#like I understand it can feel like you are constantly being abandoned or rejected especially if you have rejection sensitivity

[cervinelich]

"Everyone always leaves/abandons/rejects me =C" is such a huge red flag for me. Saw someone saying this on social media the other day and knee-jerk instinct was "blockblockblock"

[rising-psyche]

Jeffrey Dahmer and Borderline Personality Disorder.

{Borderline personality disorder is one of its diagnoses, a part and not the only one}.

Of all the mental diagnoses that Jeffrey Dahmer received before and even after his death, Borderline personality disorder is the one in which you see meaning in everything if you investigate what his motivations for his crimes were, as he declared. Not only that, but how his behavior appeared in his childhood and especially in his adolescence.

• What is Borderline Personality Disorder?

It is a mental disorder that is quite difficult to deal with for those who have it, characterized by emotional instability that manifests itself in all personal areas of that person. There is a hypersensitivity to everything where the bearer will always feel things around them in a greater way than others, which is why feelings and emotions are almost constantly on the surface - which makes Borderline people extremely intense.

These excesses that the disorder causes are far from being just something about the individual who has the problem, but something in which he sees himself under power to the point that his "overly emotional sense" spreads to his interpersonal relationships or the way he sees any contact with any other person where he feels the need for affection and permanence.

— The symptoms:

Extreme emotional instability

Impulsiveness

Constant insecurity

Feelings of worthlessness and self-deprecating thoughts

Negative image of yourself

Frequent fear of rejection and abandonment

Tendency to self-destructive habits such as drinking excessively, taking drugs, etc.

Strong irritability, aggressiveness when something upsets you and severe anxiety

Tendency to isolate

Need for affirmation to feel safe

If we look closely at the symptoms and how the disorder dominates the sufferer, it is easy to understand why this diagnosis is so logical in Dahmer's case. When you read about his life and what he himself said during interrogations, you see that he demonstrated all of these characteristics long before he became a murderer.

The reasons why the disorder may arise are vague to say, but generally the incentives come from the lack of family structure where the person grew up as a child, moments of maternal or paternal neglect and even witnessing the separation of parents during childhood - especially if it's a turbulent divorce like it was between Joyce and Lionel Dahmer.

And here I will explain why this can interfere with that child developing the disorder:

There is no doubt that Joyce and Lionel Dahmer were often more concerned with settling their own issues than giving the necessary attention to the effects that the problems between them could have on their children, and this was most triggered by Jeffrey. Descriptions of what he was like are typical, seen as withdrawn, shy and quiet, but his parents probably thought it was just "his way" and nothing more. Some of this may be true, some may not. Jeffrey never knew how to express himself or say at least a little about how he felt, so he expressed it in other ways. Perhaps the trigger for his mind to slowly become ill is the fact that he blamed himself for his mother's illnesses, which got worse after his birth (this is a common Borderline behavior that puts oneself in a position of "burden" and uselessness).

"Jeff's response was classic. He blamed himself for his mother's illness. He had known for as long as he could remember that she was depressed after her birth and that he had caused her illness. He must also have caused each relapse. He couldn't articulate his pain, for fear of pushing his mother over the edge again. He had to keep to himself, say little and do even less, to protect her, to keep some calm in the house. The more she saw of him, the worse it would be for her. His brother David said: '[Jeff] never learned to be open with his feelings of frustration…he went into the woods alone and cut down trees for firewood.' They could hear it banging against tree trunks from inside the house. It felt like vented anger". (The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, Brian Masters)

Access to the emotion of anger was already present from an early age, but Jeffrey suffocated everything he felt for himself and we see how this continued throughout his life until, fatally, he lost control of everything.

When his mother divorced his father and left with David, even if Dahmer didn't express it at that moment when his mother asked him not to tell his father that they were leaving, it is clear that the feeling of abandonment hit him. His mother asked him to accompany them, yes, but it's fair to speculate that perhaps Jeffrey wanted her to give up and everyone to stay home.

"He was now almost eighteen, and perhaps old enough to look after himself, but it was significant that he was not consulted, and also that the Dahmers were so involved in their quarrel that they did not realize how dangerously disconnected their eldest son was now". (The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, Brian Masters)

Many times, there were episodes of inattention and negligence on the part of their parents that would make an increasing difference from the beginning to the years. It's safe to say that his aversion to abandonment or at least his suspicion of it came from a solid foundation when he experienced it between his parents. When Dahmer decided to isolate himself so strongly and over time, his contained desperation for attention and some affection took on gigantic proportions and would finally become evident in a tragic way.

Dahmer's indifference during adolescence, from another angle, was just a camouflage because he refused expression. The disorder forms from adolescence to early adulthood, and here we have another characteristic point: obsessions as an occupation of the inner void. Dahmer developed his fascination with dead animal bones and had a cabin with an animal cemetery where he spent most of his hours. This can be explained as an escape, it was his first true interest and when he met him, he dedicated himself to it, worrying Lionel Dahmer who wanted his son to leave his own world instead of just experimenting with animal bodies and bones.

Another detail is how Jeffrey always used alcohol as an alternative to alleviate what he felt and didn't express it. During the period of separation, his self-destructive habit largely increased. So, he resorted to isolation and drinking as his technique to not suffer so much from the divorce.

It is surprisingly common to see this contrast in the formation of Borderline personality disorder: on one side there is a true purposeful loneliness that others may associate with "not caring" when, in reality, on the other side there is a great wound and a lot to be said. It's like a silenced scream.

"It was my way of blocking out any painful thoughts, just putting on an attitude of not caring or pretending not to care, to spare myself the pain of what was going on with the divorce. Maybe it started then. It was effective, it worked." (Dahmer in The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, Brian Masters).

• Inside the crimes.

It is by emptying the mind to look at Dahmer's perspective on his actions that we can find one of the feelings that best fits this diagnosis.

Unlike someone who would kill simply for cruelty and pleasure, in his testimony, Dahmer stated that he killed because he wanted those boys to "remain." There were the morbid fantasies and again, the screaming urgency of not wanting to be alone again. He made everyone sleep with sleeping pills because according to him, that's the only way to make them stay as long as he wanted. Whenever one of them said they needed to go at that time or mentioned that they needed to go the next day, for Dahmer, it was like a threat where the desperate feeling of not being left screamed. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, one of the most latent behaviors of a Borderline is the panic of being left, abandoned. Here, of course, Jeffrey created criminal means in search of company, but if you look at the beginning and how he negatively withdrew throughout his life, in addition to dealing with dark thoughts and the prison of painful feelings, you realize how impossible it was that a good result would come out of it. He was seriously ill and no one knew either because of him or others who had investigated him before and although they did, they did not make a deeper study of his mind when Dahmer said he was "in significant psychological distress".

Even in how he kept the victims' remains because he "felt their presence like that" and didn't want to get rid of them because he "wanted to spend more time with them", there is great awareness of how a person with the disorder can be so desperate for a minimum of affection and contact that is unimaginable. Obviously Dahmer's problems were several and all complex, but the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder for Dahmer is coherent and assertive based on his speeches, history and also what, in his distorted vision, he intended when he murdered.

*****

The impulsiveness in his actions is also quite evident, since Dahmer's murders in particular were completely reckless and became sloppy. And about this lack of care that he started to have, we see how Jeffrey was someone who really had his self-esteem destroyed because everything that involved him, he didn't care what happened to him - part of it because he knew what he was doing was wrong, the distinction between right and wrong was never lacking (for this and several other reasons it is irrational to diagnose him as a psychopath, he was many things but psychopathy really doesn't fit).

It is important to highlight that the overwhelming feeling of emptiness is one of the "ghosts" of BPD, causing the individual to view his own existence as something often without purpose or meaning. It is an internal emptiness where nothing truly satisfies him, it is as if Dahmer saw no reason for anything on a daily basis because one of the things that depressed him was precisely this dense emptiness.

During school, as illustrated in the book "My Friend Dahmer", despite his shyness, it is notable how Jeffrey had long shown wanting attention and wanting to belong somewhere when he played embarrassing pranks. This is nothing more, within the Borderline spectrum, than the manifestation of a much observed feeling, which is the need for validation, belonging, to "fit in" with other people. This was his way of getting attention at the time.

Irritability always existed, but he rudely stifled his emotions and expressed them non-verbally, which would have been appropriate on several occasions. Instead, for example, hitting tree trunks with pieces of trunk was more viable.

It is a certainty that Jeffrey Dahmer was a Borderline and this can be confirmed only by evaluating the behavior, his triggers for crimes, childhood and adolescence occasions and others. This is by no means all, Dahmer had an absolutely vast psychic field and this is what makes so many people interested in him/his story.

[zoeykallus]

The Bad Batch x Reader HCs - Abandonment Issues

As requested by @golden-nyx-ghost I hope I'm not too far off the mark 😅

Warnings: Mentioned Anxiety/Implied Traumatic Experience/Hurt/Comfort/Also; Crosshair (I mean strong language)

_________

Ko-Fi (If you feel like giving me some coffee)

_________

I had to do a little research on that topic and thought I'd share what I found.

Abandonment issues is an informal term that describes a strong fear of losing loved ones or of them leaving a relationship. This fear can result from trauma, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.

Most common “symptoms”

worry that friends or partners will leave them

constantly look for signs that others do not really like them

need frequent reassurance that others love them

always try to please others, even at their own expense

give too much in relationships, or have a lack of boundaries

stay in unhealthy relationships due to a fear of being alone

What it can do to a person:

Have anxiety: Both children and adults with fear of abandonment may feel chronically anxious, especially if they feel a relationship is about to end.

Experience relationship challenges: Anxiety about abandonment can alter a person’s perceptions of their relationship, causing them to see problems where none exist. They may be sensitive to any sign of rejection, or find it difficult to trust that their partner will not leave. This can result in clingy behavior, which may impact the relationship.

Communicate poorly: People with abandonment issues may develop harmful communication techniques to ease their anxiety. For example, they may engage in attention-seeking behavior to get the love they feel they might lose.

Engage in harmful behavior: People with a fear of abandonment can sometimes try to prevent their partner from leaving them through manipulative or even abusive behavior. For example, a person may try to prevent someone from socializing with others. This is a form of coercive control.

Source

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AC: Of course, there are different forms of this problem, and it doesn't have to go to the extreme right away. At this point, we assume that no chronic, negative (harmful) behaviors have manifested yet.

_____________

Hunter

He is often quiet, introverted, but unlike you might think, he listens very carefully, is alert, attentive. He does not miss when your mood changes, and you are suddenly unsettled. Hunter reads your body language, notices every little thing. But he doesn't want to barge in, so he first tries to find out what makes you tick, to learn something about your past.

Gradually, he realizes what's bothering you, why you're sometimes so tense and overprotective when you communicate with him, why you sometimes barely let him out of your sight.

"You're afraid," he says unexpectedly.

