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#(and i think as an adult it's only partially to do with personal experience it's also to do with social experience
chaifootsteps · 23 hours
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One of the things that frustrates me about Viv's designs is that they don't really tell me anything about the character's motivations or personality.
If I came knowing nothing about Hazbin and you tell me that Cherry Bomb is a punk from the 80's, Sir Pentious an inventor from Victorian England and Alastor a radio host from the 1920's I would have a very hard time believing you.
(((Especially since for some reason, Viv dresses almost all her male characters in Hazbin with some variant of the same suit and bowtie)))
But I think that no - other design frustrates me more than Nifty's. She is supposed to be a Japanese housewife from the fifties. Yet her dress is looks more like a Halloween costume of a fifties girl than something women would actually use at the time.
Her hair is not even accurate, it should be more curly since perms were really big among Japanese women during that time.
However, the fact that she wears a costume of a fifties woman could come in handy if you write a decent backstory.
Let's start by saying that Nifty was not an adult during the fifties, she was actually born during the early sixties into a very conservative and traditional family who told her that the only thing she needed to worry was to marry a decent man, have kids and take care of the house.
Like a 50's woman!
This caused Nifty, a very extroverted and playful child who loved bugs and mud, to have a pretty stressed-out childhood. Every time her mother found her playing in the garden and getting dirty she was beaten. The germo-phobia she developed as a adult was partially because of this, since filled with germs = being harshly punished she always made sure everything was clean.
Eventually when she was 19, her parents arranged a marriage with a businessman and they tied the knot not even a year later.
Her husband was not bad,
He was rather handsome, had a stable job, a big house in Tokyo and could even afford going on vacation once a year.
If only he wasn't the most boring man alive then things probably would have been different.
Whatever he genuinely loved Nifty or not is completely irrelevant when he treated her more like a housemate than an actual wife. They even slept in separate beds and the only time they spend together was during dinnertime and then 30 minutes of TV before going to bed.
NIfty was suffocating in her marriage.
But is not like she could say something. The one time she tried talking to her mom about it, she just told her to "be thankful" to have so much free time since things will change when she has children.
Well, she and her husband hadn't been intimate since their weeding night, so that wasn't happening any time soon.
That stayed the same for a while, until one night, while watching TV with her husband a local boy/band appeared on screen
It was the early 90s and boy bands were allll the rage.
New bands formed every day and this particular one didn't seem too different from the rest. Except that maybe, the Bad Boy of the group captivated a 30 year old Nifty and rocked her world in a way she hadn't experimented before.
At the start everything seemed normal, she started by buying one CD or two, attending meet and greats in local malls and going to their concerts. Nifty didn't want her husband getting involved, so she got a part-time job to cover those extra expenses and not use her husbands money.
Of course almost all the merch she bought was of Bad Boy
Soon, she started having this fantasies, dreams were B.B confused his undying love for her and took her away form her boring husband and into a live of adventure and music. B.B was a real man, rebellious and strong that would be able to keep emotion and passion in her life unlike her husband.
Those dreams helped her to live another day, and maybe it was because of this dependency that Nifty started to believe that those fantasies were real. That she and B.B were a secret couple and the meet and greats they had were really "dates" that they had to do in secret from her husband.
Unfortunately, it was only a matter a time before dear Nifty became one of those fans who you end up seeing in a police lineup and reading in the newspaper the minute she started stalking B.B and talking about him as if he was her boyfriend with whoever may listen.
All went into a breaking point when one day, Nifty just got tired waiting for B.B to take her away from her boring life. Thinking about it she just came to the conclusion that it was her dear old hubby the one that was keeping B.B away from her.
That has to be it.
Her husband must be preventing B.B from fulfilling his promise!
What lies did he told him about her?
Does he want me as his prisioner forever?!
This is not staying like this!
That night, after her husband fell asleep, Nifty woke up, went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and stabbed her spouse 30 times before ending his life with one clean slit in the throat.
Now that the bore is dead, she and her precious Bad Boy could be together forever! Now he has no excuse to not fulfill his promise! A new life filled with love, excitement and adventure awaits!
But first she needs to clean, everything ended up a disaster.
Maybe it was the excitement she was feeling, or it was too dark to properly read the labels, but mixing cleaning chemicals can actually be extremely dangerous. You may create a very dangerous gas that could potentially kill you.
That morning, the neighbors woke up due a very strong smell and they shouted the minute they found dead bodies of Nifty and her husband. She had her skin partially burned as she had felt face down the mix of cleaning solutions that took her life.
And you and me know, where she ended
Congratulations, Niffty's yours now! You're clearly more qualified to be writing her. Please cherish her.
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seriousbrat · 3 months
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this says a lot about Snape's character development for me. There are many parallels drawn throughout the series between Harry and Snape; obviously, they're very different characters but there are similarities too.
I think here Snape is talking about himself. The teenaged Snape we see in the Pensieve is very much like this- emotional, heart on his sleeve, easily provoked, a definite wallower in sad memories... weak. Adult Snape, though he retains some of these characteristics that do emerge in stressful moments (in PoA we see how angrily he reacts to Sirius's escape, for instance) on the whole is a great deal more thoughtful, reserved, calculating, measured.
I think that Snape at some point had to force himself to become this. I think he actually relates to Harry here, and is giving him advice based on personal experience. In my fic he begins to learn to control his emotions partially out of a desire to protect Lily; he's fully aware that she's his weakness (or really, his strength, viewed a different way) and that openly displaying any sort of emotion towards her at all makes her vulnerable to the likes of Avery and Mulciber, who will have the perfect weapon to get to him if they want to.
Severus doesn't have the advantages of his peers, he's not pureblood, he wasn't born into money. If he wants to join the Death Eaters and rise in their ranks, he needs to be subtle, cunning, careful. he can't afford to be careless and entitled like mulciber or bellatrix or even sirius. what he's got to offer isn't his name or his money, it's his sheer talent and cleverness. moving on:
When Voldemort decides to go after Lily this becomes even more important. Imo the reason why Voldemort believes that Snape only "desired" Lily is because that's what Snape told him. He lied to Voldemort's face and told him something probably disgusting tbh because that's the only way Voldemort would accept it and agree, if it was a selfish, callous request that Voldemort could understand. We can see evidence of this here:
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Asking Voldemort to spare a mudblood because he was in love with her would likely not have gone over well- and as we know, Voldemort actually bore his request in mind, though obv didn't give enough of a fuck about Snape to follow through. Because although asking voldemort to spare her must have taken serious balls, Snape's mistake here was trusting someone inherently selfish to do something selfless for him.
Clearly he immediately realises this and goes to Dumbledore, which is when controlling his emotions becomes of paramount importance, because now he's working against perhaps the most highly accomplished legilimens of all time.
It's also interesting to me that Snape in this conversation is probably the character who is most forthright and informative with Harry in the whole of OotP until Dumbledore at the end; Harry actually learns a lot in this conversation. And Snape also kind of gives him credit which is interesting too:
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like for Snape that's high praise lmao. A shame because if he wasn't so bitter (i.e. didn't wear his heart on his sleeve so much around harry) then he might have actually been pretty helpful to Harry and a decent teacher. Again, during the Occlumency lessons his unrestrained emotion brought up by memories of James is a hindrance. He defies Dumbledore's orders to teach Harry Occlumency because of his emotional response to SWM, as well as honestly doing kind of a shit job before that (by not being empathetic and teaching Harry in a way that would've been actually productive.)
At this point Dumbledore believes that Harry learning Occlumency and controlling his emotions is of vital importance; he turns out to be wrong about this. In Harry's case, it turns out to be his emotional nature that saves him- unlike Snape, who is the opposite. Snape's journey is about learning that some things are more important than his selfish need to give into his own emotions.
By DH Snape's learned this lesson fully; his old hatred for James doesn't stop him from doing what has to be done, from giving Harry the tools he needs. Even in the final moments of his life, he can look past James and see Lily in Harry- and, by giving Harry the information that leads to his self-sacrifice, he can let her go.
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astraltrickster · 10 months
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I want to introduce a disability concept that I've been calling paradoxical stigma.
What is paradoxical stigma? It's the stigma against:
1) The actually disabling traits of a disability that's in the spotlight for the parts of it that are convenient to accommodate, and/or
2) The diagnosis of such a disability itself,
Due to the assumption that the spotlight renders it "destigmatized" and no longer in need of support.
As of right now, at least around this corner of the internet, the most obvious examples of this are autism and ADHD. It's become disturbingly common for people to treat those like Diet Disabilities That Don't Actually Count. It's been really interesting to watch the popular attitude about these disorders shift from "autism is either a tragedy or an excuse depending on 'severity', and ADHD is just a myth used to drug kids into complicity instead of teaching them actual skills", to "actually these are real disorders that affect people in all aspects of their lives", to "I GUESS they're real disorders but honestly EVERYONE has them can't we worry about more SERIOUS ones?" and...not in a good way.
