#SOMEBODY SAVE THIS CHILD FROM HIS TRAUMATIC LIFE

[lady-charinette]

"I didn't know me being born was a good thing."

[theloganator101]

So! Eri!

I've seen others talk about her and how she basically destroys some plot points in the story, so I feel like talking her and what I think.

I like her, I think she's cute. And as a concept, I think she could work wonderfully. A kid with a powerful quirk who's been abused and was practically kept as a prisoner all her life until Izuku saves her.

But the execution... left more to be desired. Let's look into her backstory.

When her quirk first came in, she accidentally rewinds her dad out of existence, causing her mom to abandon her to her grandfather. She was then placed under the care of Overhaul who wants to experiment with her quirk to resurface the Yakuza, but her grandfather refused to Eri being used as a guinea pig so Overhaul took matter in his own hands by crippling him so he wouldn't get in the way.

From there she was exposed to years of abuse and grueling experiments where she was dissected and even killed multiple times before Overhaul revived her with his quirk. In comes her meeting Izuku and kicking off the chain of events that'll lead her freedom and being with people who actually cares about her.

~~~

To start off, I kind of have a problem with how her backstory is executed. Because think about it, what does it remind you?

A character whose life has been nothing but hell?

An abusive parental figure who is clearly awful and deserves no sympathy? (Not that I'm saying or implying Overhaul does)

Meeting the one person who'll make their life better again and everything is now sunshine and rainbows?

Yeah this reads like bad fanfiction you find on Wattpad or Fanfiction.

Eri is technically Y/N or any mary sue protagonist. Except here she's a plot device to move the story along.

Oh, let's talk about that now.

Eri has become nothing more than a plot device as her arc went on. All she is at her quirk for the characters to use when the time is right. She's not allowed to be her own character and is just there when a character needs her quirk.

Thankfully it only happened once with Mirio to get his quirk back, but this led to me and others fearing that he'll use her again to heal any of the major cast that were injured during the war.

Let's move on to the aftermath of her rescue, and where she ends up. Does she end up in the foster care system? Does somebody they know take her in?

The answer: Aizawa takes her in.

Yes, Mr. Expels everyone and plays favorites, is the one chosen for the job of watching over a traumatized little girl with a powerful quirk. Because he can just erase her quirk if it gets out of control.

That's literally the reason she's left in his care.

Good job there guys! Put the child in the care of a guy who hasn't gotten over the death of his best friend and would most likely neglect her! I'm sure that won't backfire in ANY way!

~~~

So with all that I've said, what would I change to make her role in the story more plausible? Well simple

-Change her quirk to that of a healing quirk that can't restore quirks or restore lost limbs.

-Change her backstory that she just got dumped with an abusive relative that Izuku just took off with her in his arms since, you know, he was in abusive dynamic himself with Bakugou. Afterwards they discover she was being abused and get the relative arrested.

-From there the arc can just be about helping Eri realize she's not in danger anymore and help her get on the path to heal from what she's been through.

-Putting her with someone not Aizawa, I would suggest Inko as she's the mother figure she needs.

And that's it for my thoughts about this character, feel free to add in what you would've done with her because I would love to hear your ideas.

[alanshee-keeper-of-realms]

What is your opinion of Walt Disney?

Okay I will warn you this will be a bit long

Walt Disney is an inspiration flat out no matter what you say he is an inspiration to me, I come from humble rural backgrounds just 3 hours away from me lays Chicago where the Disney Family built a house and was starting a life before Elias Disney Walt's father moved them to Mississippi

There's a reason Kansas City claims to be Home of the Mouse because that's where Walt did a lot of blue collar work, from working in ad companies to working in the newspapers while he taught himself how to draw and eventually yes how to animate

You know how he first made his projectors at home with one of those really old-fashioned cameras. I am talking 1920s camera a sheet and some technical know-how,

Laugh-o-gram Studios had just gone up and that's what caused them to move to California, they weren't known, they did not have a penny to their name, they were just some Mississippi Chicago boys with a wish and a dream,

And from a shed in the backyard of Walt and Roy's Aunt and Uncle, the Disney Company would be founded and to go from that shed to the absolute massive company we see now

That only happened due in part because of Walt and yes Roy I will always give Roy just as much credit as his brother because he's much like Oswald quite forgotten in this story

Walt was a man ahead of his time, the original Dreamer no matter who laughed jeered ect he kept pushing the boundaries of what people thought Animation could do,

That is not to say he was perfect ohhh no he was definitely human, he had problems sharing he was known for being unbelievably stubborn on certain things, extremely old fashioned in views (He was Lost Gen After all being born in 1901)

1941 he traumatized himself horribly by ostracizing his crew who wanted to form a union, it lead to Walt getting into an actual brawl out front of the Disney Studios with one of his inner circle as they called it, leading to that one leaving with several others it broke his trust badly, and even worse

It took his passion for Animation away from him

A majority of projects in the 40s, 50s and '60s up until his death weren't really headed by him, sure he was involved in certain aspects but a majority of the times it was somebody else in the Studio that was the main overseer of those movies.

It really is sad because Jungle Book which was released in 1967 gave him his passion for animation back he was actually enjoying himself and had a few projects in mind, just as the cancer unfortunately struck and took him not even 2 months later on Dec 15th 1966,

When people say Walt Disney had so much unfinished business, they aren't lying. He was an imperfect human who believed in Family, Wishes,Dreams and seeing the Wonder in everything,that everything had a possibility to be great,

Did you know Characters in the parks aren't supposed to let go in a hug until the child does because Walt said

When a child hugs you, you don't let go first. Let them let go when they're ready because you never know how much they may need that hug in their life.

He was not perfect. However, he was a prime example of not giving up despite adversity, caring for Families instead of the Profits, Lord knows he danced the edge with bankruptcy multiple times fun fact The Three Caballeros helped save the company in the 40s after Fantasias fantastic flop, the government paid Disney to produce that package film and thats what kept them from going completely under, also thank Disney for your Surround Sound because Fantasia is the first 1. There is a reason some do say Disney is the prime example of the American Dream realized.

Because that's all Walt Roy and Ub had when they walked into Hollywood in the 1920s and founded a company that would become known around the World eventually with a Mouse who's name would come to be known by almost every child.

[forgiveness-in-the-misery]

Both Steven Universe and Army of the Doomstar have this interesting commonality where a protagonist panic proposes to a girl to escape horrors in their own life.

Steven and Connie were always just friends as far as the narrative ever explicitly stated, though you could always tell they may have crushes on each other and could end up romantically involved someday once they are in better places in their own lives as people. The thing is Steven panics because he’s losing control. He is changing in ways that scare him, the few humans he had in town have begun moving on and leaving and Connie will be next, he has survived immensely traumatic things nobody should have to experience especially as a child, and Connie is stability. He wants to be part of somebody, for him fusion and marriage, this idea of a white picket fence and this girl who makes him feel normal and grounded. So he panics and proposes and she obviously turns him down.

Army of the Doomstar is about the same situation. Abigail entered Nathan’s life when it began spiraling hard. He’s made choices that in the long run were correct, but personally fucked up his friendships that he doesn’t know how to repair without telling them things they won’t believe and find him insane. She represents a connection to normal life, a chance to get away from prophecies and ptsd and being forced to make decisions that could have an impact on humanity. He only proposes after collapsing and being admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with PTSD, it only happens when he gets out and is immediately reminded the world is ending and he needs to know how to save it. He proposes to her because she for him is an exit, for Nathan marriage and kids and the suburbs represents safety. The world can’t end if he gets married and denies destiny and creates his own path out of fear of losing everything.

I appreciate for starters that both Connie and Abigail not only deny the proposals, but are never shamed for it. The plot never acts like they did something wrong by stating a lack of interest like that, openly saying they know this isn’t what either guy wants and that this won’t solve things.

I also appreciate how uncomfortably embarrassing both scenes are like watching something you aren’t meant to yet can’t really look away from.

[blimbo-buddy]

Whos darksteipes favourite out of sashas kits/wnich one of them likes him the most? Alternatively, how would Sasha and darksteipe react to the other having a nightmare? How would they comfort each other?

(So this is gonna cover the Sasha and DarkStripe au obviously)

DarkStripe doesn't really do favorites, he feels like it's super wrong to favor a child over the other and he kind of dealt with that in the past from Thunderclan. Now, as for which kid likes him the most: It's Tadpole. DarkStripe saved Tadpole when he was near seconds away from drowning and managed to resuscitate him. Tadpole was severely traumatized after this so when DarkStripe decided to stick around with the family, he was beyond ecstatic. DarkStripe is like his emotional support, he's the cat that Tadpole finds safety in - not that Sasha didn't make him feel safe obviously, it's just that Tadpole looked up to DarkStripe for saving his life-. He goes to him whenever he has nightmares.

And speaking of nightmares…

DarkStripe:

He doesn't know how to handle somebody having nightmares the best and he doesn't know how to properly react. He's been getting slightly better though. Usually when Sasha has a bad nightmare, he finds a way to get her grounded back down and when that happens, he talks to her a bit to make her mind not stay on the nightmare until she or the both of them get tired enough to be able to go back to sleep, DarkStripe usually holds her close after that. He's been using this trick any time Tadpole or Moth or Hawk have nightmares too and it works wonders

Sasha:

Sasha has more experience with calming cats down after they had a nightmare, both due in part to her having four other siblings and her three kits. She'll get the cat grounded by telling them to breath slowly, in through their nose and out through their mouth. Then she usually tells them to flex their claws into the ground under them so that they could easily ground themselves. And then she holds them close to her, not too tightly in case they freak out again. That does the job super well, she does this to both DarkStripe and other cats she knows

[cxpperhead]

[y'know we had to do it to 'em.]

🐣

Send 🐣 to catch my muse caring for a child

Another night had fallen in Gotham and with it, so had the temperature. So cold was it in fact that the city streets were unusually quiet for late November, with criminals and civilians alike preferring to stay indoors. Still, there were people out and about even at this time of the year - it was Gotham after all, and some people had to venture out into the bitter cold to conduct business whether they liked it or not. Copperhead was one of those people, so when he set out to take a life that night, he didn't expect to be saving one instead.

