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syd-djarin · 7 months

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Sugar, Spice & Please Fuck Me Nice (neighbor!joel AU)

chapter one: the new neighbors

*18+ Minors DNI*

Word count: ~2000+

Warnings: FLUFF, nervous reader, a hint of masturbation (f & m), neighbor!joel needs a warning, eventual smut

reader has hair that she fidgets with, "grows warm" /"cheeks burning" but not necessarily blushing, with embarrassment - minor edits to make this more inclusive for my readers <3

Author/s Notes: this is my first fic, so ofc I had to write Joel, and I have a weakness for neighbor!Joel.

this will be a series and I'm so excited to share this :) this is super self-indulgent, making reader based off myself so shameless self-insert kinda? lol

a huge thank you & ily to my babe @katiexpunk for helping me make edits/bouncing ideas and encouraging me to dive into writing <3

Tags: no outbreak AU, neighbor!joel, reader is sweetie pie, age gap (reader is mid-late 20's, joel is late 30's-early 40's in this), dilf!joel, gratuitous descriptions of joel being strong & sexy, f & m masturbation, eventual smut, fluff

AUSTIN, TX OCT 2005

You’ve lived in this neighborhood for the majority of your life, with the exception of your time in college.

Now that you’ve finished your undergrad, your parents, now retired and living in Maine, have graciously offered for you to stay in your childhood home. It wouldn’t be forever, you think, just until something comes through for you to use your degree on.

The neighborhood hasn’t changed that much through the years; some of the houses got renovations or additions, although many of the homes were the same that they have always been. Many of the people living in the cul-de-sac had known you since you were just a baby, and like to remind you of that more often than you’d like.

Occasionally a home would go up for sale, and it just so happened that the house directly across the street from yours was one of them – a classic blue Ranch style home, well maintained, albeit a bit outdated, but full of potential. The previous owners lived there for nearly four decades, and the entire neighborhood is antsy to solve the mystery of who’ll move in next.

You had assumed that the next tenants would be another nuclear family type – the stereotypical, American family - husband, wife, two kids, the works. Much to your surprise, a single father and his daughter were the succeeding residents of the house. A ruggedly handsome single father, at that.

+++

Move in day came for your new neighbors and just like everyone else who resided here, you couldn’t help but to be nosy, curiosity getting the best of you.

You discreetly parted your living room blinds, your curiosity at its peak, as your new neighbors began unloading the hefty boxes from their U-Haul and settling into their new abode. You even went to check the mail to get a closer peek, despite having already checked it earlier in the day when it arrived.

You couldn’t help but ogle at the broad-shouldered man lifting boxes as if they weigh nothing. His dark gray t-shirt clings to his biceps for dear life and you feel your pussy involuntarily throb every time he lifts up the bottom of it, bringing it to his forehead to wipe the sweat collecting there, each time revealing his soft tummy and the dark hair that trailed down from his belly button.

You imagine yourself holding onto those brawny arms, while he pounds-

Oh my god, get a grip, you internally chastise yourself. It’s been too long since you’ve gotten laid, defending yourself for conjuring up dirty fantasies of a man whose name you didn’t even know.

You decided you’d go introduce yourself once it appeared that they’d finished unloading the moving truck, not wanting to disrupt or cause an intrusion.

Baking being one of your love languages, you decide to make your new neighbors your grandma's famous cookies – snickerdoodles and chocolate chip. The recipes don’t call for much, but your grandma swears it’s the love that goes into them that makes them as good as they are. She had taught you to bake at a young age; ensuring you knew the fundamentals, techniques, and the importance of quality ingredients. She also taught you that the best gift you could give is a dessert, one that requires your time and attention.

Besides wanting to be a welcoming neighbor, baking provides you with a necessary distraction to your nefarious thoughts about the new neighborhood DILF. Were these cookies for him, sure, but it proved to be quite a successful deterrent from your naughty thoughts, allowing you the space to fully engross yourself in the task of making the dough, folding in the chocolate chips, rolling the batches into little balls, and spacing them out evenly on the tray before popping them in the oven.

After a couple of hours, the cookies now cool, and the warm autumn sun begins to set. Your home smells of warm sugar, a nostalgia that brings a smile to your face. You peek out the window and notice the moving truck is now gone, and figure now was as good a time as any to introduce yourself.

You neatly package the goodies into their designated container, draw on your oversized flannel and shoes, and begin your brief trek across the street. As you begin walking down your porch steps you’re hit with a wave of nervousness, your stomach does backflips and your heart beats faster. Get it together. You take several deep breaths and hold onto the cookie container a little tighter before continuing on your mission. Why are you such a nervous wreck? I mean, it’s just some guy, you (unsuccessfully) try to reason with yourself.

Reaching the front door, you knock– tap, tap, tap. A brief moment passes, and the door opens, leaving only the space of the doorframe between you and a young girl with wide, curious eyes and beautiful curly brown hair staring back at you.

“Hi there, I’m your neighbor across the street,” you say, gesturing towards your own home, “I wanted to introduce myself – I brought you some cookies, just a little something to say welcome to the neighborhood.”

“Cookies! Ah sweet, I love cookies - what kind?” she asks, not at all trying to hide her fairly obvious interest for them and less in you.

“There’s chocolate chip and a few snickerdoodles,” you reply, giving her an amused smile.

Her father, the devastatingly handsome one, makes his way up behind her and stands in the doorframe, halfway inside and halfway onto the porch where you stand. He was a sight to behold up close: dark hair that had a loose curls and a beard, both lightly dusted with some grays, chocolate brown eyes you could drown in, a mustache that perched atop plush lips.

He’s muscled in the shoulders and arms, which act as a nice compliment to his soft torso. He had the kind of physique that came from hard labor, which only fuels your attraction to him more.

If this were a cartoon, you were sure your eyes would be bulging out of their sockets in the shape of hearts.

“Oh, uh–hi,” you say, perhaps an octave too loud. “I was telling your daughter here that I brought over some cookies, you know, as a welcome gift,” you pause, realizing you hadn’t even introduced yourself. “I’m your neighbor, I live just across the way,” you say, nodding to your house. You turn back to face him and fidget with your hair. Through a nervy smile, you manage to give him your name.

“I’m Joel, this here’s Sarah,” he says, voice gruff and smooth at the same time. He holds out his hand to shake yours. You hope he wouldn’t notice how sweaty your hand is; maybe it’s the nerves, or the still-sticky Texan air, despite it being October. Probably both.

His palm is warm; worn and calloused in some places, but firm and inviting. You couldn’t help but gawk at how small he made your hand feel in his. He releases your grip; bringing you out of your brief trance, and your eyes once again meet.

“Welcome to the neighborhood, Joel and Sarah,” you smile and hold out the container of cookies for Joel to take. Before he can even reach up to grab them, Sarah already has her hands on them and has run back into the house, murmuring something that sounds like thanks as she does.

He had just met you, but Joel couldn’t deny how much he likes hearing you saying his name in your gentle, nectarous voice.

Your hands now empty, you nervously interlace your fingers and twirl your thumbs, unsure of what to say next. Joel’s eyes take note of the smudge of flour on your cheek – cute. He also notices the flour in the cleft of your cleavage, but he tries not to make that fact obvious. The flour between your breasts stares back at him, but he collects his composure, averting his gaze back to you. He should point it out to you, he thinks, but you seem shy and he doesn’t want to embarrass you, or scare you away from wanting to come over again.

“‘Preciate the cookies, sweetheart,” he says, voice low. His eyes stay glued to your face. You avert your eyes downwards and cross your arms, buckling under the weight of his gaze. You felt your cheeks and chest grow hot at his use of sweetheart.

“I’m just – uh,” you trip over your words, nervous, “I’m just across the street if you need me,” you offer, giggling at the suggestive way that sounds, “you know, like a cup of sugar or anything like that,” you add.

Joel nods in reply, edges of his mouth coming up in a smirk as if to acknowledge your kindness, being careful not to full on grin in amusement of his apparent effect on you.

“Same to you,” he says before closing the door, perhaps eyeing you a moment too long as you walk away. He turns to enter the house, only to find Sarah staring at him, cookie in hand, and a knowing grin on her face.

“Why didn’t you tell her she had flour all over herself?” she asks, teasing, like she could already tell he was embarrassed to admit the truth.

“Did she? Hmm, didn’t seem to notice,” he says, trying to hide the lie behind a weak cough, before walking away, cheeks obviously flushed.

Back in the safety of your own home, you come to a still with your hand pressing on the door, reeling from your interaction with Joel. You were wired up, buzzing with arousal and nerves.

And God, the way he called you sweetheart.

You replay the moment over and over in your head, not wanting to forget his Texan twang or the way he looked at you when he said it. You could have died, right then and there. You let your mind run wild, thinking of all the things you wanted to do with him, what you wanted to do to him.

Needing to relieve the throbbing ache in between your legs, you decide a shower is in order. When stepping into your bathroom, you catch yourself in the mirror. You were mortified at the discovery of the flour on your face and chest. You had been so engrossed with baking the cookies and too anxious about taking them over to Joel’s that you failed to give yourself a once-over in the mirror before heading out the door. The arousal you felt temporarily held precedent, you’d process your embarrassment later.

