#and i hate my brain because all solutions it has is DIE right now

[breitzbachbea]

I know I need a break, but I can't take a break, I NEED a break but I can't take a break.

[shunshuntaiga]

angst anon back to redeem my sins!! well kinda👀...

first off, you're soooo right!!! it would slowly kill Spadino to not actually hear the words, especially given their history. it would only feed his insecurities in an endless loop of misery and pining. Aurelia shows his feelings through his actions, but it's never quite enough to quell Spadi's fear of being just some fleeting fancy that will get left behind once again.

and this in turn would of course hurt Aureliano, but he's a stubborn ass, so he'll just Suffer. because he decided he would rather have Spadi alive and hating him than dead and loving him.

so my fanfic writing brain came up with some kind of a solution. at one point the boys get in trouble and Spadi almost dies in Aurelia's arms, which of course prompts this idiota to finally *finally* confess. but since i want them happy, Spadino doesn't die. instead he wakes up in the hospital days later to find Aureliano asleep at his bedside (because you know YOU KNOW he absolutely refused to leave and threatened anyone who tried to make him).

and the first thing Spadi says, high off his ass on morphine? he calls him a moron and gloats about being right. when Aureliano asks wtf he's talking about, Spadi just tells him "see? not a curse. a blessing" before promptly falling asleep and letting Aurelia deal with Emotions™.

so so so sorry for going off like this!!! but this story wouldn't leave me alone and i already have a fic in the works for these two, i cannot afford another. :)))

God YES.

Also the idea of Aurelia threatening some poor doctor is hilarious to me. Like, babygirl, we *know* you're in love. Calm down your boyfriend's fine.

I feel like Spadì would maybe think of it as less of a blessing and more of a curse he'll gladly bare for the rest of his life, because loving this absolute DRAMA QUEEN of a man is so much work lol

Or perhaps a "it's your turn to sit in misery at my bedside, now shut up and kiss me while I'm not dying you moron."

No matter what the theme of the story, Aurelia is so fucking fun to write struggling with his emotions, because the man is so emotionally constipated that he can barely say the words you can see rattling around in his head.

So writing him just finally breaking down, and letting everything he's shoved down in his heart just flood out like a boiling over kettle is so good.

And in that situation I feel perhaps a brush with death is a fun option, not enough that it hospitalizes Spadì, so that Spadino doesn't see it as a big deal, you know? But to Aurè it's EVERYTHING. Because you just know he'd have such a complex about Spadì dying after the whole junkyard thing.

So his true feelings spilling out, maybe starting off angry at Spadino's brush with death and how casual he's being about it? Then turning to the root of the problem which is that Aurelia loves him *so damn much* that he can't imagine living without him?🤌❤️

*then* Spadì gets to gloat a little, once our boy has let it all out and he's admitted it. Then Spadì gets to kiss his head and be like "you fucking *idiot*"

[unlackeyed]

"...The family resemblance is uncanny."

It's the first thing that Shadow has said since his arrival. He'd taken his perch atop a crate of salvaged badnik parts and had been watching Snively work, cool and quiet as a wandering stray cat. What had initially led Shadow to seek him out was anyone's guess—maybe he just had nowhere else to be.

(Or, privately, it could be that Shadow craves the familiar background noise of someone tinkering away. It's a sound that he hadn't realized he missed until recently.)

"What are you working on?"

Snively is like most who've survived years in a perilous and unpredictable situation: he moves very little when he can avoid it. He makes himself small and quiet, erases himself from the picture of any conflict. Movement opens the pathway to pain.

So when Shadow, renowned (infamous?) all over Mobius, appears in the doorway of the workshop shared with Tails, Sir Charles, Rotor, and other inventive prodigies of the Resistance-turned-Restoration, well....Snively's pale, frigid eyes turn toward G.U.N.'s once-weapon. And nothing else.

A sniff of his sharp nose.

"I'm rather curious to know what part's so similar," and out comes a voice always just nasal enough to rankle nerves. "And while I'm at it, I'm wondering whether you're just socially inept, or attempting to compliment me in earnest."

His head tilts a little. He doesn't blink enough for an ordinary "Overlander" (the slang of most Mobians, for the dwindling human population of this planet). He knows it's unnerving: one of his few effective weapons. Because Snively once had great ambition, but he knows now he was always too craven to see his schemes through. Nah, these days, he'd rather be the man behind the curtain, tapping on a makeshift keyboard at lightning speed, inventing code for the "good guys." Code over which--he must pause, smugly, to acknowledge--even his genius uncle the "Eggman" would stumble.

There's a reason Colin Junior was Dr. Robotnik's right-hand servant for over a decade. He worked like a dog, with no illusion of grandiosity, no poetic vengeance, no "here's my evil plan in verbose detail while I hold you at gunpoint," to blind him to the most practical, logistically sound solutions. No glory, just bloody results.

Shame his uncle rarely listened to him. Or, perhaps it's no shame at all. He IS alive and well now, because Sonic didn't die.

Maybe Shadow knows all that. Maybe he's clocking the kinsman of everyone's common enemy for signs of double-dealing.

Well, the human quietly scoffs and returns to his work, better put on a pot of tea, kiddo. You'll be waiting a while. My motives are very simple these days: fuck over Uncle Julian in any way possible. My allies are anyone who can make that happen. Hate is an exceptional motivator.

He hums a bit, off-key. He runs a simulation on the laptop he built (in hours) last week. He clicks his tongue, puts his welding mask back down, and continues fusing together the parts of old Badnik "friends" from his planet-destroying youth. Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts haven't shown up yet. Maybe they survived the last long war, and don't need to be swept and reactivated as....eugh...Goodniks. Maybe. But doing something with his brain and his hands keeps his mind from roving down even darker paths of memory.

"Reconstructing the past more efficiently," he drawls. "And you?"

The urge to ask something deeply irreverent, like, How they hangin', Doom Patrol?, momentarily seizes Snively. But he lets it pass, like the urge to sneeze. He's very good at placating big egos.

But the silence drags on. So he finds himself lifting the mask again to peer at Shadow. A small smirk wins over his attempt at a pokerface.

"Well?"

God, what a weirdo.

[airconditionedgirl]

Hi

My name is Alison. I am a 26 year old transgender woman and I am bisexual. I love my partners very much, and have loved every animal companion I've ever had. I've had sex with four people, two men, one woman and one non-binary person. I enjoy reading novels, playing video games and watching movies. I've had three jobs and I've stolen from all of them, for which I was only caught once. the last job I had to quit because people kept yelling transphobic things at me. I smoke weed, and take a lot of prescription drugs to handle my anxiety, depression, ADHD, paranoia and PTSD. I have been abused physically, and I am plural, which means I have multiple identities with their own names and personalities. Those headmates help me with my issues.

I'm writing this because I want to kill myself.

I want so, so badly to end my life. Being alive hurts in ways I never thought it could, and I hate myself. And I am sometimes convinced that everyone else hates me as much as I do, even if I know that that isn't true.

I'm writing this because if I don't, I'm worried that I will actually hurt myself in some way. I keep typing so that I don't stop. I also type to ground myself in some way, since I suspect that I am having an episode. Hopefully it will pass, but the bad days have begun to outweigh the good ones, so the thought of it passing does not make me feel at all comforted.

I hate myself so much that it's difficult to believe. The obvious solution is to just stop hating myself, but that has not thus far worked. I wish it did.

I don't know what else to write. The idea was to keep going and going until I fell asleep, but I think I made a mistake in saying out loud that I hate myself, because now that is all I can think.

I don't know what else to write.

If I end up posting this, there isn't any reason to be concerned. Fortunately, my desire for the pain to cease and the need to hurt myself never actually comes to anything, since I don't actually want to kill myself, I simply want to die.

It's not an ideal situation to be in, but it does result in little more than depression and emotional self harm, so if you worry that I won't be here tomorrow, I will be.

But I want so badly for the pain to go away. Part of me wishes my depression was worse so that I wouldn't feel anything. The other part of me wishes my problems were worse, so that I'd actually kill myself.

But then part of me doesn't, the real part of me I suspect.

I love my partners, and I think they'd be hurt if I died, more than my death would help them. And of course they'd miss me.

it's possible that this comes from a place of supreme arrogance. I am very smart and clever, if not always wise, and I am usually correct about what I think. So when I start hurting myself mentally, my brain says that I must be right to do so, because it's so used to being right. Which I guess is a fundamentally immature way of looking at it.

Of course I know that these thoughts and the pain comes from a lifetime of abuse, but it's difficult to heal mental scars when the mental scars inhibit the ways you can think and process information.

I hate myself so much, and I wish I were dead. I hate myself so fucking much, and I wish I were fucking dead. I hate myself so fucking much. I hate myself so fucking much.

I don't know what else to say.

I'm not going to hurt myself, but I am going to sleep. I am very tired, and it is 8 am, which is 8 hours past my bed time.

I hope you all do very well today, and that whatever happens, you all recognize that you are doing the best you can, and that you are loved and worthy of love. It always gets better, one way or another. I love you. I love you so much.

Good night, see you tomorrow.

[gammyclowntime]

i make me feel like i cant breathe.

i hate how much i think about them. how that happened, how i caught feelings, and kept pretending i didn't.

kept pretending it'd go away.

kept pretending itd beover soon. I'd move on. I wouldn't be sick at the sight of romance; the thought of romance,

the ideal of romance without them there.

i fell.

i fell like an idiot, and i was dropped like it was nothing. because of course they're happy;

and of course that means I'm not in the picture.

I hate my ROCD. I also hate romance. I hate my cluster b fuck of disorders, and I hate myself.

I'm not pretty.

I'm not funny.

I'm just a guy who's convenient enough when the time is right. everytime someone says that's not true they prove it all over again.

I'm always the one in the background. I reach out. I vent, no one answers. I laugh along- It gets quiet. I speak, I'm looked at weird.

I try to express myself and I shut down, and I break down out of fear and only hurt them.

i had so much patience.

I had so much. all of my life, i was patient. I would help whoever i could,, even if it killed me.

and now it's killed me. I'd rather die than live like this.

i want to.

I might, I have what I'd need; I'm tired.

I'm so, FUCKING tired. I'm tired of falling in unrequited love. I'm tired of living in constant agony.

I'm tired of staying up, waiting and spamming and praying for responses I never get.

I'm tired of hinting at how I feel and hurting others by doing it.

I'm tired of this timeline.

I'm tired of going through this painful cycle.

I'm tired.

but then if I leave, it's a problem.

if I leave, suddenly everyone feels bad because they "could've done something "

they never want to when I'm alive.

it's draining.

it's too much.

they don't know how.

yet they have no issues ranting to me, venting to me, crying out their sob stories.

they have no issues doing nothing when i try to do the same. they have no issues shutting me out when im desperate for comfort.

i give everyone my all; I comfort them, I care for them, i offer my full heart; and i fall easy, and get hit hard easier.

I'm..too tired.

breathing has been nothing but painful.

my head is tight and my brain is tighter.

everyday i feel like im going to faint.

heart palpitations.

leg pain.

ankles.

wrists, hips, pure agony.

everyday i feel like a husk. a bottomless pit of a human.

everyone else feels like npc's: they dont seem real.

everyones mouth moves slower than their voice.

and i oddly experience everything they have before in some way.

yet im always the problem, never the solution.

I'm tired of being a final choice.

the fruit that's turned mush yet still is edible.

the rotting meat.

the roadkill on a road.

im tired of losing my hearing and my sight.

im tired of living a life and only feeling happy if others are.

i make cries for help with art.

all i get is pity.

never true love or care.

I'm so tired, I'm tired of being this way.

feeling this way,

I am lonely.

[journalofsorts2]

something im not sure how much of the general public understands is all the habits and life changes you have to make once you stop being suicidal. in my personal experience, i was chronically suicidal for years on end (i didn't do it cause im a coward lmao) and it's only let up in recent years. it wasn't off and on, it was constant until one day i woke up and realized i was actually just scared and i didn't really want to die. but obviously being constantly suicidal for 5+ years has a lot of effects on your life and i feel like every week i encounter a new one. for example, i have no clue what to do with my future. i never planned for it, i never had a reason to. in my mind i was supposed to be six feet under right now, there was no future to plan besides the method i was going to end myself. so now i feel like im scrambling to figure out what im going to do for the rest of my life and what prerequisites i need to do said thing for the rest of my life. another thing is that it took a WHILE for me to retrain my brain to not think "now im gonna kms" at every minor inconvenience. like obviously people joke about that kinda stuff all the time and it doesn't always mean they want to genuinely die, but in my case there was always a certain percent of seriousness behind those jokes. when i said "im gonna kms" in frustration to a game back then, a part of me genuinely did mean it. and so i've had to retrain my brain to know that offing myself is actually not a valid solution to all of life's problems. another one is basic health habits. when you can barely get out of bed in the mornings, it's hard to get the motivation to brush your teeth, let alone get in the shower and face the body you hate. teaching myself to brush every morning and night and take a shower everyday (WITHOUT WEIGHING MYSELF) took a bit. especially cause adhd makes it harder to form habits that stick. and like healthy eating? that was basically non existent when i was majorly suicidal. it was easier to just get something easy to prepare (i.e. frozen dinners, etc) then actually take the steps to cook and prepare a meal that would nurture my body. especially when my autistic ass is an extremely picky eater and unhealthy eating is a common thing with autistics. relearning my love for cooking has been really fun and i really love coming up with different variations of the food i already know how to make and enjoy. idk being suicidal fucked me up in a lot of ways but it's been fun to relearn how to live. i enjoy getting out of bed because i get to make a breakfast i'll enjoy now. life does get better. it really doesn't feel like it in the moment, and i know i hated hearing that from people before, but it really is true. not everyday is perfect but that's okay because nobody is meant to be perfect. as long as you're alive, you're doing a great job

