#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

[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,”

[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.

[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.

[beclynn-herondale]

hi! ❤ hope you are well, i'm so happy to know you liked my last robert analysis. it feels very safe and nice to write about him to you, so it makes me really glad that you're enjoying too. forgive me, it took me a while to write this one!

between the points you mentioned, what you said you think about his trauma got my attention first. what you think is right, and i thought it would be a good idea to help you with your conclusions if i explained robert's trauma in details.

to examine it closely, i separate robert's childhood trauma into three parts. i guess we could say he had three different childhood traumas. you probably remember it generally: rune experience, parents, and discrimination. each one was deeply connected to the others but had a different effect in some ways.

1- rune experience: it's kinda hard to people to understand what happened because its horribleness was complex. i'll try to summarize. it was robert's 12th birthday. first of all, robert was being burned alive non-stop. he wasn't having his flesh burned, he was something like "burning inside." how intense the pain was: it consumed his entire being, he lost the ability to think, the pain blocked any thought or memory he could have, so robert didn't know who he was, where he was or what was happening, because all his body/mind/soul were processing was the extreme pain. it was mortal pain, it was supposed to kill robert, he was supposed to die consumed but the burning pain. but it didn't. somehow, while he hadn't the ability to think or feel anything but pain, he had strenght to stay alive in pain instead of die. he was enduring something people shouldn't be able to survive to. in his state where his sould/mind was enduring differently of his body, there were demons, and they tortured robert physically and verbally. then, his family members appeared to him, basically saying he was worthless and should die. he really was supposed to be dead by then, and he could see it, he literally could see hell right waiting for him to finally expire. but it didn't happen. somehow he endured it. now, all of this, lasted one entire month. it's actually hard to imagine someone somehow enduring this for one entire month. i don't think any other character had to endure something like this, except maybe annabel. it's the worse i ever saw happen to a tsc character, it was an entire month. (it's very depressing how nobody could ever understand robert cuz no one else around survived something like this. annabel was tortured, buried alive and then painfully ressurrected, and went literally insane because of it.)

this had multiple consequences to robert. physically, he took a while to recover, but then it was stated his body was fine. the effects were mostly mental. after receiving his first rune, robert was supposed to continue his training, but he couldn't. other kids of his age were evolving their training, while he was doing nothing about it. he both hadn't the energy and couldn't do it, cuz he was afraid of steeles. something perfectly logical since a steele caused that month of agony. you know he eventually managed to learn to use steeles to be an actual shadowhunter. but it wasn't all.

the first rune is something normal that happens to all shadowhunters, and it's mostly something good. the way it was horrible to robert in a way no one could have expected, made robert develop extreme anxiety; because the worst happened to him triggered by something common. so while doing common things, robert would be always scared and anxious, thinking about the worst of the worst that could happen. while it wasn't much notable to other people, it harmed his development and behavior a lot, consequently harming his self-steem, cuz he couldn't do things right, he was always worried and overthinking everything.

to compensate it, robert became somebody who worked on two extremes: he was always overthinking everything, except in battle. in battle he wasn't what we define as brave i guess. he was fearless. valentine is the one who helped robert to achieve that. (we know his actual motivations, this isn't important now) the mental process valentine taught him was: robert's inherent fear and anxiety made him fail, and that made him despise himself (that's something robert does a lot for countless reasons). robert should not only embrace the fury he felt against himself, but it should dominate him, and he use its intensity to block his fear. then basically, robert should do a mental form of self harm, letting the strenght of his hate for himself take his mind and use this strenght to control his actions. robert's fury leading his actions, not his fear and anxiety. as expected with this process, robert then was able to engage in normal shadowhunter activities, but fearless when it came to physical risk. logically this would be very dangerous, but we can imagine how useful it was for valentine to have on his team a warrior like this who was such a big and strong man and centainly could take a lot of physical damage and pain (and i guess it shouldn't be any doubt that being so tough helped robert a lot to survive through the years). we know it was because of this robert felt he owed loyalty to valentine.

