#op why are you the only smart person ever

[scientia-rex]

I feel like disappointment in Biden is baffling to me because he was always a disappointment. He was the asshole who got to ride to power on the coattails of a better man. He told bizarre and repeated lies (despite getting caught at it and his team telling him not to) about having a Welsh coal miner dad when he did not and he stole that story from actual Welsh people. I read a profile of him years back that pointed this out and told the story of the time he straight up ignored good advice from an expert not to plant a certain kind of tree too close together and flew a bunch of them out to plant, at night because he was just too fucking excited about it, and they all died. He’s not a smart man! He’s charismatic ish and lacks principles and as far as I can tell doesn’t really care about abortion rights or a lot of things we’d consider pretty critical to preserving freedom. I sincerely thought he couldn’t become President because there were so many obviously better candidates in the pool. I underestimated the sexism and antisemitism in American politics, and when he became the candidate in 2020 I gritted my teeth and voted for him because the alternative was a man who is not only an idiot but also profoundly dangerous. Trump is not ha-ha crazy, he’s Mussolini crazy. He is not dangerous because he’s stupid, although that doesn’t help; he’s dangerous because he does not care about anyone except himself under any circumstances and if that means he lets the far right push us straight into forced birth for white women and sterilization for women of color he’s going to do that. If that means conversion therapy for queers and death penalty for homosexual acts he’s going to do that. He has literally no limits. If he gets back into power, a whole lot of people are going to die, again. It’s not a hypothetical because it happened the first time and he’s only going to get worse.

I am not, never have been, and never will be a fan of Biden. To pretend that he and Trump are in any way equivalent is wrong at best and another goddamn Russian psy-op at worst. To pretend that a third party candidacy is viable in the US is to completely ignore every election of your lifetime and your parents’ lifetimes, and to further ignore the lesson of Ross Perot.

You cannot save Palestinians by not voting for Biden in November; the best you can do is chip away at his margin, and the worst you can do is see Trump elected so he can decide to do the worst possible thing in ever circumstance. Biden has Palestinian blood on his hands and watching this when we could have had Bernie or Elizabeth Warren instead is maddening. (I would have preferred Hillary to Trump, but I don’t think she’d be any different than Biden here. They’re both old-school politicians.)

I hate everything about this, and I hate that saying “maybe don’t put the man who literally said he would kill his political enemies in power” is seen as supporting genocide. It’s acknowledging reality. Joe Biden as a person can eat rocks for all I care. I was kind of hoping he’d die sooner in his term so we’d have time to get used to and then vote for President Harris. (Remember when the line was “she’s a cop, don’t vote for her”? Funny how there’s always a reason not to vote for a woman or a person of color or someone you just “don’t like” and can’t put a finger on why except she “seems angry.” Oh does she. How would she not? When Michelle fucking Obama, the picture of grace , STILL got called angry for having the nerve to be a Black woman with an opinion? When Hillary Clinton lost to a man with no political experience to her decades and who openly discussed sexually assaulting women? Would you have voted for President Harris? Or would you let Trump win again because you don’t LIKE her personally and she’s made decisions and statements you disagree with?)

Biden has both less power than his critics give him credit for and more power than his fans give him credit for. He needs to do more to pressure Israel and although it’s a delicate diplomatic situation I’d rather see us fuck up our diplomatic relationship with Israel than watch more Palestinians get murdered for things like “wanting to eat” and “existing.” The line has been crossed, and he doesn’t see it. Because he wasn’t the best person for the job. Because they didn’t get elected, because of sexism/antisemitism/racism. Hell, I have no idea what bootlicker Pete Buttegieg would have done here, but I’d have given him a try. But no. We got Biden and we’re stuck with this reality where you can be as leftist as you want and still have to look at the situation and decide whether you’re comfortable contributing to a Trump victory through inaction. I want socialism—I want every single person on Earth to have clean drinking water, enough safe food, shelter, medical care, and education—and I’m going to vote for Biden, pissy as it makes me, because the only actual alternative is so, so much worse, for me personally as both a woman and a queer, and for everyone in America and the rest of the world who Trump would find reasons to hurt. What do you think the man who openly and repeatedly praises dictators is going to do when those dictators massacre their own people? Yes, we need to care about this genocide now. We also need to care about all of the other people who are at real risk, both at home and abroad. Would a Trump government agree to fund military intervention in Haiti without insisting on it being a colonial exercise in power? Would a Trump government roll back the restrictions on discriminating against transgender patients in healthcare? How would Trump respond if Orban started dragging people into the streets and shooting them en masse? How would Trump respond if China finally went for it and invaded Taiwan? There are more lives at stake here than mine or yours or even those of the Palestinians, who have deserved better for literally decades and are being mass killed in ways that should result in immediate sanctions, a war crimes trial, and the execution of Netanyahu.

The world deserves better from you than complicity in a Trump victory.

[syoddeye]

the christmas party

ceo!price x reader / smut free / ~2.8k words

A very belated Christmas drabble thing. Definitely not inspired by real life events. 👀 Featuring a fem!Reader x Price, background Ghost x Soap, and Gaz, the incredi-boss. Might fuck around make this a series, we'll see! Maybe I'll clean it up and throw it on AO3, too.

CW: alcohol, substance abuse (mentioned) inappropriate comments from coworkers

You came to expect drama at the company Christmas party. It was as traditional as the optional White Elephant gift exchange, the hired group of carolers, and the ugly sweater competition.

Last year, a 'mystery' baggie of powder and a credit card belonging to the former Head of Sales was found in a bathroom stall. Two years ago, it was the unexpectedly raunchy dancing between an engineer and a project manager you swore hated each other. Three years ago, a division head went home with someone who was definitely not her spouse.

You'd seen a lot in your tenure. The good, the bad, the ugly, the hilariously mortifying.

Coming up on your fifth year with The 141 Group, you were a rarity. Most folks job-hopped. More power to them, no shame in gaining good experience after a year or two to leave for greener pastures. The fact you stuck around labeled you a 'veteran', a cheeky if not sensational label, though there were times you certainly felt like you'd seen war. Acquisitions. Rebrands. Reorgs. Yeesh.

But life at 141 suits you. You are an executive assistant, a good one. It helps that your direct supervisor and the VP of Finance, Kyle Garrick, a fellow 'vet', was an incredible boss. He lets you work from when you need to, doesn't micromanage, and treats you like a person, unlike other execs. He had faith in your ability to manage his calendar, prep materials, book travel - in short, you organized his work life. In return, whenever some new hire got too fresh with you, all it took was one teensy mention in a morning meeting, and by lunch, the offending party had only apologies for you. Most importantly, though, the job nets enough money to make rent and let you pursue your hobbies.

With years of Christmas parties under your belt, you were looking forward to tonight's low-grade yet cataclysmic event. Pre-gaming and primping at a fellow assistant's house, Jordan, you clasp the silver holly leaf pendant around your neck where it lies just above your modest cleavage. The dress code was simply 'Christmas Color', another tradition. Formal attire was expected, if not an unsaid requirement, which meant slipping into a gorgeous dark green dress you spied weeks ago in a boutique window. You thank yourself for earning that last pay bump to afford it because you look fantastic, in your humble opinion.

Lacing her leather Oxfords, Jordan gives a low whistle when you turn away from the mirror. "Like a big, sexy pine tree."

You smirk. "Thanks. Remind me why we both couldn't wear red tonight?"

"Because of the two of us, red is my color. Do I not look like some kind of holiday vampire?" She asks, standing with a sweeping gesture down at her deep, red velvet suit.  

"More bellboy, but-"

"Rude!"

The two of you lovingly bicker all the way out to the awaiting car. The 141 Group, ever mindful of its image, always reimbursed rideshares for its company parties. Given the amount of liquor that flowed at these events, it wasn't only generous but smart. Like the higher-ups needed a scandal. The car ferries you across town to the ritzy event space at a local art museum. Leaving your coats at the complimentary bag check, you enter the well-underway party.

The events team needs a raise, like yesterday. The sprawling space was completely done up. Several open bars, a champagne wall, a photo op with a to-scale Santa's Sleigh, and dining tables with place settings that probably rival a monarch. Silvery white birch trees enveloped in lights line the walls, with clusters of small fir trees fully decorated dotting the space. The dancefloor was already busy with a DJ fully dressed as Santa.

Four going on five years, and it was still quite the sight.

You gently elbow Jordan. "So. Cheesy themed cocktails first or canapes?" 

"Obviously drinks. I just saw one with an ornament in it!"

~~

Three hours in, it was a dead heat for Most Dramatic Event. Two separate calamities slowly built throughout the night.

At the nexus of the first, Chad from marketing was almost blacked out. After winning the ugly sweater with a true abomination of a sweater (working lights, a mini speaker, and an ungodly amount of sequins), he celebrated. A little hard. He bopped from open bar to open bar as the bartenders cut him off one by one. He was trying to convince a coworker to grab him another Mistletoe Martini, and it was progressively getting louder.

The second was from the rumor mill more than anything. Apparently, a developer named Scott brought the wrong gift for the exchange. As the story went, his wife used the same paper for an identically sized gift, one of a titillating nature, and now he was visibly paranoid that he nabbed the wrong one on the way out the door. The man stalked the pile of gifts as folks drew numbers.

Jordan bet on the first, and you bet on the second. From the corner, you watch, giggling behind a cup of Prancer's Punch.

The sound of your name drew your attention. Kyle, in a charcoal gray suit with a sleek snowflake tie bar and green tie, approaches with a Tiny Tim Collins in hand. Though you waved hello earlier in the night, he spent most of the evening in the company of who you deemed his 'buddies' - Johnny MacTavish, VP of Technology and Jordan's boss, and Simon Riley, the Chief Security Officer. You learned in your first month to leave the trio to it. 

"Having fun, are we?" Kyle grins and turns to observe the twin events. 

"I love this party. Every year, delivers just like Santa," Jordan gleefully said.

"Someone should stop them," You add, knowing nobody would. At least not Kyle.

And as if on cue, the man chuckles. "Not my circus, not my clowns."

The three of you chat, swapping bits of office gossip collected through the night. Not the most appropriate, but not the worst social crime, surely. You're the right amount of tipsy: warm and relaxed but solid.

The wager came up naturally.

"What do you want if you win, my pine tree?"

"Hmm. It's gotta be something outrageous but not a fireable offense. Hmm. Maybe I'll have you sing on a video call, pretend you thought you were on mute or something."

"...That's boring."   

"Do I want to know?" Kyle asks, sipping his drink. 

"We have a bet on who's gonna be this year's drama - Chad or Scott." You explain.

"Maybe I ought to get back…" Your boss said with a laugh. "Better not witness to whatever you two plan." 

"Might be for the best. Night, Kyle," You accept the brief hug from the man, then poke a finger against his chest. "Listen, if I get one DM about work during the holiday, I'm switching your coffee to decaf."

Kyle claps a hand over his heart as if he's been shot. "Monstrous. Fine, have it your way, no work during Christmas…Now, behave yourself, both of you." 

Watching him retreat back to MacTavish and Riley (who look quite cozy - perhaps another piece of gossip?), Jordan nudges you. "If I was into guys, that's who I'd be into."

"You and like fifty other people here," As Kyle's assistant, you're more than his Girl Friday; you're also a professional gatekeeper. You could wallpaper your apartment with the amount of cringy notes you've stopped from reaching his desk. 

"Not your type, then?" 

You whip your head back to Jordan, utterly horrified. "No way. Not that Kyle isn't an absolute dreamboat; he's just not my dreamboat. Plus, at this point, it would be so, so weird."

Jordan laughs. "Y'know, even though we've been work besties for a year, I don't think we've ever discussed this. What is your type? As dudes are not my specialty, I have no clue."

Your type, huh? As if you don't know. Your type's been the same for as long as you can remember. Big and brawny, the kind of guy who could haul you around. Dark hair. Well-groomed, well-dressed, well-endow–You could still make it onto the naughty list. 

Using better and cleaner terms, you relay this information to Jordan. 

"Huh. A man's man. Whodathunk–oh! Oh shit, look who it is!" The other woman pats your arm and gestures with a nod.

Joining Kyle and his buddies, is none other than John Price - CEO of The 141 Group. Fashionably late (very fashionably late), yet another tradition. Adorned in a Santa red suit jacket and a matching red tie, he somehow makes the boring dress code dashing. Flanking him is a pair of bodyguards. He's just in time for the wager to come to a head. 

God, he looks good. 

As Kyle's assistant, you see John fairly regularly. Not that he sees you. No one above a certain pay grade sees assistants. You kind of just blend right on in. Not even Mr. Riley, whom you've been introduced to a dozen times by Kyle himself, recalls your name. When you tag along to meetings to take notes for the boss man, you assume you're on the same level as a lamp or plant. That doesn't mean you haven't ogled John Price before. Kind of hard to not to, what with his commanding presence. You're kind of ogling him right now.

"Wow, you really do have a type," Jordan hums with a shit-eating grin.

"Shut up," You hiss into your drink and look away, just in time to see Chad from marketing lift a gift box-shaped ice sculpture and smash it onto the ground next to one of the open bars with a frustrated yell. The poor bartender and caterers jump back, and the music scratches to a halt. A thick silence fell over the party, impressive for a crowd of over a hundred, and your eyes flick to Mr. Price.

He glares daggers in Chad's direction, then nods at the taller of his bodyguards. Without hesitation, the man crosses the event space toward a petrified, drunk-crying Chad. As the guard hauls him away, your coworker, or former coworker, you assume, bursts into ugly tears and then disappears from sight. But your eyes are still on John, whose gaze turns to the DJ. The music starts again, as does the chatter. 

"Fuck yes," Jordan giddily whispers. 

"Well, shit."

"You know what this means, don't you?"

"...Unfortunately, yes. Yes, I do," You sigh and down the rest of your drink. "Before you swing the axe, let me grab another punch."

"Hurry back, I've got my thinking cap on," Jordan impishly smirks. 

With a groan, you make your way to the nearest open bar. One far from Chad's little tantrum. Most folks are on the dance floor at this hour, leaving this particular bar quiet. Waiting in line behind other tipsy coworkers, a clearing throat behind you grabs your attention. 

"D'you have a recommendation?" A low, gravelly voice from all your best dreams asks. 

You turn, and the sweet Hallmark-worthy image that blossomed in your mind in the last two seconds promptly morphs into a nightmare. Not a running-for-your-life nightmare, but a you're-the-only-naked-person-in-class nightmare. Laughable, considering the topic of conversation not three minutes ago.

John Price stands tall behind you, arms crossed, testing the fabric of his red suit jacket. He smells like tobacco and something spicy, and his eyes are a shade of blue you hadn't noticed before. You never got this close. They narrow slightly, and you realize you haven't answered him.

"Prancer's Punch." The name sounds cornier aloud.

"Hmm. Brandy or rum?" He sounds unimpressed. Was he unimpressed?

You're quicker to answer this time. Except, you babble. "It's, uh, made with dark rum. It's delicious. I've had a few. The cranberry juice isn't too tart, compliments the sparkling wine and–It's good."

Santa, run me over with your reindeer.

Kyle would be humiliated to have heard all of that. You are humiliated for having said all of that.

To your surprise though, the corner of John's mouth hooks in a smirk, then he chuckles. "How many qualifies as 'a few'?" 

You, apparently committed to acting moronically, answer honestly. "Five." 

It gets you an actual laugh this time. His hand raises up to scritch at his cheek, flashing the band of a watch you're certain is worth more than your life, then juts his chin forward slightly. "You're up, miss."

"Oh, no, Mr. Price, I insist, please-" You start to sidestep to let him up in line, but his hand lowers immediately and stretches out to stop you. He doesn't touch you, but the hair of your arm stands up at the proximity. 

John smiles again, and his head tips toward you. "I insist. Join me, Miss…?"