It comes up...partially as a legitimate backlash to people with these disorders who think that invisible disability and/or neurodivergence begins and ends at their experience, and...yeah, that's a problem all right, in fact if I had a dollar for every asshole who looked at my struggles with things like keeping my space clean or not fucking up my medication doses DUE TO ADHD and went "well I have the same diagnosis and I don't have THAT problem to THAT extent, obviously you're just lazy and careless", or saw me having an AUTISTIC meltdown and called it "bullying" or worse because I get loud and insisted that I NEED to CONTROL that CHOSEN BEHAVIOR if I want to not be a Bad Person, or heard about how AUTISTIC overstimulation defense measures play into my trouble with cleaning and insisted that well THEY'RE autistic too and don't have that specific problem so this is clearly weaponized helplessness because I just don't WANT to learn to do better, I'd...probably have a lot more assistive tech. I also get really, really frustrated and upset when people use RSD to mean "if you ever criticize me that's the height of ableism, no matter how much I'm actually fucking up and hurting you" - especially since it's so often invoked as a defense against being lightly criticized for ACTUALLY harmful behavior and as much as it sucks there IS no substitute to make that more emotional-dysregulation-friendly beyond basic kindness in criticism. That attitude exists. It's bad.
And yet, theoretically, I think we could all agree that the response to that should NEVER be to reinvent the old "ugh, those aren't REAL disabilities, those are just EXCUSES that LAZY PARENTS make for kids being kids, what they need is DISCIPLINE" stereotype of the 90s-2000s, just now aimed at those same kids as adults, in ostensibly supportive spaces - or arguably worse, to revert all our understanding of support needs to the externally judged high-functioning/low-functioning dichotomy.
What really sets this apart as paradoxical stigma, rather than just garden-variety lateral ableism, is that 1) we CAN theoretically all agree that reinventing those stereotypes is a terrible response, yet many people do it anyway, and 2) these stereotypes are invoked not only because of that intracommunity misbehavior, but both within and outside of disabled spaces, because of the illusion that you can bring up those disorders and have them taken seriously because fidget toys and stim videos and weighted blankets are popular now. An event having quiet rooms, or backlash to Autism Speaks being visible outside of autistic spaces, will be taken as "proof" that autism stigma is over forever and anyone who complains about it is just a whiner who doesn't know how good they have it...even when what they're complaining about is, say, being barred from migration. Paradoxical stigma is enacted by people who think that they, alone, are standing up against someone who's throwing others under the bus to continue to progress their own limited agenda...when in fact they're speaking a very popular shitty opinion, that MANY of the people making that claim would disagree with HEAVILY once separated from the "crab bucket reflex".
As a personal example, the result is that when I'm looking for assistance, I'm...hesitant to bring up those diagnoses, because I know I'm going to be written off as "obviously a high-functioning low-support needs scammer who just doesn't WANT to CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY and EARN things" - even by people who otherwise agree that people should be allowed to survive even if they truly are the living strawman lazy bum who has nothing wrong with them but just WANTS to lay around eating junk food and doing drugs all day, AND that disability deserves to be respected, isn't black-and-white, and affects everyone differently; somehow when these combine in the context of my diagnoses that have had a very sanitized version of themselves "destigmatized" on TikTok, they cancel out into blatant reactionary sentiment indistinguishable from what I'd hear from my shitty token Republican uncle.
So, that's paradoxical stigma. Feel free to use the term if you find it useful.
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lightlycareless · 1 month
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Could you please spare some child au or high school au hc? Please I’m so hungry 😔 /hj
Hello dear anon!!
Well, I've decided to write a lil thing for the child au :> It's the au that I have most neglected, mainly because I don't get any inspiration for it 😭 (idk, just... nothing comes to me, you know?)
BUT I did manage to get this, mainly from my experiences... or maybe that was just me. Either way, I remember taking pictures of just about anything and posting them to my myspace (OOOF) soooo........ enjoy :>
warnings: none, fluff. plus a little something I wanted to explore at the end.
Happy reading!
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“—A camera!” Naoya grins as he proudly shows off his newest acquisition, a gift from one of his grandparents; the latest digital model found in the market!
And perhaps something the adults might’ve wanted to wait a bit longer before getting, or at least put up some resistance against Naoya’s never-ending fits when it comes to impressing you…
“What do you think? Nice, right?”
You stare at it for a few seconds, before giving him a big, bright grin and a nod.
“Yes!”
Naoya’s heart flutters—his purpose accomplished.
“I knew you’d be able to recognize excele—exclen—excellency!” he boasts, whether he knew the meaning of that word meant or not, is a mystery for both.
“What are you going to do with it?” you curiously ask. You’ve never had a camera, even though you’ve long expressed your interest for it, (your parents were a bit more… sensible when it came to spoiling you.) Nonetheless, what Naoya’s got was also yours, much to their chagrin.
“Take pictures, of course!”
“But of what?” you pout, frowning.
There’s actually so many things he wishes to do with his new camera, things that he’s partially done already, from taking pictures of the new figures he’s got from his favorite anime to the drawings he’s been slowly working on to impress you…
However, he had a reputation to maintain, and such, he gives you the response he thinks will make him look the coolest, straight from Naoaki’s —his oldest brother— book.
“I don’t know, just, whatever I guess.” He shrugs, copying every mannerism, down to the tone, to impress you.
But to you, he only appeared absent-minded, as if he was foolishly failing to realize the great opportunities having a camera presented!
And thankfully, you’d come to his aid. Unknowingly creating a win-win situation for the two.
“Oh, I know! We can take pictures of us doing cool poses!” you grin. “Like the ones in my brother’s posters!! Or that anime you were watching the other day!!”
“That girl group?” Naoya twists his lips, not very… fond of your idea at first, until the frown on your face rectifies his response. “I mean—If that’s what you want…”
Of course, what he said wasn’t what he felt, for the moment you grabbed his hand with your soft one, tightly holding onto him as you led him towards your room, he was nothing but willing to do what you desired.
He’d silently observe you take out a few of the magazines you managed to sneak out of your brother’s room (Ren’s very aware of it, he just lets you keep them, happy to share his enjoyment for the Spice Girls.) and get ideas of what poses to replicate—down to the smallest details.
Naoya’s commitment had some limits, though.
“I don’t know if I want to do that one…” Naoya murmurs, slightly embarrassed, fearing what he’ll look like before you if he accepts…
“Why not? I even got the clothes!” you encouraged. Kind of. They’re your best attempt at something like that. It’s the thought that counts, though.
But in the end, you let Naoya not take part in the activity, solely because he got an even better job to do—that is, being your own personal photographer.
A camera is something that you’ve always been allured to, especially the instant ones where you can get the picture immediately after, so to hear that your best friend is getting one, and that he’s more than happy to share this adventure with you, is like a dream come true!
So, the two begin to take all kinds of pictures, with just about any pose you could think of, and landscapes to choose from; getting more and more ideas the longer this photoshoot went on.
Eventually, Naoya would also feel comfortable enough to take pictures with you; although truth to be told, he was hoping to get one either way, realizing that by doing this… he’ll have a piece of you to take come.
The thought of keeping your adorableness through pictures is enough to fill his heart with this growing sentiment he has yet to discover as love—or perhaps completely understand, achieving so until much older…
When he isn’t fretting about your increasingly worrisome choices, that is.
“Take a picture when I’m jumping down the edge!!” you’d say. “I’m going to do this cool pose like in Naruto, so be ready!!”
“Y/N, wait!” He cries, camera unprepared, while fearing for your wellbeing. “What if you get hurt?!”
“I’m a ninja! I can’t get hurt!”
The number of scares you’d put him through that day are ones that he’ll never forget, the mere thought of them enough to send shivers through his spine…
But even then, he didn’t complain much. Because he was nothing but happy see you smile and laugh, proof that his decision was the right one, yet again, just to show how well he’s gone to know you—already planning what to get when you eventually grow tired of the camera…
If he doesn’t destroy it first when his brothers eventually discover his embarrassing photos.
“Naoya, come here please!” You’d call from another room, a request that was immediately granted just a few seconds after when he crosses through the doors.
“What is it, my love?” Naoya asks, throughout the years, his determination to please you has never dwindled.
“Look what I found!”
“Oh, its—”
The same camera he got all those years ago, the first one he’s got. A relic of his childhood, in other words.
“The camera, that one! Remember?” you say. Rummaging through the moving boxes has been quite nostalgic as of lately, but you never expected to see something so… ancient, no offense meant. “Wow, can’t believe it’s here…”
“Me neither…” Naoya says, somewhat… nervous.
“Think it still has pictures from back then?”
Naoya immediately turns red.
“No!” he shrieks, making you raise an eyebrow. Did you forget, perhaps? “I mean—It’s old, who knows if the battery or memory are any good.”
“Let’s find out then!” you grin, quickly standing up to look for a compatible charger.
Naoya tries to stop you, kind of; he doesn’t really put that much of a fight whenever he sees you this enthusiastic, although he wishes he could’ve for once, considering how anxious he felt for the impending moment the camera turned on and revealed all those embarrassing pictures he innocently took back then.
To when you giggle graces his ears, amused by his antics…
But when the camera beeps on, he’s received with… well, nothing. Just silence as you diligently flick through the photos, each one received by your intense gaze that makes him wonder if perhaps the camera didn’t work anymore…
Until noticing the fluster in your cheeks, then did Naoya dare to ask what’s wrong.
“Y/N, is… everything ok?”
“Naoya… did you really… keep all these pictures?” you ask, slowly turning around to see him, revealing your burning face.
“I… did.” He silently admits, unsure where this is going, but convinced it wasn’t good. “I… well, you liked them, so I thought I’d keep them, in case you wanted to see them again, of course. I didn’t know you wanted me to… delete them.”