Hunched over a pile of cardboard boxes, the would-be assassin looked remarkably out of place in an alleyway that night. To anybody walking past, even they would have had a hard time mistaking him as a bum looking for shelter. His long tail, gleaming orange and black scales and vivid green eyes were exposed for all to see, indicating that something was very wrong for Copperhead of all people to be exposed outside like this when normally he stayed out of sight, lying in wait for the next unsuspecting victim. It was even more wrong for a known killer to be holding a bundle of fabric close to his chest as though he were protecting it. "Crying, here in the boxes." Copperhead uttered softly as he detected the presence of somebody close by. Even with the alleyway's stench assaulting his senses, he didn't need to turn his head to know Rorschach had arrived, the vigilante he'd crossed paths with on more than one occasion. Had it been anybody else, Copperhead might have fled the premises there and then but deep down he knew he could trust the masked vigilante on this matter, having witnessed Rorschach calming traumatized children being trafficked by scumbags richer and far more depraved than they. A baby was a different story from a grown child however, and Copperhead turned to Rorschach to show what he was holding, lifting the flap of fabric with a scaled finger to reveal the round, chubby face within. At the very least it didn't start crying again, Copperhead's shoulders sagging with visible relief when it gurgled upon seeing the swirling black patterns of Rorschach's mask. As for the vigilante himself, Rorschach's expression was unseen, his emotions unreadable beneath his guarded exterior. Whatever. Rorschach could be furious with him all he wanted later. Right now they needed to put their differences aside, and to tell the other man what he knew. "I didn't see anyone near it, but it doesn't seem like it was left too long either. If it hadn't cried out when I'd passed by..." Copperhead rambled, doing his best to keep the shiver out of his voice - the clothing he was holding was that of his own poncho, the metahuman having stripped it off to further bundle up the infant. Physical contact would only drain what little precious heat the tiny body could retain, prompting the assassin to hold out the bundle to Rorschach in desperate hopes he knew what to do with a baby at this time of night. "Take it. You're good with kids, I saw from before. This one's just... smaller." He finished lamely, as though it wasn't already obvious to the pair just what kind of situation they'd gotten themselves into.

[cookie-nameless]

So today I feel like talking about my favorite family in and cookie around the family that I wrote multiple fanfictions for that I love so much that I've been renting to my friends in the DMs but haven't really gotten a chance to talk about them that much the starter family plus Rye

I think more people should see them as family like they are literally the main characters and they only have each other triplets born alone a thief who had no choice and a royal who was abandoned coming together to build a place where every cookie can liver everyone can be happy and also adding another parent to their family a cookie who chose to be there that's a family that loves each other that they should love each other even if they have their own flaws and they're not the perfect family they're going to try their damn hardest and that's what makes this family so perfect

Now I'm going to talk about the individual head canons of the family their role and how they connect to others because these have been in my brain for so long and I need to tell somebody that that I haven't told and I haven't made new friends on here so let's go

Rye the one who feels kind of disconnected from the family because she joined in later when they had already become a full family unit she's more of a stepmother and she still has complicated relationship with her feelings towards chili even though now she knows why chili did it but she likes the kids and she's going to try her damn best

Chili basically the mother of the family although you expect her to change after assuming the role and she did she's still the same cookie just now she has cookies that she has cookies that she cares about again and now she has slightly become more responsible and a better person overall she's not perfect but she's trying her damn best

Custard the youngest of children of course he's the one who deals least with the kingdom affairs although he tries to help a lot everybody loves and wants to protect him for him to not to see the darkness of the world but he knows at least a little bit but he is still a kid and he's going to stay as a kid until he can't

Wizard the one that feels the most disconnected from the family everybody still loves him and he loves them but he's still rude to them and acts like he's the greatest wizard ever deep down inside he knows that he isn't that he's just a teenager but he's going to try his best to be an adult because he's already seen a lot of adults can't handle

Strawberry the quiet older sister who knows everybody struggles because she listens unintentionally of course but still she has known all of these cookies for the majority of her life she knows when something is different she knows that something is different than her too and she will find a source and fix it for her family

And brave the oldest child at least in the way that they act they tried to be reliable Brave help everyone save everyone and push away they're negative feelings because she is the most Brave cookie the one who's saving everyone the one who escaped the heaven even if they barely can sleep because of the nightmares they cannot let their family worry because everything is going to be fine they're going to defeat dark enchantress and everything is going to be okay

I love this little traumatized f***** up family I love all of them so much they deserve so much more than what they are getting please comment your own thoughts about them also read the fanfictions I think they're pretty cool

https://archiveofourown.org/series/3020472

[hopelesslyconfusedart]

No, because that is such a wonderful depiction for each of them. Excuse me because i’m about to rant.

WARNING IT IS VERY LONG, BATFAM MEMBERS TALKED ABOUT: Bruce, Dick, Barbara, Jason, Tim, Stephanie, Cass, Damian (not including Duke because i have not read enough material to know him as well, i’m working on fixing that)

Continues under the cut for those who want to read the rant:

Bruce needed someone to save him, but he also needed to get away from death. The moment his parents died was so horrendously traumatic that the small details still come to him constantly as he’s going about life. (ie: Martha’s pearls clattering and breaking, Thomas trying to defend them (in some versions), the flash of the gunshot in the dark alley way, or the the pools of blood left behind)

Therefore he then strove to be like his father, be like the hero Zorro (who’s movie he had just seen) but restrain himself to never have to be the reason he or someone else goes through the trauma of death again. He never wants it to be his hands that bloody another child’s mind. He succeeds to a degree and is desperately holding onto his moral codes because of it. Plus, he would also snap if he killed someone, because he knows it’s easy to kill, harder to protect. Therefore he becomes the figurehead of safety, salvation, and justice that he needed that night in the alleyway.

Dick Grayson watched his parents die in the same way Bruce did but the tragedy of their deaths wasn’t what stuck with him like his father figure. No to him it was the loss of his parents as people, their memories, emotions, entire beings being destroyed because of corruption in Haley’s circus. It’s why, in multiple adaptations, Dick is down to murder to avenge his family. He doesn’t have the mental blockage/trauma around the act of killing specifically. Though he later comes to realize that revenge isn’t what he needs specifically to feel the burden lift off his shoulders.

What he needed as a kid during that time, which he partially got from Bruce later on, was a positive lifeline in the form of a person to rely on. He had it in the earlier comic runs when Bruce wasn’t nearly as bogged down by poor writing and trauma so he took after that. He based his interactions with victims on what he would’ve wanted, somebody to comfort them and uplift them. One of his biggest flaws is how terrible he is at not being himself, trying to act like others (ie: Bruce during his run as batman) and that is because he can’t bring himself to be that other person. He isn’t who Bruce needed, not who Bludhaven or Gotham needed, he is what he needed.

Barbara Gordon, she watched her father go to the police precinct every day. Watched him climb the ladder and grow into many roles there. He was the ultimate example of safety for her. Yet she realized that he was in mortal danger every second of the way. She could lose him at any moment. So she became who she believed her father needed, someone who could support him. In a similar way to the batman. So she readies herself, throws herself into danger with no support, and does it knowing it will take some crime off the streets, Knowing it makes it so there is less of a chance her father doesn’t come home at night.

Then she grows up, flourishes with guidance and begins to branch away from being who her father needs. She begins to become what she both has needed and needs at that moment. She becomes strong, reliable, capable, and fiercely intelligent. Only to have that growth stripped away by the Joker for the sake of being a part of Jim Gordon and Batman’s storyline. She’s forced into a role in the background, once again forced to watch from the sideline as her loved ones are in danger and she can’t do anything to help. So, once more, she pushes herself, and soon she becomes Oracle. She’s in the background yes, but she becomes the ultimate support, she’s essentially running the show from behind the scenes. Helping her loved ones and contributing, arguably, even more than she had in the field. She becomes everything she wanted to be when she was young, even as life fought her for it.

Jason Todd was born in crime alley (in later adaptations, not his copy paste background of Dicks in the earlier comics) he was born into poverty, violence, and general depravity. It marked every aspect of his life, and yet he was as positive as can be. He had a yearn to learn, to do more, to be more. Yet his background stunted that. When his parents dies they both died in ways that were almost predictable to him. His mom overdosed and his father (in many iterations) dies in jail. He was braced for it so, even though they affected him horribly, it didn’t give him the shock that Dick and Bruce had gotten. No, that was his own death.

During his time as robin he was already trying to be what he had needed. Kind, smart, reliable, and good at what he did. He wasn’t angry and tried to forcefully be the best he could be. You see that starting to wear at him before ethiopia, he gets a bit more violent, holds back less, and gives into his anger a bit. It shows that his trauma is finally catching up. Then he dies, a terrible death, at the hands of someone who has proven there are faults in the world. It makes it worse when he is brought back.

Because the person Jason needed in that warehouse was someone willing to pull the literal or metaphorical trigger. There is no ifs or buts, the Joker wouldn’t have been stopped in the long run by just putting him back in jail. Jason knew that and so desperately needed someone willing to care enough about him to rid the world of a parasitic monster. Yet he never got that, so he then becomes that. He gets violent, figures out that it works, and protects any and all innocents he knows. It’s what he needed and wanted as he watched a bomb tick down on a concrete floor.

Tim Drake had parents, loving and supportive parents (in most instances). They fostered him in a way that made him so inquisitive and genius. He strove for more knowledge. Learning the batfam secret identities at a young age. The people that he needed at that time were batman and robin. So he idolized them, but then Jason died. Tim was forced to watch as batman became someone he couldn’t idolize anymore, so he goes to find who batman needs, he tries his hardest to get Dick back into being robin, yet it fails. So in a last ditch effort he becomes who batman needs. He throws on the robin suit and willingly throws himself in the metaphorical and literal bullet pathway.

He strives to be what batman needs, not what he needs for so long. He emulates the previous robins before him and forces his way into helping Bruce. But then he begins to lose everything around him, his mother dies, his father is hospitalized, then dies later, his best friend dies, he experiences pain unimaginable, everything the universe can do to him it does. He then finds himself faltering because how is he supposed to be what he needs to be for himself at that point? He’s been giving himself to everybody else, so how does he do that for himself. His red robin run introduces him to becoming his own support, who he needs. Eventually he becomes that person, so outgrown (no matter what DC is trying by putting him back in the robin suit every time he sneezes) of his old personas that, even if he still clings to them a bit, most people have a hard time understanding who he is.

Stephanie Brown was given a shitty ass beginning. She was born into very similar conditions as Jason, but with the added bonus of a supervillain father. She grew up watching her mother deteriorate and watched her father being the worst imaginable human being. She grew up watching him as he did these things and knew they weren’t right. She needed someone who could put her dad in his place, protect her mom, and help them thrive outside of their circumstances. Yet she never got that help as a hand out, any help she got she had to fight for, she was learning at a rapid pace just to become better. She becomes so intelligent that outsmarting her father becomes a cakewalk and her first forays into vigilantism are specifically so she can foil her father. Later, after the downfall of her father she is left without as powerful as a drive. She dons the robin mantle for some time and ultimately dies in the costume just as Jason had.

After her revival, she grows even more independently, with Barbara helping her. Her growth as batgirl is phenomenal. She realized that she can fight for her own goals instead of basing her entire time around fighting her past. She lives through trauma after trauma (ie: having to give up her newborn child) only to come out stronger afterwards. It seems as though the person she needed when she was younger was what she wanted her mother to be. Dependable, independent, strong willed, sharp witted, and able to save them from her father. Yet her mother wasn’t able to be those thing when she was young (even if she has now gotten better) so Stephanie became that person instead.

