#(also Law why must you make it so hard to argue. You're wrong as hell but you're so stubborn it's hard to get through to you :sob:)

[ikkaku-of-heart]

medicus-mortem​:

   She doesn’t understand anything. Ikkaku goes on another rant, meeting his furious gaze with an unwavering stare. That offending finger curls into a fist and for a moment he expects Ikkaku to punch him. He’d rather that than hear this completely ridiculous tirade. She only makes it clear to him that she doesn’t truly know what is going on. He’s not running away from anything here. Law’s salting the earth and burning the bridges. He’s sabotaging himself in an effort to make this stop. It has to because if he allows himself to care for Nami the world will do what it always does.

   Destroy anything that makes him happy.

   He frowns when she gives her imagined ideal future for them, the Hearts Captain snorting in disdain. He turns away, arms crossing over his chest as he takes a couple strides away from his engineer. When he stops his eyes close, fingers digging into the cloth of his shirt. How tempting it is to Shambles her away mid speech and yet he stands here, listening and growing more frustrated with each word. Ikkaku moves onto making things work and he hunches into his shoulders. His teeth bite into his lower lip, a muffled groan rising in his throat.

   It’s that long distance that is the problem. It’s the fact that Nami is going to be outside his reach for vast amounts of time. He won’t know what she’s doing or who she’s with. He won’t know if she’s in danger until it is too late for him to do anything to help. He can’t protect her, can’t keep her safe from a world that takes everything from him. Trafalgar Law has no control over her and that terrifies him.

   “ … You’re not as good a sleuth as you think you are,” Law finally says, stamping down his frustration to respond with cold words. He straightens then, back still to his engineer. “I’m not runnin’. I’m doing what I must to protect myself … and her. I’m sabotaging myself, Ikkaku. I’m making sure I get the bad ending on my own terms ‘cause if I don’t it won’t be my choice anymore.”

   Hands unwind from his chest, golden eyes staring at the freezer drawers that hold both cadavers and body parts. One hand rises to his mouth, the doctor’s mind bringing up everything he’s lost and how it happened. In every case he had no power, no ability to stop the tragedy and save the ones he loved. He tried to make it so that would never happen again, that he’d only care about people he could have complete control over, but then this happened. It wasn’t supposed to get like this. It was just sex. And now he’s terrified.

   “I … I can’t deal with that again,” he mutters, more to himself than to Ikkaku.

   Then Law takes a deep breath, arms dropping to his sides. He stands at his full height, making himself sturdy. He is certain in himself, in this path he’s chosen. Law admits it puts him on edge, a part of him hating how much this already hurts, but he’s thought about this. It’s the smartest move. Better for both of them, despite how much it doesn’t feel like that right now.

   “I know what I am doing,” Law states as he turns back to his engineer. His voice is even, the emotion of moments ago pressed deep down. “Leave it.”

No, she would not leave it because it was becoming more and more obvious that Law didn’t know what he was doing. It was clear in the fact that he was admitting to self-sabotage. That her normally brilliant captain was acting like an absolute idiot.

“So, you’re deliberately trying to get rid of her because you’re scared of losing her?” Ikkaku asked, though the answer was pretty obvious. “Law, that’s stupid. Unfathomably stupid. That’s like saying I should blow up the Tang’s engine right now because it’ll possibly get broken beyond repair someday. Just because things might fail doesn’t mean you don’t fucking try anyway.” Her choosing to have this argument was a good example of that. Yes, she might fail to change this stubborn pessimist’s mind but that didn’t mean she was going to give up. She could be just as stubborn as him, after all.

Ikkaku sighed, shaking her head in frustration and pity. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand his fears. She had them, too. She’d had a particularly unlucky birth and childhood and some of the lessons it had taught her still had yet to be unlearned. Like feeling truly worthy of love and acceptance. That the universe wasn’t just waiting for her to let her guard down before pulling the rug out from under her feet and stealing away everything that had made her happy.

Law’s past was even worse. How so much tragedy could happen to one person she would never know. It further reinforced in her mind that there wasn’t a god because how could any deity put so much pain on one person for no reason? However, his belief that he deserved some bad ending and that the only way to screw fate was to cause his tragedies himself was opening her eyes a bit regarding his self-destructive behavior.

Fuck, he was a screwed-up bastard, wasn’t he? She needed to put a stop to this self-sabotage before it really hurt him, or even the crew.