"Mr. Price?" A voice suddenly interrupts. The taller bodyguard that removed Chad steps up and steals away Mr. Price's attention. "The problem's been dealt with. Regarding…"

You don't hear the rest of the conversation because you hurriedly ask for a punch and bolt back to Jordan. 

And Jordan saw everything. Your heart is racing, and you miss half of her teasing. 

"You made him laugh. Twice. I don't think I've ever seen him smile, let alone laugh." 

"Because I basically admitted to being drunk!"

"Calm down, you're not, you're solid," She reassures. "Besides. You saw that death glare at Chad. If he was upset, I reckon you'd be on the receiving end of one of those."

You groan and take a swig of punch. You hope you've had enough of the good stuff to burn away the memory of your embarrassing rambling. You look back to Jordan to say something and find your friend once again grinning devilishly at you.

"I just thought of what I want for my victory."

Any time, Santa. Put me out of my misery.

"What?"

"So…You know #AskPrice?" 

You know where this is going, and your eyeballs nearly bulge out of their sockets. "Jordan. Please. No. Do not make me post something stupid there." 

#AskPrice was the name of the open channel at work. Anyone across the company could post questions for Mr. Price to answer. More often than not, it was a venue for bootlickers and kiss-asses to rain praises and share bad proposals. Rarely was there a legitimate question or a good idea.

"Darling, of course not. I have something far funnier in mind," She started, and you swore you saw the flames of hell itself in her eyes. "You're going to direct message Mr. Price and ask what he wants for Christmas." 

Jaw, meet floor. "Absolutely not!"

Jordan laughs and hooks an arm around your neck, pulling you in. "Come on. It's harmless. Believe me, I considered making you send a selfie or asking if you're on the naughty or nice list."

"He could fire me!"

"For what? It's just a question! He always says we're welcome to DM him."

To be fair, Mr. Price did say that at the end of every company-wide call or in email announcements. He always harps on 'transparency' and 'open channels of communication', hence #AskPrice. To your knowledge, however, no one ever takes him up on that, at least at your level.

"Jordan…Mercy. Please."

"My sweet pine tree, you lost fair and square," She releases you and pats your shoulder. "If it makes you feel better, I bet he gets a thousand messages a day. The notification will get lost in the noise."

It doesn't take much more prodding and encouragement from Jordan. Your phone ends up in your hand, and you tap into the chat app. Your hand shakes a little when you pull up John's username and open the message dialogue. 

johnprice - invisible Hi, Mr. Price. I was wondering what you want for Christmas?

Short and to the point. Jordan calls it 'boring', but you're already putting your neck on the line for a stupid wager. You're not risking anymore by dressing it up. Bet fulfilled, you press send, quickly turn notifications off, and shove your phone back into your little purse. Jordan rewards you with a squeeze to the shoulder.

"That was terrifying." You whine.

"That was a rush. Come on. Let's dance." 

~~

The next morning, when you're all but molded to your couch and housing takeaway, there's a little ping from your phone. It's the chime of the chat app.

"Kyle, for the love of everything, it's Sunday–"

You nearly drop your phone.

johnprice - invisible Hi, Mr. Price. I was wondering what you want for Christmas? > World peace. > I'd settle for a drink, though.

#call of duty #john price #captain john price #captain price #price x you #price x reader #john price x you #john price x reader #john price x female reader #price x female reader #cod fanfic #cod fic #ceo!john price

[incorrectbatfam]

The 'Batfam on Reddit' post was fun and I won't mind another one! (I have nothing specific in mind besides more sibling shenanigans)

Going down the list, here's Jason

———————

Posted to r/AmITheAsshole by user local-zombie

AITA for changing my grandpa's cookie recipe? 

Earlier this week, one of my (22M) sisters decided to fill my rifle with purple glitter. As revenge, I swapped the salt and sugar before she made her waffles this morning. Prank worked, yada yada, that's not why I'm here though. 

See, like a dumbass, I forgot to switch them back. I've been running on 4 hours of sleep and I'm not even home half the time, sue me. It didn't really hit me until I was watching my grandpa make his signature chocolate chip cookies. 

This was some cinematic shit, I tell you. Everything happened in slow motion. Before I could say anything, he dumped an entire cup of salt into the batter followed by a teaspoon of sugar and started the stand mixer. It seemed then that all was lost. 

Out of nowhere, my dad—and I can't believe I'm saying this—descended like an angel from the heavens and asked my grandpa to help him with his hair. And lucky for me, I'm the only other person trusted to be in the kitchen. My grandpa told me to put the cookies in the oven before he went upstairs. 

This is where I might be the asshole. 

I needed to fix the dough immediately, so I added extra sugar and chopped up some caramel candy to (hopefully) turn it into some halfway-decent salted caramel chocolate chip cookies. Then I scooped them out, threw them in the oven, and prayed harder than the goddamn Pope himself. 

Apparently God had a high call volume though, because as soon as the plate hit the table, my ENTIRE family knew something was up, like a bunch of fucking detectives or some shit. And they immediately blamed me. They're not wrong, but the fact that that's their first reaction is totally unjustified. 

Anyway, now my family's pissed off and my dad thinks I should've just told gramps, but I think trying to fix the situation should count for something. So, Reddit, AITA? 

Comments

bluebirdz: Did they taste good? |— local-zombie: Not like the original, but a solid 7/10 |—— bluebirdz: All's well that ends well. NTA

redrobin: yta |— local-zombie: At least provide some reasoning |—— redrobin: no

starfire: NTA but next time give them a heads up |— your-tired-librarian: Also voting NTA but OP should've fessed up from the beginning.  |—— thatpurplething: I'm saying YTA for the waffle part |——— orphanized: not relevant |———— thatpurplething: It is to me

i-am-the-darkness-i-am-the-light: NTA for the way you handled it, that was pretty smart. YTA for tampering with food as a prank tho :/

notmysecretanimeaccount: You are indeed the donkey cavity for the poor setup and execution. |— local-zombie: Dude just say ass |—— notmysecretanimeaccount: Ass cavity. Happy? |——— local-zombie: Not what I was thinking but I'll take it |———— lesbian-premium: Congratulations on the worse conversation the internet's ever had

kyle-rayner: YTA. Just in general

assenal: nta. your family is overreacting

dickwings: soft yta. how would you feel if you were expecting one thing but got blindsided by something completely different? |— local-zombie: I'd just deal with it instead of whining like a pissbaby pretty boy |—— dickwings: nvm make that a hard yta |——— local-zombie:🖕

kitty-central: ESH. You for what you did, your family for how they reacted |— pennyworthy: At last, a sensible answer. 

official-batman: YTA. And grounded. 

#jason todd #red hood #dick grayson #tim drake #damian wayne #duke thomas #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #barbara gordon #harper row #kate kane #alfred pennyworth #selina kyle #bruce wayne #batman #red hood and the outlaws #batfamily #batfam #incorrect batfamily quotes #batbros #batboys #batgirls #batkids #batsiblings #batman family #incorrect quotes #incorrect dc quotes #dc comics #headcanon #tw swearing

[beanghostprincess]

i would care if you talked about luffy's issues please talk please tell me all your takes, genuinely (< anon who enjoys your takes)

I am so thankful you asked me this because Luffy is genuinely one of my favorite characters of all time, especially when it comes to shonen protagonists. I'm always saying I don't like shonens (says the one that watches a lot of shonens) but that's mainly because the main characters never feel... Well-written enough for me to like them. But, well, One Piece is different. With all characters, really. It's one of the first shonens I watch that I genuinely love and enjoy because of the characters (shout out to Mob Psycho 100 being one of my favorite animes of all time too because of that same reason).

Luffy is a very complex character and I think that's why he gets mischaracterized most of the time when it comes to the fandom. Some people make him too dumb. Others make him too childish. Others make him way darker and more depressed than he truly is. And I'd say that's weird, having in mind how much the show talks about Luffy and is focused on Luffy's POV, but I kind of understand because people aren't used to characters that are both optimistic and realistic at the same time. Most of the time people consider an optimistic character to be completely idealistic (a good example here is Uta. She is idealistic because she's been sheltered for so long and thinks something as complex as the corruption in the world can be solved with a few songs and love) and refuse to acknowledge the fact that somebody with hopes and dreams can also understand (first-hand, even) the suffering within the world. People like extremes. They like to make both Law and Zoro extremely edgy. They like to babify Sanji and Koby. They forget about Nami's character depth to make her only "the mean lesbian" of the group (that term makes me so fucking furious you don't even know). Etc. Etc. Etc. The thing is: Luffy has layers. His personality varies. He's optimistic. He's realistic. He's stupid. He's emotionally intelligent. He's impulsive. He cares about the safety of the people around him. He's careless. He feels guilt. He's confident. He's so damn insecure. He's playful. He's the most serious character too. Etc. Etc. Etc.

What I want to say with all of this is that Luffy, despite being always perceived as this childish, dumb, and careless character within the fandom, has so much depth and trauma he deals with every fucking day. I once saw somebody saying Luffy is "not smart enough to understand the feeling of sadness" and I started laughing because what the fuck does that even mean. And... Is that person watching the same thing as me? Because the guy has suffered the injustice of the world so many times and so many losses that I can't even count them.

Basically: People portray Luffy as if he hadn't gone through any type of trauma when OP has shown countless times that he has been through a lot. A fucking lot. Perhaps it's the fact that he's the one hiding it all the time in the show, always replacing sadness with the need to be stronger so he doesn't feel like that ever again (aka protecting everyone so he doesn't lose anybody again. And not even in a selfish way to not be alone, although we could say that he does feel like that to some extent. But because his loved ones do not deserve to disappear or die in those ways and he feels guilty whenever it happens because every time, he says it's because he wasn't strong enough to protect them) and that's why most people don't realize how much pain he has gone through. But that's not a very valid argument because we have a lot of arcs that prove it otherwise (Sabaody, Marineford, Film Red, Wano...). So, yeah, I guess people just don't know how to read.

Starting through chronological order, I want to talk about his abandonment issues and savior complex that always seem to go hand in hand.

Luffy doesn't like to be alone. He's a very empathetic and extroverted person. He doesn't like to be bored, always loving the company of somebody else. But, sadly, he has always been kind of alone? People come and go for him all the time, and you can't tell me that doesn't affect him psychologically. He's 7 when he meets Uta and Shanks and the kid has never been more excited! That's when his dream of being a pirate begins and it's the first time he has a friend. A real friend, not just random animals he manages to find or older people that sometimes take care of him. Luffy gets bored easily, so of course, Shanks and Uta, being something new, make his life brighter. With dreams and new experiences and hope for a newer, better life outside his village. And then Uta and Shanks have to go, of course, and he stays all alone again. From what we've seen, the only thing Luffy did when they weren't around was just... Waiting for them to come back to him. That's it. Luffy's joy basically comes from being with people, and especially when he's fixated on somebody in particular, he doesn't let them go. Then they come back... But Uta is not with them anymore. That's Luffy's first heartbreak, in my opinion. It's when he decides that he has to be stronger. He loved Uta so damn much. She meant the world to him. And suddenly she isn't there, giving him no time to say goodbye, and... He only has Shanks. But Shanks refuses to tell him the truth about what happened with her. So here you go! It's the first time Luffy loses somebody this dear to him and the first time Shanks betrays him enough for him to get angry at his hero. He ends up accepting it, of course, but not because he has moved on, but because both Uta and Shanks told him to be stronger. More mature. And he forces himself to grow up faster because he wants something. He wants to know where his friend is, and if Shanks refuses to tell him because he's just a kid, then he'll just have to grow up and become stronger. To become a pirate and to keep the promise he made with Uta. The movies aren't canon so I just keep thinking about Luffy wondering where Uta is, and it breaks my heart every time.

Then Ace and Sabo appear in his life and... They are literally everything to him. I like Garp. He did what he could do. Kind of. But he leaves Luffy on his own with Ace under the care of some bandits (Dadan we love you, queen). So he can't really blame Luffy for the way he turned out to be, honestly. The thing is: Ace and Sabo are, again, something new to Luffy. They are not just friends. They are his brothers, now. We don't talk enough about Luffy's maturity and respect for other people's dreams even when he's just a kid. Luffy literally was kidnapped and beaten up and he didn't dare to say a word about Ace and Sabo's treasure because he respected their dream. He's loyal and understands other people's feelings and hopes perfectly. His empathy and emotional intelligence are just perfect. Then, well, you all know the story, but these two become the most important thing in Luffy's life, not only because they are his brothers, but because they are the representation of their dreams and future. And then it crashes into a million fucking pieces because of Celestial Dragons and classism and rich people quite literally saying "We are burning down the poor because they don't deserve to live! Woohoo!". And it's Luffy's first time realizing that the world is unfair and fucked up and that there are people that believe to be superior to others, a thing that Luffy fights against all the time.

So, Luffy learns that the world is extremely fucked up at a very young age. He has first-hand contact with the abuse rich people inflict on others, in every way. He suffers from the torture that is fighting for your life in the world of pirating and thieves when he's not even a pirate yet. He's just a kid. What the fuck. And then he loses Sabo. His older brother literally is killed by a celestial dragon and he can't do anything about it. He can only cry, of course, he's just a kid. What is he going to do? So he decides to become stronger. Because he feels weak in the hands of what is the injustice of the world. He feels trapped by that injustice, in my opinion, and wanting to be stronger is just the path to freedom. Because freedom means being able to save the people he cares about.

And here's the thing: Luffy's need to become stronger always comes from the guilt he feels after losing somebody, blaming himself even though he literally could have done nothing at the time to save Uta or Sabo. He has a severe savior complex, not to feel better about himself (although you could say that it would certainly fix his fear of being weak) but to not lose anybody else. For some reason he always feels responsible for the faith of the people he loves, he's constantly putting others first and sacrificing himself and then feeling guilty and weak when he can't save them when it wasn't even in his hands to save them in the first place.

Kid Luffy goes through a ton of stuff in his early years and the fear of being alone... Of losing somebody he cares about... It haunts him. He sees Shanks and piracy as the meaning of freedom and strength. It's just that simple for him: If he becomes a pirate, he'll be strong. If he's strong, he'll be free. If he's free, he'll never lose anybody again.

And yet, even if he's confident he'll manage to do this... He's still a kid. He's still a little brother. Ace's little brother. He depends on Ace, too, because that's the one person he has left. Ace promises him he won't die because he's just as confident, and says this as if Luffy was stupid for thinking something could happen to him. Not to get too into Ace's character right now, but the fact that he's constantly wondering if he should be alive to then realize Luffy needs him to stay alive... Is so damn beautiful.

And then he literally dies in front of Luffy. Protecting Luffy. And Oh, boy if that doesn't kill him... But that comes after Sabaody! After losing literally all of his crew! God, stop hurting this guy already for fuck's sake-

Long story short, Luffy manages to get a family. Not a crew. A family. He's not alone anymore, and he proves constantly that he won't let any of them go or die on him the way it happened with Uta and Sabo.

Water 7 is... Rough for Luffy, to say the least. Because it's the first time he sees everything he has built crumbling down. Robin is taken by the Marines. Usopp wants to leave the crew because he doesn't feel like he fits in, even though Luffy knows he is perfect for the family (Usopp just can't believe him because, you know, insecurities suck). And he has to learn how to be a captain. A true captain. He has to make the harsh decision of fighting his best friend and letting him go (his worst fucking fear) at the age of 17 because he's the captain. He has to be mature. And strong. And he definitely doesn't feel like those now. Not when Robin is also on her way to be executed.

Usopp is leaving. Robin might die. And it's just like Uta and Sabo all over again.

So, basically, Luffy grows up too fast. He grows up too fast, with the fear of abandonment and being weak, and the weight of being the captain of a whole crew resting on his shoulders. Besides, he fights against the world government for Robin because he refuses to let her die thinking she doesn't deserve/want to live, and it reminds me a lot of Ace's story. Ace doesn't think he deserves to live but then stays because he realizes that Luffy loves him and needs him. Robin, thanks to Luffy, realizes that she wants to live and that she has a new family to fight for.

