#part of this is probably because they wouldn’t know how to emotionally function if i kicked the bucket so they can’t even think about it

[jelliegirl]

well at least i’m recovered from my cancer treatment enough that i can literally run away from my problems

[seeker-ophelia]

Ophelia’s Review, Part Three: The Lore

Man. Thank you to @senseandaccountability ’s post for sparking this brainwyrm because I was at a loss for words on how to start this post, and I could not put my finger on what was actually bothering me.

Again, let me just say, emotionally, this game wrecked me. I enjoyed it. I (am probably one of the few who) liked the combat. I liked the companions (basic as they are). And I liked the story. I liked the locations. I liked the quests and the loot system and the companion banter. But.

The Lore.

[Part 1:Emotion]   [Part 2:The Dragon Age System]

If you’ve read my Part 2 Review, you know the end of it is actually its own little fic-let on the Veilguard realizing the veil needs to come down.

And I’m just going to straight up copy a paragraph from @SenseAndAccountability ‘s post (I strongly recommend you go read it, its fantastic).

Replaying really emphasizes how incredibly little the game convinces me of its original main quest - to prevent Solas from doing his ritual. This is a problem as a long-term player because for three games we’ve had build up for a great crescendo tackling the overarching themes of the (restrictions and oppression of) magic, of tears in the Veil, of religious tyranny and oppression based on myths about the Black City and the temptations of flawed humans, we’ve seen and deconstructed the elves quite a bit, we got started on the dwarves and in DAI your Inquisitor can openly ask Solas if it wouldn’t be better if the Veil came down because then spirits wouldn’t be separated from the living and risk becoming demons. Cole, whose function is to reflect the plot, talks endlessly about the old songs wanting to be sung again, about how it hurts to be cut off from part of yourself, how the templars feel it, how the mages feel it, how the elves and the dwarves feel it. The Veil as a prerequisite for life has been deconstructed, the Fade demystified, the gods have mostly fallen. The Veil as an actual wound inflicted on this earth has been presented as a theory and not been convincingly rejected by the narrative. 

Let’s recap, just a little bit.

In Origins, we are introduced to the Dragon Age World. Its politics, its magic physics, the races, and its religion. We are introduced to the concept of the Chantry and the Templars and the Circles (*wiggles my eyebrows at you). We learn about demon possession, and about spirits in the fade. And maybe most importantly, we are introduced to the concept of The Blight.

The unstoppable, indiscriminate zombie-plague that sweeps Thedas once a century or so. And maybe more importantly, thanks to the sacrifice of the Grey Wardens, how to stop it.

In 2, the Thedas lore is even subtler. We were introduced to Dalish Gods in Origins, but because of Merrill we get a little more. We start to become curious about the Gods of the race that has been subjugated and enslaved throughout the common Ages. We learn the tense political atmosphere surrounding the Templars and the Mages, and the Chantry’s weakening hold on the politics and structure of Southern Thedas as a whole. We learn about slavery in the north, about the basics of the Qunari, and we have a Terrorist (potentially our lover), hit the religious organization in our city.

In Inquisition, we learn all about the magic. We learn about the fade, about the veil, we learn all about the Elvhen. We pick a side in the Mage/Templar war, we learn about this strange process of Tranquility, the only power templars have to control mages (thanks to Cassandra), and we also learn what that control costs (thanks to Cullen).

And because of Solas, and Cole, we learn about spirits. About how the Veil turns them to demons on their passing into the real world. About how all they want is to stay true to their purpose. They are simple, pure things, and while there are demons, of course, its not all bad in the fade as maybe we might have believed before. After all, Solavellan’s first kiss happens in the fade.

In Descent, we learn about titans, about memories, about songs, about lyrium, about isatunoll.

In Trespasser we learn about why the Titans even matter. Orbs. Power. Greed. The creation of the Veil, and what it really means.

*Insert Kronk Oh-Yeah-Its-All-Coming-Together.gif*

We had 10 years to scheme. 10 years for theories. 10 years to datamine.

So what did we learn in Veilguard?

Well, in the grand scheme of things, nothing.

We have theories confirmed. Which Evanuris hat belongs to who, how the blight was created, how the blight is spread, and how the blight is controlled (kinda-not-really). At least, we learn how the Evanuris are doing it.

What did we learn that was NEW?

We learned about the Morn Watch (but I mean, did we really?) Emmerich has a good relationship with wisps and spirits. We learn about his distinction between a spirit and a soul.

We learned *a little* more about Qunari culture.

We learned it was a blood magic ritual that was holding the veil up, tied to the life force of the Evanuris, now tied to Solas.

We learned about the Evanuris’ Dragon-Thralls and the strong connection between the two, a connection strong enough to get their souls out of Solas’ Fade Jail.

We learned that the Evanuris could not only control The Blight, but had relics to give to others (the Venatori) to control blighted things. We learned their greed for power was so vast, so consuming, they were willing to Blight the world to achieve it.

But we fought an archdemon, in Origins and in Veilguard. We see and know the terror and horror of the Blight.

This makes any action Solas commits understandable, and even necessary. Would we have done anything different? If my leaders were bent on blighting the world, wouldn’t I go to extreme lengths to stop them? Compromising my own morals, dignity, and values to do so?

I think I would.

Having such a terrible evil, having such an indiscriminately bad thing, The Blight, leaves absolutely no room for nuance. No room for complexity. Just good versus bad. Destroy the bad thing at all costs.

So we do. Wham, bam, Evanuris dead.

And the only thing stopping us from tearing down the Veil, is the Blight.

Because Solas tells us that the Blight is in there too.

But, he made a new Prison for the Evanuris, one without a veil, before Rook & Co. interrupted his ritual. Why can’t we move the blight into there and still tear down the Veil?

What is stopping us at this point?

Solas says: Thousands would die

(You’re trapped in your regrets)

This is why you had to use me to escape the prison. It’s made from regrets. And you’re trapped in yours.

You cannot understand -  

Destroying everything won’t erase your mistakes.

You have a chance right now to save the world. Bind yourself to the Veil and stop it from falling.

2. (Do this the right way)

You’re right, you do need to make up for the damage you’ve done, but breaking the world again is the wrong way to do it.

Letting the veil collapse –

Is what YOU want. Making amends isn’t about what YOU want.

You have a chance right now to save the world. Bind yourself to the Veil and stop it from falling.

3. (This won’t help anyone)

Who does this help? A lot of people are going to die… So you can fix something they don’t even see as wrong.

It is not just people, spirits –

Will be destroyed when you do this, too. Won’t they?

You have a chance right now to save the world. Bind yourself to the Veil and stop it from falling.

Listen. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but there's more to Dragon Age than Solavellan.

This, in the end, was an emotional decision. The decision to leave the veil up was tied to emotion, and not logic.

So, what does all this mean?

Well, for players new to the series, nothing. They were always fighting for the Veil to stay up. The opposite of what the antagonist wants, pretty much. Easy enough to follow along.

But for returning players? Lavellans who stood in Fade-Haven? Players who walked Vir Dirthara? Mages who made the Descent, and saw how horrible it was for the dwarves to be sundered from their dreams, and made the horrifying connection that the Veil did the same to them?

Trespasser Solas: You must understand, I awoke in a world where the Veil had blocked most people’s conscious connection to the Fade. It was like walking through a world of Tranquil. (We aren’t even people to you?) Not at first. You showed me that I was wrong… again. That does not make what must come next any easier.

When I learned about the rite of Tranquility in Origins, I was disgusted. The first thing that popped into my head was lobotomization. They are one and the same to me. Turning a person into a husk of what they were. Separating them from their emotions. From hard emotions, yes, from things that are not easy, even painful, but at the cost of themselves.

We walk with Harding through her decision to, although the Titans are angry, and what was taken from her people was great, not reunite Titan and Dwarf because…

Lace: The story of their end is the story of our beginning.

Mythal releases Solas from his journey to reunite Elvhen with the Fade.

Harding releases angry Titans from their quest to reunite with the Dwarvhen.

And so the Veil stays up. The Titans stay sundered.

But… at what cost?

Lest we forget, it was the sundering of the Titans from the Dwarves that CREATED THE BLIGHT. The Titans created the blight as a weapon to infect the Elvhen as punishment for their death, their tranquility.

This Tranquility Ritual, be it in the form of keeping Mages from the fade, be it of Titans or of Elvhen, is WRONG.

I’m a Blue-Collar Journeyman, and we have a turn of phrase we use with old fellers who don’t want to change the way they do things.

Just because you’ve been doing something for a long time, doesn’t mean you’ve been doing it right.

You can do something for years, and still be doing it wrong.

And both Lace and Rook decide that this is the way things have been done, for AGES. We’re not going to change now.

And I’m just… Solas. As John Travolta playing Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, confusingly standing there, looking around with my arms out.

Did we learn nothing from the Lessons of Origins? Nothing from the Lessons of Inquisition?

Maintain the Status Quo? That’s the answer?

At what cost?

One of my favourite lines in in my Part 2 Post is this;

Veilguard, is shallow. The essence is there, beneath it's Veil, pressing and bursting at the seams to escape, but is being held back by a gentrification of Thedas.

This decision, the decision to keep the veil up, is shallow. Its basic. Its Easy. It is pre-masticated, lunchable drivel. It was spoon fed to us in easy dialogue and groupthink.

What about every other thing we learned in the other games of Dragon Age?

If Weekes et al. want me to forget about how horrible the Rite of Tranquility is, they’re going to have to come out with a hell of a companion novel between now and DA5, because this makes no sense to me.

I ask you. If sundering Titans created The Blight, what did sundering the Fade create?

Or should I say,

If separating Dwarvhen from their Memories created the Blight (out of Titan anger),

What did separating Elvhen from the Fade create?????

Lets talk about Ser Dave.

If you read my part 2, you’ll know that Ser Dave is my name for the ‘?????’

Not only is it so insulting to my intelligence to call something ‘?????,’ because of course then I’m going to pay more attention to it, but its so lazy. Let it introduce itself to Rook and say “call me the wicked witch of the west,’ ‘a concerned party,’ ‘I am the Batman,’ ‘I am No One,’ ‘I am Daivd Gaider,’ ffs.

An I excited at a new villain? Yes. Am I happy to learn there was a shadow organization pulling the strings behind all of my villains throughout The Dragon Age? Abso-fucking-lutely not. Am I happy Southern Thedas, Treviso, and Minrathous are essentially razed after the rise of the Evanuris? No.

Nothing we did in any of our previous games mattered. Nothing I did mattered. Ser Dave was there the whole time, controlling, balancing, guiding, whispering.

I was doomed to fail from the start.

The moral of the story in Veilguard is to not assume the burden of others actions:

And yet its Ser Dave and the Nazgul Band that assumes responsibility for my villains?

What in the Actual Fuck?

So what is going to happen in 5? I don't know. Will I find true agency? How do we have a villain worse than a God? How do we live in a Tranquil’d world, knowing the alternative? How do you bring back the dark, heavy, realness of Thedas, after the gentrification of Veilguard? After blanding Thedas, making it easier for more palates, needing to feed the EA Machine.

For the record, I have yet to complete my second playthrough. I have yet to find all the codices. I have yet to get all the companion banter. I have yet to play as every race. I have yet to make every decision. And if Inquisition taught me anything, its how one little piece of information can change everything. So, for the record, this whole post could be wrong.

In fact, I hope, and pray, that I am missing a big piece of something in Veilguard. That I just haven’t found it yet. That one little thing that’s going to shift my worldview. And I’m going to play until I find it.

Because these messages Veilguard is sending? They’re too contradictory. Too opposite to be coincidence. Too Different to simply be Bad Writing™. I said that Veilguard is a Tranquilized Version of what DA4 could have been. Inquisition, 2, and Origins, were too deep, for Veilguard to be this shallow.

And… Maybe its copium, but I’m kind of hoping that it was on purpose.

[gojos-thot-patrol]

Some good old fluff! How would the JJK men comfort a sad s/o and vise versa? 🫂 HCs please and thanks!

ooo, I love this!!! We all need some fluff in our life, lets do this!

Now Presenting...

Starring Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, Kento Nanami, and Ryomen Sukuna

Satoru Gojo

Gojo’s method of trying to comfort you is trying to make you laugh. 

Gojo is the “Run from you emotions and never ever ever confront that shit” and while he would never push that on to you, it’s how he knows how to cope

He’d hold you close while making soft jokes just to try and make you smile

Hopefully if you’re with Gojo you have a sense of humor, even a dark one, so hopefully it doesn’t hurt your feelings more.

If it does, he P A N I C S but internally to not stress you out more. Outwardly he softly apologizes and shuts the hell up

Which is honestly probably what you need as well

He brings you tea for sure

Tea is warm and safe and comforting, and here: Put it inside you, it helps

He’s doing his best, ok?

Making him feel better is a little more straightforward. 

Make him laugh, make him giggle, joke around with him anything. 

When Gojo is sad, the last thing he wants to do is think about it. That can be saved for late at night when he can't sleep. For now, he just wants to take his mind off of it. 

So just make him laugh. It won’t be hard honestly. 

Sit with him and distract him, he’ll feel better eventually. 

Your proximity to him ensures that.

Suguru Geto

His comfort is quiet. It’s him holding you while you cry into him, assuring you it will all be ok.

It’s gentle forehead kisses and back rubbing while you cuddle on the bed

He wraps the two of you in your favorite blanket and turning on your comfort medias. 

He’s willing to cancel the day and just stay with you and be there for you when you’re upset, honestly

He’s dedicating all of his time and love into you while you're emotionally recovering

And when he’s upset he honestly just wants the same thing.

He wants you to rest your head on his chest and tell him how much you love him.

He needs to know you're going to be there for him, no matter what and unconditionally. 

Geto is in an almost constant emotional pain, and he’s extremely good at hiding it. 

So when it gets to the point that it’s visible you know it’s bad. It’s soul crushing.

And a part of him hates the fact that all it takes is a hug from you to soothe that pain, just a little.

A part of him is relieved that he has you to remove some of this immense emotional burden off of him.

But 100% of him is positive that he needs you, more than he needs air. 

So just hug him for a little bit when he’s sad, yea?

Kento Nanami

He does the guy thing where he tries to find solutions

Even if you don’t want solutions.

He copes with his own sadness by trying to solve the problem, so logically that would help others, right?

But, if you communicate with him that you don’t want solutions you just want to vent, he will shut up and listen. 

But, ya gotta communicate that first. 

He’d probably make you your favorite warm meal while you talk as well, that way you have another form of comfort when you finished venting.

He makes that as well as your favorite hot drink

When he’s upset, he wants to talk about it.

He wants you to sit with him and come up with ways to try and solve the situation. Just talking with you helps really

He finds your voice rather soothing

And if there really is no way possible to fix it, he wants a distraction. 

Talk to him about the weather, what shows you like, how your day has been.

He doesn't want to waste energy on what he can’t fix. 

He'd rather pour that energy into you.

Ryomen Sukuna

AH SHIT, HERE WE GO AGAIN

I struggle so hard anytime yall want Sukuna to get all cute and fluffy because he Does. Not. Function. Like That!

Sukuna doesn’t do comfort. When he sees you cry he gets annoyed. 

He tells you to stop, like full stop my guy lmaooo

He’s like throwing toilet paper rolls at you like “Tears! Ahh! Dry them, Dry them!”

….Buuuuuutttt It wouldn’t be my Sukuna if he didn’t have a soft spot.

Sukuna is avoiding you, yes. But, you do find small comforts around the house. Ones that he surely left you. 

Little candies or even flowers.

And eventually, late at night, he does come around to hold you while you drift into sleep. 

Not for you though, not at all. All of this is for him…somehow. Just trust me, ok!

When he’s upset, if you were smart you’d steer clear of him.

But you’re in love with Sukuna, so how smart could you be?

That was a self burn btw.

Comforting Sukuna is honestly just being domestic with him. 

DO NOT acknowledge the fact he’s in pain. That's calling him out for being vulnerable and that will not end well. 

But, do make him some tea and talk to him about your day. Ask him to sit with you while you tend to the flowers, or walk the grounds with you. Cuddle into his side while “forcing” him to watch something on tv.

Those are the little things he needs. Despite what Ryomen says, he’s completely and utterly in love with you, you being alive is testament to that. So when he’s upset, all he wants to do is be near you. 