Taking one more bite of ice cream, she chewed carefully as she considered her next words. She needed to get through to him, but she also needed to ensure she didn’t give him something to latch onto that would let him change the subject. Avoiding the topic was his greatest desire right now, but she couldn’t grant it. Not if she wanted things to get better. “Law, believe it or not, I’m in the same boat as you. Not just literally, either. I mean, it’s pretty obvious Zoro and I are a thing by this point. You think I don’t worry about him every time the Straw Hats are away? My idiotic, reckless swordsman who doesn’t know how to properly rest and recover after a battle? Who seems like he’s got a genuine death wish sometimes?” Good gods, when she’d seen Chopper’s file listing all the various injuries he’d treated for Zoro, she’d nearly had a heart attack. How was that man alive? Ikkaku was no doctor, but best she could figure, it was simply through pure stubbornness.

“You think I don’t worry that someday I’m gonna get a call from Nami saying he’s gotten himself killed? Or that I’ll read about his capture and execution in the papers? It’s fucking terrifying, Law! Anything could happen and I could lose him forever!” Her fists clenched again, and her heart pounded. Staring down at her wavy reflection in the surface of the stainless-steel table, she fought hard to not to let her mind drift to the nightmares she’d had about that very subject. She wondered if her grandmother had ever felt this way. That she might someday receive word that the man she loved had been killed out at sea and she’d never see him again?

If she had, it hadn’t stopped Arashi from loving Tomasu. And Gramps hadn’t been nearly as strong or brilliant as Zoro and Nami, nor did he have the protection of a unfathomably chaotic but lucky captain. If he could survive the treacherous seas and make it back to his awaiting love, so could they.

“But you know what the biggest difference between our situations is?” Ikkaku asked, looking up at her captain, refusing to waver. “Nami’s got a lot more self-preservation instincts than Zoro. She knows when to run from a fight. How to ask for help and protection, and you know for a fact she’s got a fuckton of powerful people ready to come to her aid if she gets in over her head. Me and the Hearts are near the top of that list. Plus, she’s nearly as good at planning as you are, Law—do you think she hasn’t assessed the risks of your relationship and decided ‘yeah, this is worth it’? Because you’re really not giving her enough credit if you haven’t.”

[dreams-of-wings]

Phantom Dragon

Imagine being on of the things/people that make Ikebukuro so special.

Warnings: It's me, so swearing. I'm a slut for Light Fury's, sorry. And being obsessed with something (for me) means crossing it over with almost every fandom I know.

There's so much that makes Ikeburkuro stand out from other cities. Sure it might not be the biggest or most populated city in the world, but you know what they say, "Quality over quantity."

It's the people that make this city so unique: you've got The Headless Rider, Saika (who some still argue is just a myth), the strongest man in the world Ikebukuro, everyone's most hated favorite information broker, and heck even some of the gangs help make the city widely infamous.

And then there's you.

You only came recently.

Some time after that big fight that landed Masaomi in the Hospital.

You hadn't arrived there by normal means- traveling internationally involves medical records and documentation in order to make sure that, health wise, you were okay to travel to another country. BUT because you aren't completely human, and have a little somthin' else, any form of testing might come up or appear outside the normal ranges for a human being (little things like taking your temperature might be alarming to medical professionals).

So you got there by paying someone to stow you away on a boat. Unfortunately getting somewhere by shifty means, ment you had to hire some shifty people, and that ment they couldn't always be trusted to keep their mouths shut - especially after they thought they saw something.

That being said, of course Izaya knew about you the day you arrived.

Correction

He knew of you, but not about you. He only knew what he had been told and that only made his interest in you deepen.

"Someone's arrived in Ikebukuro who might add some extra weight to the scale- maybe not on one side or the other, but perhaps in a new direction."

Oh color him interested.

For about a month or so, you were able to live quietly and without being seen while you were... *cough cough* having fun being yo majestic dragon shifting self.

The first sighting happened on one of the days when Celty was being hunted down ceaselessly.

Someone got their hands on one of those giant guns that shoots out a big net, and they had the mind to try and use it on Celty.

Let's just say their aim was off

And you, in all your curious glory wondering why so many thugish-looking bikers were ganging up on one woman, were gliding around kinda low.

Then it happened. You were shot down, but at first no one could see you and for a second they thought the net was faulty.

But Celty knew otherwise.

She was able to use her powers to help you get away without being seen by the people in your immediate vicinity, but she could do nothing about the people in the surrounding buildings.

So of course someone had seen you and gotten video evidence before you seemed to disappear into thin air.

It took only a few hours for the footage to go viral - with some people stoked to see that such a creature existed in their home town, while others were skeptical of the video being real.