It’s funny to see that even when married, Naoya is just as anxious when it comes to openly expressing his feelings—he’s gotten better at it, of course, the two were now living in the same house together, hoping for a baby…
But maybe it’s the inner child in him, the one that never got to express his feelings back then, didn’t know how. Even though he wanted so, so much.
Which is coincidentally, the same reason that made your breath hitch to your throat, heart skipping a beat when realizing that Naoya, all this time, has…
“—You’ve always cared for me, haven’t you?”
Naoya blinks, caught off guard by the direction this conversation was heading; but even then, he nods, admitting what you confessed.
You knew that already; you wouldn’t have married him if that wasn’t the case.
It’s just that… to be reminded that Naoya always had your wellbeing in mind, probably since the moment he met you… melted your heart.
Truly, you had found your soulmate.
“Enough to even… take these silly pictures of me!” You add, it’s your turn to be embarrassed by all the goofy pictures you made him take; you knew you were nothing but a child back then, actions like these more than expected, but now that you were an adult… you can’t help but wince, covering your cheeks with your hands as you continue to fret. “Oh my god, Naoya—how did you even put up with me back then??! Seriously, look at this one!! It’s all coming to me now—I think I got hurt, didn’t I? Or at least that’s how it felt…”
“I guess I just liked you too much.” He says, a smile on his face.
“I guess you did.” You giggle. “Guess you must’ve had it real bad if you were willing to make silly faces with me! Though you looked far cuter than me, but then again, you were always good-looking.”
“What are you on, love? I don’t think either of us looked good.” he snickers, leaning down and looking at the camera. “Definitely not you on that photo.”
“Hey!” you gasp. “No need to go that low!”
“Or what?” he smirks. “Gonna make me take more pictures of you?”
You gasp. “I’ll take this as blackmail, then!” and then, you stand up, sprinting past the door and away from him, hoping to get a copy of these pictures onto the computer and let your evil scheming commence.
“Huh?! No you’re not!” Naoya says, running right behind you, eventually catching up to you and taking the camera away from your hands.
But you meant no harm, of course, not when the presence of them filled the two with nostalgia, fondly looking back to the moment the two were nothing but kids, yet, unknowingly fated to be with one another.
It’s always meant to be that way; to be happy together, whether in the past, the present, or the future.
One the two have yet to create, now as a family.
Which neither could wait for it to happen.
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Naoya and YN growing to be together is the ultimate endgame. I will not discuss otherwise :) also, Naoya might be holding onto those pictures in hopes of showing them off to their future daughter, just to get back at her (Naomi is not thrilled, at all. It's probably the first time she thinks of her parents as weird)
Oh, I hope you enjoyed this little thing 🥺❤️ thank you so much for sending in this ask, the child au is 😭 the fluff I need amongst these times of angst haha.
Anyways, I will try my best to write the Naoya b-day one shot :> In between requests and updates.... you know... eheh.
Thank you so much for your patience, take care, and hope to see you soon ❤️❤️❤️
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betterbemeta · 4 months
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Hi hello and welcome people who like the fat girl vampire post!
I made it 8 years ago in response to having graduated a while earlier, as I struggled to actually get jobs with my shiny new degree.
I rarely presented femme in my life before I had to dress up for interviews, and for in-person work. I was always 'kind of terrible at it', partially because I have always been fat and that interferes with 'doing girl correctly' to a lot of our society.
Having to work as an adult likely contributes to being fatter than my previous norm, which was maintained despite walking miles between school and home, biking at college, etc.
I wrote the fat girl vampire post, thinking that the things that fat women often deal with (intersection of fatphobia and misogyny?), have to do with presence and absence. Vampires, when the trope isn't discussing class (?) also are often about presence and absence:
A fat girl is not invited to parties or events because she is pushed away from society in favor of those who are seen as just a bit more human. A vampire can't enter your house unless invited; they lack the social agency of a living person.
A fat girl is not photographed because someone does not like how she'll look in a group. Or she is covertly photographed to humiliate over how much space she takes up in public. A vampire can't be photographed because they are dead, their image can't be captured, they aren't 'there', or they do not have a soul to capture on a silver exposure plate. And yet their absence from the photograph is jarring, their 'space' they take up is obvious.
A fat girl is terrorized into avoiding mirrors, a vampire avoids mirrors.
etc.
Although I enjoy many feminine fashions and took away a lot of knowledge from that part of my life, I began experiencing a strange alienation when I would 'dress up,' as if I was in costume or in disguise. Some of this was probably due to the artificiality of it all. I only 'needed' to wear more feminine things to go to work, which is the means to an end of Get Money. But I also bought and wore things I genuinely liked, that weren't completely for the work type of costume. So that wasn't the end of it.
I reasonably considered, most women don't feel like they are assuming a form, or are in costume, when they present in public. This stuff clued me in to identifying as agender, and nonbinary. I wonder if I had been a skinny child, if I would feel the same way. Or would being given a 'full life' as a woman instead of a 'half life,' have conditioned me differently?
Because our world really doesn't know what to do with agender people, I still most frequently 'assume the form of' a woman for social reasons, and I can even enjoy it... in the way you can enjoy wearing a costume sometimes. I can't say I am no longer connected to 'womanhood' even if I definitely do not have a cisnormative relationship with it.
It's interesting to me to see that ancient post circulating now, with an artist's work attached to it. I love the artwork, and I adore the artist's work and size inclusive clothing shop. In context to my specific experience though, I find it funny that the fat girl vampire is pictured to be so effortlessly feminine in her existence. She's as close to the default as she can be and still be seen to be fat. She has 'assumed the form', too...
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auncyen · 5 days
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Same anon with the mira and bonnie ask, lobed your response but felt weird to just put it in w/o a question so if you don’t mind:
what do you think siffrin’s life was like before joining the party? Could be pre- or post- forgotten island. Idk to me its fascinating bc they were loved in some measure (cloak, jokingly running away bc of veggies) and are p in touch with their culture when they remember it, but at the same time siffrin’s mindset is pretty unhealthy. Like even before looping/during act 2 loops, they seemed unconcerned about serious bodily harm and death that would happen to them + just seems to have. A very strange relationship with people feeling sad instead of happy around them? Idk i just don’t think that’s from just the memory loss.
See I think kid Siffrin was pretty happy. As Isabeau notes whoever gave them the cloak and hat must have really loved them. When Siffrin recounts running away it's in a carefree way--he knew he could give his parents a scare and it'd go down as "just a prank". Basically their home life was really good. There are questions I have about the island's beliefs / values that might be troublesome, but I don't really think that sort of thing grates on a kid with a happy home life too much. (And also as a little note the only glimpse we get into the island's beliefs/values are through Siffrin and King, two individuals who cannot recall those things completely and are very traumatized, so like. Should probably take a grain of salt on how they portray the beliefs anyway.)
Post-island I admittedly read a LOT into how Siffrin finds Vaugarde's openness weird and had kept their hair dyed up until a few months pre-game.
In his experience, other countries are not as welcoming. So I imagine their teenage years were probably pretty lonely. This isn't to say other countries were completely awful--he obviously enjoyed Poteria's plays!--but they were juuust old enough where few would assume just by looking at them "uh, you're on your own, do you need help?" If they stayed long enough in a spot for people to figure out something was wrong it'd invite questions like "where are you from", "where are your parents", basically questions that'd make Siffrin's head hurt and probably lead to them cutting off the interaction if the other person doesn't walk away first because they're put off or alarmed by Siffrin's reactions. Basically, there probably WERE well-meaning attempts to help Siffrin. They backfired because people didn't know what was wrong with Siffrin (Siffrin didn't know what was wrong with Siffrin). Siffrin probably beat himself up for it when he knew the other person was trying to help and he was just too "broken". As a teenager he probably stayed longest in places where adults assumed he was a runaway that didn't want to talk about it and maybe helped him out in a more "hands-off" way--"hey, run this errand for me and I'll give you dinner and a roof for the night". Which, great! Because Siffrin finds a way to get by. But it doesn't deal with any of the emotional issues festering inside.
I also feel like, while this may be a bit dark for the fantasy setting, Siffrin probably got targeted at times for being a young traveler on their own. I mean I also headcanon that Siffrin was very good at escaping dicey situations, partially because they'd start Wish Crafting unconsciously if they were really scared, so they were never seriously harmed. But they weren't good experiences to have!
I also kind of headcanon that pre-canon with not knowing who they are like--they loved plays. But also, like. I can see them at times hurting when they think about plays, how they'd be portrayed in a play. No true name, no past, no home, no relations. At best they're the jester who mocks a King gone wrong and makes the audience laugh. At worst they're a side character killed off-stage in a tragedy, barely important enough to devote two lines to. What kind of play would have a protagonist with zero emotional stake in anything?
They try to be the jester, at least. Sometimes, when he's feeling brave enough. It tends to fizzle pretty quickly. (And then he meets someone who doubles over laughing at a bad pun.)
So yeah I feel like Siffrin pretty much mastered the art of getting by and also as in this post actually being pretty good at fighting pre-canon, but socially well. They can ask directions in at least half a dozen languages but can't be honest about how they're feeling or what's going on with them in a single blinding one. Then they meet a group that's in desperate need of another fighter and 2 of them are Vaugardians who are willing to accept Siffrin's eccentricities as just part of them and not ask questions and Odile's pragmatic enough to not rock the boat unnecessarily. I pretty much do view the group as being the first chance Siffrin remembers getting to bond with people without it going south by them wanting to know their background. Of course he loves them. Of course it doesn't really matter what happens to him, who's going to miss him?? They have homes and families and friends. They're the real heroes. He's just supporting cast.
