#i just described social anxiety by the book definition

[cyanogoth]

A nonexistent human being. Or is he? (character analysis of Johan Liebert)

A few months ago I’ve read a book which was recommended by one of the Monster’s fans, - “The Divided Self” by Ronald David Laing. He suggested Laing’s work to everyone who’s confused about Johan’s mindset and motivations, just as I’m sure a lot of us were… It was a GREAT recommendation, so insightful that I wanted to share my thoughts and the interpretation I developed.

Any blockquote in this post is from “The Divided Self”, there will be too many to sign each of them, so just keep that in mind :)

It’s going to be a painfully long read, but hopefully a rewarding one too.

PART 1: DEFINITION OF ONTOLOGICAL INSECURITY, TRUE AND FALSE SELF

Firstly we need to get familiar with a few concepts from Laing’s work which will be important for understanding the rest of the essay. His book describes schizoids and schizophrenics, exploring the mechanisms behind their illness. But it is important to understand that he, although a psychiatrist, acknowledged mental illness primarily as an existential/philosophical problem rather than a purely medical one. He saw more value in understanding the patient's experience of the world rather than endlessly examining and manipulating their body. 

The first term we will need is ontological insecurity. Let's compare how Laing describes someone who is confident in his own reality - and someone who is not.

The individual, then, may experience his own being as real, alive, whole; as differentiated from the rest of the world in ordinary circumstances so clearly that his identity and autonomy are never in question; as a continuum in time; as having an inner consistency, substantiality, genuineness, and worth; as spatially coextensive with the body; and, usually, as having begun in or around birth and liable to extinction with death. He thus has a firm core of ontological security.

<...>

The individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question. <… > He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body.

If a position of primary ontological security has been reached, the ordinary circumstances of life do not afford a perpetual threat to one's own existence. If such a basis for living has not been reached, the ordinary circumstances of everyday life constitute a continual and deadly threat.

For an individual who’s unsure of his own existence, life becomes a constant struggle to preserve his self. All efforts are made to avoid engulfment, implosion, petrification. Fear of being absorbed is essentially fear of being understood, caught up, seen, loved, "grasped".

To be understood correctly is to be engulfed, to be enclosed, swallowed up, drowned, eaten up, smothered, stifled in or by another person's supposed all-embracing comprehension. It is lonely and painful to be always misunderstood, but there is at least from this point of view a measure of safety in isolation.

The way to deal with this fear is to take one’s true self out of the real world, completely out of reach of other people. A true self withdraws into the depths of the inner world, its connection with an individual’s body is interrupted. That which interacts with the "outside" world and controls actions, movements, words, facial expressions is the false self. A carefully falsified image designed to deflect the gaze of others.

…[he] never allows himself to 'be himself in the presence of anyone else. He avoids social anxiety by never really being with others. He never quite says what he means or means what he says. The part he plays is always not quite himself. He takes care to laugh when he thinks a joke is not funny, and look bored when he is amused. <…> No one, therefore, really knows him, or understands him. He can be himself in safety only in isolation, albeit with a sense of emptiness and unreality. With others, he plays an elaborate game of pretense and equivocation. His social self is felt to be false and futile. - Laing describing his patient

However, another fear, of petrification, or objectification, clashes with the previous one. Fear of being absorbed makes one flee from the gaze of others, but by hiding from it, an individual ceases to be perceived by anyone, which once again puts their substantiality into question. An individual is very much afraid of being perceived by others as an object, as something inanimate, as a machine, as an “it” without subjectivity. It’s as if any potential observer is Medusa, who can instantly turn an individual to stone with a mere gaze. This fear pushes a person to "existential suicide" - he pretends to be "dead", giving up his own autonomy before someone else can deaden him and treat him as an inanimate object. Also, as a way of protecting himself, an individual might turn everyone around him into stone too - because a phantom, hallucination, or an object couldn’t harm him, only real human beings are capable of such.

Fear of implosion is the same as fear of absorbing the real experience of life. An individual is empty, he is a vacuum - but this vacuum he begins to think of as himself. Any substantial relationship with the world and people threatens to "tear" him, so he avoids it, too.

Now let’s clarify what is false self, how it relates to the true one and the world.

If the individual delegates all transactions between himself and the other to a system within his being which is not 'him', then the world is experienced as unreal, and all that belongs to this system is felt to be false, futile, and meaningless.

Here’s an illustration from “The Divided Self” to better visualize what is meant here.

The reality of the world and of the self are mutually potentiated by the direct relationship between self and other. In Figure 2, there is a vicious circle.

the person who does not act in reality and only acts in phantasy becomes himself unreal.

The true self resides in an imaginary, devoid world of phantoms. It becomes unembodied, not represented in the real world. The real world, in return, loses its vitality in the eyes of a schizoid, viewed now as filled with objects.

The false self is a mask, a performance, an imaginary identity with little or nothing to do with the true self of the individual. Laing describes cases in which the false self starts to emerge in childhood and such children are described by their parents as remarkably obedient, compliant, undemanding. They conform perfectly to the expectations of the family and the environment. They begin to mockingly imitate what is desired of them. This is not necessarily an absurdly "good" image; it can also be absurdly evil, if that is what the world wishes the individual to be.

The point of having a false self is to not let any part of the true one slip to the real world, where an individual has no power over what will be done to it. To give something about him away is to rely on others mercy, and it’s a risk a schizoid can't afford.

in reality, in 'the objective element', nothing of 'him' shall exist, and no footprints or fingerprints of the 'self shall have been left.

Now to the interesting part - how all of that correlates to Johan.

PART 2: ROOTS OF JOHAN’S ONTOLOGICAL INSECURITY

Firstly, of course, dressing up as a sister. He probably could sense already that it’s done for a reason, not for the fun of it. The family led “a quiet life”, which is probably difficult to do with two kids. So, my suggestion: the twins grew up with the feeling that they have to hide from some sort of danger and avoid attention. But, Anna didn’t have to hide her real appearance, unlike Johan, for whom pretending to be someone else became an important part of remaining safe.

Did he conceal as someone else, or was he only an imposter for the real human that for sure is present in the world?

Because everyone, besides mother and sister, only knew the sister, the girl, the daughter. She was definitely real. Was he really ever there?

Even the mother couldn’t tell them apart. He became an illusory twin.

The moment their mother hesitated could only solidify Johan’s intrusive thoughts. She had someone in mind, could it be that she hesitated because at that exact moment couldn’t tell where the kid she’d given up?

Did he only stand a chance to live, physically and existentially, only if he concealed as someone else? Because if people could see him for what he truly was, he would not be saved.

My guess is that Johan's perception of himself was so distorted that he no longer thought of himself as the real thing; that the true self worth protecting wasn’t inside of him, it was his sister, and he was fake in his entirety. He was a mere pretender who had to ward off danger from the true self. Johan's saying "I am you, and you are me" and referring to Anna as "my other self" indirectly confirms my assumption - he began to see himself and his sister as an integrated system, where he is nothing more than a facade and his sister is the living, real, substantial, human one.

The mother's hesitance in choosing between the two children added fuel to Johan's already flimsy sense of his own substantiality. What if she was not choosing between the twins, but simply could not at that moment figure out which one was which? Keeping a particular child in mind, she just couldn't tell who was really the kid she was thinking of and who was posing as such? Where is the real child and where is the false one?

The feeling of insecurity, the loneliness, the pain of their mother's abandonment, the sympathy for this sister, and the enormous guilt that the real one of them two had fallen into clutches of monsters. The twins' whole life consisted of constant attempts of intruders to destroy their lives and identities.

The days after Anna’s return prior to being found on Czech-German border mark Johan’s existential death.

Something in him collapsed in that interval of time. When his mother was choosing between them, he was still a normal child (or, at least, nothing described in manga showed us his abnormality) - afraid of being abandoned by his mother, of being handed over to be torn apart by sinister strangers whose intentions were unknown, but from whom he’d been running for as long as he could remember. All these feelings died in him. When and how exactly, we don't know, but a completely different Johan crosses the Czech-German border - detached, horrifyingly tranquil, indifferent to death. In a sense, he no longer has anything to fear, the short chain of events has been so devastating that he unknowingly committed existential suicide. Even if it’s death that’s awaiting them, no one will be able to put their hands on them, no one will be able to twist their souls and minds.

Laing’s patients often described their inner world as a wasteland, devoid of any sign of life. There are quotes from his book in which Laing talks about his patient and cites his words:

The self becomes desiccated and dead. In his dream world James experienced himself as even more alone in a desolate world than in his waking existence, for example:

“.. . I was standing in the middle of a barren landscape. It was absolutely flat. There was no life in sight. The grass was hardly growing. My feet were stuck in mud… ”

“. .. . I was in a lonely place of rocks and sand. I had fled there from something; now I was trying to get back to somewhere but didn't know which way to go… “

Reminds us of something, doesn’t it?

And it’s a precise reflection of Johan's world, the real Johan, where his self ended up imprisoned. However, he was a little luckier than the other schizoids - there was room for one more person in his world.

Mentally, Johan never made it out of that wasteland, only his body was saved. He calls this landscape a scenery of the Doomsday, not only because his body was close to death in that very space, but because it so strongly resembled Johan's inner landscape. It was the last place his soul has seen.

PART 3: KINDERHEIM 511 AND THE LIEBERTS

One’s true self, residing in a world of phantoms, ceases to engage with the real world through the individual's body. What is this body occupied with meanwhile?

Instead of being the core of his true self, the body is felt as the core of a false self, which a detached, disembodied, 'inner', 'true' self looks on at with tenderness, amusement, or hatred as the case may be. <…> The unembodied self, as onlooker at all the body does, engages in nothing directly.

This offers an answer as to why Kinderheim didn’t have the same destructive impact on Johan as it had on other children. His true self was already out of reach, it couldn’t be obtained no matter what they did to him externally.

They could get nothing from him. "They could only beat me up but they could not do me any real harm." That is, any damage to his body could not really hurt him.

In a sad way, the experiments on Johan's psyche were not successful, for he himself, quite unknowingly, subjected himself to all the horrors to which the Kinderheim warders were about to subject him.

You cannot kill what is dead, drain what’s empty, objectify what’s inanimate. That's why they didn't make it.

But Johan, of course, is the result they strived for but couldn’t achieve: a human so terrified and defenseless that is pushed to abandon his sensitivity in order to survive.

Thus, to forgo one's autonomy becomes the means of secretly safeguarding it; to play possum, to feign death, becomes a means of preserving one's aliveness. To turn oneself into a stone becomes a way of not being turned into a stone by someone else.

It seems to me that Johan was ready to settle down and stop running after escaping Kinderheim 511. But he left the orphanage with a critically dangerous revelation - sometimes it’s either you, or everyone else; his actions clearly show that he won’t hesitate to obliterate everything and everyone if it ensures safety. I just don’t think he expected to find himself in a similar position so soon, when he was adopted by Lieberts.

The thing about him is that he played along, he became what the world wanted him to become, yet it wasn’t enough to finally be left alone. The man they ran away from showed up at their doorstep and Johan lost his temper. Nothing helped the twins to escape monsters - living under different names, with different caregivers, in different places, together, separated- NOTHING was ever enough.

Maybe it was around the time his plan to be the last one standing was formed. Wiping out every sparkle of life from the world was the last attempt to gain safety.