Cassandra Cain was raised as a child soldier. She didn’t know she needed someone until it was far too late. She never even knew how disgustingly David Cain treated her until her first kill. She was so used to being a living and breathing weapon. Body language was the only way she knew how to communicate. So when she first killed someone is horrified her. Extremely similarly to Bruce the death itself is what stuck to her. For her it was the unnatural way the body behaved after death. To her it was as if you were to read a book that someone had written during a slow descent into madness they eventually dies from. The stillness or the body was akin to the scribbles and eventual drag of the pen as the author experienced their passing. It was traumatizing for a girl that didn’t even know the word trauma. So she escaped, fled for the preservation of life, so she couldn’t be used as a weapon.

She ended up in Gotham, where she learned how to use what she was similarly to bruce. Striving to be better without killing as an option. She tried to adapt, though it was hard (ie: learning how to read, write, and speak only to lose her original language, the language of the human body) and began to forge her own understanding of the world. She became independent after Barbara gave her the chance to grow. After Lady Shiva attempted to get her to help her with her own suicide she realized what the world needed and specifically what she needed as a child. She needed someone who embraced humanity, valued life over death, and treated her with human dignity and respect. She became that as she branched away from Gotham, going around the globe and settling in Hong Kong so she could spread that knowledge in an area that lacked it.

Damian Wayne doesn’t know yet what he needs. Because he hasn’t been given the time or age to reflect upon that. As he is right now he strives to be what others want him to be. Even if he refuses to admit it. He wants to be what his mother, grandfather, and father want him to be. He’s grown tremendously as an individual after being given a life with his father. However, that can be attributed partly to Nightwing during his run as batman. He grew to become capable of being a child under nightwing guidance. This was only further encouraged when Bruce came back and took him under his wing. It’s even further expanded on when he travels to make reparations for his misdeeds (ie: slaughtering goliath’s entire species)

Eventually he will become the stability and reliability he was wanting as a child. (As shown in some iterations we have of him grown up or as batman) but for now he is growing as a person mor than as an idea or concept. He is striving to be himself before being what someone else needs.

Thank you for being subject to this long ass rant. Please feel free to correct me or discuss with me if you find anything lacking in my rant, i enjoy the opportunity to expand my understanding of these characters i treasure so dearly.

TLDR; They all have such big individual growth and influences that not a single one of them perfectly aligns, yet they all are their own heroes in their own right.

best depiction of the batfam will always be "You grew up to be the person who would have saved you" but it applies to them each respectively and that's why none of them can see eye to eye and also get up their own asses about things and go to such great lengths to defend their personal brand of justice. Because they can never stop trying to save themselves from their own history.

[kuu-stuff]

My dearest - Part 3

The only way to truly save him would be to save him as a child. And while at it, save him before his mother’s death. But even before that his father would beat them up while drunk. CPS where the fuck are you when people need you ?? Also I know that it’s just a story and stuff but who the fuck would let a 7 year old in the streets ?? I mean, I’m sure it happens, but bro … WTF mister Brown ?? So yeah I have always obsessed about how to save him. How to let him have a nice life. He would have always been traumatized at best. No matter when and what you’d do. His entire character would have to stop existing for him to be happy. There is that whole saying about how what happened in your life shaped who you are, good and bad. Even I feel sometimes that the bad stuff that happened to me made me who I am and I don’t know if I would want to redo my life and stop existing as me. And recently I was wondering if someone like Silas would think the same. Would it be cruel to stop him from meeting Aringarosa and joining the Opus Dei by saving him from the streets all this time ago ? As what Belaf from Made in Abyss said; only in darkness can you find the brightest light. Or what Bondrewd said about Prushka; that only someone who knew of pain can truly cherish life. I don’t know why I’m quoting Made in Abyss but that’s what came to me while writing. The point is, if you’re saved from a seemingly miserable life so early that you’re not even you anymore and that you never go through the trials you did before your fate was changed, and you won’t feel the same joy, relief and hope when you do experience joy because it would be all you ever knew. Then was it really worth killing that person he might have been ? Just to turn him into another who will never understand the happiness he lives in ? That’s also a whole reflection I have about synths in Fallout 4 where you “kill” them by erasing their memories and giving them a new personality, like … why ? That person doesn’t exist anymore, you could have just killed the synth and it would be better because you wouldn’t have forced somebody else to live in this world, not even knowing that their whole existence is a lie. That’s so dumb… So…

HOW DO I SAVE THIS MAN ?!!! I keep daydreaming of it over and over. I finally stop thinking about him for a year or two, then it comes back and I’m running all over again wondering what to do. As if I could ever do something about it, as if my thoughts alone would matter at all. And how can you move on from this obsession when this man doesn’t exist and can’t be saved ? 

I’ve spent 18 years with that guy. He hung out with me in my dreams. I talked to him. I made him live in my town, imagining him living his life around our cathedral. I would desperately try to make him happy. What he could never be. I remember all this time ago reading about all those alternate universe stuff, wondering if I could find a way to save him, if maybe another me could. If somebody else could. Sometimes thinking that I could exchange my own life for this. I lived enough, I got and done everything I wanted, but he had nothing. And I would helplessly roll in my bed, trying to resolve an impossible problem night after night. Studying him again, making sure how I’d go about it, how he might react. Finding no satisfying ways, not even in my dreams. He ended up so dear to me. Like a close friend I could never let go. Even when I grew up way past the age when this kind of stuff is acceptable. Unable to even express those deep feelings I had for this one guy who I could never befriend even if we lived in the same world. I don’t share the same beliefs as he does, I would have made him more mad than anything else. Actually without knowing him from a book, I wouldn’t even have spoken to him. And that’s another feeling that tears at me. That I spent so long thinking of him when he wouldn’t bat an eye at my whole existence. Always trying to find the right words to maybe make him like me but finding nothing. Daydreaming again and again but without ever being able to end it happily while keeping it even slightly believable according to his character. Maybe if I was prettier, maybe if I was stronger, maybe if I was perfect… But it’s still not working. If I tell him I know about him and I love him I would just seem like a gross stalker. If I imply that I know how things would end, he wouldn’t believe me. Would he even listen to me in the first place ? At the end of the day I could be nothing but a stranger to him. So maybe if I could find a way to save him from the shadow. Maybe someone would save him if I would give my life after all ! All this thinking without ever landing on a solution, all this self deprecation for even entertaining the thought… If even someday I’d be in front of him, he'd see me, he’d listen to me… Could I even say a single word ? Would I run away and make him feel like I’m just one of those people who are scared of him? Would I try to speak and make myself look like a fool, unable to say anything coherent ? It takes me back to when I would try to talk to real life crushes of mine, back in high school. One of them I wrote a confession to and he answered in such a gentle and thoughtful way but no matter what I never could face him again and pretended like he was not there anymore. Another, I spent half an hour apologizing by text, crying the whole night for telling him that I loved him. Most of the time I wouldn’t even confess. I would just stare from afar… Certainly I would do that. Instead of saving him, I would just watch, unable to do a single thing. Isn’t it maddening ? After all this longing and thinking, the solution was always “doing nothing”. How could I pretend then that I love him, that I care for him, when I couldn’t even face him even to save him from his cruel fate ? 

How fortunate then that he’s nothing more than a character in a book. That I wouldn’t be the one hurting him. 

Despite all this, I could never put him to rest. I would have conversations with him, I would wonder if he’d like this or that type of food, I’d think about it every time I’d visit a church. Every time I’d go to places he was mentioned to pass by, I would look around me, memorizing the streets, looking for him. I spent so much time feeling the need to have him there. To tell him that everything will be okay, that I love him, that there is nothing wrong with him, that he simply needs to try more, to talk to people and they would love him too. I would be able to give him a face, to memorize his appearance, his mannerisms, his smell. I feel the need to know him better, to understand him. To finally know who he is really. Sometimes this longing possesses me and I find myself unable to think about anything else. An itch that can never be scratched, not even in my dreams.  There is no real conclusion to this whole… thing. You could make a dissertation of the impact of fictional characters and art on people… Or maybe on how one could lose their sanity getting too attached to an imaginary friend in their adult life. Frankly I just wanted to tell you all that I love that guy and I pinch his cheeks and hug him tight and I don’t care about fitting in society and it’s way better than most other addictions anyway. A girl just needs her dearest plushie to fall asleep at night and display it proudly amongst the pillows during the day. It’s all. Thanks.

[suguru-getos]

genshin men x love at first sight

characters included: ayato, zhongli, childe, itto, xiao. <3

ayato: man? he is so mesmerised!! how the hell can someone as stunning as you even real? he always is looking out for the finer things in life, he is spoiled enough so he thinks he deserves it <3 he is the head of the clan am i right? :V so when he crosses paths with you on one of his journeys outside inazuma, he is stunned. stopping between his path and walking towards you, “excuse me, i don’t mean to be creepy, or won’t even be the slightest of daring and audacious… but what is your name?” the sincerity in his voice is so genuine that it feels natural. “y/n” you mumble. ayato swears his heart can’t take it, the way your voice echoed over and over in his head, damn!

zhongli: he first saw you when he was out as wangshang funeral parlor’s consultant. somebody had died in your household, what a grim vibe and atmosphere. he almost feels guilty for not being able to take his eyes off you. how you look devastated only makes him imagine over and over how gorgeous would your smile look. would you get dimples? do you smile with your eyes? he can’t keep that sight out of his mind. zhongli had a reputation throughout liyue, for the first time he was thankful for it, the opportunity to have a one-on-one with you. it could be something meagre, like his condolences of course! “greetings, i am here to offer my sincerest condolences for your loss, it must be truly painful,” he softly spoke, kissing your knuckles like a gentleman. “i know how it feels to lose your kin, your dear ones…” he continued, and somehow you could find the tranquility in his voice that you just needed<3

childe: you were at the northland bank for some transactions, and childe swears he hasn’t ever seen you before. how dare you miss his eyes? he looked at you and for a moment, malfunctioned 💀✨ you could swear he was speechless, absolutely stunned. “h-hey girlie,” he blushed, grinning at you with a chaotic, tooth rotting sweetness of a smile. “hello, childe,” you spoke. he was famous in liyue, for good and bad reasons. it was normal for you to know him hence, but boy! oh boy?!!?! childe never expected that :3 “you know my name?” he raised a brow, widening eyes and clearing throat to gain composure, “uh…” he smirked, turning on his charm switch and leaned closer, “it’s only fair i know yours,” the rest is history 🥰 ok? ok.

itto: he saw you when he was running from the kanjou commission, (his story quest get the gist pls) -,- he wanted to find beetles to fight with, but he laid his eyes on you. you were there, picking lavender melons. for the first time he felt an emotion that was… weird! his heart started racing, cheeks dusted red, “oh my god oh my god oh my god-” he looked at you like an excited kid, “GOD DAMN!” he groaned, watching you intently, completely forgetting about the onikabuto battle ok? and that’s saying something 😤 “tell ya what these bigger ones are actually the worse, they taste like shiiit~” he interrupted you, grinning and giddy. let’s just say you got a great friend that day, and an even greater boyfie xoxo

xiao: the yaksha basically rescued you from a group of samachurls. “worthless,” you hear him utter with absolute rage, absolute ruthlessness and the unflinching determination to slay. you noticed it took him mere seconds to finish them off. then he finally saw you, normally he doesn’t even remember the face of every civilian or a non-adventurer traveller that he saves. but to you? he comes closer and asks, “are you hurt?” you had a few scratches, nothing too serious. but boy were you traumatized. you shivered, shaking head no and quivering lips. it was then the alatus spoke, “i will protect you, always. don’t fear these monsters, just say my name and i’ll be there. my name is xiao,”

[aria0fgold]

A continuation cuz tumblr's 10 image limit per post sucks. IT SUCKS SO ASS, I thought there was a 30 image limit but it's actually 10?????? SERIOUSLY????