...So yeah tl;dr pre-island vanishing I think Siffrin's life was just fine. post-island was an incredible amount of loneliness and the Universe putting his brain in a blender and idly hitting the pulse button every so often. This is not even getting into experiencing the physical side of puberty while not knowing who you are or who to ask for help, which, yikes.
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darlinguistics · 3 months
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'its just IMPOSSIBLE to not be addicted to your phone nowadays its UNREALISTIC-'
heres some advice to being less chronically online. for gen z (and younger??) who dont even know how to start thinking about it and have only heard shitty advice from older adults who just genuinely do not get it, from a fellow gen z and my experiences so far.
*these are personal and may not all 100% resonate but its still good prompting to start thinking about things! PLEASE feel free to add your own stories/advice in the notes! support your fellow humans, dont gatekeep what youve learned, lets have these conversations! and no negativity/pessimism please <3
first thing is to make it a less scary thought, a more concrete idea and not a hypothetical. it doesnt have to be all-or-nothing, cold turkey, a huge announcement and a fundamental shift in your personality. the internet will be in your life for the rest of your life, this is an ongoing relationship you are trying to make healthier thats all! and it takes one step at a time and some self-compassion, but a true effort nonetheless. 'dont you think thats a bit too serious-' if youre my age you quite literally grew up and developed online, it is literally part of your psyche the way your childhood is, it IS serious, you deserve to treat it seriously.
dont save your login info/dont stay logged in for social media accounts, having to manually log in when you want to go on like youre on some elementary school chrome book is a really healthy and clear boundary to have between being logged off and logged on.
-> bigger challenge - uninstall it on your phone in general, only log on on your laptop/pc if applicable for you!
if youre motivated to, try to work on your posture too. i only say that because most of our bad posture is at least partially related to being on our phones a lot, and when i started wanting to fix my posture, completely separately and unrelated from trying to break my phone addiction, it made it easier to lose interest in my phone since i didnt want to ruin my progress with my posture. it made me start to have a mindset like 'well if you cant do this on your phone with good posture then dont do it' and 'if youre on your phone so long your posture starts to cave in, youve probably spent too long on your phone anyway'
listen to music more. its easier for me to kinda write off my phone and do other things if i just open music or a podcast or long youtube video on it. i know we all love long video essays, but i recommend music more specifically for me at least because im less inclined to pause music or scroll while listening to it for some reason? whereas using a show or video or podcast for white noise, im way more likely to also be scrolling on my phone and that is my activity lol. music for some reason i dont want to interrupt and instead of being on my phone i can clean or do something productive on my computer etc
this one is sooo hard but try to fall asleep with some distance between you and your phone, even just a couple feet. mine stays on the desk next to my bed which isnt that far but its better than on bed like it used to be. when you wake up you probably wont feel like reaching for it right away if its far and even better if you have to get up for it because then at least you stand and move your body first thing instead of looking at your phone first thing. and try to get more and more of your morning routine done before touching your phone over time.
-> for me, i started by just trying to at least wake up a bit in bed before touching it, then stand up before touching it, then stand and stretch, then going to the bathroom first, making coffee first, feeding the cat first, etc. its surprisingly helpful to have a specific chore/task in mind that is The requirement so that everytime you do it you get a lil dopamine rush for unlocking your phone from yourself lmao. when the weather was nice i used to make my Requirement being outside first before going on it and i LOVED that. esp as it got easier and i started doing more and more before going on it and finally walking outside with coffee and my phone felt like such a pleasant little reward.
find a hobby that uses your hands. example: i really need to get back into knitting because when i did it regularly so much time that wouldve been on my phone was spent knitting with music/podcasts/shows/(even online lectures! when i felt productive lol) playing. its the same amount of physical relaxing - barely moving lol - but uses a longer attention span and a much better dopamine hit than scrolling, i literally MADE things.
-> you might be thinking, 'but mindless knitting isnt better than mindless scrolling is it?' but that mindless feeling on your phone is just that, mindless. the mindless feeling you get when doing something like knitting is actually closer to a flow state, which is actually incredibly good for you, like a fulfilling nutritious meal as opposed to 'empty calories' or whatever
get a widget for your homescreen that shows your screen time. i have one and of course it doesnt always stop me but seeing that time go up all day the more i use it and the pride of keeping it low is really helpful
practice grounding. in general.
spend more time on anonymous activities and have more privacy and less attachment with your 'persona' - what i mean by that is, i consider things like scrolling through tumblr (for me personally!) to be relatively harmless because i dont try to like,, brand myself here. if youre a tumblr regular you know the jokes - 0 follows, 0 notes, screaming to the void, moots you dont talk to, blorbo pfp and urls, fake names everywhere, and we're having fun! basically targeting the 'everyone is famous now' thing with this one - embrace being a nobody with no personal stakes here
-> personally ive never kept up with having social media accounts that are actually just, me irl - like a facebook or main instagram, like a locals account yknow? but i think it goes for that too - stop spending so much time trying to further personalize your online presence in the hopes of it representing you perfectly - because it never will, and it shouldnt, and you shouldnt aspire for that. your social media presence is lighthearted and incredibly surface-level, treat it like that! thats not me bashing social media either, having that mindset will make it more enjoyable bc youll be using it as it should be used!
do following/followers or camera roll/files or app purges. this is also a soft launch type of way to practice easing into a better mindset. aside from just literally getting rid of junk, the process of trying to judge whether or not you need something is good practice in mindfulness! even if you dont delete everything you feel like you maybe should, thats fine, youll do other purges in the future too. eventually youll get better at parting with things and realizing when things that feel good in a moment are actually bad for you. and it forces you to regularly check in on your more long-lasting parasocial relationships online and how theyre serving you or not
speaking of parasocial - for actual friends, if theyre irl, think about how much you interact with them online vs in person and why you think that is and how it affects you. maybe youll wanna see them more irl if possible (i promise its better for your friendship), maybe youll realize you dont need to keep tabs on them anymore (old high school acquaintances lookin at you). for celebrities and fandom things - try to think about the bare minimum content from them you could do with. you dont have to unstan all your faves and stop enjoying things - but do you need their notifications on? do you need to have a stan account? do you need them on all the platforms? do you need to have all that saved content of them? are there aspects of this that you love that could be found elsewhere?
if youre of the genre of online where you just cant help yourself from getting involved in big discussions or discourse and arguments - i recommend journaling when you get upset by something online, articulating your feelings without the idea of someone ever reading it and without the goal of 'winning' or being the most correct and logical or even the most sympathetic and morally good. take away every audience aspect of it. what is this really about for you, and why would strangers online deserve to hear your personal well-thought out opinions? why would your thoughts deserve to be simplified and misconstrued and underappreciated the way they would be in this discussion? is there even an outcome to this where you feel truly satisfied? are their people who are more worthy of hearing your thoughts who arent part of this audience? is this a conversation that is best held online where so much communicative nuance is inevitably sacrificed?
in the end these are all just practices in remembering how in control you are. and that goes for if any of these are scary or too difficult sounding too! these all become less scary if you remember that as soon as anything becomes too uncomfortable or painful, you have all the power to stop doing it, make a change, and try again later. so much of advice for quitting bad habits can be intimidating because the pressure and the shame that would come from failing scares you out of the possible benefits of trying - just go ahead and kill that shame from the jump. of course youre going to fail! you are going to have setbacks! thats part of it! you have agency in this, always. the internet is not inherently or completely evil nor good. build trust in yourself to make the calls on when it is serving you and when it isnt on a case-by-case basis, and then give yourself permission to learn through trial and error.
and remember you are worth all of this effort. i believe in us <3
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tokyo-daaaamn-ji-gang · 5 months
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It's only me or what have been revelead about the final timeline (a mysterious adult saving Inupi (shinichiro?), Hakkai protecting Yuzuha when he was too afraid in the previous timeline, ect...seems to show that Chjifuyu isn't the only one to remember?
Because if people remembers, more or less, it can explain or they do'nt remember but havr just some pictures, feelings out of context. Chifuyu remembers exact moments so why would he be the only one?
why Hakkai suddently feel enough strong to face Taiju and talk back to him (what Taiju needs to hear/see to stop), and why Taiju actually stopped.
why Shinichiro (if it's him) knew about the fire even if it was just a "bad feeling" that he has had this day, he ran there without knowing why and...(but it means that he already knew Inupi and knew about Akane too). or it's a mistranslation and it's Takemichi who saved Inupi and not a adult XD
Why Inupi seems so loyal to Takemichi (have you seen as he's HAPPY at the wedding, he's one of the most happy in all Mitchy's friends)
Why Kazutora is apparently uneasy with Shinichiro ^^" (i really hope he doesn't remember why, no need of trauma for him)
Koko wastes money like he was amassing money in his previous timeline. So much that Inupi has to keep his wallet XD (they're so married)
Imagine if everyone knew/felt something but nobody talked about it.
Could be! Ngl I didn't even consider that angle with Hakkai protecting Yuzuha, I assumed Takemichi met them earlier and influenced Hakkai the same way he did later on. (Kinda like this idea since it means Takemichi and Hakkai gets to keep their bond). But it could've been Hakkai partially remebering.