You look at him, startled; you weren't really aware of it yourself. But now that he brings it up, you feel it abundantly clear.

"You won't lose me, you won't lose any of us. You won't get rid of us that easily."

You blink and say softly, "I've heard that before."

Hunter sighs softly, but smiles at you.

"You will see and learn with time that your past can't determine your future, it can only if you let it. You can count on us"

He grabs your shoulder and looks deep into your eyes.

"Do you trust me?"

You can't help but nod, Hunter's eyes, his expression, you feel so close to him.

"Good, have a little patience, that feeling of security you crave, it will come with time".

Echo

With him, you can talk openly about everything, he is a good listener, and he will always try to find a solution to the problems discussed between you. Echo can well understand what this fear of being abandoned or losing people is and how it feels. As a soldier, one inevitably deals with it a lot. Echo lost a great many of his brothers, not only to war, but also to Order 66.

"Some things we can't hold on to, no matter how hard we cling to them. That's a realization that's hard, but it comes eventually. You have to come to terms with it, make friends with it."

You wrap your arms around your body as if you need to hold on to yourself.

Echo sits down next to you and continues, "None of us want to leave you, but sometimes that's not in our power to decide. Voluntarily, we will never turn our backs on you. But you have to come to terms in a healthy way with the fact that some things are beyond our control."

You sigh softly and say, "I know, I just care that you don't seek distance from me because of me."

Echo laughs softly and says, "You're not getting rid of us that easily."

Wrecker

This cheerful guy is also a good listener and a good distraction. Wrecker can always carry you away and get you out of your darkest worries and thoughts. But he can also listen to you seriously and calmly when you need it.

He is attentive and much more empathetic than some might think.

Wrecker listens and nods in understanding.

"I know it's not the same, but I also sometimes fear losing my brothers. Well, as a soldier, you just worry about the things that might happen in the field. But you can't let that make you crazy."

You smile wryly at him.

"We certainly won't let you down on purpose," Wrecker says with conviction.

"Are you sure?"

"You're not losing us, we're here for you, every one of us," he says with a smile, thrusting a box of Mantel-mix into your hand.

You look up at him and say, "I've thought that about other people too."

Wrecker says perkily, "But we're not other people, we're Clone Force 99, and we deliver what we promise."

Tech

"Change is a fundamental part of life. People come and go, sometimes even those who are particularly close to us. That is quite normal. To be afraid of it is pointless."

You frown and say critically, "Aren't you afraid of suddenly being alone at some point?"

Tech goes into himself for a moment, thinks, then answers, "Not really. It's relatively unlikely that I'll suddenly find myself all alone at some point."

"Couldn't that theoretically happen to anyone?" you ask.

He frowns and says, "Well, theoretically it can, but there's also a probability factor."

You raise your eyebrows.

"Are you trying to tell yourself that right now because you're actually afraid of it too?"

Tech looks at you indignantly.

"I'm not afraid. There's no reason to be, and there's no reason for you to be. Why would we abandon you?"

You shrug, scenarios coming to mind.

"It's enough when priorities change, meeting new people in someone's life, that's often enough to split groups," you say seriously.

Tech hesitates.

"Well… yes, that may be true…"

"But?"

He sighs and says, "If you let that anxiety consume you, you can't enjoy the time you have with the people around you at all. This constant anxious tension is unhealthy"

"That may be," you admit quietly.

Tech hands you back your holopad he fixed for you.

"Here. Good as new," he says with a small smile.

"Thanks Tech, and thanks for listening".

"Anytime."

Crosshair

He has already recognized your behavior and that you cling does not agree with him at all. He can't handle it very well. Crosshair at least tries, in his own way.

"What do you want me to say? People leave us sometimes, and sometimes they leave us behind".

He himself has already had this painful experience, and actually he knows exactly how it feels.

"Hurts like a bitch, but it will pass. You can't let that define your life"

"That's easy for you to say," you sigh, dropping into your bunk.

Crosshair sighs deeply before sitting down on the bunk across from yours that actually belongs to Hunter and looks at you.

"No, I'm not just saying that. I've been through this experience too, I know it sucks, and I know you can get through it if you don't let it consume you."

You sit up and look at him questioningly.

"And how did you do that? How did you deal with it?"

Crosshair sighs again, shakes his head, and says grumpily, "You might not want to take an example from that"

"Why not?"

"My approach was unhealthy, too," he says reluctantly.

As you look at him questioningly, he continues, "Echo would probably say I'm stubborn as shit, but that wasn't it, not quite."

"Then what was it?" you ask cautiously, sensing that you're on sensitive ground here.

Crosshair looks around as if to make sure the two of you are alone. Finally, he looks at you again.

"I didn't cling to other people, but to being a soldier, to my supposed duty. The reason why my brothers and I actually parted ways to begin with. I plunged deeper into it, so deep that soon I was no longer myself. The whole process was painful, for me and others, you should not take an example from that".

You don't say the question that is on the tip of your tongue, but he answers it anyway, as if he felt it.

"Enjoy what you have, hold on to the positive things, not the negative. Deal with it, but deal with it sensibly. You can't force anything, neither that people stay with you nor that old wounds heal. Everything needs time and some work. But you can be sure, we would never abandon you willingly, none of us".

@rintheemolion

@andyoufollowyourheart @clone-whore-99

@brynhildrmimi @kaliel2310

@misogirl828 @tech-deck

@meshla-madalene

@chxpsi

@thebahdbitch

@nahoney22 @ladykatakuri

@darkangel4121

@ttzamara

@arctrooper69

@padawancat97

@agenteliix

@allsystemsblue

@palliateclaw

@either-madness-or-brilliance

@ortizshinkaroff

@andy-solo1

@hunterssecretrecipe

@heyitsaloy

@greaser-wolf

@extrahotpixels

@hated-by-me

@hunterxcrosshair

@malicemercy

@bebopsworld

@echos-girlfriend

@cpnt616

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@sleepycreativewriter

@projectdreamwalker

@1vlouds

@starwarsnerd111

[fernlessbastard]

im the psychotic wilbur anon (forgot to note im paranoid schitzo and i see myself so much in him ANYWAYS) BUT CWILBUR BPD FOR THE WORLD. (< ALSO BPD.) hottest take is that him and quackity are bpd4bpd and a huge part of their relationship is a learning curve figuring out how to navigate communication with each other and each others splits and such. i also think that wilbur tends to black split on HIMSELF more often, and quackity tends to black split on OTHERS more often. i also think that wilbur white splitting on quackity would be a whole nother thing they have to deal with, with wilbur suddenly being like "you are literally god to me and the only person who loves and cares about and understands me you are the greatest human being alive please let me worship you i love you so much" and quackity just being like "woag dude" LIKE. also im so so so for real wilbur has so much paranoid schitzo swag i dont know how to explain that this man is fucking TEXTBOOK paranoia and he has so many paranoid anxiety habits that make me feel insane. i think he always makes sure to lock the door and check the lock like six times when he comes home and he cant sleep at night if hes alone in the house so he barely slept in paradise and didnt sleep right until he moved in with quackity, i think he has really severe paranoia about imposters and intruders and also barely slept and was constantly on high alert in pogtopia and he could only really sleep when quackity visited or if tommy or technoblade shared a mat with him, i think he also has delusions of grandeur that he has to deal with a lot and reality checking him can be really dangerous especially coupled with his bpd because he then SNAPS to black splitting on himself so hard he makes himself sick, ohhhh cwilbur my sickly man i adore you so sorry for being insane in your inbox

The first ask in question

(Ok so as a disclaimer obviously headcanons are personal and there's no wrong ones and you're valid for reading it this way)

With Wilbur I very much agree, but I don't see bpd in Quackity tbh. It more so looks like ADHD alongside shit like abandonment issues, being invalidated his entire life, being generally overworked and having no healthy outlet for his feelings, having trouble identifying said feelings in the first place, etc - all of which are very common in/characteristic of ADHD. I don't remember him ever splitting. His shitty love life makes sense with ADHD too - deficiency of dopamine makes it very easy to mistake the dopamine boost from "new person to talk to" for a crush (believe me). Hypersexuality is also common in ADHD, as well as emotional dysregulation, alexithymia (difficulty/inability to identify one's own emotions), overstimulation, shutdowns, etc, which can occasionally resemble splitting, but is very different, and works through exhaustion and frustration rather than delusions. Various types of paranoia as well as heightened irritability are also very common, especially when your senses are clouded by sensory/information/emotional overstimulation. And especially the splitting outwards part just doesn't sit right with me - maybe i missed a stream or sth but I haven't seen anything like that in him. Furthermore I'd actually say he generally points negative feelings/breakdowns etc inwards for the most part - and when ADHD is being pointed inwards it usually leads exactly to developing/heightening shit like paranoia, rejection sensitivity, hypersexuality, emotional dysregulation, alexithymia, etc. He can snap and isolate himself, but it's very different to splitting. ALSO - very important part - Quackity doesn't exhibit mania episodes. He occasionally exhibits the type of hyperactivity and excitement representative of ADHD, but it's never this state of delirium with feelings of grandeur, delusions, etc. Wilbur does exhibit mania episodes - pretty heavily at that - and the contrast makes it pretty apparent that Quackity's case is different.

THAT BEING SAID I don't have bpd, so for a perspective from someone who does, here's a rant from @octobre-ackedia: <<On so many levels, Quackity doesn't show bpd symptoms. Not all abandonment issues are borderline personality disorder. I don't think I need to say it, but bpd takes over the entire life of a person, it's not just trauma. And I don't really have much to elaborate on with the ask, mostly showing Wilbur's bpd traits but that's for an entirely different rant, and I need to chill out. Quackity doesn't black split on others. It was not shown a single time. He slowly loses trust in people, he builds walls, but that's not splitting. He doesn't start to irrationally hate everyone around himself, think that people are just cruel and bad, and more importantly don't care about him, suddenly becoming aggressive towards them. He backs off a little bit more with each disappointment in people around him, ending up not so much hating, as avoiding human relationships. And he doesn't have a favourite person, not even Slime who was just so perfectly there to be an example of that. Quackity learnt how to trust the guy, building a friendship, but never became truly "obsessed" with him. He grieved his death, tried to save him, but FFS, that's not a favourite person, that's how human relationships work (or more so, hybrid relationships haha). He doesn't get manic. You could say he becomes strongly confident, hypersexual or overworking himself, but the important part in it is the reasoning. He doesn't start believing he is some sort of a saviour for the world and can build a perfect country, or that he doesn't need anyone for that. He starts a project and might go overboard with it, but it's never this... aggressive as with bpd. With the 9 most visible symptoms, he has maybe 3 of them, which are all clear reactions to specific situations. Unstable relationships? Schlatt became an abuser, Karl and Sapnap abandoned him, he never really influenced any of that happening. The abandonment issues and feeling of emptiness are simple reactions to that trauma. His moves are calculated, he doesn't really show any mood swings, he has a quite clear image of himself, he doesn't experience any suicide ideation or shows extreme examples of self harm/putting himself in danger. And what about the part of splitting when he pushes people away after getting scared of becoming too close? He always stays, in the end. Even when he tried so hard not to get attached to Slime. Where's the white splitting? Where's anything, really. I still stand with the headcanon of them having to navigate a hard relationship, with both of them experiencing severe mental issues, but it's not bpd4bpd. Q is my depressed ADHD bitch, who struggles with trauma.>>

Also I'd say Wilbur's heavily autism coded too - as a bonus it does frequently "strengthen" bpd cause of the type of trauma autistic people experience. Q I see as very much ADHD but I also low-key hc him as somewhere on the spectrum too, though I'm not as heavily set on that

Tldr while Wilbur absolutely clearly has some severe mental issues, Quackity's seem (to me at least) to be more easily and consistently explainable by a combination of ADHD (maybe low support needs autism) and some (pretty damn severe (canonically - looking mainly at all the abandonment + sa hints)) trauma

[seriousbrat]

Do you find it difficult to write for Peter? I imagine it's hard to find the right balance in his characterization, especially considering people will be expecting him to be either totally useless and hated by the group or being totally equal and adored. I do think you do it very well though, he seems pretty realistic and in character imo

Ooh thank you so much for saying so! I really love this question.

