#because of this I have to live in fear for me and everyone in my family

[abbotjack]

Asking Robby to walk you down the aisle after u said yes to Jack hOLD MY HAND SYDDDD 😭😭😭😭

The Handoff 𖥔 ݁ ˖ִ ࣪₊ ⊹˚

a/n : I fear I took your idea and turned it into a 4k word emotional spiral. I genuinely couldn’t help myself. like… Jack crying in uniform??? Robby soft-dad-coded and holding it together until he can’t??? the handoff?? the dress reveal??

summary : Jack proposes in the trauma bay. You say yes. Before the wedding, you ask Robby to walk you down the aisle.

content/warnings: emotional wedding fluff, quiet proposal energy, found family themes, Jack crying in uniform, Robby in full dad-mode, reader with no biological family, soft military references, subtle grief, emotional intimacy, and everyone in the ER being completely unprepared for Jack Abbot to have visible feelings.

word count : 4,149 (... hear me out)

You hadn’t expected Jack to propose.

Not because you didn’t think he wanted to. But because Jack Abbot didn’t really ask for things. He was a man of action. Not words. Never had been.

But with you? He always showed it.

Like brushing your shoulder on the way to a trauma room—not for luck, not for show, just to say I’m here.

It was how he peeled oranges for you. Always handed to you in a napkin, wedges split and cleaned of the white stringy parts—because you once mentioned you hated them. And he remembered.

It was how he left the porch light on when you got held over.

How he’d warm your side of the bed with a heating pad when your back ached.

He’d hook his pinky with yours in the hallway. Leave your favorite hoodie—his—folded on your pillow when he knew he’d miss you by a few hours.

Jack didn’t say “I love you” like other people. He said it like this. In gestures. In patterns. In choosing you, over and over, without fanfare.

No big speeches. No dramatic declarations.

Just peeled oranges. Warm beds. Soft touches.

So when it finally happened—a proposal, of all things—it caught you off guard.

Not because you didn’t think he meant it. But because you’d never pictured it. Not from him. Not like this.

The trauma bay was quiet now. The kind of quiet that only happens after a win—after the adrenaline fades, the stats even out and the patient lives. You’d both been working the case for nearly forty minutes, side by side, barked orders and that intense, seamless rhythm you’d only ever found with him.

You saved a life tonight. Together.

And now the world outside the curtain was humming soft and far away.

You stood by the sink, scrubbing off the last of the blood—good blood, this time. He was leaning against the supply cabinet, gloves off. Something in his shoulders had dropped. His body loose in that way it never really was unless you were alone.

He didn’t speak at first.

Just watched you in that quiet way he always did when his guard was down—like he was trying to memorize you, just in case you weren’t there to catch him tomorrow.

You flicked water from your hands. “What?”

“Nothing.”

You gave him a look.

He hesitated.

Then, casually—as casually as only Jack could manage while asking you something that was about to gut you—

“I’d marry you.”

You froze. Not dramatically. Not visibly. Just enough that he caught the subtle change in your face, the way your mouth parted like you needed more air all of a sudden.

His eyes didn’t move. He didn’t smile. Didn’t joke.

“If you wanted,” he added after a beat, voice a little lower now. A little rougher. “I would.”

It didn’t sound like a performance. It sounded like a truth he’d been sitting on for months. One he only knew how to say in places like this—where the lighting was too bright and your hearts were still racing and nothing else existed but you two still breathing.

Your chest ached.

“Yeah,” you said. It came out quieter than you meant to. “I’d marry you too.”

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

And then he stepped toward you—not fast, not dramatic, just steady. Like he’d already decided that he was yours. Like this wasn’t new, just something the two of you had known without ever having to say it.

No ring. No big speech. No audience.

Just you. Him. The place where it all made sense.

“You’re it for me,” he murmured.

And you smiled too, because yeah—he didn’t say things often. But when he did?

They wrecked you.

Because he meant them. And he meant this.

You. Forever.

You didn’t tell anyone, not right away.

Not because you wanted to keep it a secret. But because you didn’t have anyone to tell. Not in the way other people did.

There were no group texts. No parents to call. No siblings waiting on the other end of the line, ready to scream and cry and make it real. You’d built your life from the ground up—and for a long time, that had felt like enough. You’d learned how to move through the world quietly. Efficiently. Without needing to belong to anyone. Without needing to be someone’s daughter.

But then came residency.

And Robby.

He hadn’t swooped in. Hadn’t made it obvious. That wasn’t his style. But the first week of your intern year, when you’d gotten chewed out by a trauma surgeon in the middle of the ER, it was Robby who handed you a water, sat next to you in the stairwell, and said, “He’s an asshole. Don’t let it stick.”

After that, it just… happened. Slowly.

He checked your notes when you looked too tired to think. He drove you home once in a snowstorm and started keeping granola bars in his glovebox—just in case.

He noticed you never talked about home. Never mentioned your parents. Never took time off for holidays.

He never asked. But he was always there.

When you matched into the program full-time, he texted, Knew it.

When you pulled your first solo central line, he left a sticky note on your locker: Took you long enough, show-off.

When a shift gutted you so bad you couldn’t breathe, he sat beside you on the floor of the supply room and didn’t say a word.

You never called him a father figure. You didn’t need to.

He just was.

So when the proposal finally felt real—settled, certain—you knew who you had to tell first.

You found him three days later, camped at his usual spot at the nurse’s station—reading glasses sliding down his nose, his ridiculous “#1 Interrogator” mug tucked in one hand. He didn’t notice you at first. You just stood there, stomach buzzing, watching the way he tapped his pen against the margin like he was trying not to throw the whole file out a window.

“Hey,” you said, trying not to fidget.

He looked up. “You look like you’re about to tell me someone died.”

“No one died.”

He leaned back in the chair, eyebrows raised. “Alright. Hit me.”

You opened your mouth—then paused. Your heart was thudding like you’d just sprinted up from sub-level trauma.

Then, quiet: “Jack proposed.”

A beat.

Another.

Robby blinked. “Wait—what?”

You nodded. “Yeah. Three days ago.”

His mouth opened. Then shut again. Then opened.

“In the middle of a shift?” he asked finally, like he couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or impressed.

You smiled. “End of a code. We’d just saved a guy. He said, ‘I’d marry you. If you wanted.’”

Robby looked down, then laughed quietly. “Of course he did. That’s so him.”

“I said yes.”

“Obviously you did.”

You shifted your weight, suddenly unsure.

“I didn’t know who to tell. But… I wanted you to know first.”

That landed.

He didn’t say anything. Just stared at you, his face soft in that way he rarely let it be. Like something behind his ribs had cracked open a little.

Then he let out a breath. Slow. Rough at the edges.

“He told me, you know,” he said. “A few weeks ago. That he was thinking about it.”

Your eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

“Well—‘told me’ is generous,” he muttered. “He cornered me outside the supply closet and said something like, ‘I don’t know if she’d say yes, but I think I need to ask.’ Then grunted and walked away.”

You laughed, head tilting. “That sounds about right.”

“I figured it would happen eventually,” Robby said. “I just didn’t know it already had. This is the first I’m hearing that he actually went through with it.”

He looked down at his coffee, thumb brushing the rim. Then back up at you with something warm in his expression that made your throat go tight.

“I’m proud of you, kid. Really.”

Your throat tightened.

“I don’t really have… anyone,” you said. “Not like that. But you’ve always been—”

He waved a hand, cutting you off before you could get too sentimental. His voice was quiet when he said, “I know.”

You nodded. Tried to swallow the lump forming in your throat.

“You crying on me?” he teased gently.

“No,” you lied.

“Liar.”

He reached up and gave your arm a firm pat—one of those dad-move, no-nonsense gestures—but he kept his hand there for a second, steady and warm.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he said. “The two of you. That’s gonna be something good.”

You smiled at the floor. Then at him.

“Hey, Robby?”

He looked up. “Yeah?”

You opened your mouth—hesitated. The words were there. Right there on your tongue. But they felt too big, too final for a hallway and a half-empty cup of coffee.

You shook your head, smiling just a little. “Actually… never mind.”

His eyes softened instantly. No push. No questions.

Just, “Alright. Whenever you’re ready.”

And somehow, you knew—he already knew what you were going to ask. And when the time came, he’d say yes without hesitation.

It happened on a Wednesday. Late enough in the evening that most of the ER had emptied out, early enough that the halls still echoed with footsteps and intercom beeps and nurses joking in breakrooms. You’d just finished a back-to-back shift—one of those long, hazy doubles where time folds in on itself. Your ID badge was flipped around on its lanyard. You smelled like sweat, sanitizer, and twelve hours of recycled air.

You found Robby in the stairwell.

Not for any sentimental reason—that’s just where he always went to decompress. A quiet landing. One of the overhead lights had a faint flicker, and he was sitting on the fourth step, half reading something, half just existing. His hoodie sleeves were shoved up to his elbows.

He looked tired in that familiar, permanent way. But settled. Like someone who wasn’t trying to be anywhere else.

“Hey,” you said, voice low.

He looked up instantly. “You good?”

You nodded. Walked down a few steps until you were standing just above him.

“I need to ask you something.”

He squinted. “You pregnant?”

You snorted. “No.”

“Did Jack do something stupid?”

“Also no.”

He closed the folder in his lap and gave you his full attention.

You hesitated. A long beat. “Okay, so—when I was younger, I used to lie.”

Robby blinked. “That’s where this is going?”

You ignored him.

“I’d make up stories about my family. At school. Whenever there was some essay or form or ‘bring your parents to career day’ crap—I’d just invent someone. A dad who was a firefighter. A mom who was a nurse. A grandma who sent birthday cards.”

Robby didn’t move. Just listened.

“And I got good at it. Lying. Not because I wanted to, but because it was easier than explaining why I didn’t have anybody. Why there was no one to call if something happened. Why I always stayed late. Why I never talked about holidays.”

You looked down at him now. Really looked at him.

“I didn’t make anything up this time.”

His brow furrowed, just slightly.

“Because I have someone now,” you said. “I do.”

He didn’t say anything. Not yet.

You took a breath that shook a little in your chest.

“And I’m getting married in a few months, and there’s this part I keep thinking about. The aisle. Walking down it. That moment.”

You cleared your throat.

“I don’t want it to be random. Or symbolic. Or just… for show.”

Another breath.

“I want it to be you.”

Robby blinked once.

Then again.

His mouth opened like he was about to say something. Closed. Then opened again.

“You want me to walk you?”

You nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

He exhaled hard. Looked away for a second like he needed the extra space to catch up to his own heart.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “You’re really trying to kill me.”

You smiled. “You can say no.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” He looked up at you, and his voice cracked just slightly. “Of course I’ll do it.”

You hadn’t expected to get emotional. Not really. But hearing it out loud—that he’d do it, that he meant it—it undid something small and knotted in your chest.

“You’re one of the best things that ever happened to me, you know that?” he said.

“I didn’t have a plan when you showed up that first year. Just thought, ‘this kid needs a break,’ and next thing I knew you were stealing my chair and bitching about suture kits like we’d been doing this for a decade.”

You laughed, throat thick. “That sounds about right.”

“I’m gonna need a suit now, huh?”

“You don’t have to wear a suit.”

“Oh, no, no. I’m going full emotional support tuxedo. I’m showing up with cufflinks. Maybe a cane.”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re unbelievable.”

He stood then—slower than he used to, one hand on the railing—and looked at you with that same warmth he always tried to hide under sarcasm and caffeine.

“You did good, kid.”

You gave a crooked smile. “Thanks.”

The music started before you were ready.

It was quiet at first. Just the soft swell of strings rising behind the door. But your hands were shaking, your throat was tight, and everything felt too big all of a sudden.

Robby looked over, standing next to you in the little alcove just off the chapel doors, tie only mostly straight, boutonniere slightly crooked like he’d pinned it on in the car.

“You’re breathing like you’re about to code out,” he said gently.

You gave him a half-laugh, half-gasp. “I think I might.”

He tilted his head. “You okay?”

“No,” you whispered, eyes already burning. “I don’t know—maybe. Yes. I just—Jack’s out there. And everyone’s watching. What if I trip? Or ugly cry? Or completely blank and forget how to walk?”