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I don't think this is Shinichiro anymore though, not after the translations calling the person a "mysterious adult" if it was him then they would've known it was him and he wouldn't have had any reason to not just say it's him.
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I am so curious about how Takemichi's relationships develop in this timeline though esp with character's like Inui who wouldn't have had the same bonding experience with him. There's nothing to say Kazutora is uneasy around Shinichiro though. I do like the idea of everyone kinda having these feelings though, like not as clear as Chifuyu but just glimpses or dreams or feelings.
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heliza24 · 11 months
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Love your blog and all your analysis!!
Many people didn't like S2 because Simon, according to them was just a tool to drive Wilhelm's story, a love interest only and didn't really have his own story. In particular, many are frustrated at the lack of narrative on the video's effect and Simon's subsequent trauma. Of course, everyone's allowed their opinions but seeing as you have experience in the world of writing and making tv magic, wanted to get your insight on this. Thanks, a S2 fan! 💜
Hi anon! Thanks for the question.
I’ve already written pretty extensively about Simon’s arc in season 2 and why I like it in this post. In short, I think he grows a lot in season 2, but his growth takes him towards emotional vulnerability and openness, which is not something we’re used to seeing in characters (especially not male ones). 
I also don’t mind how they address Simon’s trauma in season 2. I’m going to approach this momentarily not as a writer, but as someone who has been in therapy for years. There are some traumas that have happened to me (like a serious car accident when I was a kid) that are very concrete, with a set beginning and end, and that began to affect me right away. (I had ptsd symptoms pretty immediately after that accident). But there are other traumas that feel like a series of small cuts instead of one big punch. It’s harder to decide where they begin and end, and their effects are more subtle. Sometimes it takes me years to even realize that they were traumatic and that they are still affecting me. (The medical trauma I’ve experienced as an adult over several years is like this). To me this is more what Simon is dealing with with the video. Once the video goes online, it’s not coming down. There’s no set end date, and Simon spends most of season 2 not even knowing who the perpetrator was. He’s in the kind of no-man’s land between the initial blow and coming to understand how the whole process has affected him. That being said, I do think we see some changes in him that reflect what he’s gone through. He seems to care a lot less about his academic classes than he did in season 1. He’s writing music in an attempt to process what he’s been through. And you could even see his attempt to have sex with Marcus as a trauma response. The last time he hooked up with someone his agency was taken from him. So it makes sense to me that he’s eager to have sex again but fully on his own terms, to partially erase that feeling of not being in control. I don’t know for sure if this will happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more traditional ptsd symptoms from Simon in season 3. If there’s some sort of legal action against August that would signify a sort of “end” of the video trauma, and would also probably be re-traumatizing in a lot of ways. I also think interacting directly with the royal family might stir up some things as well.
Ok, now I’m going to totally switch gears and approach your question from a writing perspective. Let’s talk about story structure for a minute, specifically TV story structure. Most TV has an A plot and a B plot (and sometimes a C plot too). In old school cable procedurals, the A plot would be the mystery of the week, while the B plot would be about whatever was happening in the characters’ personal lives. If there was an overarching mystery or storyline that tied the whole season together, that would be the C plot. As you can guess by how they’re named, the A Plot would take up the most time and do the most to drive  the episode forward. The B plot is next most important, etc. Once shows started to become more serialized in the age of streaming, the concept of A and B plots changed a little bit. Now the plots are divided by character and theme. The A plot will be headlined by the protagonist and will explore the main themes of the show. The B plot will be headlined by a secondary protagonist, who doesn’t have as much to do as the A plot lead, but is still answering a dramatic question that relates to the central themes of the show. A lot of times the primary and secondary protagonists’ actions influence each other, but they don’t share a ton of screen time. (If they did, their stories wouldn’t be separate.) You can think of the A and B plot protagonists as two sides of the same coin. They’re intricately connected, they’re exploring the same ideas, but they rarely come face to face, and they often represent different perspectives on the same themes. Black Sails is probably my favorite example of this. (I’m not as active in the Black Sails fandom as I am in the Young Royals fandom, but Black Sails is probably my all time favorite show and I absolutely love all the ungovernable pirates over in the Black Sails tag. Shout out to them). James Flint is the main protagonist and headliner of the A story, but Max is the secondary protagonist that headlines the B story. Both are struggling with the question of how to achieve and wield power in an unjust world, and their political maneuvers consistently influence each other’s plots. They share a lot of secondary characters across both of their plots, but they themselves never interact. So that’s one example, and if you look around at your favorite shows you’ll be able to find lots that adhere to this formula, including, I would say, Young Royals.
I think a lot of people are kind of subconsciously looking for this kind of structure, and have decided that Simon is the protagonist of the B plot. I understand this, because we all love Simon. He’s really well written and acted, his personality is so compelling, and his chemistry with Wilhelm is great. I spend a lot of time writing him in fic (I’m the writer of all the Simon content in Heart and Homeland) so I understand this impulse. But if you were looking for Simon to be anchoring the B plot in season 2, you might have been disappointed. Because in reality I don’t think he’s the secondary protagonist. I think Sara is. 
Sara is set up as a foil to Wilhelm, the main protagonist, in so many ways. I always say that the driving dramatic question of Young Royals lives with Wilhelm, and it’s something along the lines of “should I conform and live the oppressive life that was designed for me, or rebel and find my own path to happiness?” Sara is wrestling with a similar question that’s kind of the inverse of this; for her settling into a prescribed role in the Hillerska class system initially seems like a relief. So maybe for her the dramatic question is something along the lines of “is the price of fitting in worth it? Will it lead to true happiness?” They feel so much like opposite sides of the same coin to me. 
So Sara and Wilhelm are both trying to define themselves in relation to their families and also the class system. This comes up in the similarities of their family structure (they both feel very connected to their class position through their families; they both have complicated relationships with their mothers and bad to negligible relationships with their fathers; they both have a deep connection to their siblings) and in the relationships they choose to embark upon. They’re both navigating a very serious and complicated first love. They’re both dating across class (in the opposite direction, a perfect example of the “different views on the same theme” aspect of primary and secondary protagonists). They both have concerns about how and when their relationships become public, and by extension are both playing in the sandbox of themes around privacy and authenticity that define so much of the show.  
Both have difficulty regulating and recognizing their emotions. Sara seems to exhibit alexithymia, a common aspect of autism that makes it hard to recognize one's own emotions. Wilhelm has been taught to repress his emotions, which he does well until he explodes (like when he got into the fight at the top of the series or when he yells at his mom on the phone). He’s also managing a lot of physical symptoms of anxiety. 
Both also struggle with questions of justice and how to make things right. In the beginning of season 2, Wilhelm is initially determined to destroy August because he thinks August will never repent, but by the end of the season he’s starting to realize that this was the wrong technique. He realizes this largely because of Simon; he only puts down the gun and walks away from August because Simon does first.  Sara makes the opposite journey: she starts by trusting that August will change and repent on his own, but then she is forced to confront the fact that this is not true, and that she needs to use the legal system to bring August to justice. She makes this realization largely because of Simon, and seeing the ways that she has hurt Simon, in the same scene with the gun. 
The other big argument in support of Sara as the secondary protagonist of the show is that she and Wilhelm never directly interact. Their actions affect each other all the time, but they don’t share a scene together. They’re living on parallel but separate story tracks. 
Simon is a crucial character in both Wilhelm and Sara’s stories, but the fact that he is close with both excludes him from being a protagonist of his own plot line. (I would say the same about August, who is a catalyst for both Wilhelm and Sara.) That doesn’t mean that Simon isn’t well written. He has a very compelling character arc, motivates much of the plot, and his relationship with Wilhelm forms the heart of the show. But I think the reason people were disappointed in his story in season 2 is that they were expecting something from him that the structure of the show doesn’t support.  
If you’re interested in reading more about A/B/C plot structures I found this website really easy to understand. Also shout out to @bluedalahorse for talking to me about Wilhelm and Sara and helping me articulate what I was trying to say here. 
Thanks again for the ask, anon and for the vote of confidence in my analysis! I really appreciate it. If anyone else has a Young Royals scene or question they want me to break down from a writing or cinematography perspective, my ask box is always open.
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purgemarchlockdown · 6 months
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I'd joke about this interrogation question and how I've written a whole post about her Kazui parallels and how the 0308 parallels are so very real and we have the 020708 + 06 sometimes and that isn't even going into the 0809 parallels and the 050608 family parallels, but also I'd like to take a moment to mention how isolated Amane is actually.
It seems partially self-imposed but even before this she seemed to be the most withdrawn out of all the cast members. Not only does it seem like she was alone before the prison she says herself her upbringing isn't the standard.
Amane: Aren’t we the same? Me and Warden-san. You know, I’m aware that I’m out of the ordinary. That my environment was peculiar, and that everyone [else] is normal.
Amane is so far away from everyone, both physically since in T2 she isn't really willing to talk to anyone. And uh...metaphorically I guess. I don't really know a better word for it.
Amane is so young and the stuff she's experienced is so non-standard I'm not surprised she feels excluded and isolated. Part of a cult's indoctrination process is to isolate it's victims, and the more isolated you are the harder it is to crawl out of it.
Not to mention the ways the other prisoners make her Feel Excluded. Shidou does this often by making her feel Looked Down Upon.