You step into the steamy shower and touch yourself, thinking of Joel. You shove two fingers inside your pussy, imagining they were Joel’s long, thick, dexterous fingers.

Little did you know Joel was having his own feelings about your little introduction.

Several of his new neighbors come to introduce themselves in the coming days, under the guise of welcoming him and his daughter, but in reality, they wanted to get scoop on who they were. Where had they moved from, what prompted the move, we’re they planning on staying short-term, what did he do for a living, was there a Mrs. Joel Miller? And once they found out he was a contractor, there were a whole other set of questions of “would you mind taking a look at my ____”.

He liked the neighborhood, and while the people were nice and seemingly mean well, Joel begins to feel irritation at the consistently prying questions, annoyed that people felt like they were entitled answers to begin with.

But you.

He was not expecting you.

Beautiful, endearing, kind eyes, a smile he thought could end wars. You had been sweet and respectful, and didn't appear to have ulterior motives. It made his heart palpitate and sent blood rushing somewhere he knew it shouldn’t. You were young, too young and sweet, too sweet for a man like him.

Then he saw how you stared at his hands, grew warm and shy when his gaze had lingered too long on you.

That night, with Sarah tucked into bed, he grabs one of the snickerdoodle cookies, Sarah insisting that he save all of the chocolate chip ones for her, but he doesn’t mind; snickerdoodles are his favorite.

He bites into the soft cookie, his eyes fluttering shut as he does, an involuntary reaction to the sweet, perfectly soft texture. He lets out a moan, the kind that is elicited when tasting something delicious.

And the fact that you made them? The thought sends blood straight to his dick.

Joel, in inner turmoil, was trying to resist the temptation to touch himself to the thought of you. God, if your cookies were this good, so sweet and fluffy, how good would you taste.

The thought consumes him, the temptation too strong.

He polishes off more than three of the cookies, before heading to shower. That night he takes his cock in his fist to the thought of you, and your stupidly delicious fucking cookies.

Joel was a gentleman, sure, but he was also a man.

And the best way to get to a man’s heart?

Through his stomach.

THE END

#joel x f!reader #joel miller #neighbor!joel x f!reader #first fanfic #joel fic #joel x reader #joel miller is babygirl #joel fanfic #reader insert #fluff #smut

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justaboot · 1 year

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Okay but the thing about DT is that they’re related, but it’s still a found family. No one fills a traditional role, there is no nuclear family, and thats what makes it all so much more powerful, is that everyone had to chose and fight to have that role.

“Donald is the triplets’ dad,” no, he’s not. That’s the point. He’s their uncle, and was always gonna be their uncle, even when everything was all sunshine and roses they were all going to be growing up in the mansion together. But he’s not their dad, he’s their clumsy, lame-ass, too-loud, long suffering uncle, and that doesn’t make that role any less influential and important, because he had a choice, and gave up everything to raise them safely.

Della should have been a given, but they didn’t get that chance, so what would have been a no-brainer became an uphill war to get home to the only traditional family spot, one they left open for her. She wanted it and fought for it in a way that bio-parents traditionally don’t have to. And the kids fought for her, too. She wasn’t taken for granted, and they fought to have a relationship with her memory before they even knew she was still alive. Once she came back, they had to start fresh, and you have to want it to make it work, and they did.

And I know I’ve got kind of a brand with my writing, but Scrooge isn’t, and was never, the twins’ father. He’s, again, their uncle. We didn’t seem much of Donald, (he was caught up in his own grunge thing,) but he had his rich uncle back and forth thing with Scrooge, and Della made him up as some god-king that she had to unlearn later, but they had a relationship offscreen pre-series. We’ll never know in canon what happened to their household, but he was an influence outside of their nuclear family, and he chose to take them in when they couldn’t be with their mother and father anymore. He went out of his way to raise them, and was he the best parent? No, of course not. But he brought them in. They were just his kids, and he let that be a complete sentence.

I could talk endlessly about Webby’s found role in the family. Bentina’s not Webby’s mom, she’s her Granny. (I’m not looking at the finale, I don’t know her.) She took her in. Webby’s not the triplets’ sister, they took her in. Donald grouped her in immediately. Della never knew any different, and how different is 4 from 3 anyway? You literally watch Scrooge decide to be her uncle onscreen. (fine I’m looking at the finale-Choice is endlessly more significant than sharing DNA. “He’s her dad,” girl he already chose her, you’re undermining everything, he didn’t chose to have a daughter, he loved a little girl enough to make her his niece, it’s enough.)

LP was at their first Christmas together. They loved him enough to call him family. They loved Lena enough to call her family. Dude, even Goldie, she’s not Louie’s mother figure, shes a mentor. She’s some cranky old bitch from Canada who accidentally let slip she has a heart, and who she is was enough for them to keep dragging her back until it stuck.

No one was taken for granted. They literally made their own family. It’s enough. Send tweet.

#donald duck #della duck #Huey Duck #Dewey Duck #Louie Duck #Webby Vanderquack #scrooge mcduck #ducktales 2017 #Its my day off and I have feelings

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sgiandubh · 9 months

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Such unsmiling people

The comment that moved me the most after posting that August 10 diatribe came from a very special blogger, @myrthil23. I promised her a longer, thoughtful answer, so here it is.

I share with her way more than meets the eye and with a bit of deductive skills, you could easily place us very specifically on an European map. To be honest, I was surprised (and then absolutely thrilled, of course) to find someone like her hanging on in here. But this is not the only reason prompting a response - her comment made me think a lot about a couple of relevant things.

For those who loathe foraging for reblogs, here goes:

In the colorful Shipper family, the Eastern Europeans are (supposedly) the unsmiling ones. This is one of the stubborn clichés that informed the Western gaze, especially in Communist times. Unsmiling, foreboding and unfathomable people: I am not smiling, I am laughing while writing it, because if anything, Myrthil, @zeya-zg, a couple of others and I do share a superb ability to use bullshit-o-meters, an unsinkable sense of humor and a hefty dose of sarcasm. All of these are basic, compulsory street smarts if you want to survive, God knows how, a nuclear winter of sorts.

Imagine you grow up in a world with empty supermarket shelves but permanently sold-out concert halls, where trivial details such as cotton swabs, potato chips (crisps, heh), political parties or The Last Tango in Paris are virtually unknown. Imagine your family is either cautiously aligned to some public idiocy they loathe everyday at home, teaching you at the same time to never talk to strangers. Or even worse, a political pariah, for reasons that have everything to do with the way you sip your tea, as Ella Fitzgerald would say. The latter situation (mine) was something very much akin to a civil death. And you just knew you could never be, for imbecile but firm reasons, an architect, a lawyer or even an epidemiologist: jobs way too sensitive to entrust the enemies of the people (and their spawn) with.

What is left for you, then, when the view from your window, in 1982, is something not very different from this photograph:

(side note: these people are staying in line to buy 1 kilogram of sugar for each person, which was the monthly allowance fixed by law in my country, from 1980 to 1989; you could only buy those with Government-issued tickets, not unlike what happened in the UK during WWII or what you can see in series like The Handmaid's Tale)

When all is seemingly lost, you will still have, in no particular order: books. Music (including piano lessons). Sports. Each other (although that was overall more complicated than it seemed). Going to the opera and never taking off your winter coat inside, but enjoying every second of it. Impromptu dinners by candlelight during power outages ("wir machen ein bisschen Stimmung"/let's make a bit of atmosphere, grinned my aunt). Foreign languages (a must). Fits and giggles and jokes galore. And the ability to adapt to just about anything, anywhere.

When change finally reached us, many had the almost surreal opportunity to go West. Some came back, others didn't, simply because they chose to continue elsewhere their pursuit of happiness. And yes, Myrthil is right, that fabled West was always something to behold and measure up to. In my case, it was almost too easy, but then I consider myself really lucky: going to live in Paris, at 18, felt both as homecoming and being left alone (and with unlimited credit) in a candy store.

So, here we are. We may have discovered Sylvia Plath a bit late, but I think we are decently knowledgeable about Chaucer. We sometimes may sound Edwardian and if we do, you should probably blame C.E. Eckersley's Essential English (this is how that life-long affair started, for me). And if anything, we bring another, perhaps even more inquisitive, angle to these strange things we are dealing with daily, in here.

But for the love of Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, don't you ever dare tell us what to think and with whom to talk. Don't call us stupid. Don't call us liars. Historical reasons prompted a durable allergy to sanctimonious speech and yes (I can only speak for myself) I will always, always react. Because we do not deserve the arrogance of people who have no idea of how it really was to grow up somewhere in Eastern Europe during the Eighties. Oh, and something else, lest I forget: being pariahs never bothered us - we can cope.

Other than that, we should go along just fine. :)

youtube

PS: @claraisabelcampohermoso, you probably don't know how your gif made me smile. Nadia will always be Nadia: a humble, warm person with a terribly heartbreaking story.

