#and the complex feelings of siblings & trauma & the fear of losing everyone you love

[remuswriting]

[sehtoast]

How are you able to like Homelander and not condone his actions at the same time, without feeling crappy? This sounds accusing but I’m asking bc I’m struggling with it. I know ppl who do the same with characters, but I’ve had an unwelcome fixation on him come out of nowhere and I feel sick and guilty bc I feel like everyone will think I’m some kind of freak or something. I’m very much anti-sa and other gross stuff esp as a victim but I still feel like I’m being hypocritical or something. I’m sorry for the weird message but I feel like I’m losing my mind

The short answer is that he’s fictional.  Think of… I dunno, an antagonist in media of a different form (let’s go with anime).  I was a naruto kid growing up, so let’s use Orochimaru for an example.  My guy was on some fuck shit through the entire show. Snatching bodies, murkin’ Hokages, wild experiments, all that shit with Sasuke, and so on.  People still liked him regardless because he was a cool character despite the bad things he’s done.  Some people may have even found him relatable in certain ways.  I feel like it’s the same concept here.

You don’t have to feel bad about enjoying fictional characters, no matter how awful they may be.  At the end of the day, they’re fictional and their actions have harmed nobody in real life.  Their actions may mirror that which does harm real people, but they themselves have not dealt real harm to real people.  Enjoying them does not mean you condone their actions.

I’m also extremely anti-SA, and am a victim of it myself, but I still find a lot of love and appreciation for Homelander’s character– but this isn’t hypocritical.  My love for him doesn’t come from the fact he has perpetrated that act, nor should it come from that.  I love him as a character with the bottom line that he is… extremely complex.  

I’ve said it for years now, but I think Homelander is a compelling tale of the dangers of commodifying the human soul.  He is an example of how awful someone can turn out if you deprive them of humanity with the goal of creating a product.  People are not products, we are not a means to an end, and we certainly should never be treated that way. He was, and this is how he turned out.  He’s a take on the cyclical nature of trauma in a lot of really interesting ways as well.

I find him relatable from a standpoint of my own traumas and being transgender.  Episode four of s4 revealed that I have a jarring amount of trauma that mirrors his own to some capacity.  I’ve always suspected these things, and I’ve had headcanons since the first season, and having them confirmed reminded me just how much I’ve latched onto this character because of it.  Homelander experienced some degree of sexual abuse in the labs– and I wager there may have been worse than simply being called ‘squirt.’ Homelander was subjected to physical torture and locked in a room where his mind slowly fractured, all while being conditioned to never seek escape otherwise he’d be too devastated from disappointing the scientists or losing their ‘love.’ 

I have experienced SA, I was locked in my room with nothing as punishment (my 'bad room'), had very little privacy and next to no access to boundaries as a kid, I was put through physical pain very often by a sibling (my furnace), I was reared and conditioned to have a fear of disappointing others so severe it made my blood pressure drop into the danger zone a couple times as a kid– and still has similar effects as an adult.  I’d literally pass out, have panic/anxiety attacks, vomit, etc.  I also know what it’s like, as a trans man, to have been raised and reared for a life that was designed for me, but was not me.  I was lucky enough to find my way to the person I needed to be; Homelander has not and likely will not ever be able to do so.  In all of the aforementioned, I have a lot of empathy and compassion for him that combines with my fascination with his complexity.  There were a lot of things in my life that should have pushed me down the road to be an awful person, much like the things in his life did. But I had a handful of people to guide me toward better things.  He didn’t.

But I see myself in there nonetheless. Homelander was the first time I ever saw so much of my own trauma on display in a single character.  I’d love to hug the man and tell him he’s enough, show him the humanity he was and continues to be denied, and so on.  When I realized that means that I would, in turn, do that for myself if I only viewed myself through a lens that wasn’t my own, my life changed.  This character changed my life.  I know I thirst-post about him a lot, but my love for Homie runs a lot deeper than just finding him attractive, you feel?

A fictional character doesn’t have to be one of moral high ground or superiority for it to be okay for you to enjoy them.  You can enjoy characters who commit horrible acts. This does not make you someone who condones horrible acts.  I was initially pretty embarrassed to admit I like Homelander as much as I do, but I slowly realized that it does not make me a bad person and it should never be used as a gauge to find out how ‘moral’ someone is or not.  People like Hannibal Lecter, people like Thomas Hewitt, Joffrey, Albert Wesker, Cletus Kasady– any number of fictional characters who have an ugly record or have done horrific things.  We do not assume someone is evil because they like Hannibal, nor should we do the same for people who like Homelander.

At the end of the day, do what makes you happy. If exploring Homie is something you would have fun with, do it! Engage in media, learn tales of caution and tragedy– stories make us human.  You are not inhuman for enjoying Homelander and his tale.  In fact, I would argue you are very human because of it.

[vanillaxoshi]

Boom badabim bada pow

Welcome to septuplet au! Also now called injuries matter au

Where i make the elements into siblings but despite this being done but a bunch of people let me make this my way or-

Maybe a similar way ig

What you see above is Cahaya and daun

There aint no way Cahaya will become just fine after being hit on the head and the abdomen or gut by a giant hammer and flew thhrough metal floors? Ceilings? (I know this happened to boi but dont drag him into this. this is also a septuplet au he aint included but dont u dare get ideas👹👹👹)

And he got thrown to space twice, very high or low temperature causes dead cells and stuff (welcome decayed skin)

So- yeah, he got into a longer coma so to speak, perhaps the actual logic into this is death but lets not get into that and just do 2-3 months folks

According to google said symptoms for frontal lobe damage are:

Weakness on one side of the body or one side of the face, Falling, Inability to solve problems or organize tasks, Reduced creativity, Impaired judgment, Reduced sense of taste or smell, Depression, Difficulty controlling emotions, Changes in behavior, Low motivation, Poor attention span, being easily distracted, Reduced or increased sexual interest, Odd sexual habits, Impulsive or risky behavior, Trouble with communication

And vocal chords get damaged with cold temperature so-

Kk, hes not completely incapable as he heals overtime(note: not completely), but trauma with the dark :> oh how will that help if he doesnt sleep well :)

(he uses sign language if he needs to stop speaking)

ALRIGHT moving on to air

Dude got his arm melted off by roktaroka i think thats his name, which very much hurt because lava, is still slow, which meant it was slow and painful, and with it being put on ice immediately (yes this situation summoned ais) it left quite a huge mark

And he also cant keep the ice hand for so long so bros ambidextrous just uses left the most now, might have trauma from long distance attacks and perhaps hot temperatures, so you could say api is trying his best for air and that goes the same for air to api

LETS GO DAUN

Yes he gains a type of inferiority complex so he has to be included and does his best, but not only that, he gains lightning scars from kirana, on his hands, so he has trouble controlling those hands

They will randomly end up shaking sometimes, and randomly drop as in become paralyze, this resulted to a lot of things to become broken, and this is where daun feels bad for gaining this problem, and at times might hurt like theres still lightning striking him

OF COURSE petir feels bad and blames himself for getting caught like that haha-

Bro also got caught or kidnapped three times he blames himself for repeating that situation a lot.

ANGIN well, i know the fandom makes him love yaya's cookies, but imma be honest here, those things basically drugged him into drugging everyone, he for sure gained fear of those cookies. That made him out of it

Buuuuut what if as well he has a temptation to eat it at times, despite his whole mind not wanting to, so when he does end up eating it he becomes nauseous and vomits :)

API doesnt like seeing fear in peoples faces but that never washes away bc of his anger issues that causes people to be afraid so lets go low self esteem-

Tanah wants his brothers to be more better so thats why he shoves all responsibility onto himself but that also causes trauma!!!

Hes so afraid of losing them that he became very strict which causes to some arguments but he also tries his very best to look tough and be more capable, but there are times where its obvious like with movie 2, api and air try their best to help him despite him pushing them away and being in denial. Gopal was the one who did end up calming everyone down

Angin is the one who sees him always and is always the one who conforts him

Petir feels even more down knowing that hes the oldest and that he should be the one to take that burden of responsibility.

And yeah i might add more but who knows

[invertedfate]

Hey different anon here, i always thought floweys actions in the canon was supposed to be a kind of dark reflection of the players own actions, and a parallel with how WE treat video games. I never really thought it had anything to do with trauma, cause like think about it, how many players abuse save states in video games to get away with evil shit? Most of them i would wager, and if you had the power to save, load, and reset, maybe you WOULD start to treat even your own reality like a video game.

Like, is it wrong when flowey does these things when we do the same? Because to him its real but to us its just a game or is it ok for him to do so because it really IS a game.

And flowey DID say he also spared everyone, in the same sentence he said he killed everyone, implying both are things he doesnt really place value in doing, he didnt do it for fun, he did it because he got bored, and we do the exact same things in video games when we play one a bunch, we start to experiment, we start seeing how different "npcs" react to different situations, we start making challenges for ourselves, we start analyzing characters and putting way more thought into their actions then the person who wrote them probably did.

When flowey has that power taken away from him, only then does he start to change from this desensitizing and feel intense emotion like rage when you don't do what he wants, or fear when you're about to kill him, both are caused by him not being used to not being in control, he spent so long being the one who gets to "play" the world that he can't accept a world he's not the "player" in.

Another factor might be that not having a soul inhibits his ability to feel empathy, but thats just headcanon, sorry for this long tangent, i just really like flowey, favorite character in undertale, just wanted to express my thoughts since everyones talking about him.

I think from a metatextual level, Flowey 100% is meant to be a dark mirror of the player, which is likely why his full backstory is only given in geno, since at that point you're treading a similar path as him if you go all the way on that route. That being said, I don't think there's a lack of trauma. At the end of the day, the buttercup plan involved watching his best friend/sibling die, said sibling sharing control of his transformed body (which is implied to be VERY unsettling in appearance), his refusal to take a single SOUL, which led to his death, and then awakening in a new form, unable to connect to others the way he used to and assuming he was broken as a result of it. He did try to take his own life, after all, and only came back from it because he got scared and his determination brought him back. His power allowed him to avoid consequences and grow detached, of course, but there is absolutely room to read trauma as a PART of how he got to be this way. Not the sole factor, but a pretty significant one, especially if you interpret his loss of compassion as an undiagnosed PTSD symptom misunderstood due to toxic positivity culture among monsters. e.g. this idea that their souls are made of love, hope, and compassion and that makes them different/better than humans. Considering how many monsters force smiles to deal with their pain, I legit this mindset is super harmful to all monsters and they might not even realize it. Flowey is a great and complex character, and losing his abilities definitely also impacted his actions, for sure. I definitely am not a fan of the immense woobification of Asriel in the fandom, like, at all, and it's part of why this arc in IF is taking its time to do more character exploration and stuff since in UT, a lot of his depth is locked behind a route the game actively doesn't want you playing.

[moo-nstone]

jupiter through the houses

jupiter in the 1st house: you have a very strong, bold, larger-than-life personality! your generosity and love for helping others is what attracts them to you. a strong desire to achieve and live life to the fullest. tendency to over-indulge in food, exercise, anything of the sort. youthful, glowing quality to your appearance. the more optimistic and honest you are, the luckier you feel. you might feel like the universe helps you overcome any obstacle. be careful with trusting your luck too much, you need to still always make things happen for yourself and to trust reason and logic while remaining confident. a love for traveling. leadership and people skills, you only want to focus on self-improvement and what truly matters; you have no time for insignificant problems. people can feel lucky for having met you because of your soothing aura. you feel like if you ever lose faith in yourself, then you have nothing else. strong morals. careful with trying to "fix" people or situations who don't even need fixing in the first place... you can overstep others' boundaries in your attempts at generosity. 

jupiter in the 2nd house: jupiter here gives a lot of abundances when it comes to finances, but this also means that you love overspending. your first instinct when you feel sad or empty might be to go shopping. you might buy things that aren't even useful for you. luckily, money seems to come to you without any effort. you're very giving, romantic and poetic; you don't want to see the ones you love suffering and you do all you can to aid them. because of that, your friends are very loyal to you and always quick to defend you. you can be terrifying when crossed, your intimidation is no joke. a talent for business and for convincing others to do what you want. very dependable and trustworthy, you keep your word and you make sure to always put in your best when doing a job. you want comfort and the power that is obtained with wealth. you're a hard worker with a need to develop your talents, you want to be proud of what you're doing for a living. you possess a lot of knowledge about art. be careful not to put too many responsibilities on yourself. people in authority positions love you. 

jupiter in the 3rd house: you're very talkative and open-minded; your charm makes you very sociable, people always want to hear what you have to say. you love to learn and even more to teach, you have a special capability for turning a complex piece of knowledge and present it in a way that's interesting and easy to understand. people always see you as happy because you're capable of hiding your feelings of sadness. very hard-working and great at making decisions. sharp intelligence. talent for writing and a love for reading, you might want to continue your studies until older. you need to be careful with absorbing too much knowledge because some of it can be useless, your mind is like a literal sponge but you need to tend to it properly; you might be the type of person who wants to learn one hundred subjects at once but then you don't understand much out of all of them because you did it so hastily, it's suggested that you focus on one thing to learn at a time. very imaginative and with a need to get along with everyone. your siblings, if you have them, will play a very important part in your life. people might come a lot to you for advice. you get bored when you're not learning and exploring new things because you want to grow deeper every day. 