22/10/24 (Shidou’s Birthday)
Amane: ……Kirisaki Shidou. How long do you plan on continuing this foolish behavior? Shidou: I wonder what you might be referring to there. I’m just doing what I need to do. If anything, I’d be happy if you would lend me a hand. Amane: I warned you. I can no longer turn a blind eye to this wickedness taking place right in front of us. You’re bringing ruin unto yourself. Do you understand? Shidou: No, I don’t understand. It’s my job as an adult to teach you that throwing a temper tantrum isn’t going to make everything go your way. If it’s a test of endurance you want, I’m happy to oblige, Amane.
He doesn't Mean to hurt her but it doesn't really change the outcome does it?
Notably the people she talks recently to are the ones that ask her for advice or her opinion. Fuuta has done that multiple times and Yuno did it recently.
23/06/27 (Amane’s Birthday)
Amane: What is it…… Kashiki Yuno. Don’t sit so close to me. Go away. Yuno: Sorry for barging in when you’re getting into your worldview thing. But Mahiru-san’s finally managed to get to sleep. Humour me with some small talk while I take a break. By the way, Amane. Have you ever wished you were never born? I’ve thankfully lived a pretty fun life so far, so haven’t really. But you seem to be struggling with something. So I kinda wondered if you thought like that. Amane: ……I don’t think that. Being born into this world is the first miracle any person experiences, and is something to celebrate. Even if after birth I was put through trial after trial, the value of that will never disappear. Yuno: Hmm. Ok. ……happy birthday, then. It’s good that you were brought into the world, I guess.
It seems like Amane appreciates being listened to and being asked for her opinion, which tracks with things she said in her in the T1 VD.
Amane: I see. Then, are the things that I as a twelve-year-old think irrelevant? Are you going to cast aside the feelings that I know I have in this very moment, purely based on the fact that I have not yet lived for a very long time? Judging these things based on someone’s age will not take you very far. Do I, at age twelve, not have my own will? Does Muu-san, at age 16, have more of a free will than I do? Does Yuno-san, at age 18, have more of a free will? Does Fuuta-san, at age 20, have an entirely free will?
It makes sense to me that she appreciates this, for most of her life it seems her wants and feelings are discarded and considered unimportant.
You might notice this makes Shidou's treatment of her worse. I'm so sorry Shidou but calling her actions a "temper tantrum" was one of the worst things he could of done in this situation. At this point if you get bitten by her it's on you.
(I wonder how much of Amane's hatred of Shidou is because of her cult and how much of it is because of this behavior. Thinking about the 050608 family parallels again...)
Really, no wonder she thinks nobody is like her. The only reason why I can make all these parallels is cause I have access to her magic mind MV and the rest of the material.
Kazui does not know how much Amane lies to protect herself. Amane doesn't know that Mahiru conflates love and pain together. She doesn't even know about Fuuta and Kotoko's crimes for justice! All these people she could relate to and she can't reach out to any of them.
Their so far away from her, it seemed fine in T1 but now the distance is so much bigger now. She's guilty, most of them are innocent, and the ones who are guilty are going through their own pains. Of course nobody is like her, she doesn't know anything about anybody here.
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nerdygaymormon · 6 months
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The Illusion of Choice - Therapy Session 10/17/2023
I think this is my fourth session with this therapist, and the sessions are quite unlike any other sessions I've experienced. We talk about books and philosophy and it keeps me a little off balance. I'm used to feeling like there's a plan that the therapist is guiding me through, but this feels very unstructured. It's not that I haven't made progress, but it's very interesting to experience.
One thing he does is reframes my life experiences in ways I never would have thought of, presenting me almost as a hero, and he is so convincing that I almost believe him!
Today he told me about a book he's working on, he's got 11 chapters written so far. It's about a detective in the future who from chapter to chapter meets different people and helps them find an answer to a question. In helping them find answers, the detective is also healing his own wounds. The thing is, each of these chapter is a metaphor for things people work on in therapy.
He shared a few examples with me, giving me summaries of 2 or 3 chapters. Then he asked me to come up with a concept for a chapter and a title to go with it. It's a form of narrative therapy to help me think about myself from an external perspective, a way to understand myself and my journey.
I came up with the title "Illusory Consent."
Consent is voluntary and uncoerced, it has to be authentic. The person giving consent has to be affirmative in communicating the consent, silence doesn't equal consent. Consent means being informed. Consent can be withdrawn.
The detective is perplexed that this person he encounters is upset with their choices. If this isn't what they wanted to choose, then why would they pick this? They consented to this.
But he learns that while it looks like the individual was free to make their own choice, they were manipulated. They were free to make the decision that others in their community approved of.
To ensure the "correct" choice was made, several techniques were employed, such as only being given partial information, or not being told the extent of what they were agreeing to, that agreeing to this also means agreeing to all these things. Sometimes they were emotionally manipulated by having their family brought in to express how proud they are of you for your willingness to make a certain choice and then watching expectantly as the individual is asked if that is their choice.
Is this individual really free to make a choice if not making the "right" choice will bring shame and isolation from their community? Is it a choice if they are told that God only approves of one answer? Are they really consenting to all the ramifications of that decision if they can't understand them or weren't given enough information?
But the truth the individual is learning is that they didn't actually give full consent in any of those instances. They weren't able to give consent as a child for what they would do as an adult. An adult isn't stuck forever with a commitment made by a child who couldn't possibly understand the impact of that choice. It isn't consent if the people you rely on are clear about what the only acceptable choice is. It's not consent if you understood you were agreeing to one thing but didn't know it implied agreeing to a bunch of other things. It isn't consent if you can't withdraw the consent, circumstances change and so can our choices.
If a choice is no longer serving me, I am allowed to make a different choice.
Why would someone allow themselves to remain in a situation like this where they don't feel they have the freedom to make the choices they want to make? Because an important aspect of being human is relationships. We are herd creatures; we need other people. Compromise is required. But when does it go from compromise to unhealthy? When is someone willing to sacrifice so much? Likely when they don't see any alternative that will be better than where they currently are. Fear is a big motivator to stay in abusive relationships and communities.
The detective is a loner who bounces around, meeting people and helping them. He is free to make the decisions he wants. He learns that choices have layers to them. Being in connection and community with others is meaningful and important, but also means to make your own individual choice is harder and takes more courage because it risks losing so much.
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eloise0620 · 7 months
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3D, Seven, and Jks Image
After 3D and the alleged video of Jungkook and his girlfriend I truly have realized how nasty some of this fan base is when one of the members isn’t fitting into the idea ppl have constructed for them.
This is your friendly reminder that you DON’T know Jungkook. You don’t know his sexuality you don’t know what he’s like in person you don’t know his relationship status. We only see what we’re given and whether you want to accept it or not what we’re given is a partially constructed image. I’ve seen so much screaming and whining about how 3D and seven are too “straight” or sexual for him and aren’t who he is and are ruining his image.
Like?? He has literally said in his own words he HIMSELF is trying to move away from the cute maknae image and be taken more seriously as a mature adult. Why are y’all acting like he can’t have multiple aspects to his identity as a person and an artist? Singing about women doesn’t make him a bad person or suddenly a completely different Jungkook. But some of you are delusional and put so much stake in him being in a relationship with one of his bandmates that you can’t even be happy for him if his music has pronouns that you don’t like. At that point you don’t support him you support the idea of him you’ve created in your head that’s attached to a fantasy. He’s not “queer bating” when he’s touchy with Jimin or Taehyung, he loves them. Him constantly bringing up Jimin means they’re close of course but it never necessarily meant it was romantic. It’s such an insult to their friendships to degrade Jungkook like that and act like those boys don’t love each other with their entire heart. They mean everything to each other and you can’t even find joy in that because it’s not how you envisioned the lives of people you don’t KNOW????
I’d also like to add that even if he is bi or has had relationships with men, etc. (not saying that he has just a hypothetical), using female pronouns doesn’t negate that??? He is a KOREAN artist, he cannot just suddenly start singing about men and not experience cultural backlash. Why would he want to put himself in that position during the peak of his solo career? He didn’t write these songs either so if they were handed to him with female pronouns what reason would he have to change it? I beg for some ppl to just use the tiniest bit of logic before speaking because some of y’all are grown ADULTS that are throwing full on fits and it is so embarrassing to witness. You are entitled to your opinion on his music and if you don’t like it that’s okay! But dragging his personal character into it is so gross and delusional, especially when it’s revolving around hearsay.
At the end of the day if Jungkook is happy and has not OBJECTIVELY done anything bad then you should be happy for him too! I’m so serious when I say some ppl in this fan base need to transfer this energy into BLs or something that doesn’t involve real people. He has expressed how he is tired of being infantilized, this man is 26 years old, and you think he’s being “corrupted” somehow. Jungkook is not your queer icon or your little baby or the raunchy bad boy, he’s just Jungkook the individual. There have been plenty of valid criticisms I have heard regarding 3D but all this nonsense is not apart of it. If you don’t like him as he is then I sincerely hope you do leave because no one deserves fans like that, especially not someone like Jungkook who dedicates his time to showing how much he truly loves and appreciates army.
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sophieinwonderland · 6 months
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if you had to guess, what percentage of do you think may be of a plural mind, regardless of if it’s a trait they identify with or not?
Ooh! This is a tough one.
It's going to come down a lot to how we defined plurality.
First, are we talking about people who currently are experiencing plurality or all the people who have ever experienced plurality?