Johan doesn’t care much about dying because his existential death has already happened, he already feels a lot more dead and frozen than alive. He already convinced himself that there’s nothing true about him, and out of two of them his sister is the true self. It doesn’t matter if he dies, he was never there from the start. But even after the gunshot he hopes to live through his sister.

Everything that comes after that wretched rainy night is an attempt to secure himself and his sister from the world that was on their tail for as long as they lived. He is ready to be separated from her and let her live under a different name if that’s how the monster finally loses track of her; he’s ready to enter the underworld, to take control of the German economy, to kill people.

It seems to me, because of the confinement of his true self in the realm of insubstantiality, he became unable to perceive people from the real world as alive and autonomous, that’s the sad reason why he could kill so easily. What he saw around were ghosts, objects that were mimicking human beings, not actual humans.

But there were exceptions.

Only Anna and Tenma are shown together with Johan in the wasteland of his inner world, where his true self dwells - them being there with him is a way of telling us, readers, that only these two truly know Johan. And therefore, only they can be spared.

I just want to emphasize: for Johan, “destroying the world” and “be the last one standing” wasn’t something he did for fun, or just because he could. It’s the last endeavor of a tortured child convinced in hostility of all living things to find peace.

PART 4: THE TALE OF THE NAMELESS MONSTER

The self is, however, charged with hatred in its envy of the rich, vivid, abundant life which is always elsewhere; always there, never here. The self, as we said, is empty and dry. One might call it an oral self in so far as it is empty and longs to be and dreads being filled up. But its orality is such that it can never be satiated by any amount of drinking, feeding, eating, chewing, swallowing. It is unable to incorporate anything. It remains a bottomless pit; a gaping maw that can never be filled up.

In the tale of the nameless monster, Johan can be both the monster and the boy who has been possessed by a foreign entity. That depends on how you interpret it.

This tale could be an allegory for what is happening to the twins, which are represented as nameless monsters. Johan could not remain himself, all the time hiding under different "faces'', changing names and identities. However, he couldn’t stay in any of them for long. His nature was bursting out, destroying these masks and whatever and whoever was around in the process. Nina on the other hand, even knowing her past, accepted the truth. Accepted her mother's choice and hardships she had to endure. She no longer tries to appear to be someone else, having chosen to move on with her life.

A second interpretation: Johan-the-Prince and our Johan are both weakened boys on a brink of death. For each of them, letting the Monster in, something scary, unnatural to humans, was a way to survive. So our Johan suppressed his sensitivity and susceptibility by pretending to be a not-quite-human, until traces and even references to his humanity have all but disappeared.

I don't think the fairytale manipulated Johan as a child, messing up his consciousness. What’s truly sinister about this picture book is that it foretold his fate.

As an adult, he picks up this book and sees himself in both the monster, who could not bear the present self and took on another's form, and the boy, who in an attempt to survive has ceased to be human, has destroyed everything around him. All that remains is solitude.

Imageries of the prince and the monster merge into one, and in one thing they are similar - in a fear of losing their lives, they lied primarily to themselves, and that lie destroyed the being of each of them. Neither monster nor prince really saved what they were protecting so desperately.

In addition, the book itself was an object from Johan's distant childhood, now almost forgotten, and served also as a reminder of the times when he was an ordinary, normal child.

Johan was wearing masks all the time, but the greatest of all his deceptions was not to live under the names “Johan Liebert”, “Franz Heinau”, “Erich Springer”, or any other for that matter. The most atrocious lie was to wear a mask of the nameless monster, even convincing himrself that this is who he is, that the emptiness and void is all there is to him. Wearing the guise of the nameless monster for years he had almost lost every memory of being human, and the book in his hands was a painful, violent reminder of his cowardly self-deception, his abandoned humanity, his forgotten self.

PART 5: I AM NOT YOU, AND YOU ARE NOT ME

From the moment the book falls into his hands, Johan probably realizes that his worldview is very much distorted. One of his fundamental beliefs about himself has been undermined, so debunking the rest of his illusions becomes a priority.

He remembers orchestrating the massacre at Kinderheim, but his belief that he was always capable of such things is shaken. He suspects that in his lost memories he will find the answer to the question he didn’t even think of asking. If he wasn’t born a monster, how did he become one?

We are not allowed to listen to the entire contents of the tape from Kinderheim 511. Only his attachment to Anna becomes apparent from it; but maybe he proceeds to talk about the Red Rose Mansion next. During interrogation he could recall his sister's words, which he heard again and again after her return. Her story was told in the first person POV: “I saw <....> I heard <…> I was <...> I ran <...>”. On recording he could repeat verbatim the words of his sister, and then, as an adult listening to it, misunderstand the meaning of those words. After all, he heard himself saying “I was taken <...>, I saw people die <...> , I ran away…” And only on the basis of this would he latch on to the story about the Red Rose Mansion as an explanation for what he had become.

Johan then decides to destroy the place. Although he clearly doesn’t recognize it, it doesn’t ring the bell yet.

Johan at that moment still considers himself a single set of personalities with his sister, and believes that in his mother's eyes they looked the same.

I can only assume that he told Čapek that Nina would kill him because he mistakenly thought that Nina held the same opinion about their connection as he did. If he's willing to kill for her, she'll do the same. Of course, he was wrong: he saw himself as an extension, a shadow of his sister, taking her joy and pain as his own; Nina, as much as she loved her brother, did not see herself and him as one, and clearly drew boundaries between her being and Johan's.

The capacity to experience oneself as autonomous means that one has really come to realize that one is a separate person from everyone else. No matter how deeply I am committed in joy or suffering to someone else, he is not me, and I am not him.

The assumption of being taken away by Bonaparta and being cast aside by his mother was one of the last crutches guarding him from the horrifying truth - he was the one who turned himself into a monster.

He cries when he hears Nina's story. Realizing that they’re not one, and she has never perceived Johan in this way. She is not his true self, and he is not his sister's false self. He sees more and more clearly the outlines of the true self within him, and he does not like the picture emerging before him at all.

All the “saving” he was doing turned out to be a sham that didn’t bring any of the twins the expected result. He experienced the guilt of denying himself existence and grew so enraged that he decided to kill himself. He now saw his true self - destructive, without a good reason. And realized it had to be eradicated, along with the man, the Monster, who made him that way - Franz Bonaparta.

PART 6: RUHENHEIM

The final stage of Johan's collapse, the massacre at Ruhenheim.

When he gets to Bonaparta's old house and finds numerous sketches of him and his sister as children he understands that Bonaparta was not “a monster outside of him”.

He refers to him as such when meeting Čapek, implying that Franz is to blame for him becoming a murderer. Upon seeing these sketches he recognized that Bonaparta's intentions had changed greatly over the years, and both Anna and himself were able to escape their fate because of his suddenly awakened sympathy. Not that this excuses Bonaparta, he was the one who designed the experiment after all. But these sketches were a confirmation of his kind intentions towards the twins, whatever they may have been at the outset.

It turns out that when Bonaparta came to visit the Lieberts, he was no longer a threat to Johan and Anna. Johan now knew that the night he shot the Lieberts had indeed stumbled and made a fatal mistake which tore him apart from Anna and plunged him deeper into the abyss of despair.

The event that finally convinced him of the animosity of the world and the lack of a safe corner anywhere in it was a figment of his mind which was led by fear.

This discovery was the final straw for Johan. Any image he had of himself collapsed for good.

The ending of "Monster" is Johan's realization of the fact that he undoubtedly Is. He exists, he is real, and he is him. And he was among the people who denied him the right to live; he was incapable of standing up for himself and recognizing his right to life, as his sister managed to do. He was so eager to erase any traces of himself from the world that didn’t notice the huge trail of blood dragging behind him, that was solid evidence of his existence, the only thing he had left.

He didn’t need to do horrible things that only left him and Nina traumatised. That left him all alone, miserable, separated from her.

He tried so hard to evade the evil people that he killed his Self before anyone had a chance to lay a hand on it.

When he set out to be nothing, his guilt was not only that he had no right to do all the things that an ordinary person can do, but that he had not the courage to do these things over and against and despite his conscience which sought to tell him that everything he did or could do in this life among other people was wrong. His guilt was in endorsing by his own decision this feeling that he had no right to life, and in denying himself access to the possibilities of this life.

After everything he learned about his past, Johan can’t forgive himself. For throwing himself into oblivion, for locking himself in the darkness. For making himself a monster that he was not born to be, that he had a chance not to become.

He was just as capable and deserving of normal life and real, deep connection with others as any other human being. He just convinced himself that he wasn’t one, and nobody dared to contradict him.

There is a desire in him to preserve not only himself from being consumed, but also those he cares about from himself. He thinks of his love as disastrous - because of it, Anna lost her brother and adoptive parents. Tenma, who saved him, was forced to be on the run for several years after becoming a murder suspect.

If there is anything the schizoid individual is likely to believe in, it is his own destructiveness. He is unable to believe that he can fill his own emptiness without reducing what is there to nothing. He regards his own love and that of others as being as destructive as hatred. To be loved threatens his self; but his love is equally dangerous to anyone else. His isolation is not entirely for his own self's sake. It is also out of concern for others. <…>

…what the schizoid individual feels daily. He says, 'It would not be fair to anyone I might love, to love him.' <…> He descends into a vortex of non-being in order to avoid being, but also to preserve being from himself.

He wishes to die now more than ever - a real death, this time. Not just existential, but total. The true end, as he called it.

Appearing in front of Bonaparta and Tenma, he doesn't aim at Franz, because he no longer blames Bonaparta for what he has become.

Johan said the only thing everyone is equal in is death, and what was behind his words: he says to Tenma that not everyone is worthy of saving, of being loved and forgiven, and Tenma should've finally realized this after meeting him and really knowing him. Because he's a monster, and being cheerful, having hope and light in their life is something that others can have, but he can’t; he's completely out of this human world and the only thing he has in common with everyone else is that they are mortal and so is he.

But even in his death he is mistaken. Once again believing he has no right to exist, he hopes to laugh at the world one last time, and die at the hands of the man who once saved him. After all, he certainly wouldn't have done it, knowing what Johan would grow up to be.

Isn’t that right, Dr. Tenma?…

Nina forgave him and the man who saved his life long time ago doesn’t regret his choice anymore and commits to it. The only people dear to him have recognized his right to live, whatever he may be.

Alas, how this affected him, we don’t know, and all we’re left with is speculation.

As a sentimental person, I want to believe that it meant something to Johan.

But what I really don't doubt is that Johan by the end is a completely different character to the one he used to be. Broken, disarmed, miserable. But it’s finally truly him.

"I think I must have figured out how the show ended. The Magnificent Steiner, he probably, became human again."

PART 7: THE FINAL ESCAPE

A mother plays a huge role in the development of her children's ontological insecurity - sometimes by being outright dismissive, sometimes by simply enjoying the child's undemanding and calm nature.

Here's what you can read about the mother’s impact in “The Divided Self”, those are Laing's reflections and descriptions of several of his patients.

... we suggest that a necessary component in the development of the self is the experience of oneself as a person under the loving eye of the mother.

His own feeling about his birth was that neither his father nor his mother had wanted him and, indeed, that they had never forgiven him for being born. <…> He was treated as though he wasn't there.' For his part, not only did he feel awkward and obvious, he felt guilty simply at 'being in the world in the first place'. His mother had, it seems, eyes only for herself. She was blind to him. He was not seen.