2- parents: first, something kinda interesting is that robert had other relatives and they were there when robert's first rune was made. we are informed that his state during that month of agony was a scandal and robert's parents were the ones being absurd. so we can assume his other relatives had nothing to do with it. another strong evidence is robert naming two of his children with names from his family, what indicates he didn't saw his entire family negatively. now his parents... let's never forget what happened to robert was supposed to kill him on incredible intense pain. andrew and phoebe deliberately let their child to die in pain so he wouldn't be a mundane. i personally classify them between the worst shadowhunters parents along with céline's, annabel's, valentine and tatiana.

after robert woke up, they (or anyone else) never cared to ask robert how he felt. all they wanted was to make everything seem normal, without caring about how robert was taking it. they never showed any regret about what they've done: they did the opposite of that, telling robert right on his face what they did and how they were sure that it was totally worth it to make him go through that to not be a mundane. it hurt (and traumatized) robert a lot.

love from parents and relatives is supposed to be the first love someone gets. and robert didn't have that. if his parents showed love to him on his first years alive, it never mattered because these two traumas mentioned made robert forget anything about his parents from before his first rune. he couldn't ever remember them as actual parental figures of love. the only parents he remembered and recognized were the ones who left him to endure that, looked proud of it and never cared about its effects on him afterwards. as far as it counted, robert lived a loveless childhood. as i mentioned, andrew and phoebe wanted everything to be as normal possible, so they just acted as robert's parents as if anything happened, but it was pointless and felt cold. after knowing what they did to him (what they let happen to him), knowing that they didn't actually love him as their child, robert couldn't have a bond with them, he couldn't even be comfortable around them. it's described that their presence was what intensified robert's loneliness the most. so he didn't spend much time around them, he stayed in his room.

without his parents' love, robert's first experience with love was when he was 13 years old, with michael. it was setting a standard of love to him, with the long-term consequences afterwards being devastating. (i guess someone could even connect robert not recognizing his parents affection with his future performance of fatherhood, but that would be mostly guessing and i rather work with things i can prove. another good guess i think would be connecting his loveless childhood to how robert during his teenagehood had messy limits between his love for michael and his affection for maryse and didn't know how to handle or recognize it. i mean mostly things like, if michael was robert's best friend/parabatai and maryse his romantic partner and probably future wife, why did robert see maryse and women in general as a threat to michael's place in his life and their parabatai and best friend relationship? he saw valentine having a parabatai he loved and a girlfriend he wanted to get married to, and still freaked out about a woman as his wife replacing michael who was his parabatai, what didn't make any sense. i know people joke about robert being "clueless" about michael but it isn't much funny with this context. finally, another guess would be connecting robert's discovery that his parents' love for him was faulty through they letting him hurt to his beliefs that what he did to michael proved his love for michael was faulty. you can deliberate about all of these conjectures if you want).

3- discrimination: before his first rune, robert had other kids to play with, but he wouldn't remember much of it. yeah, we can say robert doesn't remember anything about how he was treated by people before his first rune. robert doesn't know a life without trauma.

since what happened to robert was a political scandal, with everyone trying to save robert and his parents wanting him to keep his painful and mortal rune, what happened to him was kind of general knowledge. then, no kid wanted to play or train with him. at first he was still recovering, but then he couldn't move foward because he didn't have anyone. he didn't want to be around his parents' coldness and no one else wanted to be around him, quite literally. other people would be around him only when being forced, and then would stay the most distant of him possible, to never get physically close of him, as if to not catch a disease. this is absolutely dreadful to a child.

being treated like this hurt and traumatized robert terribly. being around any one was horrible, so he spent most of the time hidden in his room. not being able to improve on anything because of his fears and anxiety and not having anyone to train with or even to socialize with, and basically never being able to move on about what happened, robert hated to be alive and wished to be dead, wished the rune had killed him as it should have, because he thought no death could be worse than his life, so be dead would be better. this state of mind dured an entire year before michael came around. a lot of damage had been done by then.

being treated like he was "sick" and ostracized left a huge psychological wound on him. to him, discrimination was one of the worst things ever, for something that was never his fault and he never choose to.