I've talked a lot about how there are many imaginary friends who are experienced as acting outside of the child's conscious control.
One study showed about 65% of children have imaginary friends. Another showed 35% didn't always do what the children wanted while 29% were what was deemed as "noncompliant."
 Thirty-six per cent of the children described their imaginary companions as consistently compliant and agreeable, 35 per cent gave some indication that the imaginary companions did not always do or say what the children wanted, although they were mostly friendly and compliant, and 29 per cent described their imaginary companions as noncompliant in ways that suggested the children experienced the companion to some extent as being out of their conscious control. 
If we assume every imaginary friend who can act outside of the host's control is a headmate, the percentage of children who are plural during childhood would be a whopping 41.6%
But the numbers could be even higher. That only covers two manifestations of plurality. (Imposition and Inhabitation.) And it's probably ignoring spiritual experiences.
If a child has different distinct personality states they switch between, that's not accounted for in that statistic. Nor would praying to God be even if the child hears God regularly talks back in two-way conversation. And it's unlikely a voice in their head would be counted as an imaginary friend unless that voice had a form of some kind. So this number could actually be much higher.
But I feel comfortable saying at least 41.6% of kids are naturally plural.
What about adulthood? Well, things get complicated.
Purely on the disorder side, DID alone makes up about 1-3% of the population. OSDD and Partial DID make up even more. And personally, I consider certain experiences many psychiatrists would currently classify as hallucinations or delusions to be dissociative as well. (A delusion of being someone else could be a form of switching, some hallucinations demonstrate intelligence, etc.) Then there are many with MADD who report sentient Paras.
On a more spiritual side, Tanya Luhrmann, who is running the Stanford Tulpa Study, wrote a piece comparing people who build two-way communication with God to tulpamancers.
If we take the view that these are the same mechanisms at play, that could add a lot to the plural spectrum.
But finding accurate statistics for this phenomenon that we could apply to the whole population is hard. And it's unlikely everyone or even most people who say God talks to them is meaning with a literal mindvoice, and that this is happening consistently enough to consider this God of theirs a headmate.
Going back to the imaginary friends, only about 7% of adults report having imaginary friends.
While we might take the numbers from the children and apply it to the adult group, to say only about 64% of that 7% would be autonomous, I would actually speculate the number being much higher.
A lot of those imaginary friends will have been with the hosts since childhood. And I think it's likely most would gain autonomy and self-consciousness in that time. I would say most adult imaginary friend will be sentient enough to be considered tulpas.
All in all, my conservative guestimation for adult plurality is 10%-20%.
(This estimation might sound low after everything I've said, but consider that different forms of plurality tend to overlap. A lot of systems with DID may have imaginary friends who they don't consider alters, many spiritual systems are mixed origin, many self-diagnosed with delusional companion syndrome here on Tumblr also happen to be systems of some kind, some tulpamancers later discover they were already traumagenic systems, etc.)
Finally, if you were to ask me the percentage of the population with the potential to be plural, I would guess that at near 100%.
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skyloftian-nutcase · 9 days
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Do you think that Time's projecting his anger & feelings of failure & uselessness onto the Master Sword? Possibly even partially because she can't defend herself, so it's easy to do?
Maybe, he'd already been doing so for a long time & now it's habit?
Because, realistically, he did have a chance to head Gdorf off at the pass without needing to be put to sleep for 7 years, but that chance slipped through his fingers the moment that he returned to Castle Town only for the Princess & Impa to run off with Gdorf hot on their tails. And at that point, there was no avoiding a fight.
Had Time gone to the King after saving the Gorons, with the Kokiri Emerald in hand, told him the situation, & cited Darunia, the King's own Sworn Brother, as a witness to Gdorf's crimes against the Gorons & also informed him of DekuDad's death at the hands of Gdorf's minion, then Time likely wouldn't have even needed to fight Gdorf to begin with.
But he didn't. Likely because he didn't think of it at the time.
And it wasn't until after Time had missed the opportunity that he came into contact with the Master Sword.
I can't help but wonder if Time realizes that had the Master Sword not done what she did, the chances of him failing & dying in the process would've most likely not only skyrocketed, but also been assured?
I think something to bear in mind with Time was that his adventure happened when he was like, what, 9 or 10? And he’d never had an adult in his life up to that point, he was raised by immortal children. My point in this is that Time would have awful coping skills dealing with everything that went down. He strikes me as very much a loner, so he wouldn’t really have reconciled much of his feelings, I think, so yes, for the sake of Linked Universe he definitely projects his problems to the sword for the reasons you mentioned. I think even if his now adult mind, with more experience and ability to see better logic, recognizes the sword’s actions saved his life, he can’t reconcile that with the hurt he felt, and, as you said, the sword can’t defend itself, so that makes it an easy target.
I find it an interesting dynamic, and creates some fascinating friction between him and Sky.
Personally, outside of LU, to me the Hero of Time would be wary of the sword but I don’t think he’d hold much resentment against it. The Master Sword was an item of legend but never really emphasized as housing a spirit. Honestly, I’m surprised nobody’s written him having beef with Rauru, who went along with the sword’s actions and just let this kid be in a coma for 7 years. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But Link doesn’t strike me as someone who holds grudges against people all that much (aside from Ganondorf).
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finalmoment · 1 year
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cw: discussions of childhood trauma, child abuse, eating disorders, and suicide.
i dont think brad and luida were perfect, or even exemplary, caretakers for vash. this is partially a perspective rooted in theories about trauma (especially childhood trauma) -- but like, clearly they imprison him for months. he's a young child fresh from an incredibly traumatic event that he feels personally responsible for. he has no family, his brother used him and hurt him, his adopted mother is dead, and he wants to die. and his first experience with humans is, functionally, them going "uh i guess you might be okay but we don't quite trust you, there's just something about you that means we have to keep you right here in this one room and not let you leave" and vash just accepts this. he's too tired, and he hates himself too much, to question it, and in some ways it must make sense to him bc he did do something terrible, so they shouldn't trust him.
and then, whether intentionally or not, luida ties his worth to his ability to be useful. "there has to be something only you can do," she says, and that would maybe work if vash's problems started and ended with feeling useless, but they don't. there's so much more going on. he's called monstrous by the other humans on ship three; he sees himself as monstrous already. the only reason he can't kill himself is because he's being monitored and also because he's handcuffed, like, constantly at this point. he spends well over 4 months in what is basically solitary confinement -- a period of time and a tactic that would break any adult, so what does it do to an already-broken child? especially one that's implied to have been starving himself for the entire duration of his imprisonment.
they only start actually trusting him as a person when he proves useful to them, when he saves the plant. his decision to start eating again and his freedom/official residence on ship three are connected directly to his ability to be useful, and this is the path vash will follow for the next few decades -- seeing his value to people as measured in what he can do for them, and otherwise seeing himself as someone whose existence is fundamentally at odds with other people's peace/security/happiness. brad was vocal about not trusting him, and even if vash doesn't seem to harbor any ill feelings towards him for this (and i would bet that vash doesn't, in fact, feel that this was wrong of brad to do), it's still really painful! brad is initially sulky and put-off around vash and disapproving of luida's decision to trust him, even if vash grows on him eventually i can't imagine vash didn't internalize this attitude to himself to some degree or another. it takes him long-ish period (around a few years) to decide that brad does in fact like him a little.
and the whole time he's keeping this massive secret from them and it must be driving him insane. he can't talk about it because his wounds are just as fresh, but he can't talk about it because he doesn't know what they'll do when they find out. he didn't feel secure with them; even if he felt loved, and loved them back. but he couldn't be open with them, he could only do his best to be as useful and selfless as possible so that he can store up goodwill against the time when his secrets spill out. and the moment they do, he's branded a traitor immediately. luida doesn't believe it, but vash doesn't hear her say a word in his defense. he only hears brad decide that all of vash's actions by his side mean nothing in the face of one childish error of misplaced trust.
and of course, all of this does get better, in some way or another. no family is perfect; luida goes after vash, and brad makes it up to him. but...trauma doesn't go away that easily. vash doesn't return home unless he really needs to, for his arm. luida and brad decide to put themselves into cryo-sleep, leaving vash without a stable family again. in the span of time vash has lived, many relationships can be repaired -- especially if the person wronged is so eager to erase his own pain.
i've been thinking for a while about the patterns in vash's behavior, trying to trace them to a starting point. i think this is as good a place as any: even if knives was the one to lay the groundwork for vash's issues, many people since have contributed to them, adding their own influences to the guilt and self-hate vash carries around. and many of those people have, genuinely and unreservedly, loved vash and been loved by him anyway.
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nocturnal-nexu · 2 months
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"Ninjago 7 AU"
General Lore Master Post
(I'll tag any posts I make related to this AU with "#ninjago 7 AU" so you guys can find them easier.)
(Warning! I love character analysis, so this is going to be really long.)
When Pixal first started constructing her little Mini Pix army, she started with just some simple base programming. To follow instructions and stuff. They aren't necessarily conscience AI like Zane and Pixal are.
But after making a few Mini Pix's, Pixal decided to experiment a bit by incorporating a slightly more cognitive AI system. It's not programming exactly like hers and Zane's, though.
Just like in real life, I think that Ninjago's AI learns through experience. Like how after you search and look at different things on Tumbler or Pintrest, it starts to tune the feed to your interests. Or how, after running tons of scripts from a show through an AI, it can predict how a script from that show would go. (Albeit a very wacky and random version of a script. 😂)
Of course, Ninjago has vastly more advanced technology than the stuff we have.