Robby didn’t flinch. He just reached out and took your hand—steady and instinctive—his thumb brushing over your knuckles the way he had that night during your intern year, when you’d locked yourself in the on-call room and couldn’t stop shaking after your first failed intubation. He didn’t say anything then either. Just sat beside you on the floor and held your hand like this—anchoring, patient, there.

“Hey,” Robby said—steady, but quieter now. “You’re walking toward the only guy I’ve ever seen drop everything—without thinking—just because you looked a little off walking out of a shift.”

You blinked, chest already starting to tighten.

“I’ve watched him learn you,” Robby continued. “Slow. Quiet. Like he was memorizing every version of you without making it a thing. The tired version. The pissed-off version. The one who forgets to eat and pretends she’s fine.”

He let out a quiet laugh, still looking right at you.

“I’ve seen Jack do a thoracotomy with one hand and hold pressure with the other. I’ve seen him walk into scenes nobody else wanted, shirt soaked, pulse steady, like he already knew how it would end. He doesn’t rattle. Hell, I watched him take a punch from a drunk in triage and not even blink.”

His hand tightened around yours—just slightly.

“That’s how I know,” he said. “That this is it. Because Jack—the guy who’s walked into burning scenes with blood on his boots and didn’t even flinch—looked scared shitless the second he realized he couldn’t picture his life without you. Not because he didn’t think you’d say yes. But because he knew it meant something. That this wasn’t something he could compartmentalize or walk away from if it got hard. Loving you? That’s the one thing he can't afford to lose.”

Your eyes burned instantly. “You’re gonna make me cry.”

“Good. Less pressure on me to be the first one.”

You gave him a teary smile. “You ready?”

Robby offered his arm. “Kid, I’ve been ready since the day you stopped listing ‘N/A’ under emergency contact.”

The doors creaked open.

You sucked in a breath.

And then—

The music swelled.

Not the dramatic kind—no orchestral swell, no overblown strings. Just the soft, deliberate rise of something warm and low and steady. Something that sounded like home.

The crowd stood. Rows of people from different pieces of your life, blurred behind the blur in your eyes. You couldn’t see any one of them clearly—not Dana, not Langdon, not Whitaker fidgeting with his tie—but you felt them. Their hush. Their stillness.

And at the far end of the aisle stood Jack—dressed in his Army blues.

Not a rented tux. Not a tailored suit.

His uniform.

Pressed. Precise. Quietly immaculate.

It wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t for show. It was him.

He hadn’t worn it to make a statement. He wore it because there were people in the pews who knew him from before—before the ER, before Pittsburgh, before you. Men and women who had bled beside him, saved lives beside him, watched him shoulder more than anyone should—and never once seen him like this.

Undone. Open.

There were people in his family who’d worn that uniform long before him. And people he’d served with who taught him what it meant to wear it well. Not for attention. Not for tradition. But because it meant something. A history. A duty. A vow he never stopped honoring—even long after the war ended.

And when you saw him standing there—dress blues crisp under the soft chapel light, shoulders squared, mouth tight, eyes full—you didn’t see someone dressed for a ceremony.

You saw him.

All of him. The past, the present, the parts that had been broken and rebuilt a dozen times over. The weight he’d never put down. The man he’d become when no one else was watching.

Jack didn’t flinch as the doors opened. He didn’t smile, didn’t wipe his eyes. He just stood there—steady, quiet, letting himself feel it.

Letting you see it.

And somehow, that meant more than anything he could’ve said.

The room stayed still, breath held around you.

Until, from somewhere near the front, Javadi’s whisper sliced through the quiet:

“Is he—oh my God, is Abbot crying?”

Mohan choked on a mint. Someone—maybe Santos—audibly gasped.

And halfway down the aisle—when your breath caught and your knees went just a little loose—Robby spoke, voice low and smug, just loud enough for you to hear.

“Well,” Robby muttered, voice low and smug, “remind me to collect $20 from Myrna next shift.”

You glanced at him, confused. “What?”

He didn’t look at you. Just kept his eyes forward, deadpan. “Nothing. Just—turns out you weren’t the only one betting on whether Jack would cry.”

Your breath hitched. “What?”

“She said he was carved from Army-grade stone and wouldn’t shed a tear if the hospital burned down with him inside. I disagreed.”

You gawked at him.

“She told me—and I quote—‘If Dr. Y/L/N ever changes her mind, tell her to step aside, because I will climb that man like a jungle gym.’”

You almost tripped. “Robby.”

“She’s got her sights set. Calls him ‘sergeant sweetheart’ when the nurses aren’t looking.”

You clamped a hand over your mouth, laughing through the tears already welling. And the altar still felt a mile away.

He finally glanced at you, face softening. “I said she didn’t stand a chance.”

You blinked fast.

“Because from the second he saw you?” Robby added, voice lower now. “That was it. He was done for.”

You had never felt so chosen. So sure. So completely loved by someone who once thought emotions were best left unsaid.

Robby must have felt the shift in your weight, because he pulled you in slightly closer. His hand—broad and warm—curved around your arm like it had a thousand times before. Steady. Grounding. Father-coded to the core.

“You got this,” he murmured. “Look at him.”

You did.

And Jack was still there—still crying. Not bothering to wipe his eyes. Not hiding it. Like he knew nothing else mattered more than this moment. Than you.

When you finally reached the end of the aisle, Jack stepped forward before the officiant could speak. Like instinct.

Robby didn’t move at first.

He just looked at you—long and hard, eyes bright.

Then looked at Jack.

Then back at you.

His hand lingered at the small of your back.

And his voice, when it came, was rougher than usual. “You good?”

You nodded, too full to speak.

He nodded back. “Alright.”

And then—quietly, like it was something he wasn’t ready to do but always meant to—he took your hand, and placed it gently into Jack’s.

Jack didn’t look away from you. His hand curled tight around yours like it was a lifeline.

Robby cleared his throat. Stepped back just a little. And you saw it—the tremble at the corner of his mouth. The way he blinked too many times in a row.

He wasn’t immune to it.

Not this time.

“You take care of her,” he said, voice thick. “You hear me?”

Jack—eyes glassy, jaw tight—just nodded. One firm, reverent nod.

“I do,” he said.

And for once, that wasn’t a promise.

It was a fact.

A vow already lived.

Robby stepped back.

A quiet shift. No words, no fuss. Just one last glance—full of something that lived between pride and grief—and then he stepped aside, slow and careful, like his body knew he had to let go before his heart was ready.

And then it was just you and Jack.

He stepped in just a little closer—like the space between you, however small, had finally become too much. His hand tightened around yours, his breath shallow, like holding it together had taken everything he had.

The moment he saw you—really saw you—something behind his eyes cracked wide open.

He didn’t smile. Not right away.

He didn’t say anything clever. Didn’t reach for you like someone confident or composed.

It was like he’d been waiting for this moment his whole life—and still couldn’t believe it was real.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “You’re gonna kill me.”

You tried to laugh, but it cracked—caught somewhere between joy and everything else swelling behind your ribs.

The dress fit like a memory and a dream at once. Sleek. Understated. A silhouette that didn’t beg for attention, but held it all the same. Clean lines. Long sleeves. A bodice tailored just enough to feel timeless. A low back. No shimmer. No lace. Just quiet, deliberate elegance.

Just you.

Jack took a breath—slow and shaky.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, like he wasn’t entirely sure he was speaking out loud.

You blinked fast, vision swimming.

“You’re not supposed to make me cry before we even say anything,” you managed, voice trembling.

He gave a small, broken laugh. “That makes two of us.”

You could feel the crowd behind you. Every attending. Every nurse. Every person who thought they knew Jack Abbot—stoic in trauma bays, voice sharp, pulse steady no matter what walked through the doors.

And now? They were seeing him like this.

Glass-eyed. Soft-spoken. Undone.

Jack looked at you again. Really looked.

“I knew I was gonna love you,” he said. “But I didn’t know it’d be like this.”

Your breath caught. “Like what?”

He smiled—slow, quiet, reverent.

“Like peace.”

You blinked so fast it almost turned into a sob. “God. I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” you whispered, smiling through it.

Behind you, the music began to fade. The officiant cleared his throat.

Jack didn’t move. Didn’t look away. His thumb brushed over your knuckles like it had done a thousand times before—only this time, it meant something.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” he said softly. “Not in combat. Not in med school. Not even the first time I intubated someone on a moving Humvee.”

You laughed, choked and real. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m yours,” he corrected. “That’s the important part.”

The officiant spoke then, calling for quiet.

But Jack leaned in one last time, voice so low it barely touched the air.

“Tell me when to breathe,” he said.

You smiled, heart wrecked and steady all at once.

“I’ve got you.”

And Jack Abbot—combat medic, ER attending, man who spent a lifetime holding everything together—closed his eyes and let himself believe you.

Because for once in his life, he didn’t have to be ready for the worst.

He just had to stand beside the best thing that ever happened to him.

And say yes.

[mlobsters]

I had decades of internalized obligation* that I needed to give up agency over my body and use it for something I didn't want to do because I thought it was required, and the act of saying "hey I don't actually want to do that anymore" was terrifying and for the vast majority of people that would have been a divorceable offense.

I was thinking about it again with that sort of weird subplot in Ted Lasso where they have a kid together but the wife "isn't in love with him anymore" so they need to divorce. from my view that really isn't the only solution to this situation. speaking from personal experience! and our solution doesn't work for everyone (or seemingly most people), I'm chill with relationships outside of the marriage if that's what's works, but I'm not chill with all or nothing completely disrupting the kids' lives and our home life.

but anyway, this is getting further from the point. people have a lot of rules about how things should work and can get big mad and confused when you go against the grain. but I like that we're in a place where we can figure out something that works for our family as a whole. and it's not what anyone signed up for and I also had a lot of guilt I'm still occasionally working through about feeling like I did a bait and switch, but for the most part I'm a lot happier with the situation. and grateful that I have the awareness of why I feel the way I do, the security to ask for what I need without fearing my safety, and ability to offer solutions to address issues it might bring up.

*nevermind the time I first tried therapy, back when I was in an abusive relationship (which I did not tell the therapist about) and told her I didn't want to have sex with my then-husband, and she told me: "if you don't use it, you lose it" aka the solution to not wanting to have sex was to have sex? that just further cemented the idea that it was an obligation of a long term relationship, period.

tbh I really dislike how aphobia tends to be discussed whenever there's some kind of incident that makes it visible to general society. The most common response seems to be some variation of "why would anyone hate asexual/aromantic people, they aren't even doing anything" and it just always sits wrong with me. It paints such a passive picture of our existence and feels like a comment influenced by the level of invisibility that aspec people have in society. Why would you be annoyed by someone who is practically invisible? Just go back to ignoring their existence, it's easy!

But despite the invisibility, aspec people are actually doing quite a lot of things that will piss off queerphobic, right-wing and religious people (and hell, even left-wing people). And the most obvious point is that we are actively not performing heterosexuality the way they want us to. People who's entire world view is "cis men and women should be in monogamous, heterosexual marriage and have (white) babies" are not going to lean back and say "oh but those asexuals and aromantics are fine". They will also hate our guts, and they will come up with all sorts of reasons, including insinuating we're all secretly into bestiality, or mentally ill, or not human, or attention seeking children. It's just plain old queerphobia, and like all queerphobia, there's no inherent logic to it which you can worm your way out of by "not doing anything".

And like, there's a lot more that aspec people do which people hate. Raising awareness about amatonormativity? People feel attacked, they hate it. Asexual people having sex? Or not having sex? People hate it! Aromantic people being in (seemingly) romantic relationships? People fucking hate it! Aromantic people having sex? Ohh people hate that!!

I guess the existence of aphobia can be confusing when you haven't spent much time thinking about asexuality and aromanticism, but in the end, these are identities that aren't heteronormative and they will be hit with the same or similar bigotry as any other queer identity. I just get tired of this response after seeing it recycled for 10 years without ever seeming to go any further.

[7ndipity]

Why They’re Still Single

Ot7

Summary: why I think the members are still single and when/if I think they’ll actually settle down

Warnings: swearing 

A/N: This is pure crack that was conjured up by me and @bethanysnow ‘s brains at like 3am, so don’t take it too seriously, lol.