(one may think that if robert hates discrimination, it doesn't make sense to him to dislike downworlders, but it actually does. all robert wanted was to be a normal shadowhunter, and he had deeper reasons than most to be passionate about being one. disliking downworlders would be an ideal average shadowhunter thing to do. but robert was far from ignorant. he didn't think downworlders were animals or demons and was far more inclined to defend downworlder segregation than downworlder extermination. of course segregation is something horrible in general and should never be defended, but with downworlders being different sub-species, it wasn't as absurd as the extermination valentine defended, and robert being actually smart and open minded, we know he actually changed his beliefs).

now, to him, one being discriminated by their peers was one of the worst things that could happen, and the perspective of being discriminated terrified and triggered robert deeply. we know the perspective of homosexuality freaks robert out because of the discrimination, marginalization and "anormality" experience that comes with it (and robert is a 60s kid and shadowhunter society is a conservative mess, so it would naturally seem so much more taboo to him), what scared him deeply. we see him getting extremely anxious over himself, michael and alec about the perspective of homophobic discrimination.

robert only started training with runes after his 14th birthday. his training was late, and between his 12th and 14th birthdays, half of the time was extremely traumatizing, the other half he spent most with michael (who helped him a lot about everything). but still, it was a very big share of his childhood-teenagehood and he didn't have the feeling or normality. everything i said about his anxiety over shadowhunting, specially over runes, applied intensely during his entire teenagehood, but robert went to the academy with michael where he was having normal training and final got to socialize a little. he loved so much to feel a little normal. he still felt like a weak and useless trash, but at least he was doing normal shadowhunting things and living like a teenager. the problem was: he wanted to live his entire teenagehood, and he just couldn't do that. training is supposed to end when shadowhunters are 18 years old. robert would stay at the academy until he was 19, and still didn't seem enough. while he was older than his fellows, he felt far less mature. much of his development time had been lost, and he would never get it back. in this context, it made very sense to robert's girlfriend be a younger girl and his admiration for a younger boy (valentine), and there were jokes about him being old, but what bothered robert the most was that he should soon live an adult man average life with wife and kids, when his perspective of life was being with michael in the academy. we also know how that went... and he married maryse when he was about 21/22 years old and maryse about 19.

forgive me for any grammar mistakes. i think this summary can help a lot! at least i hope it's useful to you or anyone else who read it! writing it was very thoughtful (and it's really a huge joy for me to explain things about robert, if you haven't guessed) and i hope to start working on my next ask soon

xoxo, take care of yourself, kind fellow ☺ thank you for your attention

First of all,. I'm sorry for getting to this late.

Second, I don't think I need to add anything. This is written very well, and gave me a deeper understanding.

And I am once again saying: let Shadowhunters get help with their trauma 😭

Also, TSC has a lot of bad parents. But it sadly represents real life 😔

Thank you for taking the time to write this out. I enjoyed reading it. And I agree with a lot that was said.

[antoine-roquentin]

The Supreme Court strictly curtailed the imposition of juvenile life without parole in two landmark decisions: 2012’s Miller v. Alabama and 2016’s Montgomery v. Louisiana. In Miller, the court ruled that mandatory sentences of JLWOP—that is, sentences imposed automatically upon conviction—violate the 8th Amendment’s bar on “cruel and unusual punishments.” It explained that children’s crimes often reflect “transient immaturity”; because their brains are not fully developed, young offenders are “less culpable” than adults and have greater potential for rehabilitation. In Montgomery, the court clarified that discretionary sentences of JLWOP—that is, sentences imposed at the discretion of a judge—are generally unconstitutional, as well. It then applied these rules retroactively, allowing all incarcerated people who were condemned to life without parole as children to contest their sentences. Taken together, Miller and Montgomery held that JLWOP is unconstitutional for “all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.” And they forbade judges from imposing JLWOP unless they found that the defendant’s crime reflected “irreparable corruption.”

On Thursday, Kavanaugh overturned these decisions without admitting it. His majority opinion in Jones v. Mississippi claims fidelity to Miller and Montgomery while stripping them of all meaning. Kavanaugh wrote that these precedents do not require a judge to “make a separate factual finding of permanent incorrigibility” before imposing JLWOP. Nor, Kavanaugh wrote, do they compel a judge to “at least provide an on-the-record sentencing explanation with an implicit finding of permanent incorrigibility.” Instead, a judge need only be granted “discretion” to sentence a child to less than life without parole. So long as that discretion exists, Kavanaugh held, the 8th Amendment is satisfied—even if the judge provides no indication that they actually considered the defendant’s youth, gauged their potential for rehabilitation, and nonetheless decided their crime reflected “permanent incorrigibility.”

As Sotomayor noted in her extraordinary dissent, “this conclusion would come as a shock to the Courts in Miller and Montgomery.” Those decisions explicitly required the judge to “actually make the judgment” that the child is incorrigible. They also “expressly rejected the notion that sentencing discretion, alone, suffices.” Kavanaugh claimed that he followed these precedents, Sotomayor wrote, but he “is fooling no one.” (Justice Clarence Thomas, writing separately, was more honest than Kavanaugh: He acknowledged that the majority had subverted Montgomery, and supported openly killing it off instead of quietly overruling it while pretending to follow it.)...