Nobody dies and Usopp comes back this time, so everything ends up turning out fine after all! Yay!

Then Sabaody happens and I swear my guy can't have a fucking break.

Who has suffered more, Jesus Christ or Monkey D. Luffy from Sabaody to Marineford? I think we already know the answer.

He loses all of his crew. All at once. His worst fucking fear. They vanish right in front of his eyes and he can't do anything. He feels weak. He's shattered. Completely broken. But he's optimistic, still, because he believes in his crew and he knows they'll find a way to be together again! They've ben through a lot together, and they can find each other in a few days in Sabaody again. It's fine. But he has to delay it, of course, because his other biggest fucking fear is happening right now: Ace might die. His older brother might die.

So if you mix the trauma that caused him to have abandonment issues and a savior complex with the fact that Ace is the only sibling he has left and he is completely alone because his crew isn't by his side anymore... You get the most heartbreaking arc of the show! Awesome.

He does everything he can to save Ace. Ace complains about it, begging him to stay away from danger. And he refuses because he's his brother. He has to fight for him. And he does. And Ace dies anyway. Ace dies protecting him, too, and the hope that was left within him dies completely at that moment. Everything is shattered. His whole world is crumbling down. And I think that Luffy dies too at that moment.

For Luffy, losing Ace is not like losing a limb. Losing Ace is losing his everything. Ace meant the world to him. He was the representation of their dreams and hopes and past and future. He was the only person who knew Sabo like the back of his hand, too. And now Luffy is the only one carrying their souls. All alone.

That's probably Luffy's rock bottom. He doesn't think he deserves to be a pirate (or alive, either, but I don't want to get too deep into his suicidal thoughts I definitely think are a real thing because then this becomes too dark. But yeah. I think he does think about that too). He doesn't think he's strong enough. And he's completely broken.

There's this line from Fleabag that I absolutely adore: "I don't know what to do with it." / "With what?" / "With all the love I have for her. I don't know where to put it now."

Because Ace is gone. He's completely gone. And all the love Luffy has for him turns into grief and he doesn't know what to do anymore if Ace's soul isn't in the world to look after him. He doesn't know what to do if all the love and feelings he has for his brother go to waste. And it's his fault. Because he wasn't strong enough to protect him. Because he wasn't able to protect himself, Ace having to sacrifice himself for him. (And we know he feels guilty about this because he tells Sabo the second they meet again. He apologizes for not protecting Ace. He feels guilty about what happened still. And Sabo is just glad Luffy is okay because he knows his brothers too well to know already what happened).

Then our beloved Jinbe comes along (I love you. Please adopt me) and, following that quote of Fleabag: "I'll take it. No, I'm serious. It sounds lovely. I'll have it. You have to give it to me." / "Okay." / "It's got to go somewhere."

Jinbe reminds Luffy that he still has his crew. That he still has people who need him alive. People that love him and care for him. That he can't be weak if he has helped so many people already. That they're willing to take both the love and pain Ace makes him feel. And it's such a great character development for Luffy... It makes me go insane. He remembers his crew one by one and realizes that he's not alone anymore. That he has to be stronger for them and for Ace. And for Uta. And Sabo. Jinbe is there with him when the others couldn't, and it has nothing to do with Luffy's issues but I just want to mention how much I love Jinbe for this.

But he still feels the need to be stronger and the fear of losing his crew and the people he loves still haunts him. He tells the straw hats to meet after 2 years (that's a long fucking time. Like. Longer than the time they've spent together. Imagine the loyalty, damn). And it's... It's so beautifully written. The 3D2Y scene is one of my favorites because it shows the loyalty and love they have for each other, and how Luffy is willing to become stronger for the people he loves and the ones he has lost along the way. I literally have the tattoo. I am obsessed with the whole concept.

As I said, Luffy's abandonment issues and the fact that he wants to become stronger to never lose anybody again (Savior complex much?) still remain even after his character development. Because that's not something you get rid of. That's just how he is. And I think that, as long as he is with the straw hats, it won't be a problem.

Also I wanted to mention his reunion with Sabo! The guilt he feels for losing Ace? The way he clings onto his older brother as if they were going to take Sabo away from him? They're extremely codependent and I am here for it, honestly. Sabo would die for Luffy and Luffy would kill him if he did that. Also, I don't know where the fuck Sabo is now because I'm only watching Wano but I swear to God if something happens to him I will murder somebody with my bare hands. :)

Oh! And then it comes my favorite arc of all the show: Whole Cake Island (to the surprise of literally no one!). Luffy, in the beginning, is extremely optimistic when it comes to rescuing Sanji. He's simple like that. "If he doesn't want to get married, we rescue him. If he wants to get married, he just brings his wife with us!". And if Sanji didn't want to come back to them (truly not wanting to) he would accept it. But Sanji wants to. Luffy knows Sanji wants to go back to the Sunny with them. He knows Sanji isn't being true to himself. And God, he's desperate. Because Sanji is stubborn and his self-sacrificing and deprecating thoughts are even stronger than Luffy's, and he won't give up until Luffy lets him go. But Luffy doesn't want to fight him, he just wants his cook back. Because he knows that, no matter how much harm he does to him, Sanji is only doing it to himself (one of my favorite quotes from OP). So, Luffy goes again through the desperation of not losing a crewmate, but losing one of his wings. Without Sanji, Luffy can't become the king of the pirates. He's willing to die from starvation for him. Are you- Are you all aware that he almost fucking dies from starvation? I don't think we talk about that enough because what the actual fuck. There's this thing they tell Luffy (I don't remember exactly when or the exact phrasing) about him wanting Sanji back out of selfishness and not because of Sanji's well-being and... I partially agree? Don't get me wrong, Luffy does everything here for Sanji because he knows Sanji is suffering and lying to himself. But Luffy is selfish, too. Luffy doesn't want Sanji to go away because he loves him. That's his cook. He doesn't want to lose anybody else, even less knowing that they're going to be unhappy. That's kind of for me the confirmation of Luffy's abandonment issues. Like- He does everything for his crew, of course, but he's so scared of losing them. Then Sanji comes back to them, of course, and they have their own Pride and Prejudice moment. Not even Jane Austen can write shit like this.

I kind of want to talk about Wano but I haven't finished it yet (I'm like, on episode 1056) but I would like to mention how beautiful it is for Luffy to carry Ace's soul and promises like that. And also the responsibility he carries during the whole arc to save Wano? That's so- It's so fucked up. He's such a good leader and captain and everything I said in this post and all the things he does in Wano show that he will become the king of the pirates. I love him so damn much. I can't even write it down properly.

Anyway, summarizing everything: Luffy has a lot of abandonment issues and a savior complex that becomes unhealthy to the point of sacrificing himself and always carrying the burdens of everyone else. Because he fears he might lose his loved ones if he isn't strong enough. So. You know. It would be great if people stopped saying he's just childish and fun and that he doesn't have any character depth because he's probably the most complex shonen protagonist I've ever seen! He has suffered so damn much it hurts! Live Laugh Love Luffy! <3

#......... i love him a lot #he makes me go insane #please i swear i am okay mentally he just makes me ill #i truly thought this was gonna be longer ngl #one piece #monkey d. luffy

[bestworstcase]

You know, if the possibility of Summer not only being Salem's final lieutenant, but also possibly the person who accidentally killed the Spring Maiden (and who might also be Gretchen Rainart based on a previous theory mentioned somewhere)...

That's gotta be reaaaaaaally awkward if Summer was ever around Hazel at any point.

i’ve mentioned this before i think (<- i assume by “mentioned somewhere” you mean you read a theory post but can’t remember where in which case, the op was probably me, i’ve been on this train for a while) but:

the official story is that gretchen rainart, after enrolling at beacon academy, “tragically lost her life” on a training mission

per lionheart, the spring maiden was “determined, at first, when she inherited her powers, but the weight of responsibility proved to be too much for the child. she... ran. abandoned her training, everyone. that was over a decade ago.”

per raven: “she was scared when we found her! weak! no matter how much training i put her through, she never learned! she wasn’t cut out for this world! and with those powers, she would’ve been hunted her entire life. what i did—”

(“and which we are you referring to?”)

raven: “that’s why i tried to leave when i did. i’m not afraid, i’m smart.”

raven left taiyang shortly after yang was born. this would be approx. 15-16 years ago as of the beginning of V1. however, her statement that she “tried to leave” suggests that she stayed (reluctantly?) entangled with ozpin’s cause for longer.

eyeballing it, summer left when yang was around five and ruby about three. this would be about 12 years before the start of V1 and 3-4 years after raven broke things off with tai. since raven and summer were obviously still in close contact then, this tracks with the interpretation that leaving tai <> leaving ozpin.

‘more than a decade ago’ is vague but presumably means >10 and <20. so spring running away would have occurred approx. 10-18 years before the start of V1.

hm.

“nice story. but if gretchen’s death taught me anything, it was never to trust you.”

let’s consider the case of the runaway spring maiden. and, more specifically, the assumptions the fandom (myself included) have tended to make.

first assumption: the spring maiden trained in mistral or at haven academy.

no one ever says as much. qrow’s suggestion that the spring maiden was “picked up” by the branwen tribe after she ran away does not, in a world where trans-continental travel is commonplace (and was explicitly safer a decade+ ago than it is now), necessarily imply she ran away from haven. weiss got picked up by the branwen tribe after she ran away from atlas, after all.

likewise, amber’s presence at beacon and, later, fria’s in atlas prime the audience to link the spring maiden to haven. however, both amber and fria were in the academies because they were medically fragile and not expected to live for very long; prior to cinder’s attack, amber was traveling in rural vale, tailed by qrow. it also makes sense, in general, not to keep the living keys to the vaults in the same fortress as the vault they can open.

second assumption: lionheart knew her.

this follows from the assumption that she attended haven, but look at what’s missing from lionheart’s account: he never uses self-referential pronouns. his syntax leaves it ambiguous whether he knew this girl or if he’s simply repeating information he was given.

third assumption: raven’s “we” is the tribe, and she’s talking about finding the spring maiden after the girl ran away.

before V9, this was more plausible, but i don’t think it adds up now that we know raven was still at least notionally aligned with ozpin, via summer, as recently as twelve years ago. in order for “we” to mean the tribe, raven would have had to actually leave (as opposed to “trying to leave”); thus, either summer was conspiring with raven while raven was leading the tribe, or raven met the spring maiden after whatever went down with summer, in which case the third person involved is a complete mystery. the former is possible, but i think the simpler explanation—that this “we” is ozpin’s circle—is more plausible.

especially because what raven says lines up with what lionheart says. except for “she was determined at first,” but even if lionheart did know her, raven was clearly much closer to her and is the type to see through any façade the girl might have put up. (pyrrha was also “determined” but you know that if raven knew her, she would remember how scared pyrrha was. same principle likely applies here.)

fourth assumption: “what i did—” is solely about raven mercy-killing her.

which, it might be.

but if “we” means ozpin’s circle, that would mean raven was training the spring maiden on his behalf—and because it doesn’t really make sense for #3 to be anyone but the spring maiden, we can assume with high confidence that raven had a kindred link with her, ergo she loved the kid like her own family.

the spring maiden “ran away.” gretchen rainart “tragically lost her life on a training mission.” raven “tried to leave.” summer and raven and a third person were involved in a rogue mission to end things once and for all, none of them ever came back, and raven never told anyone what happened.

all of these things happened a bit more than a decade ago.

“what i did—”

i think she’s talking about summer’s last mission. the young spring maiden was overwhelmed, scared, struggling to learn what she needed to learn—and she had a huge target painted on her back because of salem. raven cared about her. if she wasn’t cut out for this world, the one defined by eternal war between ozpin and salem, then maybe the answer is to change the world. end it, once and for all. (sometimes it’s worth it all to risk the fall?) so she conspires with summer to do exactly that.

and then it goes so catastrophically wrong that a) summer joins salem, b) there’s a fight, c) gretchen is mortally wounded, d) raven either mercy-kills her or just can’t save her, and e) raven becomes the spring maiden.

ok.

now. if gretchen was the spring maiden, how do we square the circle of “died on a training mission” vs “ran away”?

in V3, qrow talks about having to search for maidens and in V5, ozpin says that one of the reasons he gave the branwens bird forms was to make it easier for them to search for new maidens when the transference of power was “unclear.” gretchen enrolled at beacon “against her brother’s wishes” and hazel holds ozpin responsible for her death; i think she was the spring maiden before she enrolled, raven identified her, and ozpin recruited her personally.

(if only because unknown maidens are mentioned twice in connection with the branwens and that has yet to pay narrative dividends; and it fits quite nicely.)

it does not go well. gretchen gets more freaked out with every new inkling she’s given of the conspiracy and is under intense pressure not to back out or tell anyone on the outside what’s happening. raven, her mentor/handler, sours more and more on the whole situation and eventually decides she’s not going to be a part of it anymore.

she’s not backing down from the fight. she’s not running away. but she’ll give gretchen a way out and make sure no one else can find her, and if that blows up her relationships with the rest of the inner circle, so be it.

so the spring maiden runs away. “abandons” her training, except raven still knows where she is and is still trying to help her figure out the magic because, well, she’s sort of stuck with it until she dies. gretchen can’t go home yet (salem might find her), but she can lay low and focus on mastering this power to defend herself away from the pressure of being one of ozpin’s guardians.

raven refuses to tell anyone where gretchen is. hazel is getting increasingly frantic; either she’s dropped out of contact or her vague, cryptic messages have him worried. nobody at beacon can give him a clear answer.

several years go by. the situation does not improve. somehow or another summer and raven cook up a plan to Fix Everything by taking salem down. it goes horribly wrong. summer joined salem, gretchen is dead, raven is the one left standing with blood on her hands and magic in her soul, after years of obfuscating where the spring maiden went.

what to do?

tell no one about summer. no one would fucking believe her if she told the truth. refuse to answer questions about her bond to summer, no one will think twice about her doing that because it’s what she did when gretchen went missing, too.

tell hazel gretchen is dead. he deserves to know. what happened, and why it happened, but leaving out summer’s involvement. if she’s vague on how and when—if she makes it sound like she was too cowardly to tell anyone that she, perhaps, let gretchen die (“[you saved yang] once. because that was your rule.” <- qrow really believes this)—or couldn’t save her—she can reveal that gretchen is dead without linking her death too obviously to summer’s disappearance.

if ozpin hears that gretchen is dead from hazel—when the infuriated meltdown rampage happens—then he can quietly tap qrow to confirm (by talking to raven) and restrict who knows the truth; hazel’s explosive grieving anger is easy to spin as hysterical paranoia.

and playing gretchen’s death “close to the chest” is a classic ozpin move. after all, learning that gretchen has been dead the whole time will only sow negativity, and the situation doesn’t materially change very much either way; they’re looking for the spring maiden either way, and everyone is aware that gretchen might die before they find her, so they’re already keeping an eye out for unknowns. qrow knows the truth, but he’s not about to spill the beans to anyone without ozpin’s say so.

and summer’s the one who suggests recruiting hazel to salem, because it’s her fault gretchen is dead but she can at least bring hazel into the fight to tear down the system that led her there. (“you’ve never wondered why she recruited you? you, specifically, to help her find the relics?” <- a narratively interesting line of attack in that it explicitly puts this question in front of the audience, follows up with an unequivocal confirmation that salem sought hazel out very deliberately, and follows that with ozpin’s overtly manipulative and unsatisfying answer of “because hazel is easy to manipulate.” lots of people are easy to manipulate. why choose hazel? how did she even know about Just Some Guy who lost his sister?)

like

all it really requires to tie everything together around the discrepancies is for ozpin (a liar) and raven (a matryoshka doll of secrets she refuses to talk about) to be, er, lying and keeping secrets. and narratively gretchen being the spring maiden just makes sense, to almost the same degree that summer joining salem just makes sense. it’s intuitive. it fills in gaps the narrative quietly circled in V8. it tracks with gretchen being so important in the same volume that makes a huge thing of how no one knows what salem is really after. no more gretchens; so you’ve decided against vengeance for your sister, after all this time?; in pursuit of a new world.

but yeah like. it’s fun because hazel is so malleable and so good at pretzeling his thinking that he could conceivably have been told the truth—summer killed gretchen—and still been talked around to aiming all of his fury and vengeance at ozpin because 1. ozpin is the reason gretchen got pulled into this mess, and 2. gretchen died in the crossfires of a fight that broke out when summer learned the truth (that the war was one-sided paranoia), and 3. for salem and summer the point of this war is to end the paranoid conspiracy so nothing like this can happen again. but my god, the tension between him and summer could probably cut glass.

