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96percentdone · 1 year

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In Defense of Tearer

Character writing, not the uncountable crimes

AI:TSF Nirvana Initiative is a very divisive game, for many reasons, some of which I’ve discussed before even. With its twists and split storytelling, and a horrible no spoilers policy that leaves fans of the first game with no connective tissue that respects the time they spent with those characters in the first game, it was destined for controversy, no matter how many good ideas and interesting characters it contained. And make no mistake, Nirvana Initiative has many interesting, even consistently well executed ideas. There are some things in Nirvana Initiative that I think are better than they ever were in the first game, like the serial killer at the center of it all.

Apparently, Tearer is controversial. Some think he is lesser than Saito. Less presence. Weaker. Uninteresting. Irrelevant. They think his only purpose is to provide a motive for Amame, who is actually the interesting culprit. But I believe all of that is incorrect. It misunderstands what makes Saito compelling, what makes Amame compelling, and most importantly, for my purposes, why fucking Tearer fucking rules. Tearer is critical to the fundamental nature of not just AINI’s plot, but it’s themes; he is essential to the conversation about love, determinism, and trauma and without him this game is weak and flavorless, and all the other things you like about it would be worse. Under the cut.

Part Zero: S**TO

AITSF is about love. It’s in the title. Water is wet. But for the sake of drawing clearer parallels, let’s actually talk about Sejima Saito.

Saito cannot feel love or happiness from anything from murder, because of a brain disorder, or more accurately, he would have been able to if even one person loved him to begin with. I say this because Date exists within the same body, and he’s able to get by on medication. Because people cared about Date, and wanted him to be happy; they loved him. But Sejima Sou, the world’s worst man, does not care about Saito. His son killed animals, and he did nothing. His son killed his mistress, and he covered it up, but didn’t look into the root issue. He doesn’t care. On a literal level, Saito cannot feel love because of a brain disorder, but on a thematic level, he cannot feel it because no one ever offered it to him. He does not know what it is. (From this perspective, you could say that Saito is a victim of ableism and not only just. A problematic trope, although like it’s all definitely like still here)

And the sad thing is, Saito does not know what love is, he cannot understand it, yet he still wants it from his father! He’s on record saying this is why he killed Manaka because she stole him away. Sejima does not care about him, and he recognizes that, and it bothers him. He wants what he cannot have, so he kills instead. He has to rip that which his father loves away from him. That’s why killing her makes him happy! Are you seeing the bigger picture? The dopamine rush from killing is just the literal read; Saito derives pleasure from murder because he is ripping love away from others, a thing he wants but thinks he cannot have.

Saito switches into several different bodies that do not have the same brain disorder that his did, but this doesn’t make him understand love, because the problem isn’t actually the brain disorder. It’s that at this point, he has gone so long without ever being loved, without ever knowing what love is, with wanting it but never being allowed to have it, that he absolutely refuses to conceive of a version of himself where he could be happy and capable of it. He looks at Date, in his body, who is happy, and living a life full of love, with people who care about him, and its incomprehensible to him. That should not be possible. Date is using that body wrong because to be Saito is to be without love.

Saito has defined himself as loveless, as someone who could only ever be happy when he’s making everyone as miserable as he is. Sejima did not love him, and did not support him, but even once Saito became an adult with the resources and wealth that name possesses, he did not seek out happiness elsewhere, away from the people who failed him. When he gets second chances in different bodies, he does not seek out love, no matter how false it may be. Instead he uses whatever love someone might have for whoever used to live in that body as a tool to carry out his ends, because he is determined to stay as he is. He was not loved, so he will never be loved, and so no one else should ever be either.

This is how Saito is used in the narrative of the first game. In a story where love saves and redeems, about the connections we make with others no matter how fleeting, and the strength it gives us to pull through, the antagonist is someone who was denied it, and because he was denied it is now determined to destroy it for everyone else.

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, by talking about Saito, let’s move to the main event.

Part One: Forsaken | Child

Carrying on the thematic torch, we get to AINI, and like with any sequel, the discussion about love has shifted. To simplify things, the discussion in the first game is “love good not loving bad.” Characters you’re meant to like are filled with love to give and are loved in return, characters who aren’t well...aren’t. It is good to love. I agree. But AINI takes this theme a step further: who/what do you love, and how? What does love mean to you?

This question shows up at multiple points. Komeji loves his family so dearly, but his pursuit of his dream he loves just as much keeps putting them in danger and costs him his wife and later his life. Shouma struggles to admit he loves his father, constantly fighting with him, until it is too late, and he’s gone, and there is nowhere for this love to go. At the cathedral Ryuki has to pick between Date and Tama: who does he love more? I could go on like this (we will get to Amame), but this all comes back to one source: Tearer. So, who does Tearer love, and how? What does love mean to him?

Tearer loves one person: his ‘mother’, Shigure Tokiko, the world’s worst woman. (I promise we’ll get to Amame when we fucking get there.) Like Saito, he is desperate for the approval and love of his parent, something he too does not get, but there are several fundamental differences. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that while Sejima Sou is Saito’s literal father, and has not legally forfeit his parentage over him no matter how garbage and bereft of love he may be, Shigure Tokiko is not Tearer’s mother in any sense of the word. She did not give birth to him, she didn’t adopt him, she does not raise him with love or compassion—no. She and her partner/ex Horadori Chikara (the world’s other worst man) kidnapped him and keep him trapped in the fucking basement so they can harvest his fucking organs and body parts for their biological son they gave up but actually love, Furue Jin.

And as obvious as saying that might be, it’s actually pretty critical to begin here. Both of these environments are loveless. Sejima is implicitly neglectful, and I don’t like need to tell you what’s wrong with what Shigure and Horadori are doing, yet the results are fundamentally different. There are two reasons for this. The first is that Saito was always a Sejima, and his life began in a house without love, thus he never knew it in the first place, Tearer was once a little boy not unlike any other, happy, innocent, loved up until the day he was kidnapped. For a brief moment, he knew what love was, and that will always matter.

And this difference leads to the second, which is far more interesting to me. Saito decided that if he could not have love then no one could, that he would destroy every instance of it within his grasp with his bare hands out of spite purely because he could not have it and never knew it, and never once attempted to know it himself. But every single thing Tearer does is all in the name of love. He wants the world to laud him as a hero and savior, to recognize him as important. He does not care that he killed Komeji, or that he is going to kill billions of others, because from his point of view, he believes he is bringing them to true freedom. An act of service for humanity at large. This, as warped as it may be, is a version of love, and a request for reciprocation. He is obviously wrong to think like this, even if he himself cannot understand or comprehend it, but even if he somehow did, it’s secondary to his real motive, which again is for his ‘mother,’ who he loves more than anyone else in the world.

Everything he does, with the exception of trying to convince Amame of his totally based and epic gamer plan to wipe out all human life that also involved murdering her dad, is for her. That plan he came up with is based on her beliefs about the world that he dedicated himself to because she taught them to him, and he is devoted to her without question. Shigure may say that Naix is more scientific than a cult, and is thus better than whatever Horadori is doing, but Tearer is their #1 worshipper, and that is because he adores her. He wants to prove her beliefs correct, to brings everyone to Moksha, because yes everyone will love him and worship him as a hero obviously and his endless pain and torment will end and be retconned into having not happened, but mostly because it would make her happy to be right, and if he makes her happy, then surely she will love him in return, right?