In the final portion of her dissent, Sotomayor recounted the story of the defendant in this case, Brett Jones, to show how “many aspects of Jones’ crime seem to epitomize unfortunate yet transient immaturity.” Jones was “the victim of violence and neglect that he was too young to escape.” His biological father was an alcoholic who physically abused his mother, who had severe mental health problems. His stepfather abused him, too, using “belts, switches, and a paddle.” He openly expressed his hatred for Jones. When Jones moved to Mississippi to live with his grandparents, he abruptly lost access to medication he took for mental health issues, including hallucinations and self-harm. Jones’ grandfather beat him, as well. One day in 2004, when Jones’ grandfather tried to hit him, Jones stabbed him repeatedly, killing him. He had turned 15 just 23 days earlier. Jones tried to save his grandfather with CPR but failed. After making minimal efforts to conceal the crime, he confessed to the police.

Jones’ experience is depressingly common among people sentenced to JLWOP. His crime was clearly the consequence of a traumatic childhood. He has been a near-model prisoner, earning his GED, working behind bars, and studying the Bible. His grandmother—the widow of his victim—has urged the courts to release him. Jones’ experience bears out the Supreme Court’s pronouncements in Miller and Montgomery that juvenile crimes often reflect immaturity, the product of underdeveloped brains and severe childhood trauma rather than permanent corruption. As Jones himself put it at his resentencing hearing: “Minors do have the ability to change. … Please give me just one chance to show the world, man, like, I can be somebody. … I can’t change what was already done. I can just try to show … I’ve become a grown man.”

On Thursday, Kavanaugh and the rest of the court’s conservatives denied that opportunity to Jones. At his resentencing, the judge did not consider whether Jones’ crime reflected permanent incorrigibility, and Kavanaugh blessed that miscarriage of justice. His decision will prevent hundreds of other juvenile defendants from securing early release. And as Sotomayor pointed out, the burden will fall disproportionately on racial minorities: “70 percent of all youths sentenced to LWOP are children of color,” and “the trend has worsened” since the court’s decision in Miller.” Once again, Sotomayor forced her colleagues to confront the racial inequities that their decisions exacerbate.

[spookybreadstick]

Today I feel like reading something sad. Could you please write some little angst headcanons about the creeps? Thank you bby!

-dancing parrot🐦🎶

i decided to go with nightmares as my subject of choice, I didn’t do all of the creeps but I did do the major ones, I hope you like it & it’s angsty enough for you <3 

also a brief warning that it get a little bit intense? maybe? not too sure about it, but better to be prepared than not!

🍬 LJ’s most common nightmare is being trapped in his box and never being allowed to leave. In his dreams, Isaac is there, taunting him about what a horrible friend he is and how he deserves this fate of being locked away forever in a box. The box continues to shrink, smaller and smaller, until LJ can barely breathe at all and he feels like he’s being suffocated. 

🤍 EJ frequently has nightmares that feature his lack of control over his monstrous tendencies. In his dreams, he is forced to watch as a version of himself tears into an innocent person, usually a fellow member of the mansion whom he has a good relationship with, despite their cries and pleas for him to stop. It’s graphic and terrible and EJ wakes up sobbing (although he can’t cry real tears, the feelings behind the sob are still there, it’s a sob without tears) every time it happens. It’s even worse because EJ fears that one day this nightmare could become reality, if he loses control of himself and hurts/kills somebody he cares about. 

🎮 BEN often has nightmares about drowning again. It’s a simple nightmare, but it frightens him every time. Most of the time, he drowns as other members of the mansion watch and laugh and tell him that he deserves this. Because BEN already experienced drowning before, the dream is “enhanced” by his traumatic memories of the event from his actual life. This means that in his dreams, he feels the way he felt during his actual drowning. 

🔪 Jeff gets nightmares a lot, but the nightmare he gets most often is pretty tame. He’s running from something, but he can’t quite outrun it. It’s catching up to him, and he knows that if it catches him, he’s done for. Now, this nightmare is certainly not a fun one to have, but Jeff much prefers having this nightmare over the ones that actually scare him. The two actually scary nightmares he has are when he watches a version of himself actually kill Liu (quite brutally) or a dream in which Liu kills him, whilst claiming that he deserves this fate and so much more. 