Izaya was giddy as fuck, because this must be what that one guy was talking about.

Shinra wasn't sure if it was real, but then again his girlfriend is a Dullahan so why the hell not?

Shizuo was there when Celty set you free.

Anri was a bit more on the indifferent side, she wasn't sure how she felt about the video. If it was fake it didnt change a thing, but what if it was real? Her school girl mind could only imagine.

Masaomi cracked jokes about there being a princess in town, and that was why there was a dragon here.

And as always Mikado was a bit late to the party.

Let's talk about the people who know about you- and I'm not talking about people who saw the video, no. I mean people who looked at you and just got a sixth sense or figured it out.

Simon: Just seemed to know somehow? He seems kinda like the guy who knows more than he let's on? So people just don't really think much of him at first glance. He said something to you when you stopped by for a bite to eat that just made you freeze, "Sushi is good and easy on stomach before and after long flight, no?" Oh...

Celty: She had never actually seen you shift, but when she met you she also just knew. She got this hair standing up on the back of her neck feeling, and it took her a few more interactions to figure it out, but she was one of the faster ones to the draw.

Shizuo: The timeline of the viral videos and him seeing you (a new face in Ikebukuro) around now had bothered him. It seemed very coincidental and everytime he saw you or that damn video he thought about it long and hard, and eventually he put the pieces together. Just because he's strong, doesn't make him dumb.

Izaya: One of the last people to know, though not from a lack of trying I can promise you that. Even Mikado and his friends, and Erika and her group knew about you before he did (mainly because Celty and the others told them after convincing you they were trust worthy). After managing to make friends with you, Celty and her friends did everything they could to keep you hidden away from the information broker, and that normally ment one of them being with you when you went out into the city. Celty would be damned if she let Izaya dig up your information and hold it over your head like he did to her. Of course he connected the dots when he questioned why his dear little Celty took a sudden interest in a nobody newbie. Being friends with them was probably your downfall to be honest.

Now let's talk about all the things that come with being an undocumented [I guess] dragon shifter.

God forbid you get sick, and I don't mean, "Oh look I've got a runny nose," sick i mean- coughing fit, feels like your dying sick. All I can say is fire, fire everywhere. Hope your neighbors aren't nosy.

It's kinda hard to get a good job? Everything needs proof of identity and since you aren't from their you dont have things they would normally ask for, you also dont have a work Visa saying that it's okay your there.

Sure you can get hired under the table, but keep in mind if anything goes wrong (and not necessarily with you) you'll be the first one your boss gets rid of incase people start snooping around.

You do a lot of job hopping, apartment hopping, and sometimes squatting, till you're finally able to get a good job.

#EveryonesFirstApartmentIsShit

Honestly being a dragon helps you save a lot on food sometimes- you can just go hunting yo.

Once you make friends with the crew, getting a decent paying job is easier and you bounce between working deliveries with Celty and debt collecting with Tom and Shizuo.

Kinnosuke, that hard ass motorcycle cop that gives Celty problems, gives you problems as well. Of course he wanted to know what kind of people the headless rider hung out with, so after he saw the two of you together a few times on the street he flagged you down on your walk home from work (Yes, you walk), and asked for your ID. He wasnt heartless, just a man of the law, so he understood that getting a new ID could take a while. When you gave him the ID from where you previously lived, he politely asked for a Visa or proof of citizenship in Japan/Ikebukuro.

Oh

Oh, no

It was on the second you ran for a nearby ally, turned into a damn dragon, and flew away.

"Do you have a license to fly?!"

"Do you have a permit to fly within city limits?!"

After that, you would fly to the nearest ally of your destination for anything because at least he can't get to you in the sky, and you can still hide.

"Its not the same as flying a plane you idiot!"

Sorry, not sorry.

[ourimpavidheroine]

So I take it you're not looking forward to the new Kuvira-centric comic?

Short answer? No.

Long answer? Honestly, I’ve been very, very underwhelmed by all of the ATLA/TLOK comics thus far. I mean…I suppose the new one could redeem itself by being really good, sure. But I’m not holding my breath or anything. 

I’m not a Kuvira-stan. You people know this. I think she’s an extremely compelling villain! In fact, I loved her as a villain. That being said, I am wholly uninterested in a redemption arc for her, especially as it looks like her redemption is going to be based on Suyin Beifong’s a mean old soccer mom and it’s all her fault and Oh look there’s the Avatarverse version of Mengele over there and he’s so much worse than me, he’s the real bad guy here.