Nonentity Incognito is a somnium about Tearer’s absolute desperation for Shigure to love him in the same way she loves Jin. He wants to be her son. He cries to be let out, somebody, “MOM HELP ME,” but she won’t, and no one else will. They take his ideas, his work, his organs, his skin—everything from him, while they leave him locked in a rusty cell in a basement with a door that cannot open from the inside, and yet he still cries from the bottom of his heart “I love you so much! Why won’t you love me? Why, mom, why?” But he knows exactly why she won’t. Because Shigure loves Jin, or at least she did at one point (she doesn’t anymore care much anymore given she’s all for Tearer’s plan that killed him). As much as he screams and cries and begs, she will never love him. She never has loved him. To her, he was just a child with the right DNA that could be used to save the kid that mattered to her. When asked if Tearer is her son, even when he is right there, she does not answer; the silence speaks for itself. Nothing he does will ever make her love him. He will never be her son, no matter how much he wants to be.

Some may wonder then, with this level of horrific abuse, why would he even want to? Especially since he hates Horadori and Jin for his torment, something that is no secret and is clearly illustrated within and outside his somnium. I mean he explicitly picks both of them as targets because he hates them that much. Horadori only tortures him, and Jin gets not only what Horadori takes but Shigure’s love, the one thing he wants, but why does he want it? Why does he want her love?

Part Two: Damned | Destiny

Shigure Tokiko has given Tearer exactly one thing. Not freedom, not remorse, not even a half-hearted apology, no she didn’t give him anything for his sake, but she did give him something. She taught him about her shitty cult ideology. Shigure believes the world is a simulation. Nothing is real, so there is no pain, and no sorrow, and no unhappiness if we just leave this false prison. She promises him that if he follows her, they can leave this fake world together, where true happiness, paradise, lies. . She does not tell him this because she feels sorry for him, it’s not for him, but because his obvious suffering is a confrontation of her guilt. He is in constant agony because they steal his literal body from him and keep him trapped in a dingy prison in the basement living off preserved food in a broken refrigerator, and if his torture is real, then she is culpable for it. It is her fault he suffers, so it cannot be real. This world where something this horrific happened, where she is enabling and partaking in something this cruel because she loved her son she gave up, Furue Jin—she cannot accept it. She promises him a world where he does not feel pain, and she does not feel guilt.

This obviously is just like shitty, and evil, which yeah, she runs a cult and kidnapped a child, of course she is shitty and evil, but he would not see it that way. To him, an orphan kidnapped overnight who routinely has had his organs taken from him by one of his abductors for another child who gets to be loved (or at least receives some approximation of it) instead, this manipulative bullshit looks like kindness. He’s so young. They took him when he was only six, and now this woman is promising him she can take him to a world where not only will he not be in pain anymore, but it will have never happened.

No one comes for him. He cannot escape. Even if he could somehow get the door open, they’ve taken enough of his lungs he has trouble breathing when he sleeps, so imagine every other physical challenge he could face in a body they routinely steal from. Of course, he clings onto her promises, her teachings; He has to believe her. What choice does he have? He just wants it not to hurt anymore! He is trapped in a cell, and she is telling him that they can leave it if they leave this world behind. He can be free. He doesn’t have to hurt. He will never hurt again. What she has to offer him is insincere, it is not helpful, and it is not even truly for his benefit (they even steal his work for Naix, insane, cant have shit in horaken), but who else is there to offer him anything? Shigure Tokiko does not and will never love him; she will never view him as her son. At most she sees him as a brilliant tool to further her agenda, a convenience as well as an organ donor, but he cannot leave. He is their prisoner, trapped, so her self-self-serving ‘kindness’ is the only thing he has.

They don’t let him go outside, cause obviously their unwilling organ donator can’t escape, and he’s only allowed to learn and do the things they think would be useful to them, (quantum mechanics, molecular biology, electrical engineering, Naix’ fucking teachings, etc), he has no friends or actual family, he’s lost his name, he’s lost half his face and body—what does he have that is his own? What can he have that is his own? What choices can he make that are truly his, when he has so little freedom? What else can he do?

This is where determinism comes into play. Because Nirvana Initiative is not just about love, it is about choices, and how those things often intersect and tie together: the things you do for those you love, the things you do to get it, how far you’re willing to go in its name. Tearer was willing to end the world in the name of Shigure Tokiko, because he loves her. He loves her because he has no choice but to love her, because in the situation they put him in he can make no choices at all.

When Horadori Chikara and Shigure Tokiko made that decision to abduct the child with the right DNA to save their son from his half body tumors, they sealed that child’s fate. Their love, however warped it may be, damned him into being Tearer.

Regrettably for literally everyone besides Shigure, this means he kills people, takes people hostage, blows up a building, tries to commit world genocide, dresses like a clown, and all in all just kind of sucks and posts cringe 24/7. My poor little meow meow lmao. He is the principal antagonist of the game, even if he turns out to be fucking dead for half of it. This is in part, of course, because this fucking unhinged maniac has no hobbies outside of Zero Escape and vaporwave and designed all of his plans to work with or without him being alive, but like Saito in the first game, Tearer is also representative of an idea. You may have already figured out what purpose he serves already, but if not, I think it’ll become much clearer once we talk about how he affects the story as the antagonist.

Talking about every single detail in AINI would take too long and waste a lot of time, especially since not everything that happens in the game is ties back to the HB case (hence some of the controversy), so our purposes we will focus on the characters most affected by Tearer: Ryuki Kuruto and Doi Amame. Ryuki first!

Part Three: Fractured | Mind

Now, to be completely fair, ya boi Ryuki was already going the fuck through it before the half body incident even started. Ryuki’s became a psyncer because of a childish sense of justice he cannot let go of because of the horrifying way he lost his twin brother, who was hit by a truck in pursuit of a criminal and half of his body was crushed beyond recognition. It was his brother with the heroic dreams, Ryuki is just carrying the torch. While the localization uses a reference to My Hero Academia, in the original Japanese, his catchphrase is an Anpanman reference, a superhero show for small children. He wants to do good, he wants to be a hero, to help people, but those naïve ideals can be easily twisted by his trauma and his grief, most notably into a profound hatred of criminals.

So, imagine you’re Ryuki, it’s the time of year your brother died, and now there’s a serial killer going around killing people by leaving half bodies: how do you think that’s going to go? And yeah! It goes like shit! He makes mistake after mistake after mistake, he’s constantly dissociating, memory lapses, he’s vibrating with anticipating waiting for Tama to give him the okay to kill some guys he thinks are tied to the incident, Ryuki shoots an unarmed civilian because he thinks they might be Tearer! He cannot separate his trauma from the case! And frankly, how could he be expected to?

I am not going to lie to you and pretend that Tearer designed the half body incident to trigger Ryuki’s personal issues deliberately. He didn’t. That guy doesn’t go outside lmao. But like Ryuki’s brother, Tearer too has been halved, and so he halves Horadori and Jin as punishment for what has happened to him. What is his catharsis is Ryuki’s trigger, and this inevitably leads Ryuki right into his grasp to be used, where the real shitshow begins.

Tearer has sabotaged Tama. He will kill her if Ryuki does not do what he wants, and what he wants is for Ryuki to kill Date and deal with any other minor nuisances in the meantime. And Ryuki shoots Bibi with a stun bullet, even if it worsens Bibi’s heart condition, because he loves Tama. He cannot bear Tama being destroyed, no matter how much Bibi screams at him, no matter how much she hates him.

He is under Tearer’s thrall up through to the cathedral, and he has one job. Shoot Date. Shoot Date, and Kizuna and Tama and everyone else in the cathedral gets to live! Seems easy, right? Even Date says he should shoot him. But despite this. Despite everything, despite all that is at stake, he can’t. Ryuki cannot shoot Date. It is the guilt of having shot Bibi, yes, but he loves Date. How could he ever shoot him? How can Tearer ask him to choose between the two people he loves more than anyone else in the world? How could he ever make this choice?