jupiter in the 4th house: the 4th house rules our inner experience, so you might have a very rich inner world. you're thoughtful about everything and you love exploring and coming up with new philosophies because you want to take all the lessons you've learned and use them to guide you through life. strong morals. you're understanding of all those who are different. a need to heal from all your childhood trauma and to grow an independent person. your earlier years were very good and exciting, with a large family, feasts, and a busy atmosphere. even if those times are long gone, you long to experience a sense of family again, so you're very protective of your friends and want them to feel like family. loud and bold, vibrant personality. you might act like an emotional vampire in the sense that you feel the need to experience every emotion the world has to offer. a need for a cozy home and to build a family. be careful with letting family problems destroy you and with being manipulative, you receive luck when you keep the morals that are so embedded in you. 

jupiter in the 5th house: you value expressing your individuality and creativity above all else in life, you can't stand having a job where you don't get to pour your personality and talents into it. you value having fun with your friends and you're very confident. courageous at heart. you might overwhelm the ones in their life by being too open and you might be seen as arrogant for being confident, but you can't help it that you're so unapologetically yourself. you want to have experiences with many partners before settling down - you fear falling in love and getting truly close to someone and, because of that, prefer casual dating. you're in touch with your inner child. you love to entertain, but you can tend to overindulge in life's pleasures and forget to work hard. the more creative you are, the luckier you feel. a talent for motivating and supporting others, you're a true leader. warm and caring nature, you're the happiest when you're around your loved ones. you have many talents that you'll discover through the years. your life stories are fascinating. 

jupiter in the 6th house: you love to help people and you put a lot of pride into what you do, and because of that, you have a very attentive eye for details - you hate making mistakes of any kind and this can make you a perfectionist, but be careful with overworking yourself due to that need to take on others' burdens and make them your own. very generous, you wouldn't hesitate to share your wealth and to inspire others to be better. witty and talented, you have a dry sense of humor that's fucking hilarious. make sure you're doing things for yourself instead of only putting your energy into what others want. taking care and having a routine is important for you because you want to feel like you're bettering yourself. pets can be very healing for you. honest... to a fault sometimes, you can hurt others with your words. pets can be healing for you, especially one that's independent like you, a cat for example. working hard makes you feel proud of yourself. you value getting along with everybody in your workplace. very strong bodies, you easily heal from health issues. you have incredibly high standards, so be careful of criticizing yourself and others. 

jupiter in the 7th house: you're very charming and you have a talent for softening up harsh edges, in the sense that even your enemies have respect for you because you're so diplomatic, caring and humorous. you need a partner to evolve with, someone who's as thoughtful, deep and open-minded as you. you fall in love with someone's sense of humor, intelligence, and someone with whom you share your many interests. someone to travel the world with. you're persuasive and can get others to easily compromise in your favor. you're very in tune with your emotions. a lot of luck when it comes to business. be careful with being too giving because you might be taken advantage of for your kindness, and with glossing over things because you're optimistic and only want to look at the good side of things and people. you're loved for your empathy and those closest to you find you very attractive. you have to set your priorities and boundaries straight for luck to come to you. you always look at things from both perspectives before making a decision. 

jupiter in the 8th house: this placement is perhaps the most easy-going to have in the 8th house because most 8th natives have a difficult time with having sex because they need a lot of intimacy and trust, but jupiter placed here makes for someone who loves having one-night stands and can even be overindulgent when it comes to this; you might have numerous partners throughout life, jupiter brings freedom to this part of your life. you love mystery and complicated things that most would run away from. incredible survival instincts, intuition; aware of others' true intentions. problem-solving skills. sociable and warm-hearted. easily heals from emotional problems. you can be manipulative because you feel paranoid when you're not in power, losing control of your life terrifies you. being spiritual content is necessary for your fulfillment. strategic skills. you're very enigmatic, people want to know you but it's incredibly hard for someone to get close to you, you're very loyal but you fear opening up to others about your weaknesses and deepest thoughts - yet, you have the talent to read others like a book. deep and intimate relationships, even if rare, will be the most soul-changing for you. 

jupiter in the 9th house: you place a lot of importance on your beliefs and finding your life purpose. you want to travel the world and to experiment all sorts of new things, like food. a love for learning and philosophy, that's what makes your soul feel full. luck comes from having faith, being hopeful with an optimistic mentality, you need to believe in yourself if you want to attract good things and being stuck in a negative mentality of self-doubt and hatred is quite possibly the worst thing that can happen to you. you want to expand your mind and soul, to know all about yourself and the world around you. freedom is very important to you because you hate conforming, and so are honesty and self-expression. incredibly intelligent and giving. talent for writing and teaching. you might often hurt others with your bluntness. you hate feeling stuck in one place which is why you love traveling, but be careful not to use this as a way to escape and run away from your problems. you're able to grasp very complex notions, you're a visionary at heart. remember to nurture your relationship with your loved ones and not only the one with yourself and the universe. 

jupiter in the 10th house: you have a lot of luck and blessings when it comes to your career and your relations with other people, but be careful with becoming too lazy because you're so used to everything going your way... in those cases, your luck can turn against you. you need to put in the work and to have whatever you do and achieve aligning with your sense of purpose. confident and optimistic. you might attract a lot of jealousy because people believe you get everything too easily (which is not true!). you're open to making new friends, charming and convincing. opening your own business would be good because as much as you value social status, you also value freedom and expressing yourself through your work. leadership skills. amazing sense of humor and ability to make the best decisions. you might have a talent for manifestation because you know exactly what you want from life, aren't shy to ask for it, and confident enough to believe you'll get it. you want to share with others who have less than you. dependable and resourceful, you only want to associate yourself with those who are as ambitious as you. remember to listen to others' opinions to gain more knowledge and expand your horizons. 

jupiter in the 11th house: very strong and progressive opinions. you have high ideals and want to help better the world, you're a humanitarian at heart. you feel the most cared for when you're around your friends, and new ideas and imagination might run freely between you and them when you're together. you dream of new philosophies and utopias. you do great in teamwork. very creative and non-conventional, you reject tradition and outdated ways. here, the danger of becoming too dependent on your own luck is the most prevalent! be careful with growing too lazy, you need to make things happen for yourself because that where you truly get abundant. very loving energy, you want your friends to feel protected and cared for but be careful with becoming too dependent on them. you're a ball of sunshine that brings happiness wherever you go, but don't spend too much time hanging out with your friends and identifying too much with them - you need to keep cultivating your individuality always. very knowledgeable about any subject. rich social life. big dreams and big ambitions. bravery. being generous to others not only helps you heighten your sense of self-worth and self-love but it might also prove to get luck and opportunities on your side. social causes are very dear to your heart. 

jupiter in the 12th house: when you tap into your spiritual side, you’ll gain great wisdom. great intuition, you’re very in tune with your psychic nature and your surroundings; you feel a deep craving to be generous and to be a part of the collective, you’re very giving. interested in psychology and healing; you’re a deep thinker and you want to understand everything about yourself, even the dark parts because that’s how we gain knowledge and wisdom. self-doubt and getting stuck in a cycle of self-hatred can be very dangerous for you and only when you believe in yourself, your intuition and talents will luck start coming your way. be careful with trying to escape too much and with running away from your problems because this placement indicates escapism through traveling and not only physical, it’s through daydreams as well. you must stand up for yourself always. your intuition has you being very sensitive to even the most subtle of energies, you can often feel drained and with a need to recharge. meditation is recommended. using your sensitivity to help yourself and others can bring a lot of healing energy all around you. 

[inthe-neighbourhood]

Batfamily Fic Recs: League of Assassins Edition

By League of Assassins Edition, I mean batfamily members in fanfics to do with the League.

Prodigy (Silent Death) by MaybeTomorrow141

Words: 17,456 Chapters: 10/? Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Relationships: Cassandra Cain & David Cain, Cassandra Cain & Lady Shiva, Cassandra Cain & Batfamily Members, Cassandra Cain & Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Damian Wayne

Summary:

Cassandra Cain didn't escape from her father until later in life. She met and trained with Damian as a child and trained with newly resurrected Jason Todd. They become close over their time together and when Jason leaves for Gotham he takes Damian and Cassandra with him.

Review:

Cassandra is written so well, she is still skilful and a prodigy, but when written with her father, who is just blatantly more powerful, it makes her interesting. It gives her something to overcome, and showing her weakness and fear makes her all the more interesting. The way she communicates is interesting, and her thoughts are equally so. Damian is amazing, he is written to still be a grumpy child, but he is nuanced, he feels guilt over killing, fear of being left behind and inferior to Cassandra but respects her. The way they get to know each other and bond, slowly finding comfort in one another, while still feeling contradicting feelings towards one another is subtle and amazing. It's clear neither of them has had much social interaction with people their age, it's made more clear when Jason is introduced, that he's less weapon and more human. Although he feels rushed, there isn't a slow building in his relationship with both Damian and Cassandra and while their dialogue does feel accurate for siblings, it doesn't feel earned.

Overall, I look forward to reading more and it's defiantly a good read and a good exploration of a young Cassandra and a young League of Assassins Damian.

2) Leave Me Lonely by Equisite_Expicitly

Words: Chapters: 5/? Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne

Summary:

Taking up the mantle of Robin was one of the best things to ever happen to Damian Wayne.

He would never admit it for the simple fact that it would display a vulnerability. In the League, vulnerabilities weren’t allowed. Vulnerabilities were exploitable - made you more easily controlled. They left you prone to more than just a physical attack. So he would never say it, but being Robin was like finally breathing fresh air.

Review:

This fanfiction is about the trauma Damian has from his time in the League and how it has shaped his perception of family, love and his fear of failure. I love the exploration of Damian, it is so often you see people and writers characterize him as a blood-thirsty brat, but this story explores his complexity. He loves being Robin, it represents freedom to him, and with the thought of losing it, he fears that he is a disappointment and that he is truly a bad person. Cassandra is the second main focus of this fanfic. Normally, I'm not a fan of people making her overpowered because I find characters like that boring, she gives good insight into Damian and his struggles from a perceptive outsider. Jason is also really funny, I love his scenes with Cassandra and his dialogue with Beast Boy, his characterization is really good.

This fic is definitely for people who kin Damian or find his character interesting.

3) bringing everyone home by quandaries_contradictions

Words: 1,485 Chapters: 2/3 Rating: General Audiences

Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Damian Wayne

Summary:

Jason has been many things: Bruce Wayne's son, Robin, living, dead, living again, pit mad, only pit mad-ish. He's not quite sure what he is anymore.

But he is sure of one thing, after meeting eight-year-old Damian al Ghul in the League of Assassins. He is going to steal Ra’s al Ghul’s grandson. And when he does that, the only place the two of them will be safe is in Gotham.

Review:

This is one of my favourite concepts, I love league fics, but they're hard to find. This one has Jason being a good brother and it's sweet of him to want to keep his siblings safe. It's a soft, enjoyable fanfic.

[fan-dot]

Adora’s Abuse

I cannot stand how people minimize Adora’s abuse.

The form of abuse Adora suffered is insidious. It’s the kind that if you attempted to lay it all out, it doesn’t sound all that awful for most people. After all, she was being praised! She was the preferred child. She was the golden child. 

The thing is, the abuse she faced is just as damaging and traumatizing as a ‘classic’ examples of abuse.  

A Brief and Incomplete Breakdown

The primary form of abuse Adora faced (as far as we know) was emotional abuse. Shadow Weaver manipulated, terrorized, and traumatized her in an attempt to mold her into a weapon that she could use.

Adora’s Need For Control

Adora was placed on a pedestal. If she acted out, the people under her would be punished for her misbehavior. This bred a guilt complex in her- if bad things happened, it was her fault. She had to be good, whatever that meant to her in that moment, because if she was bad or misbehaved or wasn’t good enough, others were punished in her place. 

On top of that, others around her were taught to look up to her. She couldn’t make mistakes because not only would she be letting Shadow Weaver down (and potentially getting her friends and squad mates hurt- or worse) but she would be letting everyone else down. And even further, if she messed up enough she could be the one getting hurt or tossed aside. Children need the love and affection of their caregivers. Potentially losing Shadow Weaver’s affection and attention could be terrifying for Adora. 

But it wasn’t just Adora herself that had to behave well to avoid Shadow Weaver’s ire- it was the people around her. Shadow Weaver made Adora responsible for the behavior of others from a young age. When Catra misbehaved, messed up, or didn’t live up to Shadow Weaver’s expectations, Adora was blamed for it and Catra hurt- physically and emotionally. This again deepened Adora’s guilt complex. Now, other people’s behavior was her fault as well because Adora should have worked harder to make sure that her people behaved and did well. She should have checked in on them, pushed them harder, done more, anything- it’s her fault that they got in trouble. She needs to fix things.  Everything has to be perfect because if it’s not, that’s dangerous. People are going to get hurt.  

Adora is constantly on alert and seems to operate from a place of fear and anxiety a lot of the time. She needs to be the best, because if she isn’t, people are going to get hurt and she’s going to lose the people she cares about. She needs to do x  because if she doesn’t, bad things will happen. If she isn’t perfect, if she’s not good, if she doesn’t fix things, if she, if she, if she-

The Effects of Witnessing Physical Abuse

We haven’t seen Shadow Weaver explicitly strike Adora yet as a child in the show. Even if she has, however, just witnessing how Shadow Weaver tormented Catra would leave scars. Children growing up in households where one parent is physically abused become fearful and anxious and hypervigiliant. Even if they are not being hurt directly, they have to watch someone they care about be hurt by someone else they care about. 

