#losing weight isn’t inherently bad just like gaining weight isn’t bad

[dandyleyen]

yet again thinking abt how dunmeshi is helping me fix my relationship with food,,,,,,,, thank u lord for giving me a reason to enjoy food and enjoy eating and enjoy cooking so I can Normally take care of myself like a normal adult my age can

[lycandrophile]

it's silly but the biggest reason why im not into t yet is bc im so afraid of losing my hair. do you have any solutions/tips for it?

first of all, i don’t think it’s silly — it’s natural to be worried when hair loss is talked about by so many people as like…one of the worst results of aging for men. listening to my dad talk about how much he hates balding definitely did not make me feel particularly good about the knowledge that i may very well be joining him someday. i’m not saying the fear is right, because i don’t think hair loss is something awful that we should avoid at all costs, but it’s an understandable fear given the beauty standards we’re working with, and it’s one that a lot of us (myself included) feel.

one thing that’s helped me is just…paying more attention to the guys that i interact with on a daily basis. i’ve learned two things from it: 1) hair loss is super fucking common. i’d say it’s much harder to find an adult man who isn’t balding at all than it is to find one who’s completely bald. and 2) if you forget everything you’ve been told about how bad hair loss is, you’ll realize that quite frankly, every single one of those guys looks totally fucking fine. it doesn’t ruin their appearance and make them ugly, it looks totally natural and isn’t really even something you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. we put so much weight on it but it’s really just not that big of a deal. i’ll hear my parents talk shit about men in my family who are losing their hair when i didn’t even notice a difference last time i saw them. it’s one of those things (like so many other appearance-related things) that you really only notice at all because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to care about it.

this isn’t something i’ve done personally, but if you really want to desensitize yourself to the idea of it, embrace the time-honored queer tradition of just shaving your whole damn head! find out what you’d look like without hair, find out how you feel about it and what you can do that makes you feel good about your appearance without hair, test the waters while it’s still a temporary change and not something permanent. that way, it won’t feel like this big scary unknown, and you’ll actually have a frame of reference for your feelings about how you look without hair rather than accepting the societal assumption that you’ll inevitably hate it. if you don’t want to actually shave your head, you could also just fuck around with bald filters or photoshop and see what happens.

oh, and if you’re attracted to men, keep an eye out for guys who are bald or balding and also hot as fuck. in my experience, there’s no insecurity or potential future insecurity that being gay for other men hasn’t helped me with. just off the top of my head, i can think of a couple actors who i think are absolutely fucking gorgeous who have helped me get over my fears about losing my hair. despite what our anti-aging-obsessed world might want you to think, there is no such thing as a physical feature that automatically makes someone less attractive, and while making attractiveness less of a priority in your life is good, it can’t hurt to also give yourself some proof that actually, you might lose your hair and look hot as hell doing it.

basically, entertain the possibility that it won’t be a bad thing at all! whether that’s just because it turns out to be a neutral thing for you or because you end up actually liking it, it’s not an inherently bad thing. i’ve ended up liking a lot of things that were “supposed to” be bad effects of t — i love the weight i’ve gained and the new shape it gives my body, i get a lot of gender euphoria from the fact that my acne is now on parts of my face that i saw a lot of guys in high school get it and i’m not complaining about the scars i get from it either because i’ve always liked the added texture that acne scars give my skin, and so on. i think there’s a lot of joy to be had in the changes we’re taught to fear, once we look past that conditioning and actually explore how we feel about it.

but if it’s something you really don’t want and you just want to improve your chances of not having to deal with it, it’s not like there’s nothing you can do! products like finasteride (oral) and minoxidil (usually topical but i think there might also be oral versions) are pretty commonly used among trans guys, for the purpose of avoiding hair loss and for other reasons, and there are plenty of other anti-hair loss products out there (though i don’t know how effective any one of them might be). if it’s a big enough deal for you, you can just decide that you’ll go off of t if/when you start noticing signs of it, since no longer having higher t levels would stop the process in its tracks. and if you don’t find prevention options that work for you so it ends up happening, you can always explore different hair styles (judging by the pattern of hair loss i see in my family, i suspect that keeping my hair long would make it less obvious if i started losing mine), find your preferred method of covering it when you don’t feel good about it (personally i love a good beanie generally and would probably wear them a lot more if i didn’t have hair to worry about because my main complaint is the way they press my hair onto my neck), or just shave it all off if you don’t like the look of the partial balding but don’t mind a shaved head. the point being — you have options!

at the end of the day, whether you go on t or not, you’re going to see your body change as you age in ways that aren’t always going to be attractive to others or aesthetically pleasing to you. that’s just the reality of having a body. even if you never went on t, you’d get older and you might see your hair thin out even if you don’t bald, you’ll see your skin start to wrinkle and sag in places that used to be smooth, your metabolism might slow or your body fat might start to gather in new places; hell, you might lose your hair for a totally different reason and end up in the same place but without the benefits of having been on t that whole time. life is full of bodily changes like that. transphobes will fearmonger about the permanent changes of testosterone all day long but the truth is, there is no escaping permanent bodily changes. whether or not you go on t, your body now isn’t the same as it will be in 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years, just like it isn’t the same as it was at any point in your life before now. our bodies are never supposed to stop growing and aging and changing throughout our lives. there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll love every single change our bodies go through, but that’s okay! there are so many things in life that are more important than the way our bodies look. even if you go on t and lose your hair and don’t like how it looks, your life won’t be ruined; plenty of other things will bring you joy and more than make up for the insecurities.

just think about the gender euphoria and relief from dysphoria that t could give you. would losing your hair be bad enough to outweigh all of that? or is it just the pressure of a society that decided balding is bad that’s making you fear one single change despite how much joy you could have if you let that fear go? only you can decide if going on t is worth the potential downsides for you, but i suspect that for most of us, the benefits of going on t far outweigh the possibility of side effects like hair loss happening down the line.

[shortnotsweet]

Bakudeku: A Non-Comprehensive Dissection of the Exploitation of Working Bodies, the Murder of Annoying Children, and a Rivals-to-Lovers Complex

I. Bakudeku in Canon, And Why Anti’s Need to Calm the Fuck Down

II. Power is Power: the Brain-Melting Process of Normalization and Toxic Masculinity

III. How to Kill Middle Schoolers, and Why We Should

IV. Parallels in Abuse, EnemiesRivals-to-Lovers, and the Necessity of Redemption ft. ATLA’s Zuko

V. Give it to Me Straight. It’s Homophobic.

VI. Love in Perspective, from the East v. West

VII. Stuck in the Sludge, the Past, and Season One

Disclaimer

It needs to be said that there is definitely a place for disagreement, discourse, debate, and analysis: that is a sign of an active fandom that’s heavily invested, and not inherently a bad thing at all. Considering the amount of source material we do have (from the manga, to the anime, to the movies, to the light novels, to the official art), there are going to be warring interpretations, and that’s inevitable.

I started watching and reading MHA pretty recently, and just got into the fandom. I was weary for a reason, and honestly, based on what I’ve seen, I’m still weary now. I’ve seen a lot of anti posts, and these are basically my thoughts. This entire thing is in no way comprehensive, and it’s my own opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. If I wanted to be thorough about this, I would’ve included manga panels, excerpts from the light novel, shots from the anime, links to other posts/essays/metas that have inspired this, etc. but I’m tired and not about that life right now, so, this is what it is. This is poorly organized, but maybe I’ll return to fix it.

Let’s begin.

Bakudeku in Canon, And Why Anti’s Need to Calm the Fuck Down

There are a lot of different reasons, that can be trivial as you like, to ship or not to ship two (or more) characters. It could be based purely off of character design, proximity, aversion to another ship, or hypotheticals. And I do think that it’s totally valid if someone dislikes the ship or can’t get on board with his character because to them, it does come across as abuse, and the implications make them uncomfortable or, or it just feels unhealthy. If that is your takeaway, and you are going to stick to your guns, the more power to you.

But Bakudeku’s relationship has canonically progressed to the point where it’s not the emotionally (or physically) abusive clusterfuck some people portray it to be, and it’s cheap to assume that it would be, based off of their characterizations as middle schoolers. Izuku intentionally opens the story as a naive little kid who views the lens of the Hero society through rose colored glasses and arguably wants nothing more than assimilation into that society; Bakugou is a privileged little snot who embodies the worst and most hypocritical beliefs of this system. Both of them are intentionally proven wrong. Both are brainwashed, as many little children are, by the propaganda and societal norms that they are exposed to. Both of their arcs include unlearning crucial aspects of the Hero ideology in order to become true heroes.

I will personally never simp for Bakugou because for the longest time, I couldn't help but think of him as a little kid on the playground screaming at the top of his lungs because someone else is on the swingset. He’s red in the face, there are probably veins popping out of his neck, he’s losing it. It’s easy to see why people would prefer Tododeku to Bakudeku.

Even now, seeing him differently, I still personally wouldn’t date Bakugou, especially if I had other options. Why? I probably wouldn’t want to date any of the guys who bullied me, especially because I think that schoolyard bullying, even in middle school, affected me largely in a negative way and created a lot of complexes I’m still trying to work through. I haven’t built a better relationship with them, and I’m not obligated to. Still, I associate them with the kind of soft trauma that they inflicted upon me, and while to them it was probably impersonal, to me, it was an intimate sort of attack that still affects me. That being said, that is me. Those are my personal experiences, and while they could undoubtedly influence how I interpret relationships, I do not want to project and hinder my own interpretation of Deku.

The reality is that Deku himself has an innate understanding of Bakugou that no one else does; I mention later that he seems to understand his language, implicitly, and I do stand by that. He understands what it is he’s actually trying to say, often why he’s saying it, and while others may see him as wimpy or unable to stand up for himself, that’s simply not true. Part of Deku’s characterization is that he is uncommonly observant and empathetic; I’m not denying that Bakugou caused harm or inflicted damage, but infantilizing Deku and preaching about trauma that’s not backed by canon and then assuming random people online excuse abuse is just...the leap of leaps, and an actual toxic thing to do. I’ve read fan works where Bakugou is a bully, and that’s all, and has caused an intimate degree of emotional, mental, and physical insecurity from their middle school years that prevents their relationship from changing, and that’s for the better. I’m not going to argue and say that it’s not an interesting take, or not valid, or has no basis, because it does. Its basis is the character that Bakugou was in middle school, and the person he was when he entered UA.

Not only is Bakugou — the current Bakugou, the one who has accumulated memories and experiences and development — not the same person he was at the beginning of the story, but Deku is not the same person, either. Maybe who they are fundamentally, at their core, stays the same, but at the beginning and end of any story, or even their arcs within the story, the point is that characters will undergo change, and that the reader will gain perspective.

“You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you. If you think you’ll have a quirk in your next life...go take a swan dive off the roof!”

Yes. That is a horrible thing to tell someone, even if you are a child, even if you don’t understand the implications, even if you don’t mean what it is you are saying. Had someone told me that in middle school, especially given our history and the context of our interactions, I don’t know if I would ever have forgiven them.

Here’s the thing: I’m not Deku. Neither is anyone reading this. Deku is a fictional character, and everyone we know about him is extrapolated from source material, and his response to this event follows:

“Idiot! If I really jumped, you’d be charged with bullying me into suicide! Think before you speak!”

I think it’s unfair to apply our own projections as a universal rather than an interpersonal interpretation; that’s not to say that the interpretation of Bakudeku being abusive or having unbalanced power dynamics isn’t valid, or unfounded, but rather it’s not a universal interpretation, and it’s not canon. Deku is much more of a verbal thinker; in comparison, Bakugou is a visual one, at least in the format of the manga, and as such, we get various panels demonstrating his guilt, and how deep it runs. His dialogue and rapport with Deku has undeniably shifted, and it’s very clear that the way they treat each other has changed from when they were younger. Part of Bakugou’s growth is him gaining self awareness, and eventually, the strength to wield that. He knows what a fucked up little kid he was, and he carries the weight of that.

“At that moment, there were no thoughts in my head. My body just moved on its own.”

There’s a part of me that really, really disliked Bakugou going into it, partially because of what I’d seen and what I’d heard from a limited, outside perspective. I felt like Bakugou embodied the toxic masculinity (and to an extent, I still believe that) and if he won in some way, that felt like the patriarchy winning, so I couldn't help but want to muzzle and leash him before releasing him into the wild.

The reality, however, of his character in canon is that it isn’t very accurate to assume that he would be an abusive partner in the future, or that Midoryia has not forgiven him to some extent already, that the two do not care about each other or are singularly important, that they respect each other, or that the narrative has forgotten any of this.

Don’t mistake me for a Bakugou simp or apologist. I’m not, but while I definitely could also see Tododeku (and I have a soft spot for them, too, their dynamic is totally different and unique, and Todoroki is arguably treated as the tritagonist) and I’m ambivalent about Izuocha (which is written as cannoncially romantic) I do believe that canonically, Bakugou and Deku are framed as soulmates/character foils, Sasuke + Naruto, Kageyama + Hinata style. Their relationship is arguably the focus of the series. That’s not to undermine the importance or impact of Deku’s relationships with other characters, and theirs with him, but in terms of which one takes priority, and which one this all hinges on?

The manga is about a lot of things, yes, but if it were to be distilled into one relationship, buckle up, because it’s the Bakudeku show.

Power is Power: the Brain-Melting Process of Normalization and Toxic Masculinity

One of the ways in which the biopolitical prioritization of Quirks is exemplified within Hero society is through Quirk marriages. Endeavor partially rationalizes the abuse of his family through the creation of a child with the perfect quirk, a child who can be molded into the perfect Hero. People with powerful, or useful abilities, are ranked high on the hierarchy of power and privilege, and with a powerful ability, the more opportunities and avenues for success are available to them.

For the most part, Bakugou is a super spoiled, privileged little rich kid who is born talented but is enabled for his aggressive behavior and, as a child, cannot move past his many internalized complexes, treats his peers like shit, and gets away with it because the hero society he lives in either has this “boys will be boys” mentality, or it’s an example of the way that power, or Power, is systematically prioritized in this society. The hero system enables and fosters abusers, people who want power and publicity, and people who are genetically predisposed to have advantages over others. There are plenty of good people who believe in and participate in this system, who want to be good, and who do good, but that doesn’t change the way that the hero society is structured, the ethical ambiguity of the Hero Commission, and the way that Heroes are but pawns, idols with machine guns, used to sell merch to the public, to install faith in the government, or the current status quo, and reinforce capitalist propaganda. Even All Might, the epitome of everything a Hero should be, is drained over the years, and exists as a concept or idea, when in reality he is a hollow shell with an entire person inside, struggling to survive. Hero society is functionally dependent on illusion.

In Marxist terms: There is no truth, there is only power.

Although Bakugou does change, and I think that while he regrets his actions, what is long overdue is him verbally expressing his remorse, both to himself and Deku. One might argue that he’s tried to do it in ways that are compatible with his limited emotional range of expression, and Deku seems to understand this language implicitly.

I am of the opinion that the narrative is building up to a verbal acknowledgement, confrontation, and subsequent apology that only speaks what has gone unspoken.

That being said, Bakugou is a great example of the way that figures of authority (parents, teachers, adults) and institutions both in the real world and this fictional universe reward violent behavior while also leaving mental and emotional health — both his own and of the people Bakugou hurts — unchecked, and part of the way he lashes out at others is because he was never taught otherwise.

And by that, I’m referring to the ways that are to me, genuinely disturbing. For example, yelling at his friends is chill. But telling someone to kill themselves, even casually and without intent and then misinterpreting everything they do as a ploy to make you feel weak because you're projecting? And having no teachers stop and intervene, either because they are afraid of you or because they value the weight that your Quirk can benefit society over the safety of children? That, to me, is both real and disturbing.

Not only that, but his parents (at least, Mitsuki), respond to his outbursts with more outbursts, and while this is likely the culture of their home and I hesitate to call it abusive, I do think that it contributed to the way that he approaches things. Bakugou as a character is very complex, but I think that he is primarily an example of the way that the Hero System fails people.

I don’t think we can write off the things he’s done, especially using the line of reasoning that “He didn’t mean it that way”, because in real life, children who hurt others rarely mean it like that either, but that doesn’t change the effect it has on the people who are victimized, but to be absolutely fair, I don’t think that the majority of Bakudeku shippers, at least now, do use that line of reasoning. Most of them seem to have a handle on exactly how fucked up the Hero society is, and exactly why it fucks up the people embedded within that society.

The characters are positioned in this way for a reason, and the discoveries made and the development that these characters undergo are meant to reveal more about the fictional world — and, perhaps, our world — as the narrative progresses.

The world of the Hero society is dependent, to some degree, on biopolitics. I don’t think we have enough evidence to suggest that people with Quirks or Quirkless people place enough identity or placement within society to become equivalent to marginalized groups, exactly, but we can draw parallels to the way that Deku and by extent Quirkless people are viewed as weak, a deviation, or disabled in some way. Deviants, or non-productive bodies, are shunned for their inability to perform ideal labor. While it is suggested to Deku that he could become a police officer or pursue some other occupation to help people, he believes that he can do the most positive good as a Hero. In order to be a Hero, however, in the sense of a career, one needs to have Power.

Deviation from the norm will be punished or policed unless it is exploitable; in order to become integrated into society, a deviant must undergo a process of normalization and become a working, exploitable body. It is only through gaining power from All Might that Deku is allowed to assimilate from the margins and into the upper ranks of society; the manga and the anime give the reader enough perspective, context, and examples to allow us to critique and deconstruct the society that is solely reliant on power.

Through his societal privileges, interpersonal biases, internalized complexes, and his subsequent unlearning of these ideologies, Bakugou provides examples of the way that the system simultaneously fails and indoctrinates those who are targeted, neglected, enabled by, believe in, and participate within the system.