I'm adding another read more here cuz it'd most likely get long again.

Day 4

Dollmaker getting beat by a 17 year old is VERY FUNNY to me cuz that's a grown ass person, and they're getting their ass beat by a child. Also Odessa just ATTACKING nonhuman ocs are sooo funny and again, very in character of her. She had a taste of what it was like to almost win against a god, she now wanted More (Alexandre isn't a god, but he's like, nearly there??? His species is an original one so it'd be a bit hard to explain here cuz it'd most likely get long...). And then we have... Ray... MAAAAANNNN his death is just as sad too cuz REALLY??? REALLY GALA??? Did you just Really had to do that to him? Man. Also, Ray refusing to kill Patch maaaaaaaaan.

Night 4

Okay... Gala possibly threatening Cindy and Patch to watch the shift with her is so sad actually. Like, it's either that Gala ordered Ray to kill em when they were far away so they didn't know about it or they were nearby and Ray came between them and Gala after his refusal of her order so now the two are just haunted by it AND threatened by Gala.

Dollmaker fighting Alec is a sad scenario too cuz those two are Really close to one another where they consider each other as siblings (With DM thinking of Alec as a big brother). And the fact that they spared Alec's life too? LIKE MAAAAAAN. The simulator is getting sad now.

Day 5

Wait, alright Dollmaker, what is your game plan here??? You just defeated Alec the night before and spared his life, now you're ATTACKING him again?????????? They slept and suddenly was like: Actually, I should just kill you. Like, damn... make up your mind, dear. Preferably during the moment at least cuz they really just let a whole night pass before changing their mind on it. Also Odessa has gone and lost it now, GIRL?! Why'd you have to do that to SEPH?!?! REALLY??? And it's always Patch, sheesh, Patch, why'd ya do to be targetted by two different people???

Night 5

OH SHIT-- I just realized this but Patch asking Pharaoh to kill him after getting targetted and possibly seeing someone die in front of him to protect him TWICE is actually so sad. He was so traumatized by it, oh god... Meanwhile there's Odessa snuggling with Ely like gurl??? Okay, then. There's Alexandre too just Going Through It. And Cindy is still held captive by Gala, goddamn...

Day 6

Nothing much happened here, other than Felicity obtaining ANOTHER explosive but also cheering! Cuz Cindy is out of Gala's clutches.

Night 6

This upset me the most out of everything that happened here cuz REALLY?!?!??! REALLY ROZALYNDA?!??!?! REALLY?!!! The fact that Alec was still fighting to live during then despite being so severely injured is SO PAINFULLY IN CHARACTER (his will to live is astronomically high) but Rozalynda just HAD TO FINISH HIM OFF??????? REALLY?!?!!?!??

Also, Alexandre crying again. Patch and DM with nightmares... And Cindy is back in Gala's vicinity 😔 Somebody save that poor girl from Gala. Like, imagine sitting there with the person that wanted you dead to tell ghost stories with.

Cindy: Oh, ghost stories? Ahaha... Haha... Uhh... Sometimes when I close my eyes, I still see that man's face looking at me. Oh, who? Uhh... Just, a stranger...

Day 7

OH SHIT-- Now Cindy is convincing someone to kill her, okay like with the context from the previous days and nights, that's also really sad.

Gotta love how the one thing that killed Pharaoh is toxic berries, boyfailure. You're literally a demon that survived so much already and THAT'S what killed you??? Odessa would laugh at him once they meet in the afterlife.

Night 7

Patch... 😔

Nothing much else happens here, mostly peaceful! Mostly... as peaceful as this death game can get.

The Feast

This feast is a bloodbath. It's kinda funny how after Odessa throwing hands and winning against two nonhuman ocs, she ends up dying at the hands of a human. Rozalynda is a menace and Alerik protecting Galaxias is insane in its own way. Patch made a good decision not to attend cuz there's THREE people dead with one possibly gonna be crying cuz SOMEONE (<-side eyes Rozalynda) stole her memoirs!

Day 8

LOOK AT THIS ALERIK!!! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED CUZ YOU PROTECTED GALA! SHE'S NOW TAKING MATTERS INTO HER OWN HANDS AND WANTS TO KILL PATCH! Rozalynda now being very murderous and after Ely while Felicity just died the same way Crystal did which is also btw, nearly poetic as Crystal's death (Felicity specialises with technical stuff).

So I procrastinated drawing and decided to do a hunger games simulator with some OCs (couldn't remember much human OCs and I didn't wanna just include the entire family tree of Alec and Ray so some nonhuman ones are included). I decided to include myself in it too so I can give my OCs a chance to come at me for putting em through this.

Here in Day 1 and we immediately see THREE DEAD

Rozalynda btw is a human oc that's a parent figure to a nonhuman oc (that I didn't include here) She's very sweet actually, very mom coded, so seeing her team up with Alerik to drown Cas is insane. Mel being a boyfailure and steps on a landmine, you tried your best, Mel...

One, it's VERY FUNNY how a 13 year old kid snatched a mace from me. And two, Crystal finding a bag full of explosives is VERY IN CHARACTER.

Night 1

Alec just straight up killed the dude, didn't even gave him a chance to be in the situation longer, scary...

Now this is just... really sad. Marcie and Seph are BESTIES!!! WHY DID YOU DO THAT MARCIE???

Also btw Clarissa is Ray's younger sister.

Day 2

Seeing myself and Alerik teaming up for a short time to split up and search for resources is very on brand, I think. Considering Alerik's situation (his self-awareness) so I can see him arguing with the simulator Aria honestly. Also, you'll be seeing Rozalynda be VERY MURDEROUS throughout this whole thing.

And here's Ray questioning his sanity, very in character, I am so sorry Ray.

Night 2

There's so many things happening in this chunk. First, Crystal dying from a landmine she's trying to set up is REALLY POETIC in a way since Crystal is a Bomb Expert, her special interest are bombs, so the fact that she died from one she was trying to arm is poetic in its own way. Second, Aria girlfailure. Third, Felicity ambushing someone is in character for her but Man... Cedany is dead... (Cedany is Cressida's older sister). Fourth, seeing Alerik fighting Alec is honestly so insane to me cuz that's Alerik, my highly self-aware oc, and Alec, my baby, my favourite (Saying sorry to all my other ocs, excluding Ray cuz he became favourite by association).

So it's actually REALLY in character for Alerik to just have some Intense Beef with simulator Aria and Alec. Lastly, fifth, *Them, it's a lil sad that there's no nonbinary option for this but alas... Also Pharaoh is a nonhuman oc beefing with a human oc, like OFC YOU'D WIN! YOU'RE A DEMON! Honestly would be so funny though if Pharaoh lost that.

Day 3

RETRIBUTION! My sins towards my ocs has caught up to me via simulator Aria's own Stupidity cuz REALLY GIRL??? You got your mace snatched by a 13 YEAR OLD at the very beginning, why did you think fighting ANYONE is ever a good idea? Also very fitting that Alec's sister got to participate in the killing. She deserves it, as a treat, for all the torture I put her own brother through-- WAIT!!! I just realized the doomed yuri of that, Cressida is Ely's future partner... Cressida is... she's dead 😔 OH! I cannot believe! that even in her dying moments, simulator Aria decides to bring upon pain towards the ocs anyway (ngl it's kinda fitting for me).

Also yeah time to address the elephant in the room that is Odessa attacking Alerik cuz 1. Odessa is a human oc (she's Pharaoh's partner) 2. It's both SO INSANE and SO IN CHARACTER of her to just fight with a GOD. It would've been soooo funny had Alerik died by her hands.

Night 3

A peaceful moment during Night 3, well, kinda, mostly peaceful if not for Alerik ruining Gala's supplies (Gala is my nonhuman mhyk oc).

[mycrofts-gunbrella]

Caring is the Greatest Advantage- Part Eight (Mycroft Holmes x Reader)

Sorry for such a long delay!! It’s my little boy’s first birthday this week so I’ve been running around making arrangements and picking up last minute presents! Hope you enjoy this little chapter. It’s only 3K words, but it is a build up ready for the next chapter which will contain smut! Not full blown smut (I don’t think Mycroft is ready for that yet!) but still smutty nonetheless!

I will separate the smutty bit enough so that you can skip it if you want, but it will be referenced later on in that chapter!

Word Count- 3062

This morning differed from the last few that you had experienced since staying at Mycroft's home, namely because Mycroft had awoken before you this time, but also because it was the first morning you had ever been awoken by long fingers prodding at your forehead. That and also because, despite last night's late events, you managed to arise at a reasonable 9am.

"Did you know there are a lot nicer ways to wake somebody up?" You questioned, opening your eyes to see Mycroft staring at you with a slight frown to his brow. He retracted his hand slightly and shifted to sit a little higher.

"You know, Sherlock as a child once woke me in a similar way. I felt small scratches on my eyebrows and woke up to see him crouched over me with a smug little grin on his face. As it turns out, he had slipped sleeping pills into my cup of tea before bed and in my slumber covered my eyebrows in toothpaste." You covered your mouth with your hand and snorted slightly. "He'd come in to see if there was anything left beneath them, which, of course, there wasn't.. claimed it was just an experiment. I'd like to laugh and be more dignified about it upon looking back, but I struggle because he was only six and already a sod."

"Okay, you've proven there are in fact worse ways to wake up." You didn't make big deals out of it, but every time Mycroft welcomed you a little more into the stories of his youth, you can't help but feel your heart warm. It may not seem like much, but coming from Mycroft, a very private man who hasn't been treated the best over the years, it meant everything. You stretched and moved your hands up to rub your eyes, flinching a little as your fingers brushed against the bit of your head above your eyebrows. "Bugger." You winced, poking again and feeling a small lump.

"I was going to warn you but you laughed at my traumatic eyebrow removal story." You groaned and recalled your memory of last night and where you believe the bruise originated from.

"I jumped into bed last night sulking a bit that you wouldn't talk to me and uh.. misjudged.." Mycroft snickered slightly from your side, you swatted his arm. "Tit. I'm blaming you. This wouldn't have happened if you didn't go all Han Solo in carbonite on me." You spoke playfully, letting him know you weren't truly peeved.

"I thought you said it was cute?"

"That was clearly a concussion talking." You stretched once more and climbed out of the bed, walking over to a mirror above a dressing table and rolling your eyes. "Might need your special government powers to clear out the cafe else Ms Woodall will think we've had a domestic." Bernice Woodall, owner of one of your favourite little cafes settled on the outskirts of St James' Park was a very.. particular lady. She could have a good laugh one moment, and start a quarrel with a customer over the amount they stir their tea the next. But, you'd have to admit, she has one hell of an all day breakfast menu; you could practically taste one of her omelettes just by thinking about it, making your stomach growl loudly.