He can’t, so Tearer makes it for him, because Tearer has been making his decisions for him ever since he took Tama prisoner. He blows up the cathedral, and Mizuki loses her eye, and Kizuna is paralyzes, and Date is ‘killed,’ and Ryuki never moves on from this. He spends the next six years drinking into oblivion, his PTSD worsening, unable to forgive, unable to forget, unable to move forward. When ‘Jin’s other half’ drops he throws himself back into the case, still a wreck, still hallucinating, still having manic and dissociative episodes, to the point he doesn’t even seem to know what year it is, often interacting with others like it is 2020.

You might remember he caught TC-Perge, the bioweapon Tearer had Horadori Institute make, but the literal elements of a text are never just literal. When Ryuki dissociates or he hallucinates, it comes in the form of glitches to the matrix. Tearer believes in simulation theory, because of Shigure. She and Horadori kept him imprisoned, and she taught him the world itself is a fake they must escape from. For him, this virus is an escape attempt, but like how cutting people in half is cathartic for him but triggering for Ryuki, TC-PERGE is his prison.

Tearer is dead, but it is what remains of him haunts. It lingers, it possesses, and it does not let Ryuki forget or move forward. Ryuki is stuck in place, in February 2020 during the Half-Body Incident, because since it kept triggering him he ended up trapped, forced to do the bidding of the one that reminds him most of his trauma against those he loves most. He is trapped in the time Tearer stripped his agency from him, used his love against him, and that love is now his cage. It has transformed into guilt.

Who do you love, and how? What does love mean to you? Ryuki loved his brother, to the point that he choose to live the live he should have had, to uphold his ideals of justice. For Ryuki, love is grief is trauma. It is a list of reasons for him to hate himself. Tearer only adds to that list. He puts Ryuki in the same place he is, unable to move, clinging on to your own self destruction. For Tearer, it is the Nirvana Initiative, and for Ryuki, it’s the alcoholism, and the self-loathing, and the belief he has to solve and fix it all himself or die trying because it is the only way he can possibly atone. He takes a bullet for Date, even after he gets the pep talk from them and told they forgive him, and the only way he can atone is by working together to move forward. It seems only by taking it does he find his way out.

Ryuki gets cured. He will heal from his gunshot wound. Tama is free from Tearer’s clutches, and Date is fucking fine, and Ryuki will be okay. There was a way out of this hellish nightmare Tearer put him in, and it did not involve making the villains and himself pay forever indefinitely, it involved forgiveness. It involved accepting the love offered to you, because it should not be a prison, but freedom.

But the other person was not so lucky.

Part Four: Choose | Correctly

Okay to just take care of this, Tearer thinks he’s thinks he’s in love with Amame, but what’s actually happening is he hasn’t like seen a human woman who isn’t his ‘mom’ for like two decades, and his maturity levels are out of wack cause of the human experimentation prison cell thing, so his hormones are just going crazy. I have nothing further to say about this aspect. It’s just sad, and a little gross, and it’s not interesting. We’re moving on.

Determinism and causality already haunt Amame before Tearer kills her father. Doi Amame is a girl split in two. Every decision presented to her, every choice she makes is logged deep within her heart and kept perfectly preserved in bubbles, and sometimes she takes them out and rotates them, let’s the light distort their colors into something new. What if she stayed with her father during the divorce? What if she worked a different job? Less hours? Part of her is always in the past, ruminating on what could have been if only she had done something different, maybe it would have been better. In that sense, she and Ryuki have a lot in common, and it’s also why Ryuki should have been the protagonist full time, but this is not that essay.

We will briefly have to talk about Komeji, the king of bad decisions. If there were ever a reason for Amame to be constantly thinking about the consequences of her actions, it would be looking at her dad and going “Jesus Christ.” He loves family dearly, but he consistently makes short-sighted decisions that sound great in the moment, but get him and the people he loves further in hot water. This is why he thought it was a great idea to blackmail the serial killer with the body he found and stole, cause he was wasted, and hey it’ll get him money which he can pay the loan sharks with and then his kids will be safe right? WRONG. SO WRONG DUDE. Guy was a hot mess, and he pays for it with his life.

It because of that Amame and Tearer meet. Amame hides Furue Jin’s left half in the freezer in Brahman, and she shows up at Studio Dvaita just in time for Tearer to be finishing up arranging her father’s corpse, although she does not know it’s his at first. Their fates are now inexorably intertwined. “I met the person of my destiny.” Amame discovers her father in the body-bag.

While Tearer develops a bunch of fantasies about her over the course of six years, because what else is he going to fucking do I guess, Amame grieves and mourns. Her pile of capsuled choices only grows with every minute of every day, and she spends more time looking at them. Thinking about them. Wondering which choice was the correct one. Maybe she should have stayed with her father. Maybe she should have told the truth and worked less hours to come home early. Maybe she should have comforted him when Furue Jin’s body dropped on Face to Faith, because she knew he needed it. Could she have saved him then? Would he still be alive now? Yes, Komeji was a hot mess, but he was her dad! She loved him! And now he’s gone, forever.

Maybe she could have made peace with that, had her encounters with Tearer ended there. While it would never be fair, or right, knowledge that Komeji never made good choices, and that it was another bad choice that lead him to Tearer could be made peace with. With a lack of specifics about what Tearer was even trying to do before or after her father got involved with his plans, she could fill in the blanks herself, tell herself similar stories like the what ifs she conjures because there are no answers to her questions. But that is not what fate has in store for her.

Amame gets a phone call from Tearer. He wants to meet with her, because he is convinced, for reasons we will get to in a second, that she will understand him. And Amame, although she knows she hates him, knows she cannot forgive him for what he has done to her father, knows she is plagued by the decisions she has made that she can never undo, she does not call the police. She does not tell anyone. She accepts his offer, and she goes. She just wants to know what he has to say, right? She just wants answers. Only that. Then she’ll leave. Finally, an explanation for why her father was killed.

And she gets it! And it’s the worst explanation she’s ever heard in her entire life! Simulation? Moksha? Nirvana Initiative? What the fuck is he talking about? Her dad died for this? She asks him if he remembers what happened on February 13th, 2020, the day her dad was murdered. She is trying to gauge if he remembers what he did to her father, if he even cares at all. And all he has to say is “That was the fateful day I met you.” Her father? He doesn’t matter. Komeji died because he needed a body to put at Misetan since Jin’s other half was never returned, and Tearer considers this entire thing a performance and a game. It wasn’t personal, like Horadori, or Furue Jin. It meant next to nothing to him. Her father died for no reason. He just moves on! He laughs! He’s blathers on maniacally about his plans to destroy all life on earth in the name of liberation or whatever, right in front of a woman whose dad he killed that he doesn’t remember or consider important!

He thinks she thinks this is super based, and that he’s like the smartest guy ever, and that he’s going to save the day, and that it’s an honor she is getting the chance to work with him, that she is considered intelligent and special enough to know about their ideals. Why does he think this? Is he delusional? Has he lost his mind? Well, yes, obviously, that happened like ages ago when they started stealing his organs and trapped him in the basement, but there’s another layer. Shigure Tokiko does not love him, but she only ever validated him when he supported her cult ideology, and his other relationships do not exist. She is his only frame of reference. He wishes to connect with Amame because he wishes to connect with another human being and be understood, and Amame was there, but he only knows how to do that through this shitty cult he is thoroughly indoctrinated in to the point he kills people and plans genocide for it, and with all that in mind, the result is inevitable.