Bakudeku are two sides of the same coin. We are shown visually that the crucial turning point and fracture in their relationship is when Bakugou refuses to take Deku’s outstretched hand; the idea of Deku offering him help messes with his adolescent perspective in that Power creates a hierarchy that must be obeyed, and to be helped is to be weak is to be made a loser.

Largely, their character flaws in terms of understanding the hero society are defined and entangled within the concept of power. Bakugou has power, or privilege, but does not have the moral character to use it as a hero, and believes that Power, or winning, is the only way in which to view life. Izuku has a much better grasp on the way in which heroes wield power (their ideologies can, at first, be differentiated as winning vs. saving), and is a worthy successor because of this understanding, and of circumstance. However, in order to become a Hero, our hero must first gain the Power that he lacks, and learn to wield it.

As the characters change, they bridge the gaps of their character deficiencies, and are brought closer together through character parallelism.

Two sides of the same coin, an outstretched hand.

They are better together.

How to Kill Middle Schoolers, and Why We Should

I think it’s fitting that in the manga, a critical part of Bakugou’s arc explicitly alludes to killing the middle school version of himself in order to progress into a young adult. In the alternative covers Horikoshi released, one of them was a close up of Bakugou in his middle school uniform, being stabbed/impaled, with blood rolling out of his mouth. Clearly this references the scene in which he sacrifices himself to save Deku, on a near-instinctual level.

To me, this only cements Horikoshi’s intent that middle school Bakugou must be debunked, killed, discarded, or destroyed in order for Bakugou the hero to emerge, which is why people who do actually excuse his actions or believe that those actions define him into young adulthood don’t really understand the necessity for change, because they seem to imply that he doesn’t need/cannot reach further growth, and there doesn’t need to be a separation between the Bakugou who is, at heart, volatile and repressed the angry, and the Bakugou who sacrifices himself, a hero who saves people.

Plot twist: there does need to be a difference. Further plot twist: there is a difference.

In sacrificing himself for Deku, Bakugou himself doesn't die, but the injury is fatal in the sense that it could've killed him physically and yet symbolizes the selfish, childish part of him that refused to accept Deku, himself, and the inevitability of change. In killing those selfish remnants, he could actually become the kind of hero that we the reader understand to be the true kind.

That’s why I think that a lot of the people who stress his actions as a child without acknowledging the ways he has changed, grown, and tried to fix what he has broken don’t really get it, because it was always part of his character arc to change and purposely become something different and better. If the effects of his worst and his most childish self stick with you more, and linger despite that, that’s okay. But distilling his character down to the wrong elements doesn’t get you the bare essentials; what it gets you is a skewed and shallow version of a person. If you’re okay with that version, that is also fine.

But you can’t condemn others who aren’t fine with that incomplete version, and to become enraged that others do not see him as you do is childish.

Bakugou’s change and the emphasis on that change is canon.

Parallels in Abuse, EnemiesRivals-to-Lovers, and the Necessity of Redemption ft. ATLA’s Zuko

In real life, the idea that “oh, he must bully you because he likes you” is often used as a way to brush aside or to excuse the action of bullying itself, as if a ‘secret crush’ somehow negates the effects of bullying on the victim or the inability of the bully to properly process and manifest their emotions in certain ways. It doesn’t. It often enables young boys to hurt others, and provides figures of authority to overlook the real source of schoolyard bullying or peer review. The “secret crush”, in real life, is used to undermine abuse, justify toxic masculinity, and is essentially used as a non-solution solution.

A common accusation is that Bakudeku shippers jump on the pairing because they romanticize pairing a bully and a victim together, or believe that the only way for Bakugou to atone for his past would be to date Midoryia in the future. This may be true for some people, in which case, that’s their own preference, but based on my experience and what I’ve witnessed, that’s not the case for most.

The difference being is that as these are characters, we as readers or viewers are meant to analyze them. Not to justify them, or to excuse their actions, but we are given the advantage of the outsider perspective to piece their characters together in context, understand why they are how they are, and witness them change; maybe I just haven’t been exposed to enough of the fandom, but no one (I’ve witnessed) treats the idea that “maybe Bakugou has feelings he can’t process or understand and so they manifest in aggressive and unchecked ways'' as a solution to his inability to communicate or process in a healthy way, rather it is just part of the explanation of his character, something is needs to — and is — working through. The solution to his middle school self is not the revelation of a “teehee, secret crush”, but self-reflection, remorse, and actively working to better oneself, which I do believe is canonically reflected, especially as of recently.

In canon, they are written to be partners, better together than apart, and I genuinely believe that one can like the Bakudeku dynamic not by route of romanticization but by observation.

I do think we are meant to see parallels between him and Endeavor; Endeavor is a high profile abuser who embodies the flaws and hypocrisy of the hero system. Bakugou is a schoolyard bully who emulates and internalizes the flaws of this system as a child, likely due to the structure of the society and the way that children will absorb the propaganda they are exposed to; the idea that Quirks, or power, define the inherent value of the individual, their ability to contribute to society, and subsequently their fundamental human worth. The difference between them is the fact that Endeavor is the literal adult who is fully and knowingly active within a toxic, corrupt system who forces his family to undergo a terrifying amount of trauma and abuse while facing little to no consequences because he knows that his status and the values of their society will protect him from those consequences. In other words, Endeavor is the threat of what Bakugou could have, and would have, become without intervention or genuine change.

Comparisons between characters, as parallels or foils, are tricky in that they imply but cannot confirm sameness. Having parallels with someone does not make them the same, by the way, but can serve to illustrate contrasts, or warnings. Harry Potter, for example, is meant to have obvious parallels with Tom Riddle, with similar abilities, and tragic upbringings. That doesn’t mean Harry grows up to become Lord Voldemort, but rather he helps lead a cross-generational movement to overthrow the facist regime. Harry is offered love, compassion, and friends, and does not embrace the darkness within or around him. As far as moldy old snake men are concerned, they do not deserve a redemption arc because they do not wish for one, and the truest of change only occurs when you actively try to change.

To be frank, either way, Bakugou was probably going to become a good Hero, in the sense that Endeavor is a ‘good’ Hero. Hero capitalized, as in a pro Hero, in the sense that it is a career, an occupation, and a status. Because of his strong Quirk, determination, skill, and work ethic, Bakugou would have made a good Hero. Due to his lack of character, however, he was not on the path to become a hero; defender of the weak, someone who saves people to save people, who is willing to make sacrifices detrimental to themselves, who saves people out of love.

It is necessary for him to undergo both a redemption arc and a symbolic death and rebirth in order for him to follow the path of a hero, having been inspired and prompted by Deku.

I personally don’t really like Endeavor’s little redemption arc, not because I don’t believe that people can change or that they shouldn't at least try to atone for the atrocities they have committed, but because within any narrative, a good redemption arc is important if it matters; what also matters is the context of that arc, and whether or not it was needed. For example, in ATLA, Zuko’s redemption arc is widely regarded as one of the best arcs in television history, something incredible. And it is. That shit fucks. In a good way.

It was confirmed that Azula was also going to get a redemption arc, had Volume 4 gone on as planned, and it was tentatively approached in the comics, which are considered canon. She is an undeniably bad person (who is willing to kill, threaten, exploit, and colonize), but she is also a child, and as viewers, we witness and recognize the factors that contributed to her (debatable) sociopathy, and the way that the system she was raised in failed her. Her family failed her; even Uncle Iroh, the wise mentor who helps guide Zuko to see the light, is willing to give up on her immediately, saying that she’s “crazy” and needs to be “put down”. Yes, it’s comedic, and yes, it’s pragmatic, but Azula is fourteen years old. Her mother is banished, her father is a psychopath, and her older brother, from her perspective, betrayed and abandoned her. She doesn’t have the emotional support that Zuko does; she exploits and controls her friends because it’s all she’s been taught to do; she says herself, her “own mother thought [she] was a monster; she was right, of course, but it still [hurts]”. A parent who does not believe in you, or a parent that uses you and will hurt you, is a genuine indicator of trauma.

The writers understood that both Zuko and Azula deserved redemption arcs. One was arguably further gone than the other, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are both children, products of their environment, who have the time, motive, and reason to change.

In contrast, you know who wouldn’t have deserved a redemption arc? Ozai. That simply would not have been interesting, wouldn’t have served the narrative well, and honestly, is not needed, thematically or otherwise. Am I comparing Ozai to Endeavor? Basically, yes. Fuck those guys. I don’t see a point in Endeavor’s little “I want to be a good dad now” arc, and I think that we don’t need to sympathize with characters in order to understand them or be interested in them. I want Touya/Dabi to expose his abuse, for his career to crumble, and then for him to die.

If they are not challenging the system that we the viewer are meant to question, and there is no thematic relevance to their redemption, is it even needed?

On that note, am I saying that Bakugou is the equivalent to Zuko? No, lmao. Definitely not. They are different characters with different progressions and different pressures. What I am saying is that good redemption arcs shouldn’t be handed out like candy to babies; it is the quality, rather than the quantity, that makes a redemption arc good. In terms of the commentary of the narrative, who needs a redemption arc, who is deserving, and who does it make sense to give one to?

In this case, Bakugou checks those boxes. It was always in the cards for him to change, and he has. In fact, he’s still changing.

Give it to Me Straight. It’s Homophobic.

There does seem to be an urge to obsessively gender either Bakugou or Deku, in making Deku the ultra-feminine, stereotypically hyper-sexualized “woman” of the relationship, with Bakugou becoming similarly sexualized but depicted as the hyper-masculine bodice ripper. On some level, that feels vaguely homophobic if not straight up misogynistic, in that in a gay relationship there’s an urge to compel them to conform under heteronormative stereotypes in order to be interpreted as real or functional. On one hand, I will say that in a lot of cases it feels like more of an expression of a kink, or fetishization and subsequent expression of internalized misogyny, at least, rather than a genuine exploration of the complexity and power imbalances of gender dynamics, expression, and boundaries.

That being said, I don’t think that that problematic aspect of shipping is unique to Bakudeku, or even to the fandom in general. We’ve all read fan work or see fanart of most gay ships in a similiar manner, and I think it’s a broader issue to be addressed than blaming it on a singular ship and calling it a day.

One interpretation of Bakugou’s character is his repression and the way his character functions under toxic masculinity, in a society’s egregious disregard for mental and emotional health (much like in the real world), the horrifying ways in which rage is rationalized or excused due to the concept of masculinity, and the way that characteristics that are associated with femininity — intellect, empathy, anxiety, kindness, hesitation, softness — are seen as stereotypically “weak”, and in men, traditionally emasculating. In terms of the way that the fictional universe is largely about societal priority and power dynamics between individuals and the way that extends to institutions, it’s not a total stretch to guess that gender as a construct is a relevant topic to expand on or at least keep in mind for comparison.

I think that the way in which characters are gendered and the extent to which that is a result of invasive heteronormativity and fetishization is a really important conversation to have, but using it as a case-by-case evolution of a ship used to condemn people isn’t conductive, and at that point, it’s treated as less of a real concern but an issue narrowly weaponised.

Love in Perspective, from the East v. West

Another thing I think could be elaborated on and written about in great detail is the way that the Eastern part of the fandom and the Western part of the fandom have such different perspectives on Bakudeku in particular. I am not going to go in depth with this, and there are many other people who could go into specifics, but just as an overview:

The manga and the anime are created for and targeted at a certain audience; our take on it will differ based on cultural norms, decisions in translation, understanding of the genre, and our own region-specific socialization. This includes the way in which we interpret certain relationships, the way they resonate with us, and what we do and do not find to be acceptable. Of course, this is not a case-by-case basis, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who hold differing beliefs within one area, but speaking generally, there is a reason that Bakudeku is not regarded as nearly as problematic in the East.

Had this been written by a Western creator, marketed primarily to and within the West (for reference, while I am Chinese, but I have lived in the USA for most of my life, so my own perspective is undoubtedly westernized), I would’ve immediately jumped to make comparisons between the Hero System and the American police system, in that a corrupt, or bastardized system is made no less corrupt for the people who do legitimately want to do good and help people, when that system disproportionately values and targets others while relying on propaganda that society must be reliant on that system in order to create safe communities when in reality it perpetuates just as many issues as it appears to solve, not to mention the way it attracts and rewards violent and power-hungry people who are enabled to abuse their power. I think comparisons can still be made, but in terms of analysis, it should be kept in mind that the police system in other parts of the world do not have the same history, place, and context as it does in America, and the police system in Japan, for example, probably wasn’t the basis for the Hero System.

As much as I do believe in the Death of the Author in most cases, the intent of the author does matter when it comes to content like this, if merely on the basis that it provides context that we may be missing as foreign viewers.

As far as the intent of the author goes, Bakugou is on a route of redemption.

He deserves it. It is unavoidable. That, of course, may depend on where you’re reading this.

Stuck in the Sludge, the Past, and Season One

If there’s one thing, to me, that epitomizes middle school Bakugou, it’s him being trapped in a sludge monster, rescued by his Quirkless childhood friend, and unable to believe his eyes. He clings to the ideology he always has, that Quirkless means weak, that there’s no way that Deku could have grown to be strong, or had the capacity to be strong all along. Bakugou is wrong about this, and continuously proven wrong. It is only when he accepts that he is wrong, and that Deku is someone to follow, that he starts his real path to heroics.

If Bakudeku’s relationship does not appeal to someone for whatever reason, there’s nothing wrong with that. They can write all they want about why they don’t ship it, or why it bothers them, or why they think it’s problematic. If it is legitimately triggering to you, then by all means, avoid it, point it out, etc. but do not undermine the reality of abuse simply to point fingers, just because you don’t like a ship. People who intentionally use the anti tag knowing it’ll show up in the main tag, go after people who are literally minding their own business, and accuse people of supporting abuse are the ones looking for a fight, and they’re annoying as hell because they don’t bring anything to the table. No evidence, no analysis, just repeated projection.

To clarify, I’m referring to a specific kind of shipper, not someone who just doesn’t like a ship, but who is so aggressive about it for absolutely no reason. There are plenty of very lovely people in this fandom, who mind their own business, multipship, or just don’t care.

Calling shippers dumb or braindead or toxic (to clarify, this isn’t targeting any one person I’ve seen, but a collective) based on projections and generalizations that come entirely from your own impression of the ship rather than observation is...really biased to me, and comes across as uneducated and trigger happy, rather than constructive or helpful in any way.

I’m not saying someone has to ship anything, or like it, in order to be a ‘good’ participant. But inserting derogatory material into a main tag, and dropping buzzwords with the same tired backing behind it without seeming to understand the implications of those words or acknowledging the development, pacing, and intentional change to the characters within the plot is just...I don’t know, it comes across as redundant, to me at least, and very childish. Aggressive. Toxic. Problematic. Maybe the real toxic shippers were the ones who bitched and moaned along the way. They’re like little kids, stuck in the past, unable to visualize or recognize change, and I think that’s a real shame because it’s preventing them from appreciating the story or its characters as it is, in canon.

But that’s okay, really. To each their own. Interpretations will vary, preferences differ, perspectives are not uniform. There is no one truth. There are five seasons of the show, a feature film, and like, thirty volumes as of this year.

All I’m saying is that if you want to stay stuck in the first season of each character, then that’s what you’re going to get. That’s up to you.

This may be edited or revised.

[bondsmagii]

Heya Miceal! I see your gorgeous urban explorer photos, and I Yearn. I’ve always wanted to get into the urbex scene, both because it’s a very Final Person thing to do and because it’s a great way to get background reference for horror art. The thing that’s been stopping me is figuring out the safety protocol for exploring abandoned and thus potentially dangerous structures. What (if any) preparations do you make when you set out exploring? Is there anything you make sure to bring safety-wise (filter mask for mold, first aide etc)? Do you have any tips you can share for getting started? Inquiring rats would like to know! :D

man, urbexing is one of the coolest hobbies out there imo. definitely check it out if you can, there's nothing like exploring an abandoned building and seeing everything left behind. if you like horror (which I know you do!) you'll definitely appreciate the atmosphere there. it's not even straightforward Spooky, it's just... I don't know. something unique to places that used to be so busy but have now been forgotten. it's an incredible feeling, and seeing everything first hand is very useful for art and writing!

obviously, though, it is dangerous. there is an element of unavoidable risk inherent in urbexing, because in order to see everything you want to see, you do sometimes have to take a risk. there are things you can watch out for in order to minimise risk, but... you're in an abandoned building. it's going to be dangerous. when it comes to things I bring with me, it's no more complex than a mask for mould and/or dust (I just use the medical-grade ones I use when out these days, seems if it's good enough for Miss Rona it's good enough for an explore) and obviously a flashlight and spare batteries. I'd say a flashlight is your most-needed item, because a lot of places are boarded up and therefore completely black inside. needless to say, bring a few flashlights, too -- if you drop one or lose it, you don't want to be caught in the middle of a pitch-black building with no light.

the rest is just experience and vigilance. you can never have 0% risk in an abandoned building, but here are some things I look out/do for in order to make sure I'm not being needlessly stupid:

always test where you put your feet first, even on the ground floor. many buildings -- especially hospitals -- have basements. press your weight cautiously and increasingly before each step, and look out for any spongy feeling. if the floor feels soft or spongy, don't proceed. try to find a more solid route, but if there is none, don't risk it.

if you have a decent sense of balance, you can also rely on that to see you right. the body has a decent way of sensing when thing are unstable. if you're not bothered by heights or you're not at a height, but you feel any symptoms of vertigo -- weak knees, spinning/unsteady head, etc -- it's probably a sign that the floor isn't stable.

where possible, stick close to the walls. people tend to walk through the centre of rooms or hallways, so the area by the wall is less-used and better supported. still proceed cautiously, but there's a better chance of the floor being stable here.

always keep an eye on what's above you. one person's floor is another person's ceiling. watch out for things dangling down (like lights, as I found out when I cracked my head off one once...) and for signs of an unstable roof, such as sagging or cracks. don't loiter under these, and when you're taking photographs make sure there's nothing like that above you.

watch out for signs of water damage: bubbles in the paint or plaster, signs of mould (especially in streaked patterns), damp wood, etc. water damage is the biggest risk in abandoned structures and it can rot the whole building through while still leaving it standing. one impact, such as putting your foot through the floor and stumbling, might bring down a lot more than just the immediate area.

fire damage isn't as bad if there's been no response by the fire department because everything that will collapse probably already has, but still exercise caution and be mindful of ash and dust that's kicked up as you walk. there's probably a lot of nasty shit in there. if the fire department was present, then be on the lookout for water damage caused not by gentle rain but rather high-pressure hoses, which can obviously make things much more unstable.

as with walking, when climbing into/through things, test the weight and how solid the route is. there's lots of cautiously patting/shaking things when urbexing.

please god have a tetanus shot. you can be as careful as you like, but rusty nails and sharp edges are everywhere. you might not even realise you've been scratched until later, so it's worth making sure you're vaccinated. be vigilant of any scrapes you get and be sure to clean everything thoroughly -- abandoned buildings are pretty dirty places.

if you keep these things in mind you should avoid most trouble, but again, it's a pretty dangerous hobby. sometimes you really do just have to look at something and wonder how much you're willing to risk, in the full knowledge that you're probably being a bit stupid. still, there's no pressure -- go where you're comfortable, as as you gain more experience you'll probably find this comfort expands. I've been urbexing for over a decade now so I get myself into all kinds of places (climbing up a crumbling clock tower in a storm; scrambling up two storeys of collapsed rubble to peer over the wall, etc) but there are still some things I wouldn't risk.

oh yeah, speaking of climbing -- if there's a safe place to leave any bags you might be carrying (I always have a rucksack with me) it might be worth doing so when climbing up things. bags really throw out your centre of gravity, and you don't need that while tightrope walking over a pile of rubble or walking up an open staircase with no railing or something.

happy exploring!