[epipenis]

what would i say

“i’ve been lying to you, it’s not fine” i’ve said that, idk if it would have the weight that the truth does.

i think i’ve been trying to let it bleed out for a long time. idk if there’s a solution. i feel like we’re together compulsorily…. i hate that. i want to feel wanted……… i dont. idk. maybe i do. i feel myself becoming a bad person. a sneak. a liar. more.

i want to let it bleed out. but i feel fear, for so many reasons…. because of history. with devin. without devin.

and ofc, i know devin hates long convos. perhaps i’ve been lying to myself most of all. im so hurt. and idek what for anymore. none of it feels justified enough. i don’t want to torture them. i think i’ve failed us. how do i proceed? idk if it’s just seeking comfort or displacement or what, but i think maybe we’ve always been doomed. i was too fragile and needing to be wanted at all. in any capacity. and devin similar. we’ve grown so much, and yet so much damage has been done. can i ever tell the truth? will you hate me? will you run away? have i caused too much damage to repair. i want you to comfort me in that, but i know its not your job. some secrets i keep so close, i end up telling lies to bury them and then forget the truth. i think im fake. i’m made of plastic. fear. need for control. so many things. so much pain. so much failure. god……… no one can comfort me. you could leave me… maybe you should. i think “i want you to show me gratitude for what i’ve done for you, what i’ve sacrificed”. but that’s not it. it’s about what that gratitude means. it means i’m safe, it means you love me. it means you’ll forgive me. even when im annoying. even when i keep making long conversations happen. even when i pull away because idk what to do anymore, i want you to maybe feel pain and if you don’t then it wouldn’t matter anyways and maybe it would just make you happier.

i keep thinking “please just hold me”…. i hate my brain. i want to kill myself…. try again in another life. but doesn’t everybody feel this way? isn’t everyone this… complicated. what are we. what am i. why do i exist. i’m not strong enough for them. i’m nothing. and i show that pain and fear…. and it makes it worse…. they resent me for asking for too much…. they’re learning to pull back…. and honestly. it’s for the best…. i know it is. but some awful part of me that doesn’t know any safety or comfort outside of a cycle wishes…. so badly…. that you wouldn’t. but i did this all for you… fuck olivia rodrigo for that line.. yeah.. i do think about it we broke up, i would probably feel that way about your therapist that i found, for us, and gave to you. you’re all i think about…. is this love? is this enmeshment? have i lied so skillfully that i’ve even convinced myself… do i even know how to love. am i that broken. i want to suffer so i dont have to think about it anymore. when im suffering at least i can just focus on that…. god if you ever saw this. you’d hate me. maybe not hate. but you’d know i’m bad for you. and you’d be right. and it wouldn’t even matter that i’m crying about it right now. because you’d be gone. and better off for it. my world- my thoughts, are so painful, all i ever think about in regards to them is wanting to be hurt and wanting to be comforted. one day mom and dad will die. and i will be truly alone. no one will be forced to care about me. no matter how hard i try. no matter how much i try to force smth so that its capability of working without force is indiscernible. no. not even then. i will hurt you. i will frustrate you. i will need too much. heaven isn’t real. and nobody can give it to me.

devin please love me. please want me. please…. i shouldn’t ask this of you any longer. you can have a good life, i can see it… you should have it… im…. i won’t say nothing because i think if i did you would give up on me- because what’s it worth trying with someone who feels that way.

what is human connection really? i mean… i said previously i couldn’t let you see this place. i changed the url and everything. and now, i think, that’s just fear, it could happen. i could show all parts to you and you to me. i want to die because i think that’s the only way it could be possible. i don’t actually want to die…. idk…. life hasn’t gone super well for me. and if you left…. idk….. i think that would… just…… traumatize me more. idk if i could cope without allowing it to become trauma. would i want to leave you first? idk…. i think i guess i just don’t want to see you be happy… functional…. better off without me. i want to be good for somebody. anybody.

the only way to let go of this fear is to truly find altruism at the same moment as another. to want you because i want you. not for me. and for you to do the same. idk if that’s possible. what does it mean to want…. to be wanted…. can even the best professionals help me? will i just live on like this forever until i die too. i will die. this life isn’t real…. it is…. but…… it’s not mine. my life was supposed to have heaven. my life was supposed to have that comfort. unconditional. dad did it- why can’t i? what could i need? is the solution to bury it? how deep would it have to go… is the solution to gaslight myself? idk how much feeling it can solve in this situation. i’m trying so fucking hard………. and it’s still…. too much, and not enough.

ugh. devin please….. idek what i’m asking for. i do. and im trying not to.

please live for yourself…. and in your memory think fondly of me…. know that as fucked as it is and was…. as much as i couldn’t do it for altruism…. that i tried… and i do genuinely hope your life is better off for it. go find it somewhere. out there.

fuck.

i feel like my mind is turning into scrambled eggs. i don’t know how to parse it. idk how i get through the day, i just- do? how long ago did i stop feeling? does everyone feel? does everyone stop? do they feel it like i do- or does it happen young enough? idk.

i want to process this. it’s so big. how?

if i can’t find a resolution at least try to emotionally support the other and be compassionate…

last thing- it makes me sad that you felt negatively about that long convo… i- i felt good…. it made me so happy. it changed so much in me. i know it was long. and bumpy…… but i was so happy. i thought you were too. maybe you were and i didn’t know it, maybe im just getting one version. maybe i should ask you about it…. how would i react if you confirmed my fears….

anyways. i don’t feel like i really have friends anymore. i feel distant from everyone. i miss sam so much. i think he would get it. maybe… perhaps i just have an idea of him, and not actually him. devin….. ugh, im not gonna ask you to hold me. i have to try to take responsibility for this…. all of this. i have to right?

devin feels distant. they don’t want me to be growing and processing like this with them. they want me to do it on my own. like they do, more and more. but without this- what’s left?

how can i support and be compassionate for myself right now. here. i’m grateful for my vulnerability. i’m sorry it hurts, it’s a lot of big heavy emotions, from so long ago. it’s not easy. it’s ok that it hurts. it’s ok that it’s a lot.

finn, i promise to try- no, i promise to learn to love you unconditionally, because no one else will. you are brave, you are strong. you are worthy. you do good. you struggle, you have done things that are wrong, you have hurt others, but you are good. you can be good no just reactionarily, you can change and be kind and strong for yourself, not just out of guilt. try one step at a time.

devin is right. getting out will help.

it will be ok. i will grow. i will struggle. and it will be worth it- finn- you are worth it. you are good, you are loved- by me. i love you. i will hold you. i will be kind to you. i will not let others hurt you. i promise you. shh, it’s ok, now rest, you’re safe, you’re loved, you’re wanted, you are worthy, you are useful, you’re ok. rest. it’s ok. it won’t always be easy to comfort you this way, but i will do it. i will be here with you. even when it’s hard. i’ll never leave. i am you. you are me. i will find a way for us- me, to find comfort from within, so we can stop hurting ourselves and others so much.

[zreflections]

A black lump burrows from the inside, out in my chest. The CBT workbook told me to picture bad thoughts as objects. Make them "silly and ridiculous". Name them strange concepts.

No one bothers to explain being intelligent generally just makes you want to die all the time. That maybe life is the virus in the eco system.

My boyfriend never thinks about things. He is from one thing to the next, zinging around like tiktock filed redbull shots. He eats hot peppers on everything. I am one of roughly fourteen thousand people who are allergic to caspasien.

All day I made an effort to keep the voice quiet. The one that tells me, you suck. You. Are stupid. He hates you. He will get sick of you. Your ideas are stupid. Just die already.

A few days ago I almost walked in front of a car. My life is good right now. I never want to lose it. Everything is new.

If I could marry him I would.

If I could kill myself I would.

I remind myself the moral of the story is that life one any planet is a wonderful gift. That suffering is the status quo and the happiness is the in-between. A soilder said so in a support group.

My suicidal friends arm won't stop bleeding. Her house is full of mold. She doesn't sleep from the illness. No one is helping her and she is stuck in helplessness.

Everyone who makes me bite in humanity never learned to arm themselves with thier teeth like I have.

I use them without meaning to.

They often lately land into myself. While I try to jot hurt anyone. Nothing good can come from me. The voice says.

Therapists like to say thoughts are like a computer and you just need reprogramming.

Studies show affirmations tend to not be helpful woth ptsd or cpstd because it resembles gaslighting.

I want to burn out.

I want to stop feeling.

Friday, I swam at the pool and thought about drowning. It seemed too much effort. Might as well stay.

So I pack bags. Eat lunch. Hate myself. Argue.

I admit it someone had a handful of drugs I would take them no questions asked.

Run a block if your bored.

My writing sucks

My videos suck

I hate the way my chest is constantly caving in even when I'm fine.

Friends and books say-

Don't make the bad feelings worse by having yourself for having them. Sorry noone gave a shit about me before.

His face crushed when I said, it's because those scars are new.

People all like me. My hair. My clothes. I'm polite.

If you askeda I successful, well. Maybe. I have a steady job. It's relatively low stress. The pay isn't great but the benefits aren't bad.

But I jerk and every sound hyper aware. I flinch. I want to prove my boyfriend to abuse me so I don't keep waiting asking when will the show drop?

I am always compressing myself into those space-saving bags. Trying to. But then ripping them open. Again. Again again. At every notion. Sprining back after ripping the airmask like on a plane.

I have never don't a real or true thing.

She lies as she has self published five books with bad grammar and spelling. And a collection of photos. And a heart full of regretful ashes.

There are things I should write about but they are all sad. I am the first in my family to say, I've had enough of this abuse.

People say I'm strong but I'm just broken China.

Nothing was handed to me.

I.

I wish I could breath better.

I still have no solutions I'm years of research.

Projects. Deadlines. Stupid. God. I'm so. Stupid.

He played out a fantasy I hate admiting I have recently. A sexual one. I just want to chase down his chin and stroke him into thoughtlessness.

I'm a freak. My brain prompts.

Make your goal to be yourself. He told me. I'm trying but...

Why can't being myself feel like something good? And not just a curse I need unicorn tears and griffin blood.

My brother quit caring the moment I left.

I hope a stray bullet gets me.

Sometimes I want to live forever. But mostly? Mostly I want time to stop.

Stop moving and let me adjust.

Fuck.

It's always the same shit from my mouth.

Useless.

[crazyventing]

Narratives

I’ve been stressing lately because for the first time, I have a huge goal, and there are just so many steps to achieve it. Something didn’t go right or according to plan and my head automatically thinks the world is against me. But this time, I actually stopped and wondered why? Why do I think this way? Where did I get this narrative that the universe is conspiring against me?

Then I travelled back in time when my narratives were really at its worst. When I was a teenager, I kept saying I hated my life and I just wanted to die. Lately, I’ve been waking up just wanting to be dead just so I don’t feel the stress of my objectives.

I was talking with my dad yesterday, and I was just crying and crying. I wanted him to feel what I was feeling. I wanted empathy, but more than anything, I wanted solutions. I want my knight in shining armor. I’m just so tired of fending for myself and I keep thinking of quick solutions, quick yet permanent.

But now, I’m sad. But slightly happy that I’m getting to know myself. The excitement I felt when I had the a-ha! moment was just unique. But alas, it’s still there. And I want to know really, where did this come from?

Who told me that it was me against the world? Because I like to believe the universe is working in my favor. However, I also have a problem of letting go my dreams. I don’t dare open my mind to other possibilities. It’s my way or the highway. But things don’t work that way in the universe.

Again, it’s so hard to unlearn the things that are embedded in my brain. Things whispered to me, things said in front of me and behind my back. Especially the ones that were said to me during my formative years.

I wish I could go back in time and tell my teenage self that everything will be okay. That you aren’t ugly, that you aren’t worthless, that you aren’t what you can and can’t do. You only have to be.

So now, I should make up new stories to tell myself. As much as I want to be a ray of light of endless optimism, I think I’m more of a realist. 

There’s also the narrative of “if he wanted to, he would” that’s in my head. Again, I don’t know where it comes from. Because this doesn’t apply to just men or boys, I think this way about God. Yep, the capital G. Like, in my head, I think he can make my life easier with a snap of a finger. But he doesn’t. So, I wonder why.

I can make my life easier, but I don’t know how. Because it’s not in me to just break things down and forget everything. Like, let go and give up. That’s not me, I’m a fighter. (again, where did this narrative come from?) Probably from my parents, probably from being a survivor and just having to try to survive all my life.

I am tired of being the victim and playing the victim. And I can sense people around me are growing tired of it too. However, it’s all I know. It’s my comfort zone. Time to break out of my shell, I guess.

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Black

Prompts: After POF, Roman takes over the abandoned color black. He becomes the hated side that Virgil used to be. By most, anyway. Janus and Virgil are concered. Patton chooses to ignore it. Romans room is really cold? and boy is he touch starved - anon

(Sanders sides Prompt) Any one of the sides is touch starved. fluff. (You dont have to do this just thought I might ask) - anon

Hello there!! I just wanna say that I love your work and I think you’re such a talented writer. Idk if this is a weird ask but would you consider writing Roman angst with the song “it’s OK I wouldn’t remember me either” by crywank as like inspiration? Thank you so much <3 -anon

buckel up babes this one's a doozy

Read on Ao3

Warnings: implied/reference self-harm by way of self-negligence, pretty intense self-hatred and neglect that could verge on suicidal, but NO ONE DIES, everyone's fine at the end, we don't break shit and not fix it in my house

Pairings: it is platonic found family hours

Word Count: 5697

Do you know what no one ever tells you about the color black?

It’s seamless.