#fandom #Youtube

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whatbigotspost · 9 months

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On being real mean and then less mean

Long post incoming........I've been chipping away at writing this for like a month now and (unlike my usual self) I've stalled out a few times unsure of what all I want to say. But I think I've got it squared up the way I would like to. Unfortunately, I need a long context laying preamble. Sorry this will feel like an online recipe experience 😅

As the 5 of you who usually read my blocks of text will know well, I grew up in a very toxic, abusive, high-control environment. If you wanted to intentionally produce kids who would have anxiety, shame, self-loathing, aggression, be overly-competitive, angry, and equipped with little-to-no social skills, you should be parented like I was. In my nuclear family, we couldn't have had worse life lessons or role modeling when it comes to building healthy relationships, strong friendships, and harmonious existence with others. Violence was often normalized. Manipulation was encouraged. Specific conditions and rules were put on receiving love and/or affection. We weren't seen as independent humans who had their own lives and thoughts and ambitions--we were seen as extensions of my father, brought into the world to be his unquestioning cheerleaders and adoring team, to do our best to become his clones, to live out his unrealized dreams, and to combat his grievances w/ the world.

In short, it sucked.

Above all, I was taught in a very deep and real way to hate myself, not that this was explicitly acknowledged mind you, but it was the implication of everything. This self loathing was an extension of my father's own insecurities and full inability to grow the fuck up and build a life for himself that was emotionally mature, resilience, and self-caring. This mentality, if truly internalized, creates ugliness from the inside that radiates outward. I can see that so clearly now, but back then, I didn't understand it at all.

I was implicitly taught a thought process like, "the best way to 'own' someone is to shit talk them into crying" or "you can make yourself look stronger and distract from your own shortcomings by staying 1 step ahead of everyone through making THEM feel like shit about their shortcomings."

But you weren't just mean to someone to stay ahead of them, you were also mean as a way to ingratiate others to you. "Telling it like it is" even if what you said was unnecessarily cruel, was a virtue. Like, "what? I'm just saying what we're all thinking!" kind of stuff. I was taught that "teasing" is a way you show someone you love them, where "teasing" means saying all kinds of awful things that are quite hurtful. I was taught that being funny was one of the most important qualities and it didn't matter if those laughs came at the expense of others' feelings and if, over time, your comments began to destroy those around you.

It's "just teasing." It's "just joking." It was a lot of "oh come, on grow a thicker skin" over "maybe saying cruel shit for fun is bad?" It was "God, I can dish it and I can take it, why can't you?" over "maybe I want friends who support one another instead of digging at our insecurities."

Some recent nostalgia I've been wallowing in this summer reminded me of my grossest self who lived by these rules.

Those worst moments, where I was a bully and an asshole, all occurred for me at school, when I was probably around 11/12 and older. School was a very interesting place for me. When I try to paint an efficient picture of what my childhood home was like for others, I often say, my family existed in a weird liminal someplace between mainstream, mid western white suburban society and a survivalist/separatist/cult/fringe culture (like Tara Westover describes in Educated or as seen in Captain Fantastic if you're familiar w/ either of those.) We were a cult of 4 and there were many things We Did Not Do, all my dad's rules. (My grandparent's house was a safe harbor unlike my home, but that's a tangent for another time.) That said, accessing education was something my father DID trust the local government to do (as long as he could emphasize over and over how we can't trust everything they say, we could trust their lessons of math, music, English, etc.) He strategically chose a place to live where I could get the best "free" education possible in Central Indiana. My social life existed fully in a traditional school setting, where it took me all of 2 seconds to clock that other kids' lives weren't like mine, and that was compelling to me. I became a lifelong student of interpersonal relationship dynamics far before I realized I had become a lifelong student of relationships. I remember when I was in elementary school journaling about and thinking about and talking about all the friend groups and dynamics, etc. Writing stories about friend groups. Creating Barbie universes and dramas with 2 neighborhood friends. Trying to spend more and more time w/ peers instead of family.

Beyond that, I loved school because I would receive praise and love at home for A's and praise and love from my teachers for being "so good" (aka offering 100% deference to adult authority as I been told to do, even if I could question them inside.) This all means when I was very young, I did SO WELL at figuring out school...how to make friends...how to get an A+...how to get teachers to love me...how to be The Good Kid...how to reduce my value to my grades and what I produced, which is a mentality I've still only begun to unweave from within me, some 30 years later.

Anyway, point is, despite the hand I was dealt, I somehow never had trouble making friends and with a lot of my closest friends, I wasn't all that mean to in the way I describe above, at least initially. But when I did apply that behavior, god damn was it ugly. I get that now, but back then, I felt cool as fuck.

The more it (temporarily worked for me) the more I used meanness. By the time I was like 17, I literally was known as mean and wore it as a badge of honor. Lacking emotional intelligence and an overtly loving home environment, I thought it was normal? cool? idk...to "not be able to handle mushy emotional stuff." I would (LITERALLY) run if friends were telling me they loved me. It became more and more common for me to apply, "witty mean girl" quips to even my closest friends. Stuff was said about me like, "oh, if she makes fun of you, it means she really loves you." I was always saying shit to gain laughs from others that really hurt some people and I would act like that was a THEM thing like "god, they're so sensitive, poor widdle baby."

NOT GOOD. Nothing to be proud of. Signs of someone who deep down hates themselves and hopes you don't notice because of a big, bad exterior. In this era, I was someone who attracted and accepted other toxic people and was abusive toward and accepted abuse from friends who had these same issues. How I met and fell in love w/ my partner who is not at all like this during that period of time back when sometimes confounds me. His boundaries and feelings are why I started really looking inward. His patience and willingness to understand what was going on for me was immense (as I was similarly patient for things related to his baggage.) FOR YEARS we had a dynamic where I'd "make fun of" "tease" "just joke" about him too harshly in front of others and he would ask me over and over to stop. I'd get better for a while, then I'd backslide and make him feel like shit in a group setting again--but hey! everyone laughed at my ~*~*just oh so hilarious comment*~*~ and so that makes it fine right?? Obviously, not, and the older I got the more I started to FINALLY see "mean" as mean and not "telling it like it is" or being a core part of my humor.

How I REALLY know that this toxic coping mechanism I used to my benefit was a thinly veiled defense mechanism style behavior to cloud my deep deep deep self loathing is because when I'd be talking w/ my partner about his very reasonable and normal request that I not say unnecessarily cruel things about him for fun in front of others, I would be afraid of things like, "But that's part of who I am? It's my humor."

I really thought so lowly of myself that I believed that if I wasn't witty-mean, people wouldn't love me. That I wouldn't still be funny. That I wouldn't be ME unless I was being MEAN. It was so backwards and upside down because my meanness did make me harder to be around, and people were right there loving me anyway, not because of it, but despite it.

It's so sad to realize this! Looking back and describing this girl now feels in both parts foreign to me and also like looking in a mirror. I've been in 20 years of some form or another of "recovery" from this kind of childhood now, and I'm about 15 years into true healing and re-parenting myself. Almost 14 years ago, I made the biggest shift toward killing this old mentality...I moved away from my home town and the people I spent my days around to that point. I had an opportunity for a hard reset in my social life and behaviors, leaving behind old reputations that didn't serve me. And I’m still me. I’m spicy and I’m real and I’m blunt and I’m funny but I’m not cruel or mean anymore. The old me sometimes still rears her ugly head, especially when I'm tired, stress, or dysregulated. But it's less "how I am" now than ever in my life.

As I've been thinking about this whole topic for quite a few weeks now, and I tried to articulate what I did that really changed me and allowed me to shed that mean girl shell of armor I was wearing that I had so thoroughly needed to outgrow. If these things resonate with you, I do have some pieces of advice.

Speak from your personal values 100% of the time. That means defining your personal values first, not just accepting what you think is valuable you've been told by others. Once I grew the maturity to understand I needed my own life values, it was very simple to grasp that I was not in line with them. My top 5 personal life values are: love, equity, humor, loyalty, and open communication. Mean jokes don't check many of those boxes.

Become your own best friend first. My behaviors were driven by self-hatred I did not choose. When I choose how I want to feel about myself, I choose self-compassion, and I actively cultivate this mentality and practice all. the. time so that I don't backslide.

Stop "telling it like it is." This is not helpful. No one needs something obvious and cruel pointed out. This is basic "THINK" acronym stuff. It's a classic because it works. Is what you're about to say.... "true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, kind." Telling it like it is is only TRUE, it's rarely -HINK.

Never "just joke" about something someone could possibly be vulnerable about. If someone has a physical wound, you don't jab your finger into it for fun. When someone has an emotional tenderness, you similarly don't jab a mean comment into it. When in doubt, just don't joke about it.

Have actual hard conversations and "call outs" in the right times/spaces. Sometimes behavior that one friend may call "mean" is actually a very necessary hard conversation to the other person. So it's helpful to just remember that those kind of real-deal communications are rarely done effectively or productively with an audience or by using humor. Real shit deserves a real shit tone.

Push yourself to say the nicest stuff and just be fucking sincere and genuine. Tell your friends you love them. Tell your friends when you are obsessed with what they are achieving/doing/saying. Tell your friends WHAT you love about them. Make an effort for your most important relationships to have far, far more "positive bids" than negative.

Use "teasing" or "self deprecating" humor selectively and strategically. Sometimes, my partner and I DO tease each other by having open communication and actually knowing one another's boundaries, I now understand what's fine and what's not. So I can proceed w/o hurting him. But I don't know most people to that level, so I'm not going to try to tease someone else in front of others w/o that knowledge anymore. Self deprecating humor has also been a go-to for me in the past and one of the people I could be meanest to was myself. I realized I should use it sparingly with people who I don't know well, too, because I don't necessarily need to give them a cheat sheet to what my baggage is. And lastly, in general, I think that we should ALL be very very careful to spare strangers our sarcasm, deadpan comments, or whatever. Many folks are neurodiverse or otherwise don't get your sarcasm and your implications can be lost in translation. You never know what topics, with strangers, might be a hornet's nest you stumble into.