The answer is sort of, sometimes! Honestly I don't find his voice difficult at all, I really enjoy writing him, but what I think can be a struggle with Peter is that he isn't a character that (initially) moves the plot along, compared to the others. He follows his friends, he trails behind, he's generally a passive character, so it's hard to give him active things to do within a story. I understand why people have a hard time knowing what to do with him, and either make him exit stage left during most scenes or just kind of eternally hover in the background lol. I know I've done that myself, and honestly, even though I think it was okay in part 2, it's part 3 where his arc really started to come together for me.

I'm obviously talking about the Hogwarts years here, since post-Hogwarts he has a pretty clear arc-- so during the Hogwarts years, it's all about setting up that arc, building up his motivations and foreshadowing his eventual betrayal. The way I see it he's already starting to do things that are basically small-scale versions of the betrayal, but because these actions are so minor they go completely unnoticed by the rest.

In my fic the first major turning point for Peter is during a Death Eater attack in their sixth year, when he turns into a rat and escapes, abandoning his friends who he knows are desperately trying to find him. This is never revealed to the rest of them, and Peter is at this early stage developing a habit of running from conflict and lying to his friends. During his seventh year he feels isolated from his friends and starts spending more time on his own as a rat, even failing to show up for his NEWT and lying about it later-- and in many ways that avoidance of real life is more comfortable for him. Obviously, the most extreme version of avoiding real-life consequences in this way is when he frames Sirius and then spends 12 years living as a rat.

He's terrified-- of losing his friends, of rejection, of failure, of the war-- and yet his fear is shameful to him, because cowardice is considered shameful by the in-group (Sirius and James) so he can't admit it to anyone or really face up to it. Instead he avoids it until it's too late, and then he avoids it some more by turning traitor and then by framing Sirius, then by running to Voldemort, etc etc until his death. It's almost like he's constantly in survival mode and always looking for a way out, while finding himself in situations that he feels are beyond his control but are really a result of his own avoidance.

Personally I did struggle a bit thinking of ways for Peter to move the story along or specific plot points for him during the Hogwarts years, basically ways to make him relevant, but overall I knew he was going to start unraveling early on. Peter's arc is initially very internal, nobody is ever aware of what's truly going on with him so unlike others it's difficult to tie his arc to the main plot-- but at the same time he's very observant, so he's a good vehicle through which to view other characters. He is constantly taking in information and thinking hard about that information, more than anyone else realises, which makes him a very good spy.

It can be difficult to find a balance with Peter though! As you mentioned, his standing in the group is tricky to get right, because it's somewhere between an idyllic, equal friendship and total rejection. They care about him, he is a member of their group, but they can also be disparaging, and they have no idea what's going on with him internally. They aren't consciously overlooking him, but he gets overlooked all the same. I don't think this kind of dynamic is that uncommon in real life tbh.

[morsesnotes]

A little ramble about Joan and Morse...

[There will be spoilers if you haven't finished Endeavor]

A common take I've seen in this fandom is that Joan was waiting around for him. That Morse had all these chances he didn't take to express his feelings. So her shutting him down in S5/S6 was totally his own fault. I disagree with this and don't really understand it.

Here's why:

They only start getting to know each other properly in S2, and Morse has a girlfriend at that point.

Morse becomes aware of his feelings for Joan at the end of Coda, and he went to the Thursdays' house immediately after. It seemed like he intended to talk about it with Joan, but she was clearly traumatized, and not in a place to deal with romantic declarations. She'd already decided she was leaving. What if he said how much he cared and then she was gone? When you think about the abandonment issues this guy has, and the fact she is literally leaving him in that moment, can you blame him for being afraid?

Nevertheless, he's openly welling up in front of her (a very odd thing for a man in the mid-60s to do) and telling her if she needs anything to let him know. There's no way a woman wouldn't pick up on this. Not to mention constantly putting her life before his at the bank.

When Joan contacts him in the vaguest form possible, it's enough for him to do exactly what he said he would. He goes out of his way to find her and indicates there's something between them that can happen. He tells her he cares what happens to her and whether or not she's in his life. Joan makes him leave.

Morse proposes to her. She says no and specifically cites her dad as a reason it would be a bad idea. When the phone rings, Morse is willing to let it go. She's the one who picks it up, brings it to him, and leaves before he can do anything about it.

Even though he doesn't stay at the hospital, the Doctor presumably would've told her he stopped by.

When she moves back to Oxford, he gives her some space, which is entirely correct given what she's been through. He takes up her invitation to her party and makes sure he is there. He's clearly eager at the chance to spend time with her. But then she tells him she wants to set him up with someone else.

Eventually Morse can't take any more rejection, especially with Claudine having left him. He's gotten the message Joan was sending him and lets it go. This is when Joan decides to ask for a coffee. It's the first time she actually initiates something and given the context I think it's perfectly understandable for Morse to turn the offer down? It's fair enough if he doesn't want to get hurt again, isn't it? Idk, Joan's timing here rubbed me the wrong way. It was the mature thing for him to do and showed he saw her as more than a rebound.

Finally, a few weeks later Morse realizes in Icarus that life is too short and takes her up on it, but now she says she's sick of waiting around.

The fan reaction I saw with that moment was, "Yeah you tell him Joan! Fuck him!" And it made me go "???". It's true it wasn't the best timing on his part, but it's not as if he had a habit of turning up when it suited him. She was the one stringing him along, wanting his attention one minute and then rejecting it the next. She could've said she was busy and they could do it some other time in the week. Her reaction was way too harsh.

Don't get me wrong, I love Joan and am by no means the type to view Morse as a poor little Meow Meow who can do no wrong. However, I feel like it's super unfair to put it all on him when Joan was going through her own problems and has her own difficulties expressing herself. He gave her countless opportunities to open up, and she pushed him away. At a certain point, it'd be weird if he ignored her wishes and kept attempting to pursue her. It wouldn't be a good look if he tried stopping her from marrying his friend either. As far as he knows, she's moved on.

Morse may have had trouble saying it out loud, but his actions spoke volumes. Surely that counts for something? He also wrote her that incredibly romantic letter in Zenana and straight up said "Please believe me to have been yours, always". Keep in mind again this is a British man in the 60s-70s and the men around Joan so far have been deeply repressed. Seems pretty forward to me! I simply don't believe this wouldn't spark curiosity in Joan to figure out what he meant. That she'd just wait around until Morse came to visit her to ask about it, and that seeing him in the state he's in, she'd leave it there. This woman who wants passion, who's independent, who cares about the people in her life, who knows how it feels to be saving face while suffering inside, and her literal job involves helping children come to terms with their trauma. Her total passive behavior towards Morse doesn't make sense! Like it doesn't even have to be romantic! They can interact as friends!

He carries a ton of trauma and emotional baggage which makes him terrified of losing what he has with her. Not to mention his respect for Thursday. I don't see why we can't have empathy for both of them.

And yeah, he was being a dick in S6 but again, he's allowed to be angry and in fact it's healthy for him to actually let it out rather than having this idealized view of Joan forever or holding it in like he usually does.

Btw, with his previous behavior taken into account, him not showing up in Uniform was highly unusual and should've been a "What's happened to him?" moment for Joan. Not, "Classic Morse. Works comes first."

Anyway, sorry for the essay and thank you if you read all of it. I just wanted to get all my thoughts together in one place.

[eriexplosion]

I have no real crosshair meta, this is just a pet hc but I feel like the member crosshair was closest to in the batch was wrecker, just from tcw eps. Wrecker is first to defend him, reflex dives to save from from falling off that pipe even with his fear of heights, bullies him with lula (lol) and they seem to constantly friendly compete. He's also visibly angry and hurt back in the kamino fall that he 'didn't even try to come back'. Do u have any thoughts on crosshairs dynamic w tbb before 66?

Oh yes, your pet hc absolutely matches mine on Wrecker & Crosshair being close, and they really do seem to have something special - cutting for length because I have a lot of headcanons about Wrecker & Crosshair specifically before also getting into the rest of the batch.

I feel like Wrecker is the bond that comes easiest to Crosshair in many ways, like he's close with all of the batch but Wrecker seems to be the one he's most open around and the one he gravitates to the most. Probably because Crosshair fears rejection and abandonment, especially from those he loves, and Wrecker has never been casually judgey in his life. He loves the whole batch, they've been together for ages! But Wrecker is the only one that he doesn't occasionally have freakouts about whether he might Leave him somehow.

Which is another reason for Wrecker to back him up through literally anything, even when Crosshair is blatantly in the wrong. No he's not leaving, he's right in here with Crosshair on the stupidest bullshit imaginable. Let's be real, Crosshair has been S P O I L E D by Wrecker letting him get away with shit lol. Hunter defends him on the ship but Wrecker full on refuses to let Crosshair experience a single consequence. Spoiled little bitch. (I love him <3)

Also, I think that their bond is interesting because when you think about it, of the original batch, they're the ones that would have been most trained to act as Weapons. Crosshair is precision targeting, Wrecker is brute force. Hunter is trained as a tracker and a leader, Tech is the engineer and technician. But Crosshair and Wrecker were trained primarily as weapons. Solo trainings would have focused on that for both of them, and it's just another reason to gravitate towards each other. I think they've been together the longest, to the point that they don't really remember exactly when they became a Couple just that it's kind of always been like that.

Which of course means that when Crosshair shoots him, Wrecker is going to have no idea how to handle that. He plays it off but you know it haunts him, that the same man that he's protected through so much fucking shot him.