"I would but, if I am to be very honest, she genuinely scares me a little. I think she could overthrow MI5 so I daren't even try." You stood and moved into Mycroft's bedroom, grabbing your bag of clothes and picking through a few of the pairs of your jeans Anthea had brought and scanning through the t-shirts. Your fingers brushed over the creases of the shirt that had formed from being stuffed in the bag and frowned.

"Perhaps it would be more suitable for you to pop those in one of the chest of drawers? I'm sure I have at least one drawer empty.." Myc's voice came from behind you and you fell from your crouching position, clutching your heart.

"You and your bloody spy legs, you just scared the shit out of me." You stood back up, your pile of today's clothes in one hand and the bag of the rest in the other. "Giving me a drawer in your place already? Ooh Myc you are serious." You grinned playfully, following him as he guided you to a set of drawers in the opposite corner of the room. Mycroft halted and opened his mouth to make some kind of comment but you cut him off, placing your folded clothes inside the Edwardian furniture. "Only teasing.. I'm just glad you haven't kicked me out yet. Though I don't think my own bed will ever feel as comfortable as yours. I might not want to go back now you've spoilt me, you'll just have to be blunt when you're bored of me." You winked at him and carried your outfit into the en suite bathroom to get ready. Mycroft headed over to his wardrobe to pluck out his own clothes, electing to remain somewhat casual for your trip to breakfast with a pair of navy chinos and a lighter blue button up before muttering slightly under his breath.

"And if I never am?"

In the rare parts of his life where he allowed to imagine himself getting into a relationship, Mycroft had never expected himself to be overwhelmed with so much emotion so quickly, but with you it was almost as though he had no control; as though there had been so many pent up feelings over the years that they just seem to have exploded without any rational thought behind it. And whilst these were all new to Mycroft, and how he still wasn't entirely sure about everything that he felt when it came to things with you, the only thing he was positive about was that he didn't want it to go. And that meant not wanting you to leave. Which was ridiculous. You had just under two weeks left together until you would be needed back at work, and he would have to return to fighting on Britain's behalf, but the thought of you not being at home to greet him when he finished, or him not being able to pick you up in one of his cars from the Yard to take you both home made him feel a sense of disappointment. He shook himself from his thoughts when you emerged from the bathroom fully dressed.

"On second thoughts, I may take the risk. I'm not sure I can have members of the general public associating me with a Sex Pistols fan, no matter how humerous you may believe that top to be." You walked out proudly wearing your 'God Save the Queen' t-shirt with a grin. "You are aware tha-"

"That when the Sex Pistols released their song 'God Save the Queen' in 1977 it was around the same time of The Queen's silver jubilee and thus it was banned for a while on the premise of being 'bad gross taste'? You've only mentioned it every time I wear this shirt.. Though if your research extended enough then you'd know Paul Cook said it wasn't written specifically FOR the jubilee.. So if one of Lizzie's spies catch me in the act, I shall make a very sincere apology." Mycroft took his own clothes into the bathroom to get ready himself and scoffed.

"But I AM one of 'Lizzie's Spies'." He mused, leaning slightly against the doorframe after settling the outfit on the counter. You turned around on your heel and stood up on your tiptoes, pushed him more forcefully against the doorframe and placed your hands on Mycroft's cheeks, pressing your lips softly against his. His shock subsided before he kissed you tentatively, his hand resting on your lower back. You pulled away after a moment and ushered him into the bathroom to get ready, closing the door behind you and leaving him still slightly red faced and confused.

"Consider that my sincere apology." You headed over to the dresser and began to tie up your hair. "But hurry up, I'm starving." You called, moving the hairbrush too low and brushing against your bruise, making you wince loudly. From the bathroom, you heard Mycroft's voice before the sound of him brushing his teeth.

"Head?"

"Well I was thinking more along the lines of breakfast, but who knows what the day will bring." You heard the sound of Mycroft choking on his toothpaste and wished to whatever deity out there that you could have seen his face. Yes, you had promised to try and be less overbearing with your comments but he walked into that one. You grinned and sat down on the side of the bed, briefly scanning through your phone before Mycroft emerged, his face still burnt a red as deep as the burgundy sweatshirt he had paired with his outfit. The fact he had come out at all at least let you know that your joke hadn't taken it too far.

"You're a minx."

"And you wouldn't change it. Now let's go!"

---

Only 20 minutes later had you both be found sitting comfortably in Ms Woodall's cafe, tucking into your respective meals- with you noticing, but not commenting on, Mycroft eating comfortably until the last bite of toast was gone, a sense of pride warming within you. Not too long after, Bernice herself headed over to clear up your tables.

"I trust everything was up to standard?" She asked, piling your plates onto her little trolley and offering top ups on your drinks.

"Splendid as usual, Ms Woodall." Mycroft smiled, accepting his new cup of tea and cradling it comfortably between his long fingers.

"Still proving to be our favourite place for breakfast." You praised, your hand reaching out to fondly brush against Mycroft's before taking your coffee into hand. Bernice watched your movements and raised her brow knowingly.

"Took the pair of you long enough. I had been half tempted to abstain from feeding you here until I got one of you to say something, it had started making me feel a bit sick watching you eye each other up each time you'd get up to order something." You rested your elbow on the table, hand covering your mouth as you let out a laugh.

"Yes, well, I can't promise you the ogling will stop on my behalf." You teased.

"And why should it? Mr Holmes in those posh little outfits is enough to make anyone swoon." And with that she had headed back out into the kitchen again.

"There you go, Myc. Should anything happen to me, my replacement is only round the corner."

"Mmm, and she does make a rather good cup of tea. Perhaps I shouldn't wait that long." His lip raised slightly in a smirk as he took a sip of his hot beverage.

"Oh really? Need I start getting possessive; stand my ground?" Before Mycroft could quip back, Ms Woodall had returned with a plate of biscuits in hand.

"Means you've already answered my next question, anywho." She hummed, placing the plate down between you and perching on the corner of the table beside yours. The pair of you gave her a questioning look and she continued, pointing up to her own forehead. "Tony and I were just as bad at the start of our marriage. Anywhere and everywhere we could get our hands on each other, I ended up with bumps and scrapes from alleys, the backs of cars, even in that one restaurant toilet that time.." You choked on your coffee and Mycroft all but dropped his teacup. "Oh don't act so ignorant, even us oldies had sex in their time." Your eyes caught Mycroft's and you could see him stifling down a laugh, biting softly on his knuckle- which, in itself, shouldn't have been as attractive to you as it was, but it is what it is.

"And with that thought, we best be off. Got a movie date planned." You commented, coughing down your own laugh as Bernice continued.

"Though to be fair it never stopped, all that spontaneity. Even towards the end, he could be like a lad of nineteen with how it was. God the positions, you'd have mistaken me for a gymnast and he could last for ages. I'd just lie there wondering 'will this pleasure never end'?" You could feel tears prick at your eyes as your laughter began to break through. "And then of course once Tony passed a couple years ago it all stopped. Shame really, all those years together, ending how it did.. Though sometimes I'm not sure if it's him that I miss or his massiv-"

"Ms Woodall we really should be going, thank you for breakfast." Mycroft hastily threw a few £20 notes on the table, far too much to cover your meal but enough to distract Bernice while tugging your hand and beelining for the door. Once safely distanced from the apparent nymphomaniac cafe owner you had to stop in your tracks to let out a laugh, Mycroft's hand still in yours as you doubled over.

"I can't believe she said that! She's so open."

"Evidently." Mycroft's comment set you off again, his laughter following, ignoring how you caught the attention of a few people passing by. "I do hope you are in no rush for breakfast there again any time soon, I don't think I can look her in the eye for a good while."

"Still so sure on replacing me with her so soon? I think she'd break you."

"Or turn me into a whore." You snorted and settled back to walking.

---

"Drink?"

"Please. Tea, hold the sexual history."

"I'll try my very best, though, much like my tea, I imagine my list would be abysmal in comparison to old Ms Woodall." You flicked on the kettle, eager to replace the half drunk coffee you had discarded on the cafe table in your escape from listening about pensioner sex. "Will you load up the movie?"

"No. But I shall get the film ready to go.. How the American dialect found its way back to England will never fail to disappoint me." You had followed him into the room shortly after, mugs on the table and settled on the sofa beside Mycroft.

"You know, typically, when people elect for a movie day, they don't choose the tenth movie in the series to watch first." You grinned, tucking your legs beneath your body in an attempt to get comfortable. You continued your shuffling movements and heard Mycroft's voice.

"I believe we both agree that Carry On Cleo is the superior of the 31 movies for, well, a multitude of reasons." He trailed.

"I shan't object. It's sweet that you remember it's the first one we watched together.. Had it not been for you hearing Kenneth's famous 'Infamy, infamy' line persuading you to come over, I fear that I'd have been set up with one of Greg's mates by now, sitting in a pub nursing a G+T."

"I never said I remembered that."

"You didn't have to. You and I both know that your favourite was always Carry on Camping."

"Yes, well.. Opinions change with experience."

"Is this our equivalent of a patronus? Yours has changed and matched with mine? Very cute, Myc. Might I expect you in a 'Never Mind the Bollocks' shirt next week?" You teased, electing to lay down with your head lightly using Mycroft's thigh as a pillow, feeling grateful when he didn't shove you off with a comment about ruining the linen of his trousers, and instead took to softly brushing his fingers over your head, narrowly missing the purple bump each time.

"You'd have better chances of catching me running naked down the street."

"Is that a promise?" A flick to your forehead.

"Just play the bloody film."

---

By the time the film had finished, your cheeks had hurt from smiling and your eyelids had felt heavy. Whilst getting up at a reasonable hour had felt like an achievement this morning, the lack of sleep from the previous night was beginning to catch up to you.

"Myc? Would it be entirely improper to nap on the sofa when there are multiple reasonable beds upstairs before continuing our films?"

"Only about as improper as it is to have a midday nap when you're not a young child." You shifted your head from his lap and sat up, ignoring the fact that you actually did end up ruining the linen of his trousers with the crease of your skull.

"Let me rephrase. Mycroft, would you be willing to break your proper posh boy streak and nap with me on the sofa?"

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to deviate from one's usual behaviours in order to satisfy those one holds dear."

"That's a yes, right? Good, lay down, else I may just collapse right at this moment." Mycroft's sofa certainly was a significantly bit bigger than those usually found in somebody's front room, but it was still nowhere near wide enough for two people to lay with distance. Even still, he followed your request and rotated his body, lifting his long legs to rest down the side of the sofa while you slid into the gap beside him. He eventually circled his arm beneath you and rested his hand on your hip, your face softly brushing against the comforting material of his jumper. "If you drop me, I will be holding you accountable." You mumbled, shifting your body closer to his. He merely hummed, his hand slightly bunching in your shirt and his arm tightening. "I'd always hoped you were secretly a cuddler."

