#it could run off to take after its father (misunderstood his stories of childhood abuse as tales of glory)

[potterpasta]

i think one of the major problems when it comes to hypothetical offspring for my ocs is the ones whom it would be most interesting for them to have kids are also the ones who under no circumstances could ever possibly be a parent, much less a good one

[drawsndrabbles]

I’ve seen this prompt idea floating around but I don’t think anyone’s actually written something for it yet so maybe you’d be interested. In which Bruce gets really anxious when the Avengers argue because it low key gives him flashbacks of his abusive father, but he doesn’t want to ask them to stop and make a fuss so he just avoids the yelling. Thor notices though, and when Bruce explains he gets protective and tries to make the others keep it down. (P.S. Your writing is awesome 😎)

Oh shit boooooi I’m back if you’re even following my blog anymore wonderful anon I am. so sorry. But I really liked this idea ‘I hope you enjoy! Took a bit of a dark turn though. 

Tw for implied physical and emotional abuse (nothing explicitly detailed) and the description of a panic attack

Bruce wasn’t confrontational by nature.

I suppose a childhood under the care of a monster wouldn’t allow someone to be so. The heated flesh and bruised skin of a word said out of line would silence a loose tongue with little conditioning. And so Bruce became compliant, though the pain often remained unchanged.  

The bullying of other children and degradation both at home and in the schoolyard only made a quiet boy silent in his suffering. And lo the anger and frustration of those wrongdoings twisted a righteous fury within him, but lest he became his father, it lay behind his defenses for fear he may become the monster his father claimed he was.

And so Bruce stays out of conflict, where ever it may be. He shied away from those being picked on in the locker rooms, would speed walk past arguing couples and cover his ears to block out the cries from the next room over.

And life went on.

Until the accident.

It was a curse that the misunderstood called a blessing, a tool, and a weapon. The hulk was everything his father told him he was, a monster, and a mistake. The amalgamation of his frustrations in a cruel and unjust world that swung it’s fists as carelessly as his father. And Bruce hated him.

But, sharing their bodies, their lives, hate is an uncomfortable feeling to hold to someone who knows you as well as you but is not “you.” And so they’d come to an uneasy understanding.

And life went on.

Strangely, it wasn’t so bad anymore. Bruce returned to Stark Towers with Thor and hundreds of Asgardians in tow and was welcomed back with open arms.

When they’d arrived Thor slung a comfortable arm around Bruce’s shoulders and offered him an encouraging smile as the elevator doors opened to the reveal the waiting faces of their comrades.

The reunion was a happy one, with Thor being the boisterous one as Bruce smiled tiredly while they were swarmed with questions from their friends. But as Bruce looked around he noted everyone looked a bit older, haggard and grim rather than the youthful faces he remembered. Even Tony, whose childlike exuberance seemed unending, looked worn, with deeper bags under his eyes and more lines to was the product of a little more than insomnia.

Not only that but when otherwise unoccupied he would glance to Steve every now and again with a grimace that seemed to be mirrored back at him by the captain.

Suddenly a large familiar hand clapped down on his shoulder, startling the scientist as he turned and found himself face to face with Thor.

“Friend Banner, may I request your presence for a moment?”

“Oh, yeah sure. What’s up Thor?”

The god of Thunder smiled lightly before taking Bruce’s hand and leading him out to the balcony. “I-Is something wrong?” Bruce murmured.

Thor’s upper lip curled a bit as he shrugged too mechanically to be nonchalant. “Not presently, however, I wished to ask for your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

Thor nodded. “Is it just me, or does our team seem to be divided down the middle?”

Bruce exhaled, feeling strangely relieved but newly apprehensive at the same time as he glanced back to see half their friends on one side of the room and the other half at the other. “No it’s not just you, but I get the feeling they won’t tell us the truth about it if we ask.”

Thor nodded grimly before turning and offering Bruce a bright smile. “I’m sure they will come together again soon. Loki and I have managed to reconcile our brotherhood so I’m certain the rift will mend with time.”