PFEW! Ok, I think that's plenty for now! If you've got similar tips or thoughts, LMK! Of course, I still fuck up my practice of not being mean all the time, but the best thing about having done this work and shared it with those around me is that my friends are much more like to say something like, "OW! Was that your dad talking for a sec?" and help me than to just go on assuming I'm an asshole. 😆

#healthy relationships #abuse #interpersonal relationships #toxic relationships #child abuse #self compassion #healing #reparenting #resources #advice

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ludwigplayingthetrombone · 11 days

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After seeing your beautiful new piece with the cute vignettes of team 7+team kakashi, i was wondering — how do you feel about Naruto (the boy)?

o thankyou! ;u; my feelings on narts the boy are so torn tbh so im gonna throw my ramblings under a cut bc idk if i can articulate this correctly

og naruto narts? love him. adore him. i miss that dumb little punk kid i loved him challenging the system and wanting to change it and help people. i /wanted/ him to inspire people like kakashi and gai's gen to do the same and realize how fucked up their childhoods were being weapons of the state at like 6 and 7

shippuden narts? He just rubs me the wrong way. started out good with gaara rescue arc, but then all his pizzaz left and let his obsession of sasuke be the only priority. (This isnt his fault, but kishi writing it so ONLY naruto could kill or defeat most of the enemies with his new op move was so boring to me. none of the secondary cast got to do shit) He also didnt take one second to question if his endgoal is still the same since he turned out to be exactly the opposite of "anyone can be hokage" bc he turns out to have the specialist blood of all and got revealed as a nepo baby and chosen one. He licherally became complicit and changed next to nothing as hokage in the end. the status quo remained the fucking same. Naruto rejecting the hokage position bc he recognizes neji was right is so much more interesting to me

Naruto is at his best when sasuke isnt involved imho. I adore his interactions with everyone else bc he truly loves his friends and family, but him and sakura were so delusional over sasuke but didnt actually Know him and his trauma they just loved the Idea of him. the way they talk about it, they act like sasuke was kidnapped and didnt CHOOSE to leave and even tried to kill them multiple times. shikamaru stronger than me, it'd slap the shit out of both of them

I wish they'd head on addressed the whole "sasuke's whole family was slaughtered in front of him" together and not "you have to come back so we can be a team and things can be normal again like nothing ever happened and fight me!" naruto would be the first one to offer to pull up on itachi with him lets be real lmaoo. I wanted him to offer sasuke support to BOTH tackle the injustices of the leaf. it's kinda like hiruzens passiveness with orochimaru and danzo. never holding certain loved ones accountable he was the same way with obito and even hiruzen himself. (is he even aware of hiruzen's part in the uchiha massacre or obito killing his parents?? then pardoning orochimaru?? HELLO???)

There were moments where i did see our boy shine thru, but then the god powers bullshit hit. in short, bring back my punk little man. his pure intentions were ruined by bad writing

my naruto endgame for him is not stuck at a deskjob he hates with a nuclear family he neglects and more he chooses to give up the hokage job to someone who actually can enact change and who isnt from a prestigious family. travels around helping people hands on and finally gets the peaceful life with found family he never had. advocating better for the next gen.

part one naruto, my baby boy

#its so funny bc i defend sasuke when i talk about naruto bc he was..... not a great friend in hindsight to me #sasunaru toxic rivals kakagai healthy rivals truly #making naruto minatos son was probably the worst choice

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wishcamper · 3 months

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All in the Family: ACOTAR PART II

Welcome back to our multi-part lesson on ACOTAR and Family Systems! Today’s topic is family roles, the interplay between them, and their combination’s influence on the nuclear family emotional process in the Inner Circle.

Pre-requisites: Part I

Creds: license and mf master's degree in counseling babyyy. and unhinged enough to write it all down.

No content warnings, just garden variety family dysfunction.

oh my god what the fuck does that mean

Let's back up and start with the structure of the IC pre-Archeron invasion. We have Rhysand, Cassian, Azriel, Morrigan, and Amren in a found family. This is where we have to suspend our disbelief a bit, because you’ll notice there are no parents in this family. However that doesn’t mean no one functions as a parent, because in any system there is a hierarchy, at least in an emotional sense, and the power vacuum will always get filled.

When a parent is missing from a nuclear family, very often one of the children will step in to fill the role and rebalance the system. Older siblings caring for younger ones, female children picking up housework, even phrases like calling someone the “man of the house” confer symbolic authority and responsibility to someone theoretically on the same level as the others. The dark end of this road is emotional incest, when parents rely on a child emotionally in the same way they would a spouse, a dynamic that is deeply inappropriate and incredibly damaging for a child.

Okay, so let’s talk about sibling position to see who is most likely to step up. This is a found family, so obviously none of these are based in biology, but if we look at the core four, they have a pretty clear birth order layout in terms of both power and personality.

Rhys: A textbook oldest child - responsibility-seeking, serious, tending toward leadership roles. Oldest children often feel the burden of setting a good example for others. Prone to relieving anxiety via control.

Az and Cas: Classic ends of the middle child spectrum (invisible to hyper-visible). Middle children are flexible, adaptable, and competitive, and often struggle with questions identity. They may seek to meet needs for connection and validation in unhealthy ways.

Mor: Baby of the family energy through and through. Youngest children are more likely to be outgoing, creative, and rebellious, and struggle with inferiority and self-centeredness. Interestingly, they’re also more likely to abuse alcohol and are overrepresented in psychiatric populations.

Amren, hilariously, comes across as an only child - they tend to be wise, independent, and private, struggling with social skills and receiving criticism. (1)

So who’s filling our parental roles here in the IC? Who has power over the others? Rhysand is an obvious choice - he regularly makes decisions for the group as well as individual members on the basis of his feelings and his political position. I think you could even argue Rhys sees the people of Velaris as his children, too, though he definitely plays favorites lol. Amren also emerges as a person with power, given everyone is afraid of her and she has influence over Rhys. Amren has some authority over the others, though she is less invested in their personal lives and so functions differently in the system than Daddy Rhys.

So Rhys is one parent, and Amren is like a weird aunt. It’s very normal in systems with a parentified child (PC) that the other children feel resentful - they’re all supposed to be on the same level, and yet one of them has been exalted above the rest. The PC can respond to this so many ways - force, charm, control, bribes, threats, ignoring them - it’ll depend on the person and the individual system. But the PC will also feel that counter-resentment and leverage the power position to create balance in the family (Cassian, Azriel, stop trying to kiss your sisters). The irony is that, in this system, no one asked Rhys to be in power over his friends - he decided he wanted them in his court and blurred those lines himself. I suspect this was intentional, though likely unconscious, because it gives him a nuclear option if he ever needs to reestablish order and control in his family. We see him pull rank in tense personal moments that have literally nothing to do with politics despite his excuse they do.

(I do think, though, that there’s an argument to be made here that, for people in certain positions of prominence and influence, all your choices are political. Your image is part of your power and so, by extension, the parts of your personal life that become public have an effect on your ability to rule. Rhys and Feyre use this rationale with Nesta in ACOSF, though my babe isn’t exactly a Hunter Biden. More of a Claudia Conway, I’d say.)

Let's go back to our scary image from the beginning.

Bowen believed in the importance of visualizing this structure, so he advocates for family mapping or construction of a genogram (2). Given what we’ve unpacked so far, we can roughly plot the individual connections and hierachy. I’ve created this one to show the basics of the relationships and power structure in the IC, and we’ll get more specific from here.

Solid lines=connectedness

Dashed lines=conflict

Arrow=direction of energy

Squiggles=ambivalence/fluctuation

Line thickness=emotional closeness

Amren’s special line to Rhys=whatever ulterior motive she has

If you remember from my last post, one of the most important forces in a family is the triangle. Take another look at the triangles above, and see which ones seem unstable to you. The one that immediately stands out to me, even just visually, is the Cas/Az/Mor triangle. Each individual relationship has a different tenor, which creates a lot of instability. You can see how Mor needs that closeness with Cas to balance the tension with Az, but in order to keep their relationship stable, Cas and Az have Rhys as a moderating presence. Because what is the one thing they all have in common? A close relationship with Rhys. And Rhys has Amren to reinforce his power and responsibility, keeping the whole system in balance.

In this way, the IC’s system, while dysfunctional, is relatively stable pre-Archerons.

To understand how that’s possible, we have to talk about anxiety. Anxiety is the main energy that moves conflict through the family and sets off the nuclear family emotional process (NFEP). Anxiety must go somewhere. In enmeshed systems like this one (members’ emotions and security are highly dependent on one another), members relieve their anxiety through the system instead of resolving it individually or in dyads. In cut off, emotionally distant systems, anxiety gets internalized or displaced outside the family.