There is a constant fear that the abuser could turn on them. Self-blame becomes a huge specter- if they had stepped in, if they hadn’t upset the abuser, if they had said something, if they were better, if they were good, would the abuser not hurt the other person anymore? Why am I not getting hurt? What did the victim do wrong? Sometimes the witness of the abuse can get angry at the victim for upsetting the abuser. 

Adora grew up in an unstable, dangerous environment where as far as she knew, she could be hurt as badly as the others around her in a moment’s notice.  She blames herself for a lot of what happened- after all, “if I was good, if I was better, maybe Shadow Weaver won’t hurt Catra.” She puts herself in danger to protect Catra, the same way a child might try to intervene if a parent or sibling were being  abused. 

Despite us never seeing Shadow Weaver hurt Adora while she was in her ‘care’, we still see Adora flinch from her and anxiety when she touches her. She tracks Shadow Weaver’s hands and squeezes her eyes shut when she pats her head, as if expecting a blow. That alone is sign that she fears violence from Shadow Weaver, whether or not she ever physically abused Adora as well. 

Physical Abuse

The only physical abuse we have witnessed so far in the series comes from the episode where Shadow Weaver attempts to mind-wipe Adora. 

Adora is in pain at the hands of the person who raised her. 

Though we haven’t seen much evidence for physical abuse, I think it’s possible. Adora was raised to be a soldier and I wouldn’t be surprised if she faced a lot of direct or indirect physical violence as a result. A rare strike or electric shock could do a lot for Shadow Weaver’s attempts to keep her ‘in line’. A ‘I hate that you’re making me do this’ could be one way Shadow Weaver would use it to manipulate her.

After all, Adora is terrified of her touch. It could be from witnessing Catra’s abuse, but there is potential that Catra wasn’t the only one who faced physical abuse, even if she was the primary target.

Beyond that though, there is a form of physical abuse that is a bit fuzzy on whether it is emotional or physical abuse in nature that both Adora and Catra experience in spades.

Body blocking.

Shadow Weaver is always looming over Adora and Catra. She exerts her power over them and nonverbally threatens them. She traps them into rooms and into her space and takes away their power. 

Adora’s Weak Concept of Self

Like many abuse survivors, Adora has a weak sense of self. This is only compounded upon by her being raised to be a soldier. The failures and successes of herself and the other cadets were pooled together as a group and attributed to the leader- Adora. Adora’s successes then were attributed to Shadow Weaver, and so on and so forth. Adora’s sense of self was eroded away through attaching her sense of self worth to what she could do for other people and making people happy with her. 

Her identity is completely wrapped up in being a leader, being a weapon, and being responsible for others. She needs to be perfect or what else is she? Adora is put in charge of Catra after seeing her get shoved around and frozen, cementing that need for perfection in her. Others suffering and success rely on her, making up a key part of her identity. 

It takes seeing first hand the horrors of the Horde for her to change sides because Adora wrapped up so much of her self-worth and self-identity in being  Shadow Weaver’s ace. It takes until then for her to start to break through Shadow Weaver’s manipulation. Catra knew that and could recognize on some level what Shadow Weaver was doing to the both of them- after all, she faced the overt abuse, saw how differently (and negatively) she was treated from others. Adora could not, especially with Shadow Weaver beating into her head a lack of self-identity. 

Becoming She-Ra, as much as it was her idealism and innate sense of justice, was a way of clinging to a new external identity after her old one was shattered. She sees the sword as her identity, her worth tied to how good a weapon she can be for the Princesses now instead of the Horde. When it shatters, so does her sense of self and purpose. 

Overt Emotional Abuse

When Adora does go against Shadow Weaver, without Catra around anymore to be a scapegoat, there is a reversal from covert to overt emotional abuse  and manipulation being the primary tactic.

Shadow Weaver attempts to reinforce Adora’s lack of self worth and self concept. Whether explicitly or more subtly, she told Adora over and over and over and over again that she was nothing. That she was worthless if she wasn’t what Shadow Weaver wanted. That she didn’t matter.

All the good things about her? They were conditional on Adora’s obedience.

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Other Side Notes

- Shadow Weaver stalked Adora during that episode where Adora’s trauma and PTSD is on full display (the first Mystacor episode)

- In that same episode, she took Glimmer’s form and said awful, manipulative, and abusive shit to her

- Adora knows Shadow Weaver is willing and capable of killing- and knows that’s a potential consequence for failing or not ‘keeping Catra in line’; that’s a lot to put on a little kid

-  How often did Shadow Weaver go a little too far (on purpose or on accident) and weaponized affection to bring Adora around and make her feel guilty for being upset or upsetting Shadow Weaver?

- When Adora rejects Shadow Weaver’s attempt to manipulate her with affection, Shadow Weaver switches gears to praise. There’s groundwork there, years of conditioning and manipulation that lead to this exchange.

- Adora’s childhood was filled with gaslighting, but that’s a topic for another post

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shadow Weaver traumatized Adora to the point that she had panic attacks and a breakdown over the thought of her being around her. That alone tells you how much that woman traumatized her. Her abuse is not lesser because it was primarily psychological and covert. That just makes it harder to recognize and harder to heal. Don’t minimize it. 

[dreamingsnowflake2013]

The Marriage Argument: Tharn’s Perspective

Both Tharn and Type have valid arguments about the marriage so they have inevitably been bound to clash. The reason for the clash is that they’re two people who have been formed by very different experiences, including their individual past traumas, making them into the men they are now: an idealist with a streak for eternal optimism and a realist with a tendecy for negativity; an all-out gay and a former homophobe; a hopeless romantic and a cynical pragmatic, someone who’s loved before and was broken by it and a man who is in love for the first time in his life.

Season 1 focused on Type’s problems, flaws and character developemnt as he had come a very long way. And although Tharn’s issues were addressed, they have never been completely resolved, therefore the focus in Season 2 shifts towards him and delves deeper into his character: his insecurities, hopes and personality traits.  

It’s not only their differences which divide them, but also what they have in common because like repels like, so while Tharn and Type differ in many ways, they are viscerally and uncannily similar in others, which is something many people don’t realise. THEY ARE BOTH FIGHTERS - strong, stubborn as mules and immensely brave - who have overcome huge obstacles, not only in their relationship, but also as individuals. For instance, everyone talks about how stubborn Type is, but it gets rarely mentioned that Tharn is as stubborn, if not even more. He merely isn’t so loud about it.

The most important and inherent aspect of Tharn’s personality is that he is an idealist who has always wished for the impossible and fought losing battles, ultimately having his wishes granted and winning those battles most of the times due to his dogged stubborness and refusal to budge and give up on what he believes in. He’s been like this for most of his life, even before we met him in S01E01, so when some people claim that the Tharn in Season 2 is not the same Tharn, they never really known him or understood him. Therefore, it there is one quote that perfectly describes Tharn in both seasons, it is this one:

Tharn’s always dreamed the impossible dream: to study music, for Type to love him and only him one day. 

Furthermore, he’s fought against the odds and opposition: the prejudice against his sexuality, his parents’ initial refusal to allow him study music, Type’s bullying, Type wanting to keep their relationship a secret from everyone else,... and he has overcome and defeated all of them with his unrelenting optimism and relentless refusal to give up. He still believed in love despite all his terrible breakups and didn’t give up on Type no matter how badly Type treated him, believing Type is a good person.

The very qualities that stopped Than from moving out of the dorm when Type harassed him 7 years ago, leading to them being together, and enabled him to live his life the way he wanted and to win Type’s love, despite the fact he was fighting a losing battle each time - tenacity and pride and insane stubbornness - are both his greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses. So once again Tharn hopes for the impossible: this time, it’s marriage.

Tharn accepted himself a long time ago, coming out to his parents when he was in 12th grade, openly admitting that he was gay in school and later, in work, as well. Unlike Type, he is an all-out gay, therefore he is in a very different place than his lover. However, he, too, had struggled with it. It took him 4 years before he dared to come out to his parents and publicly reveal he’s gay. So ever since, he’s been dealing with everything that comes with it, both the positive and negative. There must have been times when Tharn was marginalized, discriminated against and felt inferior due to his sexual orientation, most noticebly while being bullied by a certain homophobic roommate. 

On the other hand, while Type told his family and friends about his relationship, he’s never come out publicly, so he still lacks the final step and the experience that comes with it.

Performing at his own brother's engagement party the love song he wrote for Type and seeing him propose to the woman he loves, still hurting because Type has refused his own proposal many times and doesn’t want to get married to him, break something inside Tharn. 

He wants the same thing, but he can’t have it and that makes him hurt, desolate, bitter and envious. He’s been with Type much longer than Thorn with Aom and they’ve been through so much, earning their right to be together, yet marriage seems like an impossible dream, the only thing that Type has refused to give him. Not only does he feel cheated of something that should be his, but it makes him feel inferior, marginalized and not good enough. 

Because if he were a woman, Type wouldn’t refuse to talk about him with his co-workers and would have agreed to marry him a long time ago. Instead,Tharn has to come up with excuse why he won't introduce his boyfriend to his collegues. This has been an ongoing issue since season 1. 

 And this is where those who argue that if Type doesn't want to get married Tharn shouldn't make him completely misunderstand the problem - the marriage is only a symbol, representing equality and Tharn's desire to be like any other couple in all the things that matter.

While Tharn can compromise a lot, he is no doormat and has a certain set of morals and beliefs he will never break. He has enough self-worth to know that he deserves better. Once again, it’s the same quality which didn’t allow him to move out of the dorm when Type bullied him. So it says a lot that the only time Tharn seriously contemplated breaking up with Type was when he thought Type slept with Puifai. He couldn’t bear to be treated as second rate, a spare tire, a mistress and a dirty secret and share Type with someone else. It’s a line he will never be able to cross, his pride and heart won’t allow it. Tharn wants equality, thus he wants it all, wants what everyone else has. And being denied marriage to the love of his life makes him feel incomplete, deficient, depraved, as if he were somehow undeserving of it.

Speaking of inferiority, Tharn has never gotten over his abandonment issues: being dumped by all his past lovers, including Tar, his first love,... In fact, it has actually become worse when Type broke up with him 7 years ago. It might have been fake, but Tharn didn’t know that back then, so the heartbreak he felt was real - his body, his heart and his mind went through a real breakup and they remember it all. 

The thing with traumas is that while you might heal and overcome them, you will never forget about them because they leave behind traces, scars that will hurt from time to time and never let you forget about them. During his formative years, Tharn got used to being thrown away and Type’s abandoment was the one that cut him the deepest. Because of all this, Tharn  developed a deeply-rooted and hidden inferiority complex together with his fear of being left behind. Deep down, he always worries that he isn’t good enough and that no matter how hard he tries, he will be abandoned in the end. 

The scar caused by Type’s breakup has never healed and was left to fester, staying latent over the years, and it’s always been only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head. There is always a price to pay eventually and the consequences of that breakup have been merely postponed. 

The mere mention of breakup is enough to trigger Tharn, but hearing Type explaining to Thorn that marriage would make things more messy and difficult when they broke up shatters him, it’s basically the ultimate trigger.

Tharn knows what it feels like to lose Type, he lived through it and it almost destroyed him, so he doesn’t want to experience it ever again because he wouldn’t survive it. Therefore he has been doing everything in his powers to prevent it and bind Type to him in every way possible, desperately trying to stop him from leaving and himself from being abandoned once again. 

And marriage is one of those bonds, actually, it’s a real palpable bond that binds a person’s life to another. It involves people making a sacred and legally binding promise, proclaiming their love publicly, in front of eveyone, and they exchange rings, the symbol of the bond and eternity, as well. In some cultures, the couple’s ahnds get literally binded together. So it’s no wonder that Tharn desires to get married to Type so much. 

Moreover, a proposal, an engagement party and a wedding ceremony are incredibly romantic moments and Tharn is the ultimate romantic with a penchant for grand romantic gestures and declarations, organizing glamping dates on rooftops, giving his boyfriend red roses,... therefore he does want to do it all.

Finally, the primary reason for the inferiority complex and fear of abandonment comes from the fact that THARN IS A MIDDLE CHILD. His family is very loving and he’s never been neglected, but being a middle child means he is neither fish nor fowl, neither the oldest or the youngest. He’s grown used to taking himself out of the equation, to compromise and to share the love of his parents with his siblings. So he desperately wants someone to be only his, someone who he doesn’t have to share with anyone; HE WANTS TYPE AND HIS LOVE TO BELONG ONLY TO HIM, COMPLETELY AND UNCONDITIONALLY. It’s a visceral need on his part and the reason behind his strong jealous streak.

[sk-lumen]

Need serious advice about setting boundaries or communicating when dealing with a person who:

Is a parent

Has unhealthy communication methods -- it takes very little for them to start full-blown screaming, shouting out all your 'negative' things/mistakes/past, can continue to scream-criticise you even after you've gone silent, for WHOLE MINUTES even if you've shut up, will not accept anything that even hints at them making a mistake

You can't trust since childhood coz u made the mistake of confiding in them with a serious issue as a young teen --- mental related --- and they belittled and invalidated you, and since then pretended you never confided in them and have NO IDEA how you've been coping without them or ANYone else for years... Yeah thanks, parent, what u said back then made me think I was the one at fault and so I stopped trusting even friends coz yeah, when ur own parent doesn't give a damn, why would anyone else?

Is a master at silent treatments without explaining what EXACTLY they're punishing you for, then when theyre in the mood, will start talking to you as if they hadn't ignored you for days. Lol I'd rather be water boarded I think. Especially for all the damage this caused when I was a child

Won't openly talk about what they want, yet expects ALL FHE TIME others (in the family) to know what they want, then will complain/scream/angry for AGES about how no one cares, no one gives a damn... And when someone asks them what they want, they either say: nothing, or "you should know! Can't u see?"