But where Wrecker is the one that Crosshair is the most emotionally open with, I think Tech is the one that understands him most on an intellectual level. Tech is the one that knows how he thinks and how he processes, even if he doesn't agree with it he follows Crosshair's logic most clearly. So if Crosshair has an actual problem he needs to talk out, I think he was most likely to go to Tech to talk it through. (I also headcanon them both as transmasc, so that's just another way in which they get each other)

I think the latest episode was fascinating with the potential depth it gave Tech and Crosshair's relationship just from one namedrop, because it says that the way Tech can most express his care for Crosshair is to respect his decisions. So before everything went down, it probably manifested in that if Crosshair came to him to discuss something, he'd respect whatever conclusion Crosshair came and decision he made, even if it's one that he thinks is a bad idea.

They understand each other on a pretty basic thought process level but their different emotional expressions can clash weirdly, and they probably took a while to get together because Crosshair would have been PETRIFIED by the thought of Tech not returning the feelings or, god forbid, letting him down easy. He would rather get yelled at than get what he would probably interpret as Pity. It probably took a lot of urging from Wrecker to get anywhere.

Hunter and Crosshair's dynamic interests me because obviously we see them fight a lot in TBB but that is entirely absent in TCW. Like, Crosshair doesn't argue a single order, he follows Hunter without question. I'm reminded of Tech saying 'Maps can be wrong, Hunter never is' which yeah is about his electromagnetic senses but given how they fall in behind Hunter despite clearly having no real respect for authority? They trust him, completely, Crosshair included. When he stepped in to talk shit to Rex, he did it right after Rex pushed back on Hunter's opinion. Kind of like how he tried to throw down for Cody, I think he was doing the same thing for Hunter.

Which is why his rage in TBB is so focused on Hunter. Because with that kind of trust, the first mistake Hunter made is going to hit them both like a fucking freight truck. And of course he makes mistakes in TBB. Hunter has no reference point for what's happening, this isn't what he was trained for, he is completely out of his element. Hunter can't be Perfect in this scenario and combined with the strain he's under with the chip and its aftereffects, Crosshair really just lets his hurt get carried away into this huge wave of upset. And since he's never encountered this from Crosshair before, Hunter has no idea how to deal with it. The whole thing just spirals.

Before that though, I think that Crosshair was fairly yielding to Hunter unless he was intentionally playing with him. Crosshair has huge Brat Sub energy, so he did sometimes act up for fun but Hunter was In Charge and that was probably the only authority Crosshair respected.

And, lastly, Echo is interesting too because even though Crosshair has his whole 'I would have left him behind too' thing but when it comes to actually interacting with Echo? He never actually has a harsh word for them lol. He doesn't join in on the distrust in the fourth episode, he puts his hand on their shoulder in the firefight, and he's perfectly happy to have Echo join after everything. Which is a big deal from Mr. "We don't usually work with Regs" and not really the reaction I expected to see when going back to watch the TCW episodes after going through all of TBB. It's like seeing Echo and seeing how much they won't fit in with the other regs just made him do a completely 180 on his opinion. They're adopted now, no questions.

Which I guess makes sense, Crosshair is guided a lot by his emotions even if he doesn't want to admit that he is. He wants to come off like he's just making reasonable decisions but. He is a feelsy little bitch. He absolutely saw his batch in Echo and that's why he's so quick to accept them in.

Anyway that's my general rundown of how I think he interacted with everyone pre-Order 66. Crosshair was always a little harsh but only to those outside of his in-group, because he would rather put up the knives than risk getting hurt. The batch probably got his more pliant side, especially Wrecker, but that just means that when Crosshair was turned against them they had no idea how to react and Crosshair has no idea how to handle their perceived rejection.

Unfortunately I think this means it's also going to be very hard for the batch to mend, at least the three other OG members. Now that Crosshair is perceiving them as having rejected him, after they were the ones he was closest with for so long, he is going to keep putting up walls to avoid being hurt again. It's probably going to need to be Echo (someone he likes and trusts but hasn't known as long) or Omega that has to reach out to him and bring him back into the fold.

[salescalability]

KISS-KEEP IT SIMPLE, SILLY!

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. – Hans Hofmann.

Make it simple, but significant. – Don Draper

So this is my focus word of this year – “Simple“.

I remember a conversation with Bob Miller the co-founder of Miller Heiman Group where we were discussing a deal with a large industrial organization and their brief to us outlined a very complex sales structure. Even when we went into details of understanding their seller KPIs and incentive structure it was really complicated. Bob said, they have complicated their life too much for their own good. “Complex is easy, simple is tough !” This stuck with me and I constantly keep looking out for this.

As I look around me I realize we are continuously investing in making our lives complex. We invest in Technology to reduce time and effort and then bring in other related technologies to support that one technology and then sometimes we land up in this web where we loose the value of the original solution.

We have aggressive audacious goals and in the attempt to deliver on all of them we gather all the resources and create complex project deliverables. After a while people lose the sizzle and projects get abandoned and this adds to the complexity. Then we hire consulting firms for Simplification projects !

I see Sellers fall into this trap, we understand the client’s needs and in our attempt to create a comprehensive proposal we often make a complex project. Then we are stuck either with the client not buying it or if they do buy then delivery is a challenge.

A friend recently introduced me to a concept (the advantage of intelligent friends!) called the Occam’s razor. Occam’s razor (mental model) can be summarized as follows: Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. In simpler language, Occam’s razor states that the simplest explanation is preferable to one that is more complex. Simple theories are easier to verify. Simple solutions are easier to execute.

So, my goal this year is to consciously break down complexity and focus on the Simple. I know Simple is not easy but it is required. I have identified 3 things that I feel are important for attempting to keep things Simple –

Ask questions to get to the core. Allow the child state of mind to take over and satiate your curiosity. Ask all the questions you need to till you understand the core of the problem. Like Simon Sinek says use the 5 Whys. To make it simple you need to understand it well.

Articulate your understanding and get feedback. Always get feedback and be open to changing your opinion/ project/solution. I understand there is a fear sometimes to feel what if my opinion/project/solution may get rejected, but if it has to get rejected it will anyways with or without an opportunity to seek feedback.

Final one for me, is to remember to Own the outcome and not the idea! There can be many paths to a destination and being open to feedback and learning from others allows you to seek alternatives. You can then pick the Simplest one, cause remember simple solutions are easy to execute.

It is always the simple that produces the marvelous. – Amelia Barr In sales, it's easy to get caught up in complex strategies and intricate plans. But as Bob Miller of the Miller Heiman Group pointed out, "Complex is easy, simple is tough." This year, we're focusing on the power of simplicity. By streamlining our approaches, we can make sales consultancy and sales training more effective, helping businesses thrive. The principle of Occam’s Razor teaches us that the simplest solution is often the best. This is especially true in sales, where a Fractional Chief Sales Officer (CSO) can help clarify sales strategies, making them easier to implement and more likely to succeed. Embracing simplicity not only makes our work more manageable but also leads to better outcomes for our clients. Let's make simplicity our mantra and see how it transforms our approach to business.

[sionnaigh]

“While a best friend can be an FP, it’s usually so much more than that… a favorite person is someone you have an emotional dependence on, who can ‘make or break’ your day.” [20] “You place the responsibility of your happiness onto them. They can make you feel on top of the world, or in the deepest pit depending on whether they are paying attention to you or not.” [21]

“The only thing is it feels SO much like I love him… I keep telling myself how I feel for my FP isn’t real, but hell does it feel like it is. It’s a very confusing place to be in.” [22]

“It’s not really your choice. And, to be fair, it isn’t the other person’s choice either… it takes a lot for someone to suddenly stop seeing you as their FP.” [22] “That’s a scary and difficult role to take on, especially unwillingly… I want you to understand the position that I have involuntarily put you in…” [25]

Individuals with BPD commonly describe FPs as someone caring, sympathetic and understanding, and so on. FPs are always there and reassure them when asked. FPs accept those with BPD as they are so that the latter feel free and express themselves around their FPs without fearing being judged and feeling like a burden. Their FP is a good listener, easy to talk to, and takes the time to understand and make them feel better, always being supportive.

“First, the person has to be sympathetic and understanding. Second, I have to feel like they get me. Third, we need to have emotional things in common.” [26]

Because FP is someone who the person with BPD feels stable and safe with, who is more likely to calm them down than fight back when they get emotional, they often get to the point where they believe their FP would rescue them. The more time they spend together, the more obsessed the individual with BPD becomes.

“It’s like they are all I need, like my life is complete as long as they are constantly giving me attention…feel like I am totally worthless unless someone is validating me. I have it with all my friends and my wife to an extent, but it’s worse with an FP.” [26]

The way FPs behave—constantly giving attention, validating and reassuring whenever they are asked—unfortunately, makes BPD symptoms worse, especially when they are not around. Individuals with BPD have to deal with intense jealousy, for example, when their FP spends time with other friends or does not answer their calls or messages immediately. While people with BPD need constant attention from their FP, they tend to internally analyze their interactions, looking for signs of rejection. Even though they know that their FP has the right to see other people and have alone time, they still consider that their FP is trying to drift away and no longer cares about them.

“It’s hard for me to tell myself that your world doesn’t revolve around me, … not hearing from you makes me anxious and paranoid, thinking you decided to abandon me…” [25]

Whether intended or not, FPs know how to comfort their person with BPD and reassure that they are not leaving, which reinforces these insecure attachment patterns. Those with BPD struggle with what is known as “splitting” on their FP, constantly shifting between idealization and devaluation; the shifting goes between these two extremes. When they are in the idealization phase, their emotional attachment toward their FP is strengthened. However, when their FP fails to fulfill their expectations, they are immediately devalued, causing anxiety and depression, sometimes anger and panic attacks.

Individuals with BPD keep actively trying to be accepted by their FP and fit completely into their FP’s life. For example, they tend to gradually change who they are, what they like or dislike, and the way they behave, trying to become like their FP. FPs are expected to be entirely honest with them and constantly let them know that they do not mean to cause any misunderstanding that could upset them.

“The loss of them is so much to bear that we would do almost anything to keep them. A changing self-identity is a symptom… very present within FP relationships.” [23] “You promise me you’ll never leave… I ask you at least once a day if our friendship is OK… You remind me that I mean as much to you as you mean to me.” [30]

The FP–BPD relationship often gets worse with time, as the person with BPD needs more attention and validation from their FP to get the same feeling of being cared for.

“My BPD thrived on her attention. The more attention she gave me, the more I got hooked on it and the more attention I needed to get the same “high” I felt.” [31]

The relationship gets to the point where it stops being a good friendship and turns toxic and destructive. Those with BPD can get too reliant on and obsessed with their FP to get out of the relationship but the emotions they experience, simultaneously, are too intense to stay secure and healthy in the relationship. Therefore, they often feel like having no control over the relationship.