Given the sheer variety of relationships in the system, the most likely source of anxiety is Morrigan. She has a different relationship to every person in the system. She’s in the middle of the power hierarchy between the “parents” and the “kids”, and floats around inside the relatively stable triangle of the bat boys, with individual connections to each one . She also has a pattern of internal conflict that she moderates externally via alcohol and relationships. Despite not having the most power externally, Mor’s actions and reactions often cause the rest of the system to shuffle around her, giving her a great deal of power.

But don’t just take my word for it - let’s look at this in action.

Say Mor, Cas, and Az go out together bc apparently that is something they do regularly. Mor feels Azriel getting too close, which triggers her anxiety because she does not want to talk about whatever is between them. In response, she communicates her displeasure by leveraging the triangle and focusing her intimate attention on Cassian. But this creates conflict for Cassian, who wants to moderate Mor’s anxiety without rupturing his relationship with Azriel. Hence, we get the weird overfamiliar platonic besties routine, threading the needling of giving Mor the protection she’s asking for without out-and-out antagonizing his brother. Azriel buries his hurt feelings and retracts emotionally, despite wanting to be connected, and they go back to how they were.

So we can see how Mor has generated the anxiety, and it follows down the chain: she passes it off to the boys, who deal with it through emotional cutoff (Az) and enmeshment (Cas). Cassian steps in between the conflict at Mor’s unconscious request and takes inappropriate responsibility for Azriel’s feelings of rejection and Mor’s anxiety, while Az puts his feelings away and reestablishes emotional distance. This is the NFEP in action.

And yet Cassian and Azriel are still shown to be close, so where do these feelings go? I mean, they do physically fight each other all the time lol. Azriel banks a lot of repressed resentment he has to discharge elsewhere. Cassian feels the burden of peacemaking and internalizes the unresolved conflict as his own fault, doubling down on his commitment to making it better. Mor avoids contending with her own feelings because everyone else is doing it for her.

And here’s where Rhys becomes a moderating presence for all of them. Rhys has ultimate decision-making power over who is in and who’s out of the family, and sets the rules of engagement. He decides who gets respect, who’s allowed to initiate conflict. Rhys hold’s the power in the bat boys triangle, the strongest alliance in the system, incentivizing Cas and Az to get along with each other. He also incentivizes Mor/Cas/Az to keep their shit together because Amren has influence over him, and they need their alliance to leverage power against her. Rhys doesn’t have a problem with the buffer, so they rest of them “don’t” either.

The best question to ask when it comes to dysfunction is this: who benefits? We can see this in larger systems, too: who benefits for housing disparity, patriarchy, systemic racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia? People in power. If a system is balanced via dysfunction, it’s because whoever is in power wants it that way. With families, this is often more unconscious - perhaps Rhys is just as afraid of family disintegration as Mor, and believes addressing their issues will cause them to split. Perhaps there is a more generational pattern at play. I think it’s worth considering not just how this family functions, but what conscious and unconscious choices are being made given their individual families of origin.

And then the Archeron’s come, and all these cracks will be exposed and the system will get blown to shit. See you next time, class dismissed!

Sources:

Eckstein, D., & Kaufman, J. A. (2012). The role of birth order in personality: An enduring intellectual legacy of Alfred Adler. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 68(1), 60–61.

Brown, J. (1999). Bowen family systems theory and practice: Illustration and critique. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 20(2), 94-103.

Genogram made with Canva, art by @artworks_by_rokii, rosalynnart on deviant art, @sallteas

#prythian university #acotar #morrigan #cassian #rhysand #azriel #amren #family dysfunction #family systems #the buffer #sjm critical

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erenaeoth · 6 months

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I saw what you wrote in tags and what I can say? You know me too well! :D So for a headcanon meme, as I'm not familiar with Resident Evil beyond some really basic idea, but I'm curious after seeing a lot great art from your reblogs, how about ◉ - Any other question of your choosing for albert wesker, as in, gimme your most favorite headcanon (or two or more!) about him :)

Ahh, you're too kind giving me a question like this!

I guess my main headcanon for Wesker is that he has an anti-social personality disorder, so whilst he comes over as extremely charming and eloquent, he feels no real empathy for others, and most of his emotional-appearing responses are learned behaviour. There are a few other aspects in others that he has to fake and try to understand - like what attachment to a nuclear family is meant to feel like (he grew up in an orphanage), and how others think, as he realised from an early eage that he can make connections and process information a lot faster than most.

For these reasons, he's always set himself above others, and considers them almost a distinct species from himself, although he doesn't fully develop his god complex until many years later. There are exceptions to this. Once he found others as brilliant as himself, like William Birkin, he was much better able to quantify what his own strengths are when compared to others. William is one of the few people he feels he can relax around, since he doesn't have to hide his true nature (clever and sadistic) and can just be himself. And because he has outlets where he feels understood, he's able to curtail the prideful aloofness I imagine he walked around with as a teen and child.

I think one of his main motivations, prior to becoming fixated on his global human enhancement (and genocide) plans, was really to stave off boredom. I think he loves the complexity of playing different people off one another and having mulitple allegiances, of being involved in cutting edge research, action, espionage, of wearing all these different faces. I think it's a game to him that excites him. And I think at its heart he wants independence. He doesn't want to be owned or used, and the best way he can serve himself is to always have a backdoor escape, always have a spare loyalty up his sleeve, never trust anyone, and assume that everyone wants to use his brilliance and then discard him. So it's a game he adores playing, but also one he has to play in order to survive.

Thanks for the ask he lives in my head for always and these are things I'm writing my fic to explore!

#albert wesker #headcanon meme #resident evil #asks #re thoughts

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butchhamlet · 1 year

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what are your favourite things about king lear? also do you know any really good productions that i can watch online for free? asking because i didn’t really like king lear when i read it (except for edmund. i love edmund) and knowing why other people like it might let me look at it from a different angle. because i know it’s objectively a good play, and there’s a 50% chance of me having to study it next year so i want to like it

so i started writing a response to this ask and then paused to plot out my points (as if writing a goddamn essay) and then i looked at my points and i had written

fucked-up families

apocalypse vibes

women are hot

which. yeah, that's it, isn't it

anyway, to elaborate on that: i will admit that some of this is just personal preference, because i love stories about complicated nuclear-waste-toxic family dynamics, and lear is, like, one of the original Nuclear Waste Family Dynamic plays. (so is the oreisteia, incidentally.) what gets me specifically is that this is a play about power, yeah, but also about love: everybody in lear wants love, and nobody is getting enough of it. and the dynamics of the two families here get immediately more interesting if this isn't JUST a who-inherits-the-throne thing. edmund wants political sway, yeah, but maybe he also wants to be seen as more than a bastard. goneril kills her sister out of jealousy, yeah, but also, has she ever had a person care about her like edmund? (does he care about her? how much of the love triangle is about love vs lust vs calculation? these are questions that could be answered a thousand ways.)

i also read this play counter to old white guy traditional scholarship because i think lear (the guy) sucks. sorry. i think he sucks. i think he's terrifying and tyrannical and his daughters can do whatever they want (imo, his main problem is trying to apply his political power to his personal relationships, and that's not something caused by his senility. goneril and regan state at the end of 1.1 that, while he's going off the deep end a little more these days, "the best and soundest of his time hath been but rash." this guy has always sucked). speaking of goneril and regan, they're not evil hags--they're women trying to live with an unpredictable father, as well as trying to retain the little power they have in a male-dominated world. (notably, regan's husband is on her team, while goneril's isn't, and lear seems to have a lot of hatred for goneril specifically. which colors how both of them interact with power, edmund, and each other.)

i could actually talk about lear family dynamics forever (do cordelia's sisters love her, resent her, or both? how does edgar feel about edmund? how does edmund feel about edgar, for that matter? does he feel guilty at all for doing what he does? does edgar feel guilty about killing him? is the relationship between lear and gloucester entirely professional, or are they friends? can lear even have friends when he sees everything as some sort of zero-sum power love game? is kent gay for lear? <- yes) but i won't. because i have another point to make!

which is that it's somewhat comforting to me, in an era of [gestures at the news and broad state of the world], to read a play where people are like "holy fuck the world's going to shit and all the rules of society are inverted!" i read lear for the first time during pandemic quarantine, so. it felt fitting. your mileage may vary here (maybe you prefer escapism), but i think one could draw a lot of parallels between lear and [gestures out the window again]. this play is bleak in a way that few other shakespeare plays are bleak. (maybe timon of athens.) it's set in pre-christian britain, and the gods are invoked, but they're not really present. no one who appeals to higher powers ever seems to get any help or even comfort. and the original story of king leir didn't end Like That. shakespeare decided his play was going to end with the emotional equivalent of getting bricked in the face. cordelia's death doesn't mean anything at all! it didn't have to happen! edmund tried to stop it! she doesn't die in the original myth! and yet we're left with this horrifying apocalyptic last scene, where all the struggles for love and power come to almost nothing. maybe, if one is concerned about current events, this would make one feel worse. but i fucking love tragic catharsis and i feel bleak about the modern world so this horrible upsetting play is quite close to my heart <3

finally: i've already touched on Hot Women, but . i am a simple butch. i think goneril and regan are soooooo sexy. i love when women are mean and ruthless. i love when women kill with swords. i think conflating the two of them/treating them like two halves of the same Evil Daughter Character is a cardinal sin of shakespeare studies; you have to be reading with your eyes shut not to note stuff like regan's desire to outdo goneril, goneril's comparative lack of fulfilling relationships (re: lear fucking hates her and her husband sucks), or the differences in their dynamic with edmund (regan is still mourning cornwall at this point--does she love edmund at all, or is she just playing the political long game?). and cordelia, too, is more than just the Angelic Good Daughter; she's on stage much less frequently, but she shows a stubborn virtue that honestly borders on naivete and maybe an inclination toward martyrdom. how does she feel about her father? does she really forgive him? how does she feel about her sisters, for that matter? i'm not saying this play is, like, the most feminist shakespeare play ever written; i just really love the lear sisters.