I’m really fucking skittish about Su being framed as a villain. I do not think Bryke EVER got it right when it came to mothers in the Avatarverse. Either they were dead (Sokka and Katara’s mother, Mako and Bolin’s mother, Asami’s mother) or we had no idea if they were dead or alive or what the fuck during the actual story (Zuko and Azula’s mother, Eska and Desna’s mother, Izumi’s mother) or they were in the story but were basically there as scenery (Korra’s mother, Toph’s mother, Bumi, Kya and Tenzin’s mother, Mai’s mother, Noatak and Tarrlok’s mother). The only fleshed out mothers we get are Su and Toph Beifong, and Toph is really pushing it. I mean, we know canonically that Toph was a lousy mother. And while I do sincerely applaud Bryke for allowing Toph to be a lousy mother instead of some idealized 1950′s super mom that would be a wholly unbelievable character arc for her that only leaves us with Su as the sole mother who is a)actually in the show and b)has more than two lines.

Su Beifong, much as I loved her - and oh my god, did I love her - was a morally gray character. No doubt about it. She was a Slytherin Mom for damn sure.

Was she a perfect mother? I don’t think that exists. Good Mom? You know, I think she was, all things considered. I do not think anyone can argue that Su didn’t love her kids. She didn’t raise her sons with toxic masculinity - look at their father, for one thing, and we see the twins openly crying and that’s fine - and she’s proud of Huan’s ugly sculptures and there’s never any pressure on him to bend offensively (that includes in the train tunnels as Kuvira is attacking Republic City and he never bends at all). The moment Opal tells her parents she wants to leave Zaofu and go and train with the other airbenders Su and Baatar let her go - and they don’t bring her home even after the Red Lotus attack, despite how hard that must have been for them as parents. 

(We’ve got no idea about Junior, but the whole shy bumbling dork with no lines at all somehow turns into primo evil mad scientist thing comes out of nowhere and is not only not set up at all in the narrative but is never explained either. That’s on Bryke, however, and not Su and Baatar. It’s bad writing, for sure.)

And sure, Su as a mother has her moments. I mean…she also takes her teenage sons with her to assassinate someone, for the love of god. And she tells her oldest son, the war criminal, that everything will be just fine and all will be forgiven which is…neither reasonable nor realistic. She expects Tenzin, one of only five airbenders in the world (including the Avatar!) to drop everything and come and train her daughter on site. Which is just nuts. She has a truthseer who is always following her about, spying on people, which is super creepy. That’s Su for you. 

But, and I have said this again and again, but I have NEVER seen it addressed anywhere else - not in the show, not in any critiques I’ve read, etc. - there are TWO parents in Zaofu. Baatar may be mild-mannered, yes. But he’s there. He’s clearly an involved parent - we see him with his kids! We see him with his wife! We see him interact with his mother-in-law, we see him in the cage with the rest of his family, we see him in the tunnels with Huan, hell, we see him at the wedding in Republic City. He’s in the courtroom in the comic! 

So can someone PLEASE tell me why it always, always comes down to Su? That no one ever talks about her husband? Do not get me wrong, Su is clearly a dominant force; she’s a Beifong, for crying out loud. But Baatar has a backbone. He openly defies Junior and Kuvira without any hesitation whatsoever, fuck the consequences. He’s there when Opal tells her parents - not her mother, but her parents - that she wants to leave Zaofu to train. He’s clearly part of that decision. Does he leave the fighting to his wife? Yes, and rightly so. Does he let her carry on with the running of the city while he focuses on the building of it? Clearly. But he’s not scenery, not in the way that Senna is, for example, or Poppy Beifong.

Ever heard Kuvira mention Baatar Sr at all, never mind as someone who might have had a say in her upbringing? Never.

So to take Kuvira and reduce all of her megalomania, all of her madness, all of her destructiveness down into (foster) mommy issues? That is always going to feel like a cheap cop-out to me. I don’t care how you frame it. I cried bullshit all over that last conversation with Korra where Korra was like…oh, I get it, you felt insecure and your abandonment issues with parental figures made you want to wholesale kill people, cool cool cool cool cool, like I relate. 

Me, during that scene:

And the worst part of it is that they never did that with Amon. Yakone fucked up his kids but good; we know this. He was a legit criminal who only had kids as a means of getting revenge on those whom he felt had wronged him. He raised his sons as weapons. He was, beyond a doubt, an evil person and an appalling father. He had zero redeeming qualities. And yet…Amon is never given a pass for that. It’s there, it’s part of the story, we are horrified by it, but the narrative tells us that Amon is 100% responsible and culpable for his crimes despite his upbringing. The end.