“[They’re] like my drug. Whenever I get their attention, I’m happy for a while. But when I don’t, it’s like the world’s falling apart…” [20] “I have other friends, …but things were healthier. I didn’t rely on them the way I did with my FP, … I was happy not to have that intense bond with anyone else.” [33]

[neatfrog]

my own 2 cents (in agreement):

As someone with mental illness/trauma also married (6 years! ❤️ ) to someone who also has (similar) mental illness/trauma, it’s definitely difficult when you both have shitty self-image and constantly make assumptions about what other people must think of you. (We’re also both autistic/have ADHD, so of course there are those additional challenges as well)

In the beginning we would make each other feel bad without meaning to because the emotions triggered could be so intense and scary - that fear of being rejected, abandoned, or otherwise failing the people in your life. The way past trauma makes you desperately cling to certain people and beg them not to leave you (while also totally expecting them to leave you). Unless you’ve had proper therapy, it’s hard to know how to handle these feelings in a healthy way (now that we both have had proper therapy, this is much easier for us now and we have very open communication and blunt honesty bc it’s the only thing that works).

Neither Stolas nor Blitzø has ever really had a good concept of relationships. As mentioned, Stolas has a more romanticized and idealistic expectation of the kind of relationship he would want, and it sets him up for easy rejection when he doesn’t get the kind of response he clearly wanted from Blitzø (the first part of his duet was basically fantasizing about the best outcome where Blitzø would feel the same and they would walk off into the sunshine together holding hands).

I was in a shitty, verbally/emotionally abusive relationship when I met my current spouse, and when I had my ‘awakening’ (I was already queer and knew it so that wasn’t the issue, more that at that point in my life I just never expected the passion and happiness that another person could ignite in you) of course initially it felt like ‘oh this is what love is supposed to be, it’s magical and perfect and should never be difficult’. Which, is an unrealistic expectation no matter who your partner is. Even in the most compatible of relationships, you’re going to struggle sometimes and go through difficult things. It’s how you deal with those situations that matters, and neither of these two guys have any idea how to do that in a healthy way.

How do you react when the person you thought could never have real feelings for you and just views you as a convenience is suddenly like “by the way, I’ve loved you all this time and want to be together”?

How do you react when the person you confess that love to yells that you should “hate them” because they’re “undeserving” or “unworthy”?? Or blatantly accuses you of pitying or placating them with false feelings?

When you both struggle with your own complicated feelings of self-worth and fear of rejection, it’s hard to take the other person’s positive feelings for you at face value (especially when you’ve never been able to do that ever in your life). It’s easier to assume they’re lying, or toying with you - anything is simpler than accepting that someone finds you worthy of the love you can’t even give to yourself.

I could say a lot more, but honestly this whole scene was so painfully real and in-character with how it played out, both their reactions made sense and I understand both sides.

I’m genuinely optimistic that they will, at some point, have a proper conversation about their feelings - even if they don’t immediately start a relationship, they can at least get on the same page and acknowledge what issues they need to work on.

Why People With Mental Illness And Trauma Deserve Love

(and why Blitzø Buckso is one of them)

Grab yourself some snacks and a drink, I'll have a talk with you people who go all for the

"If you can't love yourself, you can't love anybody else"

mantra, which is toxic as fuck.

And sorry for the typos 😬🥲

SPOILER WARNING Full Moon

tw:mental illness / coping mechanism / self harm self worth / shitty parenting /abusive and toxic relationships

First of all, I'm autistic, so a lot of scenarios I'll give you will come from my experiences because it's easier for me to feel empathy that way and explain a situation.

BLITZØ IN FULL MOON

People come into my DMs and want to rant with me about him. I get it. It seems he's an asshole.

And he IS.

Blitzø has multiple character traits which are trauma coded and boy what a can of worms that is. Most of them are really hard in your face, like the fact that he can't stand his own face in pictures.

Which comes from a deep rooted self hate, which comes up in self worth issues. Blitzø had his fair experience with drugs and alcohol , even drowned himself in last to get over his shitty experience with Stolas at Ozzie's.

I'm not saying he's suicidal, but Blitzø's biggest fear is, to die alone.

Because he KNOWS how he is. That makes him really self reflected. He knows how he behaves, he knows his own coping mechanisms.

That's why it's so easy to make him mad. He's mostly angry at himself in most situations, so it also happened in Full Moon. Blitzø uses anger to get things out of people, because most people react to anger, but he's not doing it to HURT people, it's the only way he knows how to get an reaction out of people.

The reaction HE wants. Since Blitzø has no self worth he has no clue WHY people should love him. So he shoves them away and keeps them at distance.

At the same time he CRAVES intimacy. And here's the conflict. Blitzø's love language is sex.

He feels the closest to people if he can be intimate with them. And yes, even in a weird "I fuck Chaz to be close to M&M" kind of way. He is krass with his talking about sex, he over shares, he LOVES to talk about sex.

Because he's good at it. And because it gets him close to people. If the show had more time I bet we would've seen Blitzø having multiple one night stands over the time. Yes, even with his arrangement with Stolas. Because there was sex before there were feelings. Definitely.

Shitty Parenting x Self Worth

Blitzø got sold by his own father as a play buddy for a rich kid. Yes the rich kid was Stolas and it was cute, but still, rich kid.

And we all have seen, that he wasn't good at what his father made him do in the circus but what Blitzø always had, was his pride. Also, he's very good at making things up as they go. Doing that damn horse balloon and making a joke about it, shows how he is capable of selling himself still as the best, even if it isn't so.

We don't know much about Tilla, but we know Blitzø definitely had a closer relationship to her then to his father.

I know we only have two concrete scenes which show what kind of an relationship Buckzo and his son had, but the "I wish you were my son" card for Fizz kinda draws us the picture here.

As a child who always had to compete with a sister which was highly gifted, this does something to you.

You try to be better, at any cost. Sounds familiar?

"I'll try to be better".

But what? In what will he try to be better? I think Blitzø doesn't even know at what he will try to be better, he just does not want to lose this. But what is this?

RELATIONSHIPS

IF Blitzø would have just cared about his business, he would've walked away with the crystal. Just like that. He would've said

"Thank Satan, I thought I would lose my business,thanks Stolas, it was nice as it lasted" and he would've been gone.

But he didn't. He listened to what Stolas said but he didn't LISTEN. Because it was confusing as fuck, even as The Audience just watching it was a LOT what was said and going from

"I'll let you go" to "I have feelings for you, please stay" in a second.

And of course Blitzø would not understand that. Because Stolas could not MEAN it. Because Stolas has servants who are Imps and he called him names, a plaything and if Blitzø is anything for Stolas, at first, he's a whore.

Blitzø sold his body for a service. For his business.

They could have made that arrangement about ANYTHING. Money, another hitman service, bodyguarding.

STOLAS made it about sex. The thing Blitzø knows, the one he CRAVES, the thing he is good at, besides killing people.

But the one thing Blitzø is not good at, are words and feelings. And Stolas had a lot of them, at once. And it felt not fair for Blitzø to be cornered like that, because he had no idea what was expected from him. And then he used the ONLY thing he knows, which always gets something out of people: Anger.

That's the words and feelings he knows.

And he got an reaction, but also had to deal with the consequences.

STOLAS AT FULL MOON

I love Stolas. But he he's living in a romance novel world and there's also, trauma.

Stolas first words I had imprinted in my mind were "I always thought love could be fun". He wished for a happy family his whole life and all he got was an abusive wife and a loveless marriage.

He is a dreamer. Someone who loves the small things and he is caring. He loves to indulge in fiction, he loves telenovelas because even if there's drama, there are relationships. Something he never had experienced.

Stolas is a soft soul. But he's repressed and depressed as fuck. And that's not only because of Stella, but his upbringing and the knowledge to live in a Golden Cage. But he never voices that he has problems with THAT.

See, Stolas is a prince, he grew up with servants, Imps mostly. In a palace. Even if he despises Stella's parties, I bet if he wouldn't be an outsider in his own race, he would be the one doing the parties himself. It would do him some good because Stolas is also, lonely.

While Blitzø lived in Circus tents and tried to proof himself, Stolas had to proof that he's worthy his title as a prince. Being married, the whole heir thing, his duties.

And then Blitzø appears out of fucking nowhere, seducing him (like in his novels!), staying with him the whole night (showing him he's obviously gay), showing him he can choose, that he HAS A CHANCE to be happy.

With Blitzø.

And then we see the duet and the second Stolas sings about how he wants this to go, I knew they will fuck up. Because Stolas had played out this scenario SO OFTEN in his head, that he has so many images of Blitzø in his head that he knows this will not work out good. He has hopes and dreams but in the end, the decision falls on Blitzø.

So we go to Full Moon and Blitzø reacts... poorly. He even mocks him. And then he starts screaming and shouting and guess who else was always shouting and screaming? Guess who told Stolas his whole marriage that he's not worth anything. That he's not worth of love, that he's a failure, that his head is in the clouds and mocked him about everything he loves.

Blitzøs only way to cope with too many feelings is anger, Stolas trauma is based on anger and rejection.

But Stolas reacted so FAST. He gave Blitzø the crystal and he told him that he gives him the offer to stay, because he has feelings for him (like in his novels!) and his hopes are so high and the second he does not get what he wants, what he needs, he snaps. He's disappointed. He's hurt.

Because he wants this so bad to work.

But it can't, because they're for now reading the same book, but they're so not on the same page.

Because, and now we're getting there, they have to deal with what was said.

TRAUMA AND RELATIONSHIPS

I'm married for ten years now. My wife and I met each other 20 years ago.

I was suicidal back then, I cut myself regularly, I was depressed and had an eating disorder.

But I had friends. And I had relationships. And I loved so so deeply.

And then I got together with my wife 11 years ago. I was freshly diagnosed with being autistic, my wife has ADHD.

She also has several PTSD triggers, I have childhood trauma from living with my Mom who's an alcoholic.

And yes, I am able to have an relationship. We love each other dearly, we care about each other. We learn from each other, daily.

We have bad days, but we are GOOD for each other.

Because you DESERVE TO BE LOVED, no matter what.

In the first place is always that you're responsible for yourself. You can't trauma dump on your partner in excessive ways because that's not healthy. BUT learning to share your experiences but still being responsible for yourself and your actions, is a whole different thing.

You can love and be loved, even at your lowest.

But you have to be aware that your partner is not your therapist and that communication in a relationship, in which both parties are mentally ill, is KEY.

You have to go to the same ground, you have to explain what are your boundaries, what are your triggers but you have also to accept that the other one is sometimes not able to deal with your package.

My wife and I, we communicate DAILY. We have totally different needs. We have totally different views and patterns to deal with things. But we love each other.

Because we respect each other's differences.