Ryomen is constantly paranoid that you don't actually have feelings for him. For all intents and purposes, you shouldn’t. So, when he gets even a little bit of confirmation that you actually do love him too, that’s all he needs to feel even a little bit better.

[amondark]

So I decided I want to try posting something to join in on the convo on here, might be fun!

A though I was having today:

I think Byun Minho might, albeit a bit hypocritically from early SB OG quotes, actually enjoy some domestic labor tasks (cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, ect.)

In parts where it shows his apartment, it’s clean and well organized, with clear thought into where everything would go and be placed.

Nothing seems out of place each time we see his own space, which means he does regular upkeep to his own space, and that makes sense when I really think about his background, this is probably the first place he’s ever had of his own (since most East Asian background children don’t love out of their parents houses until they either buy their own or get married), and he maybe finds a sense of peace in building his own life for himself, I remember him sort of lingering on the thought of his own place a few times in the Sidestory, maybe because it was the only place he really got to express his personal identity in a living space, everyone else he lives with already fills up their own spaces, leaving no self expression for him to take up any literal space, because they don’t actually want him there personally, he’s just there to fulfill a function. They don’t want him to be a human being.

Also it makes sense why in later installments, he’s unsatisfied with doing the same thing for somebody else, it’s because it doesn’t contribute to his own success in Doona’s case, instead it contributes to her success in not having to maintain her own space herself, and also she emotionally benefits from having a clean space to be productive in (which I imagine would be incredibly helpful since she wouldn’t have her mind on it at all, even if she doesn’t actively think about it, but she definitely notices it with Woo Haesol).

With Wookyung it seems to be more to keeping the other complicit, if he isn’t upset it makes the situation less dangerous for Minho, so he contributes in that way to make Wookyung feel cared for, it’s a survival tactic to ensure his own safety, also I really think with this cooking section it’s a little interesting because Minho actually might be relieved to be doing this portion of it since it’s pretty much his only realm of self expression in this hostile, unstable environment he’s in, it’s the only piece of himself he gets to have here, it’s really saddening but also enlightening, but maybe I’m just reading the vibe wrong too.

Edit: I also see a lot of vegetable dishes here too, and when I think about some of the time that it takes to cook something like that (sometimes I cook for myself), there’s a lot of those sort of individual or picky sorts of things there, chopping it up, cooking each separate vegetable in it’s own way, making sauces for some of them, ect), part of me also wonders if he was also trying to draw the time out as long as possible, it’s just a thought.

I just find this fascinating honestly, how much you can pick up from a character in just the small details about them, I’d be interested in doing some breakdowns of other things if there was traffic for it at any point, but also what do other people think? I’d be curious to know!

[villain-in-love]

Behold! The elves and the ship chart!

Imagine falling in love with a crazy woman that barged into your dungeon and continuously tried to kill you. Press F for Thistle. As well as for Kiera, for that matter, since she also didn’t expect for things to turn out like this.

This relationship is such a mess that nobody (even the pair themselves) can figure out what the hell is going on between them anymore.

Clarifications are, as always, under the cut:

♤ The age gap goes in several directions at once. Technically, Thistle is at least 700+ years older than Kiera, since he was a dungeon lord for a thousand years, while Kiera is only 302 years old. On the other hand, he’s younger in terms of physical and perhaps mental maturity. In my narrative, Thistle stopped aging when he was an equivalent of a human 17-19 years old. In the same way Kiera would be somewhere around 21-23 years old if she was human. (In any case, both are equally emotionally stunted and immature...)

♤ They’ll be together forever because Thistle is the living embodiment of “Bold of you to assume that death will get you out of this relationship”. Also after all the shit they went through (including what they personally put each other through), they became so attached to each other that they will kill you if you try to separate them.

♤ Though they don’t dress up much while in the dungeon, both are naturally pretty, but their deeply unpleasant personalities ruin everything. Therefore not a 100% cute couple.

♤ They were not thrilled about being in love. They more or less calmed down about it by now (mostly Thistle) and took on a new approach, but at first it was nightmarish.

Thistle also used to be especially infuriated by that fact because, like, he’s got a dungeon to run! The Golden Country to protect! He needs to find his brother! Meanwhile Kiera is literally the number one hazard. He already had to think about her a lot lately because of how troublesome she is, but now he completely lost the ability to get her out of his head. He’s so busy, he already knows what he wants, and he simply has no time nor need for this nonsense. The worst part is that Kiera started to slowly replace thoughts about Delgal in his mind, and Thistle is truly horrified by that.

Kiera took it all with a bit calmer “Damn, I need to hurry up in killing him”. She hates experiencing those kinds of feelings, she hates that she wants to be closer to someone again, she doesn’t want to get stuck with him in this dungeon for eternity, how can she possibly fail- She had one job, goddamnit. It’s her own fault for wasting time because of her own curiosity. Giving up because of falling in love with a target is pathetic and nothing like her. Especially when those feelings endanger her freedom.

♤ I don’t think Thistle would eat dry noodles even in the modern AU, but nutritional value is almost the only thing that concerns him about food. Would probably eat something incredibly bland or barely cooked and wouldn’t care as long as it keeps him functioning.

Kiera's relationship with food is a long and complicated story... In any case, she is rather picky and her eating habits are all over the place, but she genuinely finds healthier food options tastier most of the time.

♤ Just because Thistle rarely brings up Kiera and the fact that they’re in a… “relationship” (if you would call it that) doesn’t mean that he doesn’t spend a frustratingly large part of his day thinking about her. He’s just the type to obsess quietly.

And in any case, who is he going to tell about her? Soulless bodies of his family sitting in his dining room? His monsters? Villagers of the Golden Kingdom who are all terrified of him?

At least Kiera mingles with other adventurers from time to time.

♤ What draws them to each other is not only being able to understand each other due to their similarities, but also the fact that both of them are really fucking lonely. That’s the glue here. That’s why they latched onto each other so hard and so quickly. (Kiera might claim that she’s okay with being alone, but she’s still human)

♤ Regarding "What stands in the way". Basically, the problem is that they stubbornly cling onto their old priorities because it’s the only thing they have ever known. Thistle is nothing if he doesn’t serve the Golden Kingdom. Kiera is nothing if not a war machine. I guess they both see themselves as tools that are only allowed to have one purpose.

On another note, at this point Kiera tries to kill Thistle not only “for sport” and because she hates giving up, but also because she’s terrified of attachment. Thistle doesn’t make things easier for her, since he tends to get too attached, as well as controlling, and his idea of expressing love includes putting Kiera in the safe terrarium that he controls, so he could take care of her fo-re-ver.

So what we have is a “control freak vs free spirit” kind of problem. This does get resolved by the end of the manga and they come to a "compromise". Not willingly by themselves, though, but because of the circumstances.

♤ Regarding Thistle and “haven't experienced any genuine human connection in centuries” – yes, he had Delgal, but I think that that after everything Thistle has done, their relationship most likely became way more emotionally distant in the last few centuries, at least on Delgal’s part.

[stillness-in-green]

Some targeted follow-up on 383, courtesy of a disgruntled Mina Stan

(Or, Why the chapter post for 384 is late.)

Ooo-kay, @randomvongenerico, I’ll dance this time because you’re just barely on the right side of “politely asking questions” for someone who, judging by their own page, is probably pretty new here.  But please know that I came very close to hitting the block button the moment I saw, “Why do you even care about heroes?  Aren’t you a villain stan?” at the very top of a notification chain of twenty-seven comments on my chapter post.  The next time you have as much to say about someone’s post, I strongly urge you to just reblog it and add your thoughts rather than indignantly spamming the comment section and then sending a bunch of the same stuff word-for-word via ask when you don’t get a reply in less than 48 hours.  Some of us do have lives and commitments outside of Tumblr.

That said, as with last time I got a detailed reply that seemed to genuinely want to hear my reasoning but also edged over into belligerent/condescending territory, I’ll have to ask you to forgive me for being somewhat blunt at times.  Digs like, “Or are we going to say Mina is being rude and impolite for having trauma now?” have not earned you the most patient reply I’ve ever put down in writing.

I’ll take your questions and points roughly in order you sent them, though I may omit points I have nothing much to say about, or rearrange them.  Anyone who wants to see rvg’s full set of replies in the original order and context is invited to check the comments here, at least until such time as I deem it less of a headache to hit that block button after all.

For everyone else, for the purposes of gauging your interest, this post contains discussion of the following topics:

Mina as she's affected by BNHA's tendency to shortchange the interiority and development of its women. I hit this one from a few different angles.

How the series treats physical damage and how that impacts what I call out as problematic or don't (e.g. why Shinsou's brainwashing got compared to a war crime but Mina's acid did not).

The Sludge Villain, why he shouldn't have been involved in the second war at all, and how his return fails to address the flaws in Hero Society he was originally used to establish.

The circumstances of Midnight's death and the impact of the narrative's ongoing refusal to allow people panel time to grieve for her.

Saving villains, who that maxim applies to, what it means for the heroes' responsibilities, and what it means when they fail to live up to said responsibilities. Specifically addresses Hose Face and Gigantomachia.

Replying to wild presumptions re: which characters I should or should not care about, as well what situations I ought or ought not overthink.

A fair number of intersections between the above topics and other less substantial diversions, including a retraction on my part for a mistake I made in the chapter post that rvg brought to my attention.

Hit the jump.

I think the “pure psychological scarring” thing is just referencing Mina’s trauma from her first encounter with Machia. It’s just there to remind the readers about Mina’s trauma, since it’s been a while since the last time it was brought up. Shonen does this sort of exposition all the time. I wouldn’t think too deeply on it.  Like, I mean, it’s technically not an incorrect statement. Mina was mentally and emotionally scarred by Gigantomachia. Or are we going to say Mina is being rude and impolite for having trauma now?

It’s true that the specific line about Machia embodying psychological scarring overlays Mina in a way that’s doubtlessly intended to remind the reader of her trauma.  However, if that’s the only function Horikoshi intended the line to serve, he’d have done much better to put it in a text box, delivered to the reader via omniscient narrator.  Instead, Mount Lady is the one delivering it, and she is explicitly thinking about Machia in relation to “ordinary people,” flashing back to the scene of carnage left in Machia’s wake, as countless civilians scream and cry for help.  She’s not even slightly thinking about Mina in that moment, for all that the same sentiment applies.

When I criticize Mount Lady’s mode of thinking, therefore, my point is not that people are wrong to have trauma,[1] but that it is wrong to dehumanize the source of that trauma.  Machia has feelings and thoughts just like any other human—treating him like a symbol of pain rather than a human being, something to be stamped out like a disease or a curse, is the same sentiment as Gran Torino blaming All Might’s pain and the smearing of Nana’s memory on Shigaraki’s very existence.  As with Shigaraki, there are reasons that Machia turned out the way he did, and talking like he’s some kind of free-roaming trauma elemental obfuscates the chain of failures and wrongdoings that produced him to begin with.

Incidentally, I wrote a twenty-thousand-word essay on the mass arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front, so I promise you are not going to get anywhere with advising me not to overthink this manga.  If Horikoshi didn’t want his readers to take his societal issues seriously, he shouldn’t have presented them as the root cause of so many problems; if you didn’t want to read a detailed meta dive tackling the chapter’s philosophical shortcomings, you probably should have abandoned ship somewhere around the time I started waxing verbose about the ethics authors sign up to engage with when they make the decision to put their protagonists in skintight catsuits and call them Heroes.

On which note:

I have some questions about your logic about the morality of the methods and tactics here, if you don’t mind. So brainwashing and calling Machia mean things is crossing the line, but throwing acid at him is okay?  You criticize Shinso using his Quirk on Gigantomachia, yet you don’t take any issue with Mina melting his claws(…).  Why?  I guess brainwashing is just too much of a villain Quirk, so it just can’t be used heroically?

Judging by one of your later comments, you did some archive-diving to find out if I’d ever talked about Mina before the Chapter 283 post.  Judging by this question, that archive-diving did not include the Chapter 282 post.  Please see it for a lengthy explanation about what specifically I object to in Shinsou’s use of his quirk on Machia, and a much briefer aside about what kinds of uses I’d have been completely fine with.

As to the difference between hurling acid at someone and brainwashing them to attack their own allies, while it’s certainly true that doing the former would be a horrific crime in real life,[2] that’s down as one of the places where I’m spotting the series its premise.  To wit, physical attacks like Mina’s acid are only ever going to be as impactful as the plot needs them to be, and the plot has a history of being wildly erratic about that impact.[3]

You can call accuse me of having a double standard if you like—picking and choosing what I hold to realistic standards—but in essence, I view Mina melting Machia’s claws with acid as Shounen Battle Action Damage.  There’s definitely a point at which it would stop being that—if she’d used it on his face instead of the tips of claws he could potentially just retract and grow in fresh—but if I were inclined to complain about every hero who uses a power that would cause ghastly mutilation if used against criminals in real life (acid, fire, concussive blasts, etc), we’d be here all week.  Shinsou’s brainwashing doesn’t get that handwave because it’s fully and completely effective.

Btw, Kirishima hearing about Midoriya and the sludge Villain was already established. We have known this since we got Kirishima’s backstory in the Yakuza arc. So this didn’t come out of nowhere.

This is a 100% fair point.  I very clearly remembered Kirishima shaking his funk because he saw the clip of the interview with Crimson Riot; I’d completely forgotten that the Sludge Villain attack was one of the things contributing to his funk.  Having looked back over it, it still seems weird that Kirishima doesn’t show any sign of recognition in this chapter, but it’s certainly possible that that’s just a consequence of the breakneck storytelling.  Regardless, consider that complaint retracted, and thanks for the refresher.

What do you mean we don’t get anything of Mina against Machia and overcoming her fears and previous failure? That’s literally what the chapter is all about. She doesn’t freeze under fear this time and instead jumps into action to save her friends and come in clutch to guarantee the win for her team. She’s the actual MVP here. The actual problem here is that the whole thing gets sped up and abbreviated. What should’ve been 3 or 4 chapters of this battlefield, gets presented and resolved in one chapter.

One of my longstanding issues with BNHA is the difference between the levels of interiority that are permitted to the male characters as opposed to the female ones—how much they’re allowed to dictate their own internal narratives via having their thoughts shown on-panel, and how much room the story affords that exploration.  Following are some examples:

Mirko has no thoughts we’re permitted to access about her traumatic double limb loss.  While Endeavor’s story of wrestling with his sins and trying to better himself as a person is a prominent, recurring storyline, carried out in the foreground to such an extent that some people complain it’s actually sublimating Shouto’s arc, Mount Lady grows from a money-hungry fame-chaser to a responsible and determined hero completely off-screen.[4]  Tamaki and Mirio get dedicated multi-chapter solo battles peppered with emotive childhood flashbacks; Nejire gets a beauty pageant that takes up a grand total of four pages, exactly one (1) of which is dedicated to Nejire’s actual participation.

And so on and so forth.  The only two gals we’re really allowed to get into the heads of in a consistent, sustained way are Toga and Uraraka, with perhaps Jirou or Momo as distant runners-up, though Jirou's interiority is mostly concentrated in the Cultural Festival arc and Momo's is virtually all rooted in her bouts with paralytic self-doubt.  That's pretty pitiful compared to the number of dudes who get sustained attention paid to their internal landscape.

That issue is largely what I’m getting at when I kvetch about not being shown Mina overcoming her fears.  When Kirishima first gets overwhelmed by Rappa, the reason he gets back up is given a backstory flashback that takes up almost two full chapters.[5]  Those chapters are the one and only reason we have any context at all for Mina’s PTSD flashback against Machia in MVA.  She’s not allowed to “tell” that trauma to the audience herself; we know about it because we got it filtered through Kirishima.

Likewise, when she comes through against Machia in 383, she just—does it.  There’re no extended scenes of her wrestling with her fear, drawing on her experience to overcome it; we don’t get a flashback to her training with Bakugou or Shouto.[6]  She just tells us about it in a single sentence, then gets a third of a page dedicated to a collage of old scenes.  And then, again, she pulls through in a moment of crisis in such a way that her moment of awesome is in service of giving a dude an opening to solve the problem instead of doing it herself.