There are no cracks, no tears, no imperfections, because everything’s so dark you can’t tell what’s a trick of the light and what isn’t. Everything blends together. At first, second, even third glance, it’s perfect. Pristine, even. It hides absolutely everything. It’s intimidating, honestly, that level of deception. The way it can make anything look like it’s meant to be there, as if to live the colorless and lightless life is all it was ever destined for.

Darkness has always found a way of feeling like home, even to the ones who are afraid of it.

You either die the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Roman hadn’t wanted to go to the wedding. He didn’t want to go, but it’s what Patton wanted. It’s what Thomas would’ve wanted. If Roman hadn’t been so loud. But it hurt, it did, when they said that they shouldn’t go to the callback because there was such a slim likelihood of Thomas winning. Because Roman couldn’t win. But Roman wasn’t supposed to be the villain and do something bad so he sent Thomas to the wedding.

Bruises were supposed to be yellow, or green, or purple, not black.

But if he had yellow, green, or purple bruises, he would’ve blamed a yellow, green, or purple Side. And that was bad.

So he hid them, because as he learned, no one was looking for them anyway. Patton cared when he didn’t show up to the video and then he was there and oh, having someone there, even if they only cared a little, was like rainfall in a desert, it was wonderful, Roman would’ve sung if he thought it wouldn’t make everything worse. But Roman was good, so he never complained, and he did his job to the best of his ability.

But what if his job was bad?

But there are two Creativities, a Roman and a Remus. And no one else liked Remus, because Remus was bad and Roman was good. But Remus isn’t bad, he’s just the opposite of Roman. And Roman didn’t want to be Remus because Remus was bad. But Remus isn’t bad.

Creativity isn’t bad.

Bruises aren’t supposed to be black but they can’t be red.

Roman isn’t supposed to be the villain but what else do you call someone who laughs at vulnerability, who scorns people’s earnest attempts to help, who single-handedly ruins someone’s life?

Roman isn’t supposed to be the villain, but bruises aren’t supposed to cover every inch of his skin unless he deserves it.

His skin burns. It crawls and aches and screams and darkens into bruises. His throat aches from the wordless screams and the horrible things he’s said to everyone. He’s been so selfish, he’s tried to make everything go his way, tried to make it about him, not about Thomas, because everything they do is supposed to help Thomas, help Thomas, that’s what they’re supposed to do, they’re supposed to help Thomas, not themselves, why is he doing this, why is he doing this?

Because he’s the villain.

Roman cries.

What else is he supposed to do?

He cries until the tears grow thick, sluggish, oozing out of his eyes until he can’t see anything but them, until his breath grows thick and his chest heavy. He cries until he has to struggle to open his eyes because of how swollen they are, how globulous the tears have become on the ends of his lashes. He cries until his head splits and his chest wails from the pain he isn’t supposed to have but deserves, deserves every little bit. He cries until his body is consumed by the bruises.

His costume is a straightjacket. He needs it off. The white hurts now, it burns his arms and cuffs his wrists. He doesn’t deserve it so he rips it off. Every seam that he ruins is another bruise. The rips are so loud they burrow into some soft part of his brain and live there. The white is still imperfect because it’s on him.

Only when his costume lies in tatters around him, his sash torn off and thrown away, far away, does the white look pure.

He cries himself to sleep with a smile on his face.

Far, far away, a black hoodie is tugged back into the Conscious Mindscape.

When Roman wakes, his head is full of static.

His lungs inflate and collapse on autopilot, driven by the merciless pump of some distant machine, turning the crank to draw air in and out, in and out.

His hands are numb, fingertips rubbed raw and inflamed from tearing relentlessly at fabric. He turns them slowly and it’s like watching himself in a video game.

His face is cold. He paws at his cheeks and feels sticky residue, etched into his skin. His eyes stick slightly when he blinks and he doesn’t know if that’s just his face or if there’s something else.

He is swathed in black fabric, an old threadbare hoodie that has gone years unloved, untouched, unseen. It’s selfishness that makes him tug it closer, feel a faint bubble of pressure on his screaming body.

He should get up, he should go make sure he hasn’t hurt anyone else with his tantrum again, he should apologize.

But…what would be the point?

Like Patton asked, does there come a point when someone keeps apologizing so much that you just have to admit they’re bad?

Roman isn’t good. Has he ever been?

Something interrupts the pleasant numbness and it shoots from his chest to the soft points at the base of his wrists, making his hands tingle. He decides he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want it. He wants everything to stop.

He’s selfish, they all know that, he’s just going to end up hurting them anyway, so why bother trying to fix it?

Apathy, his tired brain supplies when he lies there, unmoving, on the ground, for hours and hours and hours, unwilling and uncaring to fix things.

But that can’t be right. Roman is here because he cared too much, he did too much, he was too much. How can he now be the epitome of not caring at all?

If only he never cared, if only he wasn’t so attached, if only.

If only he had been Apathy, maybe he wouldn’t have been so hurt.

His pride got him here. His pride, his wants, his his his. He wanted everything and burned down the things that would’ve helped him get there because he couldn’t do it right. He is the villain and villains always have too much pride.

Pride. Apathy.

Prapathy.

Apride.

I’m not Creativity anymore, he thinks to himself as he lies there, still on the floor as his chest aches and his eyes sting and the sticky residue drips down his cheeks onto the bruises. He stares and stares and stares at the wall and a faint part of his mind that exists outside of the static realizes he never did get around to fixing that crack in the baseboard.

Pride, apathy. It doesn’t matter. There’s a much easier word that he can use to describe both of them.

Wrong.

—————————————————————

“I don’t know, Thomas,” Logan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I don’t think that’s a valid solution either.”

“But it makes sense,” Virgil protests, shoving his hands into his pockets, “all we have to do is not talk to anybody else—“

“But that will hurt their feelings!”

“But we won’t hurt ourselves.”

Janus and Patton look at each other for a moment before Patton sighs and scratches the back of his head.

“I—I don’t know, this…this feels weird.”

“None of us are happy about this, Padre,” Virgil mutters, “but it’s the best solution we’ve got.”

“Real high bar we’re setting there, isn’t it?”

“Listen, Snake Face, if you’ve got a better idea—“

“Virgil, enough.” Logan shakes his head. “We need to keep thinking.”

“We’ve been at this for an hour, Logan,” Thomas says cautiously, “I don’t know what else you think we’re gonna get to.”

“We’ve already passed the optimal point for productivity, yes.”

“Oh, well, we can’t just give up now!” Patton puts his hands on his hips. “I’m sure if we just keep at it for a little longer—“

“You said that half an hour ago, Patton.”

“And I’ll say it again!”

“Because that’s going to make everything go much easier.”

Thomas sighs as the Sides fall back into bickering. Normally, this wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary—pretty much all they do is argue back and forth—but Logan’s right. They’ve made almost no progress. He finds himself staring at the TV.

Why is he staring at the TV?

He frowns, tilting his head. It’s literally just his TV. Why is he so fixated on it right now? It’s not like it’s gone anywhere, it’s sitting right where it always is. He stares at it most of the day, why is it so weird that he’s looking at it now?

Wait—

“Guys,” he interrupts, still staring at the thing he’s not supposed to be able to see like this, “where’s Roman?”

The room pauses. Then Logan sighs.

“Oh, of course, that’s why we’ve been having such a hard time coming up with solutions, we don’t have Roman.”

At Virgil’s side-eye, he glances around to see similar looks of disbelief on the other’s faces.

“What?”

“Did you…did you just admit we need Roman?”

“He is Creativity, it makes sense that if we are struggling to be creative, he isn’t here.”

“Okay, that makes more sense.” Virgil shakes his head. “Thought you were admitting he was important or something.”

“Please, his head is big enough as it is.”

Janus hides a snort.

“Why didn’t he show up earlier,” Thomas asks, “he’s normally one of the first of you to get here.”

Virgil shrugs. “I dunno, I haven’t seen that much of him lately.”

“Is he…okay?”

“Who the hell knows, he’s Roman.”

“My guess is he’s been in his room,” Logan says, glancing at Roman’s usual spot, “I haven’t seen him either.”

Thomas doesn’t miss the way Janus and Patton glance at each other. “If you two have information now might be the time to share it.”

“Roman…hasn’t come out of his room,” Patton says after a beat, “not since…”

“Wait, he hasn’t come out since the wedding?”

Janus shakes his head. “I’ve barely seen him open his door.”

“That doesn’t…normally happen, does it?”

“No,” Patton says, “and, uh, he doesn’t normally ignore us either.”

“Ignore you?”

“We’ve tried knocking. It doesn’t work.”

“Perhaps Thomas can summon him,” Logan offers, “you have more power than any of us do, he’d have to answer you.”

“Well, here goes nothing. Creativity!”

Someone pops up in front of the TV.

Someone in a white costume with green embellishments and a mustache.

“Remus?”

Remus glares at them, his Morningstar at his side, his costume white, pristine, and light.

“What the fuck have you done with my brother?”

—————————————————————

It’s been weeks.

The fans have accepted Remus as Creativity. They think that the videos are better than ever. They think this was Thomas’s plan from the beginning.

There is one end card where the Sides are watching a movie and some of them spot a dark figure in the corner. Who could this be? Is this the mysterious orange Side everyone has been waiting for? Is this the Side that’s been hurting Thomas so much?

Zoom and enhance. It’s Virgil’s old hoodie. They’re sitting where Remus used to sit. They’re not staring at the screen, they’re looking at the others. What could this mean?

Someone spots the faint outline of a tiny crown perched atop the figure’s head.

And then, well, then it all makes sense.

There was always one Side that messed up everything, that made everything more complicated. There was always one Side that, if you thought about it, you could trace everything back to. There was always one Side that was told he was making the bad choice and yet, never seemed to learn.

They start to put together timelines, evidence, essay-length meta posts on how of course, this is the plan, why didn’t they see it before? Those that had disliked him from the start crow about how they were right, how everyone doubted them but look who’s laughing now. They point out how he’s become a Dark Side, maybe he was always a Dark Side, and how incredible would that storytelling be? To warn against the pressures of society’s expectations, the idea of good versus bad, or authentic versus forced. How of course, they’re wearing Virgil’s old hoodie because they’re the hated Side now. How they’re not looking at the screen because that’s not what they want, they want to be a part of the famILY.

Vitriolic rants. Accusations. Vent fics. The unsympathetic tag is overflowing.

Because who else could the villain be?

—————————————————————

Roman lives in the cold now.

His fireplace isn’t lit anymore. The door to the Imagination doesn’t work anymore. The blankets on his bed aren’t thick enough anymore. He drifts through a haze where only the emergency systems in his brain are online, where only the awareness needed to sleep, breathe, and move the little bits he needs to move are present.

He doesn’t know that there’s nothing behind the red door anymore, that when Janus and Virgil come to knock on it, worried, or when Remus storms through the Imagination and tries to knock it down by force, there’s nothing for them to find.

He doesn’t know that a new door, a black door, leads from his room to the hallway, far away from any of the other rooms. He doesn’t know that it’s so dark back here that no one would be able to tell there was a door if they didn’t put their nose right up against it.

He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care.

A new kind of ache settles in his bones now. Pain is an old friend, but he’s yet to give suffering a proper handshake.

He misses when he could go and ask someone for help.

He misses when Patton would turn to him without any judgment in his eyes, without any ‘well, you know, kiddo—‘, without any ‘let’s start off with—‘, just the soft words of I’m here, I’ll help you. He misses being able to walk up to Patton’s door and knock on it and know that he would be safe on the other side.

Patton would open the door and soften, his mouth curling up into a small smile as he says hey, kiddo, come in. He would sit Roman down on the bed and press a glass of water into his hands. He would rub his back as he drank, taking the empty glass gently and cupping Roman’s face in his hands. He would ask what’s wrong, sweetheart, what can I do? And Roman would say he just wants a hug, he just wants to not be alone for a bit. And Patton would smile and coo about how Roman was always welcome here, sweetheart, I’m right here, I’ll take care of you. And Roman could fall asleep with his head on Patton’s chest and believe that everything was okay.

He misses when he could walk up to Logan and ask for help and he wouldn’t be scoffed at or turned away, he wouldn’t be looked at suspiciously and asked what he really wanted. He misses when Logan could come to him too and just spend time together.

Logan would knock on his door and ask if you have a moment, would you like to walk with me? And Roman would smile and say, of course, he always has time for Logan, and they could go somewhere in the Imagination and just talk. And Logan would say that’s an interesting idea, I wonder if—and they would walk and talk for hours. And Roman could bustle up to Logan’s door and say I’ve just thought of something, and Logan would open his door and be happy to talk with Roman and it would be okay.

Roman curls up tighter and feels nothing.

He wishes he could have something to miss for Virgil. He wishes they could have bonded over their love of Disney, their want to talk about the things they’re interested in, or even the need to just have someone else in the room with them for a bit. He wishes their relationship wasn’t just spitting barbs at each other, each hoping to hit the bullseye first and knock the other one out of the race. He wishes he could’ve done better.

He wishes he could have something to miss for Janus. He wishes they could’ve done this right, that they could’ve bonded over the want to keep Thomas safe but also have him be himself. He wishes that he hadn’t laughed, hadn’t scorned, hadn’t fallen back on his pride to keep himself safe at the expense of Thomas. He wishes that maybe, just maybe, if he had been a better puppet, then he wouldn’t have been dropped so suddenly.

But as it stands now, more than anything he wishes he could hear them when they say the things they say about him because then he could figure out which bruises were theirs and take comfort in knowing that they still touch him in some way.

The bruises are a constant now. From the online hate to the casual remarks from the others to the way that Patton hasn’t even tried to come find him anymore—he can hear that, you know—he can’t turn over without landing on a new smattering of bruises. The hoodie helps to cushion the blow a little bit.