She had a great deal to say about her mother. She was smothering her, she would not let her live, and she had never wanted her.

Johan’s mother's choice was the first one in the long list of his miseries, it also triggered his ontological insecurity. And how could it not arise when the mother herself abandoned one of her children?

However, Johan was unaware that his mother had thought up names for the two of them, even before he and Nina were born. It turns out that the arrival of the second child was not an unpleasant surprise to her, she was looking forward to having them both.

She had always acknowledged the existence of both her children, and in her eyes they certainly weren’t a one big entity divided by chance into two bodies, one of which was never meant to be there.

But Johan looks truly disturbed after listening to Tenma. And this new revelation could also be another beginning to despair.

There is a door that must not be opened. What lays behind it: a paradise, or another monster?

Tenma, by telling him that the mother had given names to both of them, might have brought Johan down to a new hell. Where the mother recognised the reality of both her children and yet seriously chose which of them to keep.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life, but since it’s fiction we’re talking about, I think we should pay attention to the fact that Johan wakes up only after hearing Tenma’s words. There is a symbolic meaning of him being stuck between life and death for so long.

It’s like he was resisting to be alive again, refusing to stay awake, choosing to be in a coma rather than walk this Earth again. But yet he didn’t die - a part of Johan was holding onto life despite all the horrors it brought to him.

In his last waking moments, he was miserable after discovering all the truth about himself. He really wanted to die, he thought it was the only thing he was deserving of; but Tenma didn’t shot him, his sister forgave him - and it wasn’t the outcome he expected at all. It started an inner conflict he didn’t have the time to resolve.

Johan as well could see the memory of mother’s choice in a different light. By opening up to Tenma he admitted it as a serious enough cause for him to abandon his humanity, as he really was living in a world full of threats. Hiding and pretending came natural to a child that didn’t know any better. And his mother, however hurtful her choice was and how wrong was the very fact of it, loved both of her children, Johan knows that for sure now. Maybe, he could finally forgive himself for becoming a monster. There was no one left to blame for the way he had turned out, no one to take revenge on - even himself.

(I know it can be confusing, so I’ll clarify, just in case - by “forgiving himself” i don't mean he simply dismissed the damage he did to others. He could only forgive the one he, with his own hands, inflicted upon himself, finally realizing, he had no other choice in his circumstances.)

He had a chance to accept that he had the right to exist all along, from the very beginning.

Finally, I want to get into the last excerpt from Laing's book. These are his patient's words from their conversation.

I could only be good if you saw it in me. It was only when I looked at myself through your eyes that I could see anything good. Otherwise, I only saw myself as a starving, annoying brat whom everyone hated and I hated myself for being that way. I wanted to tear out my stomach for being so hungry. 

<…> Everyone should be able to look back in their memory and be sure he had a mother who loved him, all of him; even his piss and shit. He should be sure his mother loved him just for being himself; not for what he could do. Otherwise he feels he has no right to exist. He feels he should never have been born. No matter what happens to this person in life, no matter how much he gets hurt, he can always look back to this and feel that he is lovable. He can love himself and he cannot be broken. If he can't fall back on this, he can be broken. You can only be broken if you're already in pieces. As long as my baby-self has never been loved then I was in pieces. By loving me as a baby, you made me whole.

<…> It was terribly hard for me to stop being a schizophrenic. I knew I didn't want to be a Smith (patient’s family name), because then I was nothing but old Professor Smith's granddaughter. I couldn't be sure that I could feel as though I were your child, and I wasn't sure of myself. The only thing I was sure of was being a 'catatonic, paranoid and schizophrenic'. I had seen that written on my chart. That at least had substance and gave me an identity and personality. [What led you to change?] When I was sure that you would let me feel like your child and that you would care for me lovingly. If you could like the real me, then I could too. I could allow myself just to be me and didn't need a title.

I walked back to see the hospital recently, and for a moment I could lose myself in the feeling of the past. In there I could be left alone. The world was going by outside, but I had a whole world inside me. Nobody could get at it and disturb it. For a moment I felt a tremendous longing to be back. It has been so safe and quiet. But then I realized that I can have love and fun in the real world and I started to hate the hospital. I hated the four walls and the feeling of being locked in. I hated the memory of never being really satisfied by my fantasies.

The above passage resembles Johan in many ways: the hunger he felt for real life, the doubt of being loved by mother, the bond which he developed with Tenma…. The last has to be special for Johan: the doctor didn’t simply let him off the hook in the end, he actively chose to save his life.

And just as Laing's patient laments how difficult it was for her to give up the label of "crazy, schizophrenic” because it was the only description she felt could be applied to her, Johan couldn’t part with the mask of the nameless monster for the longest time. It was, after all, the only constant in his life. And now he knows that "nameless" part isn’t really true. Or maybe it doesn't matter anymore. He is just him.

It’s up for a debate whether Johan chose life or death in the end. There’s evidence for both and this ambiguity is sure intentional on the author’s part. 

I just want to believe it was a newfound hope that got Johan out of the hospital bed.

#johan liebert #monster anime #naoki urasawa's monster #anime analysis #monster anime analysis #nina fortner #kenzo tenma #naoki urusawa #monster meta

[yelshin]

— AT LAST

Masterlist

An: requested by @star583 sorry if this took long😭 | Wc: 6.1k (damn)

Tags: Xiao ignoring reader, angst with comfort at the end?, this is HIGHSCHOOL AU, reader is described to have social anxiety, negative thoughts

Xiao doesn't believe in love, He usually spend his whole school year alone. But not until you transfer and became his group partner.

"Excuse me have you seen anyone named 'Xiao'?" Walking up to the nearest person feeling the nervousness took all over you, you didn't know anyone at this school (yet) "oh Xiao? You mean that grumpy student who spends his whole school year alone? He's in the library i think" 'what a weird title that "Xiao" hold...' You thanked the person before heading to the library, trying to find your new group partner.

You saw someone reading near the window, he have team hair and those pretty yellow eyes, like hell he's the definition of beauty. You walk up to hin and gently tap his shoulder, which he look at you with a little glare that screams 'who do you think you are to disturb me' that small glare cause your legs to start shaking in nervousness and fear thinking you did something wrong. "Have you...seenanyoneherenamexiao?" You didn't notice you spoke that fast without pausing. Causing people to stare at you; oh you just wish the ground to swallow you. But you were surprised when he said "its me, im Xiao and who are you?"

You introduced yourself and he immediately recognize your name; his group partner. "Well im here to discuss about the project that is tasked... I was wondering where and when can we work on it?" you whispered to avoid people staring at you with 'are you weird?' "lets talk it outside. Were still inside the library anyway." You nodded and immediately walk out of the library, slamming the door behind you as if Xiao wasn't trailing behind you. 'WHAT WAS THAT FOR [NAME]?!' due to the noise you made it made more people stare at you very weirdly.

"Hey, are you okay?" You felt someone poke your shoulder, causing you to shriek "sorry if i dash out like that... Anyways about the project.."

"We can start on planning at break time, meet me at room B-7" you both agreed to meet at room B-7, you watch him walk away with a few books on his hand, "god..he probably thinks im weird..."

That's how your friendship started, over a group project, hanging out with Xiao doesn't feel weird at all, unlike most of the people say 'he's always grumpy and boring' but once you know him very well he's actually a caring person.

"Earth to [Name] are you there?" You snapped at your thoughts and realized you two still have to study for the upcoming Exam, and soon you will graduate and move to other place.

You begged your mother not to but she insist that its very urgent to move to other place due to unexpected events.

Of course being Xiao's friend for almost two years, you didn't wanna leave without saying a proper goodbye to him but the problem is, how will he react? Will he be mad? Sad? Happy? You didn't know. "Sorry i was thinking of something else..." Xiao sigh and flick your forehead lightly "focus, we have exam next week.." you didn't fail to notice a small hint of his lips frowning as if he knew something's gonna happen.

You've been trying to contact Xiao for 2 days straight. But yet he seem to not pick up every calls, "what am i gonna do... Mother said we will go tomorrow.." you murmured to yourself, before you knew it many negative thoughts fill your head

'he lost interest in you' 'your presence is annoying him' and other more. But one thing that clicked you: 'he doesn't like you back. Never'

As much as you want to confess, you don't wanna ruin the friendship you two have.

Xiao on the other hand, can feel guilt building up to him, he knows he have to get rid of thesw feelings, since you two will graduate soon and will part away he needs to brush it off as soon as possible. Before he finds himself begging you to not leave him, 'this is stupid.' he sighs and look at his phone, seeing many notifications of you calling him. 'they will forget me anyways, whats the point of confessing-' Xiao's thought were interrupted by a knock. "Xiao are you there? You haven't came out in your room for a while..." Worried voice of his father, Zhongli.

Xiao opened the door and Zhongli immediately knew what type of advice Xiao needed "its about them right?" Xiao flinched when Zhongli mentioned you. "No its not about them-" "no need to deny Xiao. I went through that when i was on age of yours, now why don't you go ahead and confess before it's too late?"

Xiao paused for a moment "they will forget about me anyway, they will leave me soon after graduation." Zhongli reach his hand out to pat Xiao and gave him a gentle smile "its not too late Xiao, and im sure they won't forget you" Xiao knew you wouldn't forgive him for ignoring you while you try your very best to reach out for him, That is obviously written on Xiao's expression.

Zhongli knew his son well "apologizing won't hurt Xiao, you have to tell them everything before its too late." Xiao thank his father for thr advices that he gave, now all he gotta do is confess. Even if you would forget him once you move out of town.

Fiddling at your fingers you and your mother wait patiently at the train station, 'this is it.. god I didn't even said goodbye properly-' your mother called you out saying that the train is near. As you stand up you heard a familiar voice called your name

You look over the direction to see Xiao panting as if he run all the way to the station

"Xiao? How and where did you-" before you could even finish your words you were engulfed by a hug, "i accidentally read your diary... Why didn't you- no im sorry for ignoring you [Name] i really am." You felt like crying at the spot and you knew you had to say it before leaving "Xiao.. you may not return my feelings but i like you... Im saying this before i leave-" You were cutted off with Xiao chuckling and flick your forehead which cause you to frown, is this the Xiao you knew? "I do too, but no matter what ill wait for you even if you take centuries, even of you forget me" you couldn't believe it. Just as you were about to say something your mother called you again, saying that the train is here.