It was bold of him to turn his back to her. She was never going to understand him. Enda Amame knocks him out with a wrench, drags him to the slicer, and kills him in the same way he killed her father. Another decision she can never take back. But she was not alone. Shigure saw her kill him, and now she is under her thrall. She has to move not just his body, but hers, or else her secret will get out. So she helps Shigure with her plan, to keep her secret, and lives the next couple of days quiet and somber, lost in her what ifs and her grief. She cannot bear this weight much longer. Not just her loss, or the weight of the secret she now keeps, but the ever-mounting regrets that began years ago.

“I did what was best for me! I don’t care if people attack me for it, I have no regrets! I have no regrets!” Amame cries at the end of Nightmare Irreconcilable, a Somnium that plays through each of her regrets, and the things she could have done instead. She wants so desperately to believe this, because while she can imagine going to see Komeji instead of Iris, or picking him in the divorce, she can’t picture not killing Tearer, even though her regrets all lead her to that point. Even though killing him did not bring her father back, but just took her away from her brother, and Gen, and her other best friends.

When Tearer calls Amame “the person of his destiny,” he is correct, but not for the reason he thinks he is. Before him, Amame’s life is full of people who love her, and of people who love her in return. Yes, her father is a mess, and the divorce was hard, but she’s okay. She has support, and she’s kind and self-sacrificing and a little eccentric, but that just makes her lovable. The choices she makes matter but they are not a fixation of hers. The world is open. She is free.

But that day in Dvaita, the world starts to close up. She is still loved, and she still loves people, and she’s still gentle and eccentric, but she’s starting to close off. Her dad’s decisions lead to the slicer. What does that mean for her? Was the world always so small? He’s gone, and there are no answers, just a hole that will never heal, no matter how much people love her, or how much she loves in return. The pathways for her get narrower and narrower and narrower, leading her directly to that dingy cell that seals her fate. And just like the man she killed that was trapped down there, she too is treated as another disposable tool by Shigure Tokiko, and is currently trapped in a cell, not unlike where he used to be.

To talk about Tearer is to talk about Amame because to talk about Amame is to talk about Tearer. They are direct responses to one another. Tearer was damned into being so at age six. His ability to choose, to love, to decide were all taken from him when he was stolen from that orphanage. And this monstrous cruelty contaminates everything it touches. Tearer desperately tries to escape to a world where his trauma never happened because it is all that he is, and like him she fixates on imagined possibilities where things are better, because the pain of her loss is too much to bear.

The world was available to Amame, until it was infected by him, by what he had no choice but to become. He killed her father, and although the world was still available to her, she was still free, she could not see it. All she saw was the past she could not undo, the family she lost forever, and the man who was to blame. For that one moment, Amame threw out all the love the world still had to offer her because she hated him more, and immediately regretted it. It’s the cycle of cruelty, of abuse, of trauma.

Conclusion: Trauma | Symbolism

This is why Tearer fucking rules, more than anything else. He is the embodiment of trauma, the breathing symbol of thematic horror the cast is trying to overcome. That’s why half his body is literally fucking chitin, a visual representation of the wounds that do not heal. That’s why his personality is entirely formed by the horrific experiences he had at the hands of Horadori and Shigure, and why everything he does is motivated by that experience, down to his fucking name! He was literally trapped because when you’re traumatized it often feels like you cannot move from where you are. He clings to Shigure and her idealogy because she stands for nihilism. She promises all those that enter her grasp that this world is meaningless and the only real way to find happiness is by ending it all: a death wish. He never leaves the narrative, even after he’s killed, and killing him cannot defeat him, just perpetuates the cycle. Amame only comes out of that even more traumatized, more guilt-ridden and horrified, it adds to her trauma. Trauma is not something you kill. His plan to kill everyone is to make people destroy themselves from the inside out, by ruining their minds so they cannot interact with one another without inevitably causing pain.

The only way to stop him is through unity and attempting to mend bridges, by process the things that hurt you instead of bottling them up. Accept the love that people give you. Embrace the opportunities that the world still has to offer.

Bonus: Somezuki Uru

You must have one question left. How come in this entire essay, I never once called him by his real name? I even pretended for a second he lost it forever somehow. Well, that’s because…Tearer is an idea, isn’t he? He is entirely shaped by the horrors forced upon him. Like I just said, he is trauma. We don’t know anything about Somezuki Uru, other than he was orphan, a normal boy, and honestly based on knowledge of Sejima’s cursed dick and balls, his brilliance in technical achievement as Tearer is probably an indicator of something significant going on in his brain that just isn’t to the same degree as cancer or the oxytocin deficiency. My money is on autism (source: autistic). Everything else we get is shaped by the horrors, and I just talked about those at length. But if I still have you here…

It is 1996, and tucked into his bed at Aioen orphanage, Uru wonders what tomorrow may bring? Rain or sunshine? Outside the open window, the moon that hangs high in the half-clouded sky has no clear answers. The breeze smells wet. Maybe it’ll rain after all. Didn’t Mr. Chieda get that new game for the computer….? That might be fun to try. He yawns. The breeze smells dry again, but he’ll worry about it tomorrow. This great big world full of possibilities isn’t going anywhere.

I hope the world you live in right now is kind to you. Thank you for reading this.

#nirvana initiative #ai the somnium files #ai nirvana initiative #uru somezuki #somezuki uru #kuruto ryuki #ryuki kuruto #amame doi #doi amame #hope.txt #my meta #aini #ai series #I HAD A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABOUT MY GUY #SO HERE WE ARE #as for that second to last paragraph #its up to you how you interpret it #be kind to one another #okay?

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marisatomay · 4 months

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Even for those who aren’t overtly hateful, this is a cloistered lifestyle that can’t function without the people kept outside the town limits. In The Donna Reed Show, that would be everyone who wasn’t white enough, straight enough, wealthy enough, Christian enough, traditional enough to fit into the world of this family, even if it’s what those outsiders desired. There’s nothing inherently evil in cooking or cleaning or not earning a salary, but endorsing Reed as an icon of femininity makes me worry that I’m unwillingly lending my participation in the massive conservative project aimed at rolling back the rights of those who didn’t have their own popular sitcoms. How could one strive for that life without being touched by its venom?

#really good piece.#longish but worth the read #the second to last paragraph. yeah.

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writingmoth · 8 months

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isnt it kinda bonkers that there no rules to writing. you can do whatever you want and its fine??

#when i was like 11 i used to think that a book had to tell a story that lasted an year bc of harry potter #then i read the princess diaries and was so confused #'why is it only two weeks long? books can do that???'#years later the fifth season came along and was like what if i breaking paragraphs was a way of telling a story too #what if this was second person all along #what if povs in different times!!!#and i was like :o #look at that i can do anything i want with writing #the more you know #ren.txt

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bloodpen-to-paper · 2 years

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Its an early Thursday morning. 6:00am, on the dot. I’m waking up at this hour because I’ve accidentally become slightly nocturnal again, and had fallen asleep at about 7pm the night before. No matter, I think as I chase away the last remnants of sleep. Time to check the news.

Its there, at the top of the Twitter trending tab, that I see it:

BREAKING: Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II is under medical supervision because doctors are "concerned for Her Majesty’s health."

Many of the Royal Family are at her side. The people of the United Kingdom are preparing for the worst. I feel adrenaline coursing through my veins.

Tumblr, I think in a moment of hysteria. I must go to Tumblr. They must be in a state of euphoria over the news.

I head over to Tumblr.

I check the trending page, expecting “Queen Elizabeth” or “down with the monarchy” or something of the sort to be at the #1 spot on the tab.

Surely, at the very least, “crab rave”

Right?

...

I stare blankly at my screen. I am in a state of shock. Too stunned to speak, some may say.

How? I beseech. How is this trending over the Queen of England’s health scare? The one that may very well cause of the end of the British monarchy as we know it?!