The coming-through-so-a-dude-can-pull-off-the-finisher pattern is a significant problem with the general power balance in the class: the girls do support while all the heavy-hitters are boys.  And doing support is fine!  There are a healthy share of boys doing support, too!  Kirishima’s own big moment in the Hassaikai arc is playing support so Fat Gum can get in the finishing blow, for example.  The problem is not girls having support roles at all; the problem is that while there are boy support students, there are no heavy-hitter, A-list offense-oriented girl students (at least not in Class A).  And actually, Mina has always been both interesting and frustrating for me in that regard because she feels like she should be a heavy hitter, but up until this exact chapter, she’s never really treated like one.

It’s never been clear to me why fire and explosions are so much more A-list material than acid, save that Mina doesn’t have Shouto or Bakugou’s intense determination to pull her up to their level from the beginning.  Acid is also the kind of thing that could so, so easily have been called a villain quirk, especially in combination with Mina’s mild heteromorphic appearance.  She doesn’t ever seem to attract that accusation, however, possibly because she’s so chipper—indeed, in a narrative that had more time for her, I wonder if we’d find that her chipperness is, at least in part, a defense mechanism she maintains for exactly that reason.  As it is, though, her personality keeps her as a fun presence in class without ever letting her seize a larger piece of the narrative for herself.  But I’ll always wonder what she would have looked like if she were hiding negativity for the same reasons Shouji hides his scars, or if she’d had Bakugou’s burning desire to be #1.

Instead, her most significant backstory moment gets relegated to a flashback intended to advance a male character, while her big moment in the story is freeing Shinsou and saving Mount Lady more or less on the backswing.  Admirable in its own right, certainly, but part of a larger pattern when it comes to the roles the Class 1-A girls play on the battlefield.

(I know Machia literally has a Quirk that makes him feel no pain, so that attack did nothing to him.  Which in retrospect, makes the poor handling of Mina’s spoltight worse, because it sorta makes it seem like the biggest feat and most powerful move she has ever performed in the series was inconsequential. Yes, I know she literally saves Mt. Lady by using it, but still). + The Sludge Villain being faced by a character that has had an encounter with him before like Midoriya or Bakugo would be too obvious and on the nose. Horikoshi can be pretty basic at times, but he’s not that basic. + Mina saving Shinso from the Sludge Villain isn’t the important part, the important part is her saving Kirishima from the Sludge Villain.

I’m unclear on why that would be more basic than e.g. Muscular showing back up for no reason save to get clowned on by Deku, or the incredibly twee return of the woman All Might saved at Kamino, but to each their own basic bar, I suppose.  On the matter of Mina’s biggest and most powerful move being arguably inconsequential, I agree completely.  As I said before, it’s entirely possible that Machia could just regrow the claws—he clearly doesn’t have them in his “base” form, so it’s entirely down to an arbitrary call on Horikoshi’s part whether the damage to them would stick if he retracted them entirely and then regrew them.  We haven’t gotten a good look at his right hand yet to see one way or the other, so the jury’s still out.

As to the Sludge Villain and who gets to face him, two things:

1)  He didn’t have to come back at all.  I can’t help but feel like the only real reason he does is that Horikoshi’s enjoying throwing in callbacks to bit characters from early chapters, rather than because there was any real groundwork laid for their return: the Sludge Villain, the baby in the cloud-pattern onesie, the star-head guy Deku talked to in the first chapter, Jin’s boss from his MVA flashback, etc.  At least the returnees from USJ have a modicum of prior association with the League of Villains and thus, indirectly, AFO.  The Sludge Villain doesn’t have that, and, honestly?  Given his characterization in 383, I’m confused about why he joined up with AFO’s group at all.

It was a specific point of note that when AFO freed the prisoners from Tartarus, the only task he gave them was to rampage, to go wild.  When Muscular shows up to bust open the prison Gentle’s in, he tells them they’re free, to do with their lives as they will.  We even know from Kashi Kashiko (the guy in 334 who ShigAFO tries to unload New Order onto) that more than one person was freed and immediately headed to the boonies.  Given that all the Sludge Villain wants is to sneak away from this fight without getting hurt, why wasn’t he one of those?

It’s always possible AFO called in favors for the jailbreaks, of course—the Warp quirk makes him an enormous danger to anyone he wants to have in his presence when he decides to call in a chip—but there’s been no indication of it if that is the case, I assume because the story doesn’t care about its shallower convict characters.

2)  Another reason you might consider critiquing this as a meaningful victory for Mina is that her defeat of the Sludge Villain has literally nothing to do with who she is as a character and the work she’s done.  She defeats the Sludge Villain because she just so happens to have a liquid-based quirk that can effectively be used to harm him.  She only used the souped-up damage quotient to get through Machia; presumably, a much less corrosive version would have been perfectly sufficient against the liquid-based Sludge Villain.

And that’s particularly annoying because one of the key points the Sludge Villain was originally used to establish was the way that heroes just stood around not even trying to fight him because they didn’t have the right quirks, and why that was a failing of the current system.  So when he returns—at the climax of the series! Almost four hundred chapters later!—it would seem the perfect time to explore how the heroes have improved.  We should watch them determine that they have to fight him even though they don’t have the ideal quirks for it.  We should see them use ingenuity and their surroundings to come up with a work-around, assuming we don’t see them apply the Save Villains maxim to convince him to back off.

But we don’t get any of that.  Instead, Team Hero just so happens to have Mina on hand, who just so happens to have the right quirk.  It’s a damn waste, is what it is.  Not only does the Sludge Villain have no personal relevance to Mina whatsoever, only twice-displaced relevance via Kirishima, she doesn’t even get to defeat him via determination or wits, skill or training—she could have sneezed on him and won.  I can’t imagine finding that rewarding for a character you really like.

Finally, I disagree that the important part of this scene is Mina saving Kirishima from the Sludge Villain rather than her defeat of the Sludge Villain in and of itself. She doesn’t save Kirishima from the Sludge Villain; Kirishima is in no danger from the Sludge Villain.  He’s Class A’s premier defensive tank character!  The only way Sludgey could pose the slightest threat to him is by trying to hijack his body, but Sludgey already has a body he seems perfectly satisfied with and is trying to use to escape.  The worst he can do is smack Kirishima around a bit, which, again, is going to be wildly ineffective.  He could possibly also attempt using Shinsou’s quirk, but Kirishima is entirely aware of Brainwashing’s operating conditions—note that he doesn’t say a single word to Shinsou the moment he becomes aware Shinsou’s compromised.

Mina saves Shinsou from the Sludge Villain, not Kirishima.

On regards on her developing her new technique due to training with Bakugo and Todoroki, I don’t see the problem. All of the students learn from other adults and eachother, as well as inspire one another. The only problem I have with the Bakugo and Todoroki thing is that we never got to see those interactions. There’s so much stuff we should’ve gotten to see from class 1-A during the aftermath of the first war and we never got.

You are welcome to not see it as a problem.  I would probably see it as much less of one if the story cared enough about Mina to actually show us any scenes of her fretting about her strength, wanting to improve herself, and psyching herself up to whatever degree she might have needed to in order to approach Bakugou about private training.

Hell, it wouldn’t even need to be a full scene—BNHA gets plenty of mileage out of 1–4 panels of characters interacting in ways that aren’t immediately explained and then dropping the explanation thirty chapters later.  Shinsou’s training with Aizawa was like that, for example.  Why not make the time for Mina?  Other than, as you bring up, the unseemly abbreviation of the aftermath of the first war.  The story at that stage has zero time for any of the students other than Deku—Mina’s hardly the only character whose arc suffers because we don’t get to see her reactions to such a sea change in the society she’s lived in all her life, or the trauma of what she experienced the day of the raid.  I’m not going to refrain from critiquing the writing just because it’s not any given character’s fault that their arc is missing huge chunks that are being papered over with flashbacks and retroactive explanations for the scenes we didn’t get.

To be fair about the Midnight thing, no one really had any actual established connection to her.  With Momo, Midnight just was her hype woman like two times, and then she entrusted her with the plan to sedate Machia.  With Mineta it’s kinda hard to take it seriously because their one meaningful interaction is full of the usual pervy jokes that are synonym to Mineta.  I guess Horikoshi tied Mina to the plotline of Midnight’s murder because Mina is a more emotional character, so there’s more he can do with that (and then he barely did anything, but what little he did, did show some great shots from her).

All of the things you cite are things that give both Momo and Mineta more established connections to Midnight, which is exactly why I brought them up as people who should have been involved in the confrontation with her killer.  I also brought up that those connections are themselves fairly thin and that Midnight doesn’t really have any strong connections with any of the students.  This is in large part why I continue to believe that Midnight being the most emotionally significant hero death during the war[7] is pure cowardice on Horikoshi’s part.  Mina getting the final say on that death is just the latest way the story is writing off dealing with it.

Midnight gets no funeral.  Aizawa, one of her closest friends, immediately shuts down Mic when he tries to bring her up in the hospital, and neither of them ever bring her up again—for heaven’s sake, Mic doesn’t even think about her in Chapter 372 when bringing up what Aizawa has lost!  And when someone finally does want to actually talk openly about Midnight’s death, who is it?  Not Momo, who Midnight trusted and praised, or Mineta, an openly admitted fan of Midnight, one perv to another.  It’s—Mina, who liked her classes, who is emotional about the death because she’s a good person who’d be emotional about the death of anyone in her social circle, not because Midnight was in any way special to her.  For heaven’s sake, she registers her first opinion ever on Midnight the chapter after the deathblow is struck.

And then, to top it all off, there’s that tossed-off, perfunctory line about vengeance, which no one Mina is facing that chapter even brought up, and which she herself immediately shuts down.  So not only do I not feel any impact from Mina rejecting revenge because she’s never been shown struggling with a desire for it, but it just feels like another case of Midnight being brought up only to get immediately dropped again. To wit:

Aizawa, who won’t or can’t think about her, chooses instead to focus on his students.  Mic brings her up the once and then drops the subject at Aizawa’s request, apparently never to think about her again, despite being given an excellent opening to do so in his confrontation with Kurogiri.  And Mina makes three, bringing up how much she liked Midnight Midnight’s classes only in the context of how stewing on the desire for revenge is bad.

And so the narrative just moves on.  And it sucks, and Midnight deserved better, even if only in her memory.

…Also, just for the record, Mineta is an incredibly emotional character.  He cries as much Deku does!  He openly, habitually worries about classmates when he knows they’re in danger somewhere he can’t reach; he worries about Midnight during the war.  Yes, he’s a primarily a joke character (and the jokes are outmoded and sexist), but so what if his scene with Midnight is full of the pervy jokes that define him as a character?  Midnight is also a perv!  She was contributing a perfectly adequate amount of pervy jokes to that scene all on her own!  Indeed, that was part of the humor of it—Mineta the lech running afoul of Midnight’s theatrical sadism and being incredibly in love with it even as he runs around screaming about how he’s ever supposed to beat her.

Mineta has been a much-improved character from the war onward so I, for one, would not have any problems at all with taking him seriously if he were allowed to seriously mourn.

In regards to the Mina and vengeance part. Remember again that Mina is a very emotional character. Also remember that when she heard about Shoji’s backstory, she angrily stated that the kind of people who hurt Shoji “should be removed from existence” (I think you said Mina was 100% right in saying that, if I’m not mistaken).  So while yes, Mina is a very cheerful, kind and friendly girl, we know the war and her inability to help deeply affected her. The problem is that we never got to explore that or see her go through it. Her inner struggle got resolved off screen in the background before her shinning moment.

You know, I thought about bringing up the Shouji bit in the post.  I didn’t end up doing it because that moment doesn’t break the pattern I otherwise described: “Mina doesn’t hold onto anger; she doesn’t brood; she’s extremely well-adjusted in that she cries when she needs to, to get it out of her system, and then she bounces back.”

That all still applies!  Indeed, as I said in the post you reference, her comment in Koda’s flashback is clearly presented as hyperbole.  She says it in the heat of the moment and no one even blinks because they understand that she’s not seriously suggesting that e.g. all bigots should be murdered in their beds.  No one takes her aside afterward to have a gentle talk with her about appropriate levels of bloodthirst or tentatively ask her if there’s anything she needs to get off her chest.  After she says it, Shouji gently acknowledges that she might be right[8] and then moves the conversation along; within the next few exchanges, she’s joined the group encouraging Shouji about making new, happier memories for him going forward.

I’m sure the war and her inability to help did deeply affect her.  Those things affected everyone.  But we didn’t get to see it, so I’m simply not going to accept the story insisting on how noble she is for eschewing the vengeance she was never shown to be contemplating to begin with.[9]  You’re welcome to fill in those blanks yourself; god knows I have characters myself in this series for whom I’m willing to make those reaches.  But then, my blank-filled characters are mostly in prison right now rather than active in the plot and trying to do emotional heavy-lifting for which the author has woefully ill-equipped them.

Regarding Midnight’s killer. I just didn’t like that part in general.  Idk about you, but I don’t like that Horikoshi wrote Mina trying to find common ground with the guy who went out of his way to mercilessly kill a severely injured woman when she was on the ground, too weak to defend herself, and posed no active threat to him.  Like, couldn’t you have just let Mina kick his ass? Like, I know the story is setting up the kids reaching out a hand to “save” the villains. But seriously? If there’s one villain who should get his ass kicked, it’s that guy.

This is another clue that you definitely haven’t poked around my backlog in any depth.  No.  Just no.  Trying to save the villains means trying to save all the villains.  No exceptions.  Anything less means the heroes are just picking and choosing based on personal bias.  That means this guy and the rest of the PLF.  It means the Tartarus escapees.  It even means All For One himself, if anyone can manage it.  The heroes are not arbiters of justice.  It is not their job to play favorites based on who they’ve seen crying and who they haven’t; it is their job—or so Deku and the general direction of the narrative would have us believe—to save people in crisis.

Should it be their jobs to do all the emotional labor and hand-holding that’s required to talk down someone whose crisis has led them to endanger others?  Maybe, maybe not, but the story has been exceptionally clear that they’re the only ones in a position to do it; God knows their justice system isn’t.  But given that the climax of the series is revolving around saving villains, if that isn’t the heroes’ responsibility, then whose responsibility is it, and why aren’t we reading the story about them?

I’m sure some people would point that, in-universe, saving people is only half of a hero's job description, and the other half is defeating villains.  That’s true enough in the world as it now stands.  However, Deku—in what’s clearly meant to be a big inspiring moment—tells the OFA tribunal in Chapter 305 that One For All is a power meant for saving, not killing, and that he learned this from All Might.  In 326, in a scene that I have some issues with but that is also obviously meant to be taken sincerely, Stain alludes to the influence of All Might on the next generation, to the embers he left behind being nurtured by the ones who don’t give up.

Thus, if All Might is meant to be the ideal because of his tireless efforts at saving people, and Class 1-A—key members of whom are moving towards saving villains—are being modelled as the collective successors of All Might, it only makes sense to assume that, yes, the series wants us to accept that villains are people who also need to be saved.  That means all of them, not just the ones who look easy.  What kind of successors will the kids be, if they can’t go even farther than All Might did?  If they just turn their backs on anyone who they don’t have the exact right quirk inspiring monologue to save, aren’t we basically just back where we started?

Incidentally, let’s talk about this characterization of Hose Face, which allegedly makes him a villain who doesn’t need to be saved, but just needs his ass kicked: he “went out of his way to mercilessly kill a severely injured woman when she was on the ground, too weak to defend herself, and posed no active threat(…).”

Twice was too weak to defend himself from Hawks when Hawks tried to put a feather sword through his forehead.  He posed no active threat to Hawks when Hawks stabbed him in the back.  Shigaraki floating in tube stasis posed no active threat to anyone, certainly not Mirko or Mic, both of whom did their level best to kill him by destroying the tube and all its systems that were keeping Shigaraki alive.  The PLF had their guard completely down the day of the raids, which certainly didn’t stop Cementoss from ripping the building in half with no warning—how many people do you think might have been in rooms five or six stories up when the floor ripped out from under them and sent them plummeting 50+ feet towards the shattered concrete and broken wood below?

They’re villains, sure.  They were going to hurt a lot of people, sure.  But aren’t heroes supposed to be better than villains?

Further, I have to contest your assertion that Midnight even was “severely wounded” or “posed no active threat.”  Yes, she’d taken a few hunks of concrete to the face and fallen through the canopy, which would severely injure any normally fragile human, but again, this is BNHA, where physical damage is only as severe as the plot demands.[10]  Midnight went from splayed on the ground to starting to push herself back up in a single panel, had gotten to her hands and knees two panels later, and was just getting a foot on the ground, preparing to push herself back upright, when Hose Face hit her from behind two pages later.