And that's the homework for Stolas and Blitzø. They don't have to TO GET BETTER, they have to grow and they have to listen, communicate instead of just dumping expectations at each other.

You can't expect someone to break a pattern that is carved by trauma, just because you tell them you love them. And you can't expect that someone's listening when you push all their triggers at once.

I'm really excited how this will go. It's heartbreaking but I guess now that everything is said, they can finally be honest, without all the trauma dumping and pushing buttons.

And as I said:

You're worth of love. You're worth to be loved and you can give love, even at your lowest. Your deserve love, even at your lowest. You ARE loved.

Thank you for reading! ✨ Gold Star for you!

[panharmonium]

this is legitimately one of my top five favorite kakashi scenes.

i love seeing kakashi break the rules in the name of doing the right thing, and this scene especially is particularly satisfying to me, because his moment of defiance here is, to my mind, long overdue.  

one of my eternal frustrations in early naruto is how the leaf village administration gives kakashi the job of caring for a group of super high-needs children and then continually makes that job as difficult for him as possible.  they task him with being solely responsible for the development and well-being of three twelve year-olds - a group that includes naruto (a walking disaster with a god’s power trapped inside his body) and sasuke (a genocide survivor fixated on killing his own brother), BOTH of whom are being hunted by different groups of supercriminals - and then the village keeps getting in kakashi’s way or dropping the ball or actively ordering him to prioritize other things.  

so much of what goes wrong with the kids in this period is the result of other people interfering with kakashi’s work or being negligent or endangering the kids/putting kakashi in impossible positions.  team 7’s first big mission sets the tone for everything that comes after, with someone else’s lie putting kakashi in a situation where he has to single-handedly protect not just the client who deceived him, but the three children who were supposed to be the clients’ other protectors.  and after that, the list just multiplies:

ten anbu operatives can’t manage to protect sasuke’s hospital room from orochimaru’s minions, so kakashi has to do it himself and then whisk sasuke out of the village for a month, leaving naruto in the hands of a substitute and sakura with her parents

genma orders sasuke to chase after gaara when the chunin exams blow up, saying “you’re at chunin level already,” which forces kakashi to immediately dispatch more kids to bring him back, because “ffs NO i do NOT want him out there doing that why the fuck would you tell him to do that?!” 

aoba runs his mouth off about itachi when sasuke is standing RIGHT THERE, instantly undoing all the work kakashi just did to prevent itachi and sasuke from coming anywhere near each other (and thus sending sasuke to that disastrous first encounter, the outcome of which ultimately leads to sasuke’s defection)

jiraiya decides he should let sasuke try to fight itachi himself, “out of respect for the boy’s feelings,” leading to sasuke ending up in a tsukuyomi coma

tsunade orders kakashi to drop his teaching work and leave the village on a mission even though a) he’s just gotten out of his own torture-induced coma and b) sasuke is having a crisis that kakashi is trying to manage

and then when kakashi gets back from that mission and finds out that surprise, all of this meddling has led to a disaster, tsunade tries to order him away AGAIN

but this time - he just says no.

he walks right out of her office.  he turns his back on her.  and there is NOTHING i love more than seeing kakashi embody the philosophy that he’s chosen to adopt as his guiding light: those who break the rules are scum.  but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.

it’s not that he doesn’t understand where tsunade is coming from here.  but he knows she’s wrong.  she’s making her decisions based solely on concerns about the Leaf Village being in a tight spot - feeling like they can’t turn down missions because they’ll appear weak and thus become vulnerable to attack when they’re already operating at half strength.  she sends a group of twelve year-olds to bring sasuke back because supposedly the village can’t spare anyone else, “even if it means letting the sharingan fall into orochimaru’s hands” - but like.  it’s not the sharingan.  it’s a child.  sasuke isn’t just a repository for his hereditary jutsu; he’s not a pair of eyes to be passed around from one wielder to the next.  he’s a human child.  

tsunade doesn’t know sasuke.  she’s new to the situation and doesn’t know enough about it to understand how serious it is.  i don’t even think she was still in the village when the uchiha massacre occurred; the timeline makes it sound like she left long before that.  she doesn’t really understand who sasuke is or how much trouble he’s in - she makes her decision because she feels like her first priority has to be the well-being of the Leaf as a whole, not the individual people who comprise it.  kakashi, though, who a) lives his life by a very different philosophy and b) does understand sasuke’s situation, would not have dealt with the issue like this, and if the village had let him do his job from the beginning, things wouldn’t have gotten to this point in the first place.

kakashi is horrified that tsunade sent a bunch of twelve year-olds out to fight orochimaru’s ninja, and i think he’s also probably angry and/or frustrated about having been ordered out of the village in the first place.  he was dealing with the situation before tsunade sent him away.  he interrupted the fight between sasuke and naruto even though he himself had literally just gotten out of the hospital, and then he continued addressing the issue with sasuke privately (unlike jiraiya’s non-attempt to address it with naruto, when he said he was going to give naruto a talking-to but actually flaked out).  kakashi knew sasuke was struggling, and he was doing all the things a teacher is supposed to do to address it, but then he was ordered away, and even though it was just for two days, it was enough time for everything to go to hell.

if people would just let him do his job - if the administration would let him focus on the task they themselves assigned to him - things would be different.  but everybody wants him to do everything.  they want him to be everywhere.  they want him to protect the nine-tails jinchuriki (who is also kakashi’s dead teacher’s son), and train the last surviving uchiha (which is a task only kakashi and his sharingan can perform), and give equal attention to a third kid, for good measure, and they want him to do it without stepping away from any of his other burdens, all while other people around him constantly frustrate the progress he makes.

so this time, when tsunade tries to send him away, he refuses.  he disobeys her orders and walks out of the room.  he doesn’t care about the rules or what he’s “legally” obligated to do.  he knows what the RIGHT thing to do is, and so he rejects his new mission in favor of rescuing the kids.

i love these moments.  i love when we’re shown so clearly the person kakashi has chosen to be - someone who does what’s right, not just what he’s told.  he made an active choice many years ago to adopt that philosophy, and he’s been living by those new rules ever since.  he's wiser now than he was when he was a child - sometimes you have to break ranks to do the right thing.  sometimes you have to buck the system, even if it means you might face severe personal consequences.

he had one of two choices: either save the mission or his comrades.  of course, according to the law of the village, you cannot abandon a mission.  but to save the life of his comrades, he put the mission on hold.

kakashi may have spent a good chunk of his childhood trying to reject everything the subject of that story stood for, but none of his attempts to harden his heart ever stuck.  he is, in the end, his father’s son.

[path-to-nowhere-headcanon]

Hi! Can I request for a platonic hc gn!reader with Zoya, Nox, and Countess Chelsea (separate)? Like given that they are sinners and us as the chief, how would they spend their time with us just doing normal stuff.

Thank you😘❤️

No thank you for being my first ask sorry if things look a little wonky gotta work with mobile limitations for a bit!🥹

Zoya

Zoya would take a moment to check in on her gang and how things are going down in syndicate if given the chance.Depending on how much they trust her/ how much freedom they want to give her I can see there being just a moment of clam where it’s just a big group chill out session with Zoya, Horo, and Earl.

Though if we were talking about her joining on the day-to-day I feel like zoya would have a lot to say about the chief's methods around the prison and how things could be improved.She can come across a little nitpicky at times partly because she does like to get under the Chiefs skin but also because she actually does care about the treatment of the other sinners here.

Now the real juicy stuff is if we’re talking about just normal everyday things like running errands, going shopping, that sort of thing.From what I’ve seen I feel like Zoya would fit right in with the chief going from place to place when it comes to shopping I feel like a lot of her input would be more practical you see it a lot in her food choices. I feel like she would pick out things that wouldn’t spoil very quickly, things that could last a long time regardless of how much money she actually has.She does feel pretty prickly walking around especially In possibly higher class areas since I feel like there’s still a lot of resentment towards the people who kind of abandoned syndicate.

Nox

Now on the day-to-day aspect I feel like it wouldn’t be too bad walking around in the prison with her. There are definitely people who are afraid of her and do kind of cower away as she walks by but it’s nothing new people have seen sinners and some of them are sinners themselves. Though due to Nox's reputation people are more on edge than usual.She's very supportive surprisingly though she mostly keeps to herself dropping only a soft good job or thank you for your hard work.

If you ask her to go somewhere with you, she’ll follow, no questions asked, but she does sort of stick out like a sore thumb when trying to do normal activities and she seems to be a bit out of her element. Not fully grasping human concepts in her mind she half understands them as someone who is using faded memories of another person. She also doesn’t seem to like loud crowds very much.

As for Nox’s own request she wouldn’t have many, if any actually. She’ll reject the offer kindly at first believing this is where she belongs,but the more time she has to dwell on it the more time she has to think and probe through faded old memories she’ll one day ask if the two of them might visit an old church she remembers.That day would be quite peaceful as the two them stare at faded stain glass widows, and broken walls overtaken by Ivy.

Chelsea

If you take her out on the town be prepared she’ll be dragging you from shop to shop with no time to rest. Any plans the chief had are thrown out the window. Any shops they wanted to visit forget about it. She's trying to spoil chief, with lavish outfits, some are a little bit exposed to put it mildly from every shop in town. Even though they politely refused and almost had a heart attack when they caught sight of the price tag Chelsea is really trying to play her hand of getting them to be sugar baby seriously. They can’t help but feel like they're somehow in a game of chess where accepting even one of Chelsea’s gifts means losing.I don’t know why but I get the feeling the pair would also stop by into a lot of hole in the wall restaurants and cafés .

Now the day-to-day rounds around the prison I feel like Chelsea is more of a hindrance than a help. She constantly tries to distract the chief, finding the day to day grind just a bit too stale for her tastes. There's so much more fun to be had elsewhere but alas, she can’t pull them away from work. So she settles in and just watches as they do their job.

[a-dragons-journal]

I can respect that. I understand how annoying at best and painful at worst it is to constantly be assumed to fall under a term you don't want to be associated with. I think ultimately, argument about whether "alterhuman" is "human-centric" or not aside, the problem is that that's going to be true of any umbrella term. There will always be some people who don't like it and don't want to be associated with it despite being of identities that are assumed to fall within it, and that's really truly unfortunate, but I don't see a solution to it. There's a reason that no alternative to alterhuman has taken off, and it's only partially that alterhuman has the age advantage on them - so far, alterhuman is the one that the most people seem to be okay with and the least people feel alienated by.

The problem is, if the rule becomes that if even a small number of people within [x] group don't want to be associated with [y] umbrella term then [x] should be removed from the "default settings" of [y], the umbrella term can no longer be used to refer to anyone (because that small subgroup almost always exists), and is thus no longer useful. Which is why it becomes a matter of majority rule, and while I don't have a statistic to prove it, from the simple facts of how widely alterhuman is used and that I had to make a whole post about trying to get people to stop using it as a synonym for nonhuman, I feel it's fairly clear that a significant majority of nonhumans, otherkin and therians especially, consider their nonhumanity to be alterhuman. Which, yes, leaves the minority who don't to have to constantly clarify "I don't actually consider myself part of that, please don't refer to me that way" - and that sucks, it really does, but it's going to be the case for someone no matter what umbrella term is in popular usage.