"Make a point of it or tell Sherlock and I'll throw you off." You couldn't even think of a witty comeback before your slumber had taken over, the smell of Mycroft and the sounds of him breathing overstimulating your senses. Mycroft being a secret cuddler hadn't been as much of a shock to you as it probably should have, but you welcome it completely and feel incredibly thankful that he trusts you enough to let you be that close to him, to feel his body in such a way. And you would embrace that- and him- as long as he would let you.

[curseofbreadbear]

[Cassidy fearfully shuddered as the rabbit suddenly shifted gears; she stared in horror as his gaze met his knife, which gave off an intimidating sheen. An involuntary sob escaped her as she imagined what he might do with it, whether her death would be swift and painless or...the opposite. As much as the man reassured her now, using Bonnie's all-too-familiar cadence to give her a false sense of security, she knew that he was lying to her...again.]

[Still, Cassidy was a child. She wasn't impervious to this emotional manipulation, and despite EVERYTHING, part of her desperately wanted to believe that Bonnie -- her friend -- had genuinely returned. The inner workings of the animatronics were a mystery to her, so surely it was possible that Bonnie was here to save her from the evil man wearing his costume, right?]

[Or maybe that was wishful thinking. Her throat tightened as he insisted on a high-five, as though that would erase what just happened. Besides...he was still holding that knife. So long as there was a weapon in his paw, she wouldn't touch him.]

[Tragically, Cassidy had no power in this situation -- what followed was likely an inevitability. She shrieked as the golden rabbit dragged her closer by the leg, nicking her with his knife as he did so. Her face scrunched up in pain; she wailed loudly, but hushed herself not long after, instinctively reducing her shrieks to a whimper. It was counter-intuitive now, a TERRIBLE response to have developed when she needed to cry loud enough for somebody to help.]

[To him, it would surely appear that she was accepting her fate -- but as bleak as the situation was, she wasn't ready to give up. She still wanted to live. The life she had out there was only marginally better than this, but...it was life. She was just a kid.]

[She could barely muster the strength to do so, but she clawed backwards, fighting against the unusually strong grip on her leg. It didn't get her anywhere in the end, and soon enough, she was back to crying. He'd probably appreciate how much she was stifling her sobs, at least...her parents always did.]

❝ I-I don't wanna be cheered up... ❞ [That act of his definitely wasn't working anymore, not now that she had been harmed. Bonnie wouldn't have reacted the way he just did, like it was an "oopsie" -- a silly, inconsequential mistake. Bonnie cared, but this man didn't.] ❝ ...I just wanna go home. ❞

[Now, there was a sentiment that she rarely expressed. If she craved the "sanctuary" of her home, then she really was in a rough spot. Cassidy sniffled and buried her head in her hands; she pictured going home to parents who would actually hold and console her after a traumatic experience like this, but even she knew that there would be no solace at home. She had nothing and no one.]

CHRIST, SHE REALLY WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A HEADACHE. Irate, William stares down at her, the monster under every child’s bed, writ large — unimpressed by the sobs and pleas. The girl is pathetic to him. Frozen in place, curled up, begging to the mascot most found endearing — oh, if only they knew the truth about it!

“Kill you?” He repeats, glancing down at his knife. It gleams dully, commiserating what is to come: it only sets his resolve in concrete. “Oh, no, no, I’m not going to kill you. I’m your best friend, Spring Bonnie!” The accent, the theatrics, the character… it’s all so easy to slip into. Like wearing a coat. It’s unnerving to most, but William has always been at home behind a mask. He’s in his element here. “Say, you’re not frightened of me, are you? Why don’t you come here — let me give you a big high five to cheer you up!”

And he advances: chuckling to himself at his own antics, oh, William, that’s good: makes this whole experimenting thing a little less boring. With surprising speed for the weight of his suit, he is bending down to grab hold of her leg, yank her a little closer to him. The knife in his hand slices into her as he does so: an accident, but he hadn’t exactly been trying to be careful. “Whoops! I suppose even Bonnie can be clumsy. Let’s get you all cheered up.”

CONTINUED. / @curseofbreadbear

[brodependent]

Sam loves Dean as much as Dean loves Sam: a meta

Much as I love reading good meta, I don’t often write meta. Thus please accept my apologies if this is mediocre, and let me start with a simple topic sentence:

Sam loves Dean as much as Dean loves Sam.

A little longer, now: Sam is even better at loving Dean than Dean is at loving Sam because of Dean’s profound and abiding love for Sam.

Confusing, right? But not really.

We all know how Dean lives and breathes SammySammySammywatchoutforSammy. It’s his defining mission, his ultimate purpose, or, as a therapist might say, his “core belief.” But sometimes I think that we allow adult!Dean too little autonomy. We assume that he can’t help himself: he’s locked into this single-minded focus, on loving and protecting the only family he has left.

That sells Dean short. (Hang in there, I promise I’ll get to Sam in a moment.)

Even people who have been forced into a certain way of life have choices. Even people who have been told who they are all their life have choices. Dean tells us, in Season 14, I’m good with who I am--and I, for one, believe him. Whether we follow canon all the way to 15x17, when Dean is finally brought back from the edge of his desire for revenge against Chuck by his love for Sam (the only thing that’s “real”), or whether we keep to season 1 when Dean said--that’s all we have...that’s all I have... and I want us to be a family again and as long as I’m around, nothing bad is gonna happen to you--Dean has always accepted his role as Sam’s big brother. Dean’s life is unabashedly Sam-centric. He’d change a lot of things, but in the end he’d change nothing, because he wouldn’t change that. 

Some fans get very het up about the codependent aspect of this. Others (in my opinion, rightly) defend it. There’s scads of meta on why the Winchester dynamic IS necessary for their mythic role in the narrative, and their human role in the narrative (more importantly), so I won’t write that meta now. All I’m saying is what I think you already know: Dean lives for Sam, his baby brother, and despite the grief, the growing pains, the occasional cruelty of desperate love, Dean said it all when he told Sam (and us), Don’t you ever think that there is anything, past or present that I would put in front of you.

So where does that leave Sam, and his love for Dean? Let’s start with that line I just quoted. Building on the above, Dean’s goal in life is to give Sam a life. He wants Sam to be happy. He wants him to be free. He also wants to keep him by his side forever, to control him for safety and comfort’s sake, and sometimes those instincts of a frightened-child-turned-traumatized-man win out. Dean isn’t perfect. Dean’s full of contradictions. But time and again he goes back to stone number one: what he can do for Sam. What he can offer Sam, by being the grunt, by standing in harm’s way. 

When we begin the story, Sam has succeeded in the path Dean helped carve for him. I’m not taking all the credit from Sam here, and giving it Dean: merely pointing out that Dean stepped into traditional parental roles and helped send Sam into adulthood, even though that meant Sam leaving him. We know that the night Sam left for Stanford was one of the worst of Dean’s life, but even in mid-season 1, Dean tells Sam he’s proud of him. You always know what you want. You stand up to Dad. Hell, sometimes I wish I--

(this, of course, is beautifully echoed in the series finale itself)

Dean is telling Sam what so many parents tell their children: you have gone places I never could, accomplished goals I never could, grown in grace and understanding like I never could. At least, I like to think that’s what the best parents tell their children.

To Dean, Sam is always the one with more hope. More wholeness. More options. To Sam, Dean is stone number one. 

You asked how Sam loves Dean, and my answer is: just look. Look at how Sam goes out into the world young, stands up to their father, makes his own decisions, fights back against Dean’s own nihilistic narrative through their primary losses and setbacks. Dean gave Sam the safety to build a better worldview than Dean himself has, and Sam turns that right back around and tries to give it to Dean. 

What do you think my job is? You’re my big brother--there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. 

I can’t lose you.

You’re not a grunt, Dean, you’re a genius.

This is my life. I love it. But I can’t do it without my brother. I don’t want to do it without my brother.

I am going to save my brother. And then I’m going to kill you dead.

If you ever need to talk about anything with anybody, you got somebody right here next to you.

I believe in us.

This is just a small collection of Sam quotes showing his love for Dean. A small collection showing the persistent theme of Sam’s persistence. He knows that pushing chick-flick moments and emotional conversations can get jokes for a dime a dozen, and even the occasional punch thrown his way. He keeps at it anyway. When Sam knows Dean’s hurting, he wants to help. He’d do anything to help. He won’t sit around and see his brother turn into an embittered killer (season 2), go to hell for saving his life (season 3), take on the Trials (season 8), be irrevocably corrupted by the Mark of Cain (seasons 9-10), let him despair (seasons 11 and 13), let him sacrifice himself to an archangel’s grave (season 14), or let him lose his goodness to the whims of a vicious god (season 15). Sam fights for Dean with full use of his considerable gifts--intelligence, rationality, resourcefulness, and yes, the occasional blind rage. Sam looks to Dean, first as a leader, then as a judge, and finally as an equal. Sam has been looking up to Dean since he was four, yes, but over the course of the show he comes to look at Dean. With love, peace, understanding, humor, pain...whatever their inimitable connection requires.

The quotes I noted above also reveal Sam’s own conflicts rear up. Sam and Dean (again, in my opinion) are equally developed characters. Both have flaws and inconsistencies. Both have struggles inherent to their personalities and upbringings, distinct from those imposed on them by supernatural forces. 

Sam had a glimpse of a different life, once. He had the smarts, he had the drive, he had the sheer stubbornness to live a different life than John or Azazel or hell, even Lucifer had planned for him. But also in Sam--innate in Sam--is his core of goodness and compassion and the principle of doing right, which leads him back into the life and to soul-crushing sacrifice again and again.

Sam breaks and is broken. Sam suffers and ages and spends more time in hell than even Dean, who went to protect him.

But what keeps Sam going? Dean. Dean can’t live without Sam. We know that. The flip side is that Sam doesn’t want to live without Dean. Importantly, I think, he has more choice in the matter. Dean focused his whole childhood identity on giving Sam a life that meant he had choices, even if Dean didn’t know he was doing that. Sam can move through more crowds, more roles, more relationships. He has a better education, he has a more powerful ability to intellectually reason and detach. He would have made a great lawyer. Yet he casts all this aside out of sheer willpower, choosing instead to love Dean and live with Dean through the chaos of their lives, and to go near mad when Dean is gone. Consider Sam in season 4, Sam in season 10...Sam in season 8 trying to atone for the very choice that Dean (the best part of Dean) wanted him to make, even if the real muddle of Dean’s psyche couldn’t forgive him, for a time, for making it.

All of this leads us to the finale. 

You said you wish Sam had said I love you back to Dean in the finale. I argue that he did. He made his love perfectly clear to Dean in that moment by holding his hand, by looking in his eyes. He said, you can go now, when all he wanted was for Dean to stay. 

The best part of Dean wanted Sam to have happiness and freedom. At the end of his life, Dean was finally able to communicate that without fear or reservation. 