Masterlist

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

Jin: He's a romantic in theory, but in practice he’s really just not that comfortable with all the dynamics of relationships(lowkey gives asexual vibes imo) I could see him eventually marrying his assistant or one of his friends when they’re both in their 40s because they’re who they’re most comfortable with, and that’s what he values most in a relationship, comfort and friendship.

Yoongi: Boy has trust issues out the wazoo. He has a hard time believing anyone would actually want him, rather than what he can do for them. He also has an over tendency to intellectualize his feelings. If he learns how to properly process his emotions and finds someone who encourages him to actually communicate his needs, I could see him getting married pretty quickly.

Hobi: He spent so much of his twenties convincing himself and everyone else that he was way too busy for a relationship, but since he’s come back from military service, he’s fully embraced his fuckboy era. He could have girlfriends in multiple cities, but everyone’s on the same page and knows it’s non committal. I see him settling down eventually, but right now he’s just enjoying living his life.

Namjoon: Man has a textbook case of fear of commitment. He’s always been so drawn to domestic married life, but the reality of letting down his walls and actually letting someone in scares the shit out of him, so the majority of his relationships have fallen apart due to lack of communication and trust. I still see him getting married and having kids eventually, he just needs to find a good therapist first.

Jimin: He’s actually the member that’s secretly married and hosts monthly dinner parties at his house for everyone else and their partners. Fr tho, I think he has a highly idealized vision of what he thinks a relationship should be, and he refuses to settle for anything less, even though his vision might be slightly unrealistic. In the meantime, I think he’s content on his own for the time being, dreaming of the perfect partner.

Taehyung: The thing with Tae is that he is in love with the concept of love, but he also loves a tragic romance. He enjoys the drama and angst of yearning and longing for someone, or the tragic beauty of the relationship that he knows must inevitably end, like a summer fling or right person - wrong time. He’s also lowkey under the impression that no one will fully understand him, but if he can find that person who matches his energy, he will fall fast and hard.

Jungkook: Kook still sees himself as in his fuckboy era, but the truth of the matter is that he is a whole ass house husband, he just doesn’t want to admit it yet. He could be in a fully committed relationship, practically living together, but still refuse to put a technical title on what they have because it’s less scary that way. Despite that, he loves playing the protective boyfriend(ain’t nobody fucking with his baby), and I think that’s what will eventually get him to own up and fully commit to the relationship.

Taglist: @sopebubbles-replies @btsw1fe @this-must-be-my-tardis @whitefoxgirl @bethanysnow @coffeedepressionsoup @feminympho @classicalelephant @dfqcsqueen @mother2monsters @comingupwithacoolnameishard @bo0ghol @seleneacyoflove @k4ngelz @universal-travel-er

[gaywineauntsstuff]

saw someone said dick should apologize to jason in the comics for having putting him in arkham

i am sorry i think the f*ck not 😭 like i love jason as much as the next guy dmw but come on guys

“Jason was in Arkham”

“Dick wanted to put Tim in Arkham”

I sincerely apologize to my whump friends but I fear yall don’t know Jason Todd’s game

First let’s not talk about the fact the only person Dick put in Arkham who was miserable was himself. We aren’t gonna talk about it. Or the Arkham reform thing he was doing a the time or the other 600 things that were going on

Hell I won’t even talk about what Jason did in blackgate (WHWRE HE WAS INITIALLY) b4 he killed a hundred people to end up in Arkham we don’t need to talk about it

I won’t talk about the menace that is the hottest version of red head Jason Todd okay we have, as a society moved past that.

But genuinely for a second can you imagine that conversation

Dick guilt ridden: Jason, I- I owe and apology

Jason cleaning his crowbar: ….

Dick: I never should’ve put you in Arkham I’m so sorry being near the joker-

Jason: was literally part of the whole plan? Why the hell do you think I TRIED to get into it

Dick: exactly! I shouldn’t have indulged your worst impulses, fuck I should’ve brought you home or kept you with a league member

Jason: I would’ve killed Tim and kidnapped Damian to use as a barter tool with Ra’s Al Ghul. You know this. I need you to tell me that you know this

Dick: fuck Jay you were nineteen! That’s basically a fucking child

Jason: I’m so sorry weren’t you ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED AT 19? Didn’t you run the league for a couple months at 18? Do you think you could do more than I could at 19 dickface.

Dick: No Jason you don’t understand-

Jason: oh perfect Grayson just because I chose to become a crime lord and YOU decided to do the cringe fail hero gig. Which was really. Cringe and fail since it’s so obvious you either wanted to be dead or a supervillain

Dick: wha-that’s not true!

Jason: sure sure go say hi to Donna Troy’s grave for me

Dick:…..

Jason: ANYWAY just because I spent my teenage years outside of spandex building a criminal empire DOESNT MAKE IT LESS IMPRESSIVE THAN YOUR STUPID TITANS GROUP R I C H A R D

Dick quietly: I’mstillsorry

Jason: well im not sorry for the fact i strung you and damain up nude to reveal your identities, im also not sorry for stealing your suit and killing people in it, while we’re on that topic im also not sorry for STEALING BRUCES SUIT, im not sorry for beating tim up that shit was funny as fuck and I’m also not sorry for laughing when bludhaven blew up.

Dick: ….

Jason: so shut your fucking ass up talking about ‘oh I’m so sorry Jason’ like we didn’t spend the past decade trying to ruin each others lives

Dick: I NEVER TRIED TO RUIN YOUR LIFE

Jason: MY LIFES DREAM WAS MURDER ERGO YOU NOT LETTING ME DO THAT RUINED IT.

Jason: we WERE assholes to each other past tense and I will 100% be taking advantage of your raging guilt complex to pretend those things are equivalent to each other and now that we are all happy family bygones will be bygones whatever I can fully abuse you to get out of league level shit.

Jason: anyway what are you gonna do next? apologize to Tim for Red Robin

Dick guiltily: he’s the next stop

Jason: omg your actually doing an apology tour

Dick: I FEEL BAD OKAY

Jason: dude you know what I’ll indulge you, go try and apologize to Tim but when he LAUGHS you out of the room for being a fucking dumbass I’ll be there with popcorn

Dick grumbling: Steph accepted my apology to HER

Jason: yeah because everyone in this family was a dick to Steph and she deserved better.

Dick: yeah she was a phenomenal batgirl i wish we worked together more now that she’s spoiler

Jason: did she really hit Tim in the face with a brick

Dick: yep

[heaven4lostgirls]

hiii, i love your writing sm!!! begging for some steve x reader fluff 🙏, maybe steve helping reader who’s been struggling with insomnia after the events of s3 or s4? 💓

pairing: steve harrington x reader

summary: request above

word count: 971 words (sorry it’s a bit short)

warnings: angst (quite a bit of it, sorry!) fluff, mentions of billy’s death, graphic depictions of violence, injury and death. reader isn’t good at accepting help.

author’s note: thank you for this request!! i appreciate it! sorry it took a bit to get out, not been doing the best with my mental health but writing has been so good for getting my thoughts out.

It’s your shaking that wakes Steve up. Your chest heaving as you clamp your fingers tightly around the duvet, eyes clenching tightly shut as you scrub your hand down your face.

“Hey,” Steve’s voice croaks from behind you, arm thrown loosely over your waist as he traces soft patterns over your sleep shirt.

You tense, blowing out a breath shakily, “hey,” you respond hesitantly, cursing yourself as your voice warbles.

“Can’t sleep?” He asks, sounding more awake than before as he shuffles himself closer, nosing at the back of your neck softly which has you smiling softly.

You hum in acknowledgement, offering nothing more and Steve just squeezes you tighter as he tangles your limbs together, cocooning you in warmth.

“I’m sorry.” You grit out helplessly, sniffing softly as tears well in your eyes.

Steve scoffs from behind you, “for what?” He asks bemusedly and you frown softly, turning gently to face him.

The moonlight cascades over his face in dim grey lighting, “for waking you up, for not getting better, for being weak.” You laugh mirthlessly, looking away from him.

“You don’t get to say that,” he says sharply and your expression pinches in annoyance.

“You-“ you start to argue.

“No.” Steve cuts in sharply.

“How many times have I woken you up screaming? How many times have you had to talk me down from a panic attack? How many times have you had to restrain me so I don’t hurt myself-” Steve’s voice starts to grow in volume as his frustration bleeds through his tone.

You understand why he’s frustrated, he wants you to let him help you.

Easier said than done.

Sure pretty much everyone witnessed what happened at StarCourt and you’d come out relatively unscathed physically.

Mentally though? For months you lived in a perpetual state of not wanting to sleepin fear of seeing Billy’s contorted frame and the sight of everyone you loved laying bloodied and frozen in the place of Billy’s corpse.

“I get it.” You cut in sharply, wincing immediately as you see Steve recoil in reflex, hurt flashing through his gaze.

You bite your lip harshly, wanting to cry.

You’re not sure why it’s so hard for you to let yourself be cared for, maybe it’s because you don’t feel like you deserve it.

Max lost her brother, Steve and Robin were beat up by Russian spies and what were you doing? just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

God you felt like an idiot, losing sleep and crying over something that should — in retrospect— not be taking this much of a toll on you.

“I’m sorry,” you blubber uselessly, tears trailing down your cheeks as you curl into yourself, scrubbing your cheeks as you try to compose yourself.

Steve makes a wounded noise, immediately moving to wrap his arms around you as sobs wrack through your frame.

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” you whimper out, shaking as Steve holds you gently through it.

“You’re okay, you’re okay honey.” he repeats, running his hands down your hair soothingly.

“I’m fine,” you say, voice thick with emotion as your tears start to subside.

“Sure you are,” Steve agrees and you exhale softly, “but it’s also okay if you’re not.” He adds with a soft kiss to the top of your head.

“Everyone else is fine, I-it just feels like I should be over this by now” you sniff, hiding your face in Steve’s shirt.

Steve tsks, “they look okay, Dustin still radios everyone after a bad nightmare and won’t go to bed unless he hears everyone’s voices.” Steve whispers into the night.

Your eyes widen, you didn’t know that. You’d known the rest of the kids had become somewhat codependent after everything but you didn’t know how bad it had truly affected them.

“Robin can’t sleep with her lights off at home, reminds her too much of the power going out at StarCourt” Steve continues, unbeknownst to your bewilderment.

“I can’t stand ice cream anymore,” he confesses lastly and you pull away to see his eyes slightly misty as he looks distantly over your head.

You sniff, drawing his attention back to you as you lift one of your hands to cup his cheek softly.

“I didn’t know” you murmur softly and watch as he smiles gently, “nobody did.” He admits.

“That’s kind of the point, everyone’s struggling but they all act like they’re over it because they’re so sure everyone else is doing better” he says with a contemplative expression.

It makes you feel better to know you’re not the only one struggling, but there’s also a hollowness in your chest at your ignorance of everyone’s pain.

You feel bad about being so ignorant to the kids and Robin’s struggles, albeit even if there was no way you could have known.

The silence encompasses the two of you as you hold each other comfortably.

“I don’t think I’m okay,” you admit at last and Steve hums consolingly.

“I’m not okay either,” he says after a while and you both squeeze each other tightly.

“Will…will you tell me when you’re…when you’re struggling?” You ask meekly, hoping not to overstep.

Steve presses a soft kiss to your lips in answer, “yeah,” he agrees quickly as a smile spreads over your cheeks.

“I can do that if you promise me that too.” He finishes and your smile morphs into something more solemn as you offer him a quick nod before snuggling into his chest, leg swung over his waist.

The next time you wake up from a nightmare, you automatically shake Steve awake, recalling horrible memories of monsters, blood and distorted bodies and Steve holds you through all of it.