I can remember being unsure how that fight would go back when the chapter dropped, because, just as the scene cut away, Midnight managed to whip her head around and shoot that fierce glare at the oncoming enemy.  Midnight had an AOE attack that was extra effective against dudes, and all of the people coming at her that we could see were men.  It was entirely plausible to me at the time that she would win, that she just stopped answering her comm line because she had to focus on the fight.

All in all, she had recently immobilized dozens of people on Hose Face’s side and was clearly still a threat.  What would you expect him to do, detour the whole group the long way around just so no one would hurt her?  Let Machia get even farther ahead of them by standing back and waiting for her to finish getting up so they could have an honorable fight?  Come on; she was part of an army of heroes who'd just attacked their base.  Of course he didn’t stand back and hand her the opening to knock them all out with sleeping gas.  And no, he didn’t go out of his way to kill her—he and his group were following Machia and just happened to run across Midnight in the path Machia had taken.

Cripes, you make it sound like he spotted her unconscious on the ground eighty feet away in another clearing and decided to run over and cut her throat before rejoining the group.  No.  Remember, he’s a member of the MLA, the only group in the series that explicitly styles themselves as an army.  His attack on Midnight should be read as a soldier fighting an enemy soldier—it’s quick, it’s brutal, it’s merciless.  Because, as far as he’s concerned, he’s at war.  Both letting a hero go because she was injured (but not so injured that she wasn’t trying to get up again) or wasting time going out of his way to murder someone who’s already dealt with (because he gets his jollies from murder) would have been acting counter to the mission.

I’m not going to tell you he was morally correct—he’s a villain, a cultist, an unabashed quirk supremacist, someone who would have been on the front lines of any terrorist attacks the PLF were planning by virtue of the regiment he was associated with—but just in terms of tactics, he didn’t do anything the heroes haven’t done or sought to do repeatedly over the course of both war arcs.  If you feel it’s okay for them to cross those lines but not him because they’re heroes who want to help people while he’s a villain who wants to hurt people, then it’s his allegiance that’s the real problem, not his tactics. 

(And, just to be clear, the reason I’m okay with him killing Midnight but not Hawks killing Twice is because of their respective allegiances.  Hose Face is a villain.  I don’t hold him to a hero’s moral code because he never claimed it to begin with, so he’s not being a massive hypocrite by not adhering to it.)

Any comment on the Mina and Kirishima interaction? What are your thoughts on the “you’ve always been my hero” line?

If I had a comment on it, you can generally assume it would have been in my chapter post.  I don’t have much interest in the lens on Mina that, because it frames her as Kirishima’s hero, means we see her heroism almost entirely through his eyes.  Again: he gets the two chapter flashback lovingly detailing his personal history, doubts, and motivations; she gets to be a figure inside his flashback rather than ever being able to frame her own.  Ochaco may not ever get two chapters dedicated to her backstory, but at least what flashbacks she does get come to us filtered through her.  Though, I will say that I find Ochaco’s romance plot largely tiresome, so I do hugely appreciate about Mina and Kirishima that they legitimately are just friends and I don’t have to watch Mina’s arc get devoured by blushing and fumbling crush behavior.

Since you asked, I can think of a scenario in which Kirishima telling Mina that she’s always been his hero would have worked much better, at least for me.  It’d fit right into all the post-war material we didn’t get because the story was so laser-focused on Deku.

Start by showing the readers Mina approaching Shouto and Bakugou about training with them.  Don’t have them ask why (because Bakugou wouldn’t care why and Shouto would just take the request at face value, especially if she explained that they both have techniques she thinks she could benefit from learning; Shouto would understand that), but have Kirishima notice or otherwise find out about it, and have him bring it up to her later on.

Then, because Kirishima and Mina are friends and should be able to have these conversations with each other, especially in the particularly vulnerable states they’d be in after the war, have Mina actually confide in Kirishima that she’s feeling shitty about freezing up when facing Machia.

Have him remind her of the time he did the same, and expand on what she already knows. I checked back over his Hassaikai arc flashback, and I notice that, while he apologized to the other two girls that were there for freezing up and being unable to help, and while he tells Mina later that he’s saying goodbye to his old pathetic self, he never actually tells her that he admired her courage (unless it’s in some other scene of theirs I’m forgetting about, which is entirely possible; feel free to give me a cite if so).  The closest they get to openly acknowledging the way Mina inspired him is her observing that his new styled hair spikes resemble her horns.  Have him say it out loud to her after the war, then, when she’s in an emotionally raw place and needs to hear it.

Thus, when he calls her his hero again after the Sludge Villain encounter (if we must indeed keep the Sludge Villain encounter), it becomes a reiteration and callback to that bonding moment, and implicitly him congratulating her on overcoming her fear—like he always knew she would, because she’s his hero.

Why do you care about Mina, btw? You’re a villain stan, correct? So why do you care about Mina’s moment to shine being handled poorly and not receiving the proper care and attention it deserved, if you don’t mind me asking?

Good lord, rvg, just because I’m a villain stan doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to care about bad writing affecting the heroes.  If the heroes’ writing were better, it would improve everyone’s treatment, including the villains!  If the students’ writing were better, I might actually care about the kids more than I do!  If the girls’ writing were better, I would have infinitely less to complain about re: the disparity in how fleshed out they are compared to their male counterparts!

Anyway, I like plenty of heroes.  I have observably positive feelings for about a third of Class 1-A[11] and only particularly negative feelings about Deku and Kaminari.  I love Monoma and Tamaki.  On the pro side, I adore Nighteye, am a thoroughly unapologetic Best Jeanist appreciator, and want to watch way more of Rock Lock mouthing off at more people higher ranked than him.  I think Haimawari Koichi is everything Horikoshi desperately wants Deku to be and is failing to write him as being.  There are plenty of others I at least think are good company when they’re around (Fat Gum and the Wild Wild Pussycats, for example), and some I would be happy to embrace if the series could stop being so incredibly indecisive about how it wants us to read them (Hawks and All Might are big offenders here).

I realize this is a hyper-divided fandom—we might as well start asking all those manufacturers who made the team affiliation T-shirts for the Twilight or MCU fandoms to make us some Team Hero and Team Villain shirts—but I promise you it’s possible to like characters from both sides of the divide.  You don’t have to lock yourself into one position or another.

Frankly, I think most of these characters deserve a final arc better than the one they’re in.  I’m just louder about it for the villains because they’re the ones who are going to be left to suffer or be forgotten if the actual ending isn’t up to snuff, whereas I fully expect the heroes to get a lavish epilogue chapter that crams cameos and last second answers into every nook and cranny of the panel layout.

-

All that said, rvg, I'm not sure you'll see this at all, as I don't seem able to tag you, which I'm unsure if means you blocked me at some point after spamming my comments and also my ask box or just that tumblr is being tumblr. If you do, feel free to respond if you like, though I'd prefer a reblog and less vibrating indignation if you do. I hope I've made it clear that I really and truly have nothing against your pink blorbo. Indeed, so far as I can tell, we both think her scene was pretty poorly handled; you're just more willing to do the mental legwork on fleshing out her characterization than I am.

Which is fine, but maybe ratchet back on lashing out at people who don't make it a priority to read depth the author is not providing onto characters that aren't their blorbos. Cheers!

------------------ FOOTNOTES ------------------

[1] And way to be, like, super unnecessarily confrontational with those words you put in my mouth, by the way. 

[2] And, yes, also a war crime—even more of one, actually.  Forcing captured enemy soldiers to fight their own is only officially a war crime in international conflicts, but Japan is a signatory to an amendment to the Rome Statute that classifies the use of chemical agents in armed conflicts as a war crime in internal disputes as well as international ones.  Give or take whether the clashes between heroes and villains meet the criteria of “protracted armed conflict between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups” anyway.

          I’m inclined to say the use of licensed and regulated abilities like quirks makes the combatants “armed,” but as much research as I’m willing to give this footnote doesn’t immediately clarify how long hostilities need to drag out to count as “protracted.”  Certainly the presence of the PLF makes the villain side an “organized armed group,” though.

[3] Dabi’s blue fire is my go-to example: it reduces back-alley thugs to twisted blackened husks but barely even singes Hawks’s forearms; it melts carbon fiber cables but leaves his outfit completely unscathed.  Given that Horikoshi can’t even keep Dabi’s damage output consistent with itself across all of his appearances, I damn sure don’t expect consistent damage output between characters.

[4] Sure, Endeavor’s connected to one of the lead students while Mount Lady is not, but that’s all on the writing.  There’s no reason that Mount Lady couldn’t have been connected to a student via a meaningful internship or a past acquaintanceship save that Horikoshi chose not to write her such a connection.

[5] That come, I might note, after he already has gotten back up.  Perhaps Horikoshi had been doing this “spoiling the outcome before we see the process” thing for longer than I thought…

[6] Recall that the story managed to make time for a flashback of Deku getting training from Ochaco, Tsuyu and Sero as a lead-in to the conversation between Bakugou and All Might about the latter hiding something.

[7] Or, more cynically, the only one, given how tertiary the characters start becoming immediately after her.

[8] And for what it’s worth, when I said that she was right, I was saying that the world would, in fact, be a better place without bigotry.  Obviously the answer is not, “Kill all bigots in their beds,” but I wish the group had talked more about what Mina said because it would have been a more frank, more honest discussion about how to fight bigotry than the provided answer of, “Put a bag over your head and hope it goes away on its own if you and everyone like you just act with inhuman levels of patience and calm at all times for the next hundred years.”

[9] Give or take her dramatically shaded angry face in Chapter 338—a face she is making along with the entire rest of her class sans Aoyama, so, again, really not impressing upon me that Mina particularly is a character struggling to avoid losing herself to revenge.

[10] So, you know, all those people who fell from upper floors of the Villa were probably also fine.  But it’s one or the other, isn’t it?  Either that kind of fall is enough to severely injure people so Cementoss knowingly enacted  an opening gambit that stood a high chance of maiming or killing an unknown number of people, or people in BNHA would walk it off with nothing worse than a few abrasions, in which case Midnight was in no significant danger.

[11] In seating order, I like: Aoyama, Tsuyu, Iida, Uraraka, Ojiro, Tokoyami, and, from the war arc on, Mineta.

[lizadale]

ok ok ok so some notes on the “what if Dimentio opened the Dark Prognosticus instead of Blumiere” concept because i can’t go to bed until i throw it out of my head somewhere

the DP wouldn’t need to have Dim create some weird persona to take up - Blumiere needed it because he couldn’t function through the eventual regret. Dimentio wouldn’t need coddled as much because:

any scenario in which he takes up the DP is calculated beforehand. Dimentio isn’t emotionally charged like Blumiere and he KNOWS how dangerous that thing is (considering who owns it at the time). if he picks it up he is both resolved and resigned

in the event that Dimentio razes the Tribe of Darkness, does he have enough of a conscience to spare Blumiere? probably. he needs an audience. I see Blumiere, really upset with the whole affair and realizing he can’t talk Dimentio down while the Book™ has him, maybe thinking getting whatever prophecies come up out of the way will free his friend

until Blumiere realizes Dimentio had already cursed TImpani as part of the original plan and man is Dimentio less than interested in recovering her now HAHA OW. Blumiere secretly helping the heroes in order to save his fiancé would effectively make this a role swap

Dimentio is very sassy the entire time because he’s conscious and thinks the book’s methods are stupid, but eventually the book, you know, “convinces” him to shut up and be a good little vessel

more at 11. AM. i am tired

[0th3rw0rldl1n3ss]

Disabled community, I want y’all’s thoughts on this (esp people who are familiar with the way disability accommodations and stuff work in the US) because I feel like I’m probably being screwed over.

So I work at a store chain in the southern US and I applied for reasonable accommodations under the ADA for diagnosed chronic pain and fatigue. I have a relative who was an HR manager (or something like that) for years and I asked for her input and she said she thought my requests were perfectly reasonable, unlikely to be denied for any reason, and very well worded. I asked for, with a doctor’s input, having two days off in a row twice a month, being scheduled no more than 8 hours a day, and “flexibility in scheduling” (doctors words, not mine, and I’m not a huge fan of this part because of how incredibly vague it is, making me unsure of how it would be applied in practice). I was told when I first sent the paperwork in to my manager that I should be the first one to hear back directly from HR via email, it’s been probably over a month and I have not heard back.

I talked to my manager this morning after my shift, asking if he had heard anything, and he said HR had gotten the request but that he and my comanager had decided to, instead of giving me the accommodations as I requested, change my job position to something “less physically demanding”. In the moment I was too tired from my shift to process this fully and was thinking “whatever, I’ll take what I can get I guess” but the more I think about it the more frustrated I am. I don’t feel that changing my job position to something less physically demanding will be adequate, because the physical labor isn’t the entire issue to begin with, although it is a big part of it. With the combination of chronic fatigue and being autistic (which I am formally diagnosed with, but did not mention in my request for accommodations because I thought it would be best to include as little of my diagnostic information as possible so they have less reasons to want to fire me, but now I realize this may have been a mistake) I am easily exhausted to the point of being unable to function adequately at work or otherwise, even from non physically demanding labor- ESPECIALLY from doing day shifts working retail where I am required to interact with customers all day. This is extremely hard on me emotionally and even physically (from the stress of it causing chronic pain flareups) and it would be even if I were allowed to sit down as much as I wanted.

I’m upset, I don’t know what to do, any advice or thoughts on the matter would be appreciated. The thing that really gets me is, you shouldn’t even have to be disabled to want two days off in a row a measly twice a month. But the fact that I am disabled according to doctors and they’re still apparently denying me this is just absolutely bonkers to me. And for someone with debilitating chronic pain, fatigue, etc that’s especially barely asking anything, it’s not even the bare minimum, it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough, but I asked for it because it would at least be better and I thought it was such an agonizingly reasonable request that they couldn’t possibly deny it. But I guess I underestimated how (even with my already present complete and utter lack of faith in the system) how unseriously the ADA is taken by corporations and how unwilling they are to make even the tiniest of adjustments. And, I’m not the only person in my job position who works there, it’s a big store with lots of employees, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to give me that much. This is all ridiculous. I don’t know what can be done, or if what they’re doing is even legal or not (but even if it isn’t, I’m not sure what I could do about it because it’s not like I have the money to hire a lawyer).

This is my first “real” job and I’ve only been there since summer of this year, if that matters for context.

Reblogs appreciated so maybe more people see this and have input.