But the bittersweet brilliance of that moment is that Sam--the Stanford boy who went to hell and back, who saved the world, brought down one god and raised another--no longer wanted any kind of happiness or freedom that didn’t include the one person who’d been by his side all along. Dean was giving his blessing for a path that didn’t beckon Sam anymore. And yet: Sam said yes to it out of the love for Dean. Sam went out of that barn, out of the bunker, out of that day and that year and that decade and into the next and the next, out of love for Dean. Sam loved Dean by living. He loved Dean by raising another Winchester. He loved Dean by holding all their contradictions, flaws, and heroisms in his heart (in their car), until he’d done what he set out to do many times over. 

Then he met Dean on a mended bridge, dressed in old clothes that said: I was happiest at the beginning. I was happiest when we could be brothers again. I took my time getting here anyway, because I know that was what you wanted. I took my time so that we could be happiest now.

If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

[linkspooky]

That’s What Makes Us Heroes and Villains

All the way back in the aftermath of the Stain Arc, Dabi and Himiko were the first new recruits introduced for the League of Villains. The three of them together, Shigaraki, Dabi, and Himiko are a trio. Effectively the three main characters of the villain side of the story. They are all three of them, traumatized children who were thrown out by society, and are now fighting back against it. They’ve been pushed out further and further until all three of them came to the same conclusion: Heroes are in the way. 

Dabi: “There are no true Heroes.” 

Shigaraki: “You heroes hurt your own families just to help complete strangers.” 

Toga: “You heroes mess everything up.” 

All three of them are children screaming the same thing at the heroes, trying to get somebody to listen only to be ignored. Shigaraki, Dabi, Himiko were all driven to become villains because of hero society. They became villains because heroes existed in the first place. 

A meta on the villain trio under the cut. 

1. Monsters

Shigaraki, Dabi, and Himiko are all introduced to us as monstrous villains who slowly become human over time. Their development is effectively then in reverse of the main heroes. The heroes we sympathize with right away because they’re introduced to us as innocent kids. We see the villains as violent monsters first before the curtain is pulled back and it’s revealed they started out as children all along. 

When the three are introduced they have no affection for one another. Shigaraki even calls them “the two types I hate most.” There’s no trust, as the first thing the three do is try to kill each other. 

We’re introduced to them at their lowest point. All three of them are in a bad place effectively. Himiko has been on the run for months, Dabi has been who knows where, and Shigaraki has had two successive failures in his attacks on both Stain and USJ. 

Their cooperation in the Camp Raid arc is begrudging at best. This goes for the whole league of villains, (Spinner and Magne end up making things harder for each other, Several members get captured) they seem to be working against each other as much as they are working together.

Shigaraki, Dabi and Himiko were all effectively traumatized by the same thing, being cast out from hero society. However, in this arc they all have vastly different desires that make working together difficult. Dabi wants to fulfill Stain’s Will, Shigaraki wants to take down All Might and Hero Society at large to show how fragile it is, Himiko wants to take down Hero Society for the sake of her easier life. 

They are not at this point motivated to work together at all and it shows in their cooperation.Dabi doesn’t really make any attempt to lead. Shigaraki just watches from the sidelines and sends out other people on a mission where he doesn’t really care much if they succeed or fail.  Himiko doesn’t try that hard to complete her mission objective because at this point all she cares about is her own survival. 

However after the defeat of All for One, the league of villains ends up all experiencing the same traumatizing loss together. They all become disenfranchised, living off of no money, and constantly having to be on the run. They lose all of their resources. However, as a reuslt their bonds with one another are strengthened and they really are working together for the first time. 

Himiko isn’t just looking out for herself anymore. Not only does she not run away when things get hard, but she encourages Twice to do the same because she empathizes with his feelings. 

Shigaraki goes from ordering people around in the shadows to not only meeting with his comrades face to face. He also has become the type of fighter who jumps straight into enemy fire on the front line for the sake of his comrades, using his own body as a distraction so he could work together with Compress and Dabi. 

And remember, Dabi’s flames physically destroy his body every time he uses them. Yet, he respects Shigaraki’s leadership enough that he goes all out for the sake of the league when he’s asked to. If Dabi didn’t care about the league at all, he probably wouldn’t be constantly burning himself alive for their sakes. 

All three humanize one another through their relationships with each other, Shigaraki values his comrades lives more than his own, Dabi cooperates with other people for the sake of his goal, Himiko’s empathic side began to show all because the three of them were for the first time surrounded by people who were just like them. 

When shown empathy and understanding, Dabi, Shigaraki and Himiko all improve as people. They are not lost causes the plot has shown us the opposite, they’re capable of growing and changing. However, they are just as capable of GETTING WORSE. 

2. Bad Children

Shigaraki, Himiko and Dabi all share the same origin. They were pushed to become villains because of what happened to them as children. They are the only three members of the league who have been shown as children, deliberately so, because the fact that this happened to them as children is what is so important to their narratives. 

Himiko was born with a weird quirk, and that was it. She didn’t even show problematic behavior that far off of most children (most children don’t have the empathy to know that say, small animals will suffer pain if you hurt them) before her parents started to punish her. Tenko just wanted to be a hero and had a father with a grudge against heros when his punishment started. When he was in the streets begging for help the only thing he was guilty of was having a quirk  that activated on accident. Touya was bred by his father for the purpose of his quirk, and because of that had to grow up in a household where his mother was constantly crying and his father either ignored him as a failed experiment, or paid attention to him which would have made his life even worse. 

It’s not just a sad backstory for all three of them, it’s a case of systemic failure. Systems that should have protected them did not. The reason we’re shown this happening to them when they were children before they did anything wrong was that the narrative most heroes have is villains choose to be evil and there’s no helping it. 

However, this happened to Dabi, Shigaraki and Himiko through no choice of their own. They were all helpless children when they survived these circumstances. The argument that “They could have tried to endure and become heroes” doesn’t work either, because all three of them did try to endure. 

They all at one time or another made an attempt to be good children. They tried to reach their parent’s expectations for them. They tried to swallow up the abuse that was hurled on them and live with other people. 

They were all children who were being abused, and told to just go on with their lives, told not to cry, told to suck it up. Instead of trying to fix or even address the circumstances of their abuse all of their pain was effectively ignored. Shigaraki, Himiko, being children DID TRY to live exactly as the adults told them to. They tried to be “Good Children” under the standards of adults, and they couldn’t be. 

That’s the reality of living in an abusive household like the one Tenko grew up in. No matter what he had done, he would have been punished. He was the problem child, the scapegoat for his father’s abuse. Rather than tell the father to stop abusing the child, the child is held responsible for the behavior and told that they were at fault for provoking punishment. 

Before you use Shoto as an example of still wanting to be a hero after enduring abuse, here’s the difference. Shoto didn’t die. Touya did. 

All three of them were cast out before they did anything wrong. Are they still responsible for the choices they made as adults? Yes. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge that all three of these characters did attempt to try making the right choices and they still got cast out anyway. It’s not because they were good or bad children. It’s because society was designed to reject people like them. 

RHA TRANSLATION: That’s how the muck gets cast out. That’s how they break and retaliate. That’s how it loops back, again, and again, and again. 

The translations are radically different this week I’m not sure which one is right, but they are vaguely talking about the same cycle. Shigaraki, Dabi, Himiko were rejected before they did anything wrong. They were forced to endure all of this as children. They gained power to survive and began to fight back. They retaliated against the violence done to them as children as adults. Then, they are punished again. 

It is a cycle where both people are acting badly. Shigaraki, Himiko, and Dabi drag innocent people into the conflict, because all they can think of to wake people up to the reality of their suffering is to make them endure the same. To show the world the violence they’ve endured on a mass scale, until it becomes impossible for those who are sheltered and protected by society, those who are saved to ignore the problems of those who aren’t saved. Shigaraki, Dabi and Himiko get innocent people involved it’s true.

HOWEVER. Were they not innocents at any point? Were they not just children who had not done anything wrong? 

And we return to the Tenko household. Shigaraki, Himiko, Dabi are all responsible for their violent reactions to the problem, that was the choice they made. However, they weren’t the ones who created the situation in the first place.

Villains are held as responsible for all of society’s ills. We are told by heroes that villains choose to become evil, and that the only way to stop them is to violently suppress their activities. However all of these villains for the most part, are outcasts who hold no real power in society, and all have yes made choices to retaliate violently but were also pushed into those choices. 

The society around them is designed to exclude people like Shigaraki, Himiko and Dabi. THE PROBLEM ELEMENT, is ignored rather than addressed. 

What Shigaraki is saying here is that heroes don’t protect the people most in need of their protection, the biggest victims. They are designed to protect a status quo. 

Heroes protect the institutions that are already in place, no matter how cracked or flawed those institutions are. they keep them in place. They are fighting to preserve a power structure that keeps heroes in power. The ones who have the power in society are the heroes. The ones who create society are the heroes. The ones who create the situation are the heroes. The villains in MHA are reacting to the problem, but they didn’t create the problem. 

3. Twice

Dabi, Shigaraki and Himiko all have an incredibly important relationship to Twice. Dabi shows up to try to save Twice, even though he states he doesn’t care about the league. Himiko opens up to Twice and empathizes with him. Shigaraki goes to save Giran because Twice asked him to, and opened up to his team for the first time because of Twice’s begging and pleas. 

The scene we see play out with Twice is what happened to Shigaraki, Himiko and Dabi as well. Twice is given an impossible choice. He can conform and sacrifice all of his friends to go with Hawks, or he can die right here. Once again, yes it is a choice. I must emphasize everything is a choice. The choice to retaliate is still a choice even if it’s influenced by the environment. However, this is a choice effectively made with a gun to Twice’s head. 

What’s interesting is, when given the choice between betraying the people closest to him or getting shot in the head. Twice chooses to take the bullet. 

As I said everything is a choice. Even an influenced choice is a choice. If someone is holding a gun to your head, you can just choose to die. You might be stuck in a situation where there are only bad choices, but it’s still a choice you make. 

I emphasize choices over and over again, because somebody chose to make the world this way. 

They exist in a system where villains are held accountable for all of their violence, their choices, and heroes are not. Heroes can effectively get away with murder as we’ve been shown with Hawks and Tokoyami. 

I’d also like to emphasize that the villains make these choices while directly facing all of the flaws of society. The heroes for the most part are completely ignorant to the suffering of villains. We are shown this ignorance again and again. The villains attempt to explain themselves, their motivations and reasonings, and every time they are literally ignored. 

Heroes and Villains both make choices, but Heroes are completely blind to their own faults. When they are told about the cracks of society by people who have lived through that, they effectively ignore the role they had to play in it. Twice tries to explain he can’t betray his friends to Hawks, that they’re all capable of being good people and he gets ignored. Shigaraki explains to Endeavor that his father told him heroes hurt their own families, he gets ignored. Endeavor’s case is especially EGREGIOUS. Endeavor who should be more aware of his own flaws than anybody else, still pretends to be the perfect faultless hero. 

Heroes and Villains are both responsible for creating this flawed world, but the villains are held responsible, and the heroes are not. Heroes are given special privilege in society, Villains are mostly made up by the underprivileged and cast out. Society, is intentionally designed to divide up people like this and categorize one over the other. 