[glowettee]

she wasn’t trying to win, she was trying to prove something | spencer hastings

everyone loves spencer hastings because she’s brilliant. because she’s intense. because she’s always ten steps ahead. but what no one talks about enough is how exhausting it is to live like that, to be the best, all the time, because it feels like if you’re not winning, you’re nothing.

you don’t just wake up one day addicted to achievement. it’s a defense mechanism. it’s the result of being told, either directly or indirectly, that love is something you earn. approval, security, pride... they’re all made into things you chase, not things you deserve by default. and for girls like spencer (and girls like us), the chase becomes your whole personality.

this post is for that version of you: the one who doesn’t know how to slow down. who feels guilty for resting. who is so busy proving she’s good enough that she doesn’t even know what she wants anymore, only that she has to win.

but glowettee girls don’t just burn out. we decode the burnout. and we build something better from the pieces.

✧ step one: admit that your ambition isn’t always healthy (and that’s okay)

spencer’s ambition was her superpower, but also her coping mechanism. it was how she kept her identity intact in a family that prioritized image over emotion. it was how she filled the silence when she didn’t feel seen. and that’s the thing no one tells you: you can be extremely high-functioning and still deeply emotionally neglected.

if you recognize yourself in that, it doesn’t mean you’re broken or dramatic. it means you learned to survive in a way that made you successful but not necessarily fulfilled. and that awareness? that’s your power now.

start asking yourself: › what part of my ambition is actually a response to fear? › am i working towards something real. or just running from feeling “not enough”? › if i stopped being productive for a while, would i still feel like i mattered?

this isn’t about throwing away your drive. it’s about reclaiming it. so that your success stops being a trauma response and starts becoming a conscious, joyful path.

✧ step two: stop tying your worth to how well you’re doing

this is one of the hardest lessons for spencer-coded girls to learn. you’ve spent so long being “the smart one,” “the responsible one,” “the one who gets things done,” that the idea of being average... or even just not ahead, feels terrifying.

but the truth is, your value doesn’t fluctuate based on how impressive you are today. you are allowed to be exhausted. to take breaks. to not know what’s next. to be unsure and still deserving of kindness.

practical reframes that help:

› “i am not only worthy when i am productive.” › “it’s not my job to be exceptional every single day.” › “i do not have to earn rest, i’m already allowed to feel okay.” › “getting ahead means nothing if i don’t feel like myself at the end of it.”

your worth is not your grades, your resume, your discipline. your worth is how gently you treat yourself when things don’t go according to plan. and how brave you are for trying again, but this time, with love.

✧ step three: identify where the pressure is really coming from

one of spencer’s most iconic traits is her constant pressure to be better, to prove herself to her parents, to compete with melissa, to always be right. and a lot of girls pick up this energy without even realizing it.

so let’s break it down.

when you’re pushing yourself too hard, ask:

› who am i trying to impress right now? › what am i trying to prove, and to who? › would i still want this if no one else saw it?

sometimes the answer is “my parents.” sometimes it’s “my younger self who was bullied.” sometimes it’s “the girl who made me feel small in 10th grade.” whatever it is... naming it gives you control back. it turns a subconscious obsession into a choice.

glowettee tip: start tracking your academic or glow-up goals with intention journals. write down why you want each thing. if the answer is rooted in love, curiosity, or your dream life. it stays. if it’s rooted in shame or needing to prove yourself, you rewrite it.

✧ step four: build a version of success that doesn’t destroy you

ambition doesn’t have to hurt. it doesn’t have to cost your health, your sleep, or your identity. but to get to that place, you need to reimagine what success actually looks like.

spencer's biggest downfall was never that she worked hard, it was that she never let herself pause. she never believed she was enough without the accomplishments. so let’s fix that.

your version of success should include:

› slow mornings with your journal and a matcha › deep focus sessions that leave you proud, not drained › goals that light you up instead of haunting you › people who see you beyond your output › a sense of peace when you're doing “nothing”

you deserve a version of success that feels like coming home to yourself, not escaping who you are.

✧ step five: learn how to forgive yourself for not being ahead

this is the softest, hardest part. if you’ve ever stared at someone else's instagram story or grades or glow-up and felt that sinking feeling of “i’m so behind,” this part is for you.

glowettee girls don’t pretend they’re immune to comparison. we just reframe it.

spencer always felt like she was playing catch-up, even if it was to melissa, to her parents' expectations, or to some imaginary version of perfection. but she was always enough. the problem was never her ability. it was her belief.

if you’re feeling behind:

› remember you are living your own plotline, not anyone else’s › take inventory of how far you’ve come, even if it’s invisible to others › allow yourself to grieve the time you lost to stress, fear, or self-doubt › forgive yourself for surviving the only way you knew how, even if it meant overworking

being “ahead” means nothing if you don’t feel grounded in your body, your heart, your softness. you’re allowed to pause. you’re allowed to rest. and you’re still powerful even when you do nothing but exist.

♡ mindy’s personal tip:

i used to think that if i didn’t get everything right, i’d disappoint everyone, my family, my future self, the version of me that’s supposed to be a doctor-ceo-academic-goddess. but slowly, i realized the pressure was inside me. and that i could be ambitious and gentle at the same time.

now i schedule in breaks like i schedule study sessions. i romanticize rest like i romanticize hustle. and i remind myself every day: i am not just a girl chasing goals... i am a girl creating a life.

so are you.

xoxo mindy

⋆ this post was inspired by my free workbook on trauma-coded ambition, it's for the overachiever girls who can't rest without guilt. grab it here:

[starkeaton]

k ive got a huge list going so a reblog fits better than a reply, bear with me

OMORI

Sunny: Page of Hope, hes definitely a page considering his big adventurous dreams and fear of actually trying to live up to them. i say hope with mid confidence because he spends a lot more time thinking of how things could be perfect than he does actually enacting anything

Kel: Heir of Breath, a simple guy with a simple philosophy, believes in himself and pushes others to change and keep moving forward.

Mari: Seer of Space, the guide of calm and peaceful existence, her emotional advice helps bring Sunny back to a state of peaceful neutrality.

Hero: Knight of Life, always working hard to be what others need of him, trying to provide and make everyone else happy, keeping up the positivity no matter what.

Aubrey: Sylph of Heart? wants others to be better, but she's a bit pushy and bossy. gets really mad at others for not understanding her feelings and caring for her when she needed it. she is the emotional heart of the group at least in the dream world

Basil: Rogue of Doom, well even before The Incident he is always thinking about even the good times in terms of loss, "I always took pictures of what I was afraid to lose." he tries his hardest to make everything ok, to take suffering away for sunny

My Little Pony

Twilight Sparkle: Mage of Mind, she's obsessed with gaining knowledge for herself and navigating situations rationally and logically. the whole "Princess of Friendship" thing feels like it's pushing her into inversion (Heiress of Heart), outside her comfort zone, if you think classpects are primarily meant to challenge then you could go with that as her title

Applejack: Maid of Blood, she lives by the ideals of responsibility and family bonds, and is always working hard to uphold them.

Pinkie Pie: Sylph of Life, she's always partying and working on ways to make others happy as much as possible, increasing happiness and struggling hard when someone doesn't want her help or when she can't keep the good times rolling.

Rainbow Dash: Thief of Breath, fairly obvious in her competitive pride and lax attitude believing everythings gonna be okay, averse to responsibility despite being the actual element of loyalty. Like more often than not, RD episodes will have her struggling with loyalty instead of it being her default.

Rarity: Sylph of Space because she is literally Kanaya. No but seriously, the constant working on things for others and appreciation for aesthetics, and more broadly the vision she has for improving the world around her, is why i think this.

Fluttershy: Rogue of... Hope? She has so much focus on "kindness" which is very hard for me to actually pin to an aspect. She totally minimizes herself for others and helps get them what they want, "taking" comfort for them in a troubling world, which is why i think she's a Rogue, but... after her episode learning to be more assertive, going against her nature, she seems to invert on a dime whenever it's necessary, displaying a powerful Rage. Is that an inversion or just her hidden default? To me it reads as the former, but nothing's really made me sure of that.

Starlight Glimmer: Scribe of Heart, sorry you're gonna have to read dewdrop's classpect brochure if you wanna understand this one. But basically Heart is her tool of judging good and evil, her argumentative attitude she tries to stuff down, conquering and bending emotion/unique personality to her will

Doki Doki Literature Club

I made a post about this one

Evangelion

Shinji Ikari: Page of Rage, same desire to be strong and important and loved, same inability to get there. Rage is harsh reality which Shinji is definitely hesitant to confront, but his "righteous" anger definitely drives him at his core, particularly in a lot of his worst moments.

Asuka Langley Soryu: Thief of Time, competitive pride and stealing the spotlight, you may think Light but i don't think she has the tendency toward narrativization, connecting ideas together, fortune, all that Lighty stuff. No, i think Asuka cares more about action and conflict, the stuff that makes up Time.

Rei Ayanami: Knight of Heart? She does her job, protects others, spends a LOT of time introspecting and developing more emotion, reflecting on the soul and her own humanity, then decides to give all the power to someone else instead. Could be a Maid, considering the connotations of serving ones aspect, propagating and serving as a tool to bring it into existence. I'm not completely sure on this one

Kaworu: Seer of Space, he attaches to Shinji and tries to gently guide him to appreciating existence and the universe as it is. I'm definitely more sure of the Space part here than with Mari

Mari Makinami Illustrious: Witch of Breath, she is the chaos element, living positively and freely, unencumbered by anyone's expectations and worries, not even in combat does she ever drop the carefree attitude. Witch because she's focused on personal fun and making change as she sees fit.

Some other random characters

Kirby: Heir of Space, once i started understanding the Space aspect as existence/inaction/peace i started seeing it all over the Kirby series. Nobody ever dies, everyone just chills out and sleeps in Dreamland, Kirby is the face of this because he is the most chilled out dude ever, until some villain shows up and he has to get serious. I say Heir because, while Kirby hasn't said much, he seems to me like a simple guy who just fixes situations for others when necessary.

Prince Zuko: Prince of Blood, he's got the prince thing of strong reaction to perceived injustices, which uhh doesnt go great for him. He destroys a lot in the name of reclaiming his honor and connection to his family, his responsibility, but ultimately realizes he has to destroy that itself and find his own meaning of Blood.

Davey Stone: Bard of Hope, yeah the guy from Eight Crazy Nights, he wants to believe in hope and hanukkah holiday spirit and stuff like that but when his is ruined he turns to destruction of hope and ruining everyone elses good times, letting people think of him as a nasty bastard because he doesnt care anymore. By the way dont watch this movie it sucks ass

Some extra hunches but not stuff i have strong arguments for

Jotaro Kujoh: Knight of Time?

Josuke Higashikata: Knight of Heart

Dio Brando: Thief of Time

Johnny Joestar: Page of Light

Gyro Zeppeli: Mage of Life

Edward Elric: Mage of Rage

Benry: Bard of Rage? Void? Light?? idk i have to rewatch

Gnome Chompsky (HLVRAI): Bard of Time

Sans: Bard of Doom

Robo-Ky: Prince of Void

Ellen Ripley: Knight of Mind?

Sonic the Hedgehog: Heir of Breath

Tails the Fox: Page/Mage? of Light

Knuckles the Echidna: Knight of Blood

Shadow the Hedgehog: Prince of Time

Silver the Hedgehog: Knight of Hope

Amy Rose: Maid of Heart

Eggman: Lord of Time? Mind?

Captain Lazerhawk: Prince of Hope (i actually am absolutely certain about this one but i dont have a paragraph to type about it cause i dont remember all the story details. just believe me its obvious if youre looking)

and btw anyone reading, please feel free to argue with me on these if you disagree on any of them, i enjoy discussion and hearing others opinions

honestly anyone whos reading this just lay down some classpects you've assigned to characters in fiction that you're especially passionate/confident about! explanations are appreciated but not required 👍

[chippa44444]

Yandere type of TFA characters3

Warnings: dark content, yandere.

Decepticons

Megatron: Brainwashing, manipulative type. "You are fine as long as you are by my side" he tells the person he likes, using his dignity, charisma, and eloquence to brainwash them into dependence. This is just my personal imagination, but among all the previous Megatrons, there is no image of him using violence to subjugate others, so he does not use violence at all, but due to mental abuse, the person becomes mentally weak and is completely imprinted with the idea that they cannot live without him and are happy to be with him.