[shalomniscient]

ok i’m in shalom delusion land no one listen to a word that comes out of my whore mouth if you’re looking for faithful characterisation, BUT

shalom would do anything, anything for her child. we’ve seen the lengths she went to for chief, and that vicious, ruthless determination only increases when it’s about her child. her family. no one will ever take anything from her again. there would be no man, no god out of her reach. shalom would gladly see the world fall to pieces around her, stand in the ashes and laugh, if it meant the safety of this little life she’s managed to claw back and build for herself. she had to fight tooth and nail for the privilege of loving, and she will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

when shalom first holds her child, her child, she cries. she doesn’t sob or wail, and honestly if you weren’t looking closely you wouldn’t even notice. even calling it crying would be a stretch. but she stands by your bedside, her baby cradled so gently in her arms, and sheds quiet, wordless tears. her heart feels so full it could burst. her body doesn’t know what to do with all the sheer emotion she’s feeling so it manifests in salty teardrops slipping down her pale cheeks. her baby is barely a few minutes old, yet she’s already wrapped around their tiny little finger. there’s not a thing in this world she wouldn’t do for them.

dramatics aside, i think shalom is unintentionally funny as a mom. like she would NOT do baby talk, she just doesn’t see the point. when her kid is barely a few months old she’d be holding full-on conversations with them, going back and forth as she casually talks with her baby about the political climate of discity or some other obscure adult thing. the baby of course doesn’t understand shit but with the way they look up at shalom, utterly entranced by their mother’s voice, a part of you wonders if they really do, somehow.

also, maybe paradoxically, any kid of shalom’s will grow up to be probably the most emotionally mature person out there. NOW HEAR ME OUT, shalom had her emotions taken from her as a child. she never got the chance to truly feel things, always being an outsider looking in through a window. so when she has a kid, probably her foremost desire is to ensure they feel as much as they can. so shalom doesn’t coddle her kids or let them shy away from emotionally intense situations. she will protect them obviously and ensure they don’t get hurt, but after the event, whatever it is, she’ll make sure to sit her kid down and just talk about what happened and how it made them feel.

like i said before, shalom is so, so weak for her child. even worse, your child knows they’ve got their mother wrapped around their finger, and that their mother has you wrapped around her finger. so essentially, if your kid wants something but you’re not getting it, they’ll go to shalom, and shalom will pretty much become their attorney until they get what they want. they’re so vicious together, little devils, but you love them nonetheless. speaking of, her kid definitely grows into a sly little shit just like their mother.

shalom keeps a beautiful flower garden in your home, and one of her favourite things to do is sit amongst the blooming flowers and enjoy the fragrant scent. maybe she’ll even pitch a cute little tent (or get you to do it) and she’ll sit there together with her child and read to them. shalom has a rather frail constitution, so she won’t be running around or rough-housing with the kid, but she’ll be there. always.

shalom attends each and every event that her child is involved in (in part because i HC her to have ‘retired’ from being a hush after being ‘arrested’ by chief, so she’s kinda sorta functionally unemployed which means a lot of free time for family!). she takes hundreds of pictures when she can using her camera, and if she’s not allowed to at the venue or something, she’ll commit every detail to memory. shalom doesn’t react loudly or boisterously, but she will definitely make sure her child knows just how fucking proud she is of them. it’s written all over her face.

despite being ‘retired’ in a kind of ‘dishonourable’ way, as someone formerly from paradeisos, shalom’s words and actions still hold a large weight—a fact she shamelessly abuses at PTA meetings. god help any parent or teacher who would even think of falsely accusing her child of something like bullying, or if they were discriminated against because one of their parents, you, were not from eastside. while shalom loves her current life, a part of her does miss the absolute mindfuckery of her work as a hush. so messing around with stuck-up, self-centered parents at the PTA meetings until they’re near tears or ready to tear out their hair is the closest she’ll ever get to something like that again. for the most part you just let it happen. the whiplash from seeing shalom in hush mode to doing a 180 and becoming loving mother and wife confuses and scares the shit out of some people, and you both find it immensely funny.

shalom’s not perfect, though. she can be a little harsh at times, maybe even distant. she’s still acclimatising. getting used to feeling again. she’s trying, and sometimes it’s difficult. she hates making her child sad, even if it’s for a warranted reason—which it must be, because it’s very, very difficult to make shalom angry. when this happens she tends to withdraw into herself, and you have to coax her back out again. tell her she’s not a bad mother for getting angry—just a human one. she’ll reconcile with her child by the end of the day. she loves them too much to stay angry for long, and that night will usually be spent with all of you in bed together cuddled close, shalom holding her child in her arms, and you holding her.

shshgshshskaksns in conclusion, shalom

PTN WOMEN AS PARENTS PT. 2 | Various

PAIRING: Anne x Afab!Reader, Cabernet x Afab!Reader, Coquelic x Afab!Reader, Garofano x Afab!Reader, Shalom x Afab!Reader.

WARNINGS: Fluff, SFW, Children, LMK if there's anything else!

AUTHORS NOTE: Here's part 2! I'm definitely making this a mini series and I'm gonna try to write a part for each PTN women (that I write for). Once again dedicated to the lovely @prisoner-of-sin.

✧ ANNE

• Anne is one of the most caring mothers, truly putting her childrens needs before hers regarding anything. Nothing is more important to her than making sure your kids have a happy childhood.

• It's common thing for Anne to call you and your kids during the day if she's away as a medic on a mission or is swarmed with caring for the injured at the Bureau.

• She hates being away from you and your kids for too long, an aching to have you and them in her arms a constant loom over her. So when she finally gets home, be prepared for her to shower you all in love and affection.

• She loves to have your kids in her arms, having them wrapped up and secured -- especially when they're babies. She doesn't like to be separated from them for too long when they're so fragile at that age.

• People would say Anne is quite a clingy mother, and while that is true, she can't help but want to always have your kids by her side. It's definitely gonna be tough for her to let them go when their old enough.

• She loves to look through your kids baby photos and she loves to take them. She almost always is taking photos of your kids because she wants to try and capture every moment of their life.

• No matter what path your kids end up taking when their older, Anne is always going to love them unconditionally, and she's always going to hold on to them in some sort of way, because no matter she won't be ready for when they leave the nest.

✧ CABERNET

• Cabernet is quite a fun loving mother. She values having fun with her kids and pushing them to always have fun themselves. She cares for them deeply and does everything in her power to give them a good life.

• Be prepared for Cabernet to turn your children into mini food critiques -- specifically critiques on the food you make. It's adorable at first when your children taste test your food, but it can be a little annoying after awhile when all they give you are negative reviews.

• Cabernet doesn't quite have the guts to tell you herself if the food you make for dinner is... unappetizing to her. Because of this, she'll usually send one of your kids to taste test your food, leave and report back to her on how it tastes and then send them back to critique you.

• You learned pretty quickly what she was doing, and each time she'd continue doing it, you'd hold a blank face, eyes glancing at the entry to the kitchen with a glare as you watched her quickly dip her head around the corner.

• Despite the whole thing being a headache to you, you can't help but find it amusing on how she uses your kids to critique the food you make. It brings a smile to your face when you think about how Cabernet doesn't have the balls to tell you herself.

• Something Cabernet loves to do with your children is cook. She doesn't do it often, but when she does, she's sure to turn your kitchen into a full on cooking show as she had your kids running around helping her make things.

• It's adorable, because they all wear matching aprons and chef hats, matching as they make an unintentional mess of the kitchen. Once they finish, prepare for the kitchen to look like a hurricane swept through.

✧ COQUELIC

• Coquelic is a great balance for a mom. She can be stern yet supportive. She pushes her kids to pursue what they want to do in life, while still pushing them towards her own interests.

• She tries her best to get your guys children interested in gardening, or at least have them understand the beauty of plants. If one of your children is interested, she's over the moon with happiness! Sharing something in common that she loves with her child is a gift she cherishes.

• If one of her kids isn't as interested in gardening or plants, Coquelic is alright with that. She doesn't want to be the type of mom that pushes her interests on her kids, she wants them to love what they love, she only wants them to try her interest out once and see why she loves it.

• Coquelic will raise your children within the Garden -- with your approval -- and something that comes with that is your children having many aunts. The assassins in the Garden care for your children as much as you both do, watching out for them whenever you both can't.

• Something she'll do is teach your children srlf defense from a young age. She wants your kids to be able to defend themselves in situations where you both won't be there to protect them. It gives her peace to know her kids can defend themselves.

• Be prepared for your children to be miniature Coquelic's. For some reason your kids just have her personality, and the older they get the more that becomes apparent.

• Something that will happen often to you is being on the end one of your children's "pranks," something that Coquelic will have a hand in helping them with.

✧ GAROFANO

• Garofano, despite her older age, has always wanted to have children of her own. She may be older, but that isn't gonna push her away from wanting and having kids with you.

• When you do finally welcome your first child into the world, know Garofano is going to treat them so gently and delicately, holding them as if they could break at any moment.

• She loves sitting back in a chair, with one of your kids in her arms or sitting in her lap. She'll be reading a book or sewing/stitching up something for them while they read or play with their toys.

• When they're a bit older, she'll want to teach them how to sew. Whether they're interested or not, she wants thdm to have the skill, so she'll sit them down and take delicate time in teaching them everything, helping them whenever they get stuck.

• She also adores making your kids their own clothes. You can commonly find Garofano sitting in her sewing room making a new sweater or scarf for your kids, the look of pure love swirling in her eyes as she works.

• Because of her older age, it's common for her to get tired quite easily when your kids decide to be more rowdy. If she has to run around the house to catch one of them, expect her to collapse into a chair to try and catch her breath quite a few times.

• Though just because Garofano can get quite tired when your kids get a little crazy, she doesn't regret having kids with you for one second. This was the best decision she ever made after all.

✧ SHALOM

• Shalom -- despite being a horrible and downright evil woman -- is an amazing mother. She's tender and loving to each one of your kids, prioritizing them no matter what.

• She takes great care in teaching her kids all about the world, from the good to the bad. She doesn't like glossing over the horrible things life holds, because she wants her kids to be know and be prepared for anything.

• When they're older, she'll be more direct about the bad. She won't do what she did when they were young and put it into a fantasy scenario. No, she'll tell them what the world holds, and sometimes will even show them.

• Besides preparing her children for the real world, Shalom loves spending some quality time with each of them. She'll take time out of her day to sit down and do what they want to do.

• If they want to have a tea party, Shalom is going to be sitting at their little table, holding perfect manners and taking their play time seriously as they pour her "real" tea.

• If for some reason she's gone during the day to deal with... matters, she's going to try her hardest to be home for your kids bedtime. She'll arrive home just in time as your tucking them in, and she'll be grabbing a book to read to them before they sleep.

• Because of what she does Shalom's made plenty of enemies in her life, and she's always prepared for one to go after her family. If someone does though, you better know they aren't getting away with it -- she's going to make sure they suffer and use them as a warning to everyone else.

ENDING NOTES: Ugh, this is so fun to write! I may love writing smut more than fluff, I can't help but enjoy the times I do write it. Especially now when I'm writing very degenerate smut for December. Anyway, lmk which women you'd like to see in PT. 3.

[bl00000g]

VENT POST

I know people have it worse than me. And I am grateful for the good things in life. But I don’t hear people talking about this and it’s such a pain in the ass.

Being almost functional.

For example, in my meds I’m great! I’m living life! But there’s occasionally a slip.

That one slip.

Where I can’t go to work. I can’t do shit for a day.

Which, even if you’re a wonderful worker. Even if you’re never late, never do no wrong. That one day. Will get you fired.

Which is fucking painful.

Because I’m so close. I’m so close to being able to live my life. And I’ve met those people, I’ve become friends with them, laughed with them, joked with them.

And then they’re cut from my life.

And that’s not the worst part. The worst is that I can’t live alone.

And every time it happens. I get screamed at. I get told I’m an asshole that’s going to ruin the family.

Like I don’t know that?

And that “This is killing me!” (Emotionally, not literally)

How the fuck do you think I feel?

I fucking hate this. I hate being told I’m lazy and that I’m choosing to do this. That someone’s gonna pack their bags and leave.

And it’s not like I lose my shit when it happens. I go into a room and lock the door. I explicitly tell people not to come in so I can deal with my shit.

You can guess what they do next.

And I’m on my meds. Yeah I know I forget to take them sometimes but it’s not a daily thing and this hasn’t happened in months!

It hurts. It hurts because I thought we were getting better. That we could trust eachother. Instead they get angry at me.

I know I’m being entitled and should just try to live on my own and spiral again but I fucking can’t. I’d get kicked out if I tried because I wouldn’t be able to work at all. As in depressed and anxious that I couldn’t bring myself to go and would probably just hide in bed.

I know this is probably gonna get some hate, whatever. Just don’t send it in my asks. Again I’m not in danger ever or having said spiral now. Just wanted to get it off my chest. I’m good :)

[variousqueerthings]

some other things about the last few episodes we’ve had

1. Charles is autistic. I already said that, but I just sit here like “you don’t understand yes he’s abrasive and unfortunately rich and often a dick, but some of his behaviours are changeable and some deserve to be accommodated” (in the same way Hawkeye’s “waves hands” Stuff is accommodated for... dare I say it... that thing where an autistic and an adhd’er come across one another in the wild and unfortunately have Literally Nothing In Common and so it’s like unstoppable force/immovable object kinda situation)

Anyway, the way he made a mistake. I liked that. I need to think about it more in terms of phrasing, and I’m sure more data will appear as we continue onwards, but I guess the TL;DR is that Charles probably will find his way towards balancing the things that he needs to function, with being able to see beyond his own nose and care for others’ needs beyond the functionality of a patient and his own ego

also him wanting Hawkeye’s attention, even if that attention was negative. Hawkeye genuinely being angry at him for fucking up with the patient. Understanding the limit, and trying to understand it. RIP I will be a Charles apologist (just like I’ll always be a Margaret-from-day-one apologist)

2. Hawkeye loving and losing (and crying). I have nothing deep to say. I thought it was a good episode. I thought Kyung Soon was a great character and I loved that part of what made this work was that she was controlling the narrative, even if Hawkeye was the POV character. You can write believable romance in 25min and make it tragic in a way that isn’t heavy-handed (I’m glad she didn’t die -- and in a way that may have been easier, because you can romanticize death in a way you cannot romanticize making the adult and correct decision that there are more important things). And I love when he cries. Alan Alda clearly loves these things too, because he wrote and directed the episode

bonus for this episode is Hawkeye talking about it... with Margaret! I’m not sure if he’s been this emotionally vulnerable with her before. And she, in turn, is vulnerable with him, because her new husband has probably been cheating on her. Telling ya these two are friend-soulmates (and they’ve been fighting it every step of the way!) (I am not a fan of “soulmates” as a concept, I merely mean they had that potential and rather than move towards it, they decided to hiss at each other for x amount of seasons, while occasionally giving in to the fact that maybe... they actually really like each other)

3. BJ is still partially an enigma to me. They’ve followed up on the idea of him as a prankster in the episode with the guy he studied with (my partner and I clearly brought something to that episode because we were not entertained by his friend at all, and felt quite on edge whenever he was onscreen), and in the way he was messing with Charles’ uniform. his interactions with Hawkeye have a lot of different -- probably more interesting -- textures than at the beginning when they were getting to know one another as well

I mean in the sense that sometimes Hawkeye annoys him, which we first saw in the episode where Hawkeye and he had a fake -- and then a real -- argument. I don’t think it’s intended as that deep (although who knows), or that it will lead to an actual temporary split between them, I just noticed it. He’s moved from the place he was in s4, but again, he doesn’t have so much POV, so I’m still placing him rather cautiously. I’m guessing he won’t become a Trapper 2.0, because otherwise he wouldn’t be so beloved in his own right, so I’m looking at the pieces of him I’ve got at the moment and squinting at how they’ll end up fitting together. I still think “observational” was something right I said, but maybe, currently, not as Solid as he was at the beginning (but that may be because Hawkeye also feels more on-edge... I do tend to read BJ in connection with his relationship with Hawkeye, so I think that’s what I’m not getting as much info on this season as previously...)

I think there’s something interesting there in terms of knowing a character’s place and/or journey, and I feel like BJ is moving with the changing tides more than any other character and I don’t quite see where he’ll end up (yet)

[lovemeian]

hungry for kisses—

characters ! bokuto kōtarō, kenma kozume, miya osamu, konoha akinori x gn!reader.

fluff, sorta suggestive but mostly comfort + hurt/comfort +  hints of angst in others & mentions of future children w/ konoha’s !

masterlist.

BOKUTO KŌTARŌ—

bokuto’s the least hesitant about asking for kisses. he asks all sweetly. unless ya’ll got into a fight, then droppy haired boyo will hesitate and creep closer to your form on the couch. its always so frustrating to fight with kou; both of you have your own principles, and sometimes because kou doesn’t want to argue anymore, he’d just give in and agree with you without really agreeing with you? toxic trait much? so the fight escalated because you confronted him about it. telling him that relationships can’t function properly if he just gives in without actually talking about it. saying it disrespects you as a person because it doesn’t seem like he cares enough to figure it out together and listen to you.

it’s been about a few hours since that fight, and you have kept to yourself, refusing to speak to him because it really hurt this time. you know he never meant to do that, especially to ignore your feelings, but he needs to realise that this matter is important to you.

you can see him from the corner of your eye, slowly inching towards you. then hesitating. then inching closer. truthfully, your anger had dissipated now and you did miss your boyfriend, even if you were still in the same apartment. your relationship with kou was just being stuck together twenty four seven. he would always make his presence known somehow.

he makes his final inch when he slumps to his knees in front of you, hesitantly resting his head on your knees with droopy, wide eyes. “i’m sorry. i never intend to make it seem like i don’t care about what you think or what you say, and definitely not care about you, because i do. i love you so much. i’m so sorry for making you think like i don’t respect you. i’ll do better, i promise.”

you can tell he’s thought his words through, probably with a lil help from his best friend. but they burn with sincerity and honestly, and you were tired not being in your boyfriend’s arms.

“mhm. okay, thank you for apologising.” you put your hands across his chin to urge him to stand up. “and i’m sorry too, for the fight earlier.”

he paused, hands braced on either side of you as he was standing up, frowning slightly. “i don’t even remember what that fight was about?”

huh. “me either.”