(Even if we did decide to eliminate umbrella terms entirely as a solution to this problem, that means that a lot of people are always going to be the "etc." in "otherkin/therians/otherhearted people/systems/etc" (because realistically, no one is going to list everything that could ever possibly be considered alterhuman in every post they make about the subject), and that's extremely othering and depressing for those people. I don't think that's a good solution either.)

With all that being said, if you want a different umbrella term, I encourage you to coin one yourselves, genuinely. I will say honestly that so far, every proposed alternative to alterhuman - usually, yes, on the grounds that it's "human-centric," because while I personally disagree with you you are not the only ones to feel this way - has failed to really take off, with alterbeing being the only one to even have a clawhold in the community as far as I can tell (I could list the ones I've seen and outline the problems people have raised with them for interest and/or reference, if you'd like, but I won't bother you with it unless asked). But maybe you can come up with the one that will actually stick, and maybe you can come up with the one that won't leave as many if not more people feeling alienated by it as alterhuman does. If you want something to replace alterhuman as the community umbrella term, if you think there's a need for it, then I think the best solution to that is probably to come up with something, put it out there, and see what the community thinks. Because alterhuman does include not-human nonhumans unless specifically rejected by an individual, and is understood to by the whole community at this point to the point where sometimes people forget it includes anything else, so trying to insist it doesn't (or shouldn't) is frankly probably not going to get you very far, especially if you're not providing an alternative to fill the linguistic gap it would leave if abandoned.

Promise this is not vaguing anyone in particular, I've just seen it one too many times from various different people recently and it feels like it need sanother PSA: Can people please stop saying "otherkin/alterhuman" or "fictionkin/alterhuman" as if those things are synonymous? They're not, and to treat them as if they are defeats the entire purpose of the word alterhuman. If you mean otherkin or fictionkin, say otherkin or fictionkin. If you mean "otherkin and other nonhumans," say otherkin/nonhuman, because alterhuman isn't synonymous with nonhuman either. If you truly mean "otherkin and other alterhumans," a) you can probably just say "alterhuman" and b) your post had better be relevant to someone who isn't nonhuman. Alterhuman is a far broader word than that, and most of the identities and communities it encompasses - otherheartedness, hearthomes, furry lifestyling, daemonism, plurality, etc. - are not nonhuman-identifying.

[canonicallyobserving911]

Buck & Eddie: Eddie takes care of Buck

Even though Buck has previously been in romantic relationships, Eddie his proven to be the only person who knows how to take care of him emotionally, mentally and physically.  He's comforted Buck many times over the past few years and the truth is he's probably the only one who can.  The nature of Eddie and Buck's relationship is built on trust which allows them to share a deep level of intimacy that couldn't be experienced with either of their romantic love interests.

Examples of those who didn't support Buck

1.  Abby abandoned him after he choked on a piece of bread while he was on a date with her and he ended up being hospitalized in 1x6 "Heartbreaker". She looked disgusted at the thought of having to take care of him while she sat in his hospital room. When Bobby arrived he saw the look on her face and said, "I can stay with him if you want to leave" (foreshadowing for when she actually did leave him in 1x10 "A Whole New You").

2.  Ali abandoned Buck too, right after his leg got crushed by a ladder truck in 2x18 "This Life We Choose".  She said it was due to his job but he told her that's what he was doing when they met.

3. Taylor's number one priority was and always will be her job.  Since they really didn't know each other, the three times he needed comfort, she wasn't able to provide it. In 5x4 "Home and Away" after Chimney punched Buck, he called Eddie for emotional and physical support. The advice or emotional support she tried to provide to Buck in 5x5 "Peer Pressure" only confused him because he couldn't relate to it.  Finally in 5x6 "Brawl in Cell Block 9-1-1" when Buck returned to his loft after being injured, he rejected her advances to physically comfort him.

Buck had an unusually difficult childhood due to his trifling parents and the reason they decided to conceive him.  He has always exhibited a need for validation and to have people like and accept him.  He wears his heart on his sleeve and he genuinely wants to help others.  While he usually appears to be a strong firefighter, he's constantly filled with self-doubt and self-worth issues. He willingly sacrifices his own safety for victims when they are in danger.  That's why he should be in a relationship with someone (Eddie) who not only knows him, they also need to be able to support and understand him.

Examples of Eddie supporting Buck

2x1 "Under Pressure" Eddie complimented Buck regarding his ability to help him remove a live grenade from a victim's leg while in the back of an ambulance.

3x1 "Kids Today" Eddie offered Buck mental support by checking on him after he quit his job due to an embolism.  He brought Christopher to Buck's loft so that Buck could spend the day with him.  He wanted Buck to stop feeling sorry for himself and to stop being depressed.

3x3 "The Searchers" After the Tsunami, Buck was mentally struggling after he and Christopher got separated.  Eddie brought Christopher back to Buck so that he could care for him as a way to prove that he still trusted him.  Buck thought he failed them but Eddie reassured him by saying, "There's no one in this world I trust with my son more than you".

3x18 "What's Next?" Eddie asked Buck "Are you ok?" after Buck saw Abby leaving with her new fiancée.  He offered Buck the emotional support he needed.

4x4 "9-1-1 What's Your Grievance" Eddie emotionally supported Buck while his trifling parents were in L.A.  He told Buck it was ok to feel upset especially if his parents caused him to feel that way.  He said "Did you say anything that wasn't true?" Buck said "No!". Then Eddie said "Then what do you have to apologize for?".

4x13 "Suspicion" Even though Eddie was physically hurt after he got shot, his main concern was if Buck was hurt.  He asked him, "Are you hurt?" while Buck was trying to stop Eddie's shoulder from bleeding. 

4x14 "Survivors" After Buck visited Eddie in the hospital and said, "I think it would have been better for him if I was the one who got shot", Eddie immediately devised a plan to stop him from spiraling.  When Buck came to pick him up when he was going to be discharged, he told Buck about the will.  He said "No one will ever fight for my son as hard as you and that's what I want for him".

5x4 "Home and Away" Buck called Eddie after Chimney punched him; therefore Eddie was able to provide him with emotional, mental and physical support.  He allowed Buck to share his side of the incident and offered him sound advice on how to handle it. He said, "You're the guy who likes to fix things. But sometimes things don't need to be fixed".

5x18 "Starting Over" Eddie emotionally and mentally supported Buck by offering sound advice regarding Buck's need to end his toxic relationship with Taylor. He also provided a therapeutic perspective on Bobby's rising guilt over the Jonah situation.

Whenever Buck needed to be comforted by any of his previous love interests, they abandoned him and didn't know him well enough to provide any of the types of support that Eddie effortlessly provides to Buck.  Eddie truly knows Buck which means he can offer support from every aspect to help Buck feel valuable and worthy.  He also listens to Buck and remains interested whenever he rambles about random facts which helps him to feel seen and heard.  Eddie's ability to comfort Buck is one of the many reasons why they are perfect together as work and life partners.

[linkspooky]

Dabi’s Self Suicide

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but Dabi is someone who has a tendency to make things about himself. In the League of Villains which is identifiably a group dynamic, Dabi takes every available opportunity to insist that he is alone, he is just along for the ride. A single man, with a single conviction, should be enough to change the world. He has a tendency to act like he’s the most important one here, he’s the one whose going to bring an end to hero society all on his own and yet at the same time he has no sense of identity. He has no self. He doens’t even have a name. Hawks asks him his name and he literally responds with [redacted]. I think this paradox of Dabi’s is at the core of figuring out who he is, and who he is not. 

1. Father Feelings

There’s something important to understand about Dabi, and just like always it starts with the family. I don’t think a lot of people realize how truly unfeeling, callous, cold towards Dabi Endeavor really was. I know we all, even I have used the golden child / scapegoat dynamic to describe Dabi and Shoto, but one important detail is that Dabi wasn’t always the scapegoat, he was the golden child at first. 

More important than Endeavor’s own feelings, is Dabi’s in this flash back. From the start, Dabi thought he was a normal kid in a normal family. He thought he had a normal dad. He even liked his super cool hero dad. Dabi wanted to train with him, wanted his attention and time, but these are just things a normal kid wants. 

However, Dabi was conceived of for very abnormal reasons. From the start, going into the whole affair, Endeavor’s intentions were wrong. Dabi was expected to carry on Endeavor’s legacy for him, he was the center of his attention, the center of his world. Dabi tried his best to carry all of those expectations as much as he reasonably could. 

However, there is literally nothing Dabi could have done in that situation to satisfy Endeavor. It’s not even about being born with the wrong quirk. It’s Endeavor who was wrong. From the start, Endeavor wasn’t interested in having a child or loving a child, but rather having a miniature Endeavor, Touya was just a vessel, to carry all of Endeavor’s hopes and dreams and live vicariously through him. However, that’s impossible.E ven if Touya had been born with the right quirk, that was impossible. You can’t live through another person. Touya’s success never would have been Endeavor’s. Endeavor would hae resorted to the exact same abuse, manipulation, control. Touya was never meant to be his own person, and that’s why even now, even becoming Dabi who is the rejection of everything Endeavor is, he still forms his entire personhood around Endeavor. It’s not that kids choose to form their personhood around their parents, they have to form themselves around their parents, we literally learn how to be people by interacting with other people especially during the developmental years. The same ones that Touya died during. 

Endeavor’s actions towards Touya is that he not only made Touya carry all of his emotions for him, he made Touya bear the brunt of his hurt feelings, all of his expectations, but then when Touya couldn’t carry them He blamed Touya. He tossed him aside. He made Touya feel, that something was wrong with Touya, and that was why he was no longer getting his father’s attention. It’s not anything Touya did, or anything Touya could do about, Touya was literally born wrong. 

It’s literally what he crawled to Natsuo asking. Yet, still Touya tried to fix himself. He was the golden child, now he’s the scapegoat, and Touya feels he did something wrong, so he keeps trying to fix himself, keeps trying to train on his own, and it doesn’t work because it could never work until it results in his eventual suicide and then how does Endeavor refer to it. 

Touya was just another tragic accident. Just a little mistake, along the road to creating Shoto. I’m not trying to explain away any of Dabi’s actions, just explain the way that Dabi regards himself, rather, Dabi literally has no sense of self at all. It’s been completely smashed to pieces. It’s ash. it’s dust. It’s just gone. Dabi’s name may as well just be [redacted]. There was also once a time that Shoto worried that he was more like his father within himself, but he got help from the people around him to realize he’s his own person, help that Dabi never got. 