Starscream: Sadistic, delusional. He arbitrarily assumes you're his lover and approaches you, saying, "Of course you're happy being with me, right?" But when you refuse, he takes it the way he likes and says, "Are you embarrassed because I'm such a great lover? What a cute guy." And if you refuse and upset him, he gets violent and says, "You know what happens when you refuse me, right?" The sudden change from a grinning smile to a cold, serious expression is enough to make you tremble in fear. He could be a good lover if you just keep him happy (although the fact that he's a yandere makes it seem impossible).

Blitzwing: Stalker, Manipulator, Sadist. Icy knows everything about the person she likes, and closes in on them by saying, "I'm the only one for you," and if they refuse, Hothead will threaten them or their family and friends with violence, saying, "CAN’T YOU LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY?!" After that, Random will express his affection by biting them until blood (Energon) comes out, saying, "Sorry! I really want to eat you! I love you so much! Hahaha!", with no idea if he's joking or serious (probably serious). His attitude and personality change depending on his mood, so you'll be frightened by the unpredictable fear.

Lugnuts (Please leave the wife aside this time…): Worship, villain extermination type. Similar to the worship and reverence he has for Megatron. In fact, it's almost the same. He mercilessly crushes, destroys, and kills his enemies, saying, "I'll eliminate everyone who gets in my way." Although he won't touch anyone he has feelings for, he should be prepared to sacrifice all his family and acquaintances.

Blackarachnia: Manipulation and dual addiction. With skillful speech, she manipulates the person she likes into falling in love with her. She also shows weakness from the past by saying "Don't leave me behind…!!!" to make the other person feel guilty and unable to escape.

Shockwave: Indifferent to possessive, obsessive type. He seems indifferent to the reader because he is devoted to Megatron, but once he becomes obsessed, he kidnaps and imprisons. There are no warning signs until he is kidnapped, and he is so well prepared that the person he loves thinks, "You think you can escape from me…? You idiot," and he has no chance to escape and becomes his. There are also hand and foot chains and collars!

Lockdown: Obsessive, stalker type. A completely prey-predator relationship. They will relentlessly pursue the other person until they give in. They want to get everything they want, and the more the other person they like runs away, the more they burn with passion, saying, "I'm not going to give up until you're mine!"

Soundwave: Brainwashing and obsession type born of love and hate. If the person he is in love with is a human or an Autobot, he will reject them at first, regarding them as an enemy, but he gradually becomes obsessed with them, and will use his powers to brainwash them into staying by his side, telling them "Follow Soundwave!" The person he is in love with will be brainwashed into the happiest state in the universe with Soundwave until he dies.

Swindle: Manipulative, disguised as devotion. They give their loved one special treatment, such as expensive things, the best environment, and things they really want, and they influence the people around them in various ways to make the other person feel isolated, making them dependent on them by saying, "You're happy as long as I'm the only one, right?"

[clutching-our-plurals]

Can you explain your stance on endos a bit more? /genq, we can't tell what your stance is, and we LOVE hearing about others with more nuanced stances! Plurality is too complicated of a topic to be fully anti or pro endo imo, nuance is the way to go!

Absolutely! I have no idea how long this has been sitting in our askbox collecting dust because I have no memory of getting it, but hopefully it hasn't been long! Lmao.

You are incredibly right about plurality being too complex to simply say "yeah endos exist" or "yeah no they don't," hard agree.

The nuances of our beliefs actually deviate a little from person to person in our system, some of us have our own little theories and opinions, but here are some things we all agree on:

1. Endogenic formation probably isn't a thing.

2. If the common summary of current research one day shows definitively that it is? We'd be totally chill with that.

3. regardless of whether endogenic system formation is real, harassing or fakeclaiming ANYONE is revolting behavior. I don't wanna see nobody doing that shit. Cause I'll call ya out.

4. I am civil with endos and will not invalidate their experience of plurality because my own beliefs. Will I debate with an endo? Totally, if they initiate first. If an endo says something incorrect about plurality will i correct them? Yes. Will I go and call somebody names and shit over being an Endo? No. People identifying as Endo does not affect me, or you, for that matter.

Okay. As for the more detailed thoughts, you can have those beneath the cut. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

So there seems to be two schools of thought within endogenic circles.

A. I am endogenic and disordered

B. I am endogenic and experiencing functional multiplicity.

I believe this discrepancy can simply be explained by endos not realizing that they have trauma on account of having the "don't remember, be plural" disorder. A truly shocking side effect of having a disorder that separates parts of the brain with literal amnesia, the "don't remember" disorder, is that you... don't remember!

Also, if you are familiar with the dearly beloved Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the first stage of grief is denial. When you are traumatized at a young age, you grieve a lot of things. A childhood, your sense of normalcy, your ability to live life without fear? You grieve. That is okay. It is never wrong to grieve, my friends.

To put my own system forward as an example: I, as our host, did not know where the system came from for many, many years.

I will try and keep this vague for you, but this is a conversation about domestic abuse, please skip to the next word in RED if you do not want to read that.

As terrifying as it is, I know I may only know part of the story, even now. Before I knew what we were, I had been denying the domestic abuse I witnessed at home, and the abuse I had been subjected to myself within that home, as I had accepted those things as a normal part of my home life.

There were also great portions of my suffering that I didn't remember at all. The worst, most identifiable parts of the abuse I faced were completely wiped from my memory. How was I meant to know? Easy! I was not.

Were we endogenic because I did not remember? No, of course not. We just... didn't remember. And if you don't remember, how will you know that you don't remember?

RED

So, do endogenic systems exist? More than likely, no.

But, do they deserve disrespect and subjugation for believing they are endogenic? No, absolutely not. That's just ridiculous. Denial, is part of grief. Not remembering, is part of who and what we all are. Why would we deny someone's experience of plurality over experiencing the goddamned symptoms of it? Do y'all hear how stupid that sounds? Everyone firestarting over this is making us all look like fools.

Should endogenics be in system spaces?

Complex question, but I appreciate that about the question. Is it beneficial to endogenics to be in plural spaces, yes! The sooner they are exposed to nuanced opinions and fellow plural folks, the sooner they're likely to realize that not knowing where their system came from isn't necessarily causation, it's correlation.

Is it beneficial to traumagenics for endos to be in plural spaces? Probably not. These people are in a state of denial, and most traumagenics are looking to achieve a state of acceptance with their plurality. They don't need people in stage one holding them back.

Or maybe... the real problem isn't that at all... maybe it's more complex than just... people considering themselves traumagenic or endo...

I'm gonna spoil it for you: It's kids.

The issue isn't traumagenics vs endos, it's kids who are unable to process or form complex opinions vs adults who can. (Endo kids and traumagenic kids) Kids need to stay out of system spaces. I don't wanna see you in a space about mental health that isn't 1 on 1 with your therapist unless you are 16 years of age or older!

A. If you're younger than 13 you really can't tell all that well if you're plural or not. Your brain is still putting that shit together!

B. If you're 13 or older... you're a child! You don't need to be announcing that you are in a vulnerable mental state on the internet! You're. going. to get. Groomed. People. Are. The worst!

I would just like to say that even if you're 16 or older, you need to watch yourself in spaces like these. You are not mature. You are not the smartest in the room. You do not have the high ground, Anakin. That comes from a place of the utmost love and 20/20 hindsight, not a place of superiority or "holier than thou" attitude, I promise.

Are full grown adults (25-28 is when your brain is finished, so we'll call that full grown) also incredibly stupid sometimes? Yes. Do they have no excuse? Also yes. Will we always have people who can't form a nuanced opinion based off of fact in spaces online? Again, yes.

So what do we do about that? Block. Button. Use your block button as the Tumblr gods intended, people, please!

That's pretty much my whole stance on it. Feel free to drop more questions in my ask, no question is a dumb question, no question is too specific or too niche.

[altarfates]

I’m gonna yap in the tags rq

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

did every hero really follow endeavor's plan during the jail break? I've never watched bnha, but I always figured there were more heros then Japan knew what do with. Was endeavor really just that worried about how the fight again AFO would go? and did AFO have the league with him? or other prison escapees? Given eraserhead was so entrenched?

As a preliminary matter--yes, it was way more than AfO. The League basically did what they did during the USJ arc and subcontracted their violent attacks. They needed a big force to first get AfO and everyone else out of Tartarus, and then they made it very clear (via loudspeaker and also fucking tweet) that they would all be very peacefully retreating while all those criminally insane and violent motherfuckers went that other direction. Ball's in your court as to how you want to tackle it.

AfO was the biggest threat, by fucking far, but it was far from isolated to him. It was the entire League of Villains + Their Very Special Friends. It was the kind of force that would be required to make the entirety of Tartarus fall for the first time in history. So the heroes had plenty to keep them busy.

And as to whether Endeavor was that scared about the next fight with AfO... Yeah.

I think bnha does a good job at establishing that All Might and AfO just exist at entirely different levels than every other person alive. Their fight leveled a decent chunk of Kamino. And I think that's kind of power and devastation is hard to conceptualize as like, people in a world where we don't have to worry about superhero fights. (as a side note--Sukuna's Big Fight in the Shibuya arc from JJK did better than any other fight in media to really capture the sheer cosmic horror of being caught as a bystander in one of those fights).

But endeavor saw it. He was there for AfO’s and All Might’s last fight. The gods were fighting. Everyone else was just an ant.

He is facing the villain that ultimately took down All Might. All Might won Kamino, sure. But he didn't get up again after. He was permanently and irreversibly taken out of play. And Endeavor has spent the last year feeling like he was struggling to be even half of what All Might was with two hours of productivity a day. He was so consistently voted to not be able to compare to All Might that he bought a wife and had four kids about it, all of whom hate him actively.

He does not think he is winning this fight. He is Japan's number one hero. The responsibility is going to fall to Midoriya Izuku to him. He is the best they have left, and the fight that would be coming was one that already nearly killed All Might, the one guy he has never ever been able to compare to. And when he really looked himself in the mirror and asked if he could stop AfO, the answer was no.

And it wouldn't just be AfO if he came back to power. It would be his followers--and he was liable to get more than just the current League of Villains roster. It would mean more Nomus. They could barely handle one Nomu--how could they possibly handle the Nomus, and the LoV, and AfO?

And the answer that he came to was that they couldn't. Not without All Might.

He thought he was sacrificing Yokohama for every single other city AfO was going to level if he had time to grow in strength again. He thought that if they threw absolutely everything they had at him while he was weak, then maybe they could contain him and the League before entire cities fell.

So. That's why he came to that decision. Why did every hero fall into line?

So what’s key to what happened here was it was this complete structural breakdown at exactly the wrong time.

Structural Flaw #1: Transportation

Was it every hero in Japan that responded to Endeavor’s order? No. But not every hero in Japan was available. Any heroes out of the immediate area were too far away to do shit.

But it's a massive crisis. Heroes would commute from all over if they could--but it's not about desire, it's about time and resources. With how imminently emergent the threat was, a lot of far-away heroes would need something like a jet to even conceivably get there in time.

Who is sending the jet?

Let's pin down what heroes could, conceivably, get there in time. Very few heroes are in walking distance. How do heroes typically get from Point A to Point B?

Hero society in bnha is an agency model. There is no communal pool of resources--you have what your agency has. You have a jet to transport you if your agency has the money for one, and I’m pretty sure only all might had that (he has since had it dismantled and the parts repurposed for the sake of the environment. He only had it to begin with so he could quickly respond to imminent threats. All Might thinks there's more than one way to save the world and saving the environment is part of it). Like. We even saw Endeavor flying fucking commercial.

But let's just assume, arguendo, that some agencies have jets. It would have to be the very top agencies to possibly afford it.

All of whom are shown in canon to mostly operate out of the same area. So they're going to have to send the jet somewhere else to get more heroes. Now any travel time is doubled. If they do send it out, how many people are they realistically getting? Are these heroes in multiple different cities? That's more travel time then. Maybe we just land the plane in Kyoto and whoever gets on in the twenty minute period while they're refueling is who is coming back. We'll hand them parachutes and kick them out the plane door over Yokohama. Okay. Good plan. Go team.

Who is sending the jet?

Like, who is physically making the call to send the jet? Who do they call? Do they just start ringing around their buddies and seeing if they have other plans? The city is on fucking fire and we need people fighting now, so the big name heroes don't have time to organize transport with other agencies. They’re not even thinking of that right now. Make it a sidekick's job.