Bruce gave Thor a small smile and nodded despite the unease knotting his stomach. “I hope you’re right…”

-

Thor wasn’t right.

It had been about a month since their return but it felt like years had passed and Bruce was exhausted.

It seemed like each day brought new reasons for his team to be at each other’s throats, whether it warranted an argument or not. Not only that but with Thor having an entire kingdom to run and educate on the ways of earth, Bruce found himself alienated from his comrades in the time past. So he couldn’t help but feel a little melancholy without a certain God by his side after all that time together in space.

And so Bruce was left to deal with the uncomfortable tempers of his teammates alone.

Now while Bruce himself wasn’t confrontational, he also avoided confrontation whenever possible. Though being strong-armed into the Avenger’s team did little to allow him to lead a peaceful lifestyle. Either way, some of his companions blood ran a little hot compared to his, and many of them refused to back down from a challenge.

He did his best to avoid it under the best of circumstances, and at worst, he had to either find an excuse to leave the room or sneak back to his room or the lab while whoever was arguing was occupied.

It seemed to work well enough for a while, but one day it all came to a bit of a head.

Tony and Bruce were doing business as usual, slumped over their desks and testing new results of different experiments before the sliding door opened and Steve walked in, his eyes downcast on a piece of paper.

“Hey Bruce did you manage to make any progress on-”

Steve paused as he looked up from whatever was in his folder and made eye contact with Tony from where he’d risen from his seat. “Ah, I see your busy.”

Tony bristled slightly and inclined his head in Bruce’s direction. “Yeah, we’re busy. We always are. What’d he ask you to work on Bruce?”

Bruce froze as a familiar feeling of dread began to knot his stomach and the onset of a panic attack cost him his breath. “I, well, That is-”

“Something I asked him to look into. Privately.” Steve interrupted.  

“Oh yeah? Are we not a team Cap?” Tony sneered.

“Why don’t you ask yourself that question.”

“Why you-”

From then on it was just white noise as both Tony’s and Steve’s voices rose with the tension in the room and Bruce did all that he could to try act nonchalant. But as the argument grew more and more heated Bruce felt the pull of hysteria gnawing at his psyche as random splashes of color flashed behind his retinas.

Tony and Steve didn’t seem to notice the chair clatter backward as Bruce bolted out from his desk and stumbled into the hall, using the walls for support.

Bruce managed to get to his room thankfully without encountering anyone else and curled up in the far corner of his bed, grabbing his blankets and encasing himself as he did so.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there in the dark, attempting to calm his frayed senses. He must have been quite out of it, however, he didn’t notice that anyone had entered his room before he felt the bed dip gently.

He reacted violently, nearly jumping out of his skin as he whipped around to see Thor, now standing, with his arms up in a manner that said Bruce had scared him as much as he scared Bruce. But when Bruce registered who it was in the dark he let out a pathetic whine and Thor closed the distance again, sitting close to the trembling scientist and nearly pulling the other man into his lap as he hushed him and rubbed soothing circles into his back.

They stayed like that for quite a while. The sun was setting through the windows when Bruce finally pulled back to look Thor in the face.

The God smiled gently down at him and brushed a stray curl from Bruce’s forehead. “Feeling better?”

Bruce felt his face heat as Thor’s hand lightly brushed his head before returning to its previous position on his hip, but when he tried to pull away Thor just hauled him closer. “I-I, yes? Yeah, I’m sorry you had to see that. After you, uh, yknow, you finally got the time to come to visit. Not, not that running your kingdoms not important, and then teaching everyone earth stuff and-”

Thor shushed the rambling scientist gently. “It’s quite alright, I’m pleased to have been here in your trying time.”

“Oh yeah… that.” Bruce replied, crestfallen.

Thor waited for a few moments before prompting; “May I ask what happened to upset you so?”

Bruce flinched ever so slightly and turned to tell Thor no, but when he looked into his eyes, there was something there, that made him want to talk. “I. It’s a long story.”

“I’d wait years.”