You look at Xiao before giving him something at your pocket, a small box. "A gift for you before i leave.. and lastly-" you gave him a small peck on cheeks before running to your mother, looking at Xiao for the last time, you wave goodbye to him causing him to smile and wave back

"I will return soon...in your arms"

An: all thanks to abba and my friend Ài helping me out on this fic😭

#🐚 —﹐☆ published:: genshin impact #xiao genshin x reader #xiao x reader #xiao genshin impact #genshin x reader #xiao scenarios #genshin angst #genshin fluff #genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #Zhongli #genshin xiao #xiao angst #genshin impact xiao #xiao #xiao x you

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hello lovely, this is re: sex witch stuff. do you have any advice for figuring out whether what's up with you is an a-spec thing or a depression thing?

context being: I've suspected I'm somewhere on the asexuality spectrum because I don't usually get *attracted* attracted to people unless I've gotten to know them somewhat. but at the same time, I've been depressed since I was a young teen and in the past few years, my libido has definitely gone down and I usually only get horny around my period. part of it is probably the meds and the fact that I'm Exhausted all the time (being in uni and having to be an adult doesn't help lol). I'm 23 and still a virgin, but I do get the sense that I would enjoy casual sex or an FWB situation. the other thing is - I do enjoy my own company, and I know I'm probably not in the best place to be in a relationship, but at the same time I'm a little lonely and would love to be in that long-term relationship stage of things yk? but I have no great desire to be actively dating (lack of energy also factors into this), and hookups are not a big thing in my culture so sex kind of goes with dating. which is why I still can't figure out whether this is more of an a-spec thing or depression + mild social anxiety thing :/

I'm the last anon about aspec vs depression thing. forgot if I mentioned it or not but I'm 23F, bi (I think. I tend to use queer. never actually been on a date with a girl before) and cis so there isn't any major gender or sexuality issues complicating things. I do have some body insecurities which may play into it (was naturally quite slim and then I lost more weight in the past 2 years due to meds which means my boobs are even smaller than before) but overall i think I'm fairly body neutral at this point 🤷‍♀️

hi anon,

I'm going to say something that I worry has the chance to come across as condescending and I want you to know that that's not my intent at all. I'm not trying to downplay your curiosity or exploration of self, or the mental health experiences that you've had. you're the predominant expert on yourself, and you can feel free to disregard all of this.

having said that:

what you're describing doesn't sound like it's solely a depression thing or necessarily an asexual thing at all. it sounds like being a busy 23 year old with a lot on their plate and having more pressing things to focus on than sex, even though sex sounds kind of nice. that's very normal for lots of people whether they're asexual or not, and it's actually great to hear that you're aware that you're not in the best place for a relationship and that you're already comfortable in your own company. it may not be the most fun thing, but being self-aware and able to be happy on your own are both important skills to cultivate.

you definitely could be asexual! I'm not denying that! but just chilling sex-free while you're busy and stressed and tired with uni and other things isn't hard proof, especially when it sounds like sex is something you think would be fun and desired for you if it were a better fit for your life right now.

some further reading that may be helpful:

The Sex Myth (Rachel Hills) - one of the very first sex books I read back in my baby sex witch days; a helpful reveal that most people are, on average, not having as much sex as they claim or want to be having

Come As You Are (Emily Nagoski) - neat insights from Dr. Nagoski about the ways that stress and other factors fuck with cis womens' sex drive and sexuality (and how to approach that with grace and self-compassion)

Ace (Angela Chen) - a phenomenal look at the experience of asexuality by an asexual writer, which may be helpful in determining if asexuality feels like the right label for your experiences

#sex edventures 2023

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 10 and 11 of Harrow the Ninth

I wonder if this scene in the library with Magnus and Abigail is based on something that Harrow actually experienced in Gideon the Ninth that Gideon wasn't aware of, because it happened during the part of the book when they were separated? Although, I'm not sure why Harrow is in the library in this scene. If she was looking for something in there, that's never mentioned, and I'm sure she wasn't there to listen to Ortus recite the Noniad. I think at this stage in Gideon the Ninth, Harrow was actually making a thorough sweep of Canaan House and drawing maps and marking down and labeling all of the locked doors. But in this rendition, they've already been given the facility key and told that they're meant to go down there, and no one has said anything about locked doors to them yet

Not Harrow calling Magnus a moron! I'm so sorry, Magnus

Honestly enjoying Ortus's passive-aggressive sass in this chapter

Yes, I got that one. Why save this for this book, though? Magnus finding an ancient Lyctoral dick joke carved into the wall of the men's room would have fit in perfectly with the ambience of Gideon the Ninth. Also, I like how apparently Magnus started this interaction by talking about this dick joke and then Ortus somehow turned that into a conversation about the Noniad

That probably means that that question has an interesting answer. I wonder what it is

I like that we're now getting more details on what Abigail's designation as "speaker of the dead" actually means, even though she was killed at the end of the second act of the first book and I figured we'd never get to find that out

Or at least you do when your cavalier is Ortus. It's kind of interesting that no one said or did anything in Gideon the Ninth to indicate that they thought Abigail and Magnus being married was weird, and we only found out it was weird at the end of the book reading the essay about the relationship between cavaliers and necromancers. But I guess maybe that just comes down to Gideon not knowing anything about what that relationship meant, so if anyone else had reacted she probably wouldn't have noticed

I also like how Magnus is the kind of guy who's like "by the way Abigail is my wife. Have I mentioned that Abigail is my wife? Because she is definitely my wife. Wife wife wife"

I like how Harrow doesn't like the Noniad, but she has read it, and can give a precise play-by-play of this particular scene, including how many lines each of these events takes. I guess there's not much else to do in the Ninth House

I wonder if Abigail did say something like this to her in actual fact. In Gideon the Ninth, when they were preparing to go to the anniversary party, Gideon described Harrow as being afraid, but thought that it didn't make sense for it to be social anxiety or something like that, and in spite of the fact that she told Gideon that she was suspicious of the food, she didn't seem to be suspicious of the food at the actual event. So I wonder if it was because Abigail had said this to her during a scene that Gideon wasn't part of

Still not sure what this is about. Someone is trying to have a baby? Is it somehow related to Gideon's birth? It honestly sounds a bit like Mercy but that doesn't seem right

Please, Ortus, "Heroes are passé, you see", "I'm certain your studies have kept you from the full breadth of the classics", you are on a roll here. I can't decide if he is mocking Harrow's comeback, or if this is a thing where Harrow is giving herself a hint that this is all her imagination and these kinds of lines don't actually happen in real life events

"She"

Yeah, it's interesting, in this whole conversation they have, Harrow is yelling at him, and he's just being outwardly submissive and polite but also being passive-aggressive and showing that he's smarter or more educated than Harrow in some respects, and that just makes her madder, and there's like, no exit strategy for this conflict. Whereas, when Gideon found Harrow in a bone cocoon in the basement and Harrow tried to argue that she was fine and knew what she was doing, Gideon was just like "no, shut up, you're being dumb" and "don't die in a bone" in a completely forthright way, and eventually Harrow was like "...yeah, ok". Ortus would have been like "I'm sure you know exactly what you're doing and keep your physical health in mind at all times, my lady" and then Harrow would have yelled at him some more

Not sure what to make of Harrow sleepwalking to go try to kill Cytherea a second time. Was this caused by the haunted sword? Does Harrow just unconsciously hate Cytherea that much for making Gideon sacrifice herself?

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth

[centrally-unplanned]

I recently re-read Lost at Sea, the first truly-published work of Bryan Lee O’Malley (author of Scott Pilgrim), which is one of my favourite short-form comics. It's a re-read inspired by all my FLCL work; I commented before about the ways in which our main girl Raleigh is a distaff-Mamimi. I definitely still see it; she is what I am now referring to as a “Sadamoto Poet Girl”, those people who express their feelings in waves of metaphors they never truly clarify:

It helps that Raleigh is a teenager; it makes sure that any risk she might have of becoming pretentious is buried by how pathetically lost she is. She also may not be rocking any of the emo drip of the time but she has full depression vibes where it counts:

That mask you're wearing is bleeding black from overuse, frikkin hardcore Raleigh. This is definitely a teen angst book but I am highlighting the peaks here, a bunch of its silly chatter with her new roadtrip friends. She isn’t haughtily looking down on a world she knows is useless; she just has no clue, yet, how to make it useful. A key trait for the Sadamoto Poet Girl; their ambiguity of expression is how they cope with the ambiguity of how to relate to their own existence.

Which I think is what makes them work, both for me and in general; the actual ‘plot’ of Lost at Sea is that Raleigh has just meet up with her online older boyfriend for the first time, it went amazingly, and then he (probably) broke up with her and she has no clue how to deal. That is very concrete, and could be very basic - but by making the entirety of Raleigh’s emotional spectrum abstract and confused, the singular plot event becomes a drop in the ocean of her generalized ennui. This is a short story, and to make an impact it needs to be efficient in its expression. Abstraction is, ironically, very good at that; with no singular concrete meaning an abstract idea can hold a dozen simultaneously. Raleigh feels very real in a few short pages due to how much ground her in-her-head narration covers, without it being didactic.

Beyond being a proto-Mamami, though, what I was struck by was how similar she is to another Ash-favourite: Mara from Perfect Tides, a visual novel by webcomic artist turned game developer Meredith Gran (that, coincidentally, Bryan Lee O’Malley playtested as they are comic-artist friends). To start, how terminally online Raleigh is did not sink in for me the first time reading this, which is Mara’s defining trait in Perfect Tides; it's not as big in Lost at Sea, but her estrangement from her physical reality due to the superiority of the virtual is readily apparent. There are these two scenes in both stories that hit directly on that beat (“this place” being their writing forum in PT):

They share other traits too - both of them, being women online in the 2000’s, are fiction writers, and being fiction writing alt girls they both live incredibly in their own heads. I have talked already about how Raleigh does that; Mara has this great way of having an idealized version of *everything* that could be that she constantly holds reality up to. There is this moment in PT where Mara smokes a cigarette for the first time, and is shocked to find it is not an effortless habit:

The author in her playthrough cackles during this scene, and describes it as “some real foreshadowing”, and it absolutely is - Mara can never glimpse reality cleanly because her abstractions about reality constantly interfere. Raleigh is more self-aware, but equally cursed by her own hallucinations.

They also just cannot handle the few moments they break through their walls of awkwardness and socially “succeed”:

Mara hilariously abandons the entirety of her emo identity and thinks she has finally Found Her Tribe until the next time some inanity triggers her spiraling self-doubt, while Raleigh is mature enough to know it's not gonna last; but they both experience the same assault from the idea of social acceptance. They are both downstream of their anxieties, if that makes sense - they build castles of rationalizations in their heads in order to defend against the emotions that beset them from elsewhere. Its why the “poet girl” vibes work - they are (generally desperate) attempts at self-understanding as much as self-expression.

I enjoy typologies, and all of this is me saying that within these characters I see a type, and I see causal linkages to the context of said type. The way a girl in the 2000’s would build an identity out of forum posts and metaphors, because society ~sucks~ but she can build an alternative online, in writing, in her head, a place for the alts and weirdos. But the very limitations that attracted those weirdos in the first place also snap back to prevent that new world from being a full substitute. Reality always wins. That identity exists today, for sure, but there is something of the time and place, of the era, that cohered this identity with a specificity I see in stories (or even people) that capture it. It's structural, and the structure has changed. In things like FLCL I see it, but you see the differences too - how the structures of Japan & the US (and Canada, Raleigh represent) intersect and how they don’t. My kind of gap moe, I guess.

Though, side note: something Raleigh and Mara do not share is that Raleigh, typical for an alt-indie 2000’s teen girl protagonist, is effortlessly pretty:

I will credit the comic, ‘effortlessly’ is overselling it - another of the petty normalities that breaks through her emo shell is how she has favorite dresses and brought them to look hot for her boyfriend. Still, the 2000’s era reeks through here; audiences wanted hot leads, even indie audiences. Mara meanwhile is a full 2020’s girl in her squat, pallid normality; the relatability privileged over the aspirational. Her story may take place in the year 2000, but it's still written for today.

