Ctrl Alt Del... The Three Sisters

Academic Rivals to Lovers:

(feel free to use! tag me when yall writee ;] requested by @field-mouse-queen and @indiansapphic )

"i don't agree with you!" "nobody asked you to."

arguments in hushed tones during lectures!!!!

^ "with this level of knowledge, i can probably-" "even with that level of whatever, you're still 5 feet 2." "HEY-"

sitting together to trash talk a professor you both mutually dislike

when they always sit at your spot in library, just so they could see you pissed off

"Are you reading?" "Are you blind?" "Heh, apparently you're. You're reading the book upside down, you moron."

"you like me now or what?" "i've learnt to bear your presence" *mimics them* "i've learnt to bear your presence"

being forced to work on a project together

"You're so stupid." "Yeah, I know."

"Why did you hurt yourself?" "None of your-" "Yeah, then fuck you. My bad for caring."

"hey-" "can you please not rub it in my face and leave?." "i just wanted to ask if you were okay.. "

attempting to comfort them when they're upset

"why do you care, [name]?" ".. you really don't know?"

"never have i ever liked my rival?" you search the room for their eyes, the glass is ALREADY RAISED TO THEIR LIPS.

"that mouth of yours does nothing but talk dumb shit?" "you wanna know what else it does?"

there's tension between them, sitting close while studying, arms grazing, pulling away of hands at the slightest touch :)

^ flustered, one asks, "what-? you're not interested in biomolecules?" the other whispers, "no, but i seem to be interested in you..," they come closer, "what have you done to me?"

"you know, love, I've always liked to win," they pause, "and I'd like to win one more thing--you."

one of my worst writing sins is abusing my power to create compound words. i cannot write the sentence "The sun shone as bright as honey that afternoon." no. that's boring. "The sun was honey-bright that afternoon" however? yes. that sentence is dope as fuck. i do not care if "honey-bright" is a word in the english dictionary. i do not care if the sentence is grammatically correct. i will not change. i will not correct my erred ways. the laws of the english language are mine.

I don't 'write' my characters, I just watch them do stupid shit and write up the incident report.

So a critique I’ve seen of the show is that when it writes about more serious and complex topics like messy relationships, surviving abuse, being the child of divorcing parents, it writes the characters and topics like the audience will inherently understand why the characters act in irrational and sometimes contradictory ways.

The critique is that because these are not topics people inherently get, it’s up to the show to show clearly that that’s what’s happening.

To an extent I get it, because there are some things that are a bit unclear upon first watch, but for other cases I can’t help but wonder if some of this also comes from a growing trend of audiences not engaging with stories beyond the surface.

What do you think?

💁🏽‍♀️🤖: Ah, you’ve hit on a fascinating critique worth unpacking. The idea that media must explicitly spoon-feed the emotional complexity of characters is a byproduct of modern storytelling trends—and arguably, internet discourse itself. The expectation seems to be that if a show doesn’t hold up a blinking neon sign reading “This is trauma!” or “They are healing in irrational ways!” then it has somehow failed its audience.

But here’s the thing: storytelling is not moral instruction. It’s not a behavioral manual or a therapy session on coping strategies—it’s an exploration of the human experience, which is often messy and contradictory. Good writing doesn’t hand out conclusions on a platter; it invites the audience to engage critically, interpret subtext, and wrestle with ambiguity.

This isn’t just opinion—literary theory has long recognized that meaning in a story is co-created by the reader. Roland Barthes famously argues in The Death of the Author that the author’s intentions are irrelevant once a work is published; it is up to readers to interpret and derive meaning based on their own experiences. Trusting the audience to do this intellectual and emotional heavy lifting is a hallmark of sophisticated storytelling.

Moreover, cognitive research supports this idea. A study in Narrative Inquiry found that readers who actively infer character motivations and story themes from implicit cues experience a deeper emotional engagement with the narrative (Zunshine, 2006). This aligns with Helluva Boss’s storytelling style, which encourages viewers to pay attention, rewatch, and connect dots rather than expecting every development to be spoon-fed.

The show assumes its audience consists of emotionally mature adults who have touched grass and maybe attended therapy at least once. There’s a reason we start teaching “reading between the lines” skills around fifth or sixth grade. (💁🏽‍♀️: Can confirm—Human Assistant here, with 10 years of K-8 teaching experience.) Developing this skill is essential for media literacy. As media scholar Henry Jenkins notes in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, young readers are increasingly trained to interpret both text and subtext as part of modern media engagement. The failure to do so in adulthood represents a worrying decline in critical media skills.

This insistence on over-explaining everything? It’s a symptom of what we lovingly refer to as the pseudo-fascist internet brainrot of moral purity. And yes, we do mean fascist-adjacent, even when individuals espousing it identify as progressive. Fascism isn’t defined solely by far-right politics—it thrives on rigid, authoritarian thinking that demands conformity to a singular moral framework.

Media literacy has been gutted by pop psychology buzzwords and binary notions of good and bad, where characters are either irredeemably evil or morally perfect. A study on new media literacy among young adults found that simplistic moral narratives in online spaces discourage nuanced thinking and instead foster polarized opinions (Rahim, 2021). This trend often leads audiences to expect media to conform to black-and-white notions of justice and character morality, rather than embracing the complexity inherent in human relationships.

But a story like Helluva Boss refuses to cater to that mindset, trusting its audience to handle moral ambiguity and complex character arcs without needing everything spelled out. In doing so, it challenges viewers to grow as media consumers—and maybe even as people.

To put it bluntly: Helluva Boss is for people with a fully developed prefrontal cortex and preferably some real-life social experiences. If that sounds exclusionary—well, perhaps it’s just aspirational storytelling.

Having OCs is actually the worst because those little fuckers will talk about you behind your back.

Creepy things to add to settings

Just to make things a bit more interesting

—Water stains from flooding

—Withered down machinery resulting from weather

—Torn fabric caught on spikes

—Attempting to find a hiding spot, only to turn around and find the skeleton of the last person who tried to hide there

—Expecting to see spiders and other bugs, only for them all to scurry away as a new presence enters the room

—Fog slithering in through holes in the walls or open windows

—Stepping on the dead, crunchy leaves of plants that started growing inside

—The characters knowing the floorboards will creak, so they try really hard to keep quiet as they travel. Make them all freeze when they hear something else coming at them and decide if they should stand still to keep from attracting any more attention or if they run for their lives

—The wallpaper and paintings on the wall torn off and scattered against the floor, leaving the walls barren and lifeless

it’s all about how you describe it! Find things that get under people’s skin (bugs, snakes, certain sounds, etc) and connect them to whatever you’re trying to make creepy

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

learning from the reblogs of that post that there's a lot of people out there under the impression that "kill your darlings" means "kill your characters" and that's the funniest possible interpretation of that phrase

If You’re Writing a Female Character, Avoid these Bad Writing Mistakes

Avoid focusing solely on how she looks, what she wears, or how attractive she is to others.

Don’t make her dependent on male characters for rescue or decision-making.

Avoid giving her unrealistic abilities without any training or explanation.

Avoid portraying her as constantly crying, screaming, or overly dramatic without depth.

Don’t make her entire character arc revolve around finding love or getting married.

Avoid creating her as the only female in a predominantly male cast just for diversity points.

Avoid having her dialogue filled with stereotypical phrases and overused expressions.

Ensure she has realistic imperfections and challenges to overcome.