I think that Cyrus Borg built Pixal with most of her "experience" data already built in. I don't think he had time for an AI to learn and develop from analyzing situations in the outside world. The tech boom in Ninjago City seemed to happen pretty fast in season 3.
(This could also partially explain her extremely robotic personality at the beginning of Rebooted. Most of her "experiences" at that time were just information and data recorded in her system and not actual real-life experiences.)
Anyway, because of this, Pixal was built to be mentally an older teenager/young adult from the start.
Mini Pix #7, however, was built with only a base AI, with little to no life experience data built in. She is definitely much more aware of her surroundings than her many counterparts, but she is still just a base AI. Her AI programing at the time of her creation is about that of a 3 year old child.
She, of course, gets schematics of whatever Pixal is working on, just like the other Mini Pix's, and knows how to do technical things (that's what she was programed to do after all) but there is a big difference between technical knowledge and emotional maturity. Basically, just imagine a 3 year old who is crazy smart for some reason, but still has the mannerisms of, well, a 3 year old.
(Like if she isn't scheduled to work on whatever project Pixal has going on at the moment "7" will go pout in a corner. She's just a little toddler who wants to be included in whatever is going on.)
After spending a lot of time and energy programming "7", Pixal found that she did not have much of either to spare when there was so much work to get done, vehicles to build, and missions to help organize. So, for the rest of the Mini Pix models, she used her original blueprints, and no more AIs were integrated.
Now we're up to Crystalized.
In the episode "The Fall of the Monastery", "7" as we know, saves Pixal, Wu, and Skylor from the monastery fire. (This particular scene is really important later. I'll get to that.) After which, in a subsequent episode, Pixal decided that she deserved a name and thus dubbed her "Mini Pix 7"
"7" also joined everyone else in that final battle at the end of "Crystalized' as well.
We don't really know when Pixal first made all the Mini Pix's, but at the time of "Crystalized" I have "7" being about 4 1/2 cognitively.
(If you have any info that says otherwise, let me know! I love discovering all the lore of this show, and I know that the time frames of things always seem to be up to debate.)
Anyway, in the months following the whole "crystal king debacle" as the monastery was being rebuilt and thereafter, "7" became a bit more of a permanent fixture of the team. She helped a lot with the rebuilding and was constantly following Pixal around, wanting to be included. The rest of the team quickly accepted her into their little family. She would always be getting into shenanigans, with Kai and Jay especially, and started to follow Zane around about as much as she stuck by Pixal. She would constantly be asking him to make pretty ice crystals for her and would do happy little somersaults when he obliged.
Well, as well as she could ask, with her limited vocal capabilities.
This became a problem.
As the months passed, and "7" grew and experienced more and more of life, the more she wanted to say. And you can only communicate so much with beeps, boops, and facial expressions.
She would get very frustrated when she couldn't communicate what she wanted to her friends, and as that was becoming more and more frequent, it made for a very grumpy robot.
As this problem persisted, Zane and Pixal started discussing building "7" a proper nindroid body. But they came to a bit of an impasse in regards to her memories.
Pixal argued that it could be dangerous for "7" to have to carry the memory of dragging her family out of her home and then watching it go up in flames. She was essentially 4 1/2 at the time! No child should have to live with that. Maybe not even deleting the memory entirely, but at least blurring it a bit, scrub away the details and such, make it bit less tramatic. And she had noticed that "7" already tended to have very expressive emotional responses to things. She wanted to give "7" the best life she could, as her and Zane at this point had become her main caretakers and in their hearts considered "7" their daughter.
Zane was completely against the idea of any memory erasure or even tampering. He stated that even if their intentions were to help "7," messing with memories was not a good idea in the slightest. He knew from experience.
(Ahem...Dr. Julian....ahem...Ice Emperor...ahem)
The arguments went on for weeks, and the rest of the team couldn't remember a time when they had seen the two so angry.
Especially Zane.
He was very adamant that removing any of "7"s memories was not even to be considered as an option.
(In other words, Pixal is being a momma bear, and Zane is having memory tramua.)
They both made very good points, and really, they just wanted to protect "7" in their own way. In the end, they came to the concensus that they wouldn't alter her memories, but they would keep a close eye on her and her emotional responses to things moving forward. You know, talk to her about it and stuff, and help her to work through the memory if it started to bother her.
About 6 months after Crystalized, Zane and Pixal were finally done building "7's" new nindroid shell. And "7" was very eager to transfer over. She is cognitively around 5 at this point.
The process actually took a bit longer than Zane and Pixal thought. But "7" had been through a lot of adventures in her first couple of years alive. There were a lot of experiences and data to transfer over.
When the transfer was complete, "7" couldn't have been more excited!
The first thing Seven did was excitingly thank her mom and dad for her new body. Zane and Pixal were a bit surprised at this. They saw Seven as their daughter, of course, but they didn't realize that she shared the sentiment and thought of them as her parents. (As pretty much the whole team cared for and looked out for her in their own ways.) There was a lot of hugging and kissing and happy tears. 🥺 🤍💜🩵
(I want to eventually write out this particular scene with all the feels and such)
When asked if she wanted a new name, she declined, saying that she liked the name Mommy gave her. I mean, everyone on the team had been calling her "Seven" for a while, so I think that she would have become a bit attached to the name.
Behind the Scenes!
(I originally did want "7" to ask for a new name. She was going to choose "Crystal". "Like daddy's ice crystals!" was her reasoning. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that with everything she went through in...ahem..."Crystalized," I figured she wouldn't choose a name that would remind her of the evil purple shards that took over her home city and almost destroyed her family.
Also, I came across someone else's Pixane kid OC who was named Crystal, and I didn't want to steal that from them. So, with the combination of those factors, I scrapped that idea.)
In contrast to her parents' calm and thoughtful nature's, Seven is a bit of a handful. She's a very adventurous little 5 year old and is always seeming to get into trouble. Sometimes, in a mischievous way, but mostly, she's just exploring and learning about the world around her like all kids do.
She has a very bouncy and bubbly personality, and, as Pixal observed earlier, she can be rather emotional at times. She is very empathetic and doesn't like it when someone on the team is sad. She loves jokes and harmless pranks, and often, Jay and Kai will rope her into their prank wars. As much as she likes mechanical and electronic things, Seven loves to run around outside. She especially likes finding bugs.
Seven likes to spend time with her parents a lot. She was a bit clingy in her original shell, and that trait has definitely carried over. You'll often find her in the kitchen with Zane or in the Sam X cave checking out whatever new invention Pixal is working on.
Zane and Pixal, love their daughter so much!!! They are a little mini family inside of their bigger found family. They give each other hugs all the time and enjoy a big snuggle pile during movie nights.
Seven still loves watching Zane make snow flurries and ice crystals, and Zane loves seeing her face light up when he does. He often involves her when he's in the kitchen whipping up a new recipe. There is often a big mess by the time they're done. (Like when they made Cole a surprise birthday cake. Flour was everywhere!)
Since she started out working on inventions with Pixal, Seven still has a passion for electronics. She likes to hang around in the Sam X cave with her mom helping her with her inventions, making modification suggestions, and making stuff of her own. Pixal often hums when working on projects and Seven joins in. It often escalates into a full concert, both of them singing at the top of their lungs.
As Pixal predicted, Seven does have a bit of trauma from the whole monastery on fire incident.
It mostly surfaces as nightmares of fire and losing her family.
Zane and Pixal are with her through it all. Comforting her when she wakes up in the middle of the night, encouraging her that they aren't going anywhere. They will always be with her.
Zane got Kai involved, and he was able to show Seven that even though fire can be dangerous, when handled correctly it can be a beautiful thing, providing warmth, light, and comfort.
After that conversation and a few more experiences with Kai teaching her about fire, Seven began to overcome her fear of fire.
Seven loves her aunt and uncles!
Nya thinks that she is the absolute cutest thing and loves to work with her and Pixal on the silly projects Seven comes up with. 5 year olds have some crazy ideas for inventions.
Jay loves having someone around who actually laughs at his jokes. He loves being an uncle and playful teasing often ensues.
Lloyd is teaching her how to play some of his favorite video games, and in the process is taking more time for himself to relax and take a break from being the leader.
Kai is very happy to see this.
After helping Seven overcome her fear of fire, Kai has become a bit of a big brother figure to her. (Big surprise 🤭)
He likes to tease her and get into tickle fights until they both end up on the floor in fits of laughter.
Cole loves being an uncle and is always giving piggyback rides. They have a little game they play where Cole sees how high he can toss Seven into the air. This worried Zane a bit in the beginning, you know, his daughter being tossed straight up toward the ceiling. But he's used to it now. Cole knows what he's doing.
Probably.
Zane and Pixal have discussed eventually passing on Zane's element to Seven. But obviously not right now. Right now, they are just letting her be a kid, and trying to raise her to be the best nindroid that she can be.
And I personally think they are doing a great job.
That's all for now. If you've read this far, wowie! Thank you! You've got some perseverance! I'm not really the best writer, so thank you for listening! I have Seven's design planned out, and I hope to draw her soon for y'all. Stay tuned!
@100-percential-human I'm assuming that the wide eyes emoji on your reblog means that you are interested in this concept, so here you go! I hope you enjoy! :)
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