other misc stuff: the themes are tasty! look at the authoritarianism! (is it right for one man to have this much power? see that line about the king being a wheel rolling down a hill destroying everything in his path as he destroys himself, or whatever). look at the gender dynamics! (goneril's dominance over albany and edmund in turn; the question of her womb; the mutual violence of regan and cornwall; cordelia leading an army.) look at the debate about fate and predestination! (#redditatheist edmund i love you). ++ the fact that it's set in some kind of nebulous unclear time period and the fool sings about merlin who wasn't even alive yet. i just think it's neat <3

as far as productions, i have a friend who swears by the bob jones university prod, though i haven't seen it in full (hi @lizardrosen :D). i also hav NTLive and RSC lears somewhere, i think, but shhhhh don't tell

i'd apologize for this ask being this long, but when my parents asked me to explain the plot of lear to them in 2020 i talked for 25 minutes so i guess we're all getting off lucky here

#max.txt #asks #dm me if you want those. i think i have them.#to be clear you do not have to like king lear. you can thikn whatever you want about king lear #but i like it a lot so here are some of the reasons why <3 #lear

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sweetmage · 2 months

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I know this is the hating children website, but I'm forever bitter how needlessly vicious and cruel people are about writing fankids.

Like maybe I just wanna have a little fun and catharsis writing a family in a situation where I know things will turn out okay. Maybe I just wanna explore a non-nuclear family since you don't get that in a lot of fiction. Maybe I just like the drama and angst and whatnot. Maybe when the main characters' story is over I want to have a brand new group to write about going on adventures in the same world some decades later. Maybe it's just fun for me and god forbid I have fun 🤷🏾‍♂️

Its one of my favorite comfort things to write and think about but you almost never see me say a word about it almost anywhere because people get crazy mean for no reason 😬

#its 2 am so thats the perfect time for ranting about something silly since most of my mutuals arent online atm lol #jun rambles #jun rants

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actual-changeling · 6 months

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Oh god the way Gomens Fandom infantilizes Muriel and tries to father figure Crowley gives me suuuch a big ick. There's two things really that bug me about it, first the need to turn naive characters into uwu little babies incapable of doing anything for themselves and de-aging them, bc obviously only children are innocent or naive or positive, and it lowkey reeks of abelism...

The other issue I have is Fandom and their constant need to parentify older characters, especially men. I get it, it's the daddy issues website, I'm the same, but not every middle aged man needs to be a father figure and THAT lowkey reeks of the "American dream" of a nuclear family, like in order to REALLY be complete and happy, you have to have a kid... I'm honestly so exhausted of characters who show they like kids even the slightest bit, Fandom has decided their happy ending is getting married and having a kid. Like hc all you want but my aroace ass is tired of people talking about being progressive but then falling back into the same "traditional family" mindset 😩😩😩

The entire "every character needs one significant other and also children" is just amatonormativity: nuclear family edition.

Muriel is the same age as Crowley and Aziraphale, and while yes, Crowley slipping into a bit of a mentor role makes sense and is probably good for them both, Muriel is not a child and Crowley is not their parent.

It's just not that kind of dynamic and it never will be, and I think the fandom's infantilization of Muriel heavily contributes to that.

Crowley is good with children because they remind him of himself as an angel, they're curious and inquisitive, and he'd never deny them answers to their questions. Plus he has experienced so much cruelty that he'd never be mindlessly cruel to someone else, especially not a child.

BUT I don't think he'd ever actually want a child. In a Human AU I could maybe see it, depending on how you write him and his background, but in canon? Never.

I fully get you anon, I'm aro and my opinion on romance is "no thank you" for the most part, although it is fun to explore in fiction. However, so many people have such a normative view of relationships and family it's exhausting to watch most of the time.

#alex answers asks #good omens #good omens season 2 #crowley #muriel #crowley and muriel

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inlovewithkobenihigashiyama · 1 year

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HI HELLO HOLY HECK THE. NEW CHAINSAW MAN CHAPTER!!! (122)

I wrote a lot of stuff (long post) and there are major spoilers for the new chapters! The actual analysis/commentary/screaming abt the new chapter is under the cutoff.

Aside from the confirmation of Yoshida knowing more things that he probably shouldn’t, there’s a LOT of other stuff to go through. I am increasingly surprised by the biblical symbolism in csm! here's where my years of being forced to attend catholic school and bible study can really shine, lmao.

Let’s start with this:

Nostradamus was a real dude! (Wikipedia page for more info)

He lived in France around the 16th century, and he did write predictions of future events.

The prediction referenced in the new chapter IS one of his predictions, but it is not the full prediction!!!

The full prophecy is this:

“ The year one thousand nine ninety-nine seven month

From the sky shall come a great King of terror,

[Shall be] revived the great King of Angoulmois.

Before and after, Mars [shall] reign as chance will have it.

(Century X, No. 72) “

I don’t know about the fourth line, but the last line. “Mars shall reign”. Mars in Roman mythology is associated with war, literally being the god of war, and Mars generally has a connection to war in western culture.

And Asa Mitaka just so happens to meet/be the host of the War Devil.

It’s unclear exactly why Yoru wants to revive nuclear weapons devil. Likely because their revival would make Yoru more powerful, but Yoru seems very childish and immature, so I think it’s also possible that she and Nuclear Weapons were possibly friends? Since devils do seem to tolerate/desire relationships, as seen with Angel Devil and his village, and Quanxi’s fiend girlfriends. A lot of fiends seem to want and seek out relationships with others, platonic/familial/romantic, whatever (Power, Violence, Beam). There are also some that don’t, as in they just do not care (Prinzi) or are only interested in murder and crime (Also Power and Beam, but only before their character arcs). There are also those that want relationships but cannot have them, as seen with Makima and Pochita. Interesting! Could be a reach on my part, but there is definitely something odd about the timing of the prophecy and Yoru deciding to come to Earth and reveal herself to Asa.

Yoru does not seem like a very capable ruler, which is also somewhat weird if this prophecy is to be fulfilled. She will rule “before and after”, but while right now is presumably ‘before’, Yoru has basically been stuck to a depressed high school girl. Yoru does have power and we have seen her fight before, she seems to love fighting. But in this chapter she runs away.

Not very leader-like in my opinion! However. She also literally has a giant ruler sword at the moment.

I mean. Technically I guess you could say she is ruling?? The whole prophecy is really weird, and could have a lot of meaning in the context of chainsaw man. But I’m going to move on from that for now!

Yoshida Hirofumi, my beloved! Knowing things he shouldn’t and being in places he has no business being! He knew about Famine Devil, but it also seems that Fami didn’t really keep her identity a secret anyways. He knows she’s a powerful horseman devil, and he’s taking her out to eat at a cafe, once again paying for everything she orders.

How does he have so much money? How did he know she was the Famine Devil? It’s possible he is just a weird dude. Love that for him!

But how did he know about the prophecy? About the experiment with the prisoners and the Future Devil? He seems to be working with public safety now, but why tell Denji he has a private organization? In any case, the prophecy seems to have some merit, and Fami does know some things about it. He asked, and Fami told him. He did threaten her, but why would a powerful horseman devil be afraid of some highschooler with an octopus devil contract?

We can’t see her face, but we know she isn’t lying. We know because Asa is there at the apartments, and there is a powerful devil that just appeared there, so powerful that Yoru refused to fight it.

As for this devil, we know it is a primal fear, but not its name. Did the chainsaw devil eat her and her name is forgotten? Or is it just a purposeful omission? In any case, I think there are a few likely possibilities for the name this devil has.

This devil is presumably the first of the “The other seven” who will die this week. In the bible, there are a lot of apocalyptic sevens! We have:

The 7 bowls

The 7 seals

The 7 trumpets

I don’t think it’s the trumpets or bowls, but a case can be made for the seals. The breaking of one seal causes the appearance of the next. Interestingly, the first four seals represent the four horsemen. The first seal releases the horseman of conquest. (Sound familiar?)

Next is war, then famine, then death. This could be the death devil? She does have the power to make people kill themselves, so it would make sense and explain why Yoru was afraid of her. It could also be sacrifice or apocalypse, but personally I think Death makes the most sense.

The fifth and sixth seals cause various people to die and natural disasters. The seventh seal triggers silence, in preparation for the sounding of the 7 trumpets. In summary, the first three trumpets cause bad stuff to fall to earth and poison 1/3rd of all seawater and freshwater, as well as burning up 1/3rd of trees and all green grass. The fourth trumpet causes complete darkness, by getting rid of the sun, moon, and stars.

The next three trumpets are also known as the three woes.

The fifth trumpet causes a star to fall and opens a bottomless pit with a key it has been given, which releases these weird bug lion monsters instructed to torment (but not kill) all who do not follow God.