“I-It’s not a pleasant one either.”

Thor placed his hand over Bruce’s squeezing tightly. “I know.”

-

Thor was quiet for the duration of Bruce’s story, his face remained unchanged for the majority of it but at certain cruel and difficult parts, Bruce noted the slight clench to his jaw. And when he finished Thor let out a soft huff like he was scared if he was too loud Bruce would run away.

And Bruce, almost felt better at the end of it all. It was like something exceedingly heavy had been lifted off him, and since he’d grown accustomed to the weight he felt like he could float away.

These things wouldn’t solve themselves overnight, but it was more of a start than he’d had in his entire life.

Bruce smiled at Thor and when Thor glanced at him, his pensive expression melted as he mirrored his expression. “I’m glad you told me, Bruce. I know this was not easy, but I do hope you feel that you may call upon me any time for anything, and I will return to you.” Thor squeezed his hand around where it was resting on Bruce’s and the scientists cheeks reddened but his smile didn’t fade.

“Now then,” Thor began as he reluctantly moved Bruce from his lap. “There is something I must discuss with the team. Though I assure you nothing you’ve told me will be heard from outside ears.”

“Y-You’re not mad are you?”

“Of course not.” Thor answered with a smile as lightning flashed outside. “I just need a moment.”

Thor left Bruce where he was sitting and went out into the main part of the tower, but it only took about 15 minutes before his curiosity got the better of him. Bruce snuck into the hall outside the living room and managed to catch the tailwind of what must have been a massive lecture.

“-peoples lives are at stake due to your childishness. If we were to get attacked now there would be no way you all would be able to act as one and would most likely make things worse rather than better. I’m not telling you to erase the problems nor am I expecting things to be fixed by morning, however, you are obviously all here with the intent to work together again. But that cannot be done if you won’t put the effort towards it. Meet in the middle as Loki and I have done or else you will bring everyone else down with you. Act like the adults you claim to be and cease your useless fighting lest I take Bruce on a holiday and leave you all to do his work by yourselves.”

A chorus of “no’s” had Bruce stifling a laugh from the shadows, but Thor’s wink in his direction had him grinning.

[jaiellesnorthkoreanlitblog]

Ten Interesting North Korean Novels.

1). FREIND

Paek Nam-nyong’s Friend is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the story unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage. The novel delves into its protagonists’ past, describing how the couple first fell in love and then how their marriage deteriorated over the years. It chronicles the toll their acrimony takes on their son and their careers alongside the story of the judge’s own marital troubles.(Googlebooks)

2). THE KOREAN WAR: A HISTORY

For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953 that has long been overshadowed by World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror. But as Bruce Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight that still haunts contemporary events. And in a very real way, although its true roots and repercussions continue to be either misunderstood, forgotten, or willfully ignored, it is the war that helped form modern America's relationship to the world. With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its start as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan's occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America's post-World War II occupation of Korea, the untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and the powerful militaries organized and equipped by America and the Soviet Union in that divided land. He tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, and exposes as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides and the "oceans of napalm" dropped on the North by U.S. forces in a remarkably violent war that killed as many as four million Koreans, two thirds of whom were civilians. In sobering detail, The Korean War chronicles a U.S. home front agitated by Joseph McCarthy, where absolutist conformity discouraged open inquiry and citizen dissent. Cumings incisively ties our current foreign policy back to Korea: an America with hundreds of permanent military bases abroad, a large standing army, and a permanent national security state at home, the ultimate result of a judicious and limited policy of containment evolving into an ongoing and seemingly endless global crusade. Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential. (Googlebooks)

3). WITHOUT YOU THERE IS NO US.

Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields—except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, all under the watchful eye of the regime. (Googlebooks)

4). THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON.

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the North Korean state soon recognize the boy’s loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.” Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love.(Amazon)

5). THE GIRL WITH SEVEN NAMES.

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”?

Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family.(Googlebooks)

6). THE ACCUSATION

Authored by an anonymous writer and smuggled out of North Korea, The Accusation is the first work of fiction to come out of the country and a moving portrayal of life under a totalitarian regime.