#lost at sea #perfect tides #essay #early internet culture I guess

[cherriscoups]

The Ghost of Noria University | Episode 04

Pairing: Seungcheol x Fem!Reader (ft. SVT & other idols)

Words: 1.4k

Content: strangers to lovers, college au, non-idol!Seungcheol, workaholic!reader, reader has implied social anxiety, she/her pronouns used to describe reader

A/N: fun fact, I started writing this chapter in December. (reblogs are much appreciated)

disclaimer: this is purely fictional. any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. These characters aren't meant to reflect the real personalities of the idols, it is purely a product of my imagination.

taglist: @autumn-lv @wonuskie (if you wanna join the taglist, do let me know)

masterlist | previous | next

“Hyung, is everything alright?” Soonyoung noticed his older friend looking very spaced out. Jeonghan, Joshua, Wonwoo and Soonyoung were having a conversation about their previous class with Wonwoo and Soonyoung questioning the older guys how they felt about this faculty given that this was an extra credit class for them. Seungcheol, on the other hand, was quietly eating, and not engaging in the conversation. It took Seungcheol a while to realise that the question was directed to him.

“Hm? Oh yeah, I’m fine.”

“That is definitely a very convincing answer.” Jeonghan remarks. 

“Oh right. How was working with Ms Ghost?” Wonwoo questions, earning a quizzical look from Joshua. 

“Her name is Y/N and she probably hates me.” Seungcheol doesn’t bother looking up from his plate. 

“Mr Has Everyone’s Heart failed to get his crush’s heart?” Soonyoung jokes. Seungcheol kicks his chair ever so slightly for his comment.

“Am I the only one who doesn’t understand?” Joshua asks. Wonwoo and Soonyoung explain the whole library story to Joshua and Jeonghan and mention that they both believe he has a crush on her.

Seungcheol quietly explains what happened in class. “Why did I even ask her to be the assistant leader when quite literally everyone else would’ve been down for it?” He also remarked on the fact that you and Chan pretty much held hands for a good amount of time before the lesson started. He honestly didn’t believe he even liked you enough to consider it a crush. He was more likely intrigued by you if anything. 

You were one who found the quiet comforting. However, the silence right now, felt almost deafening. It’s been an hour since the 3 of you got to the cafe. The conversation from earlier had died down and the 3 of you were sitting in silence. You had gone over the recent event so many times in your head so much so you were sure you could recite the day and its events in your sleep. 

Now what? You wondered. You somehow found an enemy, got asked to be the assistant leader of your group by Mr Has Everyone’s Attention and 2 of your friends now know that you knew the guy from the library.

The buzz of your and Chan’s phone pulls you back into reality. It’s a message from Ryujin.

Ryujin: So when do you guys want to meet up to do this assignment?

You glance over to Chan to see him typing up a response. "Hey Y/n, is it ok if I say we're both free on the weekend and Wednesday?" Chan asks and you nod. 

The both of you had the same schedule. On Wednesdays, you both only had 1 online class which you didn't need to be actively present for. You just had to do the class's quiz before the next scheduled class for the attendance to count. You didn't have anything on the weekends and neither did Chan.

Chan: y/n & i are free on wednesday & the weekend!

Yuna: we're free on wednesday too!

Yuna responds to Chan's message almost instantly, indicating that she & Ryujin would be able to meet on Wednesday. 

Now you both wait for Seungcheol's response. Jun notices the way you tense up when you see that Seungcheol is typing and chuckles. "For someone who isn't interested, you seem to care too much about him," he puts a slight emphasis on the him.

Cheol: yeah I'm free on Wednesday too

Ryujin: great! I'll book a study room at the library and send the details in a bit.

Wednesday.

Doyeon practically drags you out of bed after your alarm rings for the second time. Chan had told her to make sure you don’t make an excuse to avoid having to go to the meeting. Not that you would have skipped or anything but just as a safety measure. She was up earlier than you working on an assignment and hearing you snooze your second alarm made her question whether or not you were going to skip. You weren’t intending on skipping but the thought of having to go was making you dread the day before it even started. 

You got ready and made some coffee before heading out. Chan had told you earlier that he would drop by your room to pick you up so that you could go to the library together. You managed to finish your coffee before Chan got to your dorm so you both decided to drop by the cafe to get a drink before heading out to the library. Somehow the both of you managed to be early so you decided to have a chat with Ms Oh before going up to the room that Ryujin booked. 

You were hoping that the girls would come in before Seungcheol did for the sake of your own sanity. Just as you had wished, Ryujin and Yuna were already in the room when you and Chan walked in. Yuna greets the both of you and you both greet her back. Seungcheol makes it into the room just in time. Ryujin suggests the group does the assignment together instead of splitting the parts to get to know one another's working style better. 

Ryujin, Yuna and Seungcheol seem to be the kind to talk out any ideas and thoughts they have. You and Chan started taking pointers from their conversations in a shared document and making references to notes that back up their points. Chan occasionally voiced out his points and the notes both of you were taking. When there were questions raised on topics they didn't fully understand, you found answers and explained it to them in the best way you could. This led to Seungcheol directing his questions to you. At first you thought he was just raising questions and directing them to you because you were looking up the answers. But as time went by, it became clear that he wasn’t raising questions he didn't know the answers to. To be able to form such questions, you need to have thorough knowledge of the topic. And then it strikes you. He wasn’t asking because he didn’t understand. He’s asking because it gets you to talk more than you were. You see Yuna and Chan diligently taking notes from your answers and Seungcheol’s questions. 

You tried your best to avoid looking at Ryujin in fear of what her reaction might be. Yuna, on the other hand, didn’t seem too bothered over the fact that you had Seungcheol’s undivided attention. Yuna seemed comfortable taking notes with Chan and it now seemed to be her turn to have small discussions with Chan in the shared document. All discussions soon came to an end after the team gathered all of the necessary information. All that was left was to write out all of the notes into proper answers for your assignment questions. Each of you picked a question to tidy up and once you were done, you did a quick scan through of all the answers to make sure there were no spelling errors. 

“Great work everyone!” Yuna seemed a lot more cheery today than she had during your first encounter. Ryujin, however, looked even grumpier than you remembered. All of you pack your bags and get ready to leave. Ryujin picks up a conversation with Seungcheol as the group exits the room and Yuna strolls behind with you and Chan. 

“So, are you two dating?” Yuna asks. You almost spit out the last bit of coffee you were drinking. 

“What? No.” Chan looks equally as shocked as you. 

"Ah. I just wanted to ask since you know, you two seem very close and you were both holding hands for a good chunk of our class on Monday." 

"Oh, no, we're just best friends and the holding hand bit is just something that helps to ground me when my anxiety gets bad." You say, hoping to clarify the situation. Yuna giggles a little. 

As you approach the front desk, you hear Ms Oh. “So you two met?”

Seungcheol turns around to look at you and smirks a little, “Yeah, we did.”

Ms Oh explained to you that Seungcheol spent 3 weeks trying to book the room you were in and on the last day he checked, he happily left without saying anything. 

“There’s literally a 100 other rooms in this library and probably a 100 more in the library on the other side of the campus.” Ryujin remarks. 

“Yeah, but that was the room I wanted to book.”

You could practically see the dark cloud forming over Ryujin’s head. Yuna runs up to Ryujin and tells the group they have another meeting to attend to and practically drags Ryujin out of the library. 

The first thing I hated about him is that he knows how to be an ass.

© cherriscoups 2023 - all rights reserved.

#svt #cherriscoups: noria university #scoups #cherriscoups #seventeen #seventeen scoups #scoups x reader #non idol au #strangers to lovers #svt scoups #svt seungcheol

[kittensartswriting]

OC Questions Tag

Thank you for tagging me @talesofsorrowandofruin!

Tagging: @theprissythumbelina @flock-from-the-void @oh-no-another-idea @sam-glade @captain-kraken @calicoy

5 words to physically describe your OC: short curls, permanent scowl, burns

Who inspired your OC?: It's been so long since I created him, I can't at all remember how I came to his character. He has changed a lot from what he initially was and at some point I played Dragon Age: Inquisition and Cullen definitely had some effect on how Valeri developed, for his appearance at least.

Give me a song to define your OC: Kuoleman Risteyksesta Kolme Virstaa Pohjoiseen - CMX (My translation: Three Miles* To North From The Crossing Of Death)

*Virsta is not exactly a mile, but close enough and used silimarly

Sample of the lyrics with my translation to explain the vibe of the song:

Kuka vaatii helppoa laulua Mielettömässä maailmassa Kun jokainen laulu on vaikea laulaa Vaikka ois kaunista valhetta Kuka vaatii sanomaan mitä rinnan alla riehuu Kun rinnan kierossa maailmassa riehuu Miljoona käärmettä solmussa Who demands an easy song In a senseless world When every song is hard to sing Even if it was a beautiful lie Who demands to know what rages under the chest When in the twisted world of the chest rages Million snakes in a knot

If I met your OC on the street, how would they greet me?: He wouldn't, the man has social anxiety, if he sees a stranger, he will just pretend he didn't and avoid an awkward social interaction.

Can your OC be your best friend? Why?: No, definitely not. We don't have enough similar interests to infodump each other excitedly (my way of bonding with people lol), he could not deal with my chaotic bullshit and I could not deal with his neurotic bullshit. Also he starts with being a monarchist apologist and I could not be best friends with monarchist apologist. (His politics become more rad in later books so there would be a change.)

1 adjective and 1 noun to describe your OC: loyal soldier

#tagged #tag game #writeblr #valeri

[bougainvillea-and-saltwater]

Hellloooo there! 💖💖💖 I come bearing questions for both Jia and Miraak, my beloveds!

3. weapon of choice? any particular reason they chose their weapon?

7. favorite animal? why?

9. favorite food? least favorite? are they a picky eater? do they have any dietary restrictions?

11. what do they have in common with you? how are they different? would you get along with them?

17. how did they spend their summers/free time as a child?

19. are they quick to anger? what sets them off?

24. do they have any creative hobbies? (art, writing, music, etc)

🧡ask game🧡

OUAARGH SO MANY QUESTIONS FOR THE BLORBOS...😭🥺 Thank you so so so much, my friend, both Jia and Miraak kiss you and love you! 🥰

3. That's actually a very interesting question and something I look forward to writing in TPATD! First off, Jia is a spellsword, so she mostly uses a conjured sword, bow, or dagger—she likes being light on her feet, so she doesn't carry too much weight on her. Miraak, on the other hand, is a battlemage so he also relies on his magic as well as blunt and blade weapons. BUT! At some point in their story, two specific weapons will be their absolute signature weapons... For Miraak that will be the Staff of Magnus and for Jia Auriel's Shield; they'll both have SUCH badass moments while utilizing their powers... Let's say that these weapons kind of chose their owners! 👀

7. Oh, that's a difficult one because they're both so in love with nature it's challenging to pick just one! I'd say for Jia every kind of bird—swallows, sparrows, ravens, owls, falcons, hummingbirds, skylarks, starlings, wrens, you name it! If it's feathered and winged, she loves it! For Miraak, I believe he would eventually end up choosing sea mammals. After all, growing up in Jylkurfyk and having the Sea of Ghost's cetacean awe before his very eyes, it's only natural!