#my girl is haunting the narrative

[wrathofrats]

Over an overture (sexual perversity) part 2!

(Read the first part here or read the entire thing on Ao3!)

Wc: 4.7k

Pebble/alpha/ivy

When pebble gets back from his little encounter, alpha decides he isn’t quite done with him yet. Too bad ivys sitting right there.

Warnings for: humiliation, dubious consent (pebble says no many times, he doesn’t mean it and can leave/safeword whenever, yes there’s aftercare) a bit of degradation, exhibitionism, I made this as bad as possible for pebble if I’m being honest.

Other stuff: pebble is a shithead, alpha is worse, this is a tad gross but don’t read too much into it, stupid love confessions, Ivy secretly is kinda a slut but we won’t mention it, kinda a scent kink? I think? op thinks she’s really funny,

A thanks and special fuck you /aff to @divine-misfortune as usual for editing and helping me brainstorm and stufff

Ok have fun and enjoy <3

Pebble takes a deep breath before he opens the door.

The old doorknob catches, clicking the lock a bit too loudly for Pebble’s hopeful attempt to sneak in without being caught. His pants still feel uncomfortable from where Alpha had left him to sit and stew in his own shame, the promise of “ah, don’t be selfish wildflower, maybe if you do what I told you I’ll give you more later” still ringing through his brain. If any demon below was looking out for him he could rush to his own room to catch his breath before having to swallow his own pride in order to make sure Alpha made good on his stupid promise.

Honestly pebble wasn’t sure why he even bothered with that asshole. His shenanigans usually left him more annoyed and about to kill him than they left him satisfied. The stupid pride that radiated off of him in waves managed to make pebble flustered beyond comprehension.

The door opened with a squeak.

Pebble poked his head through the crack to give a cursory glance of the room before letting go of a deep breath and turning to hastily lock the door behind him.

“I was wondering when you’d come back” Alpha’s annoyingly cocky voice ground against Pebble’s already fraying patience. He’s lucky Pebble didn’t turn around and swing, barely in the mood to tolerate him, let alone his stupid comments. he only reason he didn’t just kick behind him like an irritated horse was the knowledge that he wouldn’t get anything if he acted like that.

“I was wondering when you’d get a better personality,” Pebble mocked, trying to keep the snarl out of his voice.

“Oh don’t be like that…You’ve already been so good for me, why would you ruin it with that smart mouth now?”

“I haven’t been good for you, you fucking low life perverted chimney soot pervert freak. I just had to finish my work. Have you ever even done anything that resembles work around here?” Pebble bites. Alpha has him crowded against the door, the edges of his eyes crinkling into a self satisfied smile that pebble desperately wishes he could slap right off.

“Well I-“ Alpha began.

“Besides being the fucking stick up my ass”

“Thought you loved it when I was up your ass”

Pebble swore up and down that if he were any taller, any bigger, Alpha would've been dead months ago. He's half convinced that if Alpha were six feet under he'd finally live in peace - the fantasy of a world where he didn't have to listen to the absolute insanity that left Alpha's mouth sounded too good to be true. Pebble doesn't waste his breath on answering, unwilling to dignify it. He cockes an eyebrow, glancing down to Alpha's hand splayed on his chest as if to question why he was even still detaining him there.

“I could smell you from behind the door you know” Alpha grinned, with too many teeth down at the little earth ghoul.. Intimidating to anyone who wasn’t Pebble but the humiliating implication behind the words made him blush. “Taking everything in me to not just fuck you here against the wall. Make a spectacle of how good you know how to be”

“Why can’t you just fuck me in a bed like a normal ghoul? My back hurts from earlier” pebble rolled his eyes, arms crossed over his chest. He hoped if he played his cards right Alpha would just drag him upstairs and they could stop whatever this was.

“I just don’t think that would be nearly as fun sprout”

“Why not? Can’t you be a gentleman and let me lay down for once?”

“Because we have an audience, dirt boy” alphas grin grew impossibly wider. That’s when pebble finally noticed that Ivy had been sitting in the living room the entire time, only feet away from them. From what pebble can see he doesn’t give any indication that he’s heard the two, but panic fills pebble nonetheless. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to disappoint.”

“Alpha don’t you fucking dare” Pebble gasped, wide eyed. To his horror Alpha stepped back and turned his attention towards Ivy.

“Mind if we sit with you mint sprig? Pebble wanted to watch a movie,” he called across the room. Beyond casual.

Pebbles heart melts a bit when Ivy just beams at the simple invitation, yelling back an “of course!” While alpha grabs him by the upper arm. The rough handling is enough to break him from his stupor. He tries to jerk away, to wriggle from his grip, but Alpha only holds him tighter.

“No no no alpha wait no you promised!-“ Pebble quietly pleads with him.

“Listen, do what I say and I’ll fuck you so hard you can’t walk tomorrow” alpha muttered back. The words make Pebble’s stomach do flips. They only serve to keep him docile enough to mess with while alpha enacts whatever sick scenario he has running through that tiny brain of his.

Pebble sat at the far end of the couch with his legs curled in on himself in an attempt to hide his no doubt stained pants and annoyingly half hard cock. He subtly placed both hands in his lap while Alpha shot him a knowing, and satisfied look.

“So what did you want to watch, Pebble?” Ivy asked naively, clearly and thankfully not picking up on the tension in the room. He scooted closer, almost touching Pebble’s side while pebble just smiles and tries to give himself a second for his brain to struggle to catch up.

“What?” Pebble started to ask but answered his own question “Oh. I don’t care. Pick whatever you want.” He mumbled less than enthusiastically after a second too long

“You said you wanted to watch something though” Ivy questioned.

“Come on dirt boy, don’t leave the sweet thing waiting, tell us about that movie you wanted to watch.”

Pebble glares at Alpha as he racks his brain for any movie he's ever heard of and tries to ignore the blush on Ivy’s cheeks from yet another one of Alpha’s stupid comments. His thoughts move at the speed of molasses, blood flowing to all the wrong places.

Ivy was too close for comfort and any other time he’d consider it a blessing but it only serves to jumble his thoughts.

“Fuck- uhh, night swim came out a bit ago, we can throw that on or something” Pebble mumbled. It’s the only movie he could think of, remembering the god awful advertisements for it plaguing the tv. He just had to sit through the next two hours without losing it, he tells himself. If he can just sit still and keep his thoughts at bay he can get fucked and go to bed.

“You smell really good by the way” Ivy mumbled, shimmying impossibly closer to pebble. He thinks he can hear him trying to breath in his scent when ivy turned toward him to deliver the comment.

Did he notice? Is he in on it and they’re both fucking with him? Does Ivy even know what’s going on? He prays the answer to all three is no.

The color drained from his face as he hugged his legs closer to himself, squeaking out a thanks before attempting to turn his attention back to the movie and not only ignore how he too can smell the dried cum and arousal on him, but the fact that ivy is fully pressed into his side.

“Oh doesn’t he?” Alpha chimes in, “could practically smell him through the doorway”

Pebble should have known it was pointless to have hoped Alpha wouldn’t catch the offhand comment. He is Alpha at the end of the day. Never one to let anything slide or let Pebble have a goddamn moment of peace.

“Any reason, sprout? New cologne or something?”

“I don’t know. What are you? A cop?” Pebble sneered.

“Just wanted you to know how sweet you smell” Alpha smiled in a way he could only describe as predatory. Pebble was going to kill him actually. The comment went straight to his dick for no real reason and Alpha absolutely knew it. He adjusts himself once again, debating giving up and seeing if Mist felt nice enough to peg him to take the edge off. Moving is hard with their eyes on him, and he knew Alpha would never let him escape out of something like this so easily.

The scent of honey and hemlock coming from Pebble was enough to make Ivy’s mouth water. He smells like rich rain soaked soil, sweet with a bite of musk. Practically catnip to any earth ghoul, and Ivy seemed high off of it. Pebble had never seen him so ballsy. If he wasn’t curled in on himself he was sure Ivy would have been in his lap by now, practically rubbing up against him. The worst part? He wants it, he wants Ivy on him so desperately but not like this.

He doesn’t want him when he’s sitting in his own fucking cum because he was too stupid, horny, and perverted to control himself. Can’t let him find out what happened. It’d give him the impression he was just as bad as Alpha, and he was far from it. He still had some shame, even in his current predicament.

Pebble makes what he’s sure is his hundredth prayer of the day. Begs Satan to make Ivy give him a couple inches of space so he could run to his room and relieve himself of his uncomfortable clothing. Prays he hasn’t stained himself and his hard on would go down so he can escape. He honestly doesn’t care if he got fucked at this point, it was not worth whatever torture this was.

The shit eating grin on Alpha’s face convinced him Satan hadn’t been listening to a single thing he’d asked for. Maybe he deserved it for his church shenanigans. Maybe Satan just hated him.

“Ya know, Papa called me into the chapel earlier, smelled something similar in there if I recall correctly” Alpha speaks up after another minute of silence.

“I don’t know how you can recall anything correctly, you geriatric.”

“I’m just saying, could’ve sworn there was a stain left on the floor.” Alpha shrugged, an innocent look on his face.

Pebble sighed dramatically, “Fuck, I knew it was dementia, I better call Terzo and give him the bad news.”

Alpha rolled his eyes and continued speaking. “You’ve been in there all day, any explanation for the class?”

“That’s where I do chores asshat, maybe you’d know if you ever did any work.”

“Oh the last I heard you weren’t doing work either, sweetheart.”

Pebble froze.

“Shut up” he growled, the immediate anger almost instantly giving him away. Ivy looks too confused for Pebble’s comfort.

“What was he doing?” Ivy pipes up as Pebble attempts to sink further into the couch.

“Well I heard-“

“Alpha I swear to Satan” Pebble growls, nails pricking through the fabric of the arm rest.

“What’s wrong? What were you doing?” Ivy asks again. Pebble’s never once wished harm on him but if he doesn’t sit and be quiet he may have to retract his stupid puppy crush in favor of burning down the building.

“I’m sure Ivy would find the answer real interesting Pebble.”

Every comment eats away at his patience more and more. He fidgets with his hands in his lap, jaw clenched, trying to talk himself down from pouncing.

“Shut up” Pebble growls once again, hoping the final warning would be enough, but with how the day had been going he really should’ve known better.

“You seem really upset for no reason. Unless there’s something you’re not telling us.”

Pebble loses the last strand of his patience as he jumps up from his seat on the couch. “I’m going to fucking kill you” he nearly shouts. His hands come away from his lap as he balls them into fists at his sides, and he realizes way too late that this was all apart of Alpha’s fucked up game.

Alpha’s gaze travels down and back up whereas Ivy might as well be fully staring at his crotch. He's still slightly hard, a small but extremely noticeable stain on his pants where the head of his cock sits.

“Oh…Whats got you like that sprout?” Alpha is physically incapable of shutting the fuck up. His voice is cocky, a bit too giddy when he asks.

“I-“ Pebble stutters, the words die in his throat, no reasonable excuse comes to mind, not that he’s convinced there even is one. He can’t admit the truth. He can’t admit Alpha fucked him against the wall and told him to stay like that. He can’t admit that he fucking listened purely because his horny brain liked being called good boy just a bit too much to be rational. He can’t admit that the only reason that any of that even transpired is because they both got so turned on over Ivy’s innocence that they couldn’t help themselves.

“Cats out of the bag dirt boy, you might as well come clean.”

Pebble looked like a deer in headlights. He physically can’t bring himself to say what happened, he doesn’t even know where to start. Sure it’s not a secret that the ghouls all pass each other around like the sisterhood of the traveling whore but he has more shame than to admit that it was Alpha out of everyone, and that he was talking about Ivy the entire time.

“Are you going to tell him how you let me practically bully you up against the wall? How I got you begging for it, just from a couple of touches?” Alpha stands to loom over Pebble, tip his chin up to force eye contact while Ivy watches the whole thing happen in front of him.

“I- I wasn’t begging. You offered.” Pebble’s voice has a note of uncertainty to it, like he doesn’t believe the words he’s saying, walking straight into one of Alpha’s traps to embarrass him further.

“I'm begging, just make me cum, please!” Alpha’s voice pitches high in a degrading imitation of Pebble, “shut up and put your cock in me Alpha!”

“Have you made your point yet?” Pebble cowered slightly, not daring to look over at the count to where Ivy looks too interested for his own good.

“I haven’t even gotten to the best part! I’m sure Ivy would love to know how you screamed h-“

Before Pebble can even think about it he aims up with his fist, directing it straight for Alpha’s jaw before his wrist is quickly caught. Alpha moves fast, grabbing both hands in one fist and pinning them behind his back. The other hand roughly grips his chin, forcing him to look at Ivy.

“Tell him pebble” Alpha growled low into Pebble’s ear.

He can’t. He can’t make himself. He cant force the words out of his mouth and Ivy won’t stop fucking looking at him likes he’s too interested in this.

“Tell me Pebble,” Ivy says. His voice is still high and innocent like he hasn’t assumed already what the answer is. He can’t be that stupid, Pebble refuses to believe it. But his eyes are wide and sparkle with curiosity and Alpha’s nails dig into his wrists and he can’t help but blurt everything out.

“I- he- I screamed your name when he fucked me” Pebble winced.

“Come on, there’s more” Alpha digs deeper.

“No there isn’t” Pebble grits through the pain in his wrists.

“Not going to tell him how you wanted me to fuck his mouth with my fingers at dinner? How you wished it was you?”

“I didn’t say that alpha!” Pebble wanted desperately to scream, to wave his white flag, the only thing keeping him from completely losing it is how Ivy seems more and more interested by the second. He seems to be enjoying the show, and if Pebble thought to know any better he could swear Ivy has his hands planted over his lap in a similar fashion to the way he did earlier.

“Said you wanted to know how pretty he whines, wanted to be the first to get your cock into the innocent thing right?”

“I never said that!” He protested once again.

The hand on his chin trails down his chest slowly as if Alpha is showing him off. Reaches down to squeeze him through his pants making Pebble gasp and wiggle against his grip.

“You’re hard pumpkin, clearly you were into it if you’re turned on just from me mentioning it again.”

Pebble hides his face in Alpha’s shoulder, unable to look at Ivy any longer. He would probably grind against alphas hand like a mindless whore if was anymore brainless. Alpha keeps squeezing, kneading at him, and he’s still not even looking down. Alpha maintains his eye contact with Ivy as he works him over.

“Want to get off like this in front of him or do you want me to clean you up like I promised” alpha whispered.

“Wait” Ivy finally speaks up for the first time in what felt like hours.

“What’s on your mind mint sprig?”

“Can i?” Ivy asks timidly, playing with his fingers in his lap.

“Oh? You want to clean him up? How sweet. Desperate thing came in his pants like a horny fucking teenager, sure he needs it after waiting so long.”

Ivy nods enthusiastically

“Did you hear that sprout? You ok with finally letting Ivy get that pretty little mouth on you?” Pebble only nods with a small whimper. His head still tucked into Alpha’s shoulder.