“can you give me kisses now?”

you smiled. “always.”

“okay!” with just that one word, kou brightens like the morning sun, taking your elbows and arms, and pitching himself backward to take you with him. with you on top, his arms lace across your back and he pouts his lips dramatically for his kisses.

“dummy.” but you give them to him anyway. because he was your dummy and you can work it out with him. no matter the hurdle.

KENMA KOZUME—

kenma’s not really shy, he’s just quiet. actions speak louder than words kinda guy. that’s his entire love language, plus gifts. he memorises everything you’ve ever expressed you wanted to buy or thought looked nice/would be nice to have. he banks them in the back of his head, along with the difference in your demeanour and expression and adjusting how to move forward.

he knows his time is demanding, and this has been a frequent complaint on your part. kenma isn’t perfect— and worse, sometimes he just forgets. but he makes up to you as much as he can, because losing you would be the worst outcome of any of his actions.

you know there’s some sort of tournament going on in the past three days, so he’s busier than ever. he had already told you beforehand that he might be emotionally unavailable during this time, promising to make up to you as soon as it’s finished.

so you supported him in quieter methods, making sure to drop him a tray of food so his skinny ass wouldn’t starve (he forgets to eat more than anyone you’ve eve known), and giving his office a wide berth to make sure nothing distracts him; tournaments get intense, you can just tell from the furious clicking of his fingers and how he comes out for breaks looking pale and a little green. and since ya’ll have been going out for a while, you know what you have to prepare to entertain yourself during times like these. usually going out with your friends, having fun on your own with your own time and hobbies. you both can be separate people, and it’s nice not to be demanded attention of every single minute.

so you didn’t expect him to come out of his office the same time you were putting on your shoes.

“oh, are you hungry? dinner’s on the table, you just have to heat it up. it’s still pretty warm, so you might not need to. if your headphones broke, i have mine on the second drawer in the bedroom. oh, and turn on the humidifier in your room, love. it’s already plugged in. your skin’s going to get bad but i think we still have those nice facemasks you like.”

his blink is a little slow. “you’re... going out?”

“oh yeah, with some friends. sorry, i didn’t tell you. we’re watching a horror movie. i lost a bet so i’m buying popcorn.”

he prowls, taking off the tie in his hair. “how long before the movie starts?”

“mhh, an hour?”

“c’mere.” he pulls you towards him in a swift tug, reaching for your neck, the nape of your hair, and kissing you deep, biting at your bottom lip for entrance. you melt under his touch, the surprise washing out as you respond to pulling him closer, kissing him back in the same hunger. you really did miss him— times like this when you’ve been apart enough in a good length since this is when the neediness comes out. when the desperation to be close snaps like elastic.

“what was that for?” you ask as soon as you pulled back, both of you breathing heavily. his eyes are lazy half-moons of amber. his smirk is mischievous. he tugged you further into the house, going for the couch.

“we have an hour, right? gotta make the most of it.”

MIYA OSAMU—

another one who doesn’t hesitate for his kisses. your neck is free real estate, sorry. most of the time, if he’s tired as hell from work, he just. plomps right behind you. whatever you’re doing, as long as he can weave his arms— corded soft muscles weak from the entire day but never to weak to tighten like a snake around you — across your form and just pesters the nape of your neck with kisses. moving to your jaw, flipping you so you face him, and starts going for everywhere else but your lips; that’s always for a finale, and to be honest, it just never ends in quick kisses.

miya osamu is man who savours, and no matter how great he is at cooking, you were a taste he can never replicate.

so he rectifies it by tasting it on you instead.

this is the usual scenario. but what if you surprise him at the restaurant, there to pick him up because you missed him too much with a beaming smile and a charming sweep of greetings to his staff, 20 minutes before closing?

oh, boy does his heart stutter. if it was humanely possible he was falling in love with you all over again.

you wait by one of the counter seats, offering up glasses of water for some the patrons, chatting to people you do know, and giving your boyfriend a wink and loved up gazes every time he meets your eyes.

he can’t help it. when everyone else is busy with the last people of the day— he offers a hand, you take it, and he takes you to the pantry back room.

“’a love you,” is the only thing he says as he presses you against one of the metal shelves, his touch so soft over your own, bringing you closer so he can press soft, tugging kisses, leaving licks and imploring movement from you. they feel so needy and wanting.

it takes ya’ll thirty minutes to finish and freshen up. everyone knows what’s up, but all you can do is burn red with a dopey smile on your face, holding your boyfriend’s hand, whilst he was sporting his own very relaxed smile. no matter how hard the day’s been, you always pull the strongest sense of peace in him than anyone or anything else.

KONOHA AKINORI—

can surprisingly get very needy with kisses. he has a reunion with his high school friends, and it’s been a while; catching up each other’s lives, from wives to husbands, to newborns to funny kids’ stories in new schools. from tears of saying goodbye to them even when they know they’ll picking them up later, to the sweet, prideful moments of their significant others doing sweet, amazing things for them.

he’s submerged in the feeling of nostalgia and daydream, and it catches up to him like a feature film of your life together. dreams of a small wedding, maybe. shared in white, met at the altar, surrounded by people that you both care about and who cares about you. you’ll be a picture to see, burned bright against his eyelids. he might even shed a tear.

a bigger home, maybe, filling with more things as the years come; shared likes in a bookshelves, various of mismatched plates and one really nice one you only use for really good company. waking up next to each other, submerged completely in each other’s welcomed, loving warmth.

maybe children? you and him have talked about it before, but only in comments and in passing. a smattering of laughter filling the pictures in his head, spending sundays together as a family, no matter how big or small. all their firsts you get to experience and see, bring them to parks to run off their energies; to camping trips with mosquito bites and good grilled food across scary stories.

but the burn of wanting a future with you engraves itself in him, in the corner of his chest as he comes home to you, loopy with happy exhaustion and light drunkenness. he doesn’t see you as he softly says ‘i’m home’, mostly to himself as he knows how late it has gotten. but he pads to the room and sees you under the covers, scrolling through your phone.

his chest ache with so much love when you look up, a pure happy, sleepy expression crosses your face just from seeing him, as you say, “oh, welcome home, aki.”

and his body moves before his tipsy thoughts could process them, crawling over to you and nestling on your chest and neck, caging you with his arms towards him. he starts pressing soft, lingering kisses all over. slow and almost with purpose. almost as if he was wishing on constellations for falling stars. for his dreams to become future scenes.

together with you. forever.

“. . . okay. you smell like alcohol, stinky,” you say as you put down your phone to run your hands through his hair, musing it further.

“mhm,” he says as he continues on, murmuring words you can barely here, only catching words like, ‘gonna marry you someday’, ‘am gonna look good for you�� and ‘funny babies’.

tomorrow he’ll talk to you about, dreams and wants. for now, he’s satisfied pressing his wishes on you.

made by lavi <3

[phoenixyfriend]

For your suddenly omegaverse au what exactly happened? Like I think obiwan and Anakin hop over from cannon verse to omegaverse but I am unclear on if there already existed obiwan and Anakin in omegaverse. Did they die early or do they just not exist or are they just not force sensitive and therefore not a part of the order? Is there still a sith conspiracy around Anakin?

Context: Original Post, Surrogacy, Worldbuilding, Obi-Mom, Soap Operas

So, from the original post:

There is no preexisting Anakin in the Omegaverse

Obi-Wan and Anakin just straight up don’t exist until they drop headfirst into the council room, already covered in blood.

To clarify: There has never been an Anakin Skywalker in this AU. There has never been an Obi-Wan Kenobi.

They don't know this for sure when they land in the AU, though. All they know is that the Jedi have no record of either of them. They figure, well, maybe they just got lost in the shuffle. Anakin wasn't found until he was nine, after all, and that was only by great coincidence.

The rest of this post has almost no mention of the omegaverse elements, FYI.

Warning: References to the Tusken massacre, explicit sedation and isolation of a mentally unstable individual threatening violence.

I don’t want to make light of institutionalization and involuntary holds, but Anakin is a character with a history of violence talking about repeating such an act, and that’s... a bit of an extreme case.

------

It's not that hard to convince the Temple to let them run a mission that lets them stop by Tatooine or Stewjon. Anakin cares a lot more, so Tatooine it is! Obi-Wan can tell there's something sketchy going on with Anakin's particular anxiety about this, but he rolls with it. Anakin was very specific about the timing for some reasons, and at this point, it's easier to just let it all play through.

They go well after the whole “congrats, you’re omegas... somehow,” thing has happened, a month or so before Geonosis would have happened. Obi-Wan has managed to help the council sabotage and delay the Separatist side of the war enough that they’ve gained... maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. Just a little more time to keep a few more people alive. Nobody’s reached out to Kamino yet, and Jango isn’t staging a failed assassination to draw someone in, either. They’ve bought enough time for Anakin to spend his vacation time checking in on his mom seeing if he exists here, and Obi-Wan can go with him.

They get to Tatooine. They wander about, and Anakin doesn't actually explain where they're going, but takes them straight to where the Lars farm is. Obi-Wan lets Anakin tell him that it was the Force that led him to the right area. Anakin can sense that his mom is in there, and Obi-Wan chalks up the relief from his former padawan to 'she's here and we don't have to look for her.'

Anakin is... panicking. Just a bit. What if he shows up and it turns out this reality's Anakin is off doing something completely unrelated and she realizes he's the wrong person? Or what if she doesn't recognize him and he calls her Mom anyway? What if he fucks up and says something stupid or just starts crying on her? She'll think he's insane.

Obi-Wan... takes over.

Anakin stays hidden, listening. Obi-Wan knocks on the door, and asks if there's a 'Shmi Skywalker' in residence. Someone in town mentioned her. He explains that he has a young friend of about twenty years--they're not sure, exactly, because the friend doesn't know his own birthday, but it's about there--who happens to be a Skywalker, and they're trying to see if they can reconnect him with a parent. They don't have much to go off of other than the surname... the Shmi that lives here wouldn't happen to have ever had any children about that age?

No. She hasn't had any children of her own blood, actually, her only child is her stepson, but she'd be happy to meet this other Skywalker, if he's in the area. It's always nice to find family, and connecting with those that were separated from you is a big deal on Tatooine. She's not going to look a gift bantha in the mouth.

(Cliegg, dear, put down the rifle.)

Obi-Wan promises to let his friend know, bids them goodbye, and goes to find Anakin.

Anakin is having a bit of a breakdown.

As one does.

Anakin insists that they stick around for a bit, that they do what they can to protect the farm, because that's his mom, even if she's not really his mom, and Obi-Wan can tell there's a Lot Going On here. He assumes it's because Anakin's upset his mom doesn't know him, which is a little irrational on account of their two options being "Anakin doesn't exist (and so Shmi doesn't know him)" and "Anakin does exist (but Shmi doesn't know this Anakin, so she still doesn't know him)," but Anakin's not a very rational person.

Obi-Wan thinks tamping down the current crisis is probably a little more important than chastising Anakin's attachment issues, mostly because Anakin's hands are shaking, and he's looking a little wild-eyed, and like. Obi-Wan's not great at dealing with Anakin's many and varied emotions, but he's learned at some point when it's best to just... roll with it Until There's Less Risk of Stab or Sobbing Laughter.

He helps figure out some minor fuckery with the Force to hide the family in the homestead behind them from visitors, and to warn them to hide when someone comes by. It’s not a lot--mostly just meditating and asking the Force for a helping hand--but it’s nice.

Except, well, Anakin keeps fidgeting. He keeps panicking. He has them coming back almost daily for a week, always too scared to talk to his mom but insistent on protecting her, and always looking at the calendar. Obi-Wan wants to get back to the Temple, but whatever the actual hell is going on with Anakin is too big to just ignored.

A specific day comes and goes. Anakin is a mess of jitters and nerves, and finally Obi-Wan asks just the wrong (right?) question, and... they visit Shmi.

Anakin says they can talk later, he just wants to see his mom One Last Time.

(Obi-Wan is getting more and more worried, but he sits through the incredibly awkward meeting between Anakin and his alt-universe mom, watches as Anakin has no idea what to say and almost cries, and Shmi just kind of lets him do that and Beru--a sweet girl, Obi-Wan thinks, and very practical--tells him that this is all very normal for reunited slaves.)

(Obi-Wan wonders if maybe there’s some stuff Anakin never told him about how being a slave affected him.)

(Obi-Wan had thought they’d moved past most of this, but..)

The meeting ends. There’s hugging.

They get back to the ship, and Obi-Wan gets to watch Anakin fall apart. Obi-Wan gets to watch Anakin cry and scream into a pillow, hyperventilate and nearly punch a hole in the wall as he rages about how it was all for nothing! Obi-Wan gets to watch Anakin break into a million pieces in a way he’s never seen before.

Obi-Wan gets a confession.

Anakin tells him about the Tuskens.

It’s not an easy conversation. It’s not a short conversation, either. Anakin’s full of pain and misery and rising guilt, talks about how he’s been asking himself if it would be easier to keep his mother safe if he just killed them all now, except Obi-Wan would know, and be disappointed, and sure the Chancellor had said that they were little more than rabid animals, but Anakin doesn’t think he can kill the younglings again when his mom is still fine, and--

Obi-Wan sedates him.

He wants to say that he’s not proud of this, but... Anakin isn’t well. Anakin isn’t well in a way that is currently, specifically, revolving around doing extreme violence. Anakin is talking about going out and committing a slaughter as preventative maintenance.

Anakin stays sedated until they get back to the Temple, and he’s put in Force-suppressant cuffs--Obi-Wan quietly tells them to use something that can’t be sliced or taken apart by a droid specialist, and to avoid collars because Anakin was a slave for nearly a decade, and has a lot of traumatic associations--and in an isolated room.

It’s not a cell. Not technically.

He can’t just leave, though.

Obi-Wan hates himself for it, just a little. He doesn’t want to be doing this, not to his padawan, his brother, his son, but... a massacre. Even the younglings, he’d said.

(“He said he didn’t think he could do it again,” Obi-Wan mutters, half to himself and half to the mind healer that asks for his rundown of the situation. “I think he knows it was wrong, but...”)

(But he still did it, of course.)

It’s... better than Obi-Wan feared, but worse than he hoped.

Anakin is emotionally unstable. He has been, for a long time, but he’s usually functional. When the mind healer isn’t directly poking at his worst wounds, Anakin can more or less pass for... not okay, necessarily, but no worse than anyone else in the war had. He can say the right words. He can do a joint meditation. He can talk about philosophy the way a Knight that’s taken all the right classes does.

But part of Anakin still holds to the idea that the Tuskens deserved to die.

“This is my fault,” Obi-Wan whispers, more than once, resting his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. “I should have...”

“He was an adult,” says Mace, who isn’t Mace, not the one that Obi-Wan knows, but a newer friend, one that’s still figuring how to act around him. “Young, but still an adult. He made that choice.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t answer. Things aren’t that simple.

“The timing can’t have been a coincidence,” Obi-Wan mutters to himself, later on, but in the same spot, and the same position.

The Quinlan of this universe shrugs. He knows Obi-Wan better than most, right now. Psychometry’s helpful that way, and sharing Obi-Wan’s heat hadn’t hurt. “Seems likely. You said Sith were involved and setting traps, and a kid like yours, with that much power and trauma... ripe for the molding.”

Obi-Wan whines, and then catches the noise and stuffs it back down, locks it up tight with the other ‘instinct’ things he doesn’t like to think about having. The sound already has Quinlan shifting closer, and the smell is... intended to be comforting, he thinks. Reacting to his own distress, which he’s probably just pumping out right now, because he still doesn’t know how to--

“Can I help?” Quinlan asks, and Obi-Wan lets him.

Someone gets through to Anakin, maybe, or he just lets himself be ground down, or Obi-Wan’s entreaties that he can’t teach Ahsoka until he understands his crimes get through. He won’t be trusted around the clones until the Jedi can trust him to do the right thing, they inform him.

“I wouldn’t hurt the clones.”

“Nobody’s going to believe that until you understand your crimes and truly, actually feel remorse for them.”

There wasn’t a crime, technically. Not in this universe. That tribe is still alive, here, unknowing of the fate they escaped by dint of Anakin talking himself down from committing another slaughter.

(He tells the mind healer it’s because Obi-Wan was there.)

(He might have done it, he says, if he hadn’t thought Obi-Wan would be disappointed in him.)