Upon asking them to please talk normally, will blow a fuse, and lose it --- happened multiple times today

Literally will use me as a scape goat to unleash their frustrations upon. Even when I leave the room, I can hear them b*tch about how much of a failure I am etc. The trigger being anything that bothers them, from a phone call to something other siblings did, bla bla. I limit my time with them... But it's like, it feels impossible to have them treat me normally, without ridiculing or criticising me. I'm already a very low self esteem person... This doesn't help AT ALL

In short, refuse to tell/ask/discuss important stuff, and getting mad randomly that no one read their mind, bcoz everyone's 'old enough to have enough sense' to know what they 'should' do... Eg will not pikc up the phone when we call them from the store to ask when what the needed isn't available, so what other alternative can we get... And then when we get home, will instead blame us for being fussy and not getting the alternative, completelt skirting around the issue they didn't deign to pick up the phone... I mean, I don't get it. In the past I HAVE in fact asked them to just openly tell me what they want/expect from me to make them happy... Got passive aggressive answers like "don't you know? Are you dumb?" Bla bla

Passive aggressive to the max when they've lost it

Expect me to drop anything I'm doing and immediately cater to them, and expect me to help them in their hobbies (while simultaneously, as I learned many years ago to much heartache, not being interested or even pretending to be interested in my hobbies. The disinterest taught me very quickly how much what I wanted meant, leading to years of self-invalidation. Luckily I've learned it really is them, not me. My hobbies are valid)

Will not talk about why they're feeling angry, what causes it. Instead will blame me, who's like the golden scapegoat in our amazing family, by saying :YOU made me negative. They've said it many times now... It hurts a lot, when I'm also struggling with my own issues which I ofc can't confide in them about :)

Today I manned up -- the outburst of hatred happened again! Over a simple thing. It was NIGHTMARE and made me angry/sad/frustrated/triggered---, and so I told them to stop talking like that... Boy was that the wrong thing to say... I don't think I can accurately tell u what happened afterwards...

Usually children learn communication skills from the parents... I at least learned to recognize the unhealthy ones, and what NOT to communicate like lol. Like, other parent is even worse, believe it or not. But that's another complex situation

I'm not bashing on the parent. Lord knows I even have that much of a right huh? I hate myself eveb more when they invalidate me if I try to show how MUCH THEY HURT me after a 'communication session'. As in, heaven forbid me if I BE SILENT afterwards and DON'T wanna listen to their retardation. Nope. Even then they provoke me, rage at me, you know how sometimes enraged people hiss vitriol thru gritted teeth? Yeah, that's what they did today after I stayed silent and tried to ignore them an hour later after the 'session' when they wabted something. It's like they don't even need me to say a word and will carry on and on for minutes 🤢

I feel alone, helpless and at a loss what to do

I want to move out. Due to severe mental issues I can't even move out rn coz it scares me even more. But this has to stop. Things are only okay if I'm absolutely passive, say yes to whatever they want, kill my wants and needs, and become a perfect robot bred to cater to them (parent)

I hope you can help me out, dear

Hi darling,

It sounds like you’re in a considerably toxic environment. I'm sorry you're going through this. Know that this is not normal, nor is it how a parent/child relationship should be. In case there's any doubt, let me start by saying you deserve to be supported, respected, listened to, to have your needs met. You deserve to live in an environment that offers you all of these things.

With that being said, from the many scenarios you’ve mentioned you’ve already tried reasoning and setting boundaries, to no avail. There is only so much you can do on your own, if the other person in the equation is not meeting halfway or at all. After all, a healthy conversation involves two people, not just one.

Here's my advice, in this order:

Calmly and maturely asking the respective parent to have a serious discussion with you and to listen to what you have to say. Share how their actions and behaviour is making you feel, let them know you care, and make sure to mention several solutions for the issue as well. If this doesn’t work…

Bring up the subject of needing help from outside, such as the assistance of a specialist/therapist. Family counselling can shed a lot of light on toxic behaviours that are ingrained from childhood (both in their case and yours), on fears your parent may have, stress from their work, whatever is causing their outbursts and anger - because there is always a reason. Behind anger is sadness, and behind sadness is some need not being met, or an underlying fear, trauma, etc. This is not a justification for their behaviour, they are responsible for it; this is simply the fact of how energy dynamics work. People bottle up their frustrations, fears, etc, and let them out on those closest to them, to whom they feel superior. It’s not fair, and it’s not healthy, but it is frequently how this pattern works. If this solution doesn’t work either…

Then unfortunately, all you can do is focus on yourself. If they refuse to meet you anywhere along the road, you have to pack up your things and go your own way. Literally or metaphorically. They may be your parent and you may love them even in spite of their behaviour, but you cannot hold yourself responsible for anything they say or do; that is on them. In those cases, you have to prioritize your own mental health and wellbeing, and focus on moving out. If your (home) environment is toxic, you have to focus on first changing it. That’s vital. Only afterwards can you start healing, refinding yourself, reclaiming your self-esteem and confidence, your sense of worth. As long as you stay stuck in a toxic environment, you cannot really heal; if there is abuse of any kind (physical, mental, emotional), the causes are still there, leading to re-traumatizing.

If for whatever reason moving out is not (yet) an option, I would emphasize seeking some sort of counselling for yourself, if nothing else. You need an anchor, some sort of support that will help you along your path until you do get out.

Now, I don’t know how old you are. I am going to assume you are over 18 and of age, so only mind my advice if that is the case. (As disclaimer, I don't provide advice to minors as it's not the scope of my blog nor am I specialized/focused on that area.)

I understand moving out seems scary because it is unknown, but with that line of thought you may wait another 10 years in the same situation. Wouldn’t you wake up 10 years later already having done the hard work on moving out, finding your independence, claiming your sense of individuality and moving on from this sort of environment, this phase in your life?

Sooner is better than later, but do so with mindfulness and care over your mental health, of course. I know it’s scary. But being an adult requires some difficult decisions at times, and setting boundaries begins with choosing your wellbeing and doing what needs to be done, even if it is something uncomfortable short-term, but highly rewarding and beneficial long-term.

Hope this helps... and wishing you much luck, clarity, gentle guidance and comfort.✨

PS: Lately I've been receiving longer and longer letters in my inbox. As solution, I was thinking of having longer asks/letters redirected to my blog where there isn't any length limit, and readers can more comfortably browse both my tumblr and blog - and those requesting advice can share and receive a more in-depth response.

-Lumen

[misstrashchan]

Since @im-the-king-of-the-ocean did a post about what TMA fear entities the RWBY characters are aligned/avatars of, I’ve been itching to do one myself because as a result of overlapping hyper fixations I think about this A LOT

The basic concept is that avatars in TMA become what they fear most or embrace a fear they have developed the most complex relationship with that plays into their motivations and drive as a character. What negative impulses they have to constantly fight themselves on, the shape of the monster that lives in their heart.

To quote the RWBY song Fear, “But our greatest fear will be realised, if we fall and lose ourselves to fear, we’ll become what we’ve feared all our lives” yeah that’s a very loose definition of what becoming an avatar is.

Since MAG s5 has proven that you can be an avatar of more than one fear, (Like Martin serving both the Eye and the Lonely) some of the RWBY characters might have more than one, but I’ll try to limit it to two to avoid getting complicated, but at the end of the day it’s all fear soup, we might categorise them according to Robert Smirke’s 14, but they all bleed into one another, like Gerard’s colour analogy in 111:

GERARD

I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red? Y’know? I don’t know, that’s just how it works.

And like colours, some of these powers, they feed into or balance each other. Some really clash, and you just can’t put them together. I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour.

O-Of course, with these things it’s not a simple spectrum, y’know, it’s more like –

ARCHIVIST

An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once.

GERARD

Now you’re getting it.

ARCHIVIST

Like colours, but if colours hated me. Got it. 

Ruby Rose: The End. The fear of death itself, uncaring and unstoppable. Man this was hard to think about but I have a lot of Big Feelings about this one. Initially I really, really wanted to give Ruby the Eye simply because “can laser beam monsters with their eyeballs once they become powerful enough” and there is a fascinating overlap in how the Beholding powers and Silver Eyes function in the same way, (especially in how Cinder being exposed to the Silver Eyes fills her with an overpowering fear and reopens old wounds from trauma that have never properly healed; which is VERY similar in the psychological affect Jon’s has on his victims when he Beholds them) they’re both direct enemies/opposites to the Dark that expose their enemies/victims true nature and destroying them in the process at times. Only one feeds on fear and the trauma of others while the other feeds off of hope and love (Gerard says there’s no such thing as an avatar of hope and love, clearly he’s never heard of Ruby). 

But nope! The fear and nature of the Beholding just doesn’t really match with Ruby at all. She isn’t driven by a need of knowledge, nor does she fear being watched, followed or having her secrets exposed. The End though? Death itself? Ruby outright states that’s her biggest fear in volume 5 to Oscar “It doesn’t matter if you’re standing in Salem’s way or not. She’ll kill anyone. And that, scares me most of all” to me Ruby’s fear of death itself is projected onto Salem here, I think. It’s uncaring, unstoppable, it doesn���t discriminate, and it could come for the people she cares about at any time. What matters though is the context she says this is in explaining her motives to Oscar. Her whole life has been shaped by her inability to process death, her relationship with grief, all starting with the tragic and abrupt death of her mother Summer as a child. She’s also surrounded by a lot of death motif too, the hooded cape, mostly wearing black, the giant grim reaper scythe. She’s the End. 

Of course, her being an Avatar of the End means having to imagine the worst version of Ruby, one that is fully consumed by that fear. Avatars of the End are not malicious or destructive in nature but instead are… very apathetic. They don’t need to seek out victims to feed off of, nor do they have a ritual, because the End comes for all. And that fits with what Ruby would be like if that fear fully consumed her. It’s more or less established in vol6 during the apathy arc when she tries so hard to fight against their influence and how horrified she is when everyone around her falls prey to it. Giving up, not caring, accepting the inevitable demise of everyone and yourself? Ruby was terrified of that. And when looking at the vol8 opening where we see Ruby being dragged down by what looks like the arms of the apathy? She fights the hardest against it because it’s what she’s most afraid of, but because of her inability to process her grief properly is ultimately what will make her the most vulnerable to it when she’s pushed to her limit. All Salem needs to do to break Ruby is to remind her of Summer’s death. Not even what actually happened to her or how she died, just the death itself. Hell, the first time we see Ruby in the Red trailer, she’s at her mother’s grave, the first verse in Red like Roses that’s about Ruby “Red like Roses fills my dreams and brings me to the place you rest” in which we come to understand that the “Red like roses” lyrics in both part one and two of the song is referring to Summer’s abrupt death which Ruby apparently dreams about, which brings to mind Oliver Banks, our most prominent Avatar of the End, whose first statement to The Magnus Institute in 011 (underneath the fake alias of “Antonio Blake”) is concerning how he started dreaming about the deaths of others, which he didn’t begin to take seriously- until it was his father that he saw in his dream. Upon which Oliver realised how terrifying death really was and that fear began to consume him. 

Okay I’ve probably gone off long enough about this but yeah. Ruby is the End. I mean, she also just got a song in the v7 soundtrack called Until the End 

Weiss Schnee: The Lonely. The fear of isolation, of being completely cut off and alone or disconnected from the rest of society. I don’t really have to go too deeply into this one. It’s pretty cut and dry. “The loneliest of all”? And the Schnees basically are the Lukas family. Actually thinking about it the Lukas’ are actually somewhat better? They were the only ones in the whole of TMA that understood to raise a child to be an heir/avatar of their fear they needed room to reject it or actively choose it, even if that had an 80% success rate. Both are still awful though. (Damn, I can’t believe Jaques is an actively worse parent than an eldritch fear avatar)

When Weiss comes back to Atlas in v4 she’s more aware of her loneliness than ever, feels more aware of how she and atlas high society as a whole is disconnected from the rest of the world and its struggles. Whitley commenting on her being in her room for months implies she’s purposefully been isolating herself during this time as well, in order to avoid her family members “A pleasure to see you out of your room for a change” (sidenote; the fact that whenever Whitley shows up it always catches Weiss off guard, like she didn’t even notice his presence until he wanted her too. That’s. That’s a BIG Lonely thing. Given Peter’s siblings eventually ran away and he was the only heir I can imagine Peter being what Whitley would end up like if no one intervenes)

I’d say they might also be an possibility of the Stranger due to her struggling to find her own identity and inability to recognise oneself, but that can be an aspect of the Lonely too, as we see when Martin is in a house that is a domain of the Lonely in s5, and is unable to recognise himself in the mirror or recall who he is.

What I do have to say about this is it’s pretty interesting considering at this point in the show Weiss’ relationship with loneliness is actually somewhat healthy and something she can use to relate to and help others. She understands other people’s loneliness, that Blake in v5 needed space and in time she’d come back, and Weiss would be ready to be there for her when she did. And she also understands Yang’s loneliness in the same volume and that she needed someone there to support her.

“But you’re right. I don’t know loneliness like you do. I have my own version. And I bet  Blake has her own version too.” 