But I’ve been on this Hellsite longer than I’ve been able to formulate intelligent thoughts. I know they wouldn’t trend Undertale this high for no reason. And if its a new Deltarune update, well, I certainly can’t complain. I am a fan of the franchise, after all.

So I check the Undertale tag.

“AND WITH THAT, SANS UNDERTALE HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN CROWNED ULTIMATE TUMBLR SEXYMAN”

As the Sisters Moirai would have it, I had peacefully slept through a war. A war of ultimate consequence, that would decide the fate of two illustrious*, two remarkably renown communities, nay, kingdoms, over who could win perhaps the greatest, most dangerous prize. A prize which has spilt endless miles of bloodshed in its pursuit, which has devastated entire lands, decimated people in both mind and body until they were completely and utterly unrecognizable.

The prize, the title, of who was to be... the Ultimate Tumblr Sexyman.

The contenders: Sans the Skeleton of the hit RPG “Undertale” and Reigen Arataka from the popular shonen anime “Mob Psycho 100”

As it was transcribed, the battle had met many close encounters, but in the end, Sans the Skeleton would come to win the crown and claim victory over Reigen by a total of 420 votes (i shit you not it was 420 votes exactly i cannot believe you assholes managed to get it by 420 votes yall are actual meme trash and i am both disgusted and awe inspired by your cursed efforts)

Though I was unable to experience the spectacle myself, I had bore direct witness to the fallout. The internet now had an abundance of Super Smash-like fan content of Sans and Reigen engaged in combat, and there was an apparent brief rise in S̵͖̫̿̌ạ̸̛̎̚n̶͔͈͗͂̄s̷͉̚m̴͌͋͜͝a̴̻͚̺͛͆ē̶̤̔͗d̶̛̖̰͒͊a̷͙̜͙̾͗. Toby Fox himself has gotten involved by using Twitter to publish fanfiction. That was perhaps the hardest for me to accept.

Thus, it was on September 7 of the year 2022 that the battle of Sans vs Reigen had occurred and concluded. From what I had heard, it was a legendary event that would be seared into the minds of every Tumblrina, and forever remembered throughout the tales of human history.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I took more psychic damage waking up to all of this than I did the day my father ended up in hospice after having a stroke on a school day so thanks for that and have a good one

* “well known, respected, and admired for past achievements”; yes I knew some of you would struggle with this one

#this was actually really fun to write lmao #love this hellsite #queen elizabeth #queen elizabeth ii #uk politics #tumblr #tumblr sexyman #undertale #sans #sans undertale #mob psycho 100 #mp100 #reigen arakata #sanssweep #reigensweep #also every sentence in the second to last paragraph starts with T #for some reason

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chateautae · 1 year

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hi everyone 🥺

#IK IT'S BEEN SO LONG #HELLO HELLOOOOO LIFE JUST GOT SO CRAZY #it's so entirely different from when i was last on here!#BUT WHEW I;VE HAD THE SECOND CHAPTER TO 'TO TURN A BAD THING GOOD' FOR A WHILE #I JUST LOST ALL MOTIVATION AFTER LIFE GOT SO CRAZY #it legit needs another paragraph or two and it'll be done #i also have a tae pwp i wrote like two years ago and just never released stashed somewhere #i might release that too!#i wanna get back into maybe i do drabbles as well!!#sammy files

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stuck-in-the-ghost-zone · 1 month

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HIII THABK U FOR THE TRIVIA AND ASHE SONG before i take forever 2 answer those or forget here is a blank ticket to please please talk about prime defenders and their AWFUL emotional literacy and processing skills i would literally love to read that essay so much ive also been thinking about it incessantly. big eyes staring up at u.png. ok ok peace out GOODNIGHT !!!! <33

i lied actually im not going to bed im judt thinking about this ans listening to St. John on a loop now. hello catkiss.gif i forgot how youve filled me with so much joy. that cat is so fuckign cute

anyway. hi :) prime defenders huh. this is gonna be less of an essay and more of a sleepy ramble but ohhh i have so many thoughts. they all process things so differently and none of them are good at it they all need therapy so bad. ms.g where is the hero therapy why didnt you build that into w.a.t.c.h ma'am

vyncent is probably the best at actually processing things out of all of them, he just internalizes everything to the point where he wont talk about it unless hes pushed past the breaking point. vyncent is actually very.. emotionally intelligent? i want to say mature but that feels like im singling him out because hes the oldest. i just feel like because he grew up on Fauna and had to be in basically survival mode in a world full of monsters trying to kill you.. that makes a person grow up quicker than they should. i think vyncent had a good childhood and for the most part his parents took good care of him but just.. living in that world doesnt seem like it leaves room for a whole lot of expressing emotions. vyncent is good at quick analysis of a situation, but unless a problem directly interferes with the current goal he doesnt externalize it to everyone else. but bottling up his feelings and emotions just builds up pressure over time until something like the lich makes him blow up and let it all out at once, usually in a dramatic monologue format bc condi is really good at those god damn it. also they played off the fact that vyncent said all of that to the lich and then missed his attack as a funny thing but i like to think of it as. he got too overwhelmed w his emotions and lashed out too soon it made his fighting messy. vyncent is so angry and honestly after what hes been through he deserves to be !!!!

william wisp. my boy. god hes just like me fr so much so that it physically hurts sometimes. anyway. i always think back to the scene where theyre all in the cabin talking about themselves/sharing backstories and william keeps desperately trying not to talk about himself. the fact that hes so ashamed of his powers he hides wisp form every time. two of his powers are LITERALLY a) turning invisible and b) turning intangible, usually as an excuse to leave whatever situation hes in ("accidentally" falling through the floor at opportune moments in season 1) . theres. a thing that happens at the end of episode 13/beginning of epidode 14 that youre really close to and i wont spoil yet but god it has to do with this so extremely much please come back to my inbox when you get there. youll know what it is trust me. um. yeah. so anyway. i think a lot of this comes from a place of. he doesnt want anyone to be scared of him. williams not stupid hes incredibly smart and insightful he knows his powers are objectively SCARY. hes scared of himself constantly, he doesnt want anyone else to feel that way about him, so he shifts focus whenever those aspects of himself are brought up because if someone were to think about it for any amount of time theyd realize the truth that hes scary and dangerous to be around (<< william logic. hey remember how one of the reasons he originally left deadwood was because the monsters there were attracted to the wisps and therefore Him so he left to keep his friends/family out of danger)

i think a lot about williams death and the immediate aftermath, i dont know how much you actually know and how much of this comes later but . how does he go home after waking up from that. his parents know about his powers, so they MUST know what happened. what do you think he told them when he god home muddy and dirty and broken and probably bloody after being missing for. god knows how long. how does he look his mother in the eyes and tell her her little boy is dead. but hes also not because hes standing right in front of her. how the fuck do you think he felt the first time he went into wisp form and saw his body laying there !!! of course he wouldnt want to talk about that!!!! youre gonna have to pry william wisps emotions from his cold dead hands !!!!!!!

dakota's response to the ashe situation was to run away in the woods and do nothing but train for 10 months. he didnt think about it for 10 months. i dont even have a whole lot to say about dakota other than like. stunned silence whenever his inability to process trauma is brought up because grizzly does such an incredible job at being like "you ask dakota how hes doing and his face is just blank" << paraphrased actual quote from an episode i cannot remember which one. either 11 or 12 ?