Alpha quickly shifts them to sit on the couch to make it easier for him to leverage Pebble. Grabs him by the thigh and places him on his lap, holding his legs open for Ivy to nestle between.

“Come here then sweetheart” Alpha beckons him and points to the ground in front of Pebble “show him how you look on your knees.”

Pebble will have to think longer later about the fact that Ivy doesn’t even hesitate to drop in front of him. On his knees staring up at the two ready to be given instructions and Pebble thinks he could probably cum from the sight alone if he’s not careful.

“Go ahead. Give Pebble what he wants”

They’re both shocked when Ivy immediately dives for the button on Pebble’s pants, unzips and pulls them down along with his underwear to pull his cock out. Ivy stares a bit too long at it while his mouth waters. It sits hard against pebbles stomach, tip flushed a deep red, light shining off of the pre that dribbles down the head.

“Pretty..” he mumbles. Pebble nearly chokes.

From behind him Alpha lets go of the grip on his wrist and moves to pull his pants down even more from how he’s placed on his thighs. He uses a finger to tease his rim, circling the right ring of muscle. Pebble jumps at the sensation, trying to control himself between the two.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Pebble squeaks. Ivy smiles at his panic, gripping his cock in his fist.

“Promised you I’d fuck you didn’t I?” Alpha laughed.

Pebble thinks he may actually explode.

Ivy thumbs over his tip, sticky and sensitive and Pebble’s eyes cross from the sight and sensation of Ivy touching him. He looks too happy with himself, watching Pebble’s cock twitch with a grin, as if he’s proud of himself for getting this kind of reaction.

Two fingers play with his bottom lip, asking for permission to enter. Pebble was far beyond the snarky comments anymore, beyond the talking back, floating in a state of want. He parts his lips without a second thought, Alpha petting over his tongue to gather the saliva.

“Never seen him this quiet, usually I have to fuck the attitude out of him” alpha talks over his shoulder. He reaches back to shove two fingers inside of him, having pebble arch against alphas chest.

“You do this often?” Ivy asks with a voice that is entirely too demure considering Pebble can feel his breath on his dick.

“Well someone’s got to take care of him, can’t let him act the way he does with no punishment. Besides, he’s a fucking size queen when he wants to be.”

Alpha scissors him open, curling his fingers up to make Pebble damn near scream. He can hear them talk about him but he can’t bring himself to respond. Ivy gives a small lick to his head, as if he’s testing the waters, before licking slowly up his shaft.

“Does he ever…” Ivy trails off.

“He’s been itching to fuck you into the mattress for months, rosebud.”

They speak about him like he’s a fucking toy, like he’s some blow up sex doll they’re considering buying. Degrading. It makes his mind feel numb.

“Please…” Ivy begs at the hypothetical situation. Alpha removes his fingers from Pebble, replacing them with the head of his cock.

“I’m sure he could break such a delicate thing as you” alpha slowly lets pebble sink down, well aware of the pace Pebble preferred and giving him time to adjust.

“Need him to break me” Ivy mumbled somewhat dreamily, still mouthing at Pebble’s shaft.

“Oh baby, have you ever had a cock in you?”

“Not a real one” Ivy breathes, practically entranced.

Pebble hates how obediently Ivy responds to him. How he still sounds like it’s a normal conversation they’re having as Pebble writhes between them. He sits firmly on Alpha’s cock, full beyond belief. Pebble always forgets how big he is, how he always needs a couple minutes to breathe through the stretch.

“You have to fuck yourself with your own toys? Oh you poor thing”

Ivy sucks at his tip, swirling his tongue around it to gather the pre that leaks like faucet. He looks up at Alpha and nods.

“Tell our sweet little sapling here how you like to fuck yourself, I’m sure he’s been picturing how you look every night.”

“I.. I uh” Ivy gulped, mouth removed from Pebble but stroking him slowly. Alpha starts to fuck up into him, signaling for him to grind down. “Finger myself, like to take my time, like how it feels to touch myself”

Pebble thinks he may cum just from hearing Ivy speak like this.

“Yeah? Then what do you do?”

“Have a toy i like to get in me, like to feel full” Ivy mumbles as if he’s suddenly embarrassed.

“I'm sure Pebble will have to fix that one day, won’t you sweetheart?” Alpha noses into his hair. Pebble responds with a nod, moaning out something along the lines of a plea. He bounces as much as he can in his position, face screwed up in pleasure. “It’s funny honestly, wouldn’t expect him to be able to ruin you considering how small he is” alpha chuckles earning a half hearted swat from the earth ghoul on top of him. Ivy returns his mouth, taking the first couple inches with ease.

Pebbles hands fly to his hair, cursing loudly as Ivy bobs. “Fuck- fuck, Ivy I’m close you gotta-“ Pebble tried to warn but Ivy doesn’t let up, doesn’t take him out of his mouth, only looks up at him from beneath his eye lashes.

“Cum for him Pebble, you’ve earned it” Alpha whispered

Pebble releases with a shout, spilling down Ivy's throat, hands tangled in his hair. Alpha and Ivy work him through it, grinding and lapping up his release before he can go completely limp.

Ivy backs off as Alpha thrusts a few more times before spilling inside of him, trying his best not to overstimulate the poor thing in doing so. He’s practically boneless in Alpha’s grip, reduced to glassy eyes and broken whimpers every time Alpha moves regardless of his attempts at being careful.

Ivys uses the spare couple of seconds to stroke himself, knowing it won’t take much. Gives himself a couple quick flicks before cumming in his hand with a bitten off moan.

Alpha strokes at Pebble’s hair, monitoring him closely as he comes down from his high. Sweet words whispered into his skin as he tries not to jostle him much.

“You with me sprout?”” Alpha asks, kissing Pebble’s temple. “Take it you enjoyed yourself.”

“Mhm” he nodded, eyes half lidded and vacant. Not completely there. He whines when Alpha finally lifts him off of his cock, cringing at the empty feeling.

“Did so well, told you I’d make good on my promise” Alpha laughs softly. He pulls up Pebble’s pants to give him as much of his dignity back as he could, even if they all desperately need a shower. “Proud of you Pebs.”

“You’re an ass” Pebble mumbles. He sounds tired, hiding his face again in Alpha’s chest while he drifts down from his high.

“You ok too Ivy?” Alpha asks, stroking along Pebble’s skin.

“Yeah of course!” He beams. He sounds a bit too giddy for the situation

It takes Pebble a moment to process the situation before he’s almost flying out of Alpha’s lap

“Fuck! That was weird, that was so weird of me, Ivy I’m so sorry I-“

“You’re ok, I had fun” Ivy laughed.

Pebble moved to sit next to him, giving him a once over and attempting to read his body language for any sign of discomfort. He felt stupid, like he may have fucked everything up. He hopes ivy won’t look at him any differently, hopes he doesn’t think pebble only thinks of him sexually.

“This .. this just isn’t exactly how I wanted this to happen” Pebble mumbled. He had hoped for something a bit more respectful than some half dazed confession on the living room floor covered in cum. It’s not the true picture of romance he wanted, especially not for Ivy.

“How you wanted what to happen?” Ivy asked.

“Well.. I.. I just-“ Pebble stutters. Even if Ivy had his dick in his mouth a couple minutes ago, the idea of admitting he has feelings is beyond his brain power at the moment. “Just thought you deserved more respect than whatever this was. I don’t just look at you like some object, if you can believe that” pebble joked half heartedly.

“Are you sure?” Ivy feigned surprise

“Yes actually. You know this wasn’t just a sexual thing right? That I don’t only like you because I want to fuck you?”

“I understand” Ivy gives him a shy smile, “I wanted this too.”

“You did?”

“Of course, haven’t you seen the way I’ve been looking at you?”

Pebble scrunches his brow in confusion. Had he been this fucking stupid the entire time? He could hear Alpha give a small chuckle behind him and regretfully realizes that he was unfortunately also still in the room.

“Listen, I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to fuck this up and having someone fuck me in front of you didn’t seem like the most romantic love confession” Pebble stares at the floor while Ivy giggles in front of him. His cheeks are flushed and rosy, a crinkle in the corner of his eyes. Pebble thinks he’s beyond adorable like this.

“Don’t worry, I got the hint.”

It’s stupid. All of it was honestly so fucking stupid.. Pebble was head over heels and could have just kissed him right there if he wasn’t consciously aware of the horrifically gross feeling of three loads drying on his skin. He’s sure Ivy doesn’t feel much cleaner either. Ivy cradles his hand to his chest in an attempt to not straight up wipe it on the floor like a heathen.

“Can we continue this after we’ve all showered? I feel like a pornstar who just worked overtime.” Pebble asked, wincing at how his sore muscles protested the movement of trying to get up.

Ivy nearly snorted at his joke and Pebble’s heart stuttered.

“Yeah, yeah I’d love to.”

Alpha lounges back against the couch as the two of them depart on shaky legs, Pebble more so than Ivy. He remains despite the sweat, cum and spit on his skin, half convinced that whatever display he'd just watched had made him violently ill.

At least that's what he’s convinced of, refusing to admit to anyone (even himself) that he's happy because Pebble is happy.

#eye twitches #I love writing them so much no one understands #genuinely this fic has been so insanely fun to write #cw humiliation #cw degradation #cw exhibitionism #the band ghost #ghost #nameless ghouls #ghost bc #fanfic #wrath writes #pebble ghoul #ivy ghoul #alpha ghoul

[robby-bobby-tommy]

As it is obvious from my blog, I adore TFP. It is the first Transformers show I've watched (I remember watching tf content before, yet i can't remember which it was). Yet as always, I have some criticism even to my most beloved things and now I want to talk about one of these. And the name to him is Dreadwing.

Dreadwing is particularly interesting cuz he seems like one sane person in the whole Nemesis, who is undeniably loyal to the cause. Something that even Megatron isn't anymore. Dreadwing is a great example of what the decepticon should be. Fierce, strong, yet smart, noble, loyal and respectful to his own team. And this is an interesting since we've never seen this before, cuz everyone else on Nemesis strayed from this path and just using this cause as a way of manipulation. And still Dreadwing was most loyal to Megatron, with the only thing standing between him and total obedience is his love for his late brother (Skyquake, hun, sorry, but I literally forgot abt you the moment you died).

And this is a great start, but all this potential was, at least for me, wasted.

Firstly. His position which he came in the show. He was presented to us as a) a threat; b) Wheeljack's enemy/rival. And that's when my first problem starts here. Let's look at the statistics.

Optimus prime — Megatron

Ratchet — KO (or Shockwave)

Bumblebee — KO

Bulkhead — Breakdown

Arcee — Arachnid

Smokescreen — KO (why does he have a beef with every child in the group?)

Ultra Magnus — Predaking

And then Wheeljack is like — ?????

And yeah, I am upset abt lack of Wheeljack in TFP, but it's relevant to my Dreadwing rant, since all the others I've mentioned has met at least once/twice and had some resolution to their rivalry (even though not the good one), but cowboy loose cannon and a flying samurai never even mention each other after their episode. It is cuz Wheeljack really likes to disappear from the plot for Primus knows how long, while this Seeker stays through all the season 2 until my greatest disappointment came.

Secondly, Dreadwing's death is the dumbest scrap I've seen and looks like a very rude way to get rid of character. I still have no idea of why Megan chose Starscream over someone who's loyal to you to the point of disobeying to save ur tailpipe! And don't start the 'but DW disobeyed him', WING BOY WAS PROMOTED FOR IT.

Furthermore, from the moment I saw him even if I thought DW was to die, I considered it would happen in a battle with Wheeljack. It would be so interesting to see a death match between two guys, madly loyal to their friends/family/team. But nahh, Jackie never tries to go after winged edgelord ever again and never even ask if he's up to rematch.

(Also, funny how Dreadwing is so mad at SS for bringing Skyquake back to life as a zombie, but not at Bee and OP for literally killing him..... Priorities, huh.. Just another scrap u to Starscream for no reason.)

#transformers #transformers prime #tfp #maccadam #optimus prime #tfp optimus prime #dreadwing #tfp dreadwing #wheeljack #tfp wheeljack #tfp megatron #megatron #starscream #tfp starscream #skyquake #tfp skyquake #maccadams #why do authors do this to me.. #giving an interesting character/ character dynamic only to snatch it away #wheeljack; Dreadwing; bulkhead/breakdown; Arcee and SS (cuz he spared her) #and half of the rivalry i talked about aren't good #cuz most of them were resolved in nothing. just as arachnids arc.... *sight* #i love tfp to death but even i see bunch of problems with it

[centralperkchenford]

Chenford + Chris comments that the only reason Tim and Lucy ever got together was because of their doppelganger.

Bonus points! He insinuates Tim would never be attracted to her.

Sorry I'm painting Chris horrible

I never liked Chris so you are all good!

Chenford + Chris comments that the only reason Tim and Lucy ever got together was because of their doppelganger.

Bonus points! He insinuates Tim would never be attracted to her.

Chenford + I’m not your type (she’s not your type)

you know I did one thing right starry eyes sparking up my darkest night

Tim normally loves having his own office, its private and he can shut the door. Everyone usually knocks save for Lucy who he usually knows is coming or Angela who is well Angela. He doesn’t usually get a lot of people coming in and out but it happens.

So when there is a knock on his door while he’s doing paperwork he doesn’t think twice he calls out come in absently and goes back to doing the day’s paperwork. The door opens and he looks up briefly and then stares because it’s the last person he ever thought would be at his office door.

Chris Sanford

He has to admit he really doesn’t know what went down between him and Lucy the night she broke up with him and then came back to the station so Tim could ask her out. And he really doesn’t care because he’s happier than he’s ever been with Lucy, and he doesn’t need an ex overshadowing that.

“Uh hi?” Says Tim furrowing his brows at the shorter man. Chris is frowning at him and standing in front of him with his arms crossed his chest.

“Cut the bullshit Bradford.” Chris snaps. “I know the only reason you and Lucy got together was because of your doppelgängers.” Tim’s mouth fell open. He knew Chris was bitter, he had heard it from Wesley but he didn’t know he was this bitter.

“What are you talking about?” Tim asks calmly.

Chris stares at him before he answers. “I saw the documentary. I know you and Lucy are dating. And I know the only reason you are is because of Jake and Sava or whatever the hell you called them.” Chris snaps at him again. Tim is starting to get pissed because Chris has no idea how he and Lucy got together. He has no idea that their feelings started way before the UC op.

“You don’t know what you are talking about Sanford. Lucy and I didn’t get together just because of two people who look like us. We got together because we wanted to. We have feelings for each other and we acted it on it.”

Chris’s face does something funny as he stares at Tim some more. “Oh yeah? So Lucy didn’t cheat on me?”

“Do you think Lucy cheated on you?” Tim asks sharply. Chris thinks about it for a minute and then shakes his head. “No.”

“Well you are right. She didn’t. Nothing happened between us until after she broke up with you.” Tim says. “Have some damn respect.”

Chris frowns at Tim’s words but before he could reply Lucy comes bouncing into the office. “Hi babe— oh.” She says when she sees Chris, her smile instantly falling.

“Hi Chris.” She says and she stands awkwardly in the doorway. Chris all but ignores her and then turns back to Tim.

“She’s not your type.” Chris says. Tim’s eyes go to Lucy’s face which remains passive but he knows her well enough that she’s trying not to lose it.

“You are an ass.” Says Tim. “You have no idea what my type is. I’m not sure why you thought it was okay to burst in here and start making assumptions about my relationship with Lucy.”

“You aren’t attracted to her.” Chris says bravely ignoring Tim’s last statement. “You are attracted to the idea of her. You want someone good and fun and smart so you went for my girlfriend.”

Tim let’s out a loud breath trying to calm himself before he speaks again. But Lucy beats him to it. She comes further into the office and stands next to Tim so she can face Chris. When she speaks her voice is steady and calm.