Speaking of Blake…

 Blake Belladonna: The Stranger, I Do Not Know You. The fear that you cannot trust the perception of yourself or of others. The creeping sense that something isn’t right. I considered the Spiral, but the Stranger and the Spiral overlap more than any other two entities so I’m just gonna go with the Stranger. Especially with her semblance being a metaphor for disassociation, a coping mechanism for the abuse and gaslighting from her relationship with Adam being kind of the biggest thing here, since the Stranger and Spiral deal with that a lot. She literally creates false copies of herself, shadow clones which she uses to feint, distract and evade. As well as statues/mannequins when dust is involved, which the Stranger is known for manifesting. Her fighting style centres around misdirection, stealth and fooling people’s senses. She also used to be part of the White Fang, known within Sienna and Adam’s faction to wear the masks of monsters, appearing anonymous. And she literally disguises her identity as a Faunus in order to escape the White Fang and enroll at Beacon. Blake at first was hesitant to trust and rely on the others in the earlier volumes, to let her guard down, and when she finally did, the worst happened and her fears were proven right. In s2 Jonathan becomes more paranoid due to being marked and in close daily proximity to the Stranger (as Not-Sasha), much like how Blake in v2 becomes far more paranoid and less trusting of her team. She also does seek knowledge or answers even at the cost of her wellbeing, which is an Eye thing, but Blake’s desire for knowledge and answers isn’t really consistent or important enough with her character and motives beyond vol2 for me personally to consider her an Avatar of it, but I do think she is Eye aligned. 

Yang Xiao Long- The Eye. The Ceaseless Watcher, It Knows You, as well as The Hunt. For the Eye, the first time we see Yang is her trying to find information on her mother, and we see Raven in bird form at the beginning too, as she has followed Yang her whole life, never actually interacting or doing anything for her, just… watching her. We learn in vol2 that her search for answers surrounding her mother has been a part of her entire life, almost overwhelmingly so to the point where in her childhood she and Ruby nearly lost their lives to the Grimm when she decided to journey to a shack in the woods she thought would lead to clues in finding her mother. She is adamant because of that experience to never let her need for the truth and answers control her, but it is a need that is always there. When she finally meets Raven, she’s encouraged to “start questioning everything she knows” which, she does. Questioning and knowledge is a big part of Yang’s character, even now. She’s the one who questions Ozpin the most, as well as Raven herself, and in the recent volumes is the one who challenges and questions Ruby’s leadership the most. There’s also a moment in vol7 of her drawing parallels between herself and Robyn and relating to her when she says “I won’t stop until I find out the truth” Her being the one to take the relic of knowledge is hugely significant in this too, especially given the context that she acquires it right after confronting her mother, getting the answers she’s searched for her whole life, holding an artefact possessing infinite knowledge, and she sinks to her knees and cries because there is no sense of closure, that anything is better because of her knowing who and what her mother is, and that her choosing this path might have cost her ever having a relationship with Raven (which is more Raven’s fault of course, and Yang knows that, but that’s not how she’s feeling at that exact moment). 

For the Hunt, this one’s a bit simpler. The thrill seeker aspect to Yang’s character and motives in becoming a huntress and enjoying the chase and fighting in of itself. There’s another element in that as most Avatars of the Hunt start out as monster hunters who then develop the need to hunt and kill monsters, and gradually what qualifies as “monster” starts to blur more and more as they become consumed by the need and thrill of the chase and hunt itself. I bring this up because in vol3 Blake draws parallels between Yang and Adam after she is disqualified for attacking and injuring Mercury, worries with how familiar this all feels and that Yang might turn out the same as him (and just for the record Adam is a full blown Avatar of the Hunt, and the Slaughter too most like) 

 “I had someone very dear to me change. It wasn’t in an instant, it was gradual. Little choices that began to pile up. He told me not to worry. At first they were accidents, then it was self-defence. Before long, even I began to think he was right. This is all just… very familiar.” What Blake describes is… kind of similar to Basira’s relationship with Daisy with how Daisy, an Avatar of the Hunt, would justify to Basira and explain away how the violence and murders she committed as being for the greater good. 

Also just one more, because I have to

 Pyrrha Nikos: WebwebWEBWEB. Hoo boi Pyrrha is the Webbiest of Web Avatars as they come. Her whole character’s themes surrounding destiny, control and agency, feeling like her whole life had been decided for her, the fact she’d been blessed with incredible talents and opportunities meant she was supposed to be a huntress, the fact her talent as a world champion meant she was placed on a pedestal without her realising, becoming separate from the people who placed her there in the first place, that Ozpin and his inner circle tell her she has been chosen as the next Fall Maiden, but the method in which she must become so might result in the loss of her identity, that though they ultimately leave the choice to her do pressure and manipulate her into it. The idea of destiny being a predetermined fate you can’t escape is Pyrrha’s greatest fear, and rejects that idea in that she will not let her life be manipulated but will be the one to take control it instead, which is manifested in her having a semblance that she uses to subtly control and manipulate her surroundings. As Cinder puts it, “People assume she’s fated for victory when really she’s really taken fate into her own hands”.  

[highladyluck]

For the fic title meme: Lay Down Your Crown and Sword

So, I was thinking maybe this is about Aviendha's feelings about Rand when they're in the Aiel Waste... just kidding, I know what the people want from me.

Wheel of Time, Mat/Tuon, post-canon, ANGST. This is one take on a scenario where Mat attempts to achieve his stated relationship goal, which is convincing Tuon to abdicate and run away with him.

(This sucker is LONG and SPOILERY so I’m putting it under a cut.)

It's ~2 months after the Last Battle. There's growing danger to Tuon- an almost-successful assassination attempt (my money's on Moghedien) that scares Mat, Selucia, the Deathwatch, and maybe even Tuon herself, just a little. The sul'dam secret is leaking out and emboldening the faction that wants to kill her, there's worry it'll lead to local rebellion, plus there's still the Seanchan homeland power struggle. Mat uses all this to convince Tuon that she needs to lie low for a while. His idea is for her to fake her own death, install a puppet successor secretly loyal to her, and go hide out with him in a place no one will be able to find them for a few months.

She's not thrilled about it initially, but it's not like she hasn't faked her own death before (love that about her!) so she agrees to Mat's plan, which is 'hang out in a Portal Stone alternate timeline'. (Mat would not come up with this on his own, Mat does not like Portal Stones, but Min suggested it and he eventually agreed it would suit their needs.) Tuon would prefer something where she could keep an eye on political conditions more easily, but she feels safe with Mat & appreciates that this is definitely a secure option, and she's been out of contact with home base before for a while and been fine. Selucia stays in the palace, to keep an eye on things and do intrigue (and also give Mat and Tuon actual alone time- I am entertained by the grudging truce between Mat and Selucia, but her chaperone services are not needed this time around.)

They've got an official pickup scheduled in a few months, about a month before Tuon's due; Mat thought about waiting more time to go back but he'd rather have the option to call in trusted medical help for the birth and he wants to leave a wide margin of error for the actual due date. He intends to rope in Nyneave if it seems necessary, although he doubts he'll be lucky enough that Nyneave would help Tuon out of the goodness of her heart or even as a favor to him. More likely Nyneave's help would cost Tuon in political concessions, which he will have to either convince Tuon to accept- assuming she's in a position to make that kind of choice- or negotiate on her behalf, if she's in too much immediate danger. Either scenario keeps him up at night, but the alternative is worse. Also, he hasn't run this contingency plan by Tuon yet- likely because he isn't totally against the idea of extracting political concessions from Tuon, so there's guilt as well as fear of how she'd react. The other thing Tuon doesn't realize about this vacation plan is that Mat is hoping to convince her to move there forever- if it's nice- or at least to keep faking her death and start a new life with him somewhere in disguise in their reality.

The Portal Stone world is one that's relatively close to their world, so it has people and feels fairly familiar, but the apocalypse hasn't happened yet and doesn't appear to be doing so in the near future. (For fun let's say the obvious divergence is Damodred-related; maybe the non-asshole Damodred branch is in charge, so you don't get Laman's Sin and/or Tigrane is actually happy in her political marriage, so the Dragon hasn't been reborn yet.) Tuon's ok with the 'vacation' vibe at first, we get some cute romantic bonding moments between her and Mat as they do normal people things, they have some cute dates in taverns or whatever. But Tuon becomes increasingly bored and anxious and frustrated about not being able to keep tabs on what's happening- probably some residual trauma from the last time she went AWOL with Mat, and came back to find her homeland in shambles and her family dead. So that's a source of conflict, especially since she doesn't actually confide that in Mat. She also keeps wanting to hash out political/military plans for when they get back, but Mat keeps trying to distract her, or makes arguments she doesn't like (re: Seanchan policy reform). Maybe Mat brings up the Nyneave contingency plan because he got worried about her health, and Tuon's like 'uh how long have you been sitting on this idea, when the fuck were you going to run it past me, the person it most concerns?'

Their relationship has always had an element of conflict in it, but back then they were strangers, had rules of engagement constraining them, and a kind of shared purpose. Their conflict was a kind of game that they played together, and it drew them closer. Now they know how to get under each other's skin and aren't constrained by witnesses or promises, and they have a shared mission (keeping Tuon safe) but don't agree on who is in charge of it. What's holding them together still is their own compassion and affection for each other, but they're not great at communicating it with words and now they're using words as weapons sometimes, so most of the reconciling is with gestures/gifts/actions. In general, things are tense and there's not much going on outside of their own interactions to distract them; Tuon's temper is flaring, she's feeling powerless and like her personal integrity is being attacked sometimes; Mat's being propelled around by his gut reactions and he's scared of losing her (and the baby), in any number of ways, and mad that she doesn't want what he thinks is best.

Finally the scheduled transit date arrives and they pop back to their original universe and get caught up on the news (maybe from Min?) Over in Seanchan, possibly emboldened by news of Tuon's 'death', a warlord has consolidated most of the warring factions. Now they know who to go after, and a war in Seanchan would help unify the Seanchan in the westlands; the Seanchan military-industrial complex loves a good patriotic war. Things domestically are a little better than before they left. Selucia flushed out the network from the earlier assassination attempt and is generally keeping things running and the puppet ruler honest.

Tuon's relieved; she was really worried that everything was going to fall apart when she was gone and now she's kind of grateful for the break. She tries to tell Mat this without actually admitting that she's got trauma around it, because the Empress doesn't admit weakness and Tuon the person is extremely bad at talking about feelings anyway; she's like "Ah, that's much better news than I came back to last time you kidnapped me. I'm glad to be back to work again, let's get to it." Mat's irritable, not catching on that she was actually really worried about it based on her previous experience, and thinking she didn't appreciate the break, and also worried that his plans to convince her to leave with him aren't going to work. Tuon catches that he's cagey and unhappy and not getting her jokes, and she remembers that this was what he seemed like when she first saw him in the Tarasin Palace. Mat argues that they should at least wait until the baby comes, that the person she put in charge is doing well, they can certainly let them rule a while longer. He says he's not sure it's the right time to attack Seanchan, he'd need to check the troops out, sniff out local sentiment. He's not decisive or commanding or focused when he says these things- it's stalling, it's bravado covering panic. It dawns on her- oh shit, he's gonna run.

Tuon's spooked. She KNOWS Mat now, but that doesn't mean she knows what to do to hang on to him. She doesn't know how to deal with a loss of control in her personal life, so she turns to what she knows she can control- the empire, her role, her property. She takes refuge in past promises. She tells him they will discuss the disposition of the army and the prosecution of the war in Seanchan once her heir is born and she's officially 'off the hook'. Mat looks grim.

Tuon wanted to announce that she's back immediately, but she starts having contractions and Mat's like 'you are absolutely not going to return from the dead right this second, you're super vulnerable right now.' They stay in a relatively secret spot in Tuon's territory with a small coterie of loyal retainers until the baby is born; it goes fine. There is one (1) cute bonding moment between Tuon and the baby and Mat; then the baby vanishes. Mat was on guard along with the usual people you'd expect to be on guard (not Karede, Selucia, or Min though). Tuon FUCKING KNOWS Mat did it with Aes Sedai help, she's initially furious and betrayed, but Mat isn't admitting it and within the extremely tight circle of people who know about the vanished baby, he's doing a reasonably convincing job looking as freaked out and upset as everyone else, and she's still hoping she can resolve this privately without any drastic public actions.

She takes Mat to a private place and she tells him that she has always, always been able to trust him. She trusts him so much it terrifies her. She does not know if this is what love is, but it is what she feels for him. She asks him to honor that, to honor himself, and not to lie to her. She then asks him why he kidnapped their child. Mat staggers, and blurts out that he can't bear the thought of their children constantly at risk of assassination, from strangers or their own siblings. He has nightmares about their child beginning to channel, or being able to learn, and what that means for them in the Empire. Tuon's made her choice and he'll respect that, though he hates the risks to her, and what the Empire does to her and others. But their child deserves the choice Tuon didn't have. He loves Tuon, but he cannot love the Empire, and he will not fight in the Empire's wars, and he will not let the Empire own his children, whether that's as royalty, sul'dam, or damane. He says he trusts she'll come to the right decision about what to do with this information.

The next scene has Tuon in mourning white. It's neither Tuon's nor Mat's POV- probably Karede, or maybe Min. In front of the whole court Tuon, as Empress back from the dead, bestows the Bloodknives ring and blessing on Knotai, and orders him to take a few members of the Deathwatch (the ones on watch the night the baby vanished, our observer notes) and assassinate the warlord in Seanchan on her behalf. She says she trusts he will succeed. They stare inscrutably at each other. The court is shocked into silence at first, but the whispers rise behind Mat as he straightens from his extraordinarily polite leg and heads out of the chamber. It is left up to the reader to decide if this is an elaborate plan to fake Mat's death and set him free, or his execution.