[gohyuck]

↠ lee jeno; assassin in the thirteen colonies, year 1776

the brotherhood: guide

pairing: assassin!lee jeno x reader; based on assassin’s creed

genre: fluff, angst, suggestive (explicit allusions to sex)

word count: 4.5k

warnings: minor characters die, kidnapping, descriptions of murder

"i would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

↳ personality: you don’t think it’s possible to meet a more honest person. you also don’t think it’s possible to meet a more gentle person. last of all, and perhaps the most critical characteristic he has, you don’t think it’s earthly possible to find anyone as damn impulsive as him. frankly - and you mull over this constantly - it’s easy to forget that jeno is a killer, perhaps because he is anything but cold-blooded.

he’s the most hot-blooded person you know. passion is the undercurrent for all of his actions - a passion, specifically, for humanity. all that jeno does is to preserve humanity - that of others’, that of himself. he is honest, he is kind, he is sturdy, he is stoic, he is courageous, and he leaves change in his wake, running into fires to salvage even ashes if he can. jeno thanks every deer he slays, paying them homage for their pelt, their bones, their meat. jeno, believing far more in his own ancestors than in religion, prays for the souls of every bastard Englishman he kills, for them to find their respective gods, to find their unholy souls, and make peace in the next world with what they were unable to do so in this one.

he’s hot-blooded about the pursuit of his mother’s killers, knowing only that they’re not part of the brotherhood of assassins, knowing only that they’re part of the other side. jeno, gentle and kind jeno who wraps his arms around your waist from behind when he returns from missions, who plucks you flowers from the field beside to your home because he thinks they look pretty behind your ears, grits his teeth and clenches his jaw whenever he speaks of avenging his mother. you’re not allowed to accompany him on missions, of course - he makes it abundantly clear that he cannot lose you - but when he comes home, white robes soaked in red and tomahawk - a gift from the Mohawk tribe settled near you - dripping blood all over your floors, you can’t help but wonder how hot-blooded jeno is when slitting bad men’s throats or impaling them on their own muskets.

outside of the four walls of your home, his passion for humanity manifests in murder, in relaying letters for the sons of liberty, in pouring tea into the boston harbor. jeno’s slowly becoming a symbol of resistance against the british, and while it isn’t his goal, you know leading the colonies to victory is written in the stars for him. it’s why you let him go every time, even when he comes back to you riddled with slashes, stabbed in the side or in the arm, grazed by bullets and covered in gunpowder burns. it’s why you stay with him through the long nights, wincing to yourself when he cries out at your attempts to keep him infection free. the colonists only want to be free, he tells you when you ask of him, of his passion. shouldn’t everyone be free? he lives up to his morals in all aspects as well, freeing captured members of Native American tribes as well as doing his best to speak out against the rampant slavery that occurs amongst the same people who believe in their own right to be free.

jeno is nothing if not fair.

inside of your home, he gives you a new meaning to hot-blooded. you can only describe it as being utterly and absolutely ravished - his arms caging you against the bed you share, tongue laving gently over the numerous bruises he’d harshly sucked into your skin moments prior. there’s no lack of stamina with jeno - even after the longest of missions he comes home, energized and shaking with adrenaline, waiting for you to allow him to take it out on you. his palms are rough, so very rough, but his fingers are nimble when he strips you bare of clothes, when he enters three into you to make sure you can take him. whether he’s feeling benevolent, or loving, or gentle, it does not matter - jeno always pounds you into the mattress until you only know his name, until it’s the only word that falls from your lips.

jeno loves humanity. it’s why he fights so hard for everyone’s freedom. jeno loves you. it’s why he’s always gentle with you in the aftermath of him, all loving kisses and breakfast in bed. when he’s with you, when he watches you go over the homestead’s books from the doorway of your study or allows you to sit in on his training, when he bathes with you in the nearby stream and teaches you how to skin a deer cleanly, when he asks you to read to him with his head in your lap as you stroke his hair, all is well. it’s a shame he isn’t with you often.

↳ origin: he’d been not but 8 when it had happened. his mother had never hid anything from him, instilling the belief that there is nothing greater, nor more sacred, than the truth. jeno knew from the moment he gained true cognizance that his father was not korean like his mother was - he was a british government official who’d happened to fall for his mother while landing near her village for work. she’d followed him to the young british colonies on the continent everyone was coming to know as ‘america’. 

she’d always believed that jeno’s father was a good man. jeno, armed with the innocence only children can have, believed the same. even after he abandoned them readily, leaving a 1 year old jeno and his mother to fend for themselves in the woods while going back to his own new home in boston, she relayed stories of his heroics to her son. even after it all, jeno held onto the belief that people are inherently good. 

it wasn’t until british soldiers burned down the settlement of the Mohawk tribe that had taken jeno and his mother, until jeno was dragged, kicking and screaming, away from his mother’s asphyxiated corpse, that he realized he’d been wrong, that his mother had been wrong. the redcoats were inherently terrible, tyrannical. jeno’s father, not only amongst them but in a position of power as well, was a bad, bad man. 

it wasn’t until he lost everything he had that he realized just how much he had to lose. 

it’s then that he decides that, someday, when he has power, he will do everything he can to fight for justice and for freedom. he does not want anymore little boys losing their mothers for no other reason than oppressors seeing them as unfit for life. the moment he turns 14 - a strapping young man, shoulders broad but heavy with the weight of the world - he leaves the rebuilt Mohawk settlement, being sent on his way by the tribe mother with only a name: achilles davenport, master assassin. it’s at davenport’s homestead that he learns the ways of the assassin brotherhood, the ways of the other side - known as templars. assassins fight for freedom. templars - many of them living as british officials and redcoats - fight for complete control. 

jeno never has to think about where he stands. 

↳ the starting line: jeno only meets you in his 20s, when you run away from your house in new york and make your way to the frontier to create yourself a home. you’re practically passing out while trying to chop wood while he’s heading back to the homestead with a clean kill for dinner. as you stand up to wipe the sweat off your brow with a grimy hand, you meet his eyes, dark and completely unreadable.

jeno is never seen unless he wants to be seen. you don’t know this yet, but someday you will. 

“do you need help?” he asks, already setting the dead deer down and sheathing his knife in the small scabbard at his hip. there’s a bow and a quiver full of arrows both slung over his shoulders, but as he nears you he pulls them off as well. you don’t say anything until he’s right in front of you, holding out his weapons for you to take. 

equal exchange: he trusts you to hold his things if you trust him with your axe.

you take them. 

“you’re peter, aren’t you? from the homestead? i’m (name).” you finally ask as you hand him your weapon. he raises an eyebrow before scoffing slightly, grabbing the axe’s handle easy as he does. 

“jeno is my given name, actually. peter is the name i use when i’m amongst the colonists.”

“and why is that?” you step back, just as he arcs the axe over his head. you watch, in awe, as he splits the tree trunk cleanly in half before pushing it off of the block you have it on with the side of the metal. he picks up another piece of wood from the pile you’d been going through before setting it down. 

“’peter’ sounds more natural here than jeno, don’t you think? wouldn’t want to call attention to myself.” he has an air of finality as he speaks this time, and you decide not to prod him. instead, you sit back, hands gripping onto his bow and arrows as you watch him break pieces of wood with ease under the evening sun. you can’t help but notice the way his shirt clings to his muscles as his sweat slowly seeps through the thin material, outlining the ridges of his abs and the bulges of his biceps. 

it’s the first time you see jeno, but it isn’t anywhere near the last. 

you become close friends over the next few years, with jeno eventually allowing you to be privy to his life as an assassin when you find him, bleeding from a gash in his arm in your living room one night, after returning from dinner with a friend’s. you demand to know what he’s doing - why he’s in a blue and white robe, why he has a tomahawk strapped to his chest and a rope dart in his hands - and why he’s so badly hurt, and he finds that he can’t keep you in the dark anymore, not when you care so deeply for him and when he cares even more deeply for you. 

it’s as you straddle him, eyes focused and teeth sinking into your bottom lip while you clean his wound, that jeno realizes that he’s finally gained something - someone - personal to fight for. you can’t ignore the way his soft gaze is fixed on your face, or how his large hands rest gently against your waist. once you’re done dressing his arm, you look down at him and slowly, very slowly, lower your lips to meet his. 

it’s unspoken, but he’s yours and you’re his from then on. 

↳ i would rather die on my feet...: it’s been years since you’ve been together, but the majority of jeno’s things are still at davenport’s homestead even as he sleeps in the bed in your house at night. you do not mind this - he keeps you separate from where he plans most of his missions for a reason. 

he wants to be able to come home to you, to press soft kisses your forehead and feel you bury you face in his chest as you breathe him in. jeno does work for the good of all humanity, but sometimes he feels as if he would give everything up just to have a quiet life with you. these emotions are strongest in the passing scenes of his life that are difficult for him to dwell on due to a lack of time: times when your bare body is asleep and curled into the side of his own naked form, times when you drag him out to dance in fields and laugh with him as he cooks for you. he knows you hurt when he’s gone, because he hurts when he’s gone too. jeno is thoroughly convinced that he only needs your smile to stay alive. 

with a love like yours, it’s inevitable that sometime tries to tear it apart at the seams. 

it happens when he’s out on a mission: paul revere needs aid - and a horseman - in delivering news to the people. your knowledge of the intricacies or whatever jeno is embarking on tonight is sparse, as always, and you let him leave after he spends a night mumbling promises into your skin that say that he’ll come back home to you, as always. it’s always jeno who goes out, who risks his life for the collective. it’s always jeno who’s in danger.

it’s why, when you hear your front door pull open while you’re in the kitchen, you rush out excitedly, not thinking it could be anyone but the love of your life. it’s why, in your shock at seeing 4 men with glittering ruby red rings centered with silver crosses - the telltale mark of the templar - you’re rendered unable to move. it’s why they’re able to subdue you - you, a scrappy runaway who can at the very least wield a simple blade - without much effort, succeeding in forcefully covering your head with a bag and dragging you, kicking and screaming, into what you realize is a portable jail once you come to your senses. you’re stuck into what’s essentially a glorified cage on top of what you think is a wagon, and as you feel the men’s sneers on you and hear their jeering laughs, you can’t help but think of one thing.

may God turn a blind eye when jeno finds those responsible for this.

when you reach what’s evidently your destination, you’re pulled roughly from your imprisonment, snagging the cage while almost blindly tripping and falling to the ground. you regain your footing just in time although a part of your dress has ripped, but that doesn’t stop whoever is behind you to continue shoving you forward with abandon. you try to take note of what you can - running your hands over the side of what must be a building when they shove you into it to see what it’s made out of, trying to get a sense of the smell in the air. you’ve never been helpless - you know how to hunt, how to fight, how to care for yourself and protect yourself - so you almost immediately set about taking stock of important information that can be gleaned by your remaining senses. you eventually stop walking, only hearing the distinct clink of a key and a door being unlocked before you’re shoved unceremoniously onto a smooth, rocky floor. they lock the door again immediately, and as their footsteps recede you realize that you’re stuck tied up and blindfolded, no explanation afforded to you. you can only assume that they want jeno, although you have a feeling they don’t know what they will get in return. 

all you can do is wait. 

↳ ...than live on my knees.: jeno knows that something is wrong before he even crosses the threshold of the front door. 

he’d stopped by the homestead first to update achilles on the state of the brewing trouble - redcoats had come by sea, forcing jeno to cart revere all over the colonies to let people know of this. jeno knows there’s still much to be done - not even battles have truly been won yet, let alone the war. still, even though he can’t afford to rest, he finds himself craving time with you. leaving you is gut-wrenching, but coming back is the easiest thing in the world. 

so once he’s done briefing achilles, he goes straight home. jeno hasn’t shed his robes yet, hasn’t cleaned his weapons. he isn’t easily exhausted, but his feet ache almost as much as his heart does, and all he wants is to lie down with you, pull you to his chest, and talk about the stars or about your interactions with people down at the pub you help out at or about the family of raccoons you’d seen while taking a stroll. being with you is like a dream he doesn’t enjoy being taken out of.

he’s jarred awake when he sees that your front door is very, very slightly ajar. jeno’s mind goes into overdrive immediately, but he steels his nerves as he takes stock of everything around him: aside from the door being open, the grass is kicked up from the bottom of your porch to what look like wheel indents in the dirt. there’d been a struggle. he gingerly approaches your door and, upon pushing it open, breath hitched, he sees a chair overturned. there’s a basket of vegetables upended on the floor, and in his mind’s eye jeno can see you, small grin on your face, walking out of the kitchen mid-dinner preparation to give him a proper welcome home. 

for a moment, he thinks the rage consuming him might kill him - that it might stop his heart and shut him down completely. the fear that overrides him brings his breathing back, though it’s fast and choppy and impossible to follow. 

he has to find you. it’s his fault - his existence, his connection to you - that your arms aren’t around his waist right now, that he isn’t pressing kisses along your hairline at this exact moment. he has to find you, and he has to make this right. 

jeno doesn’t bother cleaning his weapons before he walks right back outside, eyes glinting in smothered anger. his hands are fists, blunt nails digging into his skin and drawing forth blood. the stinging in his palms doesn’t affect him - his mind is on one track, and one track only. he doesn’t bother cleaning his weapons, knowing full well that he’ll be putting them to use again soon. 

it takes him no time at all to track down where you are - there only one wagon wheel manufacturer in boston, and he’s well-aware of how their wheels look. he’s sure - entirely sure - that you’ve been taken by templars; jeno has no reason to believe otherwise. he can’t stand the fact that they’ve managed to hit him where it hurts most.

he can only take comfort in the fact that they have no idea what they’re up against.

by luck alone, it’s a new moon when he gets to you a day later, and jeno finds it even easier than usual to camouflage himself amongst the trees outside the redcoat fort he’s staking out. he’s already taken note of the wagon and cage that are on his right, his eyes having honed in on the piece of cloth stuck - he recognizes it from one of your dresses - to the cage’s hinge. there are numerous redcoats on watch, but jeno, his mind sharply focused on one thing and one thing only, finds clarity in his decision-making tonight.

he trails the perimeter, hidden amongst trees, until he finds a guard that’s about his stature. it takes little effort at all to pull the redcoat into bushes with a hand on his mouth, and it takes even less work than that for jeno to jab his hidden blade into the other man’s throat from behind, leaving him to asphyxiate on his own gurgling blood. jeno lets him die, not bothering to pray for his victim for the first time ever. instead, he’s as cold as steel as he strips the newly dead man, changing into the red uniform without remorse while amongst the bushes. he stashes his own robe and hides his weapons before he emerges, a man on a mission.

it’s easy to hide his face tonight, especially as he pulls his hat down low. the shadow engulfs his face, and when he returns to the dead man’s post, the other, tired redcoat beside him doesn’t even blink. jeno tamps down on the urge to kill him, too - part of him wants to leave no survivors, not when he doesn’t know if you’re safe or not. 

if he raises an alarm before he finds you, though, he risks you getting hurt if you already aren’t. this is the only thing that has him tipping his hat down kindly at the other man before leaving his post, murmuring something quietly about a bathroom. the soldier is too tired to register the fact that jeno’s voice isn’t one he’s used to. 

it takes him no time at all to get to what he presumes to be the makeshift prison - a small shed-like building made of wood and reinforced with brick. nobody bats an eyelid at his red-clad form, nobody makes to look at his face or question him. his tomahawk is uncomfortable against his skin, but he doesn’t care that it has to be underneath his uniform for once. 

breaking the lock on the prison is easy after he smothers the guard on duty from behind. he snaps the man’s neck, just in case - the ripping noise from within the dead man’s body doesn’t bother jeno nearly as much as it should. it takes everything in him not to pull the door off its hinges in his haste to see if you’re inside, and he finds luck on his side when he hurries in to find you standing, propping yourself up against the single set of metal bars within the shed. you’re blindfolded and your hands are bound, and his eyes are quick to find the exposed patch of skin in your side from where your dress had snagged, but you’re alive. you’re very much alive. 

“(name),” jeno breathes out, and you visibly perk up. 