He misses Remus.

Remus was…

…Remus was everything.

Roman misses his other half. Roman misses his brother. Roman misses his Creativity.

When they were small they would curl around each other as if they could fuse if they focused hard enough. They would wrap their arms around each other so tightly that it would be a pleasant ache when they woke, never minding because they were tighter. Remus was always so warm and Roman hoarded every single bit he could get.

Roman was cruel to push his brother away and now he understands how it feels.

He misses Thomas.

He misses when he was allowed to go and see Thomas. When he could talk to Thomas. When his presence was celebrated or at the very least, tolerated. He misses it. He misses helping.

But he’s helping now, by staying away.

He’s cold.

He’s so cold.

—————————————————————

do you remember what it felt like

to be touched?

press of fingertips against shoulders

bump of a forehead against yours

palms meeting and parting a mere second later

in days gone by

do you remember

warm?

humans thrive off physical contact,

we’re not built to hold each other

at arms’ length.

infants will die

if they aren’t held enough.

and I am so

so

cold

——���——————————————————

Something is wrong and even Patton can’t ignore it anymore.

The Sides shuffle uneasily in front of the red door until Remus raises his hand to knock against it.

“Roman?”

Silence.

“Roman, please, please, just—just say something.”

Silence.

“Where the fuck are you, Roman?”

“Don’t yell,” Logan mumbles, “you’ll make him think we’re angry at him.”

Remus takes a deep breath.

“We’re not angry, Ro-bro, we’re just—just please make some noise.”

Silence.

“…we’re coming in, Roman.”

But they can’t. Because as Remus turns the knob on the door, it falls forward. The entire door comes off just to reveal—

A blank wall. With no sign that there was ever a room behind it.

Thomas can hear the scream.

—————————————————————

Roman hears the scream and can’t move. But he can close his eyes and reach out and see what’s going on. After all, he hasn’t done anything, so something must be wrong if someone else is screaming.

He feels something in his chest twist and snap.

“Re?”

Across the Mindscape, Remus’s head jerks up.

“Ro,” he breathes, getting to his feet and rushing off down the hall as the others hurry after him, “Ro!”

“Remus, what’s going on?”

“Why isn’t Roman’s room there anymore?”

“Where are you going?”

They barrel into the hallway and smack into a black door. Logan’s eyes widen as he realizes what’s happened.

“Roman’s become a Dark Side,” he says, fingers scrabbling where the door meets the wall, “he’s—he’s really hurt, we have to help—“

“Move, L, I’m gonna break the door down.”

“You’re not gonna do it without me.”

“Roman!”

Roman turns his head to look at the door. Are they…here? The hoodie rasps against his undead skin and he winces. There are still bruises.

“Roman!”

The door shudders its frame. He could open it. He could. He just has to reach out and—

“Ro!”

Remus.

The door unlatches and his brother pours into the room, letting out a wail when he spots Roman in the bed.

Janus hisses as soon as he crosses the threshold, this room is freezing. It feels as if no one’s moved for years inside, as if the heat has been sucked out entirely. His gaze flies to Remus, who’s over on the bed, his hands scrabbling at something in black material.

Roman.

“Oh, little prince,” he whispers, horrified, “no, no, no—“

“We have to get him out,” Logan orders, startling Remus into action as he scoops Roman into his arms, “we have to get him warm. His core temperature is too low.”

“Shower? Bath?”

“No, if we shock his system we could make it worse. Janus, I need your heating pads, Patton, something warm to drink.”

Janus and Patton vanish.

“Virgil, weighted blankets, Remus—“

“I’m here.” As Virgil ducks away as well, Remus helps Logan cradle the limp and freezing form of his brother in their arms as they begin to rush out of that horrible, horrible room. “You thinking bathroom?”

“Get him to Janus’s, that’ll be the safest place.”

“Got it.”

Sure enough, Janus has no objection and sweeps them inside, setting down the heating pads as Patton bustles in with two thermos flasks and a mug. Virgil pops back with thick blankets as they lay the cold form on the ground. Roman’s eyes blink sluggishly as he stares up at Remus.

“...Re?”

“Yeah, Roro, it’s me, I’m right here, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here faster.”

“What’s…wha’s going on?”

“You’re too cold, Roman,” Logan says gently, “we need to get you warmed up.”

“Oh…”

“It will be easier if we take a few of the layers off,” he explains, still careful to keep his voice low and even as the others scurry around, “is that alright?”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to unzip the hoodie.” Logan works slowly, patiently, stopping when any flicker crosses Roman’s face. “That’s it, you’re doing very well, I’m almost done.”

By the time he’s coaxed the hoodie off of Roman’s shoulders, there’s a little bit of color back in his cheeks.

“Very good, Roman, you did well. Virgil’s brought a few warm blankets and Janus has heating pads for you, do you think you can sit up?”

“Don’t know.”

“That’s alright, you’re doing alright.” Logan glances up at Janus.

“Little prince,” Janus murmurs, sitting by Roman’s head, “if you can sit up, I can sit behind you and help warm you up, does that sound alright?”

“Okay.”

“Thank you, sweetie, we’re going to sit you up now.”

Logan and Janus sit Roman up slowly, only to pause when the long sleeves of his shirt fall down.

“Roman,” Logan asks, trying frantically to keep his voice calm, “are you hurt?”

“Mhm.”

He bites back the fearful response and patiently asks where, how bad, can he see?

“Everywhere.” Roman lifts his arms weakly. “’S all bruises.”

“…can we see?”

“Okay.”

Logan’s hands begin to tremble as he works the shirt over Roman’s head. He wasn’t kidding when he said everywhere.

There’s barely an inch of skin that doesn’t look bruised black and blue. Patton stifles a cry as he drops to his knees next to them, looking at Roman like he’s never seen it this bad before.

Oh, Roman, how did they not know? How could he just ignore him like that?

“Get him covered,” comes Virgil’s voice, “he’s still too cold.”

Janus grabs one of the blankets and wraps it carefully around Roman’s form. It should help distribute whatever pressure they apply so it won’t aggravate his injuries too severely. He takes one heating pad and scoots forward, bracketing Roman’s legs with his own and wrapping one pair of arms around him to press the pad to his chest.

“Can you feel that, sweetie,” he asks softly, “is that too warm?”

“No.”

“Good, good, little prince, you’re being very brave.” He turns away to reach for another and so misses the little shudder that goes through Roman. “Do you think you can handle another if I press it to the back of your neck?”

“Mm.”

“Let’s try, little prince, and if it’s too much, I’ll stop.”

“Okay.”

“Here we go, sweetie—“ Janus presses it carefully to the base of Roman’s skull, just at the edge of the blanket— “there, does that feel okay?”

“Mm.”

“Good, sweetie, you’re doing so well, so good for us, that’s it, you relax now.”

Roman starts to tremble.

“That’s alright,” Logan soothes, “you’re warming up, it means you’re going to shiver a little more, you’re alright, Roman, you’re safe. You’re doing well.”

It certainly doesn’t seem that way once Roman’s breath starts to come in gasps. Virgil nudges Patton out of the way and sits, gently calling Roman’s name until his gaze snaps to Virgil’s.

“Hey, Princey,” Virgil says slowly, “you gotta stay with me now, okay? We’re right here, no one’s angry, nothing’s going to hurt you. Just focus on me.”

He ignores the startled noises when Roman starts to cry thick, black tears.

“Eyes on me, Princey, that’s it, stay here. We’re just gonna sit here and breathe for a moment, okay?” Roman nods and Virgil starts to take big, exaggerated breaths. “Good. That’s it, Princey, you focus on me and you breathe. It’s okay. You’re doing great. Just stay here.”

When the viscous black liquid slows, Virgil reaches out and begins to tuck Roman’s hair back. A moment longer and he pauses, noting how the scratch on Roman’s face is covered in the thick black tears.

“Princey, can I clean your face off for you? You’re doing really well at breathing, I’m proud of you. Can I help you with the rest of it?”

“O-okay.”

There’s a bottle of micellar water and a pack of cotton circles pressed into his hands. He moves in slow, careful strokes, changing out the circles as often as he needs to. A pile of them grows beside him as he works, doing his best to get all the black off of Roman’s face. Roman just cries.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” Patton murmurs when Roman’s cry gives way to a wail, “it’s okay, you cry all you need to, we’re not going anywhere, it’ll be alright.”

“We have you, sweetie,” Janus says against Roman’s neck, “we’re here.”

Remus lets out a broken noise.

“Oh, Roman, you didn’t…”

Logan’s head whips sharply around to scold Remus only for his mouth to fall open in shock.

Remus’s costume is bleeding too. The same black that drips down Roman’s face is slowly coloring Remus’s costume again, back to what it normally looks like. Remus’s mouth is agape, staring horrified at Roman.

“Oh, Ro—“

“What’s going on?”

“Check the bruises on his neck,” Remus orders as Janus pulls back the blanket, “are they still there?”

“They’re here, but they’re…lighter, how is that—?”

“Roman is the Ego,” Patton mumbles, “he gets bruised when—when—“

“Oh, shit,” Virgil curses, before quickly hushing Roman’s discontented mumble, “and with all the hate that’s been gunning for him—“

“Oh, sweetheart—“

Roman lets out another sob and the tears run clear.

“The Ego is kept healthy by positive attention,” Logan says softly, scooting closer and rubbing Roman’s shoulder through the blanket, “you’ve been starving, haven’t you?”

“He’s not cold because he’s hypothermic,” Remus blusters, “he’s touch starved.”

“It’s still not safe to introduce him to direct contact all at once,” Logan warns when Patton and Remus look like they want to rip the blanket off, “we have to take it slow.”

“So what do we do?”

Janus just leans down and presses a kiss to Roman’s temple. “You’re so brave, sweetie, you’ve been so strong.”

They watch as Roman’s tears begin to wash away the black.

“We love you, sweetheart, you’re so important to us.”

“Stay with us, Princey, we need you.”

“You’re doing very well, Roman, we’re very proud of you.”

Roman cries, ducking his head into Virgil’s waiting hands as Remus’s costume colors itself black again.

After a long while, when Remus looks like he normally does, Roman shakes his head and looks up at them.

“Where am I,” and he sounds like Roman again, “what’s happened?”

“You were starving, sweetheart,” Patton mumbles, “and we didn’t notice until it was too late.”

“O-oh,” Roman blinks, “is that…is that why I’m so cold?”

“You’re touch starved too,” Virgil adds, “and we, uh, L said it wasn’t a good idea to try and shock you out of it.”

“Try and drink something,” Logan says quickly as Patton reaches for the mug, “you’ve been crying for a while and you’re dehydrated.”

“Is that…hot chocolate?”

“Your favorite, kiddo.”

Remus sits down at Roman’s side as he drinks, staring at him like he’s not seen him in ages. Which, well, none of them have, really.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” Roman repeats, looking sheepishly at all of them, “I, uh, well, the last video I messed up a lot. I, uh, I shouldn’t have laughed at your name, Jan—where are you?”

“Right here,” Janus mumbles, giving him a gentle squeeze, “and you’re forgiven.”

“Oh. Uh, that was easy…are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Yes, it wasn’t great of you to do, but I’m not exactly blameless either and…”

He squeezes him again.

“…you’ve been hurting enough.”

“Logan, you too, I—I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, Roman, but I agree. It’s alright.”

“Why are you all forgiving me so fast?”

“Because,” Remus mumbles, cupping Roman’s head and resting their foreheads together, “this happened.”

They all watch as Roman shudders as Remus shows him what happened.

“Oh—oh—I—oh no—“

“It’s over now, sweetie,” Janus reassures, “we’ve got you. You’re okay, you’re safe.”

“C-can I have a hug?”

“Of course, honey, come here—“

“Let’s get the blanket out of the way, L, is he—“

“It should be safe now, yes.”

“Remus, I—oof!”

“I gotcha, Ro-Bro.”

“It’s still—I’m still—“

“Patton, grab that end of the blanket.”

“This one?”

“That’s it, yes.”

The Sides end up swaddled in the blanket, their heads poking out, as each of them pulls a little bit of Roman into their arms to warm up. Janus and Remus wrap around his upper body, mindful of the few bruises that haven’t been healed yet. His legs are in Patton’s lap, as Logan and Virgil each hold on to his hands. The poor thing is still shivering, still shaking, still a little overwhelmed.

But Janus coos into his ear as his head lolls back, Remus holding him tightly. Logan’s thumb strokes over his palm as Virgil lets him squeeze as tight as he needs to. Patton makes sure he’s off the cold tile and he’s warm.

They’re going to have to work out what to do about the fans, about the videos, but right now they need to worry about Roman.

Speaking of Roman—

“I—I need to apologize to Thomas.”

A cry goes up as he says so, Patton reaching up to pat his knee. “You don’t have to do that right now, sweetheart, rest, it’s okay—“

“I won’t—he won’t be able to rest until he knows what’s happened.”

As if he can hear them, they feel the familiar tug of one of them being summoned. A quick glance around shows that if one of them is going, all of them are, so they appear on the floor of the living room, swaddled in the blanket.

Thomas’s mouth drops open and he rushes to their side.

“I was gonna ask if you found Roman, but I—Roman, buddy, are you okay?”

“I…I don’t know,” Roman mumbles, “but I’m sorry.”

“For what, buddy?”

As Roman begins to apologize, for being away, for hurting Thomas, for being selfish, Thomas just shakes his head.

“No, buddy, that’s not all on you. You—yeah, okay, some things happened, but it’s not entirely your fault. You don’t need to think of it like that.”

“Well said,” Logan mutters, “now help us get Roman to rest.”

“So what Disney movie are we watching and how many pillows do we need?”