9. Picky eaters??? Dietary restrictions??? Hell no, these two dragons can eat literally everything. Jia has a huge sweet tooth, so anything that has sugar in it, she'll devour it—her favorites are either snowberry crostata or lavender dumplings! And Miraak—while he likes sweets like her, he's more inclined to the savory food. He favors salty and spicy meals, so put every herb inside his broth and he'll purr like a content cat.

11. Hmm... I'd said before that Jia is my self-insert in many things. I believe that her anxiety, her dangerous balance between confidence and insecurity, and her avoidance are some of our shared negatives. Her loyalty, her selflessness, her need to nurture and protect her loved ones, and her love for the world, are our shared positives. I'm not as courageous and resourceful as her, and she's not as jolly and humorous as I am, so I only hope we take more traits from one another! As for Miraak... He's written as both my idealized man as well as the male version of myself—again, his love for nature and arts, aka his inclination to music and poetry, his general awkwardness, and his cringey social attitude are definitely my vibes. I'd get along very well with both of them, really. I don't know if they'd like me though. I'd invade their personal space with frequent hugs.

17. I want you to make the mental pictures: imagine a little Jia escaping the Companions' training sessions, and either carrying a pile of books taller than her, sitting in Jorrvaskr's garden and trying to read under the sun (even though she couldn't yet, those books were her father's and were written in Old Cyrodilic), or plucking every single alchemy ingredient she could find around, shoving it into her mouth and having Skjor and Kodlak scold her. And then, in some parallel universe, imagine a little Miraak with his bare feet and dirty, threadbare clothes escaping his father's exhausting chores, and either singing around Jylkurfyk, helping his mother heal the ill, or getting taught magic by her, when she had free time...🥰

19. I think I've described this before, but yes, Jia is very quick to anger and she has no patience whatsoever. Her anger ignites like wildfire, and it's a very difficult feat to calm herself from her wrath. That's one of her greatest weaknesses as she becomes uncontrollable and lethal, nearly losing her sanity... Miraak, on the other hand, keeps his cool in his anger. In contrast with Jia's, his is like ice spears—precise, but no less deadly than her firestorm. It's this juxtaposition I have set on them, of ice and fire, both different but destructive in their own way.

24. Jia is certainly less artistic than Miraak but... is gardening considered a creative hobby? 🤔 If yes, she can spend many many hours in her garden, tending her plants and vegetables, planting, watering, weeding, fertilizing, pruning, and harvesting to promote the growth and health of her cultivations. If baking, alchemy experimenting, studying, and making little diaries of useful bits of information and facts are considered creative hobbies I'm also adding those. Miraak is a bit more creative, art-wise. He sings and psalms a lot when no one's listening (except Jia), he writes poems to her like the sappy man he is, and he sews with Alteration Magic so his magic needles are always enchanted and his clothes always shimmer with magicka. 🥰

#ough that came out big #i loved these questions tho! #miraak #oc: jia #otp: twin flames #the priest and the dragoness #skyrim #skyrim fanfiction #skyrim ocs

[bbnibini]

(on anon bc I’m [a] chicken fr) but if you don’t mind me thought dumping here— I completely agree with your post (https://www.tumblr.com/bbnibini/741454154343514112/solomon-unrequited-unless-reassured-and?source=share ). Sol is definitely all of those things 😭 Elle and works-of-Elle you a real one for that. I just think it’s kinda funny how imo I personally do many of those things (besides the side character in own love story because that’s technically what I made myself be lol), and though I’m (unfortunately) down bad for this guy I feel like b/c of these similarities I wouldn’t be a good fit for him. ngl he would be happier with someone else and that’s all I want, for him to stop fucking suffering while alive, for him to get the security he deserves from someone who can give security so much better b/c they’re not insecure asf and don’t have a heap of mental issues that would need looking after…

Idk, just conflicting feelings :’)

(Also feel free to not respond to this lol. This turned out longer than I expected 😭)

Ify, ify. I get really nervous messaging and being messaged by people too. social anxiety aaaaa

Aww I can understand that! I don't think I can offer the best advice with romantic relationships since I don't really feel the need to be in romantic relationships(I prefer being single even if a romantic interest presents itself. Even if the romantic interest is someone I do love in a romantic way;;it's an ace thing it's hard to describe dsfjdskf) but I do get the feeling of wanting the people I love or care about to be happy.

Back when I was a little younger, I did feel something a bit similar(?). It's the whole detachment, the isolating feeling of Oh, I'm okay now, but I could not escape the fact that something was "wrong" with me before: because I had been "broken" and I had no choice but to piece myself together over the years, it looks poorly done. Chipped up. I can see the lines where the glue holds everything together. What if I fall apart? It's not your responsibility to fix me. I love you too much to see you go through what I went through.

One of my favourite translated books define it as the kind of love that is like "I love you but this has nothing to do with you." And for me is what that one Mitski song is.

I don't really think this fits exactly what you described. But I wish you the best, anon! And hey, you can ship yourself with any of the dateables you want! c: Solomon would surely find you lovely and wonderful! <3

#solomon is just a sad and tragic figure even outside of obey me #even his names (yes. names. he had quite a few) and their origins are kinda...tragic #you know those people with their destinies foreshadowed in their names? #yeah...i won't yap much about his name origins but it's sad if you do take the time to look up and read about it #obey me solomon #ask #sorry if it's not exactly the answer you're looking for #i don't really self-ship in otomes but i do love reading everyone else's yumeships!! i love love<3 <3

[annab-nana]

🐚 there are different types of soulmates, some are romantic, some are platonic, some are familial + the avengers (with each avenger being a type of soulmate?)

okayyyyy i like this!!! i think i'm gonna do this with the original six

also, it's a bit of a long one but i wanted to go a little more in-depth on each one so i hope you like it :))))))

warnings: mentions of anxiety, swearing

❀ masterlist ❀

you never knew how much getting called to fight thor's brother alongside six other people would affect your life, but it did tremendously. you held each of them very close to your heart and you felt you all made up each other. nat wouldn't be who she was without the rest of you and you wouldn't be who you were without them. neither would clint, thor, steve, bruce, or tony.

'soulmate' was a good term to describe the relationship between you all, but often when people hear the word, they immediately think of romantic love. that wasn't the case you and the avengers—at least not all of them.

bruce banner was a platonic soulmate to you. there were certain people who no matter how much you hung out with them, your social battery would never run out. bruce was like that.

you both wanted to be alone but not completely, so you'd accompany him in his lab. sometimes, you helped him out when he needed a lab assistant. other times, you sat in your established corner and read a book, filling bruce in on what was happening in it periodically.

what you and bruce liked most about each other was that you could find peace and quiet within one another. you were the one to calm the hulk down to get your bruce back. he'd sit silently and just listen to you rant about something without judgment.

if you wanted judgment, you'd go to another platonic soulmate of yours, tony stark. you did value his honest opinion and how he wasn't afraid to hide it. there were times when his opinion did hurt, but he was always right—irritating but true.

excitement followed tony around constantly. when you went up to his lab or his office, you never knew what you were going to intrude on. you've almost been hit by several flying mechanical inventions of his more times than you could count on both hands. but thankfully, you were blessed with the power of speed and really great reflexes, so you'd dodge it just in time while also giving him a wide-eyed look.

one thing you and tony really got each other on was anxiety. the pair of you were the most anxious people the rest of the team had ever met. unnecessary worrisome thoughts ran through your head faster than you could move and that was saying something. you and tony got each other in the aspect, but also, if you were alone together and super anxious, yours would bounce off of his and it would fester into something worse.

steve could often help with that and talk you through it—tony had pepper for that. there was a reason steve was the leader of your group. he knew his soldiers and how to help them in times of despair, just like he knew how to help you when your mind was against you.

steve was a good friend. you could talk to him like you could with tony and bruce, but instead of being brutally honest or a quiet listener, steve told you what you wanted to hear. maybe he was a bit of an ass kisser, but you appreciated it in times where you needed some uplifting.

you also adored his patience. sadly, when it came to art, you weren't the best, but you loved to draw and wanted to become better at it. steve admired your persistence and did everything he could to help you become better and you have improved over time—just not a lot so your work was still shit. he definitely may have you beat when it comes to art and drawing and stuff, but you wipe the floor with him when it comes to running, much to sam's liking.

you thought of thor as an older brother. he never failed to make laugh. he wasn't afraid to show that he cared for you. he was protective over you—they all were, but he and clint were on another level. he liked to run around with you on his back and mess around with you.

you think he treated you like a little sister to make up for the relationship he wished to have with loki if loki wasn't so... well, loki. and you took to it pretty instantly since your family wasn't exactly the greatest either. the only time you ever felt like you were part of a true family was with the avengers, but thor himself played a major part in that.

and in true sister fashion, you did your best to make him forget about his breakup with jane by keeping him occupied and having fun, but also being there for him when he was upset about it. to most people, he didn't talk about it, but with you, he did. it was a little questionable that you two never hid anything from each other. there were some things he's told you that you wish you could wipe from your memory, but you do enjoy getting to be your complete self when you're around him and for him to be able to do the same with you.

clint was like a dad to you. you figured that since he was already an actual father that he treated most people like that, but he didn't with the guys and he and nat already had a friendly history so it seemed to be just you. you both didn't mind it though. you never knew your actual dad so maybe you latched onto the closest thing you could get.

clint never told you, but when he taught you how to shoot a bow and then saw your wide grin when you finally hit somewhat close to the target instead of way off, it reminded him of a little lila barton doing the same thing when she was younger. you were like his home away from home, his small bit of his actual family when he was away with the avengers. you had met his family too and they loved you as much as you loved them.

clint was a good shoulder to cry on. most of the guys were, but you felt comfortable when clint hugged and soothed you before asking what was wrong. looking from the outside in, you wouldn’t expect clint barton to be that great at understanding and calming down a crying girl, but he was phenomenal at it.

lastly, your romantic soulmate. natalia romanova. natasha romanoff. your nat. you never knew you could love someone as much as you did her, but your heart surprised you. sometimes, it hurt how much you loved her, but she was the one for you and you were the one for her. there was no denying it.

it was interesting to see such a hard-ass woman have a major soft spot for someone, but you were lucky that that soft spot was for you and that you got to reap the benefits of being hers. she reminded you constantly of her love for you so you never had a reason to doubt it.

she was your everything. she was your reason for breathing. she was why your heart kept beating. she was who you got up beside every morning and who you went to sleep next to every night. it was her lips you kissed constantly, her hugs you savored, her body you worshiped, her words you memorized, her spirit you loved immensely.

so yeah, when you first got the call about the avengers initiative, you might've rolled your eyes and wished to be doing anything else. but now, you cherished that day and wouldn't change anything about it for the world.

remember to support writers & reblog :)

turn on notifications for @annab-library to be notified when i post something new!

come celebrate with me :)

#anna's 5k beach bash #starryevermore #blurbs #avengers #avengers x reader #avengers blurbs #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff blurbs #❀ kayla ❀

[shecouldfade]

Nostalgic.

The definition my mom would give in one of her poems.

Whiny.

How best would I describe to someone now.

Depressed.

Scream my body.

What are you when no one is looking?

I always wear masks, so I got used to life. I realized that I can understand how things work, because I can observe them and I can rearrange them to reproduce them 200%.

This is where art comes from, right?

With the least effort I do so much, and I suffer the way I do.

This is where art comes from, right?

I pretend to enjoy it, the game of believing in passions.