The sixth trumpet causes four angels to descend, leading a large battalion of soldiers whose lion-snake-horse steeds carry plagues that kill 1/3rd of humanity.

The seventh trumpet causes loud voices in the heavens to praise God.

I think the “King of Terror” the prophecy refers to will be Chainsaw Man, or maybe just Pochita/The Chainsaw Devil in his full form. I also think that his presence will somehow result in the devils being released from Hell, and Chainsaw Man becomes God or something. I do not know! It certainly seems ominous though!

This is all I can piece together for now, a lot of this stuff could be wrong, but the parallels are certainly interesting!

My thoughts in summary:

The prophecy mentioned is real and will happen (in chainsaw man)

Yoru/The War devil will gain a lot of power

Alternatively she will become some sort of leader, or maybe her role will have something to do with literal rulers…?

Yoshida is WEIRD!!!!!!!!! (nothing new there)

Fami gave him the information he wanted despite having (seemingly) no reason to do so other than being threatened by Yoshida

Fami didn’t even TRY to mess with Yoshida, but she was perfectly fine manipulating Asa and Yoru/The War Devil

The devil in the apartments is (probably) the Death Devil

Apocalypse time!

#chainsaw man #longpost #csm #csm spoilers #csm theory #chainsawman part 2 #yoshida hirofumi #asa mitaka #yoru chainsawman #csm part 2 #csm manga #csm chapter 122 #cube reads: csm

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pinkandpurple360 · 3 months

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(wtf where are moms who kill* husbands why there are litterally so many characters who have dead moms...)

My friends don't give me enough reply on my HB rants so now you're my friend for hour lol

Btw i wanted to rant about it more lmao sorry. forgive me mother for not sending you ask about Striker™.

Actually this is a terrible writing right here. Honestly im not so much into shaming authors for writings things i don't like (like i don't like seeing bad writers getting bullied. No matter popular of not. I hate seeing shaming and harassment even for someone such popular as viv, since for me rethoric overlaps very much with how female, kids, and queer writers get treated.)

but this trope is so overpopular i just need to rant to someone.

I only liked it in ducktales 2017 because she is apparently alive and very akward mother, but interesting character still. :D

I also like. Hate it. Like... If you need mother-related-drama, why just get them killed off-screen and never write (and design) them at all, and show them, what they actually meant, like they're non-existen hallucinations in a dream.

If you just need to throw out mother from family, THERE ARE TONS of funnier/angstier/happy for her ways to do it. Like. Idk she can just divorce man and get happier life/family, with someone else. It would be more painful for character that their lovely, kind, supportive mom is alive, but is unreachable, and maybe even choosed not to be near kid (for any reason. Probably dad was at fault not letting her get her child back or whatever you want to write). She can become brutal assasin and gangster :D Or anything, really. Maybe she have a criminal job and it's better to left kid behind, or is a political activist who don't want their kid be threatened by violent tyrants. Heck maybe she is even IN family but pretends to be aunt or anything else. Maybe she just reverse-dad-runned-to-get-milk-uno-card and ran first :'D we like. Have all kinds of mothers.

BUT. i also don't see why you need to kill specifically mother and left her as unwritten character to fan's imagination and writing. Idk why not unalive father and give us conflicting gangster couple of lesbians for Moxxie parents.

If it's a queer show, why not have queer parents? Why go with nuclear monogamous family? Esp in hell where all queers "go to" lol. What about poly family. Just sinner orphans, who died due to illness, while their parents still alive? Idk what about single parents. What if cool aunt™ was soo cool kid decided to live with them for sharing their interests and just rejected parents lol. Artificial Birth can exist too in hell i think, since "playing in god" with science is also a sin. Also if it's a hell, why not write some species just intersex or nonhuman? They can have any other stupid form of reproduction (and even magical and horrorish, surreal, relating to sin maybe. Imagine people in gluttony have to vomit kid formed from overeating idk.), or family system model, that doesn't involve two parents as the most important in kid's life. Like lions. Idk. They can just form communities and then all care about kids, and dont treat them as "theirs", or have special professionals to care, like ants do.

characters relationships with moms can be not even a bit less interesting with mothers than with fathers (i kinda have all my characters have very messy and interesting relationships with them, and i left fathers completely unwritten lol like viv treats moms) and seeing mothers overpowering husbands or them being non-mattering in characters life at all (like, that the kid doesn't even mourn or sad about it, and care more about other people.) is funnier.

OKAY SO the fuck. Like EVEN SECONDARY characters apparently have their moms dead?? (yes agent one im looking at you).

I just noticed how it plain weird when i noticed it more. Like... We had moxxie, blitz, fizz (who is a complete orphan as i rember), barbie, and agent one in anonymous "momless" club. Add if i missed someone. Wtf? Andddd we didn't even saw their faces, we Didn't even saw them speaking... Idk, even if you want to give moxx dead mom, why not let her live, and then boom. And then moxxie gets so mad, and audience get so mad and cancels viv again.

It's just so... Damn unsatisfying. And then we have stella who is just depicted as pure evil. Dammit.

Also, im mad at choice to make agent one's mom dead for literally only very cliche joke. (i hope she will get back on earth to see him, but as demon. that'll be interesting since he works as demon-hunter lol)

why at all blitz should make MOM joke? It would be more unexpected in show that always throws mysoginystic slurs swears and jokes if it. Was about NOT females. Idk what about dog. Or father. Maybe even grandpa lmao. EVEN BARBER (or how men who do haircuts for other men called i dont rember) WOULD BE HILARIOUS OPTION. Imagine him going "MY BARBER IS DEAD!!" i would die from laugh.

Maybe even some religious symbol. There are SO many possible relatives and important things for character, but ppl always go with boring mom-jokes and boring mom-is-dead-counter-joke. Would be funny too if blitz saw him having some demon husbando/waifu pin somewhere and then going "lmao i sitted on a face of your fictional crush sorry" and THEN agent would have a whole cry about it.

I swear i don't like how viv treats female characters in her shows... And jokes with them. She just constantly throws very boring, mysoginystic, and generic swears at them without any punchline, instead of showing something interesting or funny about them. :( if i wanted to see slut-shaming i would just go straight to reddit. Idk if you want to show how your character insults sex-positive female char, why not make it idk more personal or unrelated? We, like, saw it thousands times. And lived with it even... Would be more fresh to see how characters are like "ok i cannot say a bad thing about woman doing what she wants." and they insult them for other reasons and hobbies. Tho it's so hard to not depict succubus/sexual character not only as 1-dimensional person who have other interests, isn't it... Idk... Sorry for rant lmao my brain fog is shit sorry if it's barely coherent and ty for reading it to end lmao

There’s some kind of inane Madonna whore complex in this show, the writers have the most backwards outdated misogynistic beliefs I’ve seen in years. For cryin out loud Viv thinks the biggest problem in society right now is that women are too mean to men.

Yeah what’s with Stolas insisting that they keep the monogamous heterosexual marriage going?? It’s so obvious that he was the one fighting against the idea of a divorce. Not Stella. She wanted out. He refused because he wanted Octavia to have a “normal” life. Even though he himself has traumatised her countless times. Then he cheats and decides he wants out. He decides when it’s time. What a control freak. Women become enraged when they don’t have control of their own lives, when men control their lives. And that’s exactly what we see with Stella.

It’s stupid that Crimson drowned “his wife” who doesn’t even have a fucking name but the random shark bodyguard does because that’s a perfect yaoi ship opportunity. None of the men are heterosexual and yknow what? That’s actually really stupid and not good representation at all. It’s just an AU where everyone is bisexual or gay. But nobody is lesbian.

All the moms are dead or just mean. Fucking lame.

#helluva boss critical #misogyny

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welcometogrouchland · 1 year

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not only is darimila HYSTERICALLY funny as a crackship i think camila deserves a nice peacock of a boyfriend. i want her to show a photo of him at work and his coworkers are too busy wondering if this guy is an actor or a model or what to wonder about the ears or the goo hair. can you imagine darius helping the nocedas with groceries high heels and green eyeliner and god knows what else. MAN.

Firstly I love that this ask implies that Darius puts 0 effort into concealing his identity as a witch when he's in the human realm. This man is fully willing to expose magic and the demon realm in the town famous for producing a crackpot genocidal witch hunter everyone hates IF. and only if he can look fabulous doing it

I'm also on team Camila Deserves Nice Things anon, though I do differ on the details slightly, mainly because I'm sooooo enchanted by the Darius and Camila fake dating scenario I've cooked up in my brain. It both appeases the part of me that adheres to canon characterization of Camila as a woman who still, years later, has boxes of Manny's stuff lying around the house, yet to be put away, bc realistically she did not get proper space to mourn him when he died and she is not ready to move on...AND the part of me that, like you, wants Camilla's coworkers to see a picture of Darius and LOSE THEIR MINDS. HELLO??? THIS IS THE BAD BITCH SHE PULLED BY BEING AUTISTIC??? FR???????

And then I'm unsure whether or not I prefer Darius with romantic feelings for Camila? On the one hand I think, in the beautiful timeline where I actually wrote this, I'd prefer to have it come down on the side of "Darius and Camila are Good Friends who bond over how terrifying being a new(ly), single parent is"

and Hunter has to grapple with the fact that no, his family is not and never will be "normal" according to societies standards, and he cannot parent trap his parents into loving each other, but that doesn't make his family structure any worse off than something closer to a nuclear family.