A lot, as it turns out, is the answer. And they have to bite back laughs at the way Thomas makes a noise when he’s swept into the blanket too. But Thomas is warm and Roman is still cold and the movie plays on the screen.

“Hey, Roman?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re my hero.”

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[moonlit-void-to-the-far-unknown]

Go on, what are your thoughts about the bear? :)

I’m so glad you asked friend! Get ready I have feelings! Gonna be a read more cause it’s long

-settle in kids moon has a lot to discuss- we’ll start with characters:

Richie sucks, always. Why does he have to be a lil bitch about EVERYTHING like bro, we get it, your like 45, divorced, wife took the kid, your best friend blew his brains out, you hate change like the boomer you are. But like bro, taking it out on Carmy who didn’t ask to be given the restaurant in the first place? Not gonna fix it. Taking it out on Sydney, a young chef just doing her best? Doesn’t fix anything. You crying like a bitch? Doesn’t help. Selling coke? Out of the alley? Behind the restaurant? Sorry are you saying that’s the only way the beef made it through covid? Was…being a back door drug den? Okay. Okay. Yeah no one saw Micheal was a drug addict when that was his solution to fix things?

Tina, grew on me, she did, I like her, would trust her to cook everything. Actual tia of the restaurant and if anyone hurt her kitchen family you know she would be kicking peoples ass. Did irk me a bit at the start but like she learned and grew. Something A LOT OF OTHERS COULD LEARN FROM RICHIE! She even said, ‘I’ve learned more in the last two months then I ever did before’ like. Micheal was great apparently but, was he really? Tina is just love her, trust her with all my food and my life.

Ebras, I like him. He’s cool. Didn’t learn much about him but like 10/10 comic relief when we need it.

Fak, played beautifully by Matty matthaison, an actual chef and one of the producers and chef like directors of the show like Jeremy Allen white said ‘I told Matty or coco to like stop a scene if I did anything that wouldn’t be done in a real chef kitchen’ so the fact he’s playing a Jack of all trades repair man who wants to be a cook, is 10/10, he’s just another comic relief we need. I love him

Misc. crew: I like them. Didn’t learn much about them but they are key to being background and immersive elements.

Sugar, I want to learn more about her but so far standard big sister, bit over bearing in a way that I get. And also the fact her and Carmy are the ‘let’s fight to express emotions’ type of siblings is just -chefs kiss-

Pete, a bitch. Like look at him.

Cicero, so he def works in like shady shit right? Mob? Mafia? Drug dealing? Like that’s what they were like putting out right? But also why did he lend 300k to Michael? Like he knew something wasn’t right like come on. Come oooonnnn.

NOW! MY BABIES, MY PRIDE AND JOYS.

Sydney, an angel sent on high to help Carmy in the perfect way. Without babying him and not taking any shit. She is just, I would die for her, I would kill for her. Also she has my patience level of ‘but like why can’t I do it now? Like why can’t I just do it and show you it works?’ Like me and her I get it. Just the perfect partner for Carmy, like I ship her and Marcus so hard.

Marcus, an angel of a man, I would die to try his desserts, he just, he’s friend shaped guys, he’s friend shaped. Him and Sydney would be the like cutest couple. Like, I can’t explain it. Also him wanting to learn and be able to do what Carmy did with desserts like, Marcus is just I love him so much. Okay he’s the calm comfort the show needs. Also babes when the machine starts smoking? Turn it off, that’s all you can do. Also his and Carmys bonding moment like “you blew a fuse I almost burned down a restaurant the night after I was food and wines number 1, so shit happens. And you’ll fuck up again it’s fine”

CARMY ‘MY BABY’ BERZATTO, needs therapy, like extreme therapy. Needs to understand that how he was taught was abuse, the chefs he worked under, abused him and every other staff member, that’s not what he needs to keep teaching. And hopefully he realised that when Sydney and Marcus walked out because after a point you can only scream at someone so much. Now, man is just this beautiful mix of trying his best, and trying to work and fix everything around him but not being able to understand why his brother was doing the things he was and what happened in the years before that shifted everything. The fact he only went to culinary school and became one of the best of the best was to say ‘fuck you I can do what you do but a million times better in the eyes of the world’ like, Carmy is someone who has a system that he needs to keep his brain sane, but he also won’t accept anyone else trying to help fix and change that system to work and flow better as Sydney said like ‘I told you this would t work, you didn’t listen, it blew up in my face because you left’ like Carmy knows he can make the beef now the bear into something, amazing. But he just doesn’t have the tools to do it. Tools Sydney has inside her but doesn’t want to wait and slowly bring them out because as her old bosses said ‘your incredibly impatient and very green’ like. Ugh I love them.

Now over all, amazing show my god it’s fast paced and quick cut, and it shows what it needs to get the point across, it gives you enough in a scene for you to get the story with out it being spoon fed to you. You don’t need someone to say “Carmy it’s been 2 months since we started this system it’s not working” because it gave you the story beats that you need to understand time is passing by. Like the first episode Richie says carmys been in charge for 2 weeks and everything’s going to hell. So you get that time has passed, then it’s an offhand of ‘4 months ago Michael shot himself’ so you get the timeline but not in a spoon feed you way.

The show is good. It’s amazing. I can not wait for season 2. Where we see Carmy and Sydney make the bear into, something amazing. Or start to. Where Sydney starts learning patience, where Carmy maybe opens up more and realises the ways he and Sydney were abused and beat down in a kitchen doesn’t need to be the way things work in the bear.

I just. I can’t explain how much I love Carmy enough. Or Sydney or the whole show it’s. Good.

Bad if you have anxiety and have worked in a place like a kitchen or even retail like when I tell you episode 7 had me feeling like both Carmy and Sydney, from when I worked in pick up at target during holidays. My god

Yes 10/10 love it, want it always, give me season 2 like right now.

[uwuwriting]

Incompatible ships w/ Todoroki, Kirishima, Bakugou and Midoiya

Request: hii! i love ur posts so i thought why not request ajbakaha,, can i ask for todoroki, kirishima, bakugou, izuku getting jealous bc their s/o is getting shipped with another student :D (it can be their relationship is still a secret or smth) btw i love your posts!! it's free serotonin!! 😽😽- anonymous

Secret relationships are my favorite trope. This and friends to lovers. I live for these types of fics. Random fact, my allergies are acting up bc I helped take down the Christmas decorations and now my hands are on fire. Love ya. 💖💖💖

masterlist II rules

warnings: fluff, minor suggestive themes not something major though

Todoroki Shouto

-Things like jealousy are a rare occurrence in your relationship. 

-Todoroki is the type of boyfriend who trusts you blindly and would put his own life in your hands without a single hesitation. 

-Sometimes it bothers him how other people effortlessly flirt with you but he knows that nothing will come out of it no matter how much they chat you up. 

-He knows you can handle yourself and get out of  a situation if things start getting out of hand. 

-And if you can’t, he will butt in glaring down at the person who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

-Everyone around you seem to believe that the two of you are really close friends; none of them have caught a whiff of your relationship and you are proud of yourselves. 

-I mean it is pretty hard keeping so many romantic milestones hidden from your friends. 

-But alas you both knew that keeping all of this to yourselves would be for the best. 

-Now, we all know that the girls of your class drool over any remotely romantic interaction you have. 

-Same goes for everyone actually. 

-Oh Kirishima held the door open for you the other day?? I can see a new ship sailing. 

-Sero helped you pick up your stuff when you bumped into a wall? Your knight in shining armor. 

-Really any sort of kind gesture was interpreted as romantic interest at this point. 

-The worst part of it all was the ship they had created and have been simping over for the past three months. 

-You had managed to create an unexpected friendship with Monoma from class 3-B. 

-The agency he interns in is right next to yours so you take the same train and then walk to almost the same building every single day. 

-You see him during patrol, the pro heroes you work under have paired up once or twice so a friendship was inevitable. 

-So imagine the surprise on your classmate’s faces when Monoma began waiting for you outside the 3-A dorm building.

-Mina wouldn’t shut up about how cute you two were together and what a perfect match you made. 

-Soon enough the other idiots joined the party and you were drowned in ‘awwww’s and ‘love story in the making’s. 

-You got tired of explaining that he was just a friend, that you weren’t interested in him. 

-The fact that you could feel Todoroki’s gaze burn through your back didn’t help at all. 

-Your boyfriend had asked you about Monoma because he too found it weird how he waited for you everyday. 

-The boy’s presence didn’t bother him at first. 

-He was lowkey grateful that you finally had company on your way to the agency considering he couldn’t walk with you since his building was in the opposite direction. 

-It started becoming a problem when all he could hear during the breaks was the stupid ship name the girls had created. 

-He could see how visibly uncomfortable it made you and how you would seek for his gaze during those moments. 

-Then they started talking about how cute your kids would be and that’s when Shoto had enough. 

-It’s one thing hearing about how cute your girlfriend would be with someone else and it’s completely different when you hear about their potential offspring. 

-Grabbing your wrist he basically dragged you out the classroom and into an empty hallway, pinning you to the nearest wall before connecting his lips with yours. 

-You let a surprised gasp which gave him the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth and deepen the kiss, making you grasp onto his shirt as your knees gave out. 

-After what felt like an eternity he let you go for air before attacking your jaw, neck and collarbones. 

-Soon those soft kisses turned into little love bites. 

- “Sho you’re gonna leave a mark.” 

-Releasing your skin from between his teeth, he admired the reddish hickey he had left at the base of your neck. 

-He was sure your shirt’s collar could cover it up just barely. 

- “That’s the point, love.” 

-Intertwining your fingers, he led you back to class, going to his seat with a proud smirk on his lips leaving a very flustered puffy-lips-messy-haired you in his wake. 

Kirishima Eijiro 

-Kiribaby is not the jealous type. 

-Like only if you give your undivided attention to a puppy and you smother it with all your love and affection then maybe, just maybe, he will pout a bit and ask for his own fair share of love. 

-He trusts you just like Todoroki does.

-Nothing has ever happened to suggest that he should worry about others stealing you from him so he doesn’t worry. 

-Plus you are always together no matter what. 

-Almost everyone from your class knows that you are together so the shipping doesn’t start from them. 

-Oh no.

-It starts from class 3-B who has seen you talk to Tetsutetsu quite a bit this past few weeks. 

-You might wait for him outside their classroom during lunch breaks. 

-They have caught you hanging out outside of the school grounds. 

-So the only logical explanation they can come up with is that you two are either A) dating or B) have a thing for each other and are getting there. 

-Soon enough rumors start circulating. 

- “Did you know that someone from the hero course is dating that metal guy from class 3-B?”

- “Yeah yeah I heard it’s that girl Y/N. They do look really cute together, not gonna lie.”

-Eventually these rumors reach Kiri’s ears and they kinda get to him.

-He knows that you haven’t been hanging out extra with Tetsutetsu since every time you guys go out he is always with you. 

-You are the type of couple who does everything together, literally. 

-Apart from being in different agencies ya’ll are holding hands almost 24/7.

-So he really doesn’t get what everyone is talking about. 

-Mineta doesn’t help. 

-He really doesn’t. 

-He starts making scenarios about what you do while Kirishima is out of the dorms; how you have wrapped both homies around your finger and toying with them. 

-Oh the very vivid scenes he creates with all three of you in a…. compromising position. 

-Kirishima hates that most of all. 

-The words coming out of Mineta’s mouth disgust him to no end and soon enough he is walking to your dorm ready to talk this through. 

-Opening the door you greet your boyfriend with a smile and a quick peck but you immediately know what is on his mind. 

- “Baby what are we gonna do?” 

-You basically whine at the question. 

-He spends the whole night at your dorm brainstorming ideas until you both pass out on your floor. 

-And your solution to the problem? 

-Ignore the whole thing and continue on with your lives. 

-He suggested maybe leaving a mark somewhere *like our boy Sho* but you shot him down saying that they would just think Tetsutetsu did it. 

-After Monoma catches you in your classroom making out on your desk though the rumors soon die out. 

Bakugou Katsuki

-Crazy boom boom boy. 

-Your relationship is a secret because he doesn’t want to deal with all the other idiots gushing over your relationship and getting all up in your business. 

-Your relationship is a sacred thing he has sworn to protect and he won’t let Mineta���s ugly ass hands get anywhere near it. 

-Gonna taint it even with his thoughts. 

-Guard dog Bakugou bark bark. 

-It’s fairly easy to maintain a secret relationship with him. 

-Sure he might be a tiny bit calmer with you and maybe just maybe his eyes linger on you during training but yeah he treats you just like he treats all the other extras he is surrounded by. 

-Now, Bakugou is kinda *read a lot* jealous in general. 

-He doesn’t like when people he doesn’t fully trust or like, talk to you or are close to you. 

-He has butted in on your conversations with Todoroki one too many times and the poor crispy baby is so confused like why are you like this? 

-I just want the chemistry notes please let me get them in peace for once.

-You have chastised him about that manier times but your resolve melts when he pouts *YES HE POUTS AT YOU RWIHPWIE* before wrapping his strong arms around you. 

- “I just don’t wanna lose you, dumbass.” 

-You can barely make out his words as his face is buried in your stomach but you heard him and now you are tearing up at the pure emotion he is showing at these moments. 

-At the end of the day though, he trusts you. 

-He may not trust the other horny extras around you but he fully trusts you. 

-There’s no doubt about that. 

-You can imagine ,though, the instant rage he felt when he heard the girls talking about you and Deku. 

- “They do make a great couple.” 

- “Have you seen how they look at each other?” 

- “Good for her, Deku is perfect boyfriend material.” 

-First of all, how dare you, second hold the fuck up…..when did this become a WhoRe hOuSe?!?!?!?!  

-Legit someone has to shake him out of his stupor after that one. 