🖤 Jane’s worst nightmare involves her running into her childhood home, hugging her parents tightly as she cries tears of relief that they’re okay, only to look up and notice their bloody, mangled, oozing faces. In her dream, she’ll gasp and try to run away, but the zombiefied version of her parents will corner her, blame her for their deaths, and then rip her to pieces. It both breaks her heart and scares her out of her mind every time she has this dream.

⏰ Clockwork rarely dreams at all, and when she does, they’re nightmares. Her nightmares are really fragmented pieces of memory, her trauma from when she was a child. She relieves the horrific abuse she endured as a child. The only saving grace for her is, most of the time, she doesn’t remember her dreams when she wakes up. 

🎭 Tim’s nightmares mostly consist of being betrayed by Hoodie. Hoodie usually shoots him and watches him bleed to death. While he lays there dying, various people come up to him, kick him and tell him that he’s worthless/stupid/ugly/etc. These people are sometimes strangers, sometimes members of the mansion, and sometimes people from his past. 

❓Brian hardly ever has dreams or nightmares, but he does have one that he’ll get from time to time. In his dream, he is killed for refusing to become a proxy. Although, in his dream, Masky agrees to become a proxy and as his first assignment, he kills Hoodie. This dream hits home because, what if he had refused Slender’s offer to become a proxy? He would have had to be killed, of course. But would Masky have accepted if Brian did not? And would Slender have made Masky killl his own buddy? Would he have done it? These are questions that Hoodie doesn’t want the answer to. 

🪓 Toby has a recurring nightmare of the car crash that killed Lyra. He hates that one, and it’s the one he gets most often. His second most commonly occurring nightmare is when where he’s at school, being bullied. The bullying continuously gets worse and worse, with more and more people joining in, especially people who he cares about. The shame and humiliation get more intense, and the insults from the bullying crowd get more hurtful until Toby is begging from them to stop. But they don’t stop until Toby wakes up, heart pounding and tears forming in his eyes. 

[digitalzombie]

Ok. I read it, I cried, and now I feel empty inside lol

*Chapter 139 Spoilers*

The ending wasn’t as bad as people make it out to be, but that’s because things were headed in that direction anyway. I won’t say that the ending was incredible, though. There are still some things that need clarification.

My thoughts, what I understood, and questions I had while I read the chapter:

The Rumbling… It’s the worst thing that Eren has done. It was still something he caused with Ymir’s help. To me, this chapter confirmed that Eren was always behind the Rumbling; it wasn’t Ymir’s doing. I don’t see that as a positive thing for his character, though a lot of fans who supported his actions might… I see people argue that the Rumbling was for nothing, or that it was set off because of Eren’s love for Mikasa. I guess that’s true, but he was also thinking about everyone he loved including Mikasa. It wasn’t because he was a “simp;” he addressed that he wanted to sacrifice himself so that the so-called ‘avengers’ could be seen as heroes, to destroy the allied forces and buy Paradis time to build an army large enough to protect the island, his home. It’s a highly flawed strategy on his part, but this is the gist of what I understood.

Eren’s outburst about Mikasa to Armin took me by surprise, but that’s because I haven’t seen Eren lose his composure like that since the cave scene in Season 3 (where Eren begs Historia to take the Founding Titan). He was devastated about what he was doing (or going to do), and somewhat childish. He reminded me of a child having a tantrum. He was selfish. I think it showed his humanity was not completely gone. I had to keep in mind that he was reduced to a child during the Rumbling. Perhaps what we were seeing in those panels was something similar to that. He was a traumatized individual and was never really able to express his feelings well. He was vulnerable and expressing his deepest desires. He wanted to be with Mikasa and his friends. He wanted to live a normal life.

Eren and Armin’s friendship still remains true to the very end. Eren was vulnerable in front of Armin as he had been before. I like that Armin gets closure.

Mikasa Ackerman and her memories… I’m kind of stumped. I wonder if her memories were manipulated despite being an Ackerman. I’m also wondering about Levi under the assumption that Eren also spoke to him via Paths.

Mikasa and Eren’s head. It is kind of weird, but humans respond to death differently. I had to keep in mind that she’s the one who killed him. She’s respectful of what’s left of his body. How else was she supposed to carry his head?