And I think it’s especially important that every time Shigaraki tries to get someone to listen to him he gets told the same thing. Endeavor believes he is a good person fighting to protect others. He claims that he is the hero, fighting against someone who only hollowly wishes to destroy. Shigaraki tries to explain himself, he even makes a reference to familial abuse which Endeavor SHOULD RECOGNIZE and Endeavor’s response is to tell him to shut up and die. 

Shigaraki, Dabi, and Himiko are wrong for violently retaliating, but every time they make any attempt to explain themselves they’re rejected just as violently. They are told, like they were when they were just children, to just shut up and take it. Shigaraki is told by Nana, Endeavor, Gran Torino everyone around him to die rather than fight back, is it no wonder he believes the whole system rejects him? 

It is an unfair system to begin with, deliberately designed to uplift a few people into privilege and cast others out. 

Heroes act like the few people who don’t get saved are just bad luck, but it’s not. Good social programs would have saved Twice. Social services would have saved Himiko. All Might realizing Endeavor was an abusive jerk would have saved Touya. If Gran Torino had checked up on Nana’s child, Shigaraki would not have happened. 

All of these kids “just got unlucky” except the society they live in was designed to outcast certain people like them from the start. It’s meant to let people fall through the cracks. In each case it wasn’t bad luck, but rather intentional neglect of all parties involved. 

Twice is told what happened to him was bad luck, but Twice didn’t slip and fall  on a knife. He was put into the situation intentionally by Hawks. Hawks singled him out, targeted him, pushed him to the breaking point, and then killed him. The one who had power and the upper hand in that situation was Hawks from the start, but Twice is blamed for his own death for merely fighting back. 

The connection between Shigaraki, Dabi, and Himiko is that they’re pushed to become more and more radical over time. Himiko had killed a few people yeah, but she wasn’t a terrorist on a mass scale. 

Dabi had no criminal record when he started. He only started killing people to make the news  when his father became the number one hero. The more they are rejected, the more radical they become. 

All three of them have become radicalized by the death of Twice, and all three say effectively the same thing. 

Dabi: “There are no true Heroes.”

Shigaraki: “You heroes hurt your own families just to help complete strangers.”

Toga: “You heroes mess everything up.”

Why do they blame heroes? It’s because heroes are the guardians of the society that rejects them. Heroes do not protect people, they protect systems and structures first and foremost. The heroes aren’t coming to save them and they never were. 

[anakinisvaderisanakin]

Anakin is to blame for his fall.

Anakin bears final blame for his state of being.

It is true that he was raised fatherless as a slave, taken away from his mother and only security while only nine years old to be raised by a religious group he knew nothing of prior to meeting one of its practitioners.

It is true that he was met with skepticism and suspicion upon arriving, being deemed too old to train and thus picked on my his peers.

It is true that his relationship with his master was rocky, and that Obi-Wan could not be outspoken and honest about his love for his apprentice.

It is true that his fears were realized when his nightmares about his mother’s death became reality, and that he was overtly prevented from coming to her aid.

It is true that he was was required to bury his volatile emotions underneath the surface, to shut up and never bring them up and let them go.

It is true that despite being married to a loving wife, he had to hide the marriage from the public and live with a secret he knew may ruin his reputation and sever his connection to the order.

It is true that he did stand up for Ahsoka, that he did want the best for his own apprentice while she was being falsely accused of murder.

It is true that Anakin was barely even an adult when he fell to the Dark Side, terrified of losing Padmé, of losing their children of knowing that the nightmares may once again come true unless he acted to prevent it.

It is true that Palpatine manipulated and groomed Anakin all the while, sensing both his power and his vulnerability and feeding off of his weaknesses.

It is true that the Jedi did not have the tools to aid Anakin, or to give him the psychiatric help he would have needed in order to function within society given his traumatic childhood and difficult upbringing.

But it was Anakin who would not trust his loved ones, who would not believe they had the best intentions. It was Anakin who adhered to Palpatine’s constant reassurance of his greatness, his value, his power.

Ahsoka explained why she left, that she couldn’t trust the order that had not stood up for her - but Anakin still took it personally, as if she was abandoning him and without taking her feelings into the equation.

The Jedi order were clear with their rules, they put up guidelines and restrictions to follow, and Anakin still broke them.

Obi-Wan may not have been able to profess his love for Anakin out loud, but if Anakin had taken the time, he would have noticed and realized that Obi-Wan did love him - and that in spite of the fact that Obi-Wan knew he was not supposed to develop emotional attachments.

Padmé may have been selfish and codependent on Anakin and much as he was on her, and she did condone and forgive his murdering an entire village - but she did put her foot down when it went too far, and she did tell Anakin that she loved him and would have forgiven him once more despite knowing he had murdered children if he had only listened to her.

But Anakin didn’t listen. Anakin never listened. Anakin is a loving and emotional man, yes, but he is also hopelessly inept when it comes to taking the people he loves’ feelings into account. 

Anakin loves Ahsoka, therefore she should stay with the order even if it’s not fair to her. Anakin loves Obi-Wan, therefore Obi-Wan should always praise him and be openly proud and verbally supportive of him. Anakin loves Padmé, therefore she should always forgive and support him whatever he does, even if that includes killing innocent people. Anakin loves his mother, therefore killing an entire village in cold blood as revenge is a fair retribution.

Anakin loves Ahsoka, but her state of mind is worth less than Anakin’s. Anakin loves Obi-Wan, but his dedication to the order and to himself is worth less than Anakin’s need for validation. Anakin loves Padmé, but her unrelenting love and forgiveness doesn’t matter if she won’t follow him to the end of the line.

Anakin promises to save his mother, and he does come for her but it’s too late. Anakin promises to clear Ahsoka’s name, and he does but she rejects the order either way. Anakin is bashful upon learning that Obi-Wan is proud of him, but he still second guesses and doubts the sincerity behind it. Anakin promises Padmé he will save her, although she doesn’t care if she dies as long as her child(ren) lives and Anakin can’t accept that.

Anakin doesn’t care if Ahsoka, Obi-Wan or Padmé are happy or satisfied with any outcome. What Anakin cares about is his world, his feelings, his own satisfaction.

Anakin isn’t an inherently selfish man, and he doesn’t pressure people and demand their all because he’s callous. Anakin simply never learnt how to deal with healthy relationships, he only had his mother and during his formative years, he was Obi-Wan’s padawan - and Obi-Wan was distant, despite his attempts at breaking the ice.

Now, Obi-Wan being distant does not put the blame on him. Ahsoka leaving the order does not put the blame on her. Padmé enabling Anakin’s violent tendencies does not put the blame on her. The Jedi order following their religion and imposing it upon Anakin who did wish to become a Jedi does not put the blame on them.

Could Obi-Wan have been more nurturing? Yes, but Anakin still demanded more than he could give. 

Could Ahsoka have stayed in contact with Anakin after leaving the order? Yes, but her wanting to put some distance between herself and the Jedi is understandable and valid. 

Could Padmé have protested and given Anakin ultimatums when he committed atrocities? Yes, but her seeing the best in Anakin at all times came from a place of love, not a wish to condone murder or violence. 

Could the order have given Anakin some leniency and offered him therapy instead of asking him to hide his emotions? Yes, but they simply followed their teachings and expected Anakin to be able to do the same.

Anakin had no easy life, no simple choices - but he did have the choice when it came to Palpatine. Still, if anybody outside of Anakin influenced, coursed and shares the blame, it’s Palpatine. Palpatine is what Anakin is inherently not - he is a cruel, ambitious, evil man.

Anakin is selfish, Anakin wants love, Anakin wants to save the people he loves. Sure, it’s for his own gain, but he still wants to be good. He has good intentions as much as they are driven by personal investment. Palpatine cares for no one but himself. Any kindness Palpatine showed Anakin is a lie and a hoax and a bluff. Palpatine preyed upon Anakin’s insecurities. Palpatine manipulated a lost young boy desperate for approval and a father figure. 

But at the end of the day, Anakin had a choice. Do I understand why he chose Palpatine and the Dark Side? Yes. Do I understand how his fear drove him to desperate measures? Yes. Do I understand how the high of his new powers snared him? Yes. Do I understand why he believed in Palpatine above the Jedi order? Yes.

But Anakin’s self serving attitude is revealed when instead of saving Padmé, instead of running away with her so she can be safe - what he was initially fighting for - he chokes her, harms her, contributes to her demise. Anakin’s selfishness is his downfall, and that’s where the blame lies with him.

As soon as he dons the cape and mask, he accepts this new living hell he’s trapped within - because deep down, he knows he deserves no less. He ruined his own life, he destroyed the Jedi order, he drove away Obi-Wan (and Ahsoka), and he killed Padmé. Vader isn’t a different person. Vader is Anakin, and Anakin knows what he deserves is suffering, and pain, and torment.

Anakin deserves being but a husk of the man he once was. What else does he have left, but to serve the man who aided him in his downfall? What else does he have left, but to bring harm and hurt to others so that they may taste a sliver of his internal agony? What else does he have left but the monster he turned himself into? Anakin knows it’s his fault, he knows there is no Vader, he knows he did it all by himself.

Anakin knows he became his own nightmare, and he continues to exist because he knows it’s what he deserves. Anakin does not abandon his old self because he’s no longer Anakin, but because the man he once was is warped and he does not believe he deserves to associate himself with his past. The name ‘Anakin’ stands for life when it was good, and hopeful, and worth living. Anakin can no longer relate to any of those sentiments, and thus ‘Anakin’ is simply not a name he feels worthy of.

Anakin never forgot who he was, he simply accepted that he had gone too far to turn back. He understood that he did not deserve forgiveness, or redemption, and he did not seek it out. Anakin knew Obi-Wan and Padmé and Ahsoka would all have forgiven him, but he could not let them overlook the horrible things he had done.

The irony in his refusing to accept forgiveness and turn around, is that that is perhaps the most selfless decision he could have made. Because when Obi-Wan, Ahsoka and Padmé had tried their hardest, he still would not budge. And that would, in some aspect, at least let them know they did their best and it was not enough. They tried, and failed. Anakin made sure they failed because he did not wish to be saved.

Ahsoka got her chance to stay with him, and make her perceived betrayal right. Padmé never lost her faith in him, even while she lay dying. Obi-Wan let himself be cut down and killed, both to free himself as a Force ghost, but also to let Anakin enact his revenge. They got even, in the end.

Vader is no disease, no second persona, no separate entity. Blaming Anakin’s deeds on Vader as somebody else absolves Anakin and removes the guilt from him. It discredits Anakin, and it cheapens his character. Anakin is not a good man, he is only human. But in the end, despite a life time of poor choices, he makes the right decision. And it’s just as much Anakin saving Luke, as it was Anakin cutting off his hand. It’s just as much Anakin choking Padmé, as it was Anakin marrying her. Anakin did it all.

Anakin alone is to blame for his suffering, and he knows this because there is no Vader. There is only Anakin.