(He says it like it’s a foregone conclusion, that Obi-Wan’s opinion is worth more than the horror of what he might become.)

“We’re going to keep an eye on anyone talking to Palpatine,” Shaak tells him one day, after Anakin’s been mental instability hold for two weeks. “We don’t know for sure how far the similarities extend from your universe to ours, but given everything else you’ve been right about...”

“That bad?” Obi-Wan asks.

Shaak grimaces, fangs glinting in the light. “I want to believe we’d have never allowed a child into such a position, but I can’t know what political leverage may have been used in your dimension... whatever reason was had to put Skywalker in those rooms, we know the consequences now--”

“What did he do to my padawan?” Obi-Wan demands, because Anakin won’t even tell him that. Anakin hasn’t mentioned Palpatine since they left Tatooine. Not to Obi-Wan.

“Nothing physical,” Shaak manages. “But the lies he told and the suggestions he planted... it’s good they haven’t met again yet in this life. We’ll all be keeping them far apart.”

He wants to take solace in that. “Why do you know before I do?”

“Skywalker values your opinion,” she says. “Only yours. He doesn’t want you more disappointed in him than you already are, so much of what is relayed to the council as a matter of security goes no further, but this was deemed necessary to share. He agreed to it, if you worried we’d broken his confidence.”

Anakin’s therapy would normally be entirely private.

Anakin’s therapy would normally not be in response to confessions of mass slaughter.

He hasn’t asked to be let out, which Obi-Wan hopes is a sign that he realizes at least subconsciously that he was in the wrong. The mind healer says he could have been released under watch by a Master probably a day or two after he arrived, but seems to be drawing some kind of comfort in knowing he couldn’t hurt someone even if he tried.

Obi-Wan is Anakin’s emergency contact. His next of kin. His healthcare proxy. Anakin has a right to privacy, minor as it is in such a situation, and everyone recognizes and treats him as an adult, but... Obi-Wan learns as much from the mind-healer as he would have back when Anakin was actually a child.

“He trusts you to make the right decisions,” the mind healer tells him, careful and unassuming. “He has... a lot of conflicting opinions about many things, including the order, the coming war, the nature of human reproductive dynamics, the Code... but he seems keen on the idea that you are his best reference on morality and ethics.”

Oh, good, more horrifying responsibility.

“He’s better,” the mind healer tells him. “I want to get him out of here before he starts going stir crazy while still relying on the perceived safety as a crutch for his mental health. And he--”

“He’ll be staying with me,” Obi-Wan says, heavy as anything. “I know.”

“Well... there’s a war coming,” the mind healer says. She offers a thin smile when he looks at her. “I don’t want him going out, but it makes him feel useful, gives him a direction for the aggression, and... the Council is adamant that we’ll need him as much as we need you.”

It’s true.

“Did he tell you why everyone called him the Hero With No Fear?”

“No.”

“Ask him.”

[helliontherapscallion]

Recovery? (Adrenaline Junkie Part 5)

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 6     Part 7     Part 8     Part 9     Part 10     Part 11     Part 12     Part 13     Part 14     Part 15     Part 16     Part 17

Spotify Playlist (collaborative)

Warnings: PTSD, sleep paralysis, hallucinations, swearing, mentions of death/injury, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation (marked so you can skip if it’s a major trigger for you), self harm (also marked), phantom pain syndrome

Word count: 3,722

Disclaimer: I have not experienced PTSD, sleep paralysis, hallucinations, or phantom pain syndrome, so I’m sorry if they aren’t portrayed correctly 

When a wild bird can’t fly, it’s defenseless. It feels trapped even if it can still walk away. It feels alone even if it’s surrounded by other birds. If a bird loses the ability to fly, a piece of it is missing. A piece of itself. Something that it values as something unique to it and only it. It loses most mental stimulation and becomes numb until it can feel freedom again.

It’s been about two months since you respawned and you honestly felt so restless. You wanted to fly through the sky again, feeling the air move freely between your feathers. You wanted to weave in and out of the clouds. You wanted to feel something other than fear. When you’re not scared, you don't feel anything. You missed skydiving. You wanted, no, you craved the feeling of adrenaline flowing along every little nook and cranny in your cardiovascular system.

You found out that you get flashbacks whenever you see someone or something hulky and covered in a dark green color. You still haven’t told your family about this, you thought that it was something silly to be afraid of. You tried your hardest to avoid Philza the most; he always wore his favorite color with pride. You still haven’t apologized for screaming death threats at him when you were going through an episode.

You only had one other major hallucinogenic episode since the first one, but it wasn’t as bad as the first one.

You woke up in the middle of the night with the moonlight beaming through your window illuminating the silhouette of The Warden standing in the corner of your room. You willed yourself to open your mouth to scream for your brothers, but you couldn’t move. You could only watch it. 

The telltale glowing drool fell from the corners of its wide mouth, mixing with the blood dripping off from its long claws. Its chest rhythmically glowed as the things writhing in it managed to squeeze through the small gaps between the bony confines of its ribs. The white wisps flew around your room freely, bouncing off your walls with thuds and eventually settling to float in front of your face.

You watched with wide eyes as their permanently gaping mouths struggled to form words. Somehow, you could see desperation in their empty eye sockets. A flurry of whispers met your ears, but you couldn’t make out anything they were saying. It was too jumbled. 

You heard The Warden slowly drag its feet along your carpet over to your bed. The wisps started to thrash about and scream as it reached out and scooped them all up easily with a single swipe of a hand. It shoved them into its mouth and they reappeared behind the confines of its ribcage, the screaming getting louder and more distorted as they got swallowed. Multiple voices were shrieking with agony and anguish as The Warden turned its attention towards you. It bent over and hovered its face over yours as its drool and drops of blood started to drip onto your cheeks. You felt its rancid breath fan over you. It had hints of iron and rot.

Your mind was screaming at your body to move away, but you couldn’t. You didn’t have control anymore. Your breathing picked up as you felt your heart beat out of your chest. It just hovered over you doing nothing, like it was enjoying seeing your fearful eyes. Like it enjoyed the feeling of having complete power over you.

Your breath caught in your throat as it got closer to you, its mouth getting dangerously close to engulfing your entire head. You squeezed your eyes shut and tried with all your might to move any part of your body. After a while, your head slightly moved to the side. Gradually, you worked your way up to moving your head fully to the side. You felt all your muscles activate at once as you shot up from your bed with a strangled gasp. 

You frantically flattened your body against the wall, reaching a shaking hand between the wall and mattress to grab the iron dagger you hid there. Holding it defensively in front of you, you scanned the room. There was not a single thing out of place. Everything was just as you left it before you went to bed.

You covered your mouth as sobs threatened to burst from your chest like the wisps in The Warden’s. You brought your knees up to your chest and buried your head in them. You didn’t sleep for a few days after that.

Other than the major episodes, your imagination placed The Warden everywhere you looked. You saw The Warden whenever Philza walked past you. You saw glimpses of it whenever you looked into the woods at night. You saw it behind you in the mirror reaching for your other wing. Sometimes, you thought you could hear the screams of the wisps in the distance.

Your entire family was constantly hovering over you; you always had at least one of the boys with you at all times. They wouldn’t let you out of the house. 

Out of all of your family, Wilbur was probably the lesser of the evils. He didn’t judge you or question you, he just let you do your own thing. He would softly pluck the strings on his guitar and sing to you while you would lay on his bed. Those moments were one of the only moments where you would fully let your guard down and relax. 

Hangouts with Techno were also pleasant, but he hasn’t looked you in the eyes since he helped you during your first episode. That was the only downside to it though; he would give you some of his mythology books to read or read them to you. His voice always soothed you as a kid. Sometimes, he would give you a hug when he saw that it was a rough day for you.

Tommy’s hang outs were kept to a minimal, the family didn’t trust him much because they thought his rambunctious and extrovert personality would overwhelm you. You were alone with him only twice out of the last two months. Usually, you both would lay on his bed and just talk about his life with the jukebox running softly in the background playing the discs that you and Philza gifted him during his first birthday with the family. He tried to get you to open up to him, but you always deflected. He shouldn’t know how fucked up you were, you vowed to protect him when Philza first brought him home. You would always protect your little brother, even if it was from yourself.

Before the incident, you would’ve killed to get more alone time with your father. But now, you tried to avoid Philza at all costs. You couldn’t help but see The Warden whenever you saw his tall form, green clothes, and large wings. When you had to hang out with him however, you wouldn’t look at him. You two would usually go to chop down trees or cook dinner together. 

You felt incredibly guilty that you still haven’t apologized to him for everything you’ve put him through. Whenever you brought yourself to glance at him, he was always looking at you heartbroken. You knew that the outcomes of your first death gave the entire family some form of trauma, but you saw that it hit your dad harder than the others. You did threaten to kill him in graphic ways and you did hit him in your panicked stupor. You really needed to apologize for that. You probably should tell him about your silly little fear of green. You were going to wait until he was in his pajamas to apologize; they usually didn’t have much green.

You loved your family of course, but you were always the type of person to require some alone time to function, even before the incident. You felt incredibly drained physically, mentally, and emotionally. It took you a tremendous amount of effort to get out of bed in the mornings. You didn’t see any meaning in life anymore. Everything was gray and the only thing you actually felt was fear, so you didn’t see any point in getting up. The only reason you left your bed was because your brothers would coax you out. Everyday was monotonous. 

*************************SUICIDAL IDEATION/SELF HARM*****************************

Your mind was always coming up with intrusive thoughts about killing yourself. When you did the dishes, you always imagined yourself gliding blades vertically along your wrists and just letting the blood pool out and mix with the dishwater. When you cooked breakfast, you would imagine placing your hand inside the burning flame of the stove. When you were staring out of the window at night looking for The Warden, you would imagine yourself disappearing into the woods to look for a creeper to blow you up. When you passed the potion chest, you imagined chugging poison so you could feel something before you died. Whenever you used an ore during crafting, you always thought about going back to the cave so you could be put out of your misery again. It did a damn good job at killing you the first time. Who knows, maybe The Warden would be merciful this time. The most common thought was finding a tall cliff or mountain and jumping off to finally feel the wind between your feathers and the adrenaline running through you for the last time. You daydreamed about that last one a lot.

The little scrapes you got on the little tasks given to you by your family gave you a smidge of pain. A smidge of feeling other than numbness or suffocating fear. So, in a desparate attempt to feel something, you started to cut yourself You have a dagger hidden in your room that your family didn’t know about and you constantly wore a long sleeved cloak to hide your wing so you could easily hide the cuts. It would give you some light in the dark abyss that was your current mental state. 

Sometimes, you would make small cuts on your wrists and thighs when everything was too overwhelming, but the relief it gave you wouldn’t last throughout the day. You were scared to cut deeper. You didn’t want to deal with infection or smuggling healing potions underneath your family’s noses. You would probably get caught and they’d take away the very little freedom and control you had in your life.

**********************SUICIDAL IDEATION/SELF HARM OVER*************************

You grunted in discomfort as you chopped some wood with Philza behind your house. It was a bad day for the phantom pains in your absent wing, you felt shooting pain and itchiness along where it was supposed to be all day long. You heard him pause his actions and walk over to you. When he placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, you squeezed your eyes shut as you remembered the way he grabbed you the day you respawned.

“Are you alright hun?”

Shrugging off his hand, you continued to chop lumber. “I’m fine Dad.”

“Are you sure? You looked like you were in pain.”

You sighed, “It’s… it’s just a bad day for the pain.”

“Where does it hurt? I can go grab you a potion.” 

He sounded like he always did when he talked to you, concerned. You wanted to be treated like a normal person again. You didn’t like it when your family walked on eggshells around you constantly, it made you feel like a stranger in your own home.

“My right wing hurts. And potions don’t help, I’ve tried that. There’s nothing you can do.”

He paused for a second. You imagined him furrowing his brows and tilting his head lightly to the side as he contemplated what you said. It was the first time you opened up to him about anything. “...Your wing still feels things?”

You grunted as you swung the axe down onto the log, “Yeah, it feels things sometimes. It’s mostly a shooting pain or an itching sensation where I don’t have a wing. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I’m learning to live with it.”

“How long has this been happening?”

Your mind flashed back to the conversation you two had a year ago. “Since I lost it.”

“Why don’t we turn in for the night? The sun is starting to set and we’ve got enough wood to last us a week.”

You silently nodded and bent over to pick up the logs you chopped. Grabbing as much as your arms could hold, you put the planks into the chest next to the back door. Turning around to grab more, you jumped back when your eyes met with Philza’s chest. His hand was outstretched towards you. You hugged your body as you looked away from him. 

“(Y/n), you’re not okay. Please just let me help you.”

“...I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m fine.”

“You haven’t spoken to anyone about your emotions, bottling it up isn’t good hun.”

“That’s because I don’t have anything to talk about.”

He sighed, “Why don’t we get your brothers to cook dinner so we can have a little chat. Meet me in your room.”

Wordlessly, you walked back into the house and straight up to your room. Sitting on the bed, you put your head in your hands as you waited for the inevitable vulnerability. After a couple of minutes, you heard a gentle knock on your door. It opened to reveal your dad smiling at you.

Glancing back at your hands, you slipped your hand under the sleeve of your cloak to pinch the skin so you could try to ignore him when he walked over to sit next to you. You turned your head away from him. 

You felt the mattress shift under his weight when he sat next to you. You felt his breath tickle the top of your head as he spoke to you, “please, talk to me.”

“I’ve already told you, there’s nothing to talk about Dad.”

“...You’ve been seeing The Warden whenever you look at me, haven’t you?” He sounded so broken. It must be hard to have your own child avoid you because you reminded them of their murderer. 

You were quiet for a few moments while you battled against the tears that threatened to leak from your eyes. Swallowing thickly, you shakily said, “I’m sorry Dad, I’m so sorry. I-I see it when I see you. I see it everywhere.”

“Hey,” he gently said, “it’s alright. Nothing’s your fault, you can’t control it. Is there anything… specific that reminds you of it?”

“...Yeah, I see it vividly when I see something tall and… and dark green. I can’t help but to see it when I see you.”

He felt his heart sink. He always wore green, no matter the day. He was basically torturing his child just by being around them. God, what kind of father was he if he didn’t realize that sooner? He felt like a failure. 

You spewed reassurances at him when you heard his breath hitch. “Dad, it’s not your fault, you didn’t know about it. It’s just a stupid fear and it’s my fault for not getting over it. I-I’ll do better. I can-”

“Stop. Nothing is your fault and it’s certainly not stupid. You’re traumatized, (y/n), you’re traumatized and it’s nobody’s fault except The Warden’s,” it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “Would you feel more comfortable if I changed clothes?”

“You- you don’t have to. I don’t want you to change anything because of me.”

“(Y/n), I’m your father. I’ll do anything if it means you feel better, I want to help you get better. Changing what I wear isn’t a big deal. I’ll be right back.”

“You really don’t have to, Dad.”

“Nonsense, I’m going to go change. It’s really not a big deal.”

He stood up and speed walked out your door. You felt awful, he was changing because of you. Because you were scared of a fucking color. You needed to get a grip. You were weak. 

The door opened again to reveal Philza dressed in an old white t-shirt and gray sweatpants. His wardrobe was very limited when it came to colors other than green; it was strange seeing him in anything but green. You felt a little more at ease around him, but you still couldn’t look him in the eye. You still felt guilty.

Sitting next to you again, he fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “It’s been a while since I’ve worn these, I uh forgot how comfy they are.”

You two sat in an awkward silence. It was obvious that he was lying to you about liking them. He was shifting his wings around uncomfortably and shifting on the mattress. With wings, it was hard to find fabric that didn’t irritate the base of the wing. The base of the wings were more sensitive than any other body part.

“You’re lying.”

“Lying? About what hun?”

“About being comfortable. They’re irritating your wings aren’t they? This is why you shouldn’t change anything about yourself for me, I just screw things up for everyone.”

“No you don’t-”

“Yes I do, Dad. Let’s be honest here, I’m a complete fuck up. I mess up everything I’m near. I messed up the family. Everything’s different because of me.”

He moved to kneel in front of you, placing both his hands firmly on your shoulders.

“Look at me, (y/n).”

When you didn’t make any move to look up from your tightly clasped hands, he gingerly moved your chin up and put his hand back on your shoulder. His face was stern and his blue eyes were blazing. Oh god, you really fucked up didn’t you? You knew you shouldn’t have told him anything.