“jeno?” your voice is hoarse, a little raspy, and he realizes with a pang that you haven’t spoken in hours. it’s likely you haven’t had water as well. 

“i’m here, my heart,” he responds, rushing over to you to reaching his fingers between the bars and run a hand over your hair. “step back for me, love.” 

you can tell how panicked he must be from the way terms are endearment are slipping off his tongue with ease. jeno is a quiet lover, a sturdy one. you know that you have his entire heart, and you know that you always will. he proves this with his actions often, but he’s far less inclined to do so with his words. he’s worried, and you want to soothe him however you can.

you step back. 

the sound of the lock breaking is high-pitched and scraping, and before you can react you’re being pulled forward into a chest you know better than you know your own features. jeno’s arms wrap around you, and one of his hands busies itself in untying your hands while the other easily pulls the blindfold off of your eyes. his tomahawk is by the door, right beside a smashed lock. 

“are you okay? do you ache? did they do anyth-”

“we need to get out of here,” you cut him off, looking your love directly in the eye. “immediately. they wanted to lure you here, and you mustn’t let them get what they want.”

it’s not fifteen seconds after jeno drags the two of you into the woods, forcing you to climb up a tree before following you up into it, that you both watch, hidden amongst the leaves and the stars, as tens of panicked redcoats rush into the place they’d had you held. you’re close enough to hear the fear in their voices when they discover their deceased brethren at the door, and you’re close enough to hear their shouts of anger when they discover that you’re gone. they double their patrol, keeping a hawk eye on the woods around them.

it’s hours before you and jeno are able to leave, shrouded in the darkest part of the night. it’s a day before you’re back home, resting your raw wrists in a bowl of cold water while jeno cleans his weapons for good. it’s weeks before you tell him exactly what you’d seen, what you’d heard the night you were taken.

it’s months before jeno can even try to forgive himself. for what, he’s unsure.

↳ in due time: “this isn’t a good idea.” jeno mutters, and you lift your gaze from your book to look over at him. he’s been lying flat on his back on his side of the bed while staring directly at the ceiling for the past few hours while you’ve been reading on your side. 

“what’s not a good idea?” you ask, not too worried about his response. jeno gets into moods often, and typically you can pull him out of them just by talking. it isn’t easy getting him to talk, especially not considering his line of work, but he’s never had trouble opening up to you. 

“us.”

the book slips from your hands, falling onto your chest, and he finally looks over at you. his face would be unreadable if the sorrow in his eyes wasn’t so obvious. 

“now what the hell makes you say that?” your words are incredulous, your tone more hurt than scathing. jeno loves you, this you’re sure of - so what is he talking about?

“being with me hurt you,” he sighs, pulling himself into a sitting position. “and it - i thought i was going to kill everything in my path. kill everyone. for a moment i thought i was going to kill myself, i- i-... fuck.” jeno drops his head into his hands, and you find yourself staring at his back.

for a moment, neither of you speak. neither of you move. 

you reach a tentative hand out, laying it square on his back.

“being with you is why i live.” you whisper, and you feel jeno’s back shudder underneath your fingertips. “jeno, when you met me, i was running from a life of-of pain, a life where i was unwanted. you were the first person to ever make me feel loved. you still are. i did not get hurt because of you - i got hurt because there are awful people, who want awful things, and you’re single-handedly standing in the way of them ruining the world with their greed and hatred. this is not a bad idea. this is the best idea either of us have ever had.” as you speak, you shift closer and closer to him.

“you don’t- you’re okay?” jeno turns his head to face you, and you can’t help but nod instinctively. you aren’t lying. you lean in, pressing a gentle kiss against the top of his spine.

“of course,” you murmur into his skin, moving so you’re situated directly behind him. you wrap your arms around his torso from the back and rest your chin on top of his shoulder. he slowly relaxes under your touch, leaning back against you, and you let him soften before you continue speaking. 

“i’m always okay with you.”

[vulgarpr1nce55]

tw // talking abt eating disorders and fatphobia

i don’t like people who are dense and refuse to see the toxicity behind things in this world that are popularized. or how desirability plays a role in so many aspects of a person’s everyday life. because it does people who are skinny, lightskinned, able bodied, straight and rich gain large platforms way easier than anyone who does not have those privileges. and that’s a fact. the way that fat phobia is so ingrained into this society that when people point it out they’re treated as crazy and ridiculous and told “ it’s not that deep “ as if diet and work out culture isn’t inherently fat phobic. people go on diets to lose weight to get slimmer because they think it’ll make them look better when in reality it will only make them more desirable to society. all bodies are beautiful. i’ve heard dozens of people including the people around me use the word fat as a synonym for ugly when it’s not.

ex :

them : im so fat

their friend : you’re not fat you’re beautiful

fat ≠ ugly

fat ≠ unhealthy

fat isn’t a bad word. stop treating it like one bro

i myself am continuing to learn more and more about topics like this im open to change and interpretation. i like to learn. the thing is when you speak out about things like this on public platforms you’re often hated on and sent hurtful messages. that are very damaging to a persons mental health. it’s hard to not be able to speak about things and still be able to learn about them. but the comments the unnecessary hate it’s damaging. that’s why i’ve made a list of rules for myself i am going to try to stick to when it comes to social media. because im trying to find more ways to better my mind. hopefully i’ll find more intellectually blessed people that way i’ll have others to discuss things like this with. just because you get hate for your way of thinking doesn’t necessarily mean you’re incorrect. it just means other people aren’t open to accepting the fact that they can be wrong. i used to think i was a close minded person, but im very open minded and am continuing to better myself everyday. i hope that one day i’ll be able to get to a place in my life where i can be happy and open with the people around me.

another thing i know a lot of people wouldn’t like to hear is that some eating disorders also stem from fat phobia aswell. i feel as if that’s a bit self explanatory and goes along with things like diet culture etc but a lot of people fail to realize it.

there are so many different types of eating disorders that are often overlooked because people onmy think of it as just not eating. but it’s so much more complex than that. i know i keep going in about this but i was going through this twitter thread and this darkskin fat black nb person is getting attacked by this popular influencers ( who is light skin and cis ) followers for simply making a tweet about how they thought it was funny how someone with such a high level of desirability was now switching over from being a mua to making workout videos. they’re now getting clowned for making that tweet because the influencer quoted it. i just think it was very irresponsible of a person with that many followers to go after someone who didn’t even say anything wrong. they just made a tweet while high and it wasn’t a tweet hating or anything. whether they were high or not they were still RIGHT. now they’re getting death threats and attacked in their replies. it is just so unnecessary. i really feel for them and hope they are able to heal from this situion because it really takes a toll on someones mental health to be attacked like that online. clowned for doing absolutely nothing wrong… by thousands of people. it’s uncomfortable and humiliating and wrong. and fuck that influencer fr. it’s so irresponsible of her to do something like that.

[margridarnauds]

Wtf is with the Tudor fandom?? Those are the same people who have “cancelled” Isabel and Fernando lmao for their colonization of America. Why are they so mad when we talk about Elizabeth I + colonization then? who tf do they think they are by saying “social justice warriors”?

I feel, personally, like the weaponization of serious issues for the purposes of ships and stanning various figures has kind of brought us to this point, ngl. Anne Boleyn supporters bring up the Inquisition, bring up slavery, bring up the colonization of America, while KOA supporters toss Ireland and the treatment of black and Jewish people around like a ping pong ball, on and on, back and forth, pettier and pettier with each exchange. There’s no real room to discuss anything, because it’s inherently polarized, and the only ones who really lose are the ones in the fandom who wanted to discuss it from the beginning because it reflects some part of their lived experience, only to find themselves used as pawns and then discarded when they’re no longer of use. And, in that area, as a white American Celticist, I got off fairly clean. I haven’t had to deal with the constant harassment that others have had to deal with. I’ve just been lied about and ignored, which, in many, many ways, is better. Annoying, but better. 

  I’m personally at an odd place with Ferdinand and Isabella given that I do live at Ground Zero of the Spanish colonization of America - The people of Florida have, for the most part (though not uncontroversially), begun to seriously question the narratives that we were always fed about Ponce de Léon and the “Discovery” of Florida, taking into account more re: his treatment of the Táino people, who were exploited, enslaved, and butchered by Spanish forces who were paid with Ferdinand of Aragon’s gold, working under Ferdinand of Aragon’s authority. We are starting to question what, exactly, it means when we talk about having the oldest continuously occupied city in the nation, along with the question of where the legendary emeralds of the lost Plate Fleet (that, let’s be real, we ALL want to find) came from, which hands mined them before they were put into crucifixes, whose blood stains them. I’m not going to pretend I have any personal love of them, though I recognize their overall historical importance. I think that, like any other historical figures, we can talk about the good and the bad, along with the lasting effects, both good and bad, of them and their reign. 

  That being said, the blatant hypocrisy of the Tudors fandom to criticize one fandom when, the second the spotlight is turned on them, they suddenly demur and claim that, actually, that doesn’t MATTER anymore, it was centuries ago, is galling. Either we critically analyze history like adults for both sides of the Catholic VS Protestant debate, acknowledging that both sides committed atrocities that echo down to the present, or we don’t. We keep brushing things under the rug, keep trying to argue why our faves were the most pure, keep trying to enter into a dick measuring contest with a thin veneer of academism. (And, at the risk of putting too fine a point on it, in my field, I have just as much standing as they do. I’m not asking for people to bow down or even to take what I say uncritically, since I hate elitism in the field, but I AM asking, if they’re claiming to be academics and using that to swing their weight around, to give me the same respect as another academic. You can’t have the respect that comes with the position without acknowledging the responsibility.) 

  All I ever REALLY wanted was for people to talk about the darker side, not to permanently #Cancel anyone (the past is a fucked up place—If I didn’t feel like I had to constantly defend my field’s existence constantly from people wanting to paint the Irish as barbarians, I could tell you some REALLY fucked up things from Irish history/literature. Especially the literature), but to TALK about the nuances involved, only to find that, on both sides, people only really cared about boosting their own pet faves. I’m not saying “You can only post a gifset of Elizabeth/Isabella if you include a dissertation tacked on at the end of how they weren't  #GirlBosses", rather that the general perception of them needed to become more nuanced, and yet, somehow, that led to me becoming one of the black sheep of the Tudor fandom. (That and, admittedly, mentioning the very true fact that one British Dynasty has received more media attention in 20 years than the entirety of Irish history’s received in cinematic history…..which I stand by, not the least because I didn’t mention WHICH dynasty, since it applies, in fact, to multiple, including the present ruling dynasty.) (Okay, and calling an ugly fraud of a portrait an ugly fraud of a portrait. Which I also stand by.)

One thing that I appreciate with the saner parts of, for example, the French Revolution fandom is that, while it can still be quite polarized, there is, essentially, at least the IDEA that both sides fucked up and did fucked up things. The idea that, even though you can appreciate that certain figures, like Robespierre, like Marie Antoinette, like Philippe Égalité (though I’m still working on that one) were slandered in their time, they ALSO were complicit in some terrible, terrible things. I haven’t really seen any Robespierre fans defending, say, the September Massacres, the Vendée, or the suppression of the Brezhoneg language. (I’ve gotten more mixed reviews from the pro-Royalist side, but at least the understanding that the Ancien Régime and the people in it weren’t ideal, which is more than I’m getting on this side.) Is the Frev fandom ideal? No. It isn’t. It suffers from many of the same shortcomings as any other historical fandom, and there are quite a few people I utterly refuse to engage with because I find them to be too extreme on one side or the other (being the one Orléanist Stan™ does help things along), but, that being said, at least they’re having SOME historical perspective.

I made the unfortunate mistake of thinking that, when people said “Oh, yes, we can appreciate these things in the context of their time, with critical thinking!” They actually meant it, as opposed to just wanting an excuse to shut us up until we’re useful again. Instead, I quickly realized that people only cared so long as it bolstered them and their side, not about the people who were actually harmed, and if we bring THEM up, we’re SJWs. No need to argue with what we’re actually SAYING if you can just lie about us repeatedly. And, frankly? I’m utterly disgusted at the number of blogs that I thought would know better, who I respected for their nuanced approach to history and the study of it, humoring them. I’m utterly disgusted at how their narrative of “Evil SJW”s has actually gained currency from people who have based their entire reputation, sometimes their careers, on critical thinking and analyzing biases. 

[frumfrumfroo]

I’m new here and couldn’t tell from the tone of some asks (sorry) but did you like what they did with Ben in TRoKR ? I saw the discussions abt him lacking agency in it and I 100% agree but did you personality agree w/ the passive, “things only happen to me” vibe they gave him? And second question: can u give examples of how soule’s writing was telegrsmed in TFA? Thank u for taking the time xx

Like I’ve said before, it’s exactly the kind of backstory I would have written for him/always imagined. I had expected to find out he didn’t kill the other students/fought them in self defence/it was some kind of accident or emotional overload incident in TLJ. That was where everything was pointing.

Someone this insecure and conflicted about what he’s doing, someone who prays for help to resist his loving nature and cries when he sees his dad, who is so uncomfortable with himself he is covered head to toe not even his voice unmasked, who immediately latches on to the protagonist as a kindred spirit in loneliness and needs her to know he’s not a creature and wants to help her rather than hurt her- that’s not a person who had an eyes-open, all-in fall to the dark side full of decisive action and unhindered agency.

Leia saying ‘it was Snoke’ told us from the get go we’re in a situation where he was haunted and manipulated. His subservience and rote, childish repetition of ‘the Supreme Leader is wise’ when Han tells him Snoke doesn’t care about him. The constant, ongoing contradiction of his behaviour and motives tell us he has no conviction in the cause he’s supposedly supporting. His self-harm and naked suffering in the face of his own actions, his recklessness and inability to commit to selfishness and lack of ambition tell us those aren’t qualities which drove him here. He is highly emotionally driven, there’s no tangible goal and he doesn’t have a vision of the future. So why is he on the dark side?

It’s not that things only happen to him or that he’s passive, it’s that Ben has never pursued or been comfortable with what darkness really is and that has always been obvious. He tries very, very hard and fights tooth and claw to cling to something good in the comic until all of it is in ashes- he’s not passive, but he can’t win. No one can hold out forever against that kind of relentless onslaught. That he was absolutely a victim doesn’t mean he has no agency in his later choices. He’s not absolved of responsibility. But his reluctance and victimhood only makes sense, anything else would be incongruous with TFA.

There was never pursuit of power for power’s sake from him- there’s nothing he wants that the dark side can give him, he is there literally because he felt he had nowhere else to go. I said this before TLJ even came out. He felt he could not escape it, both because of the fatalism his family unintentionally instilled in him and because Snoke convinced him none of them loved him, that he is only useful or valued as a tool. Ben is a person who doesn’t believe he has any inherent value just for himself- just Ben, he believes that he can’t be forgiven for the sin of being born a disappointment, and that everything is his fault because he’s wrong and bad no matter what he does. None of his choices feel to him like real choices, all of his options appear to have been taken from him, and he feels compelled to plunge forward on the only remaining path. The comic provided an emotionally and logically cogent explanation for exactly why he would feel that way which is completely consistent with all the implications about his past and his characterisation from the films.

As I’ve pointed out before, there’s a reason he says ‘it’s too late’ to coming home not ‘I don’t want to��. There’s a reason he says ‘what I have to do’ and ‘he (I) was weak and foolish’- there’s a reason he needs Han’s help to go through with killing his father. It’s not about what he wants (he wants to go home with his dad- he thinks he can’t), he has never felt free to make his own choices or that freedom is possible for him.

Even at his darkest he never became cruel, he never enjoyed killing or hurting people, and he totally fails to suppress his instinct to be compassionate. He has a highly developed conscience and an overflowing core of empathy he can’t seal off. That’s why he’s so miserable as he pushes himself to do things he finds abhorrent- but he thinks he has to, there’s no escape, it’s the only way. In the sequence which establishes this character, even before any layers are stripped away or the investment we naturally have in him because of who he is is revealed, one of the first things we see him do is have compassion for F/nn. Those two characters are connected and a comparison is invited- this is visual storytelling showing you that they have something in common (it will be made clear later on that Ben saw himself in F/nn and that’s why he takes his actions so personally- cognitive dissonance).

F/nn was a good person trapped in the mask of the stormtrooper by circumstances beyond his control, but he is able to reject it and reclaim his identity. Ben is a good person hounded into the mask of Kylo Ren by his family’s failure to reconcile with Vader. The crushing weight of their expectations and their total lack of faith in him combined with their lies and Snoke’s manipulation convinces him there is ‘too much Vader in him’ and that Ben Solo isn’t and never will be good enough for anyone. That his love, compassion, and selflessness are all weaknesses which will only cause both him and the galaxy further suffering.

He is the most morally sensitive person in the new gen, he is the most outward-orientated and loving. His impulse is to be selfless and helpful, but that impulse has been relentlessly punished until he mistrusts it and thinks he must repress his wrong instincts and serve a ‘greater order’ guided by someone stronger than him. He has an acute sense of the impact of his actions and he considers it (even when he loses control of his emotions, he overwhelmingly targets things rather than people and his angry threats are empty).

In contrast, Anakin (who was committed on the dark side and successfully cut himself off from his empathy for many years) was all in on the pursuit of power even when he still had good intentions. Anakin also knew that power was the foundation of the dark side and he and Palpatine would always be at odds, that some day he would overthrow him and take his place. Ben only values power out of fear, and solely primal fear not more abstract, possessive fear like Anakin’s, he wants safety. He doesn’t go to Snoke thinking he’s ever going to take his place or gain his power- he wants Snoke to give him belonging and acceptance. He’s then convinced that the ends justify the means and doing things he knows are wrong and which cause him pain are necessary because his whole life and Snoke’s machinations have set him up to believe that. He is still trying to create safety and doing what he’s convinced must be done and will be done one way or another.