“You don’t know what you are talking about Chris. You have no idea what Tim and I have gone through together. And starting to date was no easy task, it was a risk and we were both willing to take it. I know what Tim feels for me is real. I know he doesn’t just like the idea of me I know he likes me. I am with Tim so I would know. You aren’t on the inside of our relationship and you never will be.” She says breathlessly. Tim looks at her proudly.

Chris glares at her no doubt angry about her answer. “It doesn’t erase the fact that you—” He starts but Lucy cuts him.

“That I what? Broke up with you? Didn’t want to buy a house with you?” She snaps at him.

He opens his mouth to reply but then shuts it. “You need to move on Chris.” Lucy tells him gently. “I’m not the one you are suppose to be with. But I’ m sure you will find the right one someday. It’s just not me.”

Tim wraps himself around Lucy kissing her on top of the head. Chris looks between them and the spins on his heels and stomps out.

There is silence for a few minutes before Tim speaks again. “He’s wrong you know. You are my type.”

“I know Tim.” She says quietly.

“And I’m not with you because of Jake and Sava.” He says. Lucy turns in his arms so she can look up at him.

“I know that too Tim.” She says smiling at him. “Believe me.” Tim takes a shuddering breath.

“I love you.” He says and her eyes widen. He thinks she knows that too they just have never said it before.

“Well that is new information.” She says trying to joke but her voice hitching a bit.

“Well it’s true. I do. I love you and you don’t have to say it back but—”

“I love you too Tim.” She says in one breath and he grins.

“Well that’s just perfect huh?” He asks mischievously.

“Yeah.” She says grinning up at him and giving him a quick kiss. “Yeah it is.”

#chenford #the rookie #chenford fanfic #tim bradford #tim x lucy #lucy chen #chenford fic #anon answered

[nothing0fnothing]

NEWSFLASH for abusive parents: NO Pussy is that good.

Exactly no one in the history of ever has had a happy, healthy, loving relationship with their mum and gone no contact with them for seven years, just because their partner asked them to.

OP knows this better than anyone, because she knew to tell her son not to get involved when she found out the girlfriend was no contact with her own toxic parents. She gives no other reason why she didn't want her "genius" son to meet the "very smart and nice" Law undergrad girl he was in love with, because that was the only one. She didn't want her son to connect with other adults who are healthily and happily no contact from their own abusive family members, because she didn't want him to see it was possible.

She really wants us to beleive that she is such a victim, because her son picked an "outsider to the family" over her. Her sons girlfriend is the person she's decided is going to take the blame, and hell will freeze over before she considers blamimg the relationship breakdown on literally anyone else. Note how she breezes past telling us about her sons "accusations" of her. She's stressing that he'd never brought the issues up before he met the girl when he was in college, but never actually denies them. Considering her son and his girlfriend described her as a "criminal", I'm gonna just assume that if it was trivial, she'd have told us what she's been accused of. He didn't choose his girlfriend over his mum at all. With all the pot stirring and projecting she's admitted to doing in this post alone, it seems to me he chose himself over her. With the way she's deflecting like it's her job and rents due, I don't blame him.

Here's a take that might be controversial: stalking... is bad. Even.. if you get someone else to do it for you.

"I had to use one of those search services" (What these psycho parents call private investigators, because it sounds more like they were searching for someone missing than that they paid someone to stalk their target.) as if her being out of pocket, paying for someone to seek out a person who clearly does not wish to be found, was super fucking inconvenient for her. I just want to scream "No babe, you didn't "have to" do anything. You chose to do that because you can't comprehend the fact that your now 30 year old son isn't your property." This dude is just young, free and living his best no contact life with his super cool, lawyer girlfriend. Literally nobody reasonable was concerned for his safety.

This is a woman who doesn't know how to apologise because she genuinely can't conceive of a scenario where she could be at fault. That snide comment "lord forbid I care about him" actually infuriates me. This woman has admitted to running her own son out of his hometown after attempting to ruin his relationship, using his father and sister as informants against him till he had to cut them off too, and paying a stranger to stalk him. This poor guy has had his life absolutely torn apart by this bitter hag of a mother. He had to orphan himself from his entire family when he was barely 20 years old to protect himself from this utter nutcase, and she has the fucking audacity to say "God forbid I..." as if she has experienced any consequences for any of her own truly unhinged behaviour.

I don't care if she's old, if I see this twat, it's on sight.

The "Poor me" angle she's trying to run at this with is pretty pathetic and really transparent. I'm not sure who beleives she's an innocent victim, but this "I text him every day and they bounce because I've been blocked for seven years" shtick is boring and over dramatic. Especially when even the fact that the girl has a law degree is enough to provoke some weird, barely related attempt at a smug remark. She's clearly not too sad to be salty. When she's not coming off whiney and sad she's just coming across as bitter and jealous. It's not a good look and it's clearly not worked for her up till now, but she's committed to the bit and she's not gonna turn it around.

Her son is happy and she's just so mad about it.

Womp womp.

#estranged parents #estrangement #no contact #toxic parents #toxic mom #dysfunctional family #dysfunctional household #narcissistic abuse

[xxlovelynovaxx]

An uncharitable reading on a population of largely traumatized neurodivergent kids that I found, that I responded to assuming OP was acting in good faith to try and open a conversation on the subject:

(Plaintext: An uncharitable reading on a population of largely traumatized neurodivergent kids that I found, that I responded to assuming OP was acting in good faith to try and open a conversation on the subject:)

to be honest i generally dislike the term "gifted kid". when people talk about being an "ex gifted kid" it's usually just to talk about burnout, which isn't anywhere near unique specifically to children who were part of some local gifted and talented program. when people talk about not learning the skills they need as an adult, that isn't unique to being "gifted" as a child. this happens to most people.

i think what is actually happening is that, as a child being treated better than their peers, their self worth was determined on academic success and being seen as smart and clever. but people develop at different rates and have different skills and the sort of abilities, skills, or intelligence you need to use isn't consistent throughout your academic year. so they "fall behind" when actually they're just average and not particularly worse than most other people. what they didn't learn was how to not hinge their self worth on academics and being better than other people. and how to see everyone as equal regardless of academic ability. people get caught up in the idea of only being "good" if they can be better than others and get top results with less efforts. which is really insulting to other people's efforts. this isn't getting over being labelled "gifted" and moving on with your life. it's clinging to that label that has long expired, and using it as a reason for why you are not as good as you would like to be.

and it shouldn't be insulting to say so if you've truly let go of the idea that people who are good at academics are better. that being smart and talented makes someone better. i really wonder how you think people who were bad at academics growing up feel about people saying that they should still be better than them, because they were better as children, and being on the same level is the worst thing ever. the moralising of intelligence and grades is so deep rooted you need to really dig in to get it out

My reply

(Plaintext: my reply)

The thing is, this is not how we use it at all.

continued below the readmore, please make note of the content warning/trigger warning tags on the post. we added both cw and tw tags to hopefully have as many people's filters be able to catch it as possible

The label "gifted kid" itself we view as a form of violence forced on kids.

It's not being told you're only "good" if you're "better than others". It's being told your sole, entire worth is wrapped up in your personal academic performance. It doesn't matter how other kids do, because they're "smart in their own ways" and "even if they're not smart, they're good at other things". It's still violently ableist against severely disabled kids, don't get me wrong; the message needs to be that all people inherently have worth, not that everyone is good at something.

But it's not about anyone else's performance, really. It's about yours, and only yours. I remember telling my parents "but [friend] gets Cs" and their response was "[friend] isn't you". Other kids were allowed to not get perfect grades in school, but if I didn't, I wasn't just not good enough, I was no longer a person.

This didn't just lead to "being average". This led to being severely, likely permanently, cognitively disabled. The burnout and trauma associated with it has made me incapable of doing many of the things that even the average adult can do. While the extent varies, especially after several years in recovery, for multiple years I couldn't do elementary level tasks. I've wondered for a while now if it caused actual brain damage (not due to traumatic injury, but that's not the only thing that can cause brain damage).

I still struggle with extreme executive dysfunction, worsened by the severe burnout and subsequent breakdown I endured - not just to the point where I struggle to fill out disability paperwork and make appointments, but even to the point where I need a caregiver in order to do things like make food and so laundry, and to the point where I sometimes have to wear diapers because task inertia and executive dysfunction make me unable to move to get to the toilet.

(This is worsened by physical disability, but if I'm being quite honest, the primary ways the two intersect is that pain further worsens executive dysfunction as well as ironically my lack of awareness of my bodily needs - forgot the term for that specifically; as well as increases frequency and urgency of bathroom needs and both cognitive and physical effects of missing meals.)

It's not and was never about "other people's efforts".

It's also hard to understate the severe negative impact of being taught to hinge your entire self-worth on something you become no longer capable of doing. This is the precise type of withholding conditional love and support in early childhood development that can later cause cluster B personality disorders. It's not really even about what you can be "good" at. It's about being taught in your most formative developmental years that you, and only you, are not deserving of love or even life if you don't earn it.

I'm not "on the same level" as most others. I'm far below their level. I'm severely disabled, and the experience of neurodivergent burnout as a result of being treated as a gifted child is what caused a good portion of it. Even the subsequent abuse by my parents after dropping out of college was in large part for these reasons, and could be partially responsible for the development of my physical chronic illnesses, even.

I don't see those without "academic ability" as worse than me. Why would I? They don't have to earn their worth. They never have. They were always allowed to exist as they were, however they were.

The messaging I internalized, as I began to fail to meet the high requirements expected of me, and eventually became completely unable to meet even what are considered basic requirements for others, was that I was uniquely broken. That there was something fundamentally wrong with me that wasn't present in anyone else - that I was born tainted in some imperceptible way.

The only comparison that I did ever internalize was that I, and I alone, had not earned the right to be alive if I wasn't "the best". My intelligence didn't make me better than other people; it made me almost as good as a real person. The only reason it was even being celebrated at all was for how I could "help other people".

I had a duty to be a doctor or a scientist because since I had been born "smart", if I didn't use it, I was basically depriving suffering people of relief and was therefore evil. I was told, explicitly, repeatedly, that I owed this to the world because I was "gifted". When I became more profoundly neurodisabled, I wasn't actually incapable, or if I was, it was just temporary. I needed to "work harder" to overcome it. When "working harder" made me suicidal, while actively being abused, I was told I was selfish for wanting to take away what I could "give" to the world. When I wanted to do anything other than a STEM field viewed as directly benefitting humanity - even arts or social sciences or pure mathematics - I was similarly selfish.

Don't get me wrong, I despise the term gifted kid. To me, it will only ever be the phrase used to teach me that my only worth was in what I could do to advance science for humanity, and that anything less than that made me a selfish burden not worthy of life.

It's quite possible that the other people you've seen who were once labeled as such didn't experience the extent of trauma that I did. They might also lack awareness, having not fully unpacked it yet, or not be able to articulate it. I don't know.

But I do know the people who were labeled as such that I've spoken to have had similar experiences. Making it just about being "better" than others or being "average" or "the moralizing of intelligence or getting good grades" isn't just severely downplaying the trauma many of us have endured, it's wholly inaccurate to many of our experiences.

I'd also add - even in cases where it is about that - there's still a component of kids being taught during developmental years that being "better" is the only way to earn love, worth, and the right to live. Being taught you have to be "good at" vs "better than others at" something are two different things.

But even in the case of the latter, in order to convince a severely traumatized, formerly neglected or abused person that it isn't true... you have to lead with the fact that they are still deserving of love, have worth, and are allowed to live, if they are average or below average.

Because yeah, if you say "you shouldn't think of yourself as better than others because they have worth and deserve to be treated well, and you're hurting them if you do", all they're going to hear is "they have worth and deserve to be treated well, and you're hurting them".

Even setting aside whether they think being "better" means they deserve to be treated better, or if it's like most trauma and mental illness where they are far harder on theirself than anyone else and are horrified at the very idea of anyone other than them needing to earn worth and good treatment...

Blame and shame will simply be less effective at convincing them to listen. Being effective in convincing people to examine their internalized ableism and ideas around the moralization of intelligence is what affects material reality and helps make changes. I've been as guilty as anyone of simply ranting about how people treat those they view as "unintelligent", especially since entering that category myself. It's what feels good!

But I also think that addressing the concerns and fears of people who have actually been hurt is necessary in convincing them of your point.

I also think that the conflation of even seeing yourself as "better than" others and thinking that therefore others deserve to be treated as "lesser than" is wholly inaccurate. I mean, we have NPD, and we do sometimes think we are better than others in other ways (often either in highly abstract or highly specific ways - so just "I'm the best" "at what" "the best"; or "I'm one of the best knitters ever for figuring out fair isle knitting on my first try").

That doesn't mean we think that anyone else deserves to be treated worse than us - to the contrary, it only convinces us that everyone deserves to be treated with the fullest amount of kindness and compassion possible, because we want everyone to feel as good about themselves as we do, and to recognize how deeply inherently worthy of that feeling as we are.

Conversely, when we have crashes, and this is probably an even bigger factor in how we feel about every human being having inherent worth and deserving respect... we never, ever, ever want anyone else to feel even a fraction of what we feel when we feel we aren't good enough.

Because we rely a lot of words of affirmation and verbal reassurance, we find exactly what the people around us take pride in and then find every possible thing we can to compliment about it. We remind acquaintances and strangers we strike up a conversation with that they don't have to earn decency if it even comes up at all.

We even had a conversation with our abusive mother, who we've chosen to continue a relationship with due to marginally improved behavior, that being able to support them while her mom has dementia, is a privilege and joy, that she deserves all the kindness and support I can give, and that she should give herself the grace of rest and letting others help.

Mind you, supporting her is a struggle and sometimes one that I question if it's worth it, because she and my father are sometimes petty and mean in return, take me for granted, and take out their frustrations on me (likely as much because I'm one of the only people they trust enough to do so, weirdly). But I don't want the literal abuser that nearly drove me to suicide multiple times to feel unworthy of love or support or just generally not good enough.

(I don't judge others who do hate or feel indifferent towards their abusers. This is not an "I'm better than any other victims for this, because this is a conscious choice I am making. Ironically, some of how my parents continue to mistreat me is because of a lack of self awareness that they have a choice in how they engage with their parents too, even if it's one that they would only ever choose one way. But point being, this is to illustrate the full extent of what I mean when I say "I truly believe everyone has innate worth and deserves to feel worthy of life and kindness and love". I know plenty of other victims are capable of believing that while not being able to feel it towards their abusers - I'd even say many of us fall into that category of believing it but not being able to feel it emotionally towards our abusers.)

(Also, as a secondary note, we switched to "we" language specifically for our whole system to take accountability for our thoughts, beliefs, and actions here, not because I specifically am excluding myself from it in any way.)

I do think you're right about how a lot of people moralize grades and intelligence. It's something many of us had to deeply examine in ourselves.

I also think that it's a bit unfair, however, to assume that "former gifted kids" think other people are less worthy or deserving of love, support, and life in general if they are less intelligent, just because they've internalized those messages about themself specifically.

Trauma and mental illness don't work that way. They're rarely rational, and even more rarely focused on other people like that. Many "former gifted kids" specifically struggle with severe depression and anxiety.

One of the most common experiences of depression and anxiety is the mental illness convincing you that you are uniquely horrible for doing things, not doing things, or not being able to do things, that it's perfectly fine for other people to do, not do, or not be able to do.

The logic isn't consistent, because mental illness is not logical in the first place. It's even more illogical when those same ideas are further supported by adults treating your past self as uniquely bad for things they actively say and show are fine for others to do - because now you have "evidence" that these thoughts are true. You have to earn your worth because you are uniquely unworthy - you must even be worse than everyone else, because they don't have to earn their worth.

Being on the same level as everyone else isn't bad. It would be great to not struggle with self-esteem issues (the root and one of the symptoms of my NPD, actually) constantly trying to tell me that I alone do not have worth and am in fact a burden on existence just for being alive. I've spent years trying to convince myself "I'm not lesser than literally everyone else, even the most evil figures from the darkest periods of history. Everyone else doesn't somehow have some innate quality of worth that I wasn't born with and therefore uniquely have to earn. None of that is true."