also because im thinking about him im including ashe in this. we didnt get to see a whole lot of his canon reactions to extreme emotional situations so a lot of this is just coming from My Mind but ashe seems like hed be the type to repress a lot of his emotions too. being alone in your house/in your room for extended periods of time will do that to a guy. i think he feels a lot of things and will probably very openly cry/scream/get angry when hes alone but as soon as he knows another person is there he can immediately flip the switch to turn it all off like nothing happened. very much a deadpan "im fine." if someone asks how hes doing, even if hes got like. the remainder of tear tracks down his face. cannot physically express his emotions in the presence of someone else

#very tempted to add a thing about the greats to vyncents section but i am not going to #anyway do u think it was weird for him to have the people he idolized in his brain. they knew things he thought #they felt things he felt they probably talked about it its no wormnder he keeps his emotions close to his chest etc etc etc #anyway.#im projecting a little bit on all of these can you tell. dont take any of this as canon i am fully like.#oh boy how can i put aspects of my godawful mental health practices on my favorite little superhero teens.#especially ashe be he has not a whole lot of canon basis . sorry ashe you get my emotion switch #asks #intertexts #friends!!!#jrwi pd #um!!! sorry i went off on the second william paragraph i think about the early stages of him gaining his powes a lot.#its the danny phantom in me #also that last sentence was especially mean of me sorry. i did yhat on purpose :) i love to be evil #OKAY. im going to bed for real now. i had 2 get this out of my system before i slept on it and forgot all the thoughts fresh in my mind

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bookwyrminspiration · 2 months

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What's your take on a Fitz-Marella friendship?

I figured it was only a matter of time before this made its way to me :)

I'm intrigued by the unaware subject/silent observer dynamic we can give them. Fitz is, after all, practically a prince of their world, constantly at the center of conversation and talk and speculation. And Marella is the "Gossip Master" (Stellarlune 511).

I'm certain Fitz, to Marella, was a rife subject--and one many others would be willing to gossip about too. Which could've turned him into this unreal figure in her mind, given how much she'd've talked and how very little of that would've involved him in any way.

Of course there's Fitz's pov, which is only marginally aware of her, if at all. He did live practically in his own world, both because of his family name and his odd absences. If he knows of her, it's as another gossip who doesn't know him but talks anyway--a nuisance or drain, even.

Though if we consider Fitz's saying he was odd and excluded for his weird absences like he said, then perhaps that could draw the two together--the kid who disappeared and the kid with the infamous family tragedy.

Then again, we could take that family tragedy (Caprise) and juxtapose it against Fitz's seemingly perfect, proud family and go for more of an opposites attract kind of thing.

Looking more at an already formed lava cake style friendship in current times is difficult because they clash in many ways, but one could argue they might find each other via, of all things, relationship drama. Marella would love to know about it, and Fitz would likely like to talk it through--and he's running out of people to do so with. Feels a little like Marella making him her project for fun, if you know what I mean? And from there further depth and connection can develop--that's if we're going a more canon route, that is

point is there's a lot of ways to take them (we just might have to work a little harder to justify/create believable scenarios dynamics given their distance in canon)

#kotlc #kotlc lava cake #fitz vacker #marella redek #quil's queries #nonsie #really struggled with that second to last paragraph #they're just so individual currently #you know?#and they come from such different backgrounds and so have seen such different povs of the world #long post

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qroier · 6 months

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edited my post from yesterday on spiderbit eurydice and orpheus to be clearer. it is now. way longer klsdjfk. but the idea is the same. anyway enjoy reading if you do and uh. pues f if you don't, no? lskdfjsdk. kinda already mentioned it in the post but should clarify here that i'm 100% talking about the greek myth.

Thinking about spiderbit as eurydice and orpheus is so interesting to me, cause I think depending on how you look at it and how you think of the story, there's an argument for both. And then you remember everything that was purgatory and how clear of a parallel it is to the myth hdksjdks. Honestly though, I feel like the purgatory parallels are the biggest reason roier cubito as orpheus is winning out on that one poll, and I kinda have to disagree with that. The evidence for orpheus roier is there from the start. Roier cubito is always and forever a perfect, permanent orpheus figure even before considering purgatory, and it's down to the devotion roier and orpheus cling to and the grief they both drown in. (The rest under the read more)

Backtracking first for a bit to set the stage. There are many different versions of the eurydice and orpheus myth out there, and its nature as a myth means that interpretations (and translations of any original latin or greek versions) are always changing. Disclaimer of course that my understanding and general knowledge of the myth has been mainly influenced by the wider english-speaking cultural approach to it. I'm focusing on the orpheus archtype from my understanding of what it means (which I'll explain along the way) because otherwise if I didn't I'd end up getting too boggled down in "virgil said this according to this translation" and "ovid went more in this direction following this translator" details. and there is no way in hell i'm struggling through translating on my own with my measle little two years of latin classes under my belt lskdjfkldfj.

But regardless, here's a very basic and brief summary that most versions tend to follow: Eurydice and orpheus are married. Eurydice dies. Orpheus treks out to the underworld through the power of music to save her and get her back. He's told the only way he can have her is if he makes the treacherous trip back to the mortal realm without turning to look at her once. He looks back right before he makes it, and fails in saving her. Sounds familiar, right? slkdjfsk

Don't get me wrong, orpheus cellbit still makes sense in a way. That's part of why the poll and idea in general is so interesting. Heed the disclaimer again but to me, the biggest, most obvious, and most immediately linked connotation the myth has always had is one of devotion. Like the type of devotion that would take you all the way into the afterlife and all the way back in the hopes that that might save the person you love. Cellbit cubito is nothing if not devoted, and normally in the loudest ways possible. He loves shouting out his devotion at all times to anyone in close proximity. It just makes sense that if anyone could hold the level of devotion necessary to be orpheus it'd be him, cause we all know he'd do anything for roier.

Plus being honest, it also makes sense just going by the dynamics in their relationship that they most often present to others. Roier cubito kinda likes playing into the dynamic of asking other people to "save" him, whether that's from mobs or hunger or anything, so long as it's not something actually serious. So much so that the idiot (said lovingly) has conditioned everyone, and I do mean everyone, both islanders and audience alike, into thinking he's defenseless and needs saving. Maxo put it best that one time when he said he felt like roier after cellbit saved him from some mobs, only for cellbit to have to correct him and say that it's usually the other way around. As far as most are concerned, cellbit does the rescuing while roier gleefully asks for the help. It is very easy to make the jump from the idea that eurydice is being saved and the image of roier cubito calling out for help with a scorpion that he could (normally at least, I know he didn't have any weapons or gear that one time during purgatory) bring down on his own. It definitely doesn't help that cellbit is, of course and as always, already running to roier with a weapon in hand to kill the scorpion. At the first chance, he's already trying to help. Anything for his husband.

So it makes sense that orpheus cellbit, who clearly loves doing the saving, would drag himself through hell in his devotion to save eurydice roier, who loves being the one saved! But then you start remembering how the story came about. You start wondering, well, why does the devotion need to be so strong? Why does eurydice even need to be saved? What has brought the both of them to the gates of the afterlife? Oh. Right. It's because she died. She's dead. Eurydice, the love of orpheus’ life, is dead.

Saving her takes and is devotion, yes, but it's also an attempt to escape grief. If she’s saved, there’s no need to mourn. If she’s saved, then she’s not dead and there’s no grief. And, always, there is no one more grief-riddled than roier (except maybe maxo, whose grief has permanently killed him). No one knows more intimately than roier how tough of a fight it is to escape constant grief because he is constantly grieving, and it just keeps getting worse. His number one recurring theme since arriving on the island has been that he will lose loved ones. To the point that sometimes, even if the person is still technically around, the grief around them and the relationship that once was finds ways to persist (just look at the mess that revolved around spreen cubito before he was confirmed to be dead).