Also, Mikasa leaving with Eren’s head: Again, a little weird, but she wanted to let him rest in peace. I’m assuming that if she stayed behind with Armin and the rest of the survivors, Marleyan authorities (or at least of what’s left of them) would have taken his remains into custody.

The Survey Corps’ final salute made me ugly sob. I love that Levi got to say goodbye to them a final time. Same thing with Sasha… However, I wish that Jean got closure about Marco. I also wish that Bertholdt got closure, or had a final interaction with the warriors.

Marleyans vs Eldians after the titans disappear: I’m not surprised. They were almost killed by the titans that had transformed. They were being cautious. It reminds me of Season 1 when Eren, Armin, and Mikasa faced canon fire after they learned about Eren’s titan.

Also, what happened to the parasite-thing? I assume that it died after Eren was killed. But did it just disappear like the titans did?

What happened to Ymir? Seriously, where did she go lol. I also don’t like the idea that she loved King Fritz. It’s awful. Although I do see her as someone who wanted love and approval. She was a slave and the King used her as such for power. This was probably the closest she ever got to feeling loved and wanted. It’s a sad thought. I can’t help thinking that she had Stockholm Syndrome.

Also: the power of love prevails! And by that, I mean Mikasa’s love having an influence on Ymir. My understanding of this was that Ymir felt someone’s love through Eren. Again, all Ymir wanted, aside from freedom, was to be loved and wanted.

Annie and her father: I obviously cried. She finally got to see him.

Annie and her titan’s abilities: What was the point of telling us that she could mimic the powers of other titans? I was hoping to see that happen during the final battle.

The warriors and the remaining soldiers get to live. I’m semi-bitter about Hange’s death. I’m indifferent about the others’ survival just because somebody had to have survived.

When it comes to Historia’s pregnancy, I still see it as a way for her to save herself from taking the Beast Titan. It was implied before, and it was implied now. There’s this idea of her pregnancy being pointless, but I think it was to save her skin and buy Eren some time to meet with Zeke. It’s selfish of her, yes, but she didn’t only do it for Eren; she did it for herself, too. She didn’t really want to be queen, she didn’t really want to be a titan, and maybe she didn’t really want to be a mother. But she did want to live, so she found a way to survive. At least she’s seen happy with her daughter. I hope that she named her Ymir, after the woman who sacrificed everything for her.

Paradis, the Eldian Empire, and the Yaegerists: Paradis is basically a stratocracy (a military-run government). It’s not shocking that they became a powerful country after the rest of the world was left in devastating states. Historia seems to be in power, though I can’t say she has complete authority over everyone. The Wings of Freedom were changed to two rifles and similar wings, a huge hint that their military is a high priority. Did anyone else notice that those in power are younger than the ones who used to be? Not to mention that the civil war in Paradis is very reminiscent to what happens in real life when small countries have civil uprisings. This “cycle of hate” will not end, and it’s a blatant message that can be applied to the real world. Theirs isn’t a happy ending, though it is as realistic as it can get.

Kiyomi is alive but what happened to Yelena? Also, Mikasa is pretty much royalty… Why didn’t that get addressed? I get that it’s not a central part of the story, but it is a major fact about her.

Reiner’s crush on Historia bugs me. It’s… weird? It seems like the little bit of comic relief we get in the chapter… It makes me wonder if the titans never existed and the world wasn’t at war, would Reiner actually be this creepy? lol

Armin and Annie? I guess it’s implied that they’re a couple, but I’m not so sure… She listens to what he has to say and watches him fondly. I think that’s enough to say that they’re canon… (for me, anyway lol)

Levi living outside of Paradis is fitting for someone who wants to live in peace, given that the Yeagerists tried to get rid of the older military leaders. Not to mention that it became a country that seems to be a stratocracy. He was injured severely during the Rumbling, so being in a wheelchair shouldn’t be surprising. The fact that Gabi and Falco are hanging out with him is adorable. I also like that Onyankopon lives!

Mikasa by Eren’s grave shouldn’t mean that she doesn’t have a life that doesn’t revolve around Eren. She lives on Paradis, her home. I’m sure that Historia looks after her. I’m also sure that she visits his grave frequently. Does Eren deserve her love? Probably not. But Mikasa does love him. She still mourns for him.

Overall, I liked the chapter. I wish my questions were answered. I’m sure I missed some things, but that’s all I have so far. I’m willing to reread SnK later on, but for my sanity’s sake, I’ll hold off on that lol.