They are all on fucking strike.

Fuck it. Fine. Make it an admin's job. There has to be some kind of office staff who can work a telephone who's available.

Who is thinking to send the jet?

Admins are not making strategic calls about where the company jets go. There would have to be some kind of protocol in place or someone with the authority to send the jet would have to think of it in the moment. And I guarantee you this would not be the case.

Because this is a society where they have canonically semi-privatized public safety and put people in direct competition with each other over it.

ASIDE: The Economic Structure of Heroics and Why It Sucks

I have an economic structure. You must listen to it. I promise it is relevant. This is why it takes me forever to do things it's because i get too deep into the weeds and have to explain the fucking economic structures underpinning the analysis for my nonsense to make sense.

How the fuck do heroes get paid?

I have no idea if canon ever tells us because to be so for real with you guys I have not watched this show in years. I haven’t cared about canon since the Shie Hassaikai arc. The fucking YouTuber arc broke me. I literally never watched it again. If they ever explain to us how heroes get paid I do not know and I do not care. I refuse to go back to canon. Everything I found out about canon after the Shie Hassaikai arc, I learned against my will. The ending to this story was so fucking stupid and I only have a scattered knowledge of the details but I’m still right. If canon ever tries to explain it then please do not tell me, I refuse to learn more things about this show.

But I still like poking around the potential economic structures based on the part of canon that doesn’t cause me psychic damage. So here’s the thought process for the economic underpinnings of hero society in the pez universe.

From canon, we know it can be an enormously lucrative profession, we know that it involves some degree of private interests (re: merch lines), and we know that there are some people who cannot have merch lines (Underground Heroes, e.g. Eraserhead), so there also must be some kind of public funding aspect to it as well. So. Who the fuck signs your paycheck?

Sources of Funding

a. Public Funding

There must be some kind of official governmental budget for heroics. Like. They are very much a public service. There would be no way to have a fully private heroics force without government funding. What else are you supposed to do, fucking Venmo heroes after they save you? Do they put your kitten back in the tree if you don’t have enough.

In my mind, there's public funds allocated to heroes as part of a city's budget. That funding is allotted based on the number of employees in a given entity balanced against the confirmed acts of heroics of that same given entity. There’s a base salary level and that can be increased based on how successful you are, but salary isn’t exclusively what this fund is for. The heroic entity (an individual hero or an Agency) is effectively receiving grant money from the government to run their agency. You put it into salaries, gear, office space, everything. The government is basically investing in heroes, and it’s investing more in heroes who are shown to have a greater positive impact on society.

It involves overly complex calculations regarding the scaled difficulty of a given bust/rescue/act and ranking of the villain (if there is one) and the overall public benefit for the service rendered. You get bonuses for having a lower average property damage, for contributing to community building projects, that kind of thing. It is Complex. There is a lot of paperwork that has to be submitted to strange and vaguely threatening government accountants. When Mirio and Izuku start their agency, they will burst into tears multiple times trying to figure it out once filing season rolls around, bundle all the paperwork in a Massive Tears And Shame Package, mail it off to the shadowy powers at be, and then get a perfunctory notice that they are getting a ludicrous amount of the city budget allotted to their dinky little agency for the upcoming fiscal year because they are Big Fucking Heroes and enormously good at what they do and it reflects in their stats. They will then lay on the ground of their haunted fucking office and stare at the ceiling for a very long period of time.

But this puts the heroes in competition with each other. Your public funding is chained to your stats under this model. There's only so many criminals out there--you've got to get the right numbers or it cuts into how much of a slush fund the agency is working with.

It's sort of an insane model for a public servant position, but I think it matches with what canon shows us. Imagine having firefighters pitted against each other. like, having a competitive model for public safety raises extreme concerns about how it incentivizes public servants to act.

But this isn't canon's model. It's my guess as to how canon works based on the hints i can remember and my own mental illness. So why do I think canon suggests a model like this?

It's because 1) canon does establish that heroes are in competition with one another and 2) this kind of model would likely be necessary due to the level of autonomy that heroes have.

The literal first fight we see involves heroes in competition with each other. Kamui Woods is doing a big Ultimate Move, and Mount Lady rushes in and steals the show. Like. that is crazy behavior if we are looking at this through the lens of a typical public servant. Imagine you're trying to get directions from a park ranger and a different park ranger kick flips in with a map and a desperate need for you to get your directions from them instead. You call poison control and they’re beating each other in the head over who gets to tell you you’re dying.

Still, on its own, the competition isn’t dispositive, because the private income streams (we'll get there) would incentivize competition even if public funding wasn't based on it. But the level of autonomy that hero offices exhibit also suggest some kind of competition model.

Heroics agencies are not run like a typical police force or fire station. With most entities that function as first responders, they respond to some kind of centralized force (like 911 call centers) and they have highly regulated resource distribution. Like, police forces are restricted to a specific jurisdiction. Within that jurisdiction they have multiple districts and officers typically stay in their district. They're not going to a different fucking city because they think the crime is cooler there.

But Endeavor does exactly that. He's like "hello, son who hates me. Let's go to Hosu because I want to fuck with the hero killer for street cred. won't you come along. It is non-optional" and todoroki says "i hate you father and will abandon you on our father son trip to set a serial killer on fire with my mind. it will be for mildly gay reasons."

These agencies aren't a centralized public service. They are all just off doing their own thing. They're not responding to specific areas as allotted to them by the city--they just fuck off and do whatever. Like, there's probably some coordination between agencies as to who is covering what patrol, but it likely would be more out of courtesy than formal requirement. People wouldn't step on each other's toes nearly as much if there was more of a structure to this.

Typical public agencies who receive funding in accordance with staffing and budgetary needs have more structure and formality than is exhibited in canon. Heroics Agencies act like they're all independent contractors. They probably function like grant money recipients, where they're all fighting for the same pool of funds. You have to write in and show why you deserve that money when that's the case. They're in competition with each other.

Like, is this definitively the structure in canon? No, of course not. I have no fucking idea what, if anything, canon has going on. But it definitely fits with canon.

b. Private Income Streams

We know from canon that it can't just be public funding. Izuku alone probably paid for the Mighty Agency private jet with how much fucking all might merch he bought. Canonically, heroes have merchandise lines, branding deals, commercials, everything. All Might had fucking movies made about him. Those are all extremely lucrative income streams--and likely where the richest heroes get the biggest brunt of their income.

In order to get this kind of income, you are necessarily in competition with your fellow hero.

Public attention, spending money, screen time, all of it--it's a limited resource. You have to be the person who gets to the fight first, who does the big move, who saves the day. If it's someone else? Then that's another kid buying their action figure instead of yours. Heroics is heavily commoditized in canon, and that inherently invites competition.

2. Distribution of Funds

So now that we have a theory as to where the money comes from, how does it get paid out? Based on canon, it comes down to a structure of (a) Independent/Underground Heroes and (b) Agencies.

a. Independent/Underground Heroes

I can't actually remember if the word "independent" is said in canon or if I came up with it, but I think canon implies its existence. It's basically the same thing as being an underground hero, but you're still a Spotlight hero. I also cannot remember if the underground/spotlight thing is canon or fanon or what I’m sorry I haven’t watched this show in years.

Independents are spotlight heroes without the backing of an agency. They just go out every day with the clothes on their back and a dream. They have no support staff, no back up, and no one to help them if things go sideways.

It is not a popular employment option.

Part of it is because it's that much harder to fund being an independent. Like. Say you're just out of high school and you decide to strike out on your own as independent. You're still spotlight, so you can have a merchandise line, and that'd be a nice income stream while you're just starting out.

How the fuck do you start your own t-shirt line?

How do you make contracts with the manufacturers? How do you make and copyright the design? how do you sell the stupid things? Do you try and get them in Walmart? Do you start an Etsy? Your own website? do you call your mom and cry when you have 500 ugly t-shirts with your face on them that no one wants to buy and they're taking up all the space in your studio apartment.

Agencies have preexisting structures in place to help launch these kinds of options, which is one of the reasons why they're so attractive for baby heroes just starting out. The only reason why Mirio has merchandise is because he decided that he didn't care and didn't need to make merch and Izuku came after him with feverish crack addict energy because he cared and he needed Lemillion merch like. yesterday. All Might ended up getting his agency to start a lemillion line. Mirio gets the profits with a reasonable fee to the Mighty Agency. To this day he suspects that Izuku is 70% of his sales but Izuku denies this fervently, like a liar (he actually has a small but very devoted fanbase who rabidly support him and buy all of his merch. he would cry if he knew this. Still. Izuku is his biggest fan and buys literally every single piece of new merch in triplicate.).

Underground heroes are in the same boat as independents but they don't even have the option of a merch line. They exclusively get public funding unless they're backed by an agency, which none of them are because agencies have a tendency to fuck them and their busts for the sake of the spotlight. All underground heroes are bitter and culturally opposed to agencies.

On that note:

b. Agencies.

This is where by far the most heroes would end up. But an agency is like thirty dudes with the same joint bank account. How does the money get there and get distributed out?

i. Public Funding in an Agency Context

Take the above model. How do you attribute public funds based on personal statistics if there's no single person? Does everyone get their own check? But that wouldn't make sense--this isn't just for salaries, it's for funding the actual heroics itself.

Everyone under the same agency would be counted together for the purposes of funding allotment. If Sidekick A managed 300 busts last year and Sidekick B man managed 350 busts, then congratulations, The Big Hero Hero Agency made 650 busts last year, here's a check made out to the agency, figure out what you want to do with it.

But what about incidents that involve multiple heroes from the same agency? Let's say that The Big Hero Hero Agency is involved in a big bust. It is Sidekick A's baby. They have spent months doing this. This has been blood, sweat, and tears. When the day comes, they are joined by Sidekick B, Sidekick C, and Big Hero himself. Sidekick B has been helping Sidekick A for the past three weeks on this case. Sidekick C got called in the day-of to help.

Big Hero showed up for the last twenty minutes of the fight when they were mostly done with everything.

So. You're filling out the post-arrest paperwork. For funding and for public statistics, you need to make sure to properly account for who gets credit for the bust. It has to be one person--if you had everyone individually credit themselves for the bust, then it looks like you've resolved four incidents instead of one under this financial model. it's artificially inflating your numbers for public funding. that's fraud. Who should get the credit: Sidekick A, Sidekick B, Sidekick C, or Big Hero?

Well, there's nothing stopping Big Hero from writing their own name. So let's go with Big Hero. He helped.

This was one of the big sources of the sidekick strikes: a lot of agencies had an absolute policy of attributing successes to the name hero if they touched the case at all, because there was no rule against it. It was better for the agency, after all--unrealistically high numbers on the biggest name meant the agency as a whole appeared more successful.

So there were a lot of heroes artificially inflating their stats with things that were more properly credited to their sidekicks. Which made it all the harder for sidekicks to leave because their stats were shit because their boss was taking credit for their work.

ii. Private Funding in an Agency Context

But that’s just public funding. How would agencies distribute private income streams?

Big Hero Agency is proud to announce its newest line of Big Hero Action Figures, featuring the Entire Big Hero Team, now retailing for $39.99. Get it now from a store near you.

So. An agency is selling an action figure line featuring Sidekicks A, B, and C, as well as Big Hero himself. We’ll round up to an even $40. How do we split up the cash?

You can’t give everyone each $10. You have to first pay the suppliers, the advertisers, the trucks that shipped the toys to the store, etc. Then you have to pay back into the agency to fund miscellaneous expenses—the stationary, the insurance, the coffee in the fucking break room. Everything. By the end, there’s only $4 of profit left over. Not great, but hey—they’re selling a lot of toys. So if they each get a $1, then it should add up quick.

Right. But. If you think about it, people are only really buying it for Big Hero. He’s the best hero of all of them—his name is on the agency, and just look at how much higher his stats are. So it’s only fair that he gets $3.70 a toy and the rest of them can get $.10 apiece. Don’t worry, it’ll add up quick.

Not all agencies would have been like this. But a lot of them would be. Money is a hell if an incentive to screw people.

END OF ASIDE.