In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung’s totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and published around the world, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window into this most secretive of countries.

Bandi’s profound, deeply moving, vividly characterized stories tell of ordinary men and women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend and loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the theatre that is their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare.(Googlebooks)

7). A CORPSE IN KORYO.

Against the backdrop of a totalitarian North Korea, one man unwillingly uncovers the truth behind series of murders, and wagers his life in the process. Sit on a quiet hillside at dawn among the wildflowers; take a picture of a car coming up a deserted highway from the south. Simple orders for Inspector O, until he realizes they have led him far, far off his department's turf and into a maelstrom of betrayal and death. North Korea's leaders are desperate to hunt down and eliminate anyone who knows too much about a series of decades-old kidnappings and murders---and Inspector O discovers too late he has been sent into the chaos. This is a world where nothing works as it should, where the crimes of the past haunt the present, and where even the shadows are real. A corpse in Pyongyang's main hotel---the Koryo---pulls Inspector O into a confrontation of bad choices between the devils he knows and those he doesn't want to meet. A blue button on the floor of a hotel closet, an ice blue Finnish lake, and desperate efforts by the North Korean leadership set Inspector O on a journey to the edge of a reality he almost can't survive. Like Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy and the Inspector Arkady Renko novels, A Corpse in the Koryo introduces another unfamiliar world, a perplexing universe seemingly so alien that the rules are an enigma to the reader and even, sometimes, to Inspector O. Author James Church weaves a story with beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a country and a people he knows by heart after decades as an intelligence officer. This is a chilling portrayal that, in the end, leaves us wondering if what at first seemed unknowable may simply be too familiar for comfort.(Googlebooks)

8). THE TWO KOREANS.

Ever since Korea was first divided at the end of World War II, the tension between its northern and southern halves has riveted—and threatened to embroil—the rest of the world. In this landmark history, now thoroughly revised and updated in conjunction with Korea expert Robert Carlin, veteran journalist Don Oberdorfer grippingly describes how a historically homogenous people became locked in a perpetual struggle for supremacy—and how they might yet be reconciled.(Googlebooks)

9). ESCAPE FROM NORTH KOREA.

From the world’s most repressive state comes rare good news: the escape to freedom of a small number of its people. It is a crime to leave North Korea. Yet increasing numbers of North Koreans dare to flee. They go first to neighboring China, which rejects them as criminals, then on to Southeast Asia or Mongolia, and finally to South Korea, the United States, and other free countries. They travel along a secret route known as the new underground railroad. With a journalist’s grasp of events and a novelist’s ear for narrative, Melanie Kirkpatrick tells the story of the North Koreans’ quest for liberty. Travelers on the new underground railroad include women bound to Chinese men who purchased them as brides, defectors carrying state secrets, and POWs from the Korean War held captive in the North for more than half a century. Their conductors are brokers who are in it for the money as well as Christians who are in it to serve God. The Christians see their mission as the liberation of North Korea one person at a time. Just as escaped slaves from the American South educated Americans about the evils of slavery, the North Korean fugitives are informing the world about the secretive country they fled. Escape from North Korea describes how they also are sowing the seeds for change within North Korea itself. Once they reach sanctuary, the escapees channel news back to those they left behind. In doing so, they are helping to open their information-starved homeland, exposing their countrymen to liberal ideas, and laying the intellectual groundwork for the transformation of the totalitarian regime that keeps their fellow citizens in chains.(Googlebooks)

10). YOUR REPUBLIC IS CALLING YOU.

Your Republic is Calling You  is a Korean novel written by Kim Young-ha. Borrowing the title of René Magritte’s series of paintings, Empire of Light, Bichui jeguk is about a North Korean spy stationed in South Korea and the day he is summoned back to North Korea. The novel both overviews the societal changes that Korea went through from the 1980s to the 2000s and follows the fate of a man whose fate becomes wholly unknown to him.(Wikipedia)