(If this seems to contradict what I said about the symptoms of NPD highs, those are themselves a reactive overcorrection to that trauma to try and cope with the low self-esteem. The truth is, I'm not special. I'm neither uniquely bad or uniquely good. Thinking of myself as the best does help, as long as I manage it to avoid severe crashes, and it's not harmful. It doesn't affect the way I treat people, except perhaps in how it makes me wanna help others feel the same way. Thinking of yourself as "better than" others or "the best" is harmless unless it causes you to mistreat others, in which case the problem is still the mistreatment itself.)

And yeah, I'm not "as good" as I would like to be. I lack basic functionality, and it causes a lot of struggles and hardship in my life. It often directly or indirectly causes trauma.

I've cried in my partner's arms, terrified she'd want to leave me or would hate me or think I'm disgusting because I made a double mess in the bed while feeling too unwell to move, or because I wet the couch repeatedly as a reaction to processing sexual and related trauma. We live in abject poverty because I am incapable of working - due primarily to my neurodivergent disabilities, much more even than my profound physical disabilities - and that is a source of ongoing complex trauma. Another source of ongoing complex trauma is the reevaluations I have to spend the entirety of every third year panicking over the possibility of losing my entire meager income from.

I have to constantly field "advice", judgment, and questions from people convinced there is some part time job that plays to my strengths, when I spend between 50 and 90 percent of every day simply being disabled or recovering from being disabled. I am constantly fatigued, sick, in pain, dealing with panic attacks, flashbacks, dissociation, and a plethora of general symptoms of both trauma and chronic illness, and spend multiple hours a day either doing those things or resting after.

Most people seem truly incapable of comprehending the true extent of my disability - how I can talk and seem "normal" (even though doing so with most people can mean I have to recover for the rest of the day, or longer if I have to do so for longer than a few minutes); how going to a single store, even while using a motorized cart, two days in a row can leave me bedridden for several days and housebound for several weeks; how I seem eloquent and well-spoken and "intelligent" but even writing this post is making my brain feel like mush and it's entirely possible I won't be able to do anything at all for the next several hours at least.

I'm not saying all this to seem dramatic. I'm admitting - yes, I'm not "as good" as I want to be. I can't even do the things I enjoy most of the time, despite having what looks externally like "free time" and appearing "normal" and "functional" to the average person I interact with. I'm saying I don't judge anyone who also can't do the same things, but that doesn't make the experience of profound disability any less frustrating.

And yes, having been previously comparatively abled absolutely plays a part in that frustration, because I know what it was like to be at least average, if not in some areas moderately better than average. I know what it's like to exceed my own personal goals, not in comparison to anyone else, but the own measures I've set for my success. I know what it's like to even meet them. I know what it's like to meet only some of them, but to be able to at least work on the ones I didn't meet.

I know what it's like to be able to even try, to not be trapped silently screaming from both physical pain and emotional anguish in a body that's falling apart and it seems is actively trying to kill us half the time, where what little energy we do have becomes a choice between directing it at the few things we can still do that make us happy, or chasing down and begging doctors to stop being massively ableist egocentric pricks and actually do their jobs (or at least, not actively prescribe things that have a good likelihood of killing us via actively worsening one or more of our health conditions).

So I don't think, even for people who are now "average", that it's bad for them to mourn their own personal capabilities. It's still not even necessarily bad if they do feel it makes them "better than" other people, as long as they don't think other people deserve to be mistreated, don't mistreat other people themselves, and don't think people have to earn worth/the right to live. But it's also not always even about that, because being "good at" something in the sense that it comes easily to you, and then hitting a wall where you struggle with or are unable to progress further, while other people still do, is difficult!

It's difficult in sports, if you hit the limits of your athletic abilities but some of your peers start outperforming you - even if others don't, you probably joined sports BECAUSE you were competitive and wanted to push your limits, and finding you can't push them further is difficult. The existence of disabled people who can't do sports (like me, I am quite literally allergic to exercise; my MCAS causes exercise induced anaphylaxis) doesn't make it ableist to want to be good, or better than average, at them.

It also doesn't inherently mean you think you're better than nonathletic people or that nonathletic people. Some people do think that and treat people as such, advocating for the mistreatment of "physically lazy" people. That's both generally bad and very ableist. But that's an entirely separate issue from just wanting to be good at or better than average/better than others at sports.

Idk, to me, the experience of being a "former gifted kid" is not at all about any kind of pride or superiority complex or any of that.

It's about having love, support, sometimes physical needs, and being treated as worthy of life, all withheld on the condition of performance in academics, being treated as worse than worthless if you fail to perform, and internalizing that if you can't perform you're better off dead and even doing people a favor by destroying yourself so that you won't be a burden any longer. It's about the inherent violence of teaching a small child that they're horrible and selfish for doing things that make them happy, and that the only way they can earn the right to exist is to sacrifice their own feelings for the "greater good" of everyone else who is worthy of love and support.

It's about the combined isolation of undiagnosed neurodivergence causing your peers and often authority figures to treat you as weird and reject and mistreat you, while also having it repeatedly reinforced that you are uniquely unworthy of love and only by being perfect (or in some cases, performing better than others), can you even earn the basic decency and support and love they already possess being deserving of just by simply existing.

It's about the way that this trauma and neglect and often abuse is downplayed if not outright erased, how we are often blamed for the ableism and mistreatment that was perpetrated against us. It's about how despite acknowledging that most "former gifted kids" are neurodivergent, the fact that neurodivergence is typically disabling and that neurodivergent burnout often has severe, lasting disabling effects is brushed aside.

It's about how we're treated as abled or basically abled - mildly disabled but still retaining average functionality - when most of us simply don't have even that much ability or privilege. It's about how when so many of us are unable to work - many of us having been determined by the infamously ableist and gatekeeping disability divisions of our governments to meet their extremely stringent requirements of disability allowance, and many more pursuing it - we're still treated as basically "average", or as if it must actually be physical disabilities mainly contributing to that level of severity of disability.

While I'm using your wording, OP, I'm not saying you're doing this. I'm reusing it for lack of better phrasing, but this is what I have faced in general, repeatedly, from people and from society. These experiences are reflected in the accounts of friends who grew up having basic decency dangled over their heads to make them perform like little monkeys in the field of academics only to be discarded as soon as they couldn't dance anymore.

People do downplay the severity of neurodivergent burnout, the way depression, anxiety disorders, and personality disorders are directly caused by neglect and abuse that result from the expectations placed on "gifted kids"; that parents, family, and other important figures in child development making love and support conditional and withholding it in the first place, and berating and punishing the kid for the smallest of academic "failures" even IS neglect and abuse; and how this plays into the extremely high rates of complex trauma in neurodivergent adults.

They ignore how neurodivergent burnout is not simply burnout. They ignore how it causes extremely high rates of self-harm and suicidality and is often comorbid with depression as well as anxiety and trauma disorders. They ignore how it is heavily influenced by executive functioning, and how burnouts are usually progressive in severity and profoundly and often permanently affect overall executive functioning. They ignore how because of differential development, the vast majority of "gifted kids" are neurodivergent (though plenty of neurodivergent people are not gifted kids - neurodivergence can be significantly disabling at any age and for any given diagnosis).

They ignore how autistic burnout at least, and iirc to a lesser extent ADHD burnout, is an actual studied phenomenon acknowledged as serious and severe. They ignore how most other forms of neurodivergence can't be diagnosed at a young age except in cases of ableist violence being used to force "compliance", and are therefore less studying and also kids receive significantly less treatment for. They forget there's still a stigma of kids being "too young" and having it "too easy" to be depressed, anxious, or suicidal - and how depression and anxiety are treated as mental illness on "easy mode" by many people anyway despite being deadly.

Again, I'm not saying OP is doing any of this. This seems to be a vent post about their own personal experiences, which of course is going to only cover their own personal experiences and perspective.

But I am saying this. If your immediate thought is to say "it's not downplaying it to say that most 'former gifted kids' are just average people having to deal with not being better than the rest of us", you have several things to examine -

about your moralization of thoughts and feelings,

about your subsequent projection onto them of the idea that people thinking themselves better than others at a specific activity causes them treat other people as less worthy of respect and dignity as human beings,

about how you're not listening to and erasing the experiences of more disabled "former gifted kids" and basing your view of the majority of the community on a small minority that is most vocal precisely because of their privilege,

about how your anecdotal experiences are biasing you in general,

about how you may not be listening to what the people you're describing are even actually saying, but might be ascribing your own ideas of their feelings, motivations, experiences, and even material realities onto them,

and about how when people say "you don't need to downplay my trauma to talk about how bad yours/someone else's was", they're not even saying you can't ever compare the two, but they are saying not to assume what an entire group of people has gone through simply because you don't THINK it could be anywhere near as bad as your/another experience.

Because here's the thing. I actually agree that SOME "former gifted kids" are relatively privileged and dealing with comparatively minor setbacks in their own performance, and perhaps even comparing themselves to people they think are "less intelligent' in a way that is derogatory and possibly ableist to those people. I've met a few myself.

I think they still deserve a space in these discussions, especially when they are disabled, but I also think they currently do sometimes take up a disproportionate space - precisely because they are not even most of the subset of people considered "former gifted kids", let alone most neurodivergent/disabled people.

But I also think that "I think that what is actually happening" is carrying a WHOLE lotta weight in that post. I vehemently disagree that that is what is actually happening. It's a whole lot of assumption, projection, and judgment, about an experience I don't know if you claim to have, but one that is not accurate to the vast majority of the people who were labeled as "gifted kids".

And I think maybe you think the negative emphasis when people call themselves a "former gifted kid" is on the word "former", when actually, for most of us, it's on "gifted".

Former "gifted" kid. Yeah, right. Former neglected, mistreated, and abused kid, who was taught they were "gifted" with the responsibility to spill their last drop of blood to feed a bunch of thirsty vampires.

It's an entirely different kind of mistreatment from the kind that other neurodivergent and disabled kids go through. Those who get sent through the special ed track in fact endure a particularly awful kind of hell, one that even from an outsiders perspective does seem worse to me.

It's not saying "others didn't have it bad" or even "others didn't have it worse" to say "we had it bad", or even "we had it worse than you seem to think we did". My own little brother ended up homeschooled from third grade on due to his learning disabilities. My mother, by his own words, was never abuse to him (and I never witnessed such, she seemed to be a good teacher for him and a good mother to him) but I did see a small fraction of why he got pulled out of school in the first place, and it was horrific.

So I'm speaking from the heart when I say that all I'm saying is that both can be bad.

Even if one is always significantly worse (which, "at what point does actual abuse of gifted kids even become comparable" is a pointless and harmful argument, so I think "always is significantly worse" is probably not accurate either, but even if it is), it's still wrong to assume that because one is worse, the other is just basically easy.

It's wrong to assume that therefore only "xyz" ever actually happens to "gifted kids" because you've already established that they have it easy and so only easy things CAN happen to them. That's a logical fallacy (circular logic) and can cause you to reject every account to the contrary due to your own bias, and say there's no evidence otherwise because obviously, there appears to be no evidence when it keeps getting circle-filed.

One example I use, because people recognize it as "objectively one of the worst kinds of abuse" is my infant CSA. Other people are still allowed to talk about other CSA, adult SA, grooming, emotional incest, sexual harassment, and everything else within that category. It's all able to be recognized as significantly bad - even if you can put "degrees" to it, it's recognized by decent people to start at "very, very, very bad" and only get worse from there.

Though I will say, precisely because of downplaying certain types of sexual violence specifically, it took me so much longer to realize the way my adoptive mother groomed me about coming to her about sexual material in media and sexual thoughts and feelings, and how she exercised a chokehold over my sexual agency well into adulthood by means of this emotional control.

This is why I am so vehemently against downplaying ANY form of harm - because I, as a victim of the "more severe" harms, have been directly harmed by downplaying the "less severe" harms.

This post has dragged on long enough already. That's the compulsive hyperlexia, trauma around past (sometimes malicious, more often not) misinterpretation of my words as a neurodivergent person, the emotional flashback that initially occurred, and general PTSD symptoms causing me to try and explain exactly why I don't agree with the original post.

I'm open to an explanation of your own perspective, OP, but I'd also like to be clear that if you do just want to argue with me about the severity of trauma or frequency of significant trauma of people who are labeled "former gifted kids" - or about what you think I "actually" think, feel, or am saying - I'd rather you just block me. I would hold no ill will towards you over that, but that is a hard boundary for me.

I absolutely respect that my perspective is not one that you've previously encountered, and I admittedly neither have the studies nor the spoons to find them to back up where I talked about how prevalent mental illness and trauma are in contexts relevant to this conversation.

I am firmly against the exact kind of ableism and moralization of intelligence that the point of your post was to address. In that, we are very much on the same side, and it is... really grossly prevalent in our culture and society, both in abled/neurotypical and disabled and neurodivergent spaces. I absolutely agree that there are even people within the "former gifted kid" conversation that do this.

I also personally don't use that label because "gifted kid" and "former gifted kids" were labels forced on me, and forms of violence done to me. I have only ever used them in reference to other people calling me such.

I disagree that most people who do use the label actually think others are less deserving of respect or basic existence in general, or that it's even about other people for most of them at all. I hope you'll also consider what that label can mean for those it was used against, beyond just a "superiority complex" over people it was never about and who often weren't even a factor.

And we do agree that in either case, effectively fighting that ableism and stigma around (lack of) intelligence is the most important thing. That's the most important thing, I think.

Their reply:

(Plaintext: Their reply:)

it's not appropriate to bring up such personal traumas on someone else's unrelated post such as grooming. also sorry you're assumptions about me are wrong

also block me because i don't wanna talk to someone who is "proship"

maybe delete your reblog too. i'd hate for other proshit people to interact with me

My reply: 

(Plaintext: My reply:)

Ah, so a label we use to indicate we are against harassment over fiction and against censorship is apparently enough to tell us we are not allowed to share our opinion on something that does affect us.

Also, personal traumas being used as a point of comparison, being directly related by a person who has experienced both, are not inappropriate. I tagged the post according to what I brought up that might be triggering, but my trauma from grooming is wholly relevant as something that, like my being treated as a gifted kid, was treated as less serious than other traumas I've been through in a way that seriously hurt me.

You don't get to start a conversation with an uncharitable and frankly somewhat ableist narrative about (other people's?) trauma and then define what trauma is palatable enough to be related for survivors themselves, nor what survivors are themselves morally "pure" enough to have a voice in the conversation.

Finally, it's on you to block if you do not want to interact further. I have blocked, but I will not delete a reply to a post I made about something entirely unrelated to shipping discourse, that never broached the topic of shipping discourse, because you don't like survivors being against something that is typically used to censor them talking anout their experiences.

Ironically, if you blocked me, it would make me unable to reblog this, AND unable to see your little comments about what you think are acceptable boundaries around what other people can discuss and what other people can believe when having an unrelated conversation with you at all.

Anyway honestly, I'm leery of making fun of reading comprehension because I think it can be really ableist. But clearly this is an example of the people who use the term "proshit" not bothering to actually read or even try to understand other perspectives. I will make a separate version of my reply and original context so people can further comment without getting harassed by OP or people they follow - don't worry, with OPs username redacted and everything - but weirdly, it's almost as if very few people who claim to be fundamentally anti-harassment will bother them when they wave a giant red flag saying "I do not use a label or interact with people who use a label that means 'we believe harassment is wrong'."

One of those groups is dangerous, and it's not the people saying "hey, don't tell other people to kill themselves because they can tell the difference between what's moral in real life and what's okay to depict and engage with in media".