With all that in mind—why would they feasibly have a structure to fly in help from other heroes far away? That’s their fucking competition. Sure, we have team ups, but they’re all either well in advance or in the heat of a moment. If they are in the heat of a moment, half the time the heroes resent it because they just stole their fight. They’re gonna what—pay the exorbitant jet fees to fly in someone who’s just going to steal their hard work in the eyes of the public?

Okay, but what about situations like this? Massive emergencies where you need more people?

Those haven’t ever happened before. They had All Might.

So. The heroes on the ground calling in help are out. What about the heroes who are close enough to make it there by ground transport? No one calls them, they just show up out of public need. How are they getting there?

Trains are out. All the trains into the area are shut the fuck down. We are not giving the freshly escaped villains a bullet train to the rest of the country. Same thing for buses. No fucking bus driver is making their regular route into a fucking battleground.

Private transportation it is. Anything more than a few hours out of the area is completely out of the question. Like, good ol’ Manuel from Hosu City and all his buddies? Not making it. The wild wild pussycats? Watched this on TV from their mountain home. Gran Torino? On FaceTime with All Might, who is watching the fight with Midoriya Inko’s hand gripped in his left and Bakugou Mitsuki’s hand gripped in his right. Gang Orca? Twelve hours away and on a fucking island so he needs a boat AND a car to get there. Or he just fucking swims.

But there has to be at least some hero that saw this happening and heroically climbed in their Mazda sedan to make the three hour car trip. Why didn’t they go to the fight in Yokohama instead of the one against AfO?

Frankly at that point those literal children were visibly doing way better than the actual heroes were faring and any heroes showing up went where they were most needed and uh. It wasn’t by the kids.

If we have the agency model as given to us by canon, then that means there is a decentralization of resources. If you want to utilize your public defense force in the case of emergencies, then you need a way to fucking get them to the emergency. Canon does not have that. This is a huge structural failing that only wasn’t a disaster sooner because most emergencies required one guy and he had his own private jet. So most heroes in the country never had to even consider if they would listen to Endeavor’s order because they were completely cut off and useless at the time.

So. Now the analysis has been narrowed from all of Japan’s heroes to just the ones in the immediate vicinity of the fight. That’s still a fuck ton of heroes. This is a heavily populated area with a bunch of heroes around. You can’t go outside without tripping over a hero.

Most of those guys were on fucking strike.

Structural Flaw #2: Over-Reliance on and Abuse of Sidekicks.

The vast majority of the workforce had to be sidekicks. Like, just from a business model perspective. Even the smallest agencies we saw had 2-3 sidekicks. Endeavor’s agency had at least double digits, and I think Idaten was at over a hundred or something. We were probably looking at, conservatively, a 1:10 ratio of heroes to sidekicks.

All those guys are on strike.

Okay. But not all of them, right? Idaten already settled and got their sidekicks back. That’s like a hundred guys.

Except the Strike was not isolated to the Tokyo/Mustufasa/Yokohama area. Idaten sent out a lot of their sidekicks to other regions to help alleviate some of the strains of the strike. (As a note, this was not the Idaten sidekicks crossing the picket line. Them picking up the slack for other sidekicks still striking would have helped minimize effects on the public. However, the agencies of the striking sidekicks would have reaped no benefit from this under the compensation structure outlined above. Idaten would have gotten the credit for everything their sidekicks did, so the other agencies would still be bleeding from this while risk to the public was slightly alleviated. Idaten’s entire function in this strike was to set an example for quick settlement and minimize public harm. There’s this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards that I won’t get into now this is already way too long.)

Idaten is at 1/10 capacity. It has like, ten guys, all of whom have been working say, thirteen hour shifts (voluntarily—again, it was a decision made to try and minimize the public safety risks of the strike while still allowing their colleagues their best chance at improved conditions) daily for the past month.

All of those ten guys responded to Tartarus before Endeavor made the call.

To understand the exact nature of the breakdown, you really have to see the chaos of how exactly this unfolded.

The LoV and their merry band of criminals hit Tartarus. The heroes do not realize at this time that they intend to let everyone out, give them transportation, and point them straight towards the mainland. They think that they’re just there for AfO. That’s still a huge crisis that needs to be shut down immediately, so they call out all of their best. Endeavor responds. Hawks responds. Eraserhead responds. Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Miruko—everyone in the vicinity who could conceivably respond show up. For a second, it looks like it’s going to end here.

Once the LoV get AfO out of his cell, the entire tide of the battle turns against the heroes. Now everyone’s out. All of those horrible, terrible villains. Tartarus has fallen. They have to make hard decisions. The high ranking, very powerful heroes who are most likely to break the line on Endeavor’s decision? They’re already at the fight by the time he has to make it. It is chaos and something they cannot easily leave.

The LoV’s picked right now because they knew that the heroes were operating at less than a tenth of their regular capacity. They picked right now because they knew the system had structural faults, and if they hit them just right, it would all come down on the heroes’ heads.

But the sidekicks broke strike lines to respond, right? Why do they all go to endeavor’s side?

For one thing, it wasn’t all of them who showed up—maybe a third of them were not even in the area any more. It wasn’t malicious, or intentional, or anything like that—they were off visiting their families for the first time in a long time or taking vacation. All of them had spent the past few years being completely overworked and abused by their jobs. They just weren’t there.

So now we’re down to 2/3rds of them who can even try to show up.

A lot of it wasn’t actually made as a reasoned choice. For many of them, they ended up where they did because of all the chaos.

So you’re a sidekick. You’re on strike. The entire world has gone to shit. How do you normally find out about the world going to shit?

This is a competition model streamed through individual entities. There’s no central command structure. Your agency calls you.

Well, your agency either fucking fired you or they cut you off completely during strike negotiations. This time, you find out through the news when the story breaks. Now what?

You frantically try to get in touch with your (ex) agency. Who is picking up the phones?

No one. That was your fucking job before you went on strike.

I used to work at a government public-service type deal, and let me tell you, they abuse the fuck out of non-unionized workers. You are doing everyone’s job. No one ask why we don’t get more support staff because they have unions. Like. I had a law degree. I was hired to be a lawyer in that office. They had us all doing the jobs of four people, and by that I mean it would be the literal entire job description of another fucking position in that office and we were all expected to just do it too.

Unions incentivize treating workers right. The absence of them opens the door to the opposite.

Why the fuck would agencies hire more people to lighten the load on the sidekicks and let them focus on actual heroics? Just make the sidekicks do everything. What are they going do, complain? They’re a dime a dozen. Hire more of those fresh faced kids with no standards just out of school.

You know when you had a job where you’re like. This fucking place is going to fall apart without me. But they treat you as disposable and easily replaceable and you’re like “okay bet” and so you leave and you find out from the people left behind that it actually fucking fell apart without you and you’re just like :o

Yeah. So that happened.

There has been a massive break down in the function of heroics offices for the past month and change because the sidekicks were not there. They were the ones who actually did most of the day to day handling of the office. They were the ones coordinating transport and figuring out the actual mechanics of who would be deployed where in a crisis. All those things that would be super helpful now? Yeah, those guys aren’t there, and they’re locked out of the fucking offices and can’t get in to un-strike for the sake of societal crisis.

But they know where the fight is. It’s on the news. Why don’t they just show up?

Where’s their gear?

Who owns it?

Heroics support gear must be an enormously expensive thing. It would have to be provided by the agency itself. Literally the only reason why Mirio has gear is because 1) all might would NEVER let his pseudo step son run around without proper support so the man would have bankrolled it himself if needs must and 2) the UA support class has a stipend each year where they can make support gear for active heroes and those heroes get it for free in exchange for free advertising for the students trying to kick start their careers, so he is decked out in THE most experimental bullshit from Hatsume Mei Industries (I have this entire side plot where the support class this class year low key became a sort of religious cult haha not really it’s just a joke it’s not really a joke and power loader is afraid every single day when he comes to work he is afraid under the iron clad rule of Hatsume Mei’s weird girl energy and they all decided Mirio was the Tabula Rasa, a figure of prophecy, and I just cannot get into that right now it’s too long it’s too long already. But it’s so fun).

All those sidekicks on strike lost valuable time trying to get back into their agencies so they weren’t showing up to an S-class villain fight in their fucking jammies. Then, when some poor admins figured out what was going on and let some of them in, everyone was frantically gearing up and getting in whatever transport van they were pointed at. Some of them didn’t know they werent reporting to Yokohama until they were already at the other fight. There’s was so much chaos and confusion that very few people had a clear idea of what was happening.

With the sidekicks, some of them never made it, some of them just got in a van and went wherever it took them, and some of them chose to obey Endeavor’s orders. Some agreed with the decision. Some disagreed but deferred to his experience. With how the Sidekick Strike had left their infrastructure, very few sidekicks were able to respond fast enough to make any real difference.

Now for the last possible demographic: the heroes that weren’t on strike and weren’t initially deployed to the Tartarus Prison Break. Why didn’t any of them go to Yokohama?

Structural Flaw #3: All Might was that one kid doing the entire group project for like forty years and some of these people are having to be heroes for the very first time and realizing that they don’t actually want to risk their lives to save people they just sort of liked the idea of this job.

It may be a bit too specific to be a structural flaw but I’m counting it anyway.

So, just to give a bit of a recap: We consider every hero alive in Japan as a candidate for Endeavor’s order. The vast majority of them are too far away to do shit, and there’s no centralized transport network to get them there faster. Toss in those who are dealing with personal medical issues or are away on vacation or just can’t come for some reason or another, and you’ve lost most of the heroes in Japan as respondents. Probably ~80% of potential heroes are culled from this alone.

So we have, generously, 20% of Japan’s heroes left as potential people to respond. ~90% of those are sidekicks on strike. They’ve got hours before they make it to any fight, because of the aforementioned structural breakdowns.

Now we’re down to 2% of Japan’s total heroes.

Some of that 2% were first responders to the initial Tartarus prison break. All the big name heroes in the area. But there can’t be that many top heroes—so let’s say 0.2% of them were at the initial fight.

Now we only have the remaining 1.8% of heroes to analyze.

There have to be a percentage of those who agreed with Endeavor’s call as a tactical decision. If they show up to any fight, they’re going to be obeying his order.

So we only have the ones who disagreed with his call left to look at.

These are small-time heroes. All of the big names are already at the fight. So they are less likely to have flashy Quirks, be especially talented, or consider themselves to have an especially large effect in the grand scheme of things. They have likely spent their entire careers living in a world with All Might.

It has never actually been down to them.

Think of Uwabami. Momo did her work study with her.

Her hero outfit is a fucking evening gown. She spent the entire work study doing commercials and meeting with her fans. She explicitly invited the young heroes that she did because she thought they were cute enough to be in commercials with her.

Now, she’s had some good if minor moments helping rescue civilians. It’s not that she’s never saved anyone.

But all of the top heroes are already committed to the fight against AfO. The current Number One Hero just ordered all her colleagues to report there. And Yokohama has a lot of S-Class villains en route.

And what the fuck is she going to do to stop them? It’s just her. Half of those villains took All Might to stop the first time. She is not fucking all might.

Is this a hero likely to go to Yokohama completely on her own to fight *checks notes* literally the entire prison population minus one guy? The worst guy, albeit. But one guy.

These are all heroes who have never had to be the actual thing standing between society and destruction. There has always been someone more powerful or capable or heroic nearby. Until recently, there has always been all might.

This isn’t to malign them. A decent percentage of them are legitimately well meaning about being a hero. They do good. But when it came to the big, blowout fights, they have always, always, always been the heroes evacuating civilians in the background or performing rescue in the aftermath. It has never been them who had to stand up and do the fight itself.

Every single one of those villains represent a big, blowout fight. And this hero trying to decide if he’s going to obey Endeavor’s order? They are one guy. And they’re not sure if they could even beat one of those villains alone, let alone all.

The reason why no one disobeyed Endeavor’s order was because, frankly, at the end of the day, they did not want to die.

Endeavor’s order signaled to everyone that there was no guarantee anyone would show up to Yokohama. It actually put good odds to the opposite. If you decided “fuck that, I’m going to Yokohama” then you’d likely be doing it alone.