-You look at Deku in a certain way? 

-Fucking DEKU?!?!?! 

-THoughts are swirling in his mind almost pouring out of his ears when he hears the voice. 

-That annoying ass voice that he has engraved in his brain since childhood. 

-And the moment his eyes land upon Deku and you speaking, he sees red. 

-He is pouncing on Deku in -5 seconds, the poor green haired boy completely unaware of what hit him, literally. 

-They are on the floor wrestling on another, you screaming at Katsuki to stop and get his shit together while your boyfriend is spewing curse after curse at the OFA user simultaneously asking what the hell he was doing with HIS girlfriend. 

-Aizawa had to break them up. 

-They both got detention even though Deku did literally nothing. 

-Katsuki was denied cuddles for a whole week and he was set on explaining duty now that the cat was out of the bag. 

Midoriya Izuku 

-Izuku is the best boyfriend anyone could ask for. 

-He is loyal, shows emotions, is good at communicating with you, has incredible date ideas although he is kinda forgetful at times and his packed schedule doesn’t leave enough time to spend with you, at least not as much as he wants, but he always tries to make up for it in other ways.

-You love how much trust he puts in you. 

-You couldn’t be more grateful. 

-But Izuku has his insecurities. 

-At times it becomes hard for him to understand why exactly you’ve chosen him to love when you could have anyone you wanted in this school. 

-He can’t wrap his pretty little head around the reason why you stay with him when the only thing you get out of all this is others saying you deserve better than some crybaby. 

-It has become his mission to prove to you that he isn’t what others say he is; he isn’t some crybaby, he is a hero in training who won’t hesitate to risk his life for you. 

-You have reassured him multiple times that you don’t care what others say.

-You fell in love with him, him and all of his flaws. 

-No one told you that you should fall for him and no you didn’t agree to date him out of pity. 

-Most of the time you manage to erase those thoughts from his mind replacing them with the warm feeling of your love.

-But there comes a time when no matter what you say, the words of other people will get the best of him and it will be a struggle to build himself back up. 

-He is thankful to have you by his side during those moments because then he truly feels weak, he feels helpless, he knows these things shouldn’t bother him. 

-He loves you and you love him end of story, but they do get to him. 

-One of the worst times he questioned if he was good enough was during your third year. 

-Being in the support department you couldn’t be by his side 24/7 but you did always manage to see him during breaks to the point the whole class knew you and slowly became your friends. 

-The thing is they thought you two were also friends; neither had ever mentioned your relationship and things felt so comfortable between you that they assumed that you were really close friends. 

-Izuku had suggested keeping your relationship on the down low; him being in the hero course and having created rather the reputation, he was afraid that you would be dragged into something dangerous. 

-Plus All Might advised you two to keep it a secret and All Might’s words are law. 

-Izuku loved how well you got along with his friends, it meant that when he revealed your relationship they would all welcome you with open arms. 

-What he didn’t expect though was for them to start shipping you with someone else. 

-For some weird reason the girls of his class started obsessing over your interactions with Bakugou and soon after that they started trying to get you two alone in the same room, much to your dismay. 

-In reality, Bakugou was the only person who knew about your relationship. 

-He had ran into you as you were leaving Izuku’s dorm room, catching you two kiss goodnight. 

-Bakugou, as much as he disliked Izuku, would never get in the way of your relationship and he hated this ship shit as much maybe even more than you did. 

-Izuku was ready to crawl into a whole and die. 

-You had to stay in his room for almost a whole month to calm him down completely, him flying you to your own building in the morning so you don’t get in trouble. 

-It was a difficult time aand his classmate’s comments didn’t help one bit. 

-The tipping point was when he overheard Mina devising a plan of setting you guys up. 

-He walked down to the common room the next day with you next to him, hands intertwined, a hickey barely visible under the hem of HIS shirt, shocking everyone in the vicinity. 

-A new ship was created *after they harassed you for answers*

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[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Can we take a moment to talk about what a tragic character Minerva is? Y’all know that for the longest time I haven’t been the biggest fan of her, and honestly I’m still not? but I think I might’ve had a breakthrough on why that is. 

Whenever I’ve asked around to see why people find her so appealing or why they consider her their favorite, I’ll get answers like, “she’s such a complex character and she deserved a redemption arc!” or “she should’ve come back to the school with us! Let Minnie be happy, you cowards! Telltale did her dirty! I could write paragraph after paragraph about her!” all sorts of things along those lines… but like, no one seems to want to actually talk about her. I find that interesting? Since when I do follow up with a “care to explain further?” I get nothing. Radio static. Like…. no, talk to me please, I just wanna understand-

Minerva within the context of TFS is such a tragedy. She grew up in a school for troubled youth where all the adults left them for death at the start of the breakout, they had walkers trying to eat the living all around them, and I’m sure she saw her fair share of traumatic violence and despair… but on the bright side, she always had her twin sister, Sophie, and little brother, Tenn. She had her friend and eventual girlfriend, Violet. She had music, and a dorm full of pretty paintings done by Sophie. She and Louis composed a song together to make everyone feel better. There are worse places to live than the school. 

Then one day she got traded away to a bunch of raiders against her will, having no idea what the hell these people were gonna do to her and Sophie. They were made to be soldiers to fight in a war that had nothing to do with them. The delta fucking broke her. If we’re to believe Lilly’s story about the twins, they started their brainwashing process early on when Sophie was still alive, and it seems like Minerva was easier to control as Sophie was still planning a way out and causing trouble. Then, when Sophie convinced her to steal a boat and get the hell out, they got caught and the delta forced her to murder her own twin sister. 

Like…. I’m sorry, not only did Minerva kill her own sister, but she was made to believe that was the right thing to do? That line she says about how she had to prove her loyalty to the place she calls home? That shit’s ingrained in her brain, you can tell that isn’t the first time she’s heard or said that very thing. That is what made her family to the delta. Delta is her home now, her family. Sophie was just a thing that needed to be dealt with. You keep your head down, do as you’re told, and you survive.  You survive and you get to go home, eat a hot meal, take a shower, and be with your delta family.  If not, you end up like Sophie.

What’s also fucked is that Minerva actually cares about these people now. Think about that. After everything they did to her and made her do, she’s been trained to see them as her family and obey. When you save Louis and he kills Dorian, Minerva actually cries out and is visibly hurt by her death. When she’s with the other raiders on land, she's screaming at walkers to get away from them. She cares about the people who made her kill Sophie… and no one ever talks about that??

She fucking hates Clementine. Clementine is just another thing in Minnie’s way. I know the part of the fandom likes to ship these two together and they think it’s hot when they fight and shit, but within the canon text, Minerva wants Clementine gone. Dead. She is the thing stopping her from having her old family merge with her new family. If Clementine hadn’t made them fight, they all would’ve been captured and they’d all be a delta family now. She would’ve had Tenn back. 

Clementine is the problem, she made everyone fight back and that’s why people are dead. Minerva hates her for it… it’s not a “I hate you but like the sexual tension, y’know?” that I see people pretend it is, it’s “you are ruining everything and if I have to, I will kill you myself and I won’t give a second thought about it when they toss your body overboard.”

Like….. seriously, think about how fucked up all of this is. Minerva is a husk of who she was before she was taken away. Sure, you do have to keep in mind that when Tenn and Violet are describing her, their sights are a bit clouded, y’know? But I do believe that she was someone who was kind and cared about people, she wanted to make people feel safe and comforted. 

Now she’s a brainwashed soldier who won’t help the people she used to call friends when they’re about to get limbs cut off. She won’t hesitate to knock someone unconscious or threaten a child.  She’s willing to trick them into being captured with no regard for what’s going to happen to them. … all she knows is this was the mission, and now they all get to be together again back at the delta. 

Then when she finds out there’s a bomb on the boat, she ditches Violet to blow up with it in order to make it to land herself. She loses her shit seeing everyone die and gets her face chewed off by a walker… and then she tries to blow Clementine and AJ up with a grenade. 

Oh, and who can forget the fact that she tracks the group down with plans of murdering Tenn so that they can go to a better place together? And she’ll take down anyone who gets in her way?

Like….. jesus christ, Minerva’s waaaaay too far gone. It’s awful. 

I think that’s what stumps me about why she’s so loved in the way that she is. It’s not that I don’t understand why she’s complex and well-written, I get that perfectly fine. She’s a compelling character study when you comb over all her scenes and take different factors into account.

What I don’t understand is why we tend to just throw everything interesting about her away? For what? 

These days, I never see anyone talking about any of this unless they’re insisting she deserved a redemption arc which…. Eh, I’ll touch on this later. What I mostly see here and mostly other platforms is how great it would be if she and Clementine made out, or hey what if she and Violet got back together if she did come back to the school? Or they just….the best term I have for this is “uwu-ify.” As in she’s reduced to a caricature of a tall, pretty, mean, white lesbian who has “good damage.” 

People insist that Telltale are cowards or bastards because their predictions of her turning on the delta to save Clem and crew didn’t happen. Instead, Minerva ends up being the final baddie you gotta get away from, and she ends up taking someone down with her. But did you really expect to just do a 180 and suddenly decide being brainwashed for over a year was lame and Clementine and friends are cool? Gonna help them out and be with Tenn again? Sure, there’s some left over trauma but love conquers and fixes everything, right?

Uh…. no? That’s not how people work? Honestly, if we entertain the idea that Minerva wasn’t bit and somehow didn’t murder Clementine when they all got back to the school…. romance is the last thing she is ever gonna think of??

I think that’s what bothers me most when reading these au’s and rants about redemption and the entire idea of clemerva as a whole. It’s the same thing that I see happen with Violet- Minerva only has value to fans if she’s in a wlw relationship. By herself, she doesn’t matter. They don’t care about her canon story, they don’t care about Sophie, they don’t care about discussing what could’ve happened if she and Tenn reunited under better circumstances or had a healing recovery together. But why?

Throwing a girlfriend at her isn’t some band aid that’s gonna cover up all the bad she went through?? Having an enemies to lovers romance with Clementine isn’t going to fix a years worth of brainwashing, trauma or the fact that she murdered her own sister and the delta told her she's proved her worth to them?? 

Having the support of those around her is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. The idea of the Ericson crew as a whole trying to help her out and do the best they can to accommodate her is bittersweet since there’s only so much they can do. They’re not trained therapists, which is what Minerva would need and plenty of years ahead of her to work through and come to terms with everything that happened as well as taking steps forward. I’m not saying that she shouldn’t have friends or that she couldn’t have a healthy romantic relationship someday... but that isn’t the solution, y’know? 

I don’t know how else to explain this, but it makes me feel weird that all of this stuff is flat out overlooked or doesn’t appear to matter to fans of her. 

Look, I get it. We all want these characters to be happy. AU’s are a thing, after all. Sometimes we want to forget about the bad things and focus on the good that bring us comfort. You wanna gush about the idea of an AU where the twins never got traded, the raiders didn’t exist, and Clementine got to meet them the way they were before? I feel that, AU’s are super comforting and fun to explore, and my point isn’t to try and shame anyone who has an AU you like this. 

Hell, you think I don’t have days where I pretend mute Louis isn’t a thing because the whole concept of Louis having his tongue cut out of his mouth breaks my fucking heart? No, lot’s of days I just want to forget everything about that route, I want to set aside all the bad and just intake as much clouis fluff as I can get…. But that doesn’t mean I always ignore or refuse to acknowledge the bad just because I don’t like it. I fucking hate the fact that Louis loses his tongue when you don’t save him, but guess what? That’s a canon route you can play, just like any other route, and the possibilities that come with a mute Louis are vast and compelling. 

This is how it is for me… my favorite characters are my favorite for a reason, and I take all the bad with the good. Louis isn’t perfect, and I don’t want him to be. I was to dive into his backstory about why did that to his parents, I like to talk about what he went through with Marlon’s murder and his feelings about AJ and Clementine at the point, I like to view his love of music as bittersweet. He can stand on his own, and while he is a love interest for Clementine, that isn’t his only purpose. 

I know everyone’s different, they express their love for characters in their own ways, but I do have a genuine question: do you guys actually like Minerva?

Believe it or not, I’m not trying to step on toes or make everyone feel defensive which I know is how people will react to this. “You’re just saying all of this to make us feel bad for shipping clemerva! You don’t even like Minnie so you don’t get to say shit!” yeah yeah, I hear you and look, it’s true that she’s not my favorite character. I know I’ve said I hate her in the past but upon reflection and throwing out fandom interpretations.... I don’t hate her. I get it now. She’s a great character study to dissect and analyze and I think she deserves more than what the writers and the fandom have given her. 

And yeah, what I do hate is clemerva, and I’ve explained why. It’s not for me, it makes me uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, who cares? Me not liking it doesn’t mean anything to those who create AU’s for them. They have their reasons, they can do as they please as long as they’re not hurting anyone. I’m just here pointing out things I see and things that bother me in hopes of starting a discussion.

There’s my ramble about Minerva. I’m gonna go make some tea now. 

[fleursdemeduse]

Remembrance AU: Constant Dying

This is not going in the direction that was originally planned, but I'm not sure I'm too upset by it. I'm glad to finally post a part that goes a bit further into Techno's feelings about you this time, though. I'm also starting to work on an angsty Simpbur fic alongside this one, so keep an eye out for that.

Warnings: Mention of death ; Near-death

Words: 3.6k

Your legs throbbed as you trudged through the multiple paths to where you and Techno had been mining. Your neck wasn’t fairing much better. There was always residual pain after a death, especially when you were killed by your own stupidity and not mobs or someone else. You were more than happy to take hits for your friend, often shielding his body with your much smaller one to protect him, but natural deaths were pointless to you. Not to mention that dying this many times in such a short period made an ache develop on the right side of your brain and you knew you wouldn’t be able to be rid of it for hours. You finished descending carved stairs to where you believed you had been and let out a sigh at the effort. Your chest filled with a dull ache at the action. A firework to the chest was certainly a quick way to die. It was far from the most painful as long as it got the job done in one or two shots and the ache would only last another hour or two if you would stop dying.