--- You may notice this is suspiciously fleshed out for a prompt I received this afternoon. XD I've been kicking around some of this premise for a while, though this ask made me finally come up with the circumstances that get Tuon to actually agree to temporarily leave her job, as well as most of the details. The main emotional beats came from stringing together several Mountain Goats songs, because of course it did. The whole sequence is Twin Human Highway Flares, Riches and Wonders (Eliza Rickman cover), Alpha Incipiens, Fault Lines, New Britain, Family Happiness. I’m not sure if I’ll actually turn this into a finished story with description and dialogue and everything, but it’s possible. This is also not the only Mat/Tuon post-canon idea I have kicking around! It’s not my ideal scenario for them for sure, but it’s a lot easier to write a ‘bad ending’ for them than to work on my ‘good ending’, because I have a lot more emotional investment in the ‘good ending’... perfectionist problems. :/

[blause]

Why Azula Doesn’t Deserve a Redemption Arc

With the Avatar Renaissance, I've seen quite a few people say that Azula deserved a redemption arc. I disagreed, despite her being my 3rd favorite character, and wrote a whole essay about it!

This is strictly about Azula in the show, not the comics!

Avatar: The Last Airbender is not only praised for being one of the greatest children’s cartoons created, but also creating one of the greatest character redemption arcs possibly in animated history.

Prince Zuko started as a bitter child, wanting only to restore his honor and be seen by his father as a valuable member not only to the Fire Nation but to Lord Ozai’s family. He spent years putting his heart and soul into a mission that was meant as a joke to keep him away, but when Prince Zuko actually finds the Avatar, Aang, it’s the first time he has had hope in a long time. That hope, though, was a flame tended by hatred, anger, and fear that he let get the best of him for two seasons of Avatar. And while there are moments in the show where he shows vulnerability and his true colors (see: “Zuko Alone”), his traumatic past overshadows any positive step he could truly take even if he had the best intentions.

It is in the third season where Zuko truly shines, standing up to his father and his sister, an abusive family where he hardly ever feels like he belongs, and joining the Avatar and his friends who he had betrayed so many times to finally do what was right and aligned with his morals instead of his father’s. It is with the love he had gotten from his Uncle Iroh from the beginning, and the compassion of his newfound friends, that he fights his own family for the sake of saving the world only to take his place as crowned king of the Fire Nation.

The reason I go into brief detail of Zuko’s character arc is to explain how fleshed out it makes his character. The questioning of himself, his morals and his motives truly make Zuko human. It makes him relatable, as nearly all true heroes in media try to be. There is an argument to be made that, despite his trauma and his warranted anger, he is not a three dimensional character in the first season of Avatar, but instead an angry child that wants his way no matter what his true motives are. Making Zuko end up on the “good” side was his fleshing out, and making him come full circle made genuine sense for the show.

So if Prince Zuko was able to get a redemption arc, doesn’t that mean his sister Azula, who also went through an immense amount of trauma, would be able to get one too and have it be just as great or make just as much sense?

No. I genuinely believe that giving Azula a redemption arc would not make sense for her character or the show.

Azula, Zuko’s younger sister and only daughter to Firelord Ozai, is seen as, what I believe to be, the secondary villain in Avatar. She was born with a natural talent for firebending, picking it up more easily and far younger than her brother Zuko did. Her personality type was nasty; she was a cunning, manipulative bully with relentless determination that reflected poorly on everyone around her. She commanded the attention of anyone in her presence, took what she thought was rightfully hers, and would not stop until she was the best -- the best being Ozai’s true approval.

In her introductory scene at the end of season 1, Azula does not even speak but it is not hard to see her emotions come through on her face. Beyond the “evil smirk” commonly associated with “bad” or “evil” characters, there is the radiating pleasure of being donned a serious task by her father. By the time you were to finish Avatar, it is clear to see in this 3 second introduction of Azula as a character that she is willing to do anything her father asks of her, thus turning into anything she would do to gain the respect and honor that Zuko also seeks out. It can be argued that, despite Azula receiving praise from her father both in her past and in the show, she never receives the honor that Zuko does.

In season 2, Azula is already cruel to those working for the Royal Family. This is to be expected, as she is only a 14 year old girl with the whole world wrapped around her talented finger, but the confidence and power in her tone as she commandeers a ship cannot be ignored. To have that ability and that intimidation at such a young age shows the complex that Azula develops with each success and conquer, only to end up being her downfall. When she reunites with her childhood “friends”, Ty Lee and Mai, it is through manipulation and fear that she gets them once again on her side (although with Mai and the way she hardly shows her true emotions, it is not as clear). It takes only minutes for Azula to get those on her side, showing the signs of a leader but also of an overlord.

While Azula’s bending powers are far beyond her years, it can be argued that her verbal powers are even stronger. Her confidence, persuasion tactics, and mastery of manipulation can sway anyone from vulnerable children (Zuko when she tried to bring him home as prisoner to her father as a traitor alongside her uncle), to an entire kingdom (not only the Earth Kingdom, but also the Dai Lee that held a leader confident in his abilities to lead the rogue society). As a counter, though, Azula’s verbal skills also lack when seen in season 3 as she tries to play the role of a “normal firebender citizen”.

She is shown at a firebender party having no social skills whatsoever, trying to find others ulterior motives, and overall struggling to fit in. While her traumatic past absolutely had a huge impact on her social skills, on top of being part of a royal family (Zuko shared similar struggles when going to offer to teach Aang firebending), it is interesting to see her confidence falter. In this episode is when we see Azula most vulnerable not only with those her age that she cannot immediately control, but also when she reflects on her mother and being called a “monster”. Those feelings of abandonment after Ursa left the Fire Nation only pushed her beyond her own limits to do anything in her power to keep Ozai’s love no matter how twisted it was

One of the biggest reasons I think that Azula did not deserve a redemption arc is because, much like Zuko, she chose her own path in the very end. If Zuko did not choose to seek out Aang and his friends in season 3, there would be no arc whatsoever. Obviously the writers chose this for him, and I see exactly why they did it. They showed Zuko’s wavering beliefs clearly over the years, despite his anger and his fear of not only change but forever losing his father regardless of how severed their connection had been for years on end. Azula, on the other hand, never showed anything but loyalty to her father and their shared beliefs and cause. There were countless openings for Azula to show some sort of questioning of herself and her beliefs, with the loss of Ty Lee and Mai, her father’s decision to make her the next ruler over the Fire Nation despite his plans as the Phoenix King, and the Agni Kai against Zuko and Katara, but she never did.

The closest she ever got was when her mental state and mental health began to collapse on her coronation day, and even that cannot be justified as questioning herself.

It’s heartbreaking to see the fall of Azula, the pressure put on her practically since birth finally crashing down around her. All the times that she had been called “crazy” by Zuko, Iroh, and others that she saw as disposable pawns finally “coming true”. It is when she begins to lose herself, not question herself, that she becomes such a big threat. While before she was cold and so tightly wound up in her ways, seeing the unraveling of trauma and how it can affect a teen girl whose true motivation was love and acceptance was powerful. The scene of Azula hallucinating her mother in the mirror was the acknowledgement of a lost past, a hopelessness that she could never forgive, and resulted in Azula’s genuine intentions to kill Zuko and Katara once confronted. And instead of stepping down, having enough awareness to see herself in such a deteriorating state, she challenges her brother to an Agni Kai.

Azula is truly gone the moment she steps off the throne. And even after she is defeated, instead of accepting the consequences of her actions or what led her to that point, she breaks down instead, forever sealing the potential of any character arc.

TLDR; So why do I believe that Azula doesn’t deserve a redemption arc?

1) She showed no desire to be redeemed.

2) Azula was already so fleshed out that it would not make sense to redeem her. Her anger, trauma, and actions take her down a road she cannot return from.

3) The fact that Zuko got such a terrific character redemption arc cannot be ignored in the sake of arguing whether Azula deserves one. If every character were to be redeemed, there would be no power behind the redemption. Giving both siblings a redemption arc, despite their (partially) shared traumas, would lessen the importance/meaning of the other’s.

4) Despite my personal belief that Azula is not evil, she is not good either. I believe that giving her a redemption arc would be a cheap shot at wiping clean or attempting to validate all of her past actions in at least some aspect. It would be a disservice to her as a character and invalidate her motivations and what she did to get to every peak she hit in the show.

[have-each-others-six]

time will tell, she’ll see us through (part five)

***

part one

part two

part three

part four

*** a cliffhanger? who is she?

enjoy!

***

Cathy knocks on Katherine’s bedroom door probably harder than she should, feeling like she’s in the thick of a howling storm of thoughts.

“Katherine?” she asks, her voice feeling choked- no ‘Kit’, not now- and the door slowly opens. “Hi, Cathy…” the girl replies, standing in the doorway, looking concerned. “Is everything okay?”

Cathy squeezes her hands into fists, trying to release some of the tension in her posture before she speaks. “No. No, everything is not okay, Katherine, and I think you know why.” “Is your manuscript still missing?” Katherine asks, sort of casually but not quite, and Cathy can hear Jane’s sort-of gasp as she realizes why Cathy was acting so strangely earlier and what Katherine may have done. “Yes, it is,” Cathy says in a quick, clipped voice, and Katherine looks wary at her tone. “Have you stolen it?”

“She would never-” Jane starts, defending her girl, but Cathy holds out her hand to quiet her argument, seeing the skittishness in Katherine’s eyes, and evidently Jane sees it too. “You… you wouldn’t, right, love?” “I didn’t take it,” Katherine mumbles, but she is a horrible liar, and Cathy’s jaw tenses. 

“Where have you hidden it?” she questions her again, voice low.

“I didn’t-” “I asked, where have you hidden it?!” Cathy near-shouts, cutting off whatever protest Katherine was going to give, and the raised volume of her voice ignites something in the pink-haired girl. “I ripped it up!” Katherine yells. “I destroyed it and hid the pieces where you’ll never find them!” She expects Cathy to shriek back, to continue the screaming match they’ve got going, but the woman’s voice is so soft when she speaks again that Katherine has to strain to hear it.