Ben is a beautiful compassionate person and always has been and that is why he’s in such constant, excruciating pain trying to shut himself off from love and vulnerability. He is following Snoke’s demands and trying to kill his past to stop the pain, to kill this vulnerability and need and weakness in himself. Connection was always what he wanted most and he is trying to cut off and cauterise all of the broken, abandoned bonds of love his family has left him with. And even here, he still wants Snoke’s acceptance, Snoke’s validation and esteem. He is still pouring himself out for an other, giving everything to please someone else, the last person left who tells him it’s possible he can achieve value.

He latched on to Rey instantly when he realised they were alike and did everything possible to lift her up and spare her what he went through. He only rejected Han and Rey’s offers to come with them because he thinks their love is conditional and that small, dirty, broken Ben Solo will never be able to meet the conditions. He thinks he is a tool or an obligation to them and it’s easy to understand why he thinks that. Han couldn’t wipe away a lifetime of baggage in a few words. Rey pretends it’s about the cause, she doesn’t tell him she loves him.

He thinks he must ‘become who he was meant to be’ and that his destiny is to become a new Vader. Everyone told him that. Whether with their fear or directly with words. When he finds out the truth about his grandfather, it’s a complete confirmation of what Snoke has told him and how his parents have treated him. Luke deciding he can’t be allowed to live because it’s that inevitable is the nail in the coffin in Ben believing there’s any place for him with his family. There is nowhere for him to exist as himself, he has to be someone else, someone less weak. And in running away from himself, his legacy, and his identity he puts himself under Snoke’s thumb and Snoke can finish inculcating his worldview.

Being able to love is freedom to Ben. He is an immensely loving person who feels like he is not worthy or allowed to love people, that his love has done nothing but make things worse for everyone. The tension and repression of trying not to need or care about people is what makes him so emotionally unstable. Kylo Ren is a mask and a shield and a prison built by Ben’s hurt and anxiety but equally built by Snoke out of his boyhood fancies to control him and shape him into an instrument of pain. Ben could never have conviction in it because it is so alien to his nature. He is so fundamentally unselfish that he never coveted like Anakin eventually did, his love never became possessive or jealous, he never sold his soul for a boon, the only way he could be selfish enough to murder is out of animal fear and pain. Wanting the hurting to stop. Rationalising it post-facto with the philosophy that the ends justify the means.

He pours himself out for Snoke because there is no one else left. All he wants is the safety and acceptance that he has literally never had anywhere. Anakin received unconditional love from his mother, Obi-wan, and Padmé and was warped from giving compassion into selfishness by his fear of loss and need for control. Covetousness became his tragic flaw and thus his fall culminates in trying to kill Padmé rather than lose her. Control became so important that others ceased to matter and love became possession. Anakin (despite also being a victim of manipulation and Jedi hubris) got to make real choices, he had real options, and thus he was a villain with conviction. Ben’s attempts to take control of his life are unfocussed and mostly involve abnegation, he pushes people away instead of trying to clutch them close; his response to loss is to isolate himself not seize power to recover the lost thing by force. Ben never received unconditional love until Han’s sacrifice on the bridge and the experience immediately shatters him from his already tenuous position in the dark. The only thing keeping him from coming home after that is sunk cost and the idea that he can never be forgiven. That it was too late.

He just needed someone to show him it wasn’t.

[gffa]

Hi :D. I’ve been wondering a little bit about your opinion on the whole Mace Windu trying to kill Palpatine in RotS. You seem to agree with Windu that Palpatine was too dangerous to leave alive (which I can see reasons for), but he was also using the same words Sheev used to justify killing Dooku to Anakin. Lucas has seemed pretty aware of mirroring statements elsewhere in his films (ex. AotC Anakin-Dooku ”more powerful than any Jedi”). What do you think this parallell is supposed to mean? 1/2

Is Mace faltering in his judgement here for awhile and should have risen above his fears to take the high way (and possibly that this could have been Anakins role, to help him stand by the Jedi way) or is the contrast rather something like Anakins reaction to it and his personal gains and losses from following? Also thank you for all your amazing metas and Star Wars content. 2/2

Hi!  Thank you for the very kind words!  I think that you’re right that they’re meant to be compared and I haven’t seen George speak on this directly, but here’s what I think contributes to this:Anakin is the Chosen One and I’ve long held the headcanon that he was meant to side against Palpatine in that moment, that fight with Mace in his office, as the whole reason the prophecy was about Anakin.  George Lucas in the ROTS commentary:   “It’s fear of losing somebody he loves, which is the flipside of greed.  Greed, in terms of the Emperor, it’s the greed for power, absolute power, over everything.  With Anakin, really it’s the power to save the one he loves, but it’s basically going against the Fates and what is natural.“  The moment Anakin chooses is that moment, when he cuts off Mace’s arm because he can’t let Palpatine die because he’s too fearful that Padme will die.  That is the moment he sides against his own Fate, which I think was about that moment as the Chosen One.  Which, in my view, lends a certain narrative weight behind stopping Palpatine right here being the best choice possible.It fits with how the choice of standing over Dooku is also a major turning point and very clearly echoed from Return of the Jedi where Luke is struggling against the dark side, as he stands over Darth Vader, whose hand he has just cut off, while Sidious watches and tries to use that hate and rage boiling in him.  In that moment, Luke makes the choice that Anakin cannot.  That’s the major parallel, because they are both facing an enemy that has been beaten.Mace vs Palpatine is more complicated because you’re right that it’s an echo, but also the situation is a bit different–Palpatine is far from beaten, his “oh noooo this mean Jedi has been attacking poor defenseless little old me!” schtick is deliberately an act, he has not been unarmed (literally or figuratively!) because he still has his lightning, he’s still very much armed and dangerous.But also Mace isn’t entirely in the right about this, but I think he knows that and he’s making this choice, to sacrifice himself because he knows there’s no other way.  If they left Palpatine up to the Senate to deal with, he will win, because he has control of the Senate, there is zero question about that.  Yes, you should believe in democracy and support it and try to change the system from within, that’s what the Jedi believe and it’s what Mace believes, but he also knows that will not work with this specific instance.So, he’s willing to take the hit to his morals and probably his freedom, to take Palpatine out.Dave Filoni once did commentary on TCW that said:      “We showed this at the end of the episode that after Dogma shoots Krell, the military police still arrest him.  There has to be a whole trial, they have to look into the whole thing.       “And that feeds into how the Chancellor–and for those kids that haven’t watched Revenge of the Sith, don’t watch this spoiler part–but when Mace Windu and the Jedi go to arrest him–can they just execute this guy?  I mean he’s essentially the head of the entire galactic Senate.  You can’t just walk in and kill him and say, ‘He’s a Sith Lord!’ because what does the Senate care?  'Yeah, but he made the trains run on time.’      “If Mace Windu kills the Chancellor, Mace Windu gets arrested.  It’s a very complex world.  And while, at the end of the day, it’s a fairy tale and very black and white, Luke in the end, it’s a personal vendetta with his father and the Emperor and the whole […]”He sort of trails off after that, but the point is that Mace Windu will get arrested if he kills the Chancellor, which is something he has to know, but he does it anyway, because all other paths will lead to the Empire.  There isn’t another way out of this, not with Palpatine controlling the system in the way he does.Jedi should not be vigilantes, this goes against what Mace genuinely believes, but he also believes in sacrificing himself (not necessarily dying, but his own standing within the Republic) if it will lead to a better future.  And I think he was right about that, that Palpatine’s multitude of plots and back-up plots meant that there was no other way to defeat him legally at this point, not without the Empire happening and things getting a whole lot worse before they could get better.The difference between Mace and Anakin is that Anakin did it out of rage and revenge, all the darkness roiling inside of him at what Dooku had done to him and justified it as needing Dooku to die so the war would end.  Mace, in contrast, has nothing personal to gain and we’re never shown that he has any boiling rage on a personal level for Palpatine, this is truly about the Republic and truly about someone who is not yet beaten, as we see Palpatine still shooting lightning.It’s not the Jedi way for either of them, but the Jedi way depended on a galaxy that was inherently good faith and Palpatine was practically the literal embodiment of bad faith, so there was no way a good faith approach was going to work with him, imo.

[colorisbyshe]

Right like i’ve long had Thoughts on weight loss discourse too, since i actually had and recovered from a binge eating disorder when i was a kid, but i find there’s no way to address how i need a specific diet. we live in a time when huge capitalist companies have shaped our diets unnaturally and i feel like i can't talk about it and how it’s affected my weight/life w/o sounding like i'm not fat (me) positive… the conversation needs to evolve and be more inclusive imo

I think this is a really hard topic to navigate without stepping on toes or feeling like you’re devaluing someone and it’s hard to not feel like an asshole saying “Sometimes, losing weight can be a good thing and we need to help people do that safely” because... we already have that narrative?

It feels a lot like saying “Let women date men!!!” when faced with biphobic antagonizing of bi women for dating men. Like you have a point but also... do you? You do but it’s easy to sound like you don’t.

I guess my point should be there needs to be more dialogues about healthy and safe ways to try to lose weight (even for a lot of people, they may not ever actually lose weight from these efforts or might gain it back) and an advocacy for weight less that isn’t anti-fat. There needs to be weight loss discussions that don’t shame you for “failing” or pressure you into losing quickly or equate fat with laziness, poor health, or bad eating. There needs to be a crossover between fat liberation and weight loss discussions.

Because there are reasons to lose weight that aren’t anti-fat. Including extremely simple things like “I gained weight and now I can’t fit into 50% of my wardrobe and can’t afford a new one,” to more complicated things like “I love my fat body and believe in fat advocacy but I can’t wait for our efforts to pan out when I’m staring down the barrel of employment and medical discrimination at my current weight.”

And while I don’t think it should be fat advocacy’s job to have to do this, realistically... who the fuck else is going to create nuanced discussions around this? Who else is going to reassure people based on actual data about how often diets don’t work and not make people feel like it’s their personal failure? Who else is going to let people see weight loss as a bodily change and not inherently as an improvement? Who else is going to lead people to still have empathy for their heavier bodies and people who will never want to lose weight or other people who will try to lose weight and maybe end up even fatter?

Weight loss programs and groups are so, so hateful to fat people as a form of motivation.

I don’t believe just criticizing them from the outside without offering up better alternatives or nuanced alternatives is the solution.

I know the goal is no one should ever feel pressured to lose weight but like I said before, there are legitimate, non-anti-fat reasons to lose weight, and regardless... we’re nowhere near a society where people won’t feel pressured to lose weight.

And I trust no one else to guide people to attempt to do so :\

Knowing most diets fail and how hard it is to lose weight makes me even more scared for the fat people trying to do so in groups away from fat accepting people. Like there’s no forgiveness there and hoping maybe after they get brutalized by groups of skinny people they MIGHT find healing in fat acceptance spaces just isn’t enough for me.

It’s not fair and it’s not even a matter of inclusivity or like “Wah, I feel like I want to talk about how my diet benefited me” (though, it has). It’s just like... where the fuck would I be if it hadn’t? I would feel terrible because for the first few months of my diet I jumped from fat hating weight loss group to fat hating weight group, trying to find anyone who would understand this was just a medical issue for me and I would have just felt like a failure when I wasn’t one. Like even if I hadn’t lost any weight I wouldn’t have been a loser or failure but most weight loss spaces make you feel like one because they associate fat with failure.

That’s what I want addressed and uhhhh mainstream weight loss groups aren’t gonna be changed. We just need alternatives. And who else can I ask for that?

Who else is championing bodily autonomy in terms of weight?

[dilutesworry]

❛                    𝒉𝒆    takes    no    time    to    shake    his    wings    dry    again    ,    but    for    us    –    a    few    drops    of    love    are    intense    pain    .    wine    rouses    the    heart    ,    wine    makes    all    men    lovers    –    wine    ,    undiluted    ,    dilutes    worry    .

               *     omg  hello  ,  i’m  so  excited  to  be  here  i  love  mythology  in  all  forms  &  i  simply  ,  am  a  s-word  for  it  always  .  i’m  cc  ,  cst  tz  w  /  feminine  pronouns  &  this  is  bacchus  ,  who  i’ve  never  written  before  but  am  excited  to  try  my  hand  at  !  in  a  nutshell  ,  he  can  be  described  as  scarily  calm  angry  guy  who’s  wine  drunk  &  has  a  flair  for  the  dramatics  .  lots  more  under  the  cut  ,  but  i’m  so  excited  for  this  so  pls  !  hit  the  stupid  lil  heart  to  plot  or  hmu  for  my  discord  !  general  tw  for  alcohol  .

  ❛           𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔  &  𝒅𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒌     ›     𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐂𝐇𝐔𝐒     .  

(   YOON   JEONGHAN,   CIS   MAN,   HE   /   HIM    ╱    well,   if   it   isn’t   BACCHUS,   who   has   decided   to   grace   us   with   HIS   presence.   I   heard   the   GOD   OF   WINE   &  MADNESS   has   been   living   amongst   the   humans   for   417   YEARS,  and  hasn’t   aged   a   day,   funny   right   ?   they   can   be   EQUABLE   &   WILY,   you   should   watch   out   because   they   are   also   known   to   be   INTEMPERATE   &   AUDACIOUS.   HE   harnesses   the   power   of   MADNESS  INDUCTION,   and   have   chosen   the   path   of   being   AGAINST   the   humans.    ╱  CC,   20,   CST   )

  ❛           𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆  &  𝒔𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒘     ›     𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒     .    

he    sits    by    the    sea    ,    swallowed    in    sand    with    an    empty    chalice    in    his    hands    .    his    eyes    are    tired    ,    an    irrationally    calm    ire    that    rests    on    impenetrable    skin    while    he    watches    the    sun    rise    .    will    he    ever    tire    of    the    simple    things    ?    there    was    once    beauty    in    humanity    –    he’s    spent    centuries    dancing    naked    in    the    woods    ,    flowers    adorned    in    his    hair    sending    messages    in    the    breeze    ;    life    hasn’t    been    the    same    since    last    he    blinked    .    oh    ,    he    tires    ,    he    longs    to    sink    in    the    sand    unforgotten    ,    but    accursed    with    the    weight    of    mankind    ,    he    tires    –    of    them    .

  ❛           𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒖𝒔  𝒊𝒏  𝒕𝒉𝒆  𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒆     ›     𝐅𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐒     .  

                           ✧  *   CORE  

↠  full  name  .  bacchus   /   alias  baek  suhwan ↠ nickname(s)  /  alias(es)  /   title(s)  .  roman  god  of  wine  &  madness  ,  baek  suhwan  –  in  the  modern  age  to  mortals   ↠  age  /  dob  .  immortal  /  appears  twenty  -  eight ↠  hometown  .  rome  (  if  u  saw  me  put  greece  here  first  no  u  didn’t  ) ↠  current  location  .  new  york  city  . ↠  stance  .  against  mankind  . ↠  abilities  .  madness  induction  . ↠  gender .  cis  gendered  man  . ↠  pronouns .  he  /  him  . ↠  orientation  .  bisexual  ,  grayromantic  . ↠  occupation  .  ????  billionaire  playboy  ???? ↠  face  claim  .  yoon  jeonghan  .

       ✧  *   COUNTENANCE

↠  height  .  six  feet  ,  one  inch  /  187  cm ↠  build .  broad  shoulders  ,  though  he’s  got  thinner  limbs  than  the  more  athletic  of  his  kind  .  best  described  as  lean  ,  but  well  toned  . ↠  tattoos  .  a  couple  hand  tattoos  ,  XII  on  the  back  of  his  neck  . ↠  piercings  .  ears  . ↠  scars  .  none  . ↠  hair .  these  days  he’s  sporting  jet  black  ,  messy  curls  that  usually  fall  into  his  eyes  .  he’s  been  known  to  try  different  hair  colors  ,  but  hasn’t  been  blonde  or  otherwise  in  the  last  century  . ↠  eyes  .  dark  ,  and  always  seeming  to  swirl  with  a  mix  of  emotions  –  it  teems  on  raw  anger  and  sheer  entertainment  ,  but  his  eyes  tend  to  always  just  be  watching  and  observing  ,  easily  putting  most  mortals  at  unease  if  he  wants  to  . ↠  clothing  style  .  whatever’s  on  trend  –  but  just  ,  slightly  off  .  in  his  youth  on  earth  ,  used  to  sport  bright  colors  and  flashy  clothing  but  in  the  most  recent  years  (  decades  ,  even  ,  not  centuries  )  he’s  toned  it  way  down  to  neutrals  and  dark  toned  clothing  .  it’s  jarring  ,  since  he’s  mostly  outwardly  still  the  same  ,  he  just  looks  like  he’s  matured  a  lot  more  . ↠  usual  expression  .  just  slightly  entertained  ,  half  a  smirk  written  on  his  lips  while  a  golden  chalice  is  tipped  toward  them  .  always  like  he’s  in  on  a  secret  that  he’s  not  supposed  to  know  about  ,  like  he’s  just  on  the  verge  of  ruining  your  life  if  you  choose  to  approach  him  in  the  darkness  of  the  party  –  he  screams  danger  ,  but  he’s  tempting  . ↠  speech  .  slightly  off  putting  ,  as  if  when  listening  you’re  unable  to  discern  where  he’s  really  from  –  because  his  words  sound  a  little  ,  ancient  ,  a  little  too  powerful  .  he  speaks  like  he’s  the  most  important  person  ,  and  like  attention  and  glory  are  owed  to  him  .  awfully  crude  ,  but  he’s  charming  enough  to  get  away  with  his  egotistical  tendencies  and  how  harshly  his  words  leave  his  lips  . ↠  distinguishing  features  .  an  aura  that  demands  attention  –  whether  he’s  earned  it  or  not  ,  worn  fingertips  that  are  always  rough  against  others’  skin  ,  tilted  lips  that  always  spread  in  a  trouble  -  making  grin  ,  clever  eyes  that  don’t  seem  to  match  the  rest  of  his  demeanor  .

