia flowers tended to prefer sunnier spots, they also required ample water to keep them nourished. It wasn’t unheard of for an amateur to be scared of overwatering the flowers.

“I think it’s about to die, so you can’t really use it for tea or anything,” she warned, expecting you to change your mind.

“Just name your price,” you smiled patiently, but you were sure it didn’t reach your eyes because of your impatience. But in a matter of mere minutes, you were walking to the public stable where you left your horse, Juniper, and you were on your way back to Headquarters to start your first official project as an Honorary Scout.

. . .

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