You thought back on how the events from earlier in the day had transpired. The entire thing had been a shit show and you loathed the next time you’d speak to Wilbur, knowing you were likely going to just yell at him. You weren’t in a great mood because of his little stunt. At least you knew why Techno had killed you and several others on the server. There was no reason for him to sit back and watch Tubbo be executed by your dearest friend. You could only hope that the boys new scars weren’t too bad. He’d have to display them for the rest of this lifetime, after all. Maybe he’d think they were cool like Tommy did.

You slowly unclenched your jaw and relaxed your shoulders, smiling a little at the thought of blond that you spent the other half of your days doting on. He was like the little brother you had always imagined wanting. Mumza had filled your prayers in some fashion, you supposed. A small chuckle spilled from your lips, deciding you’d make Technoblade pay you back somehow for your deaths today. You were up to three now.

A smile curled your lips as you thought of the possibilities. Maybe you’d steal his crown for a little bit. Or his cloak. You giggled to yourself as you crossed the lava pit that you were going to use later for obsidian. Mining in caves this deep was difficult enough without mobs so the lava was a good way to make sure none spawned nearby. Perhaps you could get away with all of the above with the addition of forcing him to make you a cup of tea. That would certainly be fair, wouldn’t it? You were sure if you convinced chat, you’d be able to make him do it.

The ore had been mostly cleared out, all that remained were long tunnels deep underground spanning for what felt like forever. It took you a good chunk of time, but finally you approached him from behind. He had continued mining, cobblestone covering the hole that you had fallen down and ultimately died upon impact in. “You grabbed my stuff, right?”

He pointed to the chest that had been set up, not stopping his assault on a piece of diorite. You flipped open the lid, pulling out several stone pickaxes he had managed to pick up. You didn’t suppose he had kept most of the stone, leaving it in the cave, but the ores, redstone, and lapis you had gathered sat untouched in the chest. “I don’t understand why you continue to use those. They’re flimsy.”

You shrugged before joining his side again, mining away the soft rock. “Because I can keep a large stock of them and don’t have to waste the durability of my diamond one.” You stopped paying attention to the coal you mined at above you as you looked towards him. “Besides, they’re expendable and I don’t have to worry about retrieving them every time I-”

Gravel began to fall on and around you in heavy chunks, obscuring your vision. You were startled for a moment at the sudden assault and you cursed your horrible luck. Of course the moment you were back and trying to resume your task, you’d almost die again. You recovered quickly, feeling the pressure around you as you were crushed and tried to dig your way out of the pile, but more seemed to just fall and replace the gravel you had just removed. It was suffocating. Rocks grated against your skin and you cringed at the sound of them rubbing against each other. You tried to claw your way through, fingers getting scraped as small pebbles cut the flesh. You were running out of air. You hated dying like this.

A hand grasped your bicep and you grunted as you were yanked out of the rubble. Rocks and flint shifted around you as it gave way and filled in the spot where you had just been. A broad chest cushioned you as you stumbled forward. You sucked in air as you rested your forehead against him. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone screw something up that fast before."

Your laugh was more of a wheeze as you smacked your hand against him, next to where your head rested. You didn’t move, however. Techno chuckled as he pat your back. He’d let you have your moment to calm yourself back down. He wasn’t particularly scared of you dying again, but he knew it had to have sucked. You had been taking the brunt of damage meant for him since, well, every time the two of you spent time together, and he didn’t understand why you were so eager to do it. On top of your clumsiness that already resulted in countless other deaths he didn’t know about, you died for him often when it would have probably only resulted in a minor wound for him. You were so reckless. But that smile you gave him every time somehow dissipated his annoyance more than it should have. It was familiar somehow. The voices loved it more than they should have. They loved you more than they should have.

You didn’t care who he was, how he was, what he did, if he could do something for you. You cared about him. Whenever he was giving too much to the rebellion, whenever he was hyper fixated on tasks and was trapped in his own brain with only chat as company, you were always there. They didn’t mind receding to the back of his head while you two talked, adding in small quips here and there. The loud roar they normally were was typically a small rumble when you were talking. It put him on edge with how much they liked you, but he couldn’t blame them. You provided conversation more often than not. You offered simpler solutions to long problems in his head he’d been breaking apart over and over until it had spiraled into a bigger one than it had started out at. But besides that, you also forced him to sleep, to remember to drink water, to take time for himself. To care about himself the way you did. He didn’t know how to repay you for the unending kindness you showed him. Especially when all you asked for was his friendship in return.

He felt you sigh against him and he moved his arm to free you. You were looking up at him, though, not stepping away.

"Are you alright?" His lips twitched. Shouldn’t he be asking you that?

"Yeah, why?"

"You look mad." A snort escaped him. You couldn’t even see his expression past the mask.

"That's just my face.” You didn’t look convinced. He ran his fingers through your hair, knocking some debris loose. It fell to the floor at your feet. He ignored the way you leaned into his touch. “I’m alright, [y/n].”

You smiled at him. You smiled that cursed smile. It made him feel worthy of the title god; so full of reverence and kindness. You had to have been blessed by Kristin herself. How could you still look upon him like that after what had happened at the festival? How could you show such adoration for a-

“Stop lookin’ at me like that.” He turned his head away. He didn’t feel like he deserved to be the recipient of that smile made from sheer adoration. Your eyebrows furrowed and your smile wavered.

“Looking at you like what?”

“Like how Wilbur looks at you.” Your laugh rang through the tunnels. It echoed off the walls and he couldn’t help the swell of something in his chest. For a moment, you reminded him of Phil.

“Why is it a bad thing if I look at you like he does to me? He’s a really dear friend.” Oh dear.

“Don’t tell him that.” The idea of you only seeing him as a friend would break his heart floated unspoken in the air. You didn’t seem to notice it.

“Why not?”

“Just don’t.” Techno stepped back from you when it was obvious you weren’t going to do it yourself. He watched you deflate slightly and felt like he had done something wrong.

“It’s not like he wants to talk to me now anyways.” You picked up your pickaxe again, moving to work on the pile of gravel. He offered you his shovel and you took it. “He hasn’t said a word to me since the festival earlier.”

“I’m honestly surprised you’re still talkin’ to either of us after that debacle.” You paused your digging to look at him curiously. “After me bein’ peer pressured into killin’ Tubbo and everyone else. Killin’ you. His plan to do nothin’ ‘bout it. It’s surprisin’ that you aren’t givin’ us both the silent treatment.”

You scoffed, going back to the gravel in front of you. “That wasn’t his plan.”

Techno stilled, his eyebrows furrowing. “What?”

“Wilbur wasn’t planning on just doing nothing. He has TNT planted all around Manburg.” You hesitated, the grip on his shovel tightening in your trembling hands as you continued digging. “I don’t know why he didn’t set it off.”

There was no sound next to you or behind you. Stopping your work, you looked at him, only to see him looking towards where the mouth of the cave was. “We should be gettin’ back.”

A soft sigh left your mouth. “Go on ahead, I’m right behind you.”

You didn’t want to face the fallout.

You returned to Pogtopia late that night. Mining alone had been a good way to soothe your nerves after the events that had happened earlier. Whilst you had wished Techno had been there longer, you understood wanting to regroup. Today had been stressful for all of you.

You walked down the crude steps that had been made after putting the excess resources into the communal chest at the top. There was soft murmuring and the distant sound of Wilbur’s cackle put you a little on edge, but you soldiered on. It’s okay. Tubbo hopefully would have respawned by now. Things would go on. You froze at the top of the walkway down to the primary meeting area.

Techno was wrapping his knuckles with some extra gauze you recognized to be from your chest. Tommy was sitting a little away from him, his back to the wall and his knees to his chest. There was a distant look in his eyes as he stared at the ground in front of him. You could see a sliver of one of your plasters on his face, the bluish purple fabric and white dots a dark galaxy against his pale cheek. Your feet were moving before your brain as you ran to the teenage boy and knelt before him. You should have come back sooner. You reached out to hold him before hesitating, choosing instead to extend your hand to examine the flesh around the bandage. “You look horrible, Tommy. What happened? I thought you were safe after what happened at the festival.”

Techno grunted from the sidelines. “We resolved our issues.”

The boy before you huffed, still looking at the ground, but he leaned into your touch. “Resolved is a strong word, but we’re okay. For now.” He looked up at you and you pursed your lips together. He relaxed at the worry in your eyes. He was safe with you. “Where were you?”

“I was mining. I needed to blow off steam after all of that.” The blond just nodded, pressing his face further into your touch. You moved closer to brush some of the golden locks away from his face with your free hand. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Techno was suddenly beside you both, towering over the two of you. “It stays in the pit.”

You sent him an inquisitive look. “The pit?”

He only nodded and your frown deepened. Anger started to fester in you. Did he do this? To a child? “We are definitely discussing this later, Technoblade.” You watched his shoulders tense for a moment. You didn’t know if it was because of your tone or the use of his full name, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care at the moment. You’d take care of it later. You two always talked things through, and now would not be any different, but you had to worry about Tommy. “You can’t just hurt people and say things are better now.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but you were already helping the blond up to shuffle him to your bed. The child kept trying to wave you off, but you persisted. Despite your ire against him, something shifted in his chest at watching how gentle you were with Tommy. His bond with you was truly something to behold.

Why aren’t they paying attention to us like earlier?

They’re so sweet to him.

Tommy's lucky we didn’t accidentally kill him.

I wonder how they’re so close.

E.

I don’t want to talk to them later.

Why are they mad at us?

E.

So they’re not upset about the festival, but they’re upset about a fight with Tommy? That makes no sense.

Follow them.

This is stupid.

E.

Do they like him more?

Techno sat back in his spot against the ravine wall. He saw traces of a fireplace and used the heel of his boot to push around the sooty remains. Most of the questions chat had were valid, but he didn’t want to pursue you. He didn’t want to have that conversation later, either. He just wanted to move on. But he knew you wouldn’t. Something about how resentment ruins friendships and miscommunication was the biggest cause. He could never resent you. Sometimes he resented the gods, but never you.

He wanted to know what kind of entertainment DreamXD and Kristin got out of watching them over and over and over again. Did they have nothing better to do than continuously create and orchestrate each new lifetime? Each new world with different rules and a different storyline? Or recreate other worlds just to change the plot? There had been so many, but this was the first where they all remembered. This was the first where he had met you.

Techno closed his eyes. None of his lives had been bad. Well, particularly bad. Wilbur always seemed to get off worse than he did. Tommy sometimes worse than them both.

He remembered a life of gilded castles, one of many. He trained Wilbur and Tommy in combat. He studied politics and was a general. He watched the two of them grow up in Phil’s absence. There were handmaidens that were too bold in their words, butlers that were too polite, and inside jokes between him and the guards. There were dinners made of things that he only wished they could recreate here. He remembered that despite any squabbling, they were still very much a family. He knows Tommy remembers that one all too clearly. He doesn’t talk about it often, but Techno knows the look in his eyes whenever Phil is mentioned. He also speaks sometimes about the servant that once tended to his mother but he nor Wilbur could ever recall one. Too many faceless employees. Too many nameless soldiers.

He remembered a different life where Hanahaki Disease roamed rampant. The flowers infected most of the people he knew. Sometimes they got better, sometimes they didn’t. Phil would never catch it. The blurry memory of his friend saying so flashed briefly in his head. That fact didn't surprise him in the least. Phil was a catch. But he had never had to deal with the deadly buds either. He couldn't remember why. His head throbbed gently as he tried to wade through the fog. Wilbur had suffered from it, though. It was devastating when he passed. The flowers choked him, stuffing his airways with petals. Who had he loved so much it killed him? Didn't he love anyone like that? Didn’t he find someone so beautiful that dying was more preferable than a life without them? Maybe he did. There were small flashes in his head of the gentle squeeze of a hand and a smile that could snuff out the sun. Why couldn't he seem to remember their face?

There was another life. A life where markings appeared on his skin. Little scratches, cuts and scrapes that weren't his, doodles, words that he would have never written himself. He remembered sitting through a lecture once, smiling at the little stars that speckled his arm and slowly appeared like the night sky in the twilight of the setting sun. Wilbur had shown off the same markings, and it was brutal irony that the two of them shared this connection with a third. They would play games frequently. Mostly twenty questions or tic tac toe, but locations and true names were always burning scribbles on their flesh when attempted. They tried many tactics to find out more before Wilbur had told them both off. He wonders if they had found their third in that life.

There had always been gaps in his memory, especially when it came to his other lives. Lulls where the mundane had become just a bit too mundane, moments where he just shut his brain off and went by instinct. Things were easier when you didn’t have past lives to think about. When he didn’t have to consider if he had already learnt a lesson and was doomed to repeat it. When you weren’t around to give him glares and words of encouragement and cause disruption in his life. Were Tommy and Wilbur’s lives more difficult with you here too? With someone to tell them what to do and to patch up their wounds and give fleeting touches that were so soft it was like touching a petal? He hopes not.

A sound of distress comes from the direction you and Tommy had gone in and he turns to look. You’re standing there, facing away from him, reaching out towards empty space to someone who wasn’t there. You must’ve been the one to make the noise.

You turn around and his frown deepens. You look tired and more than a little frustrated. It was amazing how much of a difference you stood now compared to the person that clung to him throughout the nether when he had first met you. Your presence was easy. You didn’t ramble like he would disappear anymore. You didn’t look to him for validation with every move. You didn’t act out of the desperation isolation had instilled in you. You had settled like the missing puzzle piece they didn’t even know was missing. Did you ever visit the library that you had once called your first home?