2. Sins of the Father

So it’s like a genetic trait in the Todoroki family to be completely self absorbed, and dense to the emotions of other people, to the point where you don’t really see other people’s feelings. Like father, like son, like other son. However, Endeavor’s just like that, whereas Dabi and Shoto were made that way. Imagine what it was like to be Shoto, to be constantly told, you’re different from them, you’re the special one, you’re the chosen one. To the point where you couldn’t even play with your siblings, or be a part of everyone’s normal lives, no you were forced to be special. Shoto is oblivious to other people’s emotions because he was literally forcibly separate from other people, and even his mother who was his strongest emotional tie during literally most of his developmental years. 

Empathy is literally formed by interacting with people. You can’t form it or even have it, if your interactions with people are cut off and severely limited. You learn about how other people feel by normal social interaction, something that both Touya and Shoto were eventually cut off from. Touya from dying, Shoto from his mother being hospitalized. After that their ability to form connections with others was severely hampered. 

One funny thing about Shoto is he kind of acts like he’s the protagonist of his own narrative. So does Bakugo. That’s why he goes “Get out of the way all you extras.” Shoto’s the one with the tragic backstory. Shoto’s the one with this motivation to defy his father’s wishes. However, Shoto’s not the main character, he’s not the hero of the story, and it’s actually important that he’s not because the literal setting of the story is a society where everyone has the potential to be a hero. Kind of like how the point of Miles Morales story is that everyone can be spiderman. Shoto, also doesn’t really want to be a main character, or special boy, all Shoto has ever wanted was to connect with his siblings, to have the normalcy that everyone else has. In a society where everyone, even his own father is so desperately trying to stand out, Shoto wants the safety and security of normalcy. 

So you kind of have this paradox in Shoto’s head. Shoto kind of thinks of himself as a main character, even though that’s not really what he wants to be, just because that’s what’s been forced into his head the entire life. The emotional isolation of an abusive parent still ahs an effect on you, even when you’re aware, like Shoto was, that what Endeavor was saying was wrong. No one can grow up properly in isolation, that’s why kids need to interact with other kids and grow up together. 

So, I think the utlimate explanation for Dabi’s attitude towards the rest of the league is this. I’m the main villain. I’m the biggest threat. I’m the one who is going to bring an end to hero society all on my own. 

Once again this ties back to Shoto’s trauma, and Dabi’s. Touya didn’t want to be the special one, he was forced to be. Touya thought he was a normal kid, with a normal dad until he suddenly wasn’t. Then, Touya tried his hardest to be the special one until he literally broke his body, and his dad went no nevermind, turns out you were an extra. 

Saying Dabi is just doing this for Endeavor’s attention is oversimplifying. There’s a need to give a narrative to pain. Shoto even does it. Shoto literally narrates his life, he dumps his life story on everyone who will listen. People who are traumatized, want to give some sort of special meaning to their trauma, they want to feel important, because that in some way might justify what happened to them. If they can’t feel loved, they can try feeling important, like someone who mattered. Otherwise, Dabi is literally just someone who died and got forgotten. Otherwise, he’s just a sad little mistake, the same way his father regards him. Dabi can’t let the league in, because he has to do this on his own to prove he’s special. 

Dabi has this very individualistic and self centered approach to changing the world. He has to do it all on his own. He has to play mastermind. He was to orchestrate Endeavor’s rise and fall, and once again these are coping behaviors. Touya couldn’t control his abandonment, he had no agency in that, so he tries to pretend he’s in control of everything now. Even Dabi burning himself, his self-harming,it’s pain he’s in control of because he’s doing it to himself, father isn’t forcing him to train until he breaks anymore. 

Shoto sees himself as a main character. Dabi sees himself as the main villain. 

However, at the same time. Dabi hates himself. He loathes himself. It comes out in his self loathing behaviors, but more than that every thing Dabi does is an act of self destruction. Dabi has no feelings, no friends, no family, because he’s trying to destroy all those things. 

Dabi has no sense of self, because Endeavor has ruined him to the point where he’s still Endeavor’s empty vessel after all these years of separation from him. Dabi has no self, and also he doesn’t want one. He doesn’t want to grow past this point. 

Dabi has entirely fictionalized his life. That’s why he makes a dramatic reveal. Hee wants to turn his life into a tragedy, where he is the main character, where he is the one that Shoto and Endeavor cannot save. Because at least this way, he will not be forgotten. Unable to grasp for love, he tries to grasp for some kind of improtance, to change the world instead. In that scenario, it makes sense Dabi would distance himself from the league. I don’t think Dabi knows what his true feelings towards theleague are. In fact, I don’t even think he thinks about them. Who cares about what his feelings are? They are entirely separate from what he must do. Any feelings he has, any regrets, are going to burn away when he explodes like a bomb to ruin his father’s life. 

Dabi’s wavering motivations, his constant flipping between different emotions, like he’s channel surfing, I dont’ believe we’re supposed to read into every single thing he says, but rather notice how constantly he’s changing what he’s saying, because Dabi has no stable sense of self. We’re also supposed to see why he has no stable sense of self, because he’s all alone. 

This is the climax of Dabi’s big revenge play, it was supposed to end here, with the tragic protagonist dying. However, I think it’s actually really important in this arc that Dabi gets upstaged. Dabi is not the main character, Dabi’s not even the main villain. He’s not even the only character whose the descendant of a hero. It’s also, really important that Compress is the one who upstages his reveal.

What’s that? You thought I was a background character! It turns out I had this important motivation all along. The pacing is weird but it does achieve the intended effect. Dabi thought this was his moment, but that was actually bad for him. Dabi’s main flaw is that he tries to do all of these things along, but he’s not the only one who dreams of a better world. Dabi, Toga, Shigaraki, Mr. Compress says that all of their dreams are important at the same time. They are all simultaneously main characters. 

Dabi doesn’t get to have his moment, but I think it’s narratively important that he didn’t get to have it, because Dabi does no favors for himself by cutting himself off from the league. It’s meant to be a character flaw, Dabi shouldn’t get his revenge play, because his revenge play ends up with him dying at the end to spite Endeavor one fainly time. Dabi can’t achieve his dreams, because he hasn’t figured out who he is, or even who he wants to be yet. He just knwos what he doesn’t want to be. He just knows what he’s not. He’s not Endeavor. However I don’t think there’s going to be some big twist reveal about his character where he’s like, I secretly cared about the league, or my family all along, I was secretly a soft guy at heart. Those feelings are there. It’s not a problem of being unfeeling with Dabi, rather that Dabi has no central sense of self to stabilize all those feelings around, thus we see him swinging wildly back and forth. I think while Dabi obviously has feelings towards both of those groups of people, a self is something he’ll have to develop over time when he finally introduces himself to the league. When he’s forced to live, past the tragic ending of his play. 

Who will Dabi be when he realizes he has to live past his imagined revenge, who can he become? I think his development from this point will be incredibly interesting to wait, watch and see. 

[ships-bynoa]

more thoughts:

i know some find yorick annoying (fair) because he makes stupid choices, but he is so precious to me because he feels real, no? it's the end of the world. he is the only man with a y chrom left alive as far as we know, of course he is going to struggle to adapt. he should. he didn't even get a choice and he's scared he won't be able to live up to what's expected. what i love about him is that he's so vulnerable and open in juxtaposition with his traveling companion, 355. they're going to balance each other out, hit a stride and then they'll find beth or something.

when yorick said, "i got you," to 355 in ep6 as he led her back to bed he really meant it. he thinks they're in this together and that's why he defends her to allison when she suggests leaving her behind. imagine the hurt and disappointment when 355 rejects him being her partner - because that's what he's proposing when he asks for a real job. in the loft he was there to protect her for once and cause he sees a glimpse of vulnerability, a peek into more of her, he reaches for her before she is ready.

he's asking to do more to lessen the burden on her (and he should be doing that anyway), but needs more from her too, an incline they're a team. remember in "Karen and Benji," when he apologizes to 355 and then confesses, all the changes are a lot? it really is a lot, and how else are they supposed to cope with them all without each other, not just physically going on this journey together, but emotionally. i feel like in some ways he's stronger than 355 emotionally. he doesn't hide the fact that he can't cope, and while that may mean he makes dumb choices because he's a desperate human being in desperate times, they're kind of understandable.

when he predictably goes with allison's plan after 355 blows up on him, it's typical yorick, responding emotionally, "fuck her" is personal. it's heavy. he feels rejected. he's tried to help, he wants to be more involved with protecting them and he thinks they're friends. (They are) what isn't typical is 355's emotional response, though it's expected because he hit a nerve.

if he's offering her help then it means she is failing at her job, the one thing she is good at and that defines her. yes, she's putting herself between yorick and danger, but it's more about her than him. she's lost and alone and afraid. she isn't used to navigating relationships that aren't a means to an end. her life before yorick was simple; disciplined, clinical and routine and now she has no one telling her what to do next.

the hundredth thing i love about the dynamic between 355 and yorick is, he has a better sense of who he is than she does, he can't help but be himself. whereas she has to constantly keep who she really is or was, or is rediscovering in check. she doesn't like being vulerable, so for him to confront her about her sleepwalking makes her feel exposed. naked. that's why she attacks him where it hurts - his need for connection and companionship - reminding him she's not his sister or girlfriend is her basically telling him she's off limits. when he asks for a little credit, i don't think it's as much as about what he said to allison earlier in her defense as much as it is about how he's come to actually care about her. he didn't bring up her sleepwalking to expose her but to open the floor to the possibility of sharing the burden of their survival.

with a little time alone 355 realizes shutting yorick out isn't sustainable, especially for the longevity of their trip which requires them to have a functioning relationship. for once and maybe for the first time she owes yorick an apology, and you can even see her practicing what she's going to say (she's so precious) as she comes down the stairs to find an empty basement. that's a blow no matter how she rationalizes it; whether she thinks it's ungrateful, selfish or dangerous which it is, or she feels abandoned and rejected (the way she rejected him earlier) it's a blow. and if it's all of the above, if she feels even a fraction of any of it then he's already in. we can see it when they're in the woods, the devastation on her face when she gives him a real job. (thank god. let him take part in assuring his own safety and yours)

that long look between them, the silence so pregnant even allison gulps, says so much. he's regretful, he acted rash and he hurt her and he can see it, so he tries to make amends but she shuts it down. yet she uses her anger to cover the hurt that is so clear in her voice when she scolds allison.

in truth, yorick did give up too easily, but i don't think, or at least i hope he won't do that again in a hurry.

i don't know if their unspoken burgeoning friendship is back to square one, i hope not. i think it's growing pains of figuring each other out while dealing with an apocalypse and the danger he is in. boundaries, trust and vulnerability is a must and that's what they're navigating. i'd like to think this hurtful moment is the beginning of growth for both of them.