The same is true for Zuko, by the way. The narrative makes it explicitly true that Zuko is responsible for his own shit despite what Ozai (and Ursa!!!) did to him. (The difference with Zuko is that he was still a child, whereas Amon and Kuvira are clearly adults. And even at that Zuko isn’t given a pass!)

So if the story, as told, is that in order to find redemption Kuvira needs to accept responsibility for what she did and stop blaming parental figures for all of the really appalling shit she should be in prison for the rest of her fucking life and not swanning around the former Earth Kingdom in snazzy Asami Sato hand-me-downs, then fine. I mean, been there done that already in this Verse and I’m not personally interested in following a rehashed redemption arc, but fine. It works.

But considering that they’ve got this new general dude outside of Gaoling that’s clearly set up to be Mengele and thus even worse than Kuvira? Oh man. I just…let Kuvira be a villain, okay? Redeem her if that’s what you want, but then REDEEM HER. Stop trying to make her somehow the lesser evil, here. This character was clearly created to make her seem the lesser evil; he wasn’t even alluded to in the show itself. I will lay cash that part of the Kuvira redemption arc is that OH NO she realizes that Megele dude is THE WORST and she is obligated to STOP HIM. Hey, here’s an idea…maybe you should have stopped him three years ago, how about that? You don’t get a goddamn pass for an unprovoked attack on a foreign nation with a weapon of mass destruction because some other guy in your army was conducting human experimentation. That’s not how this works. There’s no pass. 

But I’m never going to stop being super fucking salty that you take the ONE mother in this show that is actually a fully-fleshed out character on screen and let her take the blame - all alone, never mind her husband - for being a crap mother to her foster kid that decided to grow up and become a fascist. Fuck that noise. Sincerely.

[americanredragger]

Honestly, I appreciate the hell out of this response. This is a good response.

And you raise an excellent point about poor folks being hit hard by licensing costs and similar regulation. This is something I routinely wonder about, because there must be a way to do all this without negatively affecting the people who need firearms most, be it for defense or subsistence hunting. So, we're not as far apart on this as you might first think, and if and when some kind of policy got drafted up, this NEEDS to be addressed.

But if I may address the last two paragraphs (mostly so we avoid circular arguing because I don't feel there's much to be done about our genuine disagreements, so I will respectfully not try on that front):

I have a great deal of trouble with the "law breakers don't care what the law is because they're just going to break it because that's what they do" argument. I used to deploy it all the time when I was younger, and after a while, I realized that it eventually just becomes an excuse to not do anything; whatever reasonable argument it begins in is gradually lost, and at the end of the day it becomes an argument that supports laziness in action. Furthermore, it does people a great disservice by leaning on long-discredited notions that people are "by their nature" either law breakers or law abiders. It takes no meaning from what laws were broken, who's breaking them, or why. After all, a person who steals food is highly likely to be destitute and in great need of that food, and nobody steals diapers for funsies. But if a person is trying to acquire weapons illegally, and a business allows that to happen? There needs to be consequences, at least for the business. Currently, there's not much in the way of that. An owner's license is one of those things, like a bar checking you ID to make sure you're legally permitted to drink, that if nothing else helps to keep the business honest, because then they risk real consequences if they are found to have not done their due diligence. Is there a better way to do this? I don't know. Maybe. All I know is that I haven't found it yet. Licensing and insurance, at least in principle, strike me as the fairest, most reasonable additional action we can take at the lowest cost, because clearly our existing measures are NOT measuring up. You're not wrong for being concerned, and I applaud you for expressing your concerns the way you have. Also: "When union busting involved sending armed men to threaten workers on strike, it was those workers shooting back that eventually lead to being able to negotiate rights, gain benefits and form unions."

10/10. Well said. No notes. 100% agree.

FUCK YOUR FREEDOM

Freedom with a human cost is not freedom at all.

Licensing, insurance, and accountability for wrongdoing is NOT disarming the working class.

It's simply just enforcing with guns the same thing we do with other mass-owned but potentially highly lethal objects. And if we require a hunting license when someone wishes to use a gun to take the life of an animal, should it not then hold true that we have a license requirement for firearms ownership considering guns are far too often used for the taking of human lives? A human life is as precious as a deer's where the gun is concerned. The working class should be armed, but the working class also has a responsibility to protect itself from abusers and hold those who abuse that armament accountable, and pass laws that make accountability and justice EASIER, not harder.