He watches you finally approach him, sitting and leaning against his side as if you weren’t upset. You move to intertwine your arm with his, hand slipping into his own. He didn’t stop you. “Wilbur, he’s-”

“Crazy? Yeah, I know. He wants me to set off withers.” You sat straight up. Shock painted your face a hue that didn’t suit you. Or perhaps it was fear. He didn’t like it.

“Withers?” He nods. Your head spins back to the direction of your bedroom. “Does Tommy know?”

“Tommy knows. I went along with it.” Techno feels you scoot away, releasing your hold on him and he already misses the feeling. “It’s not like we’re tryin’ to salvage the place, [y/n].”

“I don’t want more innocent people to lose another life, Tech.” You look at him once more. “Do Tommy and Wilbur know that you’re hoping to leave nothing behind? Because they both talk about reestablishing L’manburg when given the chance.”

“I keep tellin’ them the truth, but it seems like they’re not gonna listen.” He watches your face fall into a look that he hopes meant acceptance. Your eyes moved to the ground between you both and you just nodded. You didn’t know where you would sit in the aftermath of this all.

Techno felt your hand slip back into his as you take your place back against his side. Pink hair was soft against your cheek as you rested it against his shoulder.

“One step at a time. Let’s worry about getting rid of Schlatt first, okay?” He just nods back, resting his head on top of yours. You squeeze his hand in response. You felt safe again, especially with him next to you “Now-

Tell me about this pit.”

[cblgblog]

Sorry I’m advance but one of my other favorite accounts just reblogged a Tony scene and people are talking about Civil War and how it made them Stan Tony, and how when they watch that movie they hate team cap👀 Then someone was all about how he was sleep deprived and how much pressure he was under and couldn’t understand how people didn’t like Tony because. Someone literally said that when someone says they don’t like Tony in Civil War they say “did you watch the same movie as me.” I’m baffled. Oddly enough someone else said, “he just wants to help everyone.” Sorry for the rant but I think people forget about what the accords are and what it would mean for people. Side note, I hope you’re having a great day/night 😀

No sorry needed!

I feel you man, I do. Honestly, I’ve unfollowed people based on similar posts when I was in especially Done moods, so.

Look on the one hand, the movie would’ve been a narrative failure if everyone was in favor of one side or the other, right? The whole point of the damn thing—besides giving the Mouse overlords more money—was to spark discussion, debate. Which, yeah, we’ll call that the tame description for what actually happened. But just, the thing was meant to split the fanbase so in that regard…winning? Thanks, I guess?

Film is also very obviously subjective, different strokes for different folks, so yeah, ten people can watch a movie and none of them are gonna see the exact same film. Let’s try to remember that this is, in theory anyway, a good thing. I just read a professional film review yesterday where I had the same reaction. What film were you watching, dude? Incidentally his reviewing partner said the same thing.

So honestly, no, they weren’t watching the same film as you or I or anyone else, because everyone brings their own biases and experiences and knowledge and interests into a thing, and that’s always going to flavor how it’s viewed. Again, let’s try to remember that this is good. In theory. Heavy on the theory.

That out of the way? Let’s get into Tony specifically so his uber stans can find this and scream at me on anon as though I just shot RDJ with a nuke.

Oh yeah, he was stressed. Oh, he was sleep deprived. Yeah, I’ve heard that. And that it’s Pepper’s fault, if she hadn’t left the poor baby, if she was there to rein him in, he’d be fine dammit, leave the baby alone!

Here’s the thing. You know who gets a pass on their shit behavior when they’re upset or tired? Actual babies. Actual babies and toddlers, and children, up to a point. Because they actually cannot always help themselves. Their bodies and brains are different, they have not learned better.

When you’re a 50-year-old man who’s supposedly the world’s bestest superhero, who wants, wants to be in charge of protecting the whole world? You need a little more self-control than that. The sleep deprived excuse works if you snap at someone before you’ve had your coffee, not for this. Roseanne Barr didn’t get to blame Ambien for her racism, Tony doesn’t get to handwave CW away because oops, I was tired.

Really? You’re a superhero, dude. Most of your teammates are tired too, that’s part of the gig. If you crash and burn this badly without your afternoon nap, fucking hang up the armor and go back to your billionaire playboy lifestyle.

Speaking of that, sure, right. It’s Pepper’s fault because she left him. Put aside the argument on whether that was justified or not (cough, it was and she should’ve stayed away even though they are adorable together). It’s not Pepper’s job to keep Tony sane. It’s not any partner’s job to do that for anyone. If she wants out, she has a right to that, without Tony going off the rails and blaming it on her. Seriously, he says part of the reason he backed the Accords was to “split the difference” with Pepper.

Dude. You were an asshole and you lost your girl. You destroyed all your suits, turned an emotional and mental corner in IM 3…and then relapsed 4 minutes later I guess because Whedon. Either way, Tony admits himself that he does not want to stop. So instead of doing that, or finding another partner who can accept that, you back an unjust international law that pits you against your team, your supposed friends? Go to therapy, have a pint of ice cream, cry into your pillow, send her more of those strawberries you sent her in IM 2 that she’s allergic to. You don’t go trying to change international law in ways that could ultimately affect millions of people because your girl left you.

Honestly—and thank God they didn’t do this but—the only way the Pepper excuse works in excusing his behavior in any way is if she’d died. Or been severely injured like Happy in IM 3. Still wouldn’t be okay, but, like Quill messing up their chance to stop Thanos because Gamora died, it would’ve been more understandable. Understandable, not excusable, and the way the MCU treats their women as manpain fodder, we’re probably legit lucky we didn’t get this.

As for him wanting to help everyone. He does in fact want that, I think. The problem is that his need to feel like he’s doing that is stronger than his rational mind, or his want to actually help in a constructive way.

Tony is too smart. He’s dumb as hell in many instances, mostly involving people and relationships, but he’s also too smart, and he’s been told for too long that he’s smart, and he’s bought into it. Ultron. Suit of armor around the world, protects the world, no more alien threats. It’s a simple concept on paper that fails in execution. So there are people with dangerous powers. Okay, we’ll make a set of laws to keep them from being dangerous, problem solved. But again, it isn’t.

Tony is not used to problems he cannot solve. He’s a genius, right? He can fix anything. He should be able to fix anything. That’s how he feels. But not everything is zeros and ones and circuits, things that can be fixed mechanically like his armors can. The people he wants to protect are not built that way. But he needs to feel like he’s doing something, because he’s terrified of what happens to the world if he doesn’t. So he creates these simple solutions to complex problems. The suit of armor, the Accords. They sound good in theory, but the problems they’re trying to solve are bigger than they are. And Tony, way back in IM 1, he sat back for years, clueless that his weapons were being used for bad things. He says it to Cap in CW. When he found out what his weapons were being used for, he went in and stopped it. Whether or not he should’ve known that already is a separate issue here. The point here is that when he found out, too late or not, he went in and did something about it.

Tony needs to do something about it. Again, go back to Cap in AoU, Tony’s nightmare sequence. Steve asks Tony why he didn’t save them. Tony’s ultimate nightmare is that he sits back and does nothing, and his inaction causes everyone to die. Which is where you get Ultron. Something he came up with because of what he saw in space in Avengers 1, then doubled down on in AoU. It’s where you get the Accords. Oops, he caused someone to die, he killed Charles Spencer. Must do something about that right now so it doesn’t happen again, and he won’t have to feel this guilt. He should be collaborating with others to come up with solutions (no Bruce in AoU doesn’t count because Bruce was dumb there), or at the very least, taking more time to think through the repercussions of the things he puts out there. But he doesn’t, because he’s got his savior complex that tells him that he alone can and must fix this, and because he’s too dumb to realize how not-smart he is in certain areas.

“We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I’m game.”

Isn’t that what he says in CW, or something very close to it? Whatever form that takes. That’s the issue, right there, whatever form that takes. Realistically, yes, there should be laws regarding people with powers, the same way there are special laws pertaining to people who carry guns, or people who are licensed to fly planes. You have a thing/can do a thing that not everyone else does, so there are regulations pertaining to that thing. Laws change with the times, they always have. Some new technology comes up, eventually there will be laws that regulate it. As there should be, honestly. The issue with the Accords, Steve’s issue with the Accords, was not the basic idea. He says as much. He says that it could work, but there would have to be safeguards. Safeguards that are not in the Accords that Tony wants him to sign.

It's not a matter of oh, fuck the law, there should be no law governing these people, they’re above it. The problem is that the law as it’s presented here is unjust. There’s what, a month between Lagos and Ross coming by to tell them about the Accords? A month is not enough time to properly analyze such a big issue, Especially when you’re reacting out of fear, which is what happened with Lagos. People died because of an Enhanced person, an Avenger, in this case. Lawmakers don’t want that to happen again, they especially don’t want the political shit storm that comes with it. Damn, we look like we were asleep at the switch here, not having anything to throw at this problem earlier. Quick, let’s throw together this thing so no one can say we’re not addressing the problem.

Patriot Act of 2001, anyone? 9/11 happened, the public were rightfully terrified, the US said oh man, these are unprecedented circumstances, we’ve never had this before. Don’t worry though, we’re on this, we’re protecting you. The reality being that that bill simply gave the government too much power, most of it being used against people who were not actually threats, and it’s debatable, to say the very least, whether or not that law helped more than it hurt.

No law is perfect. No law ever will be. It’s not possible. We still have to strive for perfection though, have to aim there so that the laws we get are as close to fair as possible. Tony’s a big deal. If not for his “whatever form that takes” attitude, he might’ve been able to use his influence to pressure lawmakers into coming up with a fairer bill. Hey, I’m me, the public loves me, I will endorse this bill publicly and work on getting the rest of the team to sign, but you need to change this and this and this first, or no deal. Instead, he took the easy way out, the quickest, easiest way for him to feel like he’s atoned for his sins without actually doing anything. Whatever form that takes.

Tony’s not wrong because he backs the creation of a law that addresses these things. He’s wrong because he says himself that he does not care what that law does, specifically, so long as it exists. He’s wrong because he violates said law upteen times during the movie, while preaching to team Cap about what assholes they are for not backing it. He’s wrong because he cares more about feeling as though he’s tackled a problem than he does about taking the time to make sure that the thing he’s proposing is actually a good idea. He’s wrong because of what he does with Bucky, though that’s honestly a separate issue, for the purposes of this discussion.

Anyway, that was longer than I ever wanted it to be. Damn. Next time you see a comment about CW being the reason people stan Tony, just remember there are other people out there who stopped stanning Tony because of that movie. Everyone’s entitled to see a piece of media however they see it, and although the Tony stans are often the loudest, there are plenty of like-minded people out there who share your take on events. Block who you need to, unfollow who you need to, blacklist what you need to, and don’t let them get you down.

Hang in there, and have an awesome day :)

[beevean]

Godot, when he has read Morgan's letter for Pearl, should have speak with Bikini, Iris, Misty and Maya. Then Maya would have explain Pearl what her mother wanted her to do and Pearl would have NEVER try to call Dalhia's spirit. And Misty would have stay alive. Maya could have know her. Pearl could have met her good big sister. Done. Everyone is safe and happy. Crisis avoided. But of course, people in those games never choose the logic way ^^"

But it's not a plot hole, it was deliberate. Godot knew he was doing something stupid, but he did it anyway because he wanted to feel like a hero and "repent" for "letting" Mia die.

Phoenix: But, but! You saved Maya!

Godot: Yeah. That was my plan... Up until just now, anyway.

Maya: Wh-What do you mean?

Godot: Are you listening, Maya? If I had really wanted to save you... ...then there's one person that I should have gone and talked to right away.

Maya: Wh-Who would that be...? Are you talking about Nick?

Godot: But I didn't do it... I tried to get the help of Iris and your mother... But I closed my eyes to the most important man involved. Do you know why? The real reason?

Maya: No... Why?

Godot: I suppose... I wasn't really interested in saving you at all.

Maya: Huh...!?

Godot: I think I was just trying to salvage what's left of my own broken soul... I was trying to make up for the fact that I couldn't save Mia. Nothing more. That's why I let you walk right into a situation that I knew was dangerous. Forgive me...

Phoenix: Y-You're wrong! You put your life on the line to save Maya!

Godot: Was it really for Maya's sake...? Even I'm not really sure.

Judge: Wh-What do you mean by that...?

Godot: That night, in the darkness of the garden, when I saw her silhouette... A part of me must have known the truth... The truth that it wasn't really Dahlia Hawthorne standing there in front of me.

Maya: ...!

Godot: It could have been Misty Fey... Or even that little girl. But I still picked up the blade... It was like I was dreaming! I'm not sure exactly what was going on in my mind at that point... Was I really motivated by the pure desire to protect Maya Fey? Or was it something else...? Was it my hatred for a woman who had stolen everything from me 6 years earlier...? Could it have been simply a desire for revenge? And now, I don't know anything anymore! I did learn something today, however. I finally realized that I was the arrogant one. I was just... chasing an illusion, a fantasy. The stupid fantasy of defeating you in the courtroom...

Well, they imply that going to Phoenix would have been the better idea and I don't know if that would have been a good solution (and not just because Godot was a petty bitch who forced himself to hate him)... and also, imagine Maya having to explain to Pearl that her mom wanted Maya dead so badly that she wanted to trick Pearl into channelling her serial killer of a half-sister. But in any case, Godot's plan was illogical and everyone knows it, most of all Godot himself.

Like, it's not that the game was stupid, Godot deliberately turned off his brain because he had Issues and even the others were like "dude why"