What Class 2-A did was considered a death sentence. People who didn’t know them and their bullshit were shocked that they all made it out alive. These were the worst villains their society had ever faced and it was all of them at once (minus that one guy).

The heroes who were in a position to disobey endeavor didn’t actually think it’d make a difference if they did. They’d just… lose.

Most if not all of these heroes made the decision to become heroes during all mights era of peace. Everything just had lower stakes. Crime was less frequent and less serious. The big fights always had someone there who could handle them, because All Might was there. They’d fight the odd mugger or purse snatcher and help put out fires and go home at the end of the night. They’re heroes. That doesn’t mean they’ve ever truly had to grapple with a life or death fight.

If they went to Yokohoma, they thought they’d die. So they might as well respond to a fight that has a chance. Even if they feel ashamed as they do it. Even if they think Endeavor made the wrong call and wanted to go to Yokohama instead. All Might wasn’t there anymore. And they were afraid.

But there is one thing that Class 2-A had going for them that gave them an advantage over these heroes. And that was the fact that they are all medically insane.

It’s that they were together.

It’s a decentralized heroics structure. If you have a large agency, you are necessarily a top hero because no one else would be able to get that many people to agree to work under them. So you’re already at Tartarus and this isn’t a decision you had to make.

Maybe you’re independent. Maybe you have a small agency with 2-3 people. There is no preexisting centralized line that you can use to try and gather more people to go to Yokohama with you. You’re stuck with your immediate colleagues and maybe a few other heroes you’re close enough with to have their number. You really don’t have time to try and ask around to see if anyone else wants to go to Yokohama instead—you need to pick a battle and get there yesterday.

What good is 2-3 people going to do in Yokohama? You’ll just get massacred and it won’t have made a difference. At least if you go to stop AfO, you’ll have a chance at doing something that mattered.

Maybe you disagree with Endeavor but you defer to his training and experience.

Maybe you don’t go at any fight at all. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you became a hero in a time where you had a symbol of peace, and you realize you can’t keep doing it in a time without one.

I think there’s a small subsection of heroes that quit in the aftermath of Yokohama. Because they wanted to disobey endeavor’s order, and they thought they’d just die and it wouldn’t matter, and then dawn came and a bunch of school kids had managed what they were too big of a coward to do. I think the fact that they fell into line when their hearts told them they shouldn’t made them seriously doubt whether they were good enough to be a hero.

But they were alone when Endeavor made the call. And it felt like certain death. And—yeah, it sort of felt that way to Class 2-A when they made the decision to respond. But they weren’t alone when they did it.

They were together. And they always felt braver when they were together. Together, they could make miracles happen.

[just-animaxiz]

Yeah, plus I know what Rhubarb's going through as well. (Do not excuse his actions but I analyze his motives)

Though it is not explicitly stated, Benjy probably represents people with mental disabilities (Maybe autism), and considering it is from the past, people do not know what they actually are - So they treat them differently.

Rhubarb represents the struggles of being a young caretaker to Benjy, especially when he is about the same age range as him. He's been told by his ma that Benjy is different and he has to take care of him; however, Rhubarb started to lose his own self-worth.

As someone with a brother like that, I know how it feels for him. My brother is older than me but he has a development deficit, thus my family has to take care of him. It felt like I'm taking the most time because everyone has work, but I personally hated the idea that my responsibility is of my family and not myself.

Like Rhubarb, I wanted to go on to my future and become my own person, but my family put me in a position where I have to be a caretaker to someone else, and that everytime I have to put their needs over mine, it feels like I'm not myself but a nurse/maid/caretaker.

I even feared that I have to take care of my entire family without being ready, forced to destroy my career as an artist for the sake of this stupid feeling inside.

I don't want that, I just wanted to be me.

And Rhubarb felt the same, but his emotions got the better of him and now he has to live with the shame and guilt.

So I know everyone is kinda mad that we don’t get to confront Rhubarb for what he did to his brother but I think Rhubarb is already being punished. He has to live with that guilt and hurt and pain forever and is all alone. Meanwhile it’s implied that Hazel has at least given Benjy some peace at least. Rhubarb will never have peace.

[artofapeach]

Hi friend! Hope doing this in asks is okay, I saw your post about needing some Thoughts on Funger characters for your comic so I wanted to help out :3 I'm sure you already know about all my feelings on Pav and Karin so instead I'll yap about Marina and Daan if that's cool! I just find it interesting how their views on religion contrast each other (with Marina being an occultist and Daan's past with Sylvian) and as Daan goes on about how he dislikes it (in the church I believe) he says the line 'If your happiness relies on the shoulders of others, then you're screwed', in which Marina goes quiet afterwards. And while it could mean nothing, to me that gives me the impression that she took it personally. Maybe she's a people pleaser and she felt called out? Who knows! Also adding to Daan's dislike of the Gods/Sylvian, when they're at Sylvian's Square and Abella tries to bring up how suggestive the fountain looks, he gets very short with her ('Yes. We get your point'). Usually he has something sarcastic or witty to say, so to be that blunt to someone as nice as Abella tells me that he was VERY uncomfortable and eager to leave. Idk, I just thought that stuck out to me. Meanwhile while Marina is at the square she's just like 'oh yeah fun fact there used to be a brothel here lol' completely unbothered, what a queen haha

HI SAM THANKS FOR REACHING OUT :D

Okay okay okay but Daan and Marina (and O’saa, but this ain’t about him) are my religious trauma family fr fr!!!!

I’m so invested in how they both grew up in super religious households and how they deal with the effects of that differently. Because while Daan is very obviously negative when it comes to religion, especially sexually religion (for obvious reasons), Marina is cheerful but insults it at the same time, almost like a coping mechanism?

Plus, Marina is especially interesting because she’s literally in school studying magic and religion. She probably feels trapped, like who would she without the church and Alll-mer? And and and when looking at a photo of her dad, she mentions how the lineage has to end, but she doesn’t make any comments about what she’ll do instead.

I think that could also tie in with what you said in Daan mentioning “If you’re happiness relies on the shoulders of others”—I wonder if she’s thinking of the idea of letting go of religion even then 🤔

SEGUE-WAY INTO DAAN

Daan cutting Abella off coldly at the statue is actually not the only time he does it! He also does it at the mall, with all the people hanging on the ceiling!

Levi mentions that it seems like the people there are enjoying it (which Daan agrees to), suggesting that the whole thing might be a sexual religious act.

When they go back down and Daan and Abella are there, we get this dialogue:

Those two instances just feel…so similar to me. It’s also interesting that they’re both triggered by Abella djndjfnjsjdnf

Also, while looking for the above pic, I also came across dialogue where he mentioned he’s done enough camping for a lifetime because of his parents, which I admittedly didn’t think about. Religious trauma even ruined camping for him :(

Daan’s the opposite of Marina—instead of leaning into it and making fun (like most of the Termina contestants tbh), he avoids anything relating to the Bunnymasks as much as possible.

It does make me wonder if he could help Marina let go of her past and find something new to strive for—he was able to do it with the kindness of the von Dutches so maybe he can do the same for Marina!—but that’s just me being obsessed with found family at that point 😆

[minty-sweet-art]

Congratulations you made it to the wedding between me and Kaufmo (aka my 100 day anniversary officially simping for Kaufmo)

Happy July 1st (art fight is haunting me) (side note I ramble in the tags)

To start of let’s watch several silly CapCut edit before getting into the wedding art

⚠️❗️WARNING FOR LOUD SCREAMING/SOUNDS❗️⚠️

Thank again @leafryoworks for the offer of letting me use one of their Kaufmo art for an edit

Original art post by leafy link here

Now that the edit are over you can have a silly terrible Terrible doodle as well. (I can’t bring Kaufmo amazing ness justice with my art but I try. Also I had no idea what to do for poses help)

Didn’t put Kaufmo in a black and white tuxedo because the color are apart of his charm(I was lazy)

We had to change wedding officiant to ( @saytrrose/) kenji rose because kinger couldn’t take Jax and gangle interrupting anymore. (They called dibs after all)

And of course can’t forget to our friends leafy. It’s like I can still hear them now.

(they just have school this week so they couldn’t see the post until this Weekend) imagine having school you nerd/ /silly /joke

Oh and also

Kaufmo gallery update: 520

Thank for viewing my silly wedding post about Kaufmo. I will continue to simp for a clown like a loser.

And remember everyone

Live laugh Kaufmo <3

– Sincerely Kaufmo simp 

[asktheevilgeniusesson]

“Im a mercenary, shadow.” The jackal barked in a rough tone, softly glaring at the other with a hidden whine under his breath. “I may not attack all of you and your friends but im still a murderer. I still kill. I still take lives the same way i took millions during that war. I get paid to slaughter the innocent. How is that anyone you could ever think of deserving a second chance?” He didnt inch away, but neither did he look at him. It was hard to tell his true emotions due to the mask but his body language showed alot of fear, guilt, and sorrow. “For fucks sake— all i am is the doctor’s attack dog! Im just a mangy mutt who cant do anything without being ordered to! Its why I’m a mercenary, its why i work for him- because im nothing but a glorified PET. You wouldnt even be able to handle me! I cant just quit my job, and i cant just waltz into your house soaked in blood!” The jackal barks, ears finally pinned against his skull as he ducks his head downward. Claws sinking into his own fur and slightly pricking at the skin. “Im a lost cause whether you like it or not. It doesnt matter if i didnt do everything myself, it doesnt fucking matter- ill never be anything but that one stupid villain everyone forgot about. I should be DEAD. I shouldnt be here..” his voice rose in more unsteady emorions, until finally his voice breaks, and defeat settles in. Defeat, then acceptance. He was only resurrected because the doctor didnt want to go through the entire ruby process again. Even then half of the rubies power was drained from his body to make sage. To replace him.

Slowly, the jackal takes a harsh and shaky breath before he turns away from rhe other. Eye closed shut. “..you shouldn’t waste your time on a man that should’ve died with the war. I shouldn’t have said anything..” slowly, the jackal moves to dare to try and move and walk away, not expecting the other to stop him this time.

[CONFLICT] to Infinite >:3

((From the "WILL THEY, WON'T THEY?" list))

The jackal didnt know why, but arguing like this was something he did to the hedgehog often- and as annoying as it was for him. He’d been.. realizing something he wasnt sure of. The canid had fallen silent. But by bodylanguage alone was enough to tell he probably wasn’t upset. His singular arm draped across his masked face as he narrowed his eyes in thought. The singular Golden-amber eye staring deeply into the ebony’s crimson red with an unreadable expression due to the mask that covered his face entirely. Why did he feel so.. weird.. his stomach felt like it was twisting yet it wasnt in disgust.. he knew disgust. This wasnt it. What was it about this hedgehog? Why couldnt he bring himself to shout and insult him until they fought or he turned away? What was wrong with him? Why was that damn scent and presence alone so.. relaxing..? His tail lashed, slapping against the floor in annoyance at himself. Come on, jackal, say something! Dont just let him get the last laugh..

[sodapopcurtis-dx-asks]

Since tornado season has started up again, have you ever had any scary/wild experiences?

“Well, here, look. I'll go through them and find some nicer ones, okay? This one ain't too bad!”

Steve was tired of seeing Soda cry so damn much, and the day just started. So, he's going through the jar himself to personally pick out some nicer questions for Soda to answer.

He reads the note to him, and Soda nods, wiping his face with his sleeve and holding out a hand to take it.

We've had some odd ones, but I wouldn't nothin' crazy.

...Okay, there was this ONE TIME where me and Steve got caught up in a real bad twister while on the road. Now that was a wild one.

It was so cool. We were makin' our way back home after an out of town race, and the storms had gotten real rough. Well, we were on a highway, about 20 minutes from home and cross cut from some big fields, and the twister had made it's way right beside us and cut past us in the road.

Us and about 20 other cars were just stuck there, waiting and praying it didn't snatch us up or nothing. It wouldn't have been able to anyways, it was a real tiny one. But I loved the adrenaline of being SO CLOSE to a thing so big. The rain, the impact, the radio blaring, it was a sight I'll never forget.

Soda hummed happily, thinking to himself about the memory.

“Not bad?”

“Yeah... Not bad.”