“You are not a fuck up. Do you hear me? You. Are. Not. A. Fuck up.”

“But-”

“Ah,” he sharply chided, “I’m not done. You aren’t a fuck up. You couldn’t control what happened to you. You didn’t know that you’d die when you went into that cave. You didn’t know that you’d lose a limb. You didn’t mess up the family, you could never, ever, do that… (Y/n), change was bound to happen sooner or later. Everything changes, that’s just how life works. Even if we didn’t want change, it’s inevitable.”

He could tell from your bloodshot eyes and wobbling chin that you were about to cry, it was always your tell as a child. In that instance, he saw you as the kid that came running to him after you scraped your knee. An innocent kid that always saw the good in the world. He pulled you into his chest and gently wrapped his wings around you, humming the song he would sing to you when you had a nightmare as a child.

“It’s alright, hun, let it out.”

You finally broke, throwing your arms around him and sobbing into his chest. Your body shook with muffled sobs as you released all the pent up emotion you’ve been deprived of in the last two months. It felt nice to talk to your dad again, to be close to him again. For the first time in two months, you felt completely safe. Your dad will always protect you. 

“It’s been so hard Dad,” you blubbered out. “I don’t know what to do. I’m broken, Dad. I can’t be fixed. I feel so empty.”

“Hun, no. You can be fixed, it just takes time. We’re here for you. Me, Technoblade, Wilbur, and Tommy. We’re always going to be here for you no matter what. We’ll help you.”

You fell silent as your body convulsed with silent sobs. You two sat there for what seemed like hours before you finally ran out of tears. You pulled back from him and wiped at your snotty nose.

“I never apologized for what I said to you two months ago. I-I shouldn’t have said any of those things. It hurt you in ways that I’ll probably never understand, and… I’m sorry Dad.”

“(Y/n), you don’t have to apologize. You were scared and you were trying to protect your brothers. That was really brave of you to do, I’m proud of you.”

You threw yourself at him again in a tight, one-winged hug. He chuckled as he hugged you back.

“…Thank you Dad, for everything.”

“Anything for you,” he glanced at the clock you made on your wall. “It’s almost dinner time, let’s go see if your brothers burnt down the kitchen.”

You genuinely smiled at that, remembering the last time your brother cooked together. It was a couple of years ago when you and Philza were coming back from visiting a nearby village. Philza thought it was a spectacular idea to give your brothers the task of cooking dinner. That day, you two came home to a fire engulfing the entire stove and your brothers arguing about whose fault it was. Since then, they weren’t allowed to cook together.

“That’s a good idea, remember the last time they cooked together?”

He chuckled. “Don’t remind me, I nearly pulled out all my feathers cuz of the stress it gave me. I think it even gave me a few gray hairs.”

You snorted. “Well, they’re quiet. Too quiet. We need to go down there before they burn down the house.”

He kissed your hair before you stood up and started to walk to the kitchen. He followed suit, throwing an arm over your shoulders and pulling you into his side. Surprisingly, they didn’t burn down the kitchen. Instead, they actually cooked dinner well. Some of it was burnt, but to their credit, they hadn’t cooked together in a while.

At the dinner table, you felt like you were part of the family again. You laughed with your brothers when Philza scolded them for something they said. You felt like there was a giant weight lifted off from your shoulders. Of course, you were still traumatized and had other issues you had to work out, but now you knew you had your family to help you through it. You wouldn’t ask for anything different.

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[aceofbooksandtea]

i fucking love morpheous so much. normally, i hate intense and gory tv shows, but i haven’t been able to stop watching the sandman because morpheous is the first protagonist in forever that i’ve been able to really connect with without getting emotional burn out.

why?

tldr: because his emotions are subtle and he’s the only positive representation i’ve seen of a non-expressive person. it gives me hope that more people can be okay with people who don’t express emotions obviously.

long version: because he’s so emotionally quiet. so many fucking writers like to think that their protagonists need to be emotions, emotions, emotions in order to make them relatable and dynamic. they are... not completely wrong. emotion is necessary. dynamic expression of said emotions are not.

i have literally started crying multiple times in the past couple of weeks just thinking of how nice it is to have actual positive representation of a non-emotionally-expressive person. like, i literally can’t think of another character like morpheous. not one that’s given the space and respect to be non-expressive.

yes. quiet and stoic characters exist. they’re mostly The Strong Silent Warrior (tm) or The Intellectual Who Cannot Feel Anything (tm), tho and that sucks. they are stereotypes and not treated as full, multifaceted characters beyond their narrative function.

even the one (one, only one!) character i can think of that is multifaceted, quiet, and non-expressive--mr. darcy--is treated as an antagonist for a better part of the story and even dismissed and cajoled by the people he seems to consider his friends to lighten up and stop ruining the fun. there is no respect for his lack of expression. it’s treated as a fault by most characters (and possibly the narrative itself? i haven’t watched or read pride and prejudice in ages so i don’t remember). it definitely is not encouraging for someone who’s non-expressive.

(and, honestly, i could probably go on such a rant about how of course darcy would fall for elizabeth. a woman who doesn’t try to cajole him into being more expressive? a woman who isn’t in it for the money? yes please. if i were in his shoes i’d propose to her even if we had only ever argued. at least she wouldn’t be asking me to smile and lighten up.)

anyway, the sandman is great in that regard because i can’t remember a single moment where the narative treats dream’s lack of expression as a problem. his lack of communication skills? oh, yes. absolutely. his lack of humility? definitely. but not once are those traits explicitly or implicitly tied to his very subtle emotional expression.

and his support circle! (for a given value of support, considering his pride and independence) i can’t think of a single moment where any of them treat his limited expressiveness as a problem, or even a neutral trait to be tolerated because some other aspect of himself makes it worth it (this is the major problem with The Strong Silent Warrior (tm) or The Intellectual Who Cannot Feel Anything (tm). the quiet, stoic part is always the “downside” of their strengths/talents/usefulness). the closest anyone comes to calling him out on his emotional expressions that i can remember is when death, the sibling he’s closest to, calls him out for brooding. and since he was actually brooding, it reads less like someone who can’t tolerate lack of expression and more like someone who knows dream so well, she can read what expression he does give off.

(god, i wish i could be so lucky to have someone like that in my life.)

anyway, if anything happens to dream in future seasons, it’s going to Break me.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

The shifting narrative of God’s interventism and how it reflects on the narrative on John

This post will ignore the issue authorial intent entirely because I can, but it’s also about authorial intent in a way, but I also don’t like to talk about things as happening “accidentally” because a) a serialized story like Supernatural, especially one that got renewed for much longer than anyone could possibly expect or hope in their wildest ambitions, structurally relies on serendipity, because that’s how stories work when they’re work in progress, b) a television show is an extremely multi-authored text and the chance that something happens out of the intent of any of the multiple layers of creators is kind of... statistically negligible. So, yeah, that’s my stance on the topic. Anyway.

The shifting narrative about God is simultaneously something that hangs on fortunate storytelling clicks on an essentially programmed narrative. At first, we don’t know where the fuck God is. Cas starts looking for him with little success. Raphael says he’s dead, Cas doesn’t believe it. Dean relates to his struggle because he knows the feeling of not knowing where the fuck your father is and going looking for him with little success, not knowing if he’s even alive. Then the theory that gets assumed as the truth is that God has left. He fucked off who knows where, who knows why, leaving his creation to struggle alone. Also essentially how Dean had felt after John had died; in that case there was guilt for his demon deal and everything, but the most cruel weight on Dean’s shoulder was that John left him alone to struggle with his devastatingly horrific instructions he doesn’t understand. The angels are also left with horrific instructions they don’t understand. No wonder Cas does his own ‘demon deal’ in season 6, as he desperately tries to do what he assumes his father wants from him, but he doesn’t actually know what that is.

“God has left” is maddening, and everyone is angry about it, but it has its own dignity. God has left us without clear instructions, we are confused and in pain and evil runs amock but at least, we suppose, the evil of it is our own doing. We are alone and we do our best, our best is simply not enough. We wish he gave us guidance, but he won’t. He wants us to figure it out ourselves, possibly. We don’t actually know what he wants. But maybe that’s the point. It’s possible he doesn’t even know what’s happening, he just has left the building entirely.

But then Chuck reveals himself. We find out that he never actually left. He was there. “I like front row seats. You know, I figured I’d hide out in plain sight”. He simply chooses not to intervene. He chooses not to answer. He chooses to be hands-off. He presents himself as a laissez-faire parent, because, he says, it’s better for his children to have the responsibility they need to grow up. He’s absent, but in a different way than we thought! It’s not that he doesn’t know what’s happening or isn’t interested in knowing what’s happening. He’s here, he knows what’s happening, he just stays there and watches as you stumble and struggle and scream. It’s worse, and it pains Dean so much he isn’t even afraid to yell at God. You know we’re suffering and you just don’t give us any support, any comfort.

You’re frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on, real hands-on, for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created... would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. It’s enabling.

But it didn’t get better.

Well, I’ve been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.

Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you’re trying to justify it.

I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don’t confuse me with your dad.

At that point of the show, the writing team almost certainly didn’t have the s14-15 twist in mind. So this was probably intended to be Chuck’s truth. Later it gets twisted (retconned?) into a lie, but about that later.

Here, Chuck is really good at manipulating the conversation. Dean has a perfectly valid point, because there IS a middle ground between being overinvolved and not being involved at all. There is a middle ground between enabling your children and abandoning them completely. But Chuck hits Dean where it hurts, plays the emotional card, basically tells him that he’s too emotional to understand, too emotional to think rationally about it, because he mixes his feelings about his father to the issue and thus cannot see it clearly. He basically tells him he’s too close to it to get it. You don’t understand parenting, Dean, because you’re too blinded by your emotions about your own little life and cannot see the big picture.

It doesn’t really matter here if he’s telling the truth or lying, it already says a lot about Chuck that he’s emotionally manipulating Dean, silencing him by hitting the painful spot.

But the thing is, 11.20 immediately presents Chuck as a liar. He makes Metatron read his autobiography and the very first line is a lie (“In the beginning, there was me. Boom – detail. And what a grabber. I mean, I’m hooked, and I was there.” “I’m hooked too, and yet... details. You weren’t alone in the beginning. Your sister was with you.”) and the stuff he talks about his experience as Chuck is not exactly truthful about anything (“That, you know, makes you seem like a really grounded, likable person.” “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” “You are neither grounded nor a person!”). Metatron calls him out (“Okay. There are two types of memoir. One is honest... the other, not so much. Truth and fairy tale. Now, do you want to write Life by Keith Richards? Or do you want to write Wouldn’t It Be Nice by Brian Wilson?”). Chuck SAYS he chooses truth and gives Metatron a different manuscript, supposedly containing the truth, to which Metatron reacts positively. Metatron believes it, and we believe it with him.

Oh! Oh, this! This is what I was talking about. Chapter Ten “Why I Never Answer Prayers, and You Should Be Glad I Don’t”, and Chapter Eleven “The Truth About Divine Intervention and Why I Avoid It At All Costs”.

Nature? Divine. Human nature – toxic.

They do like blowing stuff up.

Yeah. And the worst part – they do it in my name. And then they come crying to me, asking me to forgive, to fix things. Never taking any responsibility.

What about your responsibility?

I took responsibility... by leaving. At a certain point, training wheels got to come off. No one likes a helicopter parent.

This is sort of what he later says to Dean, except that to Dean he talks about “beautiful creatures” “my baby”, talks about helping, none of the harsh tone he’s using here. When Metatron accuses him of hiding from Amara, he retorts “I am not hiding. I am just done watching my experiments’ failures”. What a different language, uh? Then Metatron asks him why he abandoned them, and Chuck answers “Because you disappointed me. You all disappointed me”. Then, he admits he lied about “learning” to play the guitar and so on, because he just gave himself the ability, and then appears to Dean and Sam, after Metatron’s passionate speech about humanity.

So, no matter the authorial intent at the time - the truthiness of Chuck’s words was already ambiguous. He kept lying and being called out, or silencing the conversation with some good ol’ gaslighting.

The season 14 finale introduces the big twist: it was, indeed, all a lie. The whole of it. Chuck didn’t abandon shit. It was all him, minutely controlling the narrative of the universe, putting the characters through all the pain and struggles for his own amusement.

The “absent father” narrative was a lie.

What does this tell us about John? Nothing, according to the authorial intent that shines through Dabb’s Lebanon. But we don’t give a crap about Dabb’s authorial intent about John! He’s just one dude and plenty of other authors have painted a different picture. So I’m going to read the narrative the way I want, because I can, and the narrative allows me to. It’s all there.

I’m suggesting that the fact that Chuck lied when he talked about being a hands-off/absentee father parallels how Dean and Sam prefer to think of their father as an “absent father” when that’s not exactly a reflection of the truth.

You left us. Alone. ‘Cause Dad was just a shell. [...] And I-I had to be more than just a brother. I had to be a father and I had to be a mother, to keep him safe.

Setting aside how “I had to be a father and I had to be a mother” sort of retcons and cleans up the Winchester family picture painted by ealier seasons, the fact that John didn’t really count as a functional father figure and Dean and Sam were essentually alone is not incorrect or anything. It is true that John would leave them to their own devices a lot, thus the long stays in motels, the hunger, the food-stealing, and all. But John wasn’t always absent, at all. He trained them as soldiers, he disciplined them, he was around enough for them to be intimately familiar with what happened when he drank. He drove them around.

It’s almost like it’s preferable to Dean and Sam to spin their own “absent father” narrative, putting the accent on the time they spent alone, painting their childhood as a time they had to grow up on their own, rather than acknowledge they grew up under the thumb of a controlling, looming figure they would regularly live in fear of, even when he was not physically present.

The “absent father” narrative is what Dean and Sam need to use to avoid confronting the reality of the father figure whose moods and whims they had to dance around. “I know things got dicey... you know, with Dad... the way he was. And I just... I didn’t always look out for you the way that I should have. I mean, I had my own stuff, you know. In order to keep the peace, probably looked like I took his side quite a bit.”

John shaped their lives. He shaped their identities. Even in the episodes where he abandons Dean or both children somewhere, he’s portrayed as the figure who drives the car. He symbolically drives the car, you know? John shaped Dean and Sam’s relationship with each other, both on a surface level (the conflicts) and on a deeper level (the parental dynamic).

Heck. The entire first season of the show plays on John’s disappearance as the “elephant in the room”. John is there by not being there, you know? And after he dies, his death - his absence - is again the elephant in the room for Dean, the weight on his psyche that he shatters under.

It is not wrong that Dean and Sam had to spend long periods of time without John. But John structured their lives in quite minute detail. Where they needed to be, what they needed to do, what they must not do, everything had to follow John’s instructions. A drill sergeant, the narrative called him, ordering how his sons needed to live their lives. That’s no absence, except on a level where Chuck not showing himself and pretending he’s not there can be considered absent. That’s a presence, not necessarily always physical, but semiotical and psychological.

John is an absent father as much as Chuck is a hands-off god. He even writes himself into the story around the time Cas has the “season 1” phase (let’s go look for dad/let’s go look for god), which is when John actually was alive and appeared. Then he was no longer physically there, but he was still shaping his characters’ lives, just like he’d always done.

The “absent father” narrative on John is that - a narrative. Spun by the characters themselves because it’s easier and actually kinder on John. Or, better, it allows them not to be crushed by the psychological implications of having to accept that their father was such a looming, minutely formative figure in their lives. They know, but they can wave the “absent father” idea around to avoid thinking about it.

“I had to be a father and I had to be a mother” is something easier to tell yourself. I was the one who did it all. But he wasn’t, and that’s the problem. The fact that John was their father - Dean’s and Sam’s - is the problem. But ironically, blaming himself for every failure is a better option for Dean than fully acknowledging John’s abuse. As long as he blames himself, he has control over it. The moment he acknowledges the extent of John’s influence, he loses control over the entire narrative of his own identity and the family identity, the family dynamics. That’s scarier, just like realizing that God manipulated everything is much scarier than the alternative. “God abandoned us” was indeed a better option, and “John left us alone” was a better option. But neither was true, and the characters faced the implications of the cosmic level, but never got to face the implication of the familial level, because the narrative always danced around it and then Dabb’s apologist version “won”.

But what’s been put in the show is still there. The narrative of John’s abuse is still there. Nothing can take it out of the story.