Also I'd squeeze some juicy character exploration out of Luz bc she is SO not over her dad's death. She tries to downplay it and act like she is but she is not and it's very very clear in TTT. But she also wants her mom to be happy more than anything. And she loves love! And it'd make hunter happy! So she's just. Sitting there with gritted teeth trying not to get upset at the idea of Darius and her mom actually getting together and being happy.

But, tragically, I can't guarantee I'll ever fully write this out (though I fully encourage ppl to run with the idea if they like it. Please run with it I can't be the only one who's thought of this before) so I give myself a little more room to be silly and I say that. Darius is a person with a lot of walls up who likes pretending to be cool as a method of distancing himself from ppl, and I'd love to watch those walls get eroded by the overly sincere and silly sci-fi nerds that are his son-figure and his crush, who are also mother and son. Also I love the idea of Darius being a man in his forties with a crush. Yes!! Get more pathetic!!! Raeda is cowering rn!!!!!

IN CONCLUSION: I love you anon, I should really make SOMETHING based on the Darius Camila fake dating scenario, but if I don't, let this rambling serve as a testament to the GRIP it has on my brain

#ramblings of a lunatic #the owl house #toh #darimila #camila noceda #darius deamonne #the more i joke abt this ship the less ironic it becomes and I'm scared. don't do this to me #it's fine they can polycule it up with raine and eda /j #throw alador and perry in there too. watch everyone on the hexsquad slowly become related to each other. except willow. rip #ALSO i didn't proofread this bc it's very late </3 wish me luck that this is still comprehensible by morning

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spriteofmushrooms · 8 months

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I’m wanting to write a fic where JC brings his older boyfriend to meet his family and everyone keeps glaring at JFM because he’s obviously the reason JC has developed a daddy kink to cope. Just the idea of WWX furiously texting a group chat under the table coming up with more and more insane theories that this man is obviously trying to seduce YZY so he can have a mother/son threesome like that weird dream WWX had at 15. WWX’s mother is texting a different group chat under the table to annoy LQR with his fave student’s family drama. It’s very awkward and goes nuclear when JC and his boyfriend have to leave early to take care of his boyfriends kids. I’m not mentioning who the boyfriend is so hopefully you’ll be curious enough to pester me into finishing.

PLEASE THIS IS SO FUNNY. Poor Jiang Cheng!!! Maybe he just wanted to date a guy with a retirement plan and opinions about which meteorologist is best, Wei Wuxian!! Maybe he likes it when men own more than one suit, Wei Wuxian!! MAYBE HIS BOYFRIEND IS GAY AND NOT INTO HIS MOM, GOD, NOT EVERYONE IS OBSESSED WITH YU ZIYUAN??

Love Cangse Sanren adding to the chaos for fun. Oh, you think Jiang Cheng is respectable, Qiren? Well, then I guess you haven't heard...!

Is it Wen Zhuliu? That would be the funniest answer because the energy he brings to family dinners is "I didn't want to come." But I love this, whoever it is; please write it.

#pallas.rtf #mdzs #hi anon

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chewwypepsicola · 1 year

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can i ask for any color gang + purple specific headcanons? ALSO what did u think of episode 30 :)

RAAAHHH i love sharing hcs okay here we go, ill limit myself to 6 per character so this doesnt get overwhelming or boring heheheh

General stuff, oldest to youngest i see them like this: green, purple, blue, yellow, red, second. i HC that stickfiguresfighting.dotcom is actually a job they all had and that was the way they met (before second), Yellow wanted independence, Green overall just needed to start making money, Red wanted to really fight other people and he dragged Blue along Following up, Blue and Red are siblings, Blue being the oldest and often looking after Red when they were small.

WITH THAT OUT OFTHE WAY.

GREEN: - AUTISM - Oldest of the group but actually a middle child in a very loud household, he loves his family but he's very likely to have wished for a more comfortable space so thats why he moved out rather quickly and got that job - Noise cancelling earphones yesyes - genderfluid any prns pansexual icon - He HATES PDA (public displays of affection) this is a running joke i have that has developed into a proper HC haha, he always makes faces and gagging noises when YellowBlue are being gay in his general field of vision -Following up, despite hating PDA, he's super super affectionate in private when in a relationship, when in public or out of the confiness of his room he's more subtle like knees bumping against eachother under the table or soft looks across a room, THIS IS OF COURSE ALL IN REALTION TO PURPLE, SORRY, I AM A GREENPURPLE ENJOYER.

PURPLE: - My baby my baby youre my baby say it to meeee, thats not HC thats just my honest to go reaction to anything purple avm - Boy might be dog shit at fighting but he's so good at everything else i swear to god, he's super flexible and has a great amount of body strenght since we see him doing all sorts of stunt and gymnatics plus we see him being reasonably good at parkour, which in turn i have decided to take as "oh okay so he kicks ass at parkour he's the best and no one would ever be able to beat him noted." - I think he's decent at cooking but terrible at baking. Not even minecraft cakes come out right when he makes them. - They/he transmasc ourple sorry woa who said that?!?! (also mlm)

BLUE: - ELDEST DAUGHTER SYNDROME woa who said that?!?! what! - These are just canon but stoner epic skater girlfriend material she's so cool and epic - she/him bigender lesbian WOAH! - Alright you got me i'll elaborate on the eldest daughter stuff. SO BASICALLY. in my mind palace since i have decided that he and red are siblings Blue ends up being the oldest of the two, they have a singular parent so this makes Blue go thru the epic /s experience of having to take care of his little brother and their parent, giving up on childhood and dealing w responsabilities she shouldn't have. You might ask where the fuck did this come from and ill reply I HAVE NO CLUE THEY WRITE THEMSELVES OKAY!? - Blue is doing better now if you wanna know how fucked up that syndrome is just google it real quick you will be hit with the force of three trucks, shes an epic stoner gamer girl that likes to now play pranks on his little brother and be a menace. he's still a caretaker at heart and thats why he mostly tasks herself with doing most of the cooking. - THIS ONE IS BASICALLY STOLEN FROM THAT OTHER TUMBLR USER BUT UHH chronic pains after the lava incident yes brilliant send tweet

YELLOW: - Youngest child in a normal nuclear family, has an oldest sibling, relationships w family are not terrible but he always wished he would get more attention and always felt left aside when he tried to talk about his passions and interests - this guy is autism for sure! - he/him transmasc lesbian sorrey bleh - insomniac i share this hc w everyone else in the fandom this guy is just crasy insane and needs blue to remind him to take his sleeping pills and go to bed - after the LAVA incident and blue struggling to walk down the stairs of their house i think everyone agreed to rearrange the rooms and let blue have the bottom one, those two since they are a couple decided to just share a room and yellow made his old room a sort of study or overall "work" room so that he would not bother blue at night

RED: - ADHD (EXPLOSION GIF) - not a single thought behind those eyes but somehow still so smart and just as capable as everyone else OUGH - fisically strongest, not saying he's the best at combat he simply can pack the hardest punch but he might not be doing it the right way and thus hurting himself in the process - SPEAKING OF, ISNT IT FUCKED UP HOW FAR HE PUSHES HIMSELF?! now that we bring up 30 and everything that came before it i just could Not help but notice the way red passed out like three times during that whole battle, that boy had multiple broken bones and was running on pure adrenaline fighting w his own body to not give up, despite being the one more battered and bruised he kept standing back up and throwing himself right in the line of fire he makes me so sad OUGH -he/him transman realness mlm PHEW - i think that second and he passed out on the couch they moment they all realize they were out of danger you could not wake up those two up for a week they needed the rest SECOND: -trying my best to not run out of ideas here cause i know i have many hcs relating to them but also ive already wrote down a phew a while ago let me think uhhh - youngest. baby of the group, but for some fucked up reason he has decided to take on the "im the more responsible one here i need to look after all of you" role like a DUMMY - it makes very sad to think of him worrying himself so much w the safety of the others cause he has seen first hand that they are way more fragile than him, he doesnt know WHY he endured so many of Dark's attacks in ShowDown but he knows he did and he remembers vividly seeing his friends fight for their lives right in front of his eyes, of course he is going to be burdened with that weight. - Second has terrible separation anxiety that's not even a HC thats basically canon he can not be at ease until everyone is together and he is reasssured that they are okay OUGH (sounds of crying) - Little guy has awful nightterrors that leave him just sitting at the edge of his bed staring off at nothing until he falls asleep again, Green caught him one night and was like "hey you good why are you sleeping sitting like that?" and Second had to explain and Green offered to sleep w him so he would be more comfortable, Second now tends to ask green or red to keep him company when it happens smiles

OKAY THATS ALL!!! as usual i shall share a doodle, please forgive any grammar and spelling mistakes english isnt my first language we are doing the best we can over here hahah, here's the doodle! with my family headcanons for the colors and an extra "family photo" for the hollowheads haha

#THANK YOU WHOEVER READ TILL THE END WAAAAAA #love these guys they run around my head like little hamsters #ene answers #avm #animation vs minecraft #avm purple #avm green #avm red #avm blue #avm yellow #avm the second coming #PHEW #ene does art #while we are at it

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