Obvious statement to leave OP alone is obvious. They're already blocked, so they won't see this. They have a right to ask me to take down my response. I have a right to refuse. If they block me, it will no longer show up in notes, but if you wish to circulate my version, I'd suggest either blocking them first or doing it with the alt version I will put up. I encourage people to block OP for their own safety, more than anything, to avoid harassment, since it seems they may harass you if you interact and have views on shipping discourse they disagree with.

OP, you don't get to have a monopoly on the conversation on "former gifted kids", a subset of traumatized largely neurodivergent people, though, just because you find something to attack about anyone who disagrees with you.

I also don't know what assumptions I made that are wrong. That you may or may not have been labeled a gifted kid, which I acknowledged I didn't know? Or that you find effectively addressing ableism to be the most important part of this conversation. Because if it's the latter, you should be sorry, but I don't accept your apology. Care more about actual marginalized people being hurt than your moral superiority complex, be better, then maybe you'll have actually done the work of changing your actions to earn forgiveness.

If it's about something else - something I said I "hoped" you'd do or similar, I'm lost. Go learn what appropriate boundaries actually are and when you're just weaponizing therapeutic language to control other people somewhere else.

Oh and OP, if you block evade and see this: you can still block us on desktop. If you navigate to settings and blocked users, you can add our username to the field there to block us. It's a bit of an extra step, now that we've blocked you, but we don't mind helping you maintain a boundary that is your responsibility to maintain.

We have redacted OPs username to keep the larger conversation from reaching them. It is easy to find them due to our original response being kept up, but of course we ask that they be left alone, blocked at most. I would honestly prefer if people circulated this version.

Also, I'm now wondering if the "assumptions" in question were us saying "hey IF you think this, you PROBABLY need to examine these other things". We wouldn't be surprised. We also note that we neglected to tag grooming specifically on the original post, likely as a result of the exact problem of just categorizing it as a subtype of SA, which isn't wholly accurate. That's on us, and we have added the tag to this version. That is, however, why we had the "ask to tag" and "ask to tw" tags on the original post.

#ableism #neuroableism #suicide mention #cw suicide mention #tw suicide mention #burnout #“gifted kid”/“former gifted kid” labels #CSA mention #SA mention #cw CSA mention #cw SA mention #tw CSA mention #tw SA mention #grooming #cw grooming #tw grooming #ask to tag #ask to tw

[growling]

anyway bsd season 4 let's go gamers

ep1:

still waiting for chuuya to get unbooked. notify me immediately once he gets unbooked i can't take thsi

oh hi fukuzawa. put his wrinkles back on ffs

fukuzawa and ranpo flashback episode pretty please??

LET'S GOOOOOOO

oh oda's the assassin?? killer baby

ranpo voice heard my waters are cropped

i do not accept ranpo being the same age/older than oda. i will not accept this. let oda be like. 30+ or whatever

whys ranpo giving me ouma vibes in this outfit

ranpo don't care sunglasses emoji

oh yeah i had the feeling the secretary was the killer from the moment ranpo walked in lmao. now danganronpa execute him

coolest kid you've never met

good for ranpo for getting kicked out of the police after exposing all their shit as a teenager

snitch ranpo we love to see it it's okay if he does it he can do whatever he wants forever he's never been wrong in his life

orphan lore

oh he's 14 now. baby

"well done for today-" "that's it?? you're talking to a 14-year old who lost his parents his job and his future. thats all you got??" yes ranpo go fight for that sympathy points make that old man cry and shake from guilt

he's so sillyyy......... "*2 seconds after walking out the door* help me mister bodyguard i don't have work or a place to stay im going to die" yes ranpo go fight for that house and income pluck that old man out of everything he got (morally correct). i love how it literally works and fukuzawa says yeagh sure every time

with every single minute ranpo is on screen. i swear. with every single damn frame of that guy he gets more and more npd. like. that is a narcissist. you wrote a narcissist and made him the coolest most swag guy in the anime. and that's not even mentioning that guy's massive fucking autism and adhd

is this gonna be like rain code chapter 2 where where-

fukuzawa sweating voice damn that kids a genius and also deeply deeply unnerving why is he so op in the smarts stats what happened in his early childhood to ruin him forever like this

and ranpo's utterly clueless to that too he just thinks everybody else is an idiot or just acting real weird and hiding what they know for some reason.

"ive only just met you so i don't know much but- *lists his entire fucking biography*"

LEAVE THE BOY ALONE YOU KNOCKED HIM OVER FUKUZAWA YOU MONSTER!!!!!!!!!!! YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A CRUEL AND WICKED PERSON YOU WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH YOU HAVE NOT AND NEVER WILL CHANGE IN A MEANINGFUL WAY. CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'D DO THIS...............

oh ok he apologized. but can he ever truly be forgiven........

the hat :)

new sonboy acquired

#mine

[writingforatwistedworld]

Already in world reader:

To Idia,

Haha, what’s up? I figured you’d only talk to me if I wrote to you like this so I figured I’d give it a try! I’d really like to get to know you :) I think we have a lot in common so we’d get along pretty well! We both like cats, hate sports, think your brother is the cutest and our ideal paradise would be shut in a room with computer and wifi without ever having to talk to anyone! What ya say, wanna be my buddy in being antisocial? Check off yes or no :P

p.s. I think your tech inventions are awesome! I’d ask you to teach me but I’m not that smart haha

Self-aware au

I do not take any responsibility for you reading this no matter which age group you are from!

WARNINGS: Yandere themes, religion, manipulation, obsessive behavior, possessive behavior, beheading, unhealthy mindset, imprisonment

Idia Shroud-Similarities

Starting the game you were met with a confusing sight. The mailbox notified that you had a new message. Opening it you were met with a even more confusing sight. The message seemed to come from a character. Did they add that? We're players getting such things from now on? Then why did you never hear about this no matter where you looked?

Dear esteemed Overseer,

why would you write to me? I'm not that important. How could I ever dare trying to be similar to you? Someone as low leveled like me can only look up to you. But I am happy to hear from you. You are after all also only a person, God or not, and being able to talk to you without any problem is something I treasure. You think we would get along well? I don't know. You are the light of the world whilst I am a shut-in. Just think about standing besides you makes me frightened. Overseer, please don't misunderstand, I would never have to question your judgement but you don't need to be nice to me. I will always be a devoted follower of yours. You don't need to act this way so things will stay that way. No need to give me a glance. I'm forever yours.

But you like cats? How great! Have you seen the one always sitting in front of the cafe in the city? Not that I would dare to go out but Ortho sometimes sends me pictures of it. How cute! What would I do so I could squeeze it's paws, cuddle… I'm getting side tracked. Anyways, I'm happy that we have a subject we can talk about. You also have a sibling? How great! So that means that the higher beings also have relationships akin to family. That is something new for me.

But maybe things would be easier if you were here, with me. Chatting might be op but at the same time, how could I pass of a opportunity to talk with God? Even Hades hailed you. Whilst his foolish brother didn't think much about you he tried his best to rearrange the cosmos and get you to us. Haw sad that Zeus got in his way. But now you are here! With us! How about it? You come here to Ignihyde and get a room with the things you need. The Overseer has enemies after all and I would hate it if something were to happen to you. If you don't go out no one can harm you! Do you wish for a home in the island of woe? There we can promise even more protection! Of course your younger sibling will also be protected. Don't let the eyes of the heretics deceive you. They only mean harm no matter how nice they are. You can only trust us. We are further developed in terms of technology than any other place and created a place in your image, a combination of non-magic and magic. Isn't this what you wanted? We part day and night, trying to appease you. Don't you think that you need to give us something back? If you were to accept my proposal I could show you even more advanced tech inventions! Inventions the world has never seen!

But what am I talking about? I am such a worthless follower and yet I dare to ask our God to do something. Behead me if you must! I deserve punishment! But at the same time, the gaze of others on you makes me furious. How dare the even just to catch a glance of you? Come here Overseer. I will not allow this to continue.

Idia Shroud

#yandere twst #yandere twisted wonderland #yandere twisted wonderland x reader #yandere twst x reader #self aware au #yandere idia #yandere idia x reader #yandere idia shroud #tw: yandere #tw: religion #tw: manipulation #tw: obsessive behavior #tw: possessive behavior #tw: beheading #tw: unhealthy mindset #tw: imprisonment

[mamawasatesttube]

For the ask game: 1, 3, 4 and 5 👀👀

1. the character everyone gets wrong

okay so obviously kon. do i even need to say that one? that's a gimme on this blog i think so actually i'm gonna go for a second option and also say bart. he is also such a victim of the pendulum of wrong opinions (one incorrect fanon idea gains traction; people react by going entirely too far the other way). he isn't a complete idiot with the mentality of a toddler, but he's not a super genius that everyone just unfairly dunks on either. like, he's incredibly smart, but he is incredibly bad at applying his smarts without a very specific sort of guidance (which is also why he's not a good leader or strategist).

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

i shan't screencap but MAN are there so many contenders lskdjflkds

a) every single post that says kon (or any other character often shipped with a bat, but i'm a kon blog so that's the main one for me) would ever be afraid of any of the other bats, particularly jason and bruce. PARTICULARLY jason gets me. like. at least kon has been shown to generally respect bruce but JASON??? don't make me laugh.

b) someone making jokes about the titans calling dick a loser with no self-respect for going back to his abusive father. i generally dont like when bruce is written as an abusive parent but the idea of specifically going with that version of bruce just to crack really fucking mean jokes about dick being abused by a parent? HUGE yikes from me scoob, blocked op and blacklisted their url for that one <3

c) every single anon who tried to persuade me that no no geoff made some points with the 50-50 retcon :|

i'm CERTAIN there's more i just have a shit memory and it's better that way sdfjkjsdkj

4. what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

god i block people all the time. this morning i blocked someone on ao3 bc they were leaving comments on sotm where they picked out like... 7-10 sentences to highlight per chapter but ONLY ones about dick jason and tim. which is impressive. because of how it's a kon fic. but by the third comment of this i got mildly annoyed so bam block button my bestie it is

5. worst discord server and why

i am in no fandom discords unless you count the small friend gc type and it will in fact remain that way <3 in the words of bilbo baggins, i don't know half of you half as well as i should like, and i like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. or something like that.

"choose violence" ask game

#answers #clarkkent-irons

[panzershrike-pretz]

top five ocs :3

Lou you like to make me suffer???? It would be easier if this was like. A top 50 ocs 😭😭😭 i can't possibly choose only 5 🥲👍 (i'm lying)

Since I have Too Many Characters(TM), I'll narrow it down to choose between the 92 (oof) that already have ther ref sheets drawn :] and this is in no particular order, it's just numbered to look pretty,,,

1. Pangea Coldwell

She's a fairly recent character I created back in 2022. She's Peggy's handler, and a second world war medic (i was in my biggest WWII era at the time). She's a gentle and kind woman, with a big heart but almost no patience at all; usually seen as smart by her peers and fast-to-act, despite whatever's in he way.

Despite her interest in medicine, she's extremely fond of ice-skating, acting, singing and reading - some of her favorite hobbies that don't include her insane dog.

Her power is that of future-sighting, though it's not nowhere near as strong as Horace's. She sees only bits and pieces based on probability, normally of the immediate future (at most, she sees only a few hours ahead, while Horace can see years in advance).

2. Peggy

The absolute sensation. My baby. THE stupidest thing to ever walk this planet. Precious bean. The devil's child, born to put everything in her mouth (and hopefully eat it before dying). The one and only:

Peggy, the Belgian Mallinois is a medical-rescue war dog owned by Pangea. Don't worry, she's dumb even while at work. She has a magical shield against projectiles, so she's a walking barrier (RIP for everyone who tries to hit her with a shoe while she howls and barks)

Things that she eated included (but are not limited to): frogs, fish, insects, rocks, shoes, bones she found where bones shouldn't be, twigs, a dead starfish, baby turtle, tried to eat a crab but failled, a hat, her own leash at least 3 timess, wood, alcoholic beverages (she's fiiiiiine), a mushroom, triessd to eat a snake, etc.

3. Constance Ezebel

The Goddess of Oceans and Curses. I consider her to be one of the strongest Gods among my characters; she's as ancient as water.

Since she was cursed to stay stuck on a Loop in Tortuga, unable to be free at sea again, she takes her anger in those who choose the waters to be their homes. She controls floods and storms, but also when fishing is good and the seas are calm. The fate of all who chose the sea lie within her hands - and those of her se monsters and creatures, who do her biding.

She's a fucking bitch who never does anything for free and usually only accepts stuff if it's paid with a soul or sacrifice,,, she also throws the best parties so she's forgiven :3 and she's half goat so she's cool

4. Stiggy the Stygimoloch

He was just a joke I turned real. He's extremely OP (the indistructable, extremely agresssives and immortal little dinosaur. Who is VERY little and VERY angry) that I turned canon because I love him so much xD

His first appearance was back in 2019 (you see, he's OLD). His backstory is that all the anger in the universe fuels him and he was created by the Gods as a weapon or something. Anyway the only person who he listens to is Miss Kestrel

He's my fave joke character and i'm very glad I made him canon (even if he lives in a forest in the middle of nowhere without ever being interacted with xD)

5. Athena Crow

Death and Freedom Goddess! One of my mains like Pangea and Peggy! Blithe's iresponsible First Mate and Constance's biggest pain in the ass (Athena cursed her to be forever stuck on land and Constance cursed Athena to forever roam the seas. They are bestfriends but also hate each other's guts)

I have SO MANY thoughts about this woman it's unreal,,,,, I love how much of an annoyance she is in general. Alway here to make a fool of herself and have people questioning why the fuck they follow her

Form this I discovered that: of my favorites the only one who is not a complete and utter imbecile is Pangea. Good for her 🤡👍

#pretz oc #pretz ask #🥨🪶

[ariminiria]

Hi, i hope I'm not bothering you, but you seem to be a good person to ask questions about the new DND movie.

I have actually avoided it ever since the director came out and said, prior to its release, something about how it's "fresh and fun to emasculate men" (or something along those lines), as if every single movie and tv show made for the past five years hasn't been doing that. And I have no interest in supporting the girl-power-by-making-men-weak movement. I prefer my women to be strong and competent amongst a group of equally strong and competent men and women, and not only be "strong and competent" in comparison to the weak, idiotic, incompetent, emasculated men around her.

Does this movie actually do that, or was the director just... using the Hollywood Talking Points(tm) he was told to use when promoting it?

I had heard that too and was a little worried. But a friend of mine saw it, and reassured me that the film actually had nothing to do with that; he said he didn't know why the director even said that. So I went and saw it for myself, and I agree with him.

The guys are kind of goofy, but so is everyone. Chris Pine is competent, if a little flippant. The Sorcerer's character arc is about learning how to be competent, so he may seem a little useless at first, but that's because he's supposed to. The Paladin is OP, I'd say he's the most 'traditionally' masculine character, and he's full of gentleness and kindness and is dedicated to his oath.

The himbo character? Is a woman. Beefy and a little dumb, but not an idiot. Smart in a street sense way, so low INT, midling WIS.

The Druid? She's clever and capable, but a touch naive/inexperienced.

Each character has balanced strengths and weaknesses that support and counterbalance each other when they come together as a group. With that in mind, I can confidently say that the director was blowing smoke out of his ass. Why? I don't know. I almost didn't see it when I heard that quote, so they risk eliminating a portion of audience by saying that...

But anways, I'd highly recommend the movie, it's very wonderful and true to the spirit of the game and it stands on its own two feet as a movie too!

#dnd honor among thieves #honor among thieves

[rabid-catboy]

Why do you white people want to feel wrongfully oppressed for this badly, y'all are delusional and disconnected from reality and why are you assuming OP is a POC??? 💀 Did it ever crossed your mind that a very smart and open minded white people CAN ALSO call out and make fun of their own community? 😭

Not everyone who calls out racism are only POC, but nowadays to you crackers! you think "speaking about racism is when POC" talks about it".

Hey did you send this to the wrong person? (Genuine question) (no clue what you're referring to I'm sorry)

#asks #anon