The devotion still applies to him too, of course. Even though it's in quieter ways, there's no denying that roier is as equally devoted to cellbit as cellbit is to him. Cellbit once promised roier he'd rescue him if the feds ever arrested him. Roier once told cellbit he'd go after him and wouldn't stop until he got him back if the feds tried taking cellbit again. And that's not even the only time roier has promised that, he's said similar things multiple times before. He even had to fulfill that same promise once already, back during the regret arc when cellbit went missing trying to save felps. If there is one thing that is true, it's that roier is not lacking in orpheusian devotion.

Actually, extending that devotion from being based in romantic love to also including familial love just makes it all the clearer how much of an orpheus roier has already been. Orpheus fights through the journey, holding on to hope and powering himself through devotion, because the alternative of having permanently lost eurydice, of having to succumb to grief, is too much for him to take. Roier fought through the entire island and later a dungeon, holding on to hope and powering himself through devotion, because the alternative of having permanently lost bobby, of having to succumb to the grief of loosing his son to something outside of his control, was too much for him to take.

And then they both fail. Orpheus looks back too early. Sometimes he forgets, in his excitement to be so close to the end, sometimes doubt gets the best of him and he has to check, and sometimes the need to see his love again overwhelms all his senses. Sometimes maybe it's somehow all three. Roier also looked back too early, in a way, but cucurucho only knows what way that actually was. It could have been that he technically did die right at the very end before he could make it through the dungeon, or it could have been that the gods were feeling particularly cruel that day. Either way, bobby wasn't returned to him. Either way, eurydice vanishes in the morning light after orpheus gets one last glimpse of her. Either way, Bobby vanishes behind the door after roier and jaiden are given only 10 minutes to say goodbye.

This is all without even touching on some of the details about how roier's singing charms everyone he meets and how music is such an important part of his character (for those of you unfamiliar with the myth, orpheus' connection to music is so deep that the greeks named a constellation after his lyre). Or, as notes in the last version of this post pointed out, how his previous journeys to the underworld have shaken his faith and trust (which would probably need to be a whole entire other post on its own).

Roier is just permanent orpheus. He can't help it. If you believe that characters in myths are left behind, endlessly retelling their journeys even once the book is closed, then orpheus is still there, making that trip to the afterlife and back. His story is being retold through roier, who is here now. Roier, who has already gone on two trips to the afterlife and back, already told this story twice before, and is now preparing himself for a third (even a fourth, if you want to extend this whole thing and include purgatory and the eggs). It’s retold in how Roier has to do the saving, again, because he keeps getting left behind. In how he’s always drowning in grief, in some way or another. How he’ll drag himself through the journey every single time if it means a chance at saving someone he loves. If it means saving himself from more grief.

So the stage is set. Purgatory happened. Orpheus has loved, again, and he's lost, again. Roier may like it when he's the one being saved but he's been forced yet again into a position where he has a chance to do the saving. He's facing an increasingly insurmountable mountain of grief on one side and a plunging chance at salvation on the other. The book has been turned back to its first page. The story is rewinding to tell itself again. We know what path he'll pick. Now all that’s left is to see if this third trip succeeds. To see if this retelling is one where orpheus does not look back. And if he does? Well.

"Dying again, [Eurydice] did not blame her husband — What could she complain of except she was loved?" - ovid, translator: stanley lombardo

#qsmp #if you don't feel like reading the whole thing then just read the fifth paragraph (starts with “plus being honest”)#and the second to last one (starts with “roier is just permanent orpheus”)#dunno how much sense they'd make out of context but they're the ones that focus on my original thoughts the most #speaking #spiderbit #roier #cellbit #👍#i don't even want to think about how many words this is lksdjfslkf much less how much time this took #posts from me for me

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calebwittebane · 4 months

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come the fuck on man not this "the evil conspiracy to make men into trans women" shit youre outta your damn mind. also ive absolutely seen people joke about cis women needing to become more butch and go on T and ive never seen anyone have an issue with it

#the last paragraph in the second screencap is CRAZY

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ask-the-scapegoat · 6 months

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Have you heard the rumors that Mundie used to be a toon before becoming a cog?

we kinda had a talk about it back before we were hired by cogs.. he was really upset and i was really worried about him.. he thought i wasnt gonna accept him because he was a toon

he cried so much that night.. and i told him honestly and i still stand by it even today. it doesnt matter if he was a toon once, or that hes a suit now.. hes the only person who’s shown me any kind of compassion since i gained consciousness. hes the only one who protected me, or showed me it doesnt matter how physically beyond repair i am, that i am still worth effort..

it was a weird night because we talked about so much.. in the end we came out a family and havent really gone back since. i wouldnt trade mundie for anything in the whole wide world

(@mudsnapperqna)

#kilo kidd #scapegoat #ask responses #mundie mudsnapper #litigator #long response #welcome to hotel california #ooc: shoutout to mecha for drawing the amazing snuggle picture and absolutely murdering half of the worlds population !! /pos #ooc: grah this was the most effort ive ever put into an ask blog response #ooc: that second to last paragraph was more or less copy pasted from a ramble mecha and i did #ooc: oh my god i care them so much if anyone ever hurts either of them its immediate death to you #ooc: also shoutout to mecha for letting me use their art as like a base of sorts i could never make such a good snuggle pose

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masterblooky · 6 months

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blah blah something about how Martyn became the first red because he fell into the void in the end and Lizzie became the first to die permanently because she fell into the void in the end.

Some real “from dust you were made and to dust you shall return” type stuff.

through the void, red first was born and through the void red first shall die.

the lord giveth and the lord shall taketh away.

memento mori

I’ll figure it out.

you shall not find success in this realm. the realm herself shall not allow it. all you who enter shall fall, yet not all shall be consumed by the void. she hungers for more, but you have twice failed her. you failed to follow the footsteps of the gemini who opened the gateway to your rebirth.

call me Alexander Hamilton the way I’m long winded and write like I’m running out of time

#Something is UP with me today I swear #I made 3 biblical/religious references within the last 2 posts #Or just 2 in this post alone if you don’t think like I do #I dread the day someone sees one of these #And then just like goes #“Aren’t you the omega verse guy”#I might reblog this with an explanation for every sentence in the second to last paragraph #Legitimately because I like to hear my self speak #Like no joke #secret life smp #secret life #martyn inthelittlewood #inthelittlewood #lizzie ldshadowlady #ldshadowlady #Half the post is in the tags omg im so sorry

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pinkfox567 · 6 months

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“What’s it like to be you, Jester?”

Oh what a question.

“Do you enjoy your life, what you are and what you do?”

There’s no easy answer.

“Jester, are you happy?”

Happy?

I spin my baton around and around until my fingers feel numb. I twirl the colorful stick until it feels like a task I can never stop. The repetition is blinding and soothing against the harsh thoughts of my mind.

My head tilts lazily towards the girl sitting on a plush bench only a few feet away. My eyelids are drooping and the hat on my head threatens to slip off onto the ground.

I sigh and close my eyes to shield them from the icy coolness of the air in this room. Or maybe I’m avoiding this girl’s gaze. My baton keeps spinning and I’m lost in the action of it. When I hear the girl pick up another cookie from the tray on the table, I blink my two-toned eyes back open to give her the satisfaction of my attention.

I can’t focus on talking while spinning this baton, so I catch it and lazily toss it into the holder in the corner of the room. It spins as it flies and my eyes follow its fleeting trail until it lands in its destination, next to other batons that look identical in shape but wildly different in color.

“Well, princess, is that something you should ask a lowlife like me? I am but your humble court jester.”

“Jester, please, I’m curious.”