How do you do?

I continue to ignore my nihilism.

I suffer from my chronic laziness, derived from a total lack of freedom.

I devalued everything, to protect myself, and now it's late. Now nothing has any value.

I feel constantly judged, I feel trapped in those sharp eyes of my father, they remained planted there, impassive watchful, impervious to any form of emotion.

Or maybe it's me who distorted the truth I don't know anymore.

What have I become? I shrugged off the possibility of feeling anything besides anxiety.

The terror of others, the way I constantly want to escape.

The way I want to be seen, I'm getting ridiculous by now.

Everything is shutting down because you killed my brain.

I walk through time.

I obsessively try to escape from boredom. I'm intoxicated by social media, they remind me that I do something beautiful.

I have the sincerity to destroy clichés.

But when I'm alone I feel like a withered flower crushed between the pages of a book.

I would like to be the wind, I would like to never speak again, just caress the hair, the surfaces.

Being the current of a perfume.

#me #black and white #depressing shit #fineart #photoart #photography

[maskedemerald]

Pre-Order The Last Straw Novella

So the Kickstarter didn't work out but that isn't going to stop me! The book still comes out on the 25th of November! I'm still planning to do a smaller print run so if you want Paperback its going to exist! Follow the link to my website to pre-order in either E-Book or Paperback format!

A Curiosity Piqued – The Last Straw Novella – Masked Emerald

Also If you are interested I have some thoughts about the Kickstarter experience below the cut! Just my thoughts going forward and not words from any kind of expert on the matter. In fact they are rather rambly, sorry about that.

The Numbers

Costs

Indie printing is definitely not cheap, the costs have gone up for pretty much everything. However the worst thing was the increased cost of postage. Everything I read said make 20% of the goal postage costs. The way things are now I found it was more like 35% which is not good. My original printing costs were £3000 but by the time I'd added on fees, postage for the physical books and taxes it was £7000!

The Problem with Social Media

One of the biggest adversaries I faced was the algorithm and social media. Discoverability is shit on pretty much all social media at the moment. Getting seen beyond my existing followers was a big challenge. The only place I found growth was Tumblr and specifically in the Writeblr side of it (Hi new writer friends! I appreciate you! I'm still catching up on the tag games from when I was ill!)

The Experience

Preparations

Definitely next time starting preparations earlier. There is a lot of preparations involved so I'm definitely going to give myself more time so I'm not trying to do it all at the same time.

The video was harder than I thought it would be, give me unscripted streams any day over trying to get that perfect take.

Shy Bens Get Nout

Is a useful phrase however my anxiety sometimes makes it hard to actually do but seriously if you don't ask then you don't get. While it wasn't me that asked, someone asked on my behalf and as a result I got to do a talk about the book on the radio. Pick up the courage and ask, it might just make a difference. The worst they can do is say no. Which yeah can be intimidating but I need to get better at it!

Stress

I've been describing the Kickstarter as a mad dash. That's what it felt like. I had to constantly be pushing it and then things got worse, I got ill. I was in bed with no capacity to do anything for a week. It tanked my ability to push the Kickstarter. I seriously think its a good idea to have a bunch of posts already written and scheduled to go out. That way anything I post is extra. I really didn't like the stress of it personally so if I try again in future I'll be working to keep the stress low.

Future Plans

Longer Term Funding Pool

I'm going to be tracking the money made by The Last Straw and any merch designs to count towards the next print run of either The Last Straw or the next book. I'm also thinking about the people subbing on Twitch and the people considering becoming a Patreon. These people by the time a book comes out have put money into the printing pool and I think it would be more fair if they can also get the physicals without needing to pay full price. Also without them feeling they need to participate in a Kickstarter to make the thing they want happen. So I'm planning to change my rewards! Subs and Patreons will get virtual stamps towards physical items. This lets me keep entry low and even based on how much I get across the Twitch subs and Patreons. I'll be posting a proper breakdown soon.

Plans for Trying Kickstarter Again

I plan to try crowd funding again if the long term pool doesn't get enough for the next book but I am also considering trying out other sites like Indiegogo. The flexible funding is interesting if I could work out the costs the right way. We'll see what happens in March/April when I need to start thinking about printing the next A Curiosity Piqued.

#writing #writeblr community #creative writing #writeblr #amwriting #writer #A Curiosity Piqued Series #The Last Straw Novella

[anfeycare]

hello! welcome to my blog!

i'm Anfey Care, a queer non-binary artist and writer! i go by gender neutral words ("they/them" — "elu/ê/-e" in portuguese)

i enjoy art and science. i love specially Undertale, Adventure Time, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Omori, The Owl House and Utena. i'm brazilian, too. by the way, if you're brazilian, you're welcome to follow me if you enjoy:

art, pixel art, animation;

books, comics, mangas;

cuteness, horror, comedy;

games, music;

indie, alternative things;

queer, LGBT+, gay stuff;

shows, cartoons, animes;

thought-provoking stuff;

nerdy things in general.

if you're not brazilian, but you enjoy these, you can follow me, too. that's why i'm speaking english — it's to let you understand me

( ˙ ꒳ ˙ ) [cute face*]

(*texts in brackets like this describe text emojis for screen readers; similarly, i can use texts in brackets preceded by a slash as tone indicators, such as: [/silly] )

💙 i now offer custom art orders!

✨ order yours here! ✨

✨ upcoming schedule ✨

🐾 ooo, look! you found a boop post! 🐾

💙 you can support my art on patreon and ko-fi

💙 i think generative A.I.s and N.F.T.s are dumb

💙 my art tag here is "#anfey care"

💙 i don't allow reposts, just reblogs of my posts

💙 main social medias and links: ✨ here ✨

💙✨ about me: ✨

i'm an introverted, shy, and usually asocial person. somewhat antisocial too, sometimes can be completely silent and spend weeks alone when too overwhelmed from socialization. (INFP and pisces, but i don't take these seriously, although i can relate)

completely atheist. i don't mind religion, even if i might take it as stories and thoughts, but i just don't mind as long as it isn't fanatic christian stuff — i was raised around these people and it got me very tired of those things.

i'm in psychology college (i got a full scholarship), but i made a game development technical course along with high school (public education, got in through an entrance exam, was in first place on the classified candidates list), and am often studying things on my own, like languages. i draw, illustrate, research, write, can animate, design and code, and also make pixel art — sometimes i try making music, photographing and cosplaying. i'm on my way to be an indie game dev (plus a psychologist), but i'm mainly an artist and writer

as for how i identify as LGBT+, i'm queer as in all pan aspec atraction-wise. gender-wise, i identify as pangender, which in my case includes agender, genderqueer, and cassgender; this means i'm trans and non-binary. i usually put it all in short by just saying i'm queer and non-binary, but i don't shy away from saying i'm just gay (as in i'm definitely not straight)

i could be considered legally blind, as i can't see anything a few inches away from my face without glasses (8 degrees in each lens, but i've been needing a new prescription for some years... couldn't afford it yet). i suspect i might be neurodivergent (ADHD and autistic, mainly), and have lots of symptoms of depression, anxiety, some of ASPD and C-PTSD, but also can't afford to look into those. (yep, really ironic how i'm studying psychology before being able to go see a psychologist-)

i know spanish and french, besides portuguese and english. i don't have a lot of practice with those other two languages, but I can understand them well (speaking portuguese helps, heh). i still want to learn more languages — for now, i'm also studying japanese, LIBRAS and ASL from time to time

i aim for diversity, inclusivity and equity, specially for my games. that's a reason why i study a lot, and that's also why i want to make most of my creations available for free. and that's why i encourage you to give me support if you want, as it helps it all to be free of charge, and can give you a custom art or some cool extra content for a low tip (i can also think of opening a shop with prints and stickers to help it all, if you ever get the interest)

i'm a fan of:

Undertale;

The Owl House;

Good Omens;

Omori;

Revolutionary Girl Utena;

The Picture of Dorian Gray;

Deltarune;

Dracula;

Adventure Time;

She-ra and the Princesses of Power;

My Little Pony;

Sonic;

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared;

Welcome Home;

Puella Magi Madoka Magica;

and Dead Plate.

i also play RPG, like D&D, besides liking the RPG video games genre itself. as you see, i'm all over the place — i'm not completely organized and i allow myself to let some things be messy (like tags)

i like lots of things! and, though i enjoy horror, i don't make much art of this kind. plus, i create original stories, art, and characters of my own, like Safey — they're my mascot persona, and they're the fox creature on the pixel art by the start of this blog post. i have a bunch of projects i develop on my own, including ideas of comics and games! and sometimes i write poems, generally in portuguese, but i mix languages and write in english at times

i usually make cute things! whenever i happen to make something scary or with sensitive topics, i let it with the warnings i think it needs. rarely allude to NSFW — it can be there as subtext if i ever include anything like that at all, but i do enjoy artistic nude art, i do like philosophically/sociologically/literarily analytical thoughts and texts that could be about/related to sexual topics, and i also do like (well, you know) horror. i take a different approach on my own art that's around these, but you can avoid it if i ever make it due to the warnings, and i hope you will use the opportunity to avoid it if you're sensitive or don't want to see it. overall, specially for other people like me, i want my space to be a safe space

Undertale is my most favorite piece of media, so i'm drawn towards it most of the time. Sans is my favorite in it (sorry, heh). Flowey is also a favorite of mine

nice to meet you, and i hope you will like what i create!

thanks for reading! see ya! ^꒳^ [cute face smiling]

#artists on tumblr #writers on tumblr #fandom #fandom list #multi fandom blog #intro post #blog intro #introduction #introductory post #brazil #brasil #brazilian #artist #writers and poets #writer #indie games #indie #art #pixel art #oc art #safey #persona #illustration #sketch #artwork #mascot #original art #queer #digital art #indie artist

[throughdarkeningskies]

ok. tumblr sent my other post about this into the void. but ummm I'm going to talk about fangirl by rainbow rowell because it is a very important book to me but I take issue with SO MUCH of it and I wish it was different. so here have the longest dissection ever of a book I've read a million times

So brief context: cath, the central character, is a girl going off to college for the first time. She is a fanfiction writer, and is a BNF in her fandom (a fictional parallel to harry potter). She has mental health issues (textually anxiety, but I read it as undiagnosed autism, which we'll get back to later.) Being in college means, for the first time, that she'll be living life away from her twin sister, wren. the book charts her struggles with family, fanfiction and romance as she tries to navigate college on her own.

so point A is the racism. rainbow rowell is racist. this is known. I'm not going to go into it here, but her book Eleanor and Park is full to the brim with anti-Asian stereotypes. if u Google it you'll definitely find thinkpieces with explanations and screenshots, but take my word for it here, it's a shitshow. anyway.

so first off. there are no major characters of colour in this novel. cath in this book has an extremely limited social circle, due to the aforementioned mental health issues. by the end of the novel, she's only managed to make 2 friends that aren't directly related to her. u could argue that rowell gets away with it on these grounds, but she really, REALLY does not. I want to discuss the character of abel, who gets dealt an extremely shitty hand in this book.

abel is cath's boyfriend of 3 years. Relevant here - cath's family apparently grew up in an all-mexican neighbourhood, and yet this is as close to a Mexican character as we ever get. he appears to be the only significant friend she has, apart from her sister. is this an important relationship, though? no, not at all. they've broken up by page 75 of a 460 page book. is this upsetting for cath? not really, apparently. she doesn't even cry.