       ✧  *  RUMINATIONS    

↠  (  +  )  positive .  equable  ,  wily ↠  (  -  )  negative  .  intemperate  ,  audacious ↠  moral  alignment  .  chaotic  evil ↠  likes  .  wine  (  though  ,  won’t  complain  about  other  types  of  alcohol  either  )  ,  long  parties  that  last  days  –  even  if  it’s  not  as  common  these  days  ,  the  silent  roar  of  the  sea  ,  the  feel  of  an  evenly  balanced  blade  in  hand  ,  naked  company  resting  between  silk  sheets  ,  cliff  diving  (  won’t  explain  )  ,  being  awake  in  a  city  that  never  sleeps  –  roams  free  barefoot  in  the  streets  from  time  to  time  ,  never  ending  adventures  with  heroes  ;  hasn’t  found  a  hero  worth  following  ,  though  . ↠  dislikes  .  most  mankind  –  they’ve  lost  his  respect  far  too  long  ago  ,  death  (  of  a  party  ,  of  a  favored  mortal  ,  of  joy  )  ,  disrespect  toward  him  –  everyone  else  is  fair  game  ,  apparently  ,  most  demigods  –  they’re  just  annoying  ,  being  uncomfortable  –  therefore  often  indulges  in  the  finest  things  in  life  ,  most  modern  music  (  old  man  vibes  )  . ↠  quirks  .  will  pull  out  various  ,  priceless  chalices  and  goblets  seemingly  out  of  nowhere  –  usually  accompanied  by  a  rare  ,  expensive  bottle  of  wine  (  won’t  offer  to  anyone  else  ,  it’s  just  for  him  )  ,  raises  his  right  eyebrow  whenever  he  finds  something  interesting  ,  carries  around  an  authentic  aureus  coin  at  all  times  and  is  often  seen  flipping  and  weaving  it  between  his  fingers  . ↠  hobbies  .  disappearing  for  multiple  years  at  a  time  only  to  reappear  as  some  new  version  of  asshole  ,  letting  himself  get  into  fights  (  and  willingly  losing  )  just  to  Feel  Something  ,  lounging  in  a  silk  robe  in  his  penthouse  and  complaining  to  his  household  staff  (  aka  lamenting  like  an  old  poet  )  ,  creating  multiple  social  media  personalities  just  to  see  how  far  he  can  get  away  with  things  if  he  pretends  to  be  famous  for  a  century  or  two  .

 ❛           𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒆  𝒔𝒐𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒅     ›     𝐂𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄     .

trigger  warnings  :  death  ,  war  –  mentions  of  blood  .

       ✧  *  ASCENSION

         *     bacchus  ,  roman  god  of  wine  &  madness  .  he  is  not  far  from  his  greek  counterpart  ,  dionysus  ,  &  often  has  the  same  stories  as  him  .  

he’s  born  from  the  thigh  of  his  father  –  birthed  as  a  demigod  while  being  raised  by  nymphs  in  order  to  be  hidden  from  the  wrath  of  an  immortal  queen  .  the  first  to  cultivate  grapes  &  turn  them  into  wine  ,  his  first  instance  with  mankind  is  spent  in  asia  –  teaching  the  mortals  their  the  secrets  of  wine  making  .  he  is  the  last  to  ascend  to  mount  olympus  ,  the  twelfth  to  take  his  seat  among  them  &  is  inherently  ,  the  baby  (  which  ,  he  lives  up  to  )  .

       ✧  *  500 YEARS AGO

             *     the  1500s  ,  bacchus  arrives  on  earth  –  naked  &  drunk  ,  awaiting  his  newest  adventure  .  he  loves  mankind  ,  despite  the  atrocities  they  perform  upon  each  other  .  a  traveling  storyteller  ,  he  finds  his  place  on  a  caravan  of  freaks  while  roaming  in  europe  .  rome  isn’t  what  it  used  to  be  ,  now  taken  over  by  men  from  the  north  who  are  just  learning  about  the  earth  being  round  –  churches  &  monarchy  are  rampant  ,  bacchus  becomes  a  bard  briefly  .  he  has  his  way  with  the  men  &  women  of  the  court  ,  charming  them  into  sin  ,  whispering  forbidden  stories  of  godhood  into  their  ears  as  he  brings  in  a  generation  of  forgotten  demigods  that  won’t  amount  to  much  .  he  falls  in  love  with  a  mortal  prince  ,  watches  him  die  in  a  baseless  fight  against  the  churches  &  the  people  .  he  disappears  for  a  few  decades  before  resurfacing  in  asia  ,  finding  an  easy  life  with  the  sprawling  dynasties  .  as  always  ,  adopts  a  life  as  a  storyteller  –  a  rambunctious  drunk  that  has  a  way  with  words  (  &  royalty  )  ,  earning  him  a  comfortable  life  .  he  ends  the  era  with  still  much  love  in  his  heart  for  mankind  –  they’ve  been  nothing  but  kind  to  him  ,  they’ve  loved  him  &  cherished  him  ,  his  anger  is  nonexistent  .

       ✧  *  400  YEARS  AGO

            *     the  1600s  ,  italy  calls  him  home  ,  bacchus  arrives  at  the  same  time  of  the  greatest  minds  mankind  has  to  offer  .  but  as  galileo  &  isaac  newton  are  quick  to  make  discoveries  (  that  are  quite  ,  common  knowledge  in  his  opinion  )  ,  he’s  the  kind  instead  to  be  distracted  by  the  pleasures  in  life  .  bacchus  is  the  same  bacchus  as  the  child  who  took  his  first  steps  just  a  century  earlier  .  he  indulges  in  the  finest  wines  &  women  ,  a  sprawling  palace  built  in  his  name  as  he  lounges  about  being  fed  grapes  .  it’s  here  he  has  his  first  taste  in  adventure  ,  after  boredom  settles  into  his  bones  .  bacchus  assimilates  into  mankind  even  more  than  he  had  previously  –  he’s  quick  to  fall  in  love  again  ,  but  not  necessarily  with  someone  –  just  ,  even  more  with  mankind  .  he  watches  from  afar  as  they  grow  &  form  ideas  ,  becoming  brighter  &  stronger  than  they  were  ever  intended  to  .  bacchus  gifts  more  to  mankind  than  ever  ,  there  are  records  of  him  all  over  europe  –  &  to  the  east  ,  a  mysterious  benefactor  in  the  ottoman empire  that  matches  his  description  .  he  most  often  brings  up  stories  from  this  era  (  &  the  18th  century  ,  but  ,  not  there  yet  )  .

       ✧  *  300  YEARS  AGO

           *     the  1700s  ,  bacchus  becomes  more  warlike  than  ever  .  he  shows  his  godhood  in  both  the  american  &  french  revolution  ,  bares  his  teeth  in  every  single  major  war  that  starts  on  earth  .  bloody  &  powerful  ,  his  stories  during  this  century  are  a  lot  more  somber  .  he  witnesses  horrors  &  pain  that  he  didn’t  know  were  necessary  (  aren’t  those  usually  things  reserved  for  the  gods  ?  he  hasn’t  experienced  life  on  earth  on  the  bad  side  ,  perhaps  he  would’ve  seen  more  if  he  had  –  understood  that  mankind  isn’t  too  far  away  from  the  gods  themselves  .  the  titanomachy  tends  to  repeat  ,  after  all  )  ,  he  gains  his  first  taste  of  disdain  for  mankind  .  even  when  he’s  settled  between  wars  with  a  crown  on  his  head  &  a  golden  spear  in  hand  ,  he’s  starting  to  see  humans  forget  him  .  they’ve  shifted  focus  ,  weapons  in  hand  with  blood  on  their  teeth  ,  left  his  altars  empty  &  forgotten  .  of  course  ,  if  he  just  shifted  his  own  focus  back  onto  the  courts  (  &  the  rich  )  he’d  be  better  off  .  but  ,  he  spends  this  century  as  a  disciple  of  war  ,  for  the  first  time  on  earth  showing  the  strength  of  the  roman  empire  .

       ✧  *  200  YEARS  AGO

          *     the  1800s  ,  bacchus  falls  back  into  old  patterns  –  indulges  more  &  more  in  his  domain  than  ever  .  this  is  his  worst  century  on  earth  –  every  god  ever  is  aware  of  bacchus  ,  who’s  fallen  very  deeply  into  a  spiral  that’s  difficult  to  get  out  of  .  when  asked  ,  it  takes  more  than  a  thousand  drinks  before  they  understand  what  he  went  through  .  dozens  of  favored  humans  dead  in  wars  ,  hundreds  of  children  lost  in  one  fell  swoop  –  while  the  world  just  moves  on  ,  he’s  stuck  running  around  the  world  spreading  his  gifts  &  powers  .  chosen  alcohol  no  matter  where  he  goes  ,  a  never  ending  party  left  his  wake  ,  newborn  maenads  in  his  name  ,  bacchus  is  an  eternal  mess  .  he  spends  very  little  actual  time  with  sober  humans  ,  keeping  other  gods  in  his  company  instead  .  he  almost  misses  home  ,  almost  chooses  to  return  home  ,  but  is  too  stuck  in  his  haze  to  really  remember  the  way  back  .  is  it  possible  for  gods  to  be  drunk  ?  is  it  possible  for  them  to  absolutely  forget  their  godhood  ?  well  ,  it  is  for  him  .

       ✧  *  100  YEARS  AGO

         *     the  1900s  ,  his  anger  is  at  an  all  time  high  ,  bacchus  is  all  but  forgotten  .  his  greek  counterpart  is  far  more  remembered  ,  he  is  left  behind  in  the  dirt  (  though  ,  who’s  fault  is  it  really  ?  over  a  hundred  years  as  a  drunkard  ,  spilling  old  stories  &  fading  from  the  forefront  of  man’s  mind  ,  he’s  got  nobody  else  but  himself  to  blame  )  .  for  the  century  ,  he’s  a  particularly  cruel  god  –  very  sly  ,  very  cunning  ,  very  not  great  for  mankind  .  a  deal  broker  ,  he’s  quick  to  help  out  humans  ,  but  always  for  a  price  &  always  an  entirely  too  high  one  .  it  doesn’t  make  much  sense  ,  since  there’s  not  much  he  can  grant except  momentary  invincibility  ,  a  quick  escape  if  needed  ,  a  personal  maenad  .  he  sets  a  quick  record  for  inducing  madness  ,  more  than  ever  in  his  entire  four  hundred  years  on  earth  –  more  people  go  insane  than  ever  under  his  fingertips  &  he  finds  it  absolutely  entertaining  .  only  toward  the  end  of  the  cold  war  does  he  find  it  in  himself  to  ...  Relax  ,  a  little  .

       ✧  *  NOW

         *     nowadays  ,  a  new  visage  on  hand  ,  he  returns  to  his  roots  from  his  favorite  place  earth  has  to  offer  .  the  first  few  years  of  the  new  century  are  spent  around  eastern  asia  ,  traveling  about  once  again  &  teaching  mankind  new  ways  to  succeed  in  the  wine  business  .  after  he’s  swindled  enough  mortals  out  of  their  money  ,  he  turns  to  the  west  &  settles  in  manhattan  ,  new  york  .  a  penthouse  is  purchased  underneath  the  alias  “baek  suhwan”  &  he  is  content  to  live  his  days  out  ,  lounging  about  with  the  people  that  disgust  him  the  most  .  he  is  calm  now  ,  though  is  anger  is  not  forgotten  .  it’s  turned  almost  –  apathetic  ,  a  dangerous  type  of  ire  to  hold  ,  but  he’s  numbed  out  to  it  .  most  of  what  he  does  nowadays  is  insult  everyone  around  him  (  for  entertainment  )  or  be  the  most  dramatic  person  in  the  room  (  for  entertainment  )  or  cause  a  ruckus  amongst  the  gods  (  for  entertainment  )  .  as  for  mankind  ,  they’ve  really  done  nothing  in  the  recent  centuries  to  win  back  his  favor  ,  &  though  he  now  more  leans  toward  indifferent  ,  he’d  still  choose  to  fight  against  them  rather  than  ever  fighting  for  them  .

 ❛           𝒅𝒊𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒆𝒔  𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒚     ›     𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃     .  

so  like  ,  in  theory  :  everything  .

but  in  specifics  i’ll  just  list  some  scenarios  instead  haha  cause  that’s  how  i  do  things  cause  smol  brain  .

001  :  we  always  run  into  each  other  &  i  know  exactly  how  to  push  your  buttons  so  i  always  do  &  maybe  you  like  it  ,  or  maybe  you  hate  it  –  i’m  still  going  to  be  as  annoying  as  possible  because  technically  ,  i  can  .

002  :  for  the  greek  gods  –  we’re  technically  related  (  but  i’m  not  greek  &   i  never  will  be  ,  ew  ,  god  )  &  i’m  technically  still  a  baby  god  compared  to  you  but  i  am  annoying  &  i  will  annoy  you  but  you  can’t  do  anything  about  it  because  i’m  the  baby  ):

003  :  same  as  above  except  you  DO  do  something  about  it  because  again  :  i’m  not  greek  so  yeah  you  beat  my  ass  

004  :  one  time  we  accidentally  started  a  small  war  between  mortals  &  that  was  kind  of  messy  but  now  we’re  friends  ,  except  mankind  insists  that  we’re  enemies  &  we  think  it’s  kind  of  funny  .

005  :  oh  ,  yeah  ,  i’m  a  “mortal”  but  i’m  really  not  good  at  hiding  it  cause  i  kinda  do  whatever  i  want  &  i  get  away  with  it  all  the  time  but  yeah  ,  dude  ,  i’m  “human”  –  what  do  you  mean  why  did  i  put  it  in  quotation  marks  i’m  not  a  god  ,  dude  –  no  i  didn’t  wink  at  you  haha

006  :  i  did  you  a  favor  once  &  now  you  think  you’ve  gotta  repay  me  back  but  like  ,  i’m  good  –  please  don’t  talk  to  me  ever  again  ,  i  don’t  like  you  please  stop  bothering  me  &  being  nice  to  me  please  stop  .

007  :  oh  ,  we  don’t  like  each  other  &  we  both  know  it  ,  so  yeah  we  just  don’t  get  along  &  i  will  fight  you  in  public  except  the  last  time  we  started  a  battle  it  wasn’t  cool  &  we  got  reprimanded  for  like  9  decades  so  let’s  Not  Do  That  but  yeah  ,  hate  u  ,  xx  .

[mwolf0epsilon]

Can you write a short dark fic for the pairing Joey x Henry, where after Henry threatens to leave the studio, Joey snaps and kidnaps Henry and turns Henry into a perfect Boris or Bendy so that Henry would never leave his side, please?

Summary: Joey Drew couldn't ever take 'No' for an answer, much less when it came from the object of his ill-fated obcession.

---

[[MORE]]

When brought into the world children were never inherently cruel. They were curious and blunt, which often resulted in uncomfortable situations for those they interacted with, but overall younglings were empathetic at heart until reshaped and redefined into something otherwise.

The world was a terrible influence after all, and it could marr even the purest of things.

There were exceptions to this rule however…

Joey Drew had certainly been a curious kid. Unabashedly blunt too, with how often his innocent words cut deep into both his parents and peers.

But not once did he empathise enough with others to be considered a kind child.

If anything, most others his age had steered clear from his company, finding the mellow kid with the great big toothy smile to be unsettling on an instinctive level. Children were, after all, capable of sensing evil. Even in its stages of infancy.

So imagine everyone's surprise (Joey's included) when Henry Stein decided to befriend the town's most infamous little black sheep.

Kind bleeding heart that he was, Henry had thought it unfair that others would judge another as strongly as they judged Joey, so he'd taken it upon himself to make the kid next door's life a little less lonesome.

Give him what he surely needed: A good and caring friend.

Needless to say, he regretted that decision more than anything in the world...

It hadn't always been so bad. Once Joey had actually been a friend to him, and cared enough to look after Henry when he'd most needed.

Now however? Now Henry could barely recognize the monster behind that unnerving grin...

The burning selfish desires in those sapphire blues, hidden behind an half-lidded expression that was reserved to feign a serene and caring persona…

As charming and handsome as Joey looked (because he'd always been unnaturally pretty, even when going through the awkward stages of puberty), Henry couldn't help find his apathetic and selfish nature abominably hideous.

Especially now as he brought him the results of yet another failed experiment.

"I'm getting closer dear friend." He held the snapping, snarling little beast at arm's length, this failed mockery of Edgar barely looking like the adorable cartoon spider he was meant to be. "Soon I'll be able to make you perfect, and then we'll be back together as the dynamic duo we always were..."

Henry shuddered at the thought, tightly curling in on himself as he watched Joey end the poor creature's miserable existence. His bowl where his meals were served clattering loudly, as the inky heart of the slain critter was tossed onto it with precision. A mimicry of flesh thumping against the metal with a wet splat.

He fought back the urge to cry as he felt his mouth water.

"Eat up my loyal wolf… We can't be wasteful." Joey's cruel smile almost ruined his appetite. Almost. "Don't worry, this wasn't anyone you knew…"

With that said, Joey left him to greedily consume the offering.

Looking in the bowl's reflective surface once he'd licked it clean, Henry found that he could barely recognize himself anymore.

His stretched out face progressively becoming less and less humanoid as he was fed the experimental failures of Joey's horrid machine, and his pale hair having long since turned black and begun to spread.

He looked like what one would envision Boris the Wolf to look like in some lovecraftian fever dream. Dressed in ill-fitting ripped clothing, and barely able to balance a pair of cracked glasses on the bridge of his elongated nose.

An inhuman beast that fed off of the misfortune of others, losing his humanity as time passed on by.

He wondered if he'd forget himself eventually. If he'd forget that the devil in disguise that was Joey Drew was to blame for his malformations.

If one day he'd actually grow to love his captor in the same manner that Stolkholm syndrome victims tended to do, once brainwashed into submission by their abusers?