The girl breaks the cookie she had grabbed in half and tosses me the piece she deems as smaller. I catch it above my head without a second thought and take a small bite. The baked sweet melts in my mouth and the prickle of something acidic stings my tongue. She takes a bite of hers as well and licks her lips with a small smile.

“Why don’t you call me my name, princess?”

“Why don’t you call me mine?”

I laugh, a sound closer to a giggle, and my eyes blink shut with the action. I swing my legs up and set them on the table crisscrossed, not making a single sound in the process. I feel weightless, like a ghost. I recline backwards in my seat to achieve a little bit of a higher level of comfort.

“Well, simple; it’s so much more fun to call you princess.”

She blinks at me with a hint of surprise and smiles. The girl laughs, her mouth curling up and showing her teeth in the prettiest way. A way that a princess would never do in front of her subjects.

“Well, Jester, I don’t know your name. You’ve never told me.”

“Have I not?”

My hat finally slides off the top of my head and hits the couch with a muted thump. It’s hard to even notice that it happened. It distracts me for a moment and I can barely recall what we had been talking about just seconds before. Has it been seconds? Maybe it's been minutes. Maybe hours.

“Tell me your name Jester, I bet it’s beautiful.”

I smile, wide, to the point my gums start to burn with the tug of my lips. Maybe my face is ripping itself apart, tearing a line from my dimples to my ears. A breathy laugh slips out of my lungs that stains the air with chocolate and butter.

“Oh, princess, nothing about me is beautiful.”

#writing #short story #writeblr #jester x princess #fantasy #fiction #edibles #this took me a year because i rewrote the second to last paragraph 14 times #i wish i was exaggerating

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deputyash · 7 months

Text

WIP Day

Tagged by @adelaidedrubman Thank you! (Also probably some other people from long ago too but I can't remember, sorry X3)

Tagging: @harmonyowl @derelictheretic @teamhawkeye @strafethesesinners @purplehairsecretlair @peachyaliien @ri-a-rose @redreart @statichvm @shellibisshe @glowwormsmith @fuckin-nancy @isobel-thorm @blissfulalchemist @direwombat @v0idbuggy @wrathfulrook @mel-eficent @cassietrn @beemot @englass @laindtt @shallow-gravy @the-delicate-disaster @katamari-possum

A/N: Have two WIPs cause I had a mini drabble that I had fun with, but also a piece of a longer work I've had for like weeks now lol. Also heads up for wound-tending and stitches for the second WIP.

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WIP 1:

Despite never seeing them himself, Astarion never cared for his eyes. The thought of them only ever brought back wretched memories of the beginning of his torment, his turning.

This slowly began to change the more time he spent with Izel, gazing into her eyes. They were an enchanting shade of garnet. One moment they would catch the light and sparkle so sweetly and the next they were a deep chasm he could get endlessly lost in. If red eyes could be as beautiful as hers, then perhaps his own could be too.

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WIP 2:

She looks over the wound again and repeats the process until she’s satisfied with the cleanliness of it. She sets the cloth aside before grabbing and opening the metal tin. Inside are several needles and various spools of thread.

Izel grabs one of each and sets aside the rest as she begins prepping the needle. She strings a considerable amount of thread through the needle before bringing her left arm to rest on her lap. She leans forward as she brings the needle to the wound.

Her fingers tremble slightly as she moves to bring the needle point to her skin. She pauses and tries to shake off the tremors but the combination of the chilly air, the mild pain thrumming through her, and her general fatigue, makes it a fruitless task.

With a soft hiss she pushes the needle into her skin. She angles it back up and brings it out on the other side of the wound, making her first stitch. She repeats the motion again, flinching when she hits a particularly tender spot. She glances up at the lake. The orange rays of sunlight were beginning to dip down below the shimmering surface of the water.

She was losing daylight fast. She needed to speed this along or she’d be here all night.

She repeats the motions again and again until she reaches a rhythm—a shaky one—but one nonetheless. Izel nearly reaches the end of the wound when a voice cuts through the silence, shocking her from her concentration.

In a split second, Izel is on her feet and spinning around to face her intruder, teeth bared in defense, uncaring that the needle and thread were still attached to her arm.

A pitched laugh is the only thing that she’s met with. “It’ll take a little more than a sewing needle to kill me, don’t you think, darling?”

Izel lets out an indignant huff but lets the tension fall from her shoulders. “What are you doing here, Astarion?”

He flashes her a smile. “I could ask you the same thing, dear. I saw you sneaking off earlier.” He makes a scurrying motion with his hands before continuing, “Not exactly subtly either, might I add.”

“Who said I was trying to be subtle? Perhaps I just wanted some peace and quiet.” She lets out a curt hum before continuing, “Now I’d really like to finish what I was doing. I’d rather not spend all night out here with a needle hanging from my arm.”

Astarion simply crosses his arms and looks at her, gazing at her from head to toe. Izel hardens her stare and turns her body away from him, but doing so causes her to mistakenly tug at the thread still connected to her arm. She flinches and lets out a soft hiss as she looks down at the stitches, which in turn reveals them to Astarion.

“That is some of the worst needlework I’ve seen in my life.”

Izel cocks her head to the side and shoots a glare in his direction. “They don’t need to be pretty. They just need to work.”

He lets out a breathy laugh, “And leave plenty of scars in the process.”

He saunters over and stops beside the makeshift table. He reaches down and picks up the tin full of sewing supplies. He plucks out a new needle and spool of thread. He brings the needle up to his crimson eyes.

“I’m quite the embroiderer you know.” He briefly waves down at his clothing. “Did everything you see here.”

Izel watches as he easily threads the needle before setting it aside and picking up a small pair of sewing scissors. He holds his hand out before waving it impatiently.

“Arm, darling. I don’t have all day.”

“Why are you helping me?” She asks, still leaning away from him.

“We’re a team, aren’t we? And while I am no Shadowheart, I can at least offer…what few skills I do have…” He clears his throat, “So, are you going to give me that precious arm of yours or are you indeed going to let that needle dangle there all night?”

Izel eyes him with a mix of wariness and curiosity. She could sense something beneath his words but she doesn’t push him for an explanation. Who was she to push for answers? She certainly wouldn’t appreciate it if their roles were reversed. In fact she'd loathe it. Almost as much as she loathes the idea of trusting a near stranger with a needle near her flesh, especially one who had pulled a dagger on her when they met.

She lets out a sigh and looks down at her arm. The stitches were sloppy and they were already coming loose in some areas and too tight in others from her abrupt stop. She grits her teeth before relenting. She turns towards him and lets her arm rest in his outreached hand.

“There. That wasn’t so hard now was it?”

Astarion brings the scissors to the stitches and begins cutting them all off. He carefully pulls out the remaining bits and tosses them off into the grass before reaching for the carafe of water. He pours water over the wound. Izel bites down on her teeth as the stinging resurfaces but otherwise stays firmly planted in place. She refuses to look weak in front of him.

He wipes away the water with a clean cloth before bringing the new needle to the top of the wound. Izel looks away from the operating area and instead looks up at Astarion’s face. His eyes were keenly honed into his work, his brows pinched together and his mouth pursed into a set look of concentration. Perhaps he isn’t lying. Maybe he really does know his way around a needle and thread.

Her eyes then glance down at his clothing. She hadn’t really noticed the needlework on it before. All along the garment is brilliant gold embroidery, making distinct shapes and patterns all over the neckline and shoulders. She didn’t know much about the ins and outs of embroidery, but from what she could see, his work was delicate, skillful, beautiful.

#I added an extra paragraph to the second WIP last minute so hopefully it isn't too jarring lol #deputyash's writing #my writing #deputyash's ocs #my ocs #izel #izel x astarion #astarion #astarion x tav #astarion x oc #bg3 #baldur's gate 3

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