“You destroyed it?” “You heard me,” Katherine snaps, trying to maintain her anger. “It’s gone. All torn up in little bits, and I’ve hid them away. You won’t find it again.” “But why?” Aragon asks, aghast, because Cathy looks like she can’t hold herself up from shock, let alone speak. “Why would you ever do something like this?” Katherine opens her mouth, but Cathy speaks before she has the chance to, her grief shifting into something sharper and harder, tearing apart any sympathy she might have.“She’s still angry about what happened with Henry,” Cathy says bitterly, answering Aragon’s question. “Even after all this time, she’s angry that I replaced her in Henry’s life.” “That’s not what- no!” Katherine protests, her tone becoming filled with desperation rather than the vitriol of only a few minutes ago. “No, Cathy, I promise, that’s not-” “I thought we moved past that!” Cathy exclaims, her voice cracking, and Katherine can see tears in her eyes. “I thought all of us had! I thought that we were more than just Henry’s wives, I thought that we had forgiven each other because we understood that we were more than our relationship with him- Christ, that was what my whole book was about! Is that why you destroyed it? Because you couldn’t stand the idea of us moving beyond him, couldn’t stand forgiving me?” Katherine is trembling, and if this were a normal circumstance Cathy would understand that this is too much for her and step back, letting her find a safe mental space like she would do in Katherine’s interview before they continued the discussion.  But this is not a discussion, this is no normal circumstance, and Cathy is beyond calming- her chest feels like it’s filled with fire. She feels like all of her pressure and fear and anger is detonating within her, not just from the all-consuming anxiety of today but from the years she spent in court, the grief of losing her daughter, the trauma of her relationship with Thomas- Katherine destroyed her manuscript, she destroyed a part of Cathy’s history, and because of that all of the emotions of her past are crashing to the forefront. She doesn’t think she could calm down if she wanted to. “When I met Henry, he called you an uncaring witch,” Cathy says lowly. “He said that you destroyed lives and only thought of your own needs, ‘like her cousin before her.’” She looks at the ground before meeting Katherine’s tear-filled eyes. Her own eyes are burning- she can’t tell if she’s crying or not. “I always thought he was wrong, and when I met you after our reincarnation, I was sure of it. You were intelligent and sweet and loving and I dismissed Henry’s contempt for you. I wanted to honor the you that I had come to know when I wrote my story. I wanted to prove Henry and all of those men at court wrong, even if it was posthumously.”  When she speaks again, she doesn’t look away. She holds Katherine’s gaze, unable to process the girl’s trembling because of the feeling of loss pressing on her chest. “I tried my very best to prove him wrong. It looks like you proved him right.” It’s silent then, but the kind of silence that is so heavy that it’s hard to breathe. No one talks. Cathy turns around because she can’t look at Katherine anymore and sees Jane’s face, pale and shocked, and then Aragon, who’s watching her with trepidation, like she’s scared of what her goddaughter’ll do next. The harshness of what she had said begins to sink in as the haze of angry grief begins to lift, and Cathy begins to turn to face Katherine, opening her mouth to apologize, but the crying girl pushes past her and runs to the front door. Cathy just swallows hard and stands there for a moment, dread building up in her chest as she realizes the full weight of her words and what they had meant to Katherine. “I… I couldn’t…” she starts, but she doesn’t know how to defend herself, doesn’t know how to articulate the roaring in her head that made her say those things to the wife that had preceded her in Henry’s quest for a woman. “Henry drives us apart yet again,” she mutters, gritting her teeth, but Aragon surprises her by shaking her head. “This wasn’t Henry, darling,” her godmother says softly. “At least, not all of that was him.” Aragon’s eyes are soft, but her words send pain shooting through Cathy’s chest because she knows the woman is right. The difficulties in her relationship with Henry have left scars that were definitely showing rather obviously in that fight, but she can’t blame all of what she said on him. That was her who registered Katherine’s vulnerability and continued anyway, that was her who let her rage take control, that was her who targeted the girl’s insecurities with a white-hot vengeance and wanted it to hurt. She’s still angry, but now her anger is coupled with shame, and she feels like the ground beneath her is pitching and reeling like the waves at sea- but there’s no railing to grab onto, there’s no horizon to focus on- she’s here, with the aftermath of her choices, and there is nowhere to go but forward. So that’s where she goes. Without a word, she slips between Jane and Catherine, goes down the stairs, and runs out the front door into the night, having just enough time to process that Katherine didn’t take her phone. She doesn’t know where Katherine would have gone, because the sun is brushing the edge of the horizon and while the fifth queen has learned to enjoy going out at night in the twenty-first century, she never goes alone, so there are no real places that she likes to go by herself that Cathy knows about. The only lead Cathy really has is that Katherine didn’t take the car, so Cathy doesn’t either, walking down the sidewalk briskly and wishing she had brought a coat as the chill begins to settle around her. She’s moved through so many different emotions in the past hour that she feels dizzy, spiraling and stumbling her way from one feeling to the next, but her need to find Katherine overrides that dizziness and settles in her bones with a cold efficiency. As she walks quickly, she thinks about what she had written in that last page of the story she’d read aloud to Aragon. Placing us in a miniscule box of marriage and labeling us with words from a rhyme does not allow us our humanity- to have feeling, to have depth, to be complex and mutlilayered like every person on this earth deserves to be. She’d written that with the intent of expressing that she and the others didn’t just want to be known as Henry the Eighth’s wives, but as she scans the sidewalk and shop windows for a familiar head of pink hair, a different perspective comes into her mind. Cathy has been saying over and over again that the manuscript is everything to her. She has put so much into this, enough so that the loss of the book is synonymous with the loss of her memory in her mind. She’s been defining herself by this manuscript, putting herself in a box of her own by placing the pressure of telling every part of this story perfectly on her shoulders. She has denied herself the very depth and complexity and multilayered nature of life that she had written that everyone deserved. She doesn’t want the manuscript to be all she has. Katherine hurt Cathy, that’s true- she destroyed something very close to her heart- but Cathy still loves her, just like she loves all of the other queens. The manuscript had been straining that love, more than she thinks she had realized. All of this time, she’s been thinking that if she doesn’t preserve the memories she has of the other queens or her siblings or her daughter or Henry’s children or any of the other people she wanted to honor, the bonds she has with them will be tarnished, but maybe the obsession she had with making the story perfect was actually the thing that was separating her from her memories in the first place, removing them as something she experienced and shoving her back in as an author, a detached observer. The wind picks up, but Cathy no longer feels the chill, the shock of the revelation making her feel like she’s been underwater and someone’s just yanked her head up to the surface. She wasn’t doing the honorable thing by losing herself in her manuscript. In fact, she was so consumed with not forgetting and making every detail correct that she was doing a worse job at actually telling the story, at staying true to the emotions and the messages that she had wanted to get across when she had started all of this. Of course she still wants history to be represented truthfully, she’s still going to make sure people are not reduced to two-dimensional versions of themselves- she still believes history should chronicle humanity, not gods and demons, and she’ll fight for that until she dies (dies again, she supposes). But she’s done wasting her second chance at life living through her first one all over again. “Katherine!” she calls out, her voice a little strangled with emotion, and she stops walking and starts running, looking all around for the youngest queen. “Katherine, where are you?” As the sun sinks lower in the sky and the world seems to dim, the streets lit by the sparse halos of streetlamps, Cathy becomes more and more desperate.

She makes it to the edge of the city park, one of the more likely places for Katherine to be, and Cathy looks around worriedly for her and earns herself more than a few strange glances. It’s fully dark now, and Cathy’s near tears when she sits dejectedly on the edge of the fancy fountain that resides in the middle of the park. She looks out at the painful excuses for trees that dot the landscape of the grass, feeling hopeless, and drags her foot against the gravel that marks the path. She doesn’t know what to do.

***

taglist: @thenicestnonbinary, @soultastic

[thisselflovecamebacktome]

My personal connection with Taylor’s discography, part one: It’s Time To Go

No more “official” meanings for music. The world has progressed past having to consider “official” meanings of songs. I’m kidding... partially. Obviously I love connecting the dots with Taylor’s music as much as the next Swiftie, but my favourite aspect of listening to music is the emotional relatability of transferring it to events in my own life. I have also unfortunately been ridiculed for relating to romantic songs in non-romantic ways and so forth. So I’ve decided in a bid to normalise personal relatability to songs and just generally get my thoughts out there, I’m going to write out what these songs mean to me and how. Also a special shout out to @cowboylikedean who inspired this series with how Folklore and Evermore has been helping zir recover from zir heartbreak over the Supernatural ending.

Anyway, I’ve decided I’m working backwards with these because why not? I should probably also note that unless there are lyrical changes in a repeated part (mostly choruses), I’m only going to include each of those parts once as a way to reduce repeating myself. So let’s get started.

It’s Time To Go

As a whole, this song is a reassuring comfort that despite seeing my tendency to leave as a flaw caused by the trauma of staying too long in the past, it typically has served me well. Though, like many of Taylor’s songs, It’s Time To Go mostly reminds me of my family, there are aspects of past friendships that I definitely feel like I dodged a bullet with by leaving.

When the dinner is cold and the chatter gets old, you ask for the tab

To me, this line reminds me of my father and my relationship before I cut him off. Despite feeling like I was his favourite child for most my childhood, communication between us started breaking down in my teen years. By the time my family fell apart when I was 20, I felt like seeing him weekly for lunches was a chore I was doing ‘for old time’s sake’. As a whole, despite loving him, there was just no longer any common ground and it showed with most of that time being spent in awkward silences or silently nodding along to things we didn’t understand that the other person said until I guiltily gave my ‘well I guess I better be heading home’ line.

Or that moment again he's insisting that friends look at each other like that

When I was in my teen years, I was in an (partially non consensually sexual) abusive friendship. This line brought me right back to the beginning of that friendship when I’d vocalise that I, a person with a history of sexual violence before that, was uncomfortable at the way he would sexualise me or stare lustfully at me. And you guessed it, every time he’d try to gaslight me into thinking I was just making it up and ‘friends look at each other like that all the time’. This line also has a tinge of regret for me because looking but I wish I had accepted that it was time to go then as opposed to staying which led to the abuse.

When the words of a sister come back in whispers that prove she was not in fact what she seemed. Not a twin from your dreams, she's a crook who was caught

So these lines are interesting to me because outside of the generalised outro, it is the only part of this song that relates to two completely unrelated scenarios.

‘When the words of a sister come back in whispers to prove she was not who she seemed, not a twin from your dreams’ reminds me of the members of my family I thought I was close to growing up. Like these people spent my whole life telling me I was their favourite, telling me they’d provide if I needed anything and just generally put so much extra time and effort into me than my cousins and siblings. Then, when I begged for help, refused to even check in on me when my sister left and then told me they’d rather watch me starve and be homeless than step in and push my father to do the right thing by my mother, brother and I.

‘When the words... come back in whispers that prove she was not in fact what she seemed, she’s a crook who was caught’ meanwhile reminds me of an ex acquaintance from university. While I was not super close with her, she seemed decent enough so I introduced her to another now ex friend of mine in hopes that if I ever held events, I wouldn’t have to worry about her because she’d know at least one other person. While seemingly a small thing, this was a large step for me given how much the abusive friend mentioned above fucked me and past friendships up to the point this was the first time in six years I was introducing friends that hadn’t previously met to each other. And this girl knew that. She also knew that I was in a very vulnerable state given I had just cut off my father and was in between medications. Despite this, she spent the week she knew this other friend doing everything she could to fuck up our friendship and convince me that this other friend didn’t like/trust me, and unfortunately it worked.

That old familiar body ache, the snaps from the same little breaks in your soul. You know when it's time to go

This line feels very self explanatory. Sometimes you just need to trust your gut, even if it fucking kills you. Very much ‘I think I’ve seen this film before, so I’m leaving out the side door’ vibes.

Twenty years at your job then the son of the boss gets the spot that was yours

So to me, this line reminds me of the way my parents pinned my sister and I against each other, and in turn the resentment that causes when thinking about how I felt like I was damn near to the perfect daughter, stuck around for the ‘ugly’/hard parts that she didn’t and did everything I could for my parents and family in general just for everything to still revolve around my sister. Like my father chose ‘her’ (more like chose his own dishonesty and knew she’d put up with it for financial gain whereas I wouldn’t), my mother’s whole life revolves around her hurt for my sister rather than trying to have a relationship with me and my sister still got all of the support from the family despite being the one in the wrong. But here’s the thing, as much as I want to be bitter at her, she was a child when everything happened and couldn’t help that she was put in a good position and I wasn’t. It was the ‘boss’ of my adult family that chose that and that’s where the blame lays here.

Or trying to stay for the kids when keeping it how it is will only break their hearts worse

Ironically this line pretty much means the opposite to me. Like to me, this was how I felt trying to juggle relationships with both my parents after they split. Like my mother felt betrayed every time I went to see my father even though it was a precondition for him giving her money when he finally agreed to, and my father felt betrayed that I was his favourite yet opted to live with mum and support her. It was a lose/lose situation and the longer it went on, the worse the pain was for all three of us.

Sometimes giving up is the strong thing

Giving up on the abusive friend above was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. After having experienced the suicide of a close friend the year before, I had admittedly grown a supergirl complex where I felt like I had to save everyone, and knowing that this abusive friend was suicidal and still walking away despite my fears that he’d die in a way he wouldn’t have if I just stayed tore me apart emotionally and made me feel like I had failed and been weak as a friend. But ultimately it was the strong thing because I had to leave all my friends from that group behind as a result and start again.

Sometimes to run is the brave thing

So in the theme of ‘I’ve had to restart my life too many times from leaving everything behind’, we have the beginning, the first time I stood my ground and refused to go back to a situation that I was upset in. In sixth grade (final grade of elementary school where I am), I had an outburst with one of my friends about how I felt like I was her comedy/emotional punching bag. Her response? Make the whole year barring one guy hate me. That guy and my friends in the year below also got targeted for their choice to stay friends with me. By the end of the year, things started cooling down and she asked me to go to the same high school as 99% of the rest of the year and remain friends. I didn’t. I instead went to the opposing school with the bad reputation despite the idea of knowing no one and being alone scaring the shit out of me. Granted looking back it was kinda dumb to be scared given that I went from having 40ish kids in my year to like 120 (and would have been more if I went to that other school) so wouldn’t have had to deal with the false ultimatum of her or being alone anyway, but at the time it was a massive deal for me and the bravest thing I would do until leaving that abusive friendship years later.

Sometimes walking out is the one thing that will find you the right thing

Basically this just encapsulates leaving both friendship groups from above. Like leaving the elementary school group allowed me to find people who I didn’t feel I had to pretend around in high school and then leaving that high school group found me people who had common interests and wanted to challenge and grow beside me. In general, it really doesn’t feel like much is going well in my life right now, but the one thing I can say is that I finally feel like I am in a place where every friend that I have put effort into is meant to be in my life and deserves to be and I don’t feel like anything is missing on that front. So maybe it took 23 years, but at least I got there.

Fifteen years, fifteen million tears begging 'til my knees bled. I gave it my all, he gave me nothing at all then wondered why I left. Now he sits on his throne in his palace of bones praying to his greed. He's got my past frozen behind glass but I've got me

Family, family family. Quite frankly, I think these parts I wrote in an unsent letter to my father explain it best.

“And I’ve had to do it alone because the literal years I spent degrading myself into feeling like the child this family made me out to be and begging for an ‘adult’ to step in and help were met with apathy and in your case, fake apologies. And then each and every one of you has had the nerve to act like I abandoned you or that I am a thoughtless child who only won’t see you because mummy said no.”

“You have taken every part of my family, my mental health and potentially even my future away from me, and whether you care or not, that’s something you and I both have to live with for the rest of our days.”

I spent my whole childhood/very early adulthood seeing the signs of my sister slipping from us and trying to prevent exactly what ended up happening. I spent the following three years begging for people who could fix it to do so. And then when they refused, I somehow became the villain and ‘insane’ and ‘not a family person’ for leaving.

But at the end of the day, they lost a person that would have loved and done anything for them for a lifetime. I left with my self-respect, only losing fairweathered people who only liked the idea of me anyway.

And you know, you know, you know, you know when it's time to go. So then you go. You just go...

Going back to the main theme, sometimes you’ve just gotta trust your instincts and take that first step knowing you’re doing the right thing for yourself and walking towards what you need.

[ziracona]

hi can we pls have some uhhhh 🅱️uentin Smith headcanons, and some killers hcs if you want! I also lowkey hc Jake and Claudette to both be some degree of autistic, I imprint like a baby bird on my fav characters so I hc both Jake AND Quentin to be trans, and Quentin and Meg are ADHD infodump pals. Literally sitting around the cabin taking turns talking about something they love while the other is sitting there... no thoughts... head empty... they r supporting each other

Nice! And Claudette is canonically autistic according to her archives description as far as I can tell, and I’m so glad! You should check out @askthedreamwalker if you’re interested in Quentin art bc their Quentin is trans and they have really nice art! Also u right as hell about Quentin and Meg. He gets v excited and Meg and he can special-interest back and forth for hours One person is pitcher, pouring information into empty pitcher2, then the other takes a turn and pours back into first pitcher. Info dump support friends. Heaven.