the first thing to note about this is that abel and his family almost never come up in the text without being related back to food in some way. abel's grandmother owns a bakery, and every time cath thinks about her boyfriend, she thinks about the cakes she gets from this bakery. she seems more upset to have lost access to abel's grandmother's cakes than she is to have lost abel. always, always, this relation to cake. no reflection on what their relationship was like. no happy memories. always just cake. a common criticism of white people writing POC is that the POC are described using words for food. rowell takes this a step further. described with food? no! abel is directly connected with food. you almost never see him out of this context, when he's mentioned at all.

the second thing to note is that this relationship is utterly inconsequential. you could edit this relationship right out of the book and lost nothing. it might even make more sense - cath's conviction that she is doomed to fail in a relationship would make more sense if she'd never had one. and this is extremely frustrating to me because from what little we see of it, this should be an extremely important relationship for cath, and deserving of far more than than the ambivalence it gets. The book brushes off their relationship as 'safe', as 'boring', as cath never really liking him, but it doesn't stick the landing on this point to me.

cath is deeply socially isolated. she struggles with anxiety to the degree that she cannot make herself go to the dining hall, and resorts to living off protein bars for MONTHS. she's terrified by everything and everyone. and not to out myself to the world here, but her struggles are deeply, soulwrenchingly relatable to me. so I speak from experience here when I say - there should be nothing insignificant about a relationship where she feels 'safe'. she's afraid to tell anyone about her fanfiction, in case anyone thinks she's weird. and yet not only does abel know about it, he reads it. he keeps up with it. we are told that he once got her a laptop charger for her birthday. it's laughed off as a boring gift - but cath is welded to her laptop in this novel. It's almost an extension of her. like yes as a gift it's 'boring' - but its practical, and its kind. abel KNOWS her, enough to get her things she knows she'll appreciate having. there is so much potential in this relationship that just goes completely untouched. It might be very true that they aren't romantically compatible, or can't make the relationship work long term - but that should have been explored!!! That is a genuine source of conflict that could serve as a great subplot, especially when paired with the other interpersonal issues that cath is having. like why, in a novel about your relationships with your loved ones changing as you grow up, is a three-year-relationship just... discarded? there's no weight to this relationship at all. it comes off as desperately shallow, and a bit.... amatonormative is the word maybe? misogynistic? yes you might be isolated with no friends and bad social skills, but you can't be seen to not have a boyfriend. that's a step too far.

OK. So now onto my next point of contention with this book. it is WILD to write an entire book revolving around gay fanfiction and then.... just not include any LGBT characters. at all. cath writes gay fanfiction nonstop for like 5 straight years and apparently never ONCE considers her own sexuality? her own gender? she reads gay fanfiction to her eventual boyfriend to calm herself down and... what, we never probe further than that? I know this book came out in 2013, so trans ideas might not have been as high on the radar, but... idk. I would LOVE to see a trans man's take on this book, because I could certainly see cath as one. but as it is, the book is just deeply, painfully cisheterosexual. all the time. the possibility of cath being gay comes up once, as a joke. other characters express suprise at her writing gay content, and cath always approves when they are accepting.... but no gay characters. not a one. it comes off as a bit fetishing, to be honest. yes, we'll obsess over the gayness of these characters. but an actual gay person? seems a bit unrealistic idk

I have other, smaller nitpicks with the book, too, which I'll just list:

- the actual 'fandom' isn't really portrayed that well. cath is isolated there, too. she posts her own fic and reads a little bit of other fic, and that's it. And while that's fine, it might have been good to at least nod to other types of fandom experiences. this fictional fandom is the size of Harry Potter's and there's no fandom drama? None?

- her final assignment, worth fifty percent of ONE class, is ten thousand words long? in UNDERGRAD???? is that real? are American colleges crazy

- she writes romantic gay fanfiction with her SISTER? Possibly spicy stuff? girl you do you but I would sooner die

- speaking of, there's some weird parallels drawn between the gay romance and the relationship between the sisters. stop that please

- medication is not evil stop acting like it is

GRRR okay done. you may now be wondering what I see in this book at all. so here we go.

- she isnt written that way, and I don't think it was intended on the authors part, but cath is one of the best portraits of a certain kind of autistic person I've ever seen. like before I had any inkling that I was, myself, autistic, I had ONE character in all of literature I could point at and say 'this person is like me'. and I could never really explain why until post-diagnosis. this is why reading one-star reviews of this book gives me hives. you don't understand her, you don't understand ME, shut up forever.

- cath's relationship with the world of mages is textbook special interest. it makes her feel happy and safe, the one activity she can always turn to. she's been writing about it nonstop for YEARS. it's the bedrock through which she understands the world. she doesn't necessarily understand the way her sister has grown out of it, when cath hasn't. just the way in which this affects her relationship to other people is SO well done. cath not understanding why everyone else outgrew it when she didn't. her sister taking shots at the world of mages when she wants to upset cath, because that's the thing that will bother her most. at one point, cath submits a piece of fanfiction to her fiction professor for an assignment. objectively stupid? yes, of course. when the professor calls her on it, cath is most upset by the fact that she can't make her professor understand how important it is to her. other characters help cath understand why it was wrong, of course, but the point remains - she didn't turn in the fanfiction because she was being lazy or stealing, but because its the most important thing in the world to her. every single thought cath has about the world of mages reads as special interest to me

- cath being unable to visit the dining hall on own because she doesn't understand the rules, and can't Google them. she resorts to living off protein bars and peanut butter. she's only able to go to the dining hall after someone goes with her and shows her how. which. look. I avoided my college canteen for nearly two full years because I didnt understand the rules and couldn't Google them. I only got over it after someone brought me there for coffee two months ago. also developed weird eating habits because of it. maybe proves nothing but it was nice to see someone else experience that

- stunted social skills mean you don't make friends so much as you kind of drift into friendships. People adopt you, get used to you just because you're there

- the isolation. the loneliness. God I've never read another book that manages autistic loneliness like this one. the way that just showing up and going to class and having one (1) friend can be genuinely all you can do, the best you can manage, and it still leaves you so far behind compared to everyone else

- idk. I read a lot of YA when I was a teenager, and even when the characters explicitly did have mental health problems, there was always this fear of letting the characters struggle. of letting them be genuinely isolated from their peers. the weirdo always goes to all the parties. the lonely character always has a circle of friends. the loser always gets the girl. because no one could ever be that weird, that lonely, that much of a loser.

- well fuck you, man. some of us are.

- the way neurodivergence is handled in this book is kind. levi's probable dyslexia is treated in a gentle, nuanced way, and so is cath's father's bipolar disorder. I can't speak to what it's like to have either, but they're certainly not demonised here.

- I don't know. This is already long as fuck and I don't know if it makes any sense. tl;dr I wish there were more books about the autistic college experience. especially from a trans perspective

[tanadrin]

re: Buddhism, what exactly do you mean by "spiritual psychosis"

so remember ages and ages ago when Scott reviewed that book on Buddhism on SSC, and one of the weirder features of the book was that this sober-minded, highly capable, successful fellow intimated that he actually did believe Buddhism gives you magic powers at higher levels of attainment?

like, he was coy about it, but the intimation was clear: the Sacred Texts say you can levitate and stuff, and he clearly thought they were correct, and that he had experienced that kind of thing directly.

i thought that was kind of odd at the time, and just sort of filed it away. another thing I filed away was the description of (if I remember my terminology correctly) how after achieving stream entry, you basically go through a cycle of manic and depressive episodes until you manage to meditate your way out of it.

a while back i stumbled onto a community i did not know existed, which is people on the internet who were really deep into new age spirituality (not buddhism), many of whom had experiences with, if not actual cults, then extremely insular social groups with some distinctly culty aspects.

a big feature of these people's personal experiences, as they later describe them, is basically using spirituality to avoid dealing with emotional trauma or other psychological issues. some also describe what essentially amounted to cultivated anxieties about spiritual matters to the point where they lost touch with reality. this included bouts of mania and depression.

basically, it seems possible even absent external manipulation to whip yourself up into intense mental states that cause you to perceive things that have no basis in reality; buddhist meditation seems to involve trying to induce altered mental states by definition, and it seems to involve a lot of retreats that take place in a psychologically and physically isolated space, often under the guidance of charismatic spiritual leaders.

thus is seems to me far more likely that the mystical and metaphysical claims of buddhism offer no more insight into the human condition, or to our underlying reality, than the mystical and metaphysical claims of any other spiritual tradition. and, like most of them, there is a fair amount of self-deception involved.

i realize this is all a constellation of hazy anecdote by someone with no expertise in buddhism or mental disorders, but hey, we're on the subject of controversial opinions i might be justifiably cancelled for, not well-reasoned arguments that have tons of data to back them up.

[vanaglorie]

❓ — three adjectives that describe you

❤️ — what are some of your best qualities?

💔 — what are some of your worst qualities?

🍝 — favorite food(s)?

😍 — celebrity crush(es)?

😊 — any career desires?

🎶 — favorite song at the moment?

📕 — favorite book/series?

📇 — does your url have a meaning? if so, what is it?

✍️ — what other platforms have you roleplayed on?

🤔 — what genre(s)/theme(s) do you struggle to write the most?

😁 — what’s your favorite part about being part of the rpc?

😤 — what do you dislike the most about being part of the rpc?

💯 — share three random facts about yourself that your mutuals may not know about you.

munday asks

❓ — three adjectives that describe you introverted, nerd, tall (? LMAO)

❤️ — what are some of your best qualities? i think i'm very quick at learning new things ;w; and i can empathise with people very easily or that i think i'm quite emotionally intelligent

💔 — what are some of your worst qualities? my crippling social anxiety ✌️

🍝 — favorite food(s)? god anything with garlic tbh, aglio e olio, garlic cream cheese bread, etc... and rice ofc. also i love fermented black beans.

😍 — celebrity crush(es)? keanu reeves HAHAHAHA

😊 — any career desires? no idea ngl but definitely something related to what i'm studying right now

🎶 — favorite song at the moment? this song is just doing it for me while im writing i have no idea why. i just put it on loop and the words just keep on coming.

📕 — favorite book/series? the chaos walking trilogy by patrick ness holds a special place in my heart but the movie was abominable

📇 — does your url have a meaning? if so, what is it? i just wanted to be edgy and cool ;w; it has some kind of meaning in latin but i cannot recall what it is for the life of me

✍️ — what other platforms have you roleplayed on? twitter and facebook... and some other instant messaging platforms..? 💀 i think thats about it

🤔 — what genre(s)/theme(s) do you struggle to write the most? i dont really struggle like i could write it if i really wanted to, but anything action related is... sure i guess. i also really second guess myself a lot when it comes to writing something dark/angsty, i don't know if i convey that kind of angsty feeling enough.

😁 — what’s your favorite part about being part of the rpc? getting to meet a lot of cool new people for sure. i've made some really close friends through rp!

😤 — what do you dislike the most about being part of the rpc? the DRAMA.

💯 — share three random facts about yourself that your mutuals may not know about you. i actually was torn between bringing back fon or byakuran as my muse for returning to khr rp, i think people who play the electric guitar are really cool, i think whole tomatoes are icky.

#thank u for the questions wah #ooc #answered