Another shudder forced a garbled whimper out of his deformed face.

To whatever god that could hear his broken pleas, he sure hoped not.

Henry didn't want to give Joey what he wanted.

Not when that monster of a man had taken him away from his family to keep as some sort of freak show pet.

Playing some sick version of house with the "puppy" he sustained on a cannibalistic diet. Disgusting.

Curling up, Henry cried himself to sleep. Thinking of his wife and children.

Missing them terribly while locked up in the bowels of Joey's demented studio.

-

The Ink Demon wasn't bad company, Henry had found. It seemed to understand his pain on a level no other creature did, offering him what little compassion it could whenever Joey dropped by with more "food".

It feared and loathed that devil of a man just as much as Henry did, and it knew to be kind despite never once being treated with the same sort of respect.

The one positive of this odd kinship between the two, was that Joey seemed pleased by them forming the sort of bond Bendy and Boris had. Thus never getting in between their interactions.

"One day soon, it'll all be just as I envisioned." He'd purr as he pinned the bound inky wolf to the ground, touching Henry in a way that made him want to gag, and rip the rat bastard's throat out with his horrific set of doggish teeth. "Just a little more and you'll be perfect."

He didn't want to be perfect.

All Henry wanted was to kill Joey Drew and go home.

"But first, I have a surprise for you." A surprise that came right after this twisted display of "affection". This gross invasion of the abominable wolf's personal bubble.

Joey presented him with an absolutely Perfect Boris.

Overalls, pie cut eyes, soft velvety fuzz and all… no signs of dripping or asymmetrical proportions.

The terror in those eyes however… it was all too human.

"I told you I'd find a way to reach perfection. Once I've finished tweaking the process you'll be just as perfect as him… Maybe more." Joey purred. "I miss your voice after all, dearest friend. Until then I give you this fearful pup to do with as you wish."

Upon his tormentor's departure, the cartoon wolf scrambled away from Henry. Shaking like a leaf and whining pitifully.

A child, Joey had converted a child…

Hell hath no fury like the righteous rage of a scorned father.

That bastard would pay for all he'd done!

But first, the large and deformed beast that was Henry Stein carefully scooted over to the shaking Boris clone and comforted him as best he could.

He'd protect this poor pup, no matter what.

The Ink Demon seemed to be in favour of extending that same grace, although it did still go for the kill when the less than agreeable ink monsters came around looking for trouble.

-

Buddy's transformation had certainly enraged him when Joey presented the poor boy to him. Sammy's and Norman's fates however were the last straw to break the camel's back.

Most of the people that worked at the studio were strangers to Henry, but the young musician and the oddball projectionist had been friends to him.

With every stranger's heart he consumed, the large beast of a wolf grew more and more restless. The revulsion he felt when looking upon Joey growing into an all consuming desire to violently murder his captor.

When a faceless ink creature wearing only suspenders and a Bendy mask came in one day to bring him his meal however…

"My lord wishes me to feed you, oh Great Lupine... Abyssal Hunger of the Ink's Abyss…" The body shape wasn't one he recognized. The slight arch to the creature's legs a bit strange to look at, and the four fingered hands an indication that something strange had definitely come to pass in this poor madman's transition into his current state. But that voice…

"Shhh...Shhaaammiieeee…?" His voice had returned as a dissonant mess, one that was not fit for a gross mockery of a muzzle like his own.

"Is… Is that my name, oh Hungry One?" There was both fear and hope in his voice. That in itself made something twinge painfully in Henry's chest. "I… Yes, yes that is my name isn't it? Sammy… I… oh thank you kindly, Benevolent Wolf. Please, feast upon your meal. I have worked hard to acquire it in the name of our Lord, your most wonderous companion."

What had Joey done to Sammy Lawrence, the proud music director that had more than half the mind this mindless drone had? Good heavens, what had he done that completely broke the poor kid?!

Rather than voice his horror, Henry did as he was told. After all the more he ate, the more his gluttonous appetite grew… as did this horrid body he was stuck with.

Abyssal hunger indeed…

He forgot what shame tasted like, but not mercy.

As selfish as it may be, he did request one thing.

"It is as you wish, oh Hungry One… I shall protect all pups that enter my lair." The Prophet bowed once, twice and then trice as he took Buddy by the hand. "Another horror skulks in the darkness, wearing an Angel's face. She hunts wolves, for fun. I shall show them your mercy."

He trusted that Sammy would keep his word. He was as stubborn as they could get, after all, and did not back off from a challenge very easily.

Henry would miss Buddy's company though.

That particular encounter was bad on a moral level, but it did turn out alright in the end. When the Projectionist was presented to him as a play thing however, Henry had begun to crack. No one deserves such a horrible fate as to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.

Norman had once carried a world of unimaginable knowledge on his back.

Now he only had the painful weight of a projector on his neck, and the volatile temper of a mindless beast.

The deformed wolf had done his best to gain the creature's trust, but it feared being attacked far too much to let a nearly 20 foot inky monstrosity near itself.

Self preservation hadn't completely left the Projectionist it seemed.

He'd let it go, hoping doing so would be a sign of good will on its own.

And then when he'd been once again left alone, Henry continued to stew in his anger. Talked himself into showing a rarer more violent side on Joey's next visit.

Even tried to fight back against him the next when he tried to touch him.

This was a losing battle however… After all, Joey Drew couldn't ever take 'No' for an answer, much less when it came from the object of his ill-fated obsessions.

Henry Stein just so happened to be his biggest obsession. Even as this horrifically imperfect monster that only an equally horrific demon could ever hope to understand.

[justgottafinishthischapter]

Writing Romance: Pining

We’ve all had crushes. We catch feelings for that cute somebody. Some people watch helplessly from afar, but others walk right up to the one they’re crushing on and ask them out. Again. And Again. And Again. No matter how many times they get rejected. So, I want to break down this romantic trope and highlight why it works in some instances and not in others.

If you looked at Fry and Leela’s relationship in Futurama and Elfo and Bean’s relationship in Disenchantment, you would assume they’d hold the same weight. Both were created by the same person, and Fry and Elfo are both losers hopelessly pining after a strong confident girl who could kick their asses. So why then do I cringe every time Elfo makes a move on Bean, but Fry’s pursuit of Leela is charming? It’s all about the execution.

In Futurama, Fry and Leela are completely separate characters. Although Fry shows an attraction to Leela in episode 1, the first time there’s a genuine display of romance between them wasn’t until season 2 when the crew went aboard the Titanic. Fry has interests and hobbies that don’t involve Leela at all. There are episodes that focus on his relationship with Bender, dealing with his feelings about being so far from his own time, and getting into wacky hijinks on alien planets. For the first few seasons, Fry’s pining took a backseat to his everyday escapades. Leela is just as fleshed-out as Fry. She is a totally independent character with her own goals, backstory, issues, and character traits. Her desire to find her planet of origins and find her place in the universe, her love of animals, her short temper, and her responsible nagginess is in no way dependent on Fry’s character even needing to be in the show to work. But more importantly, Fry didn’t just endlessly pursuit Leela on a baseless feeling of entitlement to her. It was always clear that Leela felt at least a little something for Fry, as there were many quiet moments with her showing her warming up to Fry. Whether it was bonding over their nebula on the titanic, Burning a hole in the picture of Chazz and symbolically seeing Fry as an option for the first time, deciding to forget the coin toss and just go out with Fry of her own will, Realizing that he gave up his oxygen to keep her safe, becoming enamoured with the perfect Fry created by the super worms, and wanting to hear how Fry’s opera ends, even when he lost the ability to play the music as beautifully, there is a clear and steady build-up to Leela coming around to Fry. Fry likes Leela, and he does pursuit her, but dating Fry isn’t just Leela getting fed up with turning him down, there’s a genuine development of reciprocated feelings that genuinely feels earned.

The same is not true for Elfo. Elfo serves no real purpose in Disenchantment. If Bean was not in the show, he would have no real goals or purpose. He states in episode 1 that he wants to experience things other than constant happiness, but then he shows no interest in pursuing this goal upon meeting Bean. All of his character is either pining after Bean or being Bean’s nagging conscience. The show goes out of its way to beat us over the head that Bean has no interest in Elfo. From blatantly calling the spot at her feet “The Friend Zone” and telling Elfo to sleep there, to eating what the audience is supposed to think is Elfo’s leg and saying she likes it, but only as a friend, this pairing completely misses the point of Fry and Leela that made it so charming. And while Fry could get jealous of other guys Leela had an interest in, Elfo is downright possessive, sabotaging her relationships with guys she shows interest in. Where as Fry is generally a nice guy who doesn’t act entitled to ownership of Leela, Elfo deliberately hurts and lies to Bean to manipulate her. As a result, they have no chemistry, and I wasn’t at all saddened by Elfo dying toward the end of season 1. Frankly if they left him dead or forced him to live far away from Bean for a season or two, it might help give him a personality outside of obsessive stalker.

Althought I was an avid Klance shipper, had Allurance at least been well-written I could have unenthusiastically lived with it. But Allurance was straight up toxic from every angle. First and most importantly, Allura never showed any interest in Lance. Unlike Leela who slowly warmed up to Fry and came to like him on her own gradually, Allura always looked annoyed and frustrated whenever Lance hit on her. It wasn’t until after Lotor broke Allura’s heart that she suddenly and randomly gained feelings for Lance literally out of nowhere. It wasn’t earned, there was no build up to the payoff, and Lance didn’t act any differently to change her opinion of him. The only reason Allura finally settled for Lance was because she felt betrayed, she knew Lance wouldn’t do that to her, and she used his feelings for her to validate her self-worth. The entire time they spent as a couple, she completely disregarded his feelings, his opinions, his concerns, his needs, and his help. At no point during their relationship did she put Lance first. He always had to put her needs above his own. And who did Lance turn to when he needed someone to lean on? Oh right, Keith. Someone he has actual romantic chemistry with who doesn’t use him as an emotional bandage. And Lance has Allura on this pedestal, worshiping her like some kind of goddess, to the point that he can’t see the way she’s using him. And if he can see it, he’s choosing to ignore it because he spent so long and fought so hard to win her over, he’s afraid to say anything that would risk losing someone he perceives as being too good for him, when in reality, he’s way too good for her. This entire pairing is just toxic. They’re both terrible for each other.

But a hopeless pining idiot isn’t always excruciatingly painful. In the first three volumes of RWBY, Jaune Arc is hopelessly pining after Weiss Schnee. Every time he does, she turns him down. However, while he is still on the cringy side of “can’t take a hint”, he is able to put Weiss first. When he finds out she likes someone else, he actually gives the guy a pep talk and encourages the guy to go out with her. But with Weiss and Jaune being reuinted in season 5, and team RWBY being officially back together in season 6, we saw a glimmer of this ship rear its ugly little head and frankly, it hasn’t really earned the right to sail yet. While Jaune and Weiss have both matured, nothing has really changed between them. Neither of them has really done anything to shift their dynamic from what it was when Weiss so bluntly turned Jaune down before. If this relationship is ever going to have to work, they both need to adjust their attitudes and the way they see each other. Right now, the most Jaune has is an infatuation. They don’t yet have the kind of bond where they seek one another out or turn to each other for comfort or advice. There are no seeds of trust or mature understandings of who each other are. They simply aren’t in a good place to start dating unless they can learn to be vulnerable with one another.

Of course, not all good pining ships have to end in a relationship. Pearl’s love and admiration for Rose Quartz is beautifully complex, tying into her own feelings of worthlessness and how Rose made her feel like she was more than what society told her she was. Yes, Pearl had elements of toxicity herself, being possessive, jealous toward Greg, and putting Rose on a pedestal above herself. However, a big part of her character is learning to recognize and move past these feelings of entitlement toward Rose. Learning to accept, let go, and move on from this deeply rooted pining. The show fully admits that Pearl never had a chance with Rose. She never saw Pearl that way, and while Pearl’s feelings are not inherently invalid, and there’s a good reason for her to love Rose as much as she does, it doesn’t distract from the fact that Rose never returns Pearl’s feelings and Pearl simply needs to move on with her life.

While pining is not an inherently bad trope, it’s one that’s very easy to mess up. Too often it comes in the form of a “nice guy” who can’t take a hint, making the girl he likes angry, frustrated, or uncomfortable in the process only to be rewarded by being an unrelenting stalker. It’s important that with pining, it needs to be mutual, and it usually works best as a slow burn. A girl turning a guy down and him not stopping isn’t romantic, it’s creepy and annoying. A relationship isn’t built on one person idolizing the other and having the other person settle. It’s about understanding another person better than anyone else. Having someone you can be truly vulnerable and yourself with, who understand the way you think, and cares about you enough to be able to put themselves aside to give you what you need without taking it to the extreme of neglecting themselves in the process. Pining isn’t inherently funny, the loser getting the girl isn’t automatically romantic, and a just because it takes a girl seven seasons to give in to his relentless pursuit is not guaranteed to be endearing to your audience. If you do not build it properly, it will fall apart on itself. This trope needs to be used strategically and handled well to tug on an audience’s heartstrings, but when done right can have a very satisfying payoff.

[girloikawa]

so i was on twitter, doing my twitter things, when i saw this article

the only reason i clicked on it was because of the words “looks like a model” being in the same sentence as “so thin now” and i needed to make sure they weren’t imply that there aren’t plus size models. well, to no surprise, the article was the shittiest, most fatphobic thing ever. so let’s take a look at that

the whole thing is a slide show of previously fat celebrities and their current state after losing weight. first one is kim kardashian and, guess what....they’re shaming her for something completely natural! she birthed life, you dipshits, have some respect.

aretha franklin. “and we mean REALLY big.” 1) there is nothing wrong with being fat, fat is not a dirty word. 2) do you know how fucking stupid it is to put this on the internet forever? being fatphobic in private or even saying fatphobic stuff is terrible, but you’re not really going to get in trouble for it. but, as a company, you could at least have some integrity, or pretend to. (note: they have 1.3k followers and get this...they’re a travel company?)

honestly, scrolling through them, i saw that they were harsher on the men. maybe they took it as not wanting to be disrespectful to women (idk how though) or they just think it’s more socially acceptable to shame men for their bodies than women, but let me tell you, it is not. i don’t like chris pratt as a person, but you will not imply that men are uglier for having some weight, no matter who it is. the disrespect

“disappointed many fans by gaining tons of weight” im sorry...disappointed who? oh you mean the people who value human worth based on how much stomach fat they have? don’t want em anyways! and the fact that they refer to gaining weight as a “mistake” is appalling. so she ate food, why does that matter? celebrities don’t have to be skinny to be celebrities, nobody has to be skinny to have value. why is this such an issue?

the list is implying that you need to be slim (and in some cases unhealthily slim) to look good, and that gaining weight is in any way bad. it is not. sometimes, gaining weight can be a healthy and beautiful thing. taylor swift talked about how she’s more confident in herself once she gained weight, for example. there is nothing wrong with not being skinny.

this one is confusing to me because she doesn’t even look like she weighs a lot. so. i guess you’re only aloud to weigh 130 pounds or less

this one’s just cruel. probably the worst one. making fun or people for eating, not like it’s one of the basic human needs, am i right? they just went striaght for fatphobia! thanks!

honey boo boo isn’t in the article. it was clickbate. honey boo boo is gorgeous by the way whether she is fat or not stupid article shut up. plus size models exist and are honestly dominating the game so

moral of the story: all bodies are beautiful, as long as you’re happy and healthy, nobody should give a shit. it’s your body. beauty standards are fucked and capitalized off of, so don’t listen to anybody who thinks being overweight is inherently a bad thing. you’re gorgeous, love, let them stay mad <3

[deviant3lover]

Can you do more headcanons for the shitty teen squads? I really love them. Plus I love all of your works :)

Aha! Funny you should ask, because I started working on this one just before I saw your ask!

Without further ado…

Even more trio headcanons!!

Genos, being a regular internet user, is well aware of the various memes circulating the media. However, he doesn’t have much of a close affinity to them, and only really uses them to mock someone online. Saitama on the other hand is oblivious, and Genos occasionally has to explain what a meme means for him to get it.

Never invite Genos to roast you. He will ruin your life. He already does it unintentionally with Saitama with his baldness, but when he does it on purpose? 

Random Bitch: He’s a pretty good lay, though his nose was pretty ugly. He kept going on and on about how much he wanted to marry me- gross shit, I know, but if he keeps giving me the check, I’ll suck up to him and say I love him too.

Genos: *murderous, unimpressed glare* You expect me to believe that there’s someone who’d willingly sleep with you, and not immediately kill themselves afterwards?

Random Bitch:

Metal Bat has one hell of a sweet tooth. He’s got his heart set on chocolate, but he’s also fond of the classics: the aforementioned, vanilla, and cookies and cream when it comes to ice cream. He loves the cola flavoured lollipops, and if he had to get himself a boba tea, he’d go for the Taro flavour: it’s just too good to him. He didn’t care too much for strawberry, but Zenko’s love for it encouraged him to develop a liking towards it. His go-to snacks are Oreos, home made chocolate fudge, and pocky; with the occasional cola lollipop if he’s got to focus on something and can’t afford to get distracted by constantly chowing down on sweets.

His metabolism isn’t as nearly insane (practically inhuman) as Garou’s or Genos’s, but it’s more than fast enough to make him avoid gaining weight from them. Paired with his delinquent persona, (and buying sweets incognito from cutesy sweet shops the same way that King buys video games) most people are often surprised when he has a strong liking for them.

Since Genos uses intense firepower, he also has a hydraulic cooling system to cool him down. The only times where he steams up is during or after a fight when he’s used his fuel intensively, and the steam primarily comes from his arms, the jets from behind his shoulders, and occasionally his mouth if the arms use far more firepower than usual. For the times where he’s really, really worked up emotionally (mortified, furious, etc) bits of steam can be seen coming from his mouth, but it’s never extreme enough to get his whole body to follow suit. Apart from battle, his body is usually safe to touch due to how efficient his cooling system is: that includes the times when he’s angry, but not getting ready to fight. (I will die on this hill for this headcanon. >:0!!)