And hells yeah, I love son boy! Idk if you mean ILM headcanons or general, so I’m just gonna go with gen. 

Quentin’s got a big sense of justice. Not okay with people getting away with terrible shit, which makes the realms extra unbearable (somewhere in the distance Yui and Tapp are like ‘cheers mate’). Holds people very accountable. Boy is very fair and got upstanding character. Expects people to operate with like bare minimum decency and ain’t about to let that shit go if someone wants to be a bastard. Last person ever to let a killer get a pass for going around murdering people in-realm and would hold them extremely accountable and be v willing to kill one in a fight and view them with disgust and righteous anger, but also be one of the first people willing to forgive a killer if they genuinely reformed, or got thrown to the survivor side by the Entity and actually chose to shape up and proved they meant it. He has a huge sense of justice and righteous anger, but also believes in forgiveness and second chances. (Within reason. If any of the particularly bastard killers like GF or Nightmare or Clown showed up with a completely ooc change of heart they will never have anyway, Quentin would be like “…listen. …There are some things only God can forgive…U gotta take this one to him…and away from me. Forever…”. Boy got those high-quality standards 👌

Used to be kinda high-strung, but then his life was a living hell for so long that he ran out of energy entirely and now he has no choice but to be mostly chill. If he gets a burst of energy, the old excitement power switch flips back on and he is both way more talkative and active, and happier. Unfortunately he is usually so worn out he’s about to drop.

Got a bit of a martyr complex. The fact that literally locking himself in hell with his worst nightmare worked does not help. Feels massive guilt over the fact that the Nightmare is in the realm bc of him, but is still kind of glad bc it means he’s not out there murdering his family. Hates that he feels that way because he thinks it’s kind of wrong. Views being stuck in the realm as sort of penance for having brought Krueger unintentionally. Afraid to tell other people it’s his fault because he’s scared they would never talk to him again, and the idea of losing his friends and complete isolation here is unbearable. Feels guilt over that choice, because he feels like he’s in a way lying to them, and that if they would hate him if they knew the truth, they have a right to. Boy loves his friends hard, but does not trust them to forgive him, or to trust in him, so he’s not always completely honest about not just that but anything he’s struggling with. Very sad dumbass. Suffers alone because he’s afraid to ask for help, and/or does not think he deserves it.

Really loves the other survivors and would do anything he could to protect them. Dies in the majority of his trials because he battles endlessly trying to keep the others from being the ones who die. In a way, he’s trying to make things up to them, but he would absolutely do the same just because he loves them, and did for a long time before he ever figured out Krueger and him being taken was his fault (not that I personally think that’s a fair way for the boy to view it). Optimistic externally, struggling internally. Absolutely refuses, ever, to give up, but is always right on the threshold of having a breakdown. Pushes the others to find a way to escape and tries to give them hope. Takes a lot of shit. Will not fight back much if teased just be like -__- and moves on. Doesn’t let people boss him around though, and will always do what he thinks personally is the right thing. Extremely forgiving. (Except to himself.)  Snark boy if opportunity presents itself. Can I offer you a shot of adrenaline in this trying time boy? the rest of the time.

Gives people the benefit of the doubt. Not a hoe. Would commit to a s/o very dedicatedly. Also not the kind of asshole who would cut down on time w friends when in a relationship. Boy’s love is not a zero sum game. Would die or kill for Laurie. Loves Claudette and learning botany tips from her. Thinks she is pretty and admires her kindness and skill and refusal to let the world change who she is, and wishes he was more like her. Has not told her that. Is a lot more like her in that regard than he thinks he is. Pretty damn good in a fight bc he always gets back up. Determinator. Still in love with Nancy and loyal af. Misses her a lot. Does not open up about himself as much as people think he does. Misses his dad and Nancy and his dead friends a lot, especially Jesse. Doesn’t actually talk about his problems much. Just suffers in silence because he doesn’t think he can ask for help.

Takes his faith seriously. Prays a lot, and struggles with feeling completely abandoned by God, but won’t give up on that either. Tries hard to believe he cares and things will change. Dedicated to trying to make sure that regardless of what his friends believe in, they are okay. Very sad and alone but tries to not think about that. Tries to help friends stay hopeful. Is both baby and badass sass boy in one package. Fight hard, love hard, someday will get to sleep for a whole year. 

If you are nice to him once, will assume that means you are friends now. Genuinely cares deeply for every single survivor at the campfire. Wants to protect people. Constantly suffering bc that’s impossible here. Really just wants everyone to be okay someday, including himself, and simultaneously kind of feels like he no longer deserves to be okay in the end at all. Tries not to think about that. Massive guilt issues. Bottles it up. Loyal as hell. Would die for his friends so much it actively worries them and they’re like “Quentin…please. Quentin-stop—stop. You’ll die again. I swear to god Quentin! I can die this time! Quentin!!! Come back here right now!” But he never comes back. Big sibling energy. Regularly people be like “Damn u could make a pretty fine lil brother out of this” and then they do. He loves so hard. Please be nice to him. He’s always trying so hard and never thinks it’s enough. He works so hard.

Triggers include being grabbed by his hair and jerked around, losing his necklace, the cave, and the Nightmare within 15 feet of someone he loves, so homeboy has just, a lot of bad days. Is playing a fun game called ‘I will absorb trauma forever and not get help for it and then one day it will kill me’. Needs to learn to depend on his friends.

Good sense of humor, enjoys reading and music. Will talk way too much about things he likes and not notice he’s done it and then feel bad. Dumbass sweetheart, will think he’s doing a great job flirting and be proud of himself when he did not, in fact, do a suave job, but it’s cute. Tries hard. All the time. At everything. God he tries.

I would do killer hcs too but this already so long and I cut like half of what I initially wrote rip. I have too many thoughts. Head full. : ( Here’s just a few little ones:

Myers does not like working for the Entity. It tried to pull a fast one and be like, “Yes tis I, another voice in your head,” and Michael was like “Bitch it’s my head. I don’t know you!” and that did not work. While Michael very much would love to kill Laurie and get inner peace, working for the entity provides 0% daily Michael needs, and he hates it. Sometimes he just does what the fuck he wants and gets in trouble (homeslice is the only killer who can kill survivors with no mori and no perk for it. Michael cannot be controlled). Does not like being here at all. He doesn’t cause the Entity a lot of trouble like Krueger does, so it doesn’t consider him a problem killer, but they do not have a ‘Ah yes my favorite killer’ kind of thing going. Michael hates the spider-monster. He is so tired of everything at this point. Boy is suffering. Would fight the Entity if he knew how. Has been hurt by it before, and does not like that, because it takes longer to heal than he is used to.

Myers has a few times had his home area be close enough to the campfire that he could see it in the distance, and he watches them when that happens. For hours. He is lonely, but does not realize that, and probably never will. He does stand there and watch them, being sad and not realizing he’s sad at all. It’s the closest he ever gets to human interaction aside from killing people in trials.

The Entity hurts Max sometimes, not because he has done anything wrong, but because injuring him without providing even a way to prevent it keeps him peak feral and afraid, just like it wants. No time to recover or learn or grow. Just anger and pain and fear.

The Entity promises Rin a lot of things. Not because it has to, but because it enjoys the taste of her suffering. One of her addons is paper cranes, one of 1000 to make a wish, as the description says. I’ve always interpreted that to mean it likes to screw with her and offer her things like that she can do between trials, in the moments of lucidity she occasionally has when completely alone. ‘Make 1000, get your wish,’ but every time she hits 999, it blows the ones she’s made away, and she has to start over. Unclimbable hill. Just to watch her struggle. That kind of thing. Intentionally tends to send survivors her way it knows she would dislike killing the most, just to watch her have to do it against her will and bask in the horror of what she cannot make herself not do.

[the-potter-analyst]

Chamber of Secrets Summary

Sending everyone health and wellness vibes 🙏🏾

Harry: I think loneliness and isolation is something that’s consistently throughout this book for Harry. The previous book was all about him coming out of his loneliness and finding a home, while CoS is challenging that in a way.  Harry’s isolated from his friends in the beginning thinking they don’t want to talk to him, someone is literally trying to prevent him from being at Hogwarts (AKA his place of belonging), he hears a voice no one else can, and then the people within Hogwarts antagonize him. To top it off, he’s feeling like an outsider on a deeper level due to the abilities he possesses that suggest he could be evil. I talked a lot about this in the final chapter of this book but here’s a quick sum:

If B1 was about Harry finding his place at Hogwarts and discovering his strengths, B2 is about Harry looking deeper into his strengths and finding something that jeopardizes his new found place at Hogwarts. It’s this side of Harry that he’s a bit frightened of and doesn’t really understand. It’s his darker side, the part that has the capability of doing evil and what is most like Voldemort. Yet Harry chooses to use his resourcefulness and determination for good. He chose not to be in Slytherin. He chooses to love and to be kind. And like Dumbledore says, that’s what’s truly important.

New qualities of Harry that have come up: His low self-worth, he’s a boy of action (he’s a doer, which makes me think he’s a kinesthetic learner), his fear of losing this strength to take action

Ron: I’ve already mentioned that Ron is very protective of his friends, but it’s still important to say! He always shows concern when they’re not acting like their usual selves, like how he went full Mom mode on Harry during his depressive state when encountering the Mirror of Erised, or his immediate reaction to not hearing from Harry all summer and learning he might be using magic was to check on him. I will never get over how Ron and the twins enacted a jailbreak for Harry :’) Another quality I noticed in this book is how he always speaks his mind, likely do to growing up in a household with so many siblings. He draws a clear line of what he’s willing and not willing to do, but that said, if it means helping his friends, Ron is willing to do anything (even walk into his literal nightmare).

I also want to talk about the Weasley family in general and how they’re basically a manifestation of what the wizarding world is for Harry. The Durselys are all about order, perfection, and normalcy while the Weasleys are chaotic, rustic, and unique. The magical world fills Harry with excitement and love, which the Weasley family provides every day at the Burrow.

Hermione: I really admire Hermione’s dedication to knowledge and learning. She inhales books, always asks questions, and loves things that challenge her abilities! And when deciding which classes to take, Hermione was like I will take all of them. Which, good for her! but also, I hope she knows how much she can handle lol.

Ginny: Can you imagine being so excited to finally go to Hogwarts, only for your first year to be something straight out of a horror flick. Ginny has gaps in her memory that just so happens to align with attacks on students, she literally wakes up with blood on her hands. The trauma. Ginny opened her heart to someone only to be used, manipulated, and abused. Yet after all of that, she still comes out a stronger person, she still lets people in her life and thrives.

Draco: I started seeing new bits of information that revealed why Draco is the way he is in B2. He’s obv very spoiled, but it’s shown that he actually doesn’t get much love from his father. Like in Borgin and Burkes, he pushes his father’s buttons to see what he can get away with, which is a sign that Lucius doesn’t give Draco the attention a child needs from their parent. He also constantly complains, wanting to be coddled. I’ll just plop in smth I said in chp12 about Draco’s attention-seeking antics:

Sometimes Draco gets away with it, sometimes he doesn’t, but it’s never out of love. It’s more of I’ll do this so you can leave me be. In reality, they have a very materialistic relationship. Lucius also teaches Draco that he’s privileged because of his pure blood and he absorbs that, clings to it, probably because it connects him with his father. By upholding this blood purity mindset and trying to internalize it, Draco feels like he belongs in the Malfoy family.

Tom Riddle/Voldemort: Tom Riddle/Voldemort and Harry are constantly compared with one another. They were both orphaned as infants, taken into hostile homes, and were isolated and alone for much of their lives, yet they grew up to be opposite in personality. Tom became resentful, pessimistic, formed a superiority complex, internalized blood purity, and is incapable of love. He is also a coward at his core, which is where his superiority complex formed from. He’s overcompensating for not having control over his life at the orphanage (and also being a half-blood, not pure blood). He’d rather go the easy route and be feared than having any meaningful connections with others. He values himself above anything else.

Dumbledore: On the topic of Tom Riddle, I still wonder why Dumbledore did nothing when he saw all the signs that Tom might fall into the dark arts. Was Dumbledore in denial and overlooking those details in hopes they weren’t true? Did he just not know what to do?

Dumbledore might be a kind man, but he’s also very calculating af. He’s taking very calculated chances on Harry and his upbringing to make sure that Harry doesn’t become another Voldemort and that he can stand against Voldemort. Like both in B1 and B2, Dumbledore gives Harry tools that will help him in the final battles, trusting that Harry will be brave and stay true to his beliefs i.e. trusting that Harry wouldn’t use the Sorcerer’s Stone when in front of the Mirror of Erised, or trusting that Harry was a true Gryffindor.

Notes:

I had been wondering how Dobby was able to appear before Harry is house elves can’t usually use their magic without their master’s permission. But it might be that it’s less of being physically incapable of doing so and more of being extremely taboo for house elves, which be another factor for why Dobby would punish himself so much for trying to warn Harry. As we know in later books, Dobby is outside the house elf social norm.

Very salty about the movies giving Ron’s lines to other characters

I’m still confused on how the basilisk moved around. Like does Harry hear it in the walls when it’s coming out of the Chamber, then it just wanders around the castle?? Are there openings in the pipes at various points in the castle that it can fit through??

B1 Summary | B3 Summary