When it comes to people he respects, Genos deliberately lies or hides anything relating to him that might trouble them. That also includes his true thoughts on what you’re enamored with, his private disgust at your gross habits, and redirecting attention away from potentially offensive topics towards something that might catch your interest. Any mortifying but true things said about yourself has him in silence, unsure of how to navigate the topic without offending you.

Contrary to popular belief, Genos is actually pretty levelheaded when people insult Saitama online. He’s seen everything that people have to say about Saitama, and knows that fighting every fight- both small and huge- on the Internet isn’t worth it, since there’s always going to be horrible things said about him by people he’s unlikely to ever meet in person. Besides, no one would listen to some random user saying that Caped Baldy isn’t all that bad, and he’d rather not use his popularity as Demon Cyborg to attract unwanted attention to the both of them by praising Caped Baldy when they have better things to do. (*cough* shopping for discounts with his precious sensei *cough*) He deletes his history when he’s done browsing and subtly tries to steer Saitama away from sites that he knows are saying horrible stuff about him when his Sensei gets interested. It’s when people insult Saitama directly (e.g. In person, a fan letter that Saitama reads) that makes him angry.

Genos hates the thought of being inexperienced or having his attempts end in a failure, but he loathes it if Saitama bears witness to it. He’s far more passionate and attentive whenever his teacher is involved in any way to what he’s doing, in the hopes that perhaps, seeing his disciple taking his role seriously and not missing anything/using his time to slack off, Saitama would take him more seriously in return and tell him the true secret to his strength. (Which he already gave, poor Genos.)

When he’s caught off guard and rendered to near death by his opponents, it wasn’t because he underestimated them: it was because Genos overestimated his own strength, thinking that it was enough to kill them. He treats any and every threat seriously, no matter how weak or strong looking they are. From the meek, gross looking toilet monster, to the horrifying titanic threat that is Elder Centipede, Genos will engage his opponent with the intent of eliminating the threat by any means. He knows that weak looking monsters can house unimaginable strength as a surprise attack, and strong looking monsters could have unexpected powers that could catch him off guard. He’d never laugh or smile during a fight, knowing that his opponent is inherently dangerous and likely to endanger countless lives if they’re not eliminated.

(This is dark, but: he’s also the only member in the trio that’s killed people before, if not the most willing if push comes to shove.)

While he doesn’t care too much about his popularity, he does know that his fan clubs can be a powerful resource and will occasionally (and subtly) cater to them. His main way of doing so is buying himself clothes to make him look handsome (which he does more frequently thanks to the money he gets as an S-class,) and to keep up the ‘mysterious, alluring Cyborg Prince’ persona by refusing interviews and close relations with his fans: basically, by being himself. (Which he is more than willing to do.)

Genos, despite clearly stating his opinions on hero teams, (summary: he thinks they suck) doesn’t actually mind teaming up with other heroes on occasion. He knows that some heroes are capable of doing tasks that he wouldn’t do too well at, or would be able to do at all (especially if it’s ensuring the welfare of a group of people,) and will willingly team up if he thinks it’s for the best. It’s when those heroes make teams that they continuously depend on that he starts losing respect for them.

Inspired by this. One of his favorite clothing brands is Grin and Bears, particularly their men’s hoodies section. Alongside Amai Mask, Genos has occasionally been offered to be sponsored by several clothing brands due to how well he wears his designer clothing.

Genos has a good reason for liking oiled sardines. The food in particular was part of his old life where his family couldn’t afford much, and bought canned food more often than not. Vegetables and breads are nice and cheap, but are fairly bland. Oiled sardines is far more flavorful, and it was one of the first foods that he had tried that wasn’t the former two: unsurprisingly, he soon after became a fan of them.

Garou prefers hearty, nutrient rich foods. While he doesn’t have one favourite meal in particular, well rounded meals that involve vegetables and meats will have him wolfing it down. That includes steaks with nice veggies like potatoes and carrots and salads: it’s fairly balanced and there’s plenty to eat, hence his choice to go to a steak house to replenish his strength.

Don’t give Garou caffeine. He’s batshit insane and bloodthirsty when he’s high on it, and he’s far more irritable than he usually is when he crashes.

Genos doesn’t have fond memories of his birthday. His parents loved him, but would overwork themselves to get him a gift and it made him feel guilty every time, even though he insisted that they don’t go through the trouble. He never made plans to tell Saitama, but that information was included in his registration sheet to the H.A. and it was broadcasted on every talk show and website: needless to say, he caught wind of it. Like the festival, Saitama insists that they celebrate, and while Genos can’t completely shake off his bad experiences of it + fully engage and understand why Saitama is doing this, he’s slowly (somewhat reluctantly) getting more curious on what experiencing a good birthday is like. Saitama got him a cake on sale with a few coupons, and it looks kind of basic and a little corny with the decorations, but Genos still thanks Saitama for it and eats it all the same. Genos doesn’t have a particular favourite flavour in regards to sweets. At least, not yet. 

Badd remembers his birthdays somewhat bittersweetly, remembering his younger days: the times where he was surrounded by his family and watching YouTube videos/live sport matches with his friends, digging into fast foods like fish and chips and eating watermelon and ice cream on a hot summer’s day. Those days were gone now, but Zenko and the few friends that stood by his side even when he was swamped with work usually band together to give him a nice day off from fans, school, and the HA to celebrate his birthday. It’s a smaller circle than before, but he still cherishes those who he came to love as his found family and enjoys them, looking back on his past with a hint of nostalgia. His cake is always chocolate with Oreos. 

Garou… his birthdays were lonely, and he remembers them bitterly. There was one time where he invited everyone in his class to his party and no one showed up. 

This occasion actually happened prior to Tacchan, so while young!Garou was heartbroken, he tried to be optimistic and justified the incident to himself. It’s probably because he doesn’t know everyone that well… Maybe others are busy? Tests were coming up soon and everyone had to study: it’s okay! It makes sense why no one could come! That is, of course, until the obvious happened, and he lost faith in the people around him. Garou never told Bang when his birthday was, and Bang never pried, seeing the bitterness and determination in Garou’s heart to become stronger, and respecting his decision not to tell him. To this day, Garou treats his birthday like any other day, if he still remembers when it was.

Special Request by @rayadraws. How do Garou, Badd, Tareo, and Zenko react to Saitama?

I’ve actually loved her headcanon for Garou being wary and slightly afraid around Saitama at the start! So I believe that’s what he’ll initially be like around him. As time goes on, he’ll slowly relax and be subtly curious about him. Garou will crack jokes and teases from time to time, and while he does think it’s funny when Saitama sulks and complains about the trio teasing him for his baldness from time to time, he can’t stop the brief spike of fear that makes him freeze on instinct when Saitama is visibly angry. It’s an ambivalent situation for Garou: he’ll say no to Saitama asking if he can get something from the store, saying that ‘your tincan disciple can get it himself,’ but the serious, slightly furious face that Saitama puts on has him in silence for a few moments, before letting (forcing) out a seemingly lazy and nonchalant sigh and heading out the door to get it, his heart rate faster than it was a few moments ago.

His dreams can involve Saitama buying the most hideous pair of crocs and sporting a dopey face full of happiness at finding such a great discount, Dream!Garou groaning in disgust and walking away from him to do something else.

His nightmares can involve the feeling of rubber on his neck, slowly choking him as the bald man looks him straight in the eye above him, eyes startlingly dead and empty, daring him to make a move. His face could be replaced with that of a blank faced mannequin and hardly a difference can be seen. Nightmare!Garou remembers escaping somehow, jumping high enough to land himself in the cold, dark, suffocating expanse of space, and thinking to himself that he’d rather die up there rather than come back down to a desolate, barren earth: a lone man waiting to kill him as soon as he enters its atmosphere.

Garou’s relationship with Saitama, at first glance, is a seemingly normal one with the former lazing around his house and eating his food like an inconsiderate houseguest; but his feelings are anything but. As much as he pretends to not care much about Saitama, he’d listen carefully to what he has to say if he’s serious, and is a little more well behaved and observant around him. If Saitama imparts some of his rare pieces of advice, Garou would, on the outside, make a dull and uninterested note of it, but in reality he’d carefully consider his words in private.

- Badd knew that Saitama and Genos are a package deal, but when he found out that Saitama is Genos’s teacher, he’s incredulous. 

‘You serious, man? This guy? What’s he even gonna teach ya?’ 

Seeing Genos’s glower and hours of him chewing out Badd while lavishing praises on sensei’s strength, wisdom, and humility drove home the point to Badd, who was practically groaning in exasperation and telling him that he gets it, just to get Genos to stop berating him. Seeing Saitama’s power finally makes him understand. 

He’s somewhat more polite around him now, knowing that this is someone Genos respects, and Badd seeing Saitama living life and just generally being a good guy makes Badd’s opinion of him slowly grow. He sympathises with Saitama’s baldness, and out of the trio, is the least likely to tease him for it: deliberately or not. Badd himself shudders at the thought of losing his beloved pompadour, so he’s usually the one to say ‘quit it, you’re bumming him out’ to Genos whenever he’s unintentionally hurting Saitama’s feelings. Or a simple ‘holy shit Garou, stop’ when Garou makes a melodramatic re-enactment of Saitama’s offended reaction to Konbu’s supposed ‘benefits’ that Genos had informed him of. (Genos mentioned the event, and now they know all about it.)

Tareo, at first, doesn’t recognize him since he usually focuses on the cool heroes. When he finds out Saitama’s hero name, he’s taken aback. ‘You’re the Caped Baldy??’ He asks, with what sounded to be awe. 

Apart from internally cringing at the name, Saitama is briefly (and pleasantly surprised) and was about to say yes, before Tareo ran over to Garou and whispered to him (quite loudly) to ‘be careful ojisan! That bald guy over there is bad news!’

(Saitama’s blank face was screwed on for a good 10 seconds.)

He’s wary of Saitama, asking questions such as ‘didn’t you steal credit from other heroes when the sea monsters attacked?’ for some time. It’s through Garou’s, Badd’s, and Genos’s good opinion of the man that Tareo slowly begins to trust that Saitama is a good person. ‘If uncle and his friends thinks he’s nice, maybe he’s not so bad…’

Same with Garou, Tareo refers to him as ‘ojisan.’ ;)c

Zenko… man, the main reason why I took so long creating this post is because I wouldn’t know how Zenko would react until I thought about it carefully.

Like Tareo, she’s wary and slightly antagonistic towards him once she realises who he is, though less so than Tareo since it’s a little difficult to steal credit from an S-Class like him: Metal Bat is one of those heroes who can take down most monsters by himself, so I imagine Zenko wouldn’t be too worried about Caped Baldy taking the credit, but rather, she’d be wary of him trying something else to drag her brother through the mud.

She may not cuss him out, or even outwardly call him a Baldy, but she can be just as strong willed as her brother. Her initial relationship with Saitama can be seen mostly as this:

She does know that while Badd has a hot temper, can be forgetful, and stirs up trouble sometimes, she also knows that he harbours a serious hatred for cowards and self centred cheats that put themselves over others. The fact that Badd isn’t threatening Saitama to (fuck off) leave him and his sister alone reassures her to some extent into believing that maybe the rumors aren’t true: she’s had her share of getting angry on Badd’s behalf when the news or gossip columns twist the truth about her brother, especially in a bad light, so she carefully observes him to see if he’s the person that most people make him out to be.

Like her brother, her opinion of him slowly grows. She’s assertive, but not rude. She won’t call him a Baldy or old man like Tareo or Tatsumaki, no matter how angry she gets. There’s just some buttons you don’t press, and Zenko doesn’t want to become a mean spirited person.

She does get sort of grossed out by some of his clothing choices and will confront him on it sooner or later, saying that ‘Mr Saitama, your clothes look ugly’ and that maybe he should start looking for better ones.

(This is also the perfect opportunity to get her to drag him shopping with her: clothes for the both of them! And she’s definitely going to pick out some clothes for Saitama. 

I imagine that at the beginning, her fashion senses were still developing, and while she has her heart in the right place, it was a hit(?) or miss at the time. It gets way better later on, and she’s a little fashionista! Makeup and clothing are sure to look good on you when she picks them out herself~ But for this headcanon, you can decide if her fashion senses are more polished, or are still in development. Saitama’s fate of looking good/bad is up to you. ;3c)

Shared Traits

Badd doesn’t use any sort of weird quirk for how he texts. His source for punctuation is autocorrect and never exactly uses full stops unless he’s having a serious conversation: but even then, it’s fairly uncommon.

But he does use words and slangs like ‘dude’ and shortened words like ‘y’all.’

His swears are more relaxed in text, but only because you can’t hear his rough voice saying them; either way, he usually isn’t actually trying to intimidate you. When he gets angry, however, you can definitely feel the threats, the intimidation, and the tightly leashed anger dripping off of his words just as much as when he says them in person. If he’s angry, you’ll know it.

If he has time and is invested in a conversation, he likes using the occasional gif or emoticon but isn’t obnoxious with it.

Sometimes when he’s busy and doesn’t care, he uses all caps because he doesn’t want to deal with his words being autocorrected to something else. This is usually seen when he’s about to get into a fight.

When you ask him where he is when he’s out, he’s equally likely to text you the name of the place, or send you a photo of where he is.

When it’s a photo of Zenko, especially if it’s her with a prize or a trophy or a doll and she’s being cute, he spams hearts and praises of her.

Genos has perfect punctuation and grammar.

You know that annoying moment when the person you’re texting seemingly is texting a long ass message, only for it to come out as something like ‘ok’? Yeah… Genos never does that. (Unless he wants to say something important (and likely very personal) but is too reluctant to say it, and opts for something more mundane.)

He sends entire paragraphs if he’s explaining something or debriefing someone on some information.

His sentences are curt if he’s busy. It’ll come off as cold and rude to most people when they read them.

His recent emojis section has all the ones he can just text quickly if he’s far too busy to make sentences. Handy if he only has one arm or taking a breather from a monster fight.

Garou does not use autocorrect.

He’s obnoxious when he texts.

Memes, gifs, I wIlL bEaT tHe HeRo HuNtEr (With the spongebob meme template: specifically designed to mock heroes and wannabes who think they can take him down), spamming ‘answer me bitch’ to his poor recipient over and over until they reply, using so. Many. Emojis. For the sole purpose of annoying you.

If he’s texting Tareo, he’s pretty casual.

Hey lil turd I got some coupons for ice cream

I hate ice cream

Take them or im throwing them out

The no brainer: Genos and Garou are masters at eating competitions. Garou wolfs it all down quickly, whilst Genos is more dignified about how he eats, if the super spicy udon competition he had with Saitama is any indication. Badd can keep up, (mama didn’t raise no quitter!) but he’ll be struggling to get a grip on himself and stay awake.

If he wanted to, Genos can keep on eating for an extended period of time, limited only by the capacity of his fuel engines. (Which, by our stomach’s standards, is practically infinite for how much he can eat in so short a time and still keep going for hours.) His body can essentially turn the foods and drinks he ingests either into nutrients for the brain, or fuel for his firepower: continuously keeping his engines active will digest what he eats on a semi-fast level.

If the trio do end up becoming friends in canon, I imagine that they’d pick up on each other’s traits subconsciously. Badd’s and Genos’s smirks are faint facsimiles of Garou’s. Badd and Garou take after Genos’s protectiveness over items on sale at the supermarket, knowing how rare the occasion can be to get discounts for some in particular. Genos and Garou say ‘haah?’ in an intimidating manner, on instinct, to people they don’t like thanks to Badd. And of course, all three swear more often, usually under their breaths whenever something goes wrong, or to quietly insult someone without causing a scene.

It’s pretty obvious that Genos prefers slim fitting clothing. Anything too baggy will catch/snag and tear on his surroundings and hinder his ability to use his weapons. Badd prefers slightly loose clothing since he’s pretty hot tempered and he gets worked up for fights pretty easily, and clammy clothes aren’t exactly comfortable. Garou is a mix of both: when it comes to clothing, it’s either the clothes are light and form fitting enough to be second skin so he doesn’t have to worry about it snagging, or the clothes are just the right amount of loose to make him look decent, but not like he’s wearing painted on clothing. He’s alright with either option. Emphasis on form fitting. He canonically hates clothes that restrict his movements, and his usual shirt is made of normal, lightweight fabric, so Garou won’t be too keen on the idea of wearing a skin tight bodysuit made of latex or leather.

[uncloseted]

I just read your response to “would Effy eat 1000 calories” and I’m the person who’s 15, 5 foot 8 and 9 stone 13 and you’ve said I’m healthy but I’ve been eating like 600 calories, I’m just wondering now is that really unsafe. I’ve lost 3 stone all together since last year but a stone in less than 2 months. I’m just wondering if this is unsafe now? x

Your weight is really healthy right now, and a good place to stop losing weight.  Your eating habits aren’t healthy and probably need some altering.  It’s virtually impossible to prevent malnutrition in a sub-1200 calorie diet, especially if you’re not paying attention to the macros of your food and taking dietary supplements.  Weight loss that rapid also risks more serious health problems, like dehydration, gallstones, and electrolyte imbalances. 

The other problem with very low calorie diets is that because they’re seen as temporary (”I’ll do this until I reach my goal weight and then go back to eating normally”), many people who lose a lot of weight in a short period of time gain it back.  Maintainable weight loss requires a permanent lifestyle change, not just a quick fix.

That isn’t to say that very low calorie diets or fasting programs are inherently bad- there’s a time and a place for them- but they should always be done under the recommendation and careful supervision of a medical professional.  I would recommend making an appointment with your primary care doctor and having an honest discussion about what’s going on.  They can assess if you’re malnourished, dehydrated, have an electrolyte imbalance, etc., and